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cursed-blade-gf · 4 years ago

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@the-one-and-only-blake-llewell so this is that OC I was talking about. It’s fairly detailed because I’m a writer but there may be inconsistencies. TW for blood, horror, and mentions of abuse.

Name: Petra Naverrian

Real Name: Anezi Diasea

Nickname: The Heretic

Race: Protector Aasimar

Class: Cleric

Subclass: Blood Domain

Proficiencies: Medicine, Insight

Patron: Nytoria, Goddess of Judgment and Free Will

Alignment: True Neutral

Domain: Life, Balance

Symbol: Four hexagons, top and bottom two with arrows pointing up and down respectively, the other two with stars

Story: A goddess whose power is used to protect or take away mortality’s privilege to control one’s own fate and make choices while punishing those who seek to undermine others and subjugate or mislead the population. The power she grants her chosen are the abilities to elevate and protect others and manipulate, control, and punish the deserving. Believes in balance and that neither good nor evil should rule a generation and that each is required to fuel the destinies and desires of each individual, but those seeking power through greed or control or subjugation will be dealt with in the same manner and will suffer the loss of their own free will. Encourages her followers to protect the weaknesses of those you are loyal to and exploit the weaknesses of those they defy.

Age: 21

Height: 5’6”

Weight: 100 lbs.

Hair: Blonde with a blood red streak, tied in a ponytail

Skin: Pale

Eyes: Heterochromia, one green eye (L), one blood red eye (R)

Fashion: Trench Duster with one sleeve torn above the wrist on the right side, leather armor over a gauze wrap across the breasts and tight black pants, a belt across the waist and a three corner hat

Appearance: Right hand is wrapped in gauze with a blood red tattooed sigil on her wrist, which marks her as a follower of Nytoria and channels her abilities. Under the gauze is a massive slash through her hand that, while she can heal herself, doesn’t go away due to the amount of times she’s used it to fuel her blood magic.

Weapons of Choice: A Saber and her divine gifts

Personality:

The most brutal show-off in the world. Actively loves dueling and can have a bit of an ego. Enjoys her work as a bounty hunter and is a thrill seeker to the bitter end. Has a sense of honor and will always respect a disciplined combatant, but is more than capable of fighting dirty if her enemies don’t fight fair. Has spilled more than her fair share of blood and has no qualms in taking a life unless it's with her blood magic, which invokes her PTSD. Prefers to carefully assess a situation before killing someone and will exhaust every avenue before slitting someone’s throat. Learned from a young age to study and deconstruct people physically and emotionally, so has a very good eye for reading people and emotions as well as knowing the human body very well. Tries to act civil and mature, but has a hard time concealing the childlike persona she carries.

Backstory: Petra was gifted from a young age, blessed with the favor of Nytoria. Nytoria, as the protector goddess of free will, presented her with a small fraction of her divine power in the hopes that Petra would one day protect her friends, loved ones, and perhaps herself from disaster, knowing that this child’s life would not be a happy one.

From the second she could walk, Petra experienced trauma and hate. Her village worshipped Helm, god of protection, believing that he would shield them from suffering. Mistaking Nytoria’s act of patronage and blood red brand on Petra as mistrust and lack of respect from the deity, her parents and the town, stirred up by the High Priest, Morvarian, ordered her death. Petra, being only 5, was defended solely by her older sister, Neraia, who grabbed her and managed to barely escape with their lives into the wilderness.

Neraia, 17 at the time, being a combat specialist due to her time as a soldier taught her how to wield a sword and, as time went on, Petra became an extremely adept duelist. Neraia also was a combat medic, so she also taught Petra about the important parts of the human body and where to heal as well as where to strike. She and Petra came to rely on each other very heavily while continuing to avoid and dodge mercenaries and followers and acolytes sent by the High Priest, mad with this ideal that killing them would lead to favor from Helm.

During her 15th year, Petra and Neraia were separated in a surprise attack by an assassin’s guild. After days of searching, Petra found her sister being held as bait. With a knife to her throat, the main leader slashed Neraia’s throat. Feeling the divine magic well up inside her from seeing her sister’s blood, she channeled Mystra’s gift into puppeting all 3 assassin’s into killing each other through their own blood, her brand glowing a malevolent red. Able to barely save her sister from an agonizing death, Petra healed her and took her to the nearest town, making sure the infirmary nursed her back to health.

Feeling unbelievable remorse and terror at her own power, she ran before her sister came to consciousness. Running into the forest, she took her knife and tried to carve it her own brand only to have it perfectly healed. Trying several times as she cried and blood continued to spill from her arm only to have it healed, Nytoria appeared to her in her usual way, appearing to be a traveler of unknown origin.

��Child, why do you deny your gifts? I have given you strength.”

“I never wanted this. I almost got my sister killed. I killed those people. I put people in danger with this magic. I will pay any price to make this stop, even if it’s with my own blood.”

“My dearest Petra, there is a reason I entrusted you with this magic and why I became your patron. Your path was never meant to be easy. Helm knew of your fate and chose to let it be, so I stepped in. You are capable of great things. Blood is not a product of violence, it symbolizes life and passion. So instead of spilling your own blood, use it to make this world better than you found it.”

Instilled with an odd sense of peace, she returned to the infirmary to find her sister had left in search of her. After looking for days, neither Neraia or Petra could find each other. Using her instincts, Petra started to craft a persona as a mercenary, donning the name that hounded her as a child, the Heretic. Embarking on a quest to come to terms with and become comfortable with her abilities before being able to face her sister again.

After several years and continued harrying by the same High Priest, she continues on her journey, still harrowed by the horror her divine gifts can inflict, but slowly becoming accustomed to it, she continues to gather reputation among the continent while searching for her sister.

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kingofthewilderwest · 6 years ago

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In Race to the edge, I do think that Heather is a good character in terms of being well developed and contributing to the storylines, but there are just certain aspects about her that stop me liking her. She just comes across as full of herself and really boar headed. I know that Hiccup is boar headed as well, but unlike him, Heather never listens to anyone. She talks down to the other characters as well, albeit not in a comical way like Snotlout and the twins do. With her it is more nasty.

I think it’s perfectly fine to recognize a character is a well-developed, good character, but at the same time not enjoy her presence on screen! In many cases, writing a good character means that the audience will hate them (Solf J. Kimblee and Shou Tucker from FMAB come to mind). Regardless, whatever the writer’s intent for characters, we all have the right to dislike or like the characters we do. Even if we fully understand why the character was written into a story, that doesn’t mean we have to connect and fawn over them. So you do you with Heather! That’s chill!

That said, I do think there’s an important distinction to make between Heather and Hiccup’s personalities and life choices. These two characters might both be boar-headed, but they come from very different life circumstances.

Heather is a character who lacks trust in others. She’s gone through many traumatic events, from being separated from her birth parents, to watching the Outcasts kidnap her adoptive parents, to watching invaders destroy her hometown and kill many people including her adoptive parents, to fending for herself with no humans to support her, to learning that the sociopath behind her misery is her biological brother. All these circumstances have scarred Heather to the point that trusting others is legitimately challenging - even daunting.

There gets to be a point in peoples’ lives that, when they’ve been repeatedly harmed by others… they lack the innate ability to form meaningful trusting relationships, even when they yearn to connect. There’s this constant internal dialogue taunting you, saying that you’re destined to be alone, that everyone will leave you because everyone always has. It becomes a game of fighting yourself and somehow reversing negative beliefs you’ve held for years.

Now, it’s not that Hiccup hasn’t had hard points in life too. I mean, he lost a freaking leg as a teenager! He had rough differences of opinion with his father, too. But he didn’t develop the trauma and vast insecurities Heather did. And while Hiccup’s had harrowing escapades with enemies like Alvin and Dagur, Hiccup’s emotionally improved throughout his teenaged years because his social network has increasingly supported him. Hiccup has become more confident, more comfortable, and happier. Hiccup has been able to trust his peers; he has a close-knit social network he knows he can count on, a father who believes in him, and a best friend dragon who stays by his side through anything.

Hiccup isn’t in a psychological situation where trust is hard to understand. He hasn’t been conditioned by negative experiences to the point that his internal dialogue is telling him his friends can never be reliable. Hiccup makes his boar-headed decisions for different reasons than Heather does. When Heather acts in her own interests, it’s not that she’s justified doing those things… she’s still making wrong choices that hurt others… but I think it’s understandable given her painful background. And frankly, that fear you’ll always be alone, that suspicion even the nicest people will have to leave you behind… it is HARD AS HELHEIM to unlearn.

We see this struggle in Heather throughout Race to the Edge. Heather doesn’t listen to the others because she’s scared to trust them. Heather acts on her own self-interests because she thinks that no one else will take care of her.

In Have Dragons, Will Travel, Heather says that she believes she’s destined to be alone. She’s gotten to such a low point that, even though she’s in the company of friendly people, she doesn’t think she belongs with them. She believes she’s been cast out alone, and that’s how life will continue.

Hiccup: I talked to Johann. He told me Dagur wiped out your village… and your family. I’m sorry.Heather: Then you know why he has to pay.Hiccup: I do. But you don’t have to do this alone.Heather: I don’t know. It seems that I’m destined to be alone.

Heather is unable to trust the dragon riding gang. She’s skittish. Even though she’s touched that they’re trying to do well for her, she’s also so accustomed to fighting for herself. Fearful that these people will turn against her, she can’t trust them with basic friendship instincts. She locks up their dragons, which is definitely for her own self-interest and their harm… and she’s doing it out of fear, from lack of trust.

Heather: Look, I’m sorry I locked up your dragons. I just didn’t trust that you guys would let me go after Dagur.

Heather’s fragile fears break when all the riders are tell Heather that attacking Dagur is a bad idea. Heather’s response that they’re “all talk” rather than friends. Now, it’s true that real friends stop others from doing foolish things. Fishlegs, Snotlout, and Astrid aren’t wrong to question Heather here. Heather’s reaction is emotional rather than logical. However, I find it very realistic given her situation. It’s a response I have seen MANY TIMES by people who’ve been scarred by trust:

Fishlegs: Wait a minute. You want us to go into battle with Dagur and the Beserkers without Hiccup and Toothless?Heather: Guys, I wish Hiccup and Toothless were here, trust me. But they’re not. And we can’t wait. Fishlegs: I have to say any aerial assault of this magnitude would be foolish without Toothless. He’s the most powerful dragon in our arsenal. Heather: You heard Johann, Astrid. This is our last chance. Tell them.Astrid: Well… Look, Heather…Heather: You too?! Just forget it. All that stuff about trust and having my back… I guess that was just talk!

Heather is so accustomed to being alone that when she sees her friends being less-than-rosy to her, her fears kick in, and she believes they’re full-out against her (because everyone’s always been against her, she feels).

Heather again demonstrates an inability to trust Hiccup in Snow Way Out. To be fair, she’s grown. She trusts Astrid enough to give Astrid information about the dragon hunters. At the same time, old habits and deep fears are hard to overcome. We see that Heather still is acting with limited trust, believing Hiccup wouldn’t react the right way to her spying, and that Astrid isn’t judging the situation right when she suggests they tell Hiccup.

Astrid: We should tell Hiccup what we’re doing, this doesn’t feel right.Heather: No. We agreed.Astrid: I’ve never lied to him before!Heather: I know. But this is the best way to take the Dragon Hunters down. From the inside.Astrid: Hiccup could help us! He’s really good at this stuff.Heather: He also cares too much. Astrid, if we told Hiccup that I was spying on the Hunters, we both know he’d try to pull me out of there.

To Heather or Not to Heather also shows Heather’s struggles continuing. Since she’s inclined to be alone, she’s quick to give up and believe she isn’t going to be part of the dragon riding gang. Windshear starts acting up, and Heather’s immediate response is that “this isn’t meant to be.”

Heather: Windshear doesn’t belong with other dragons. And no matter how much I love being on Dragon’s Edge, I’m not gonna choose all of you over her.Fishlegs: But you haven’t even given it a chance. Hiccup is the best dragon trainer there is. I’ve seen him do things I never thought were possible. Heather: I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. Really, I do. I just can’t take the risk.Fishlegs: Okay. I wasn’t gonna say this, but here it goes. I don’t want to go back to being long-distance Terror mail pals. I want you here.Heather: And I feel the same way. Believe me. But Windshear has spent her whole life with me. Protecting me, and watching over me. That’s all she knows how to do. I’m sorry, Fishlegs.Fishlegs: I have an idea. I’ll never ask you again, but please, just this once, trust me, Heather.

“Please, just this once, trust me, Heather.”

Even with the man Heather is starting to attach romantic affections with, she’s finding some difficulties trusting still.

I know I’m talking mostly about her in the first few seasons, but since this is the starting point of Heather (and her character arc conclusion is getting to the point she can even trust Dagur again in Gold Rush), I think this is the context whereby we can understand why she acts the way she does for the whole series.

It’s true that Heather is boar-headed at times, and it’s true that not all her boar-headed choices are based on lack of trust. It’s true sometimes she says things that are somewhat scathing to other dragon riders. But to be fair, the dialogue in the DreamWorks Dragons shows has Astrid and Hiccup saying some pretty scathing things to the twins and Snotlout, too. The friendship dynamic of the Edge is one of constantly haranguing on each other. In a weird way, the fact Heather starts dishing on the others has always felt to me like a depiction she’s finally part enough of the gang to understand their dynamics and get in on them. Doesn’t mean that all the insults the gang says to one another are justified, but it’s interesting to think that Heather starts picking up the crew’s interactions and becoming a part of them.

It’s also true that I don’t remember the middle seasons of rtte as well and am not talking about how she acts during those either!

So it’s not that Heather’s always justified in how she treats others or how she acts in her own interests. However, I think that we do have to understand Heather in this light of her psychology. Lots of the times Heather charges out on her own is because her life’s been conditioned that way, and she’s stuck in a psychological rut fearing that only she can help herself. She does also have a growth arc where she gets better about these things.

In the same way, when Hiccup acts boar-headed, stubborn, and aggressive in RTTE, it’s because of underlying insecurity. He feels uncomfortable being bested by Viggo. It starts to eat at him. Hiccup makes riskier, daring, and sometimes more stubbornly foolish choices… because of what he’s internally fighting through. It doesn’t take away the fact this is a character weakness for him. Faults are faults. But it does mean we can understand why he’s in this mental framework, too.

Whether or not we like Hiccup for acting that aggressive, or Heather for acting in her own self-defense, it’s up to us how we feel about them. And liking or hating them, even when we understand their dynamics, is a part of us being humans with opinions. No opinion of “I like this character” or “I dislike this character” is wrong! I suppose I personally don’t call Heather “nasty,” but “scarred and struggling.” She’s also a character I connect with and love in RTTE. That said, even if she didn’t have a background reason for being a little harsher in the story, it doesn’t change the fact that we can acknowledge characters who are good for storylines but might not be our personal faves. We all have different relationships with characters, and we don’t have to love all of them! For me, I’m happy to love Heather. For you, you might not connect, and there are other characters you enjoy seeing on screen!

Take care and stay awesome. Have a good one!

#happysafaricampers #long post #rtte #Race to the Edge #Heather #Hiccup #faq #analysis #my analysis #To Heather or Not to Heather #Have Dragons Will Travel #Have Dragons Will Travel Part 2 #Snow Way Out #Gold Rush #ask #ask me

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chiseler · 5 years ago

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The Mad Gasser of Mattoon

While it must be admitted that no country on earth can top India when it comes to mass hysteria—I mean, the Indians really, really know how to panic over silly nonsense—the United States comes in a very close second. Despite sneering American press coverage of, say, the Monkey Man hysteria in north central India in the late Nineties, it seems we aren’t nearly so rational and sophisticated a population as we’d like to believe. Whether confined to small rural communities or spread nationwide, delightfully stupid instances of mass hysteria are sprinkled liberally throughout our history. Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast was small potatoes compared to some of the seriously dumb crap stalwart Americans have panicked about. From the Winsted Wild Man, to the Great Airship of 1897, to both Red Scares, to the child-raping Satanic cult hysteria of the Eighties, to the post-9/11 fear of, well, pretty much everything, to the Ninja Burglar who terrorized the residents of Staten Island for nearly a decade, Americans are just as primed and ready to start flapping their arms and trampling one another, as Rod Serling pointed out in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” (1960), whenever the lights blink. Today, as fed by media both legitimate and less so, America as a whole seems to be one ugly, sloppy, rolling ball of mass hysterias. We are a gullible, susceptible people.

Although a few sillyassed contemporary revisionists are attempting to rewrite history, claiming the incidents that took place in Mattoon, Illinois in the Fall of 1944 really were the work of a shadowy and diabolical madman, their efforts are about as worthwhile as those of the hundreds of researchers who’ve claimed they’ve discovered the true identity of the (equally fictional) Jack the Ripper. As things stand, The Mad Gasser of Mattoon remains a perfect textbook example of American mass hysteria at its finest.

Mattoon was a small, quiet community in central Illinois, home to a few factories but far from the bustle of Chicago, Springfield or Champagne-Urbana. In 1944 it was even quieter than usual, considering most of the able-bodied men in town had been shipped off to the war.

Although the invasion of Normandy two months earlier seemed to bode well, as with the rest of the country there was still a palpable paranoia in the air that infiltrated most of the women, children and elderly residents who had been left stateside. They worried not only about the young locals in Europe and the South Pacific, but also about what those sinister Germans and Japs might have up their dirty sleeves. And those were only the big things to worry about. There was plenty else, too, all the day-to-day small town fears, especially those harbored by lonely middle-aged women.

On the night of August 31st, Urban Raef and his wife were awakened by a strange smell in their bedroom. The smell sickened both of them. Convinced there was a gas leak, Mrs. Raef attempted to get out of bed to check the stove’s pilot light, but found she couldn’t move her legs.

That same night, a young mother in the same neighborhood woke up when she heard her daughter coughing in another room. As with Mrs. Raef, when she tried to get out of bed to check on the girl, she found her legs seemed to be paralyzed. In both cases the symptoms passed relatively quickly, and the incidents never made it into the papers. Not until later, anyway.

Around 11PM the following night, Bert Kearney, a local cab driver, still had an hour and a half left on his shift. Back home, his wife was awakened by what she described as a sweet odor permeating the room. As the smell grew stronger. Her legs began to feel weak, so she called her sister, who was living with them at the time. When the sister entered the room, she not only smelled the sweet odor, but pointed out it was coming through the open window. As there happened to be a lot of cash in the house that night—stacks of it, in fact, which the sisters had been counting at the kitchen table earlier in the evening—the pair jumped to the conclusion this strange odor must be the work of a prowler who planned to rob them. They called the cops, who could not find any evidence of anything. No odor, no gas, no footprints or fingerprints, no sign of attempted entry. But when Bert returned home after his shift, he claims to have spotted a tall, thin man wearing dark close and a tight cap crouching near the house. Although he gave chase, he soon lost the man in the darkness. The creeping paralysis soon passed, though for the next few days his wife did complain about a burning sensation in her mouth and throat, obvious side effects of the strange gas the tall thin stranger had pumped into the bedroom.

The Kearney’s story made the papers, and that was the end of it. With the details of their harrowing evening now made public, they provided the other residents of Mattoon with the only blueprint they needed.

In the three days following the publication of the Kearney’s story, six other people called the cops to report eerily similar gas attacks with all the same trademarks: a weird smell, partial paralysis of the legs, and a burning sensation in the mouth and throat. One elderly woman claimed the tall, dark-clad Mad Gasser, as he was quickly coming to be known, crawled in through her bedroom window and, um, “attempted to gas her.” A middle aged couple, Carl and Beulah Cordes, returned home on the night of September 5th and discovered a white handkerchief on the back porch. When Beulah picked up the handkerchief and took a big whiff, she said, she began vomiting violently, and from that the pair concluded it must have been left by the Mad Gasser to knock out their dog so he could break into the house. An older woman living with her adult daughter claimed they were in the kitchen when a tall man dressed all in black began rattling the knob of the back door. Finding it locked, he used a syringe to inject the mysterious gas through the keyhole. Both women passed out, waking up several hours later with that telltale burning in their mouth and throats.

Even those who could not claim to be victims of the Mad Gasser themselves spotted him all over Mattoon, sometimes carrying the kind of canister and hose farmers use to spray pesticides. In every instance, the eyewitness descriptions matched perfectly the description Kearney had given the newspapers.

For all their investigating, cops could find no evidence of anything. There was no lasting physical damage to the victims. They could detect no evidence of any strange gas. Although robbery was the presumed motive, no property had been stolen. Even that handkerchief the Cordes’ had found, upon careful analysis, revealed no chemical residue.

The FBI was called in, but likewise found no evidence of anything untoward.

Frustrated by this, as is usually the case, the townsfolk formed roving bands of well-armed angry mobs to patrol the streets at night, determined to capture this Mad Gasser themselves. As official requests that the vigilante groups disband went unheeded, the chief of police was forced to issue a warning begging citizens not to loiter too long on the street for fear they might be mistaken for the Mad Gasser and shot. The town council also issued a plea begging citizens to be real, real careful with those guns.

Roughly two weeks after the Kearney’s story hit the papers, as the number of reported gas attacks in Mattoon approached thirty, the cops stopped caring. Nearly every report could either be explained away quite simply as a reaction to fumes from the local factories, or simply dismissed as false alarms. Considering no evidence was found of anything (save for that evidence created by the supposed victims themselves), this Mad Gasser nonsense was simply a waste of the department’s time, resources, and patience. They had plenty of real local crimes and misdemeanors to deal with as it was.

Not long afterward, and pretty well fed up themselves, town officials came out and told the citizenry to just calm the hell down and stop being stupid. There was no Mad Gasser, and never had been.

After two weeks of public madness and shrill, fear-mongering newspaper headlines, that’s pretty much all it took to bring things to an end. Although it doesn’t seem to work anymore, there was a time, amazingly enough, when all it took was to have someone say, “Oh, just calm the fuck down and go home. You’re all being a bunch of stupid little pansies.”

Seventy-five years after the events in Mattoon, as noted above, a number of revisionists have claimed they’ve identified the mysterious gas that was used, or better still the demented chemist who was behind the attacks, while others note that an eerily similar string of gas attacks took place in Virginia in 1933. It strikes me these people are desperate to sidestep the simple, undeniable reality that people—Americans in particular—are for the most part a stupid, frantic lot eager to not only believe whatever crazy nonsense they’re fed, but run with it as hard as they can.

by Jim Knipfel

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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Attack on Titan Season 4 Episode 18 Review: Sneak Attack

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This Attack on Titan review contains spoilers.

Attack on Titan Season 4 Episode 18

“You did a good job holding out on your own, Eren. Now just leave the rest to your big brother.”

Attack on Titan is a complex series that features dozens of crucial figures that all represent unique pieces of a gigantic puzzle that’s been steadily coming together and taken apart for centuries. Thousands of lives have been lost and history has been rewritten in the process, all for this war to come down to the union of two brothers, who started this story as utter rivals, only to progressively learn that they’re two sides of the same coin and equally essential to ending an eternity of suffering.

At this point it seems as if Zeke and Eren only trust each other and the rest of the world has become the helpless backdrop to their grand story. After generations of pain and years of personal unrest, all that Eren and Zeke need to do is make contact, but hundreds of individuals do everything imaginable to prevent these two brothers from a physical embrace. The end of the world might be caused by a fraternal hug and this drives “Sneak Attack” forward with harrowing tension.

“Sneak Attack” piggybacks on the vicious fallout from Eren and Reiner’s Titan battle, which is still in full swing. MAPPA really kills it here when it comes to the animation and battle choreography. The audience feels every punch that Eren and Reiner launch at each other and it’s a deeply visceral fight that’s often hard to watch. There are drastic stakes in every word that Reiner says to Eren and he truly believes that he’s about to finally extinguish this threat, once and for all.

The climax of this fight is the goriest that Attack on Titan has been in some time and even the visual of the Cart Titan’s charred skeleton is chilling. The carnage reaches such a fever pitch that the battle cries of these Titans are enough to deafen the city and leave the civilians frozen and helpless. The Jaw Titan’s coordinated attack across rooftops is also the right way to use CG during a battle sequence of this nature. Any boulder barrage from the Beast Titan is presented as a visceral and overwhelming sequence, but this is especially true in “Sneak Attack” as swathes of airships get taken out like a kid throwing pebbles at paper airplanes.

Zeke does the lion’s share of the work in “Sneak Attack” when it comes to the Jaeger siblings, which also triggers some complicated feelings within Yelena. Yelena’s reverence towards Zeke and the Beast Titan is practically spiritual and it only makes her unstable character more volatile. Yelena ricochets between joy and abject terror as she witnesses Zeke’s rise and fall throughout this episode. It’s as if she’s watched God himself get knocked to the ground by mere mortals.

This reckoning makes Yelena especially dangerous as she grapples with this new normal. She remains one of the most terrifying characters in the series because of her deluded, unpredictable nature and the random things that will set her off. The face of disapproval that she makes at Armin is simultaneously chilling and hilarious, but the most frightening thing is that she seems just as likely to hug Armin or slit his throat at this moment. Yelena comes from such an empty place of sadness and her compulsion to have something to believe in when the world is so fractured is completely understandable.

Yelena comes to terms with her idols being torn down, but Gabi becomes more determined to fight for her fellow Eldian and try her best to make sure that no man gets left behind. A lot of viewers continue to reject Gabi, but she’s never been easier to understand than in “Sneak Attack.” Gabi just wants to protect her friend and she can’t understand why that’s not possible. It’s a jarring reminder that these crucial players are just kids, yet forced to accept impossible death sentences.

It’s alternatively just as touching when Falco, a lone Eldian, has convinced himself that he’s not important enough to waste time or resources on. The opposite of this turns out to be true and it functions as the necessary olive branch to heal the Eldians. Before Falco’s exodus, his fellow cellmates tell him how lucky he is since he at least has a home to return to and isn’t conscripted to inevitably turn into a monster. This alleged silver lining is bittersweet since Falco’s on just as much borrowed time as they are.

There are strong parallels between both sides of the war as members of the Survey Corps weigh the costs of individual lives. Connie doesn’t want to abandon Shadis, which echoes Gabi and Colt’s commitment to Falco, but Jean also is hesitant to completely give up on Eren. After everything that’s happened, they’re still determined to give their friend the benefit of the doubt and figure out his true motives. Various characters find unexpected reserves of support for Eren, which only makes it more painful when Mikasa reaches her breaking point. It’s a tiny gesture that only takes a few seconds, but Mikasa’s decision to discard the scarf that Eren gave her–what used to be her security blanket–is one of the most symbolic gestures of the entire series.

“Sneak Attack” is full of action, but the most powerful scene from the whole episode is the more muted moment that occurs between Gabi, Falco, and Colt while they’re in hiding. Their city is in ruins, yet during this moment Gabi can’t help but be touched by the kindness that the Eldians from Paradis have shown them. She truly understands that the only divisions that exist between them are the artificial ones that they’ve created. She privately mourns Sasha and regrets ever being pushed to the point where she cavalierly takes the lives of others.

This burst of empathy becomes even stronger after Falco confesses his feelings to Gabi, yet this tender moment between two children barely has a chance to incubate before the harsh realities of war once again set in. These two kids should be able to just run away and laugh together in a field, only they continue to march forward as key players in a useless war. Gabi’s removal of Falco’s black armband is heartbreaking because even though it pulls them closer together it all still feels like they won’t have time for any sort of celebration. At the same time, this discarded fabric represents Gabi and Falco at their closest and most honest, whereas Mikasa’s abandoned scarf is symbolic of the dissolution of her relationship with Eren.

These themes of understanding and redemption become suffocating once they realize that the only thing that’s keeping Falco safe from turning into a mindless Titan drone is Zeke’s own empathy to not follow through with his plan because Falco will become collateral damage. Most of the characters that are focused on in “Sneak Attack” are forced to perform mental gymnastics over whether a sole sacrifice is worth risking the lives of others. Warriors from both sides are willing to go the extra mile for their common man, but there’s no guarantee that Zeke will do the same. It’s a devastating conclusion to an episode that’s all about people working together and how open minds and hearts are the most powerful weapon. In the end, war and destruction still reigns.

“Sneak Attack” sends the final season of Attack on Titan into further chaos, but characters finally take a step back and acknowledge their mistakes during a time where it’s never been more important. Bloodshed begins to drown both sides and it makes it easier to double down on fear instead of pivot towards empathy. So many characters in “Sneak Attack” consider alternate routes and are prepared for abrupt changes, yet Eren remains steadfast in his mission and continues to move closer to his goal, one step at a time.

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

Eren only travels a few hundred feet throughout “Sneak Attack,” but every single step that he takes forward has seismic reverberations for Attack on Titan’s future. The rest of the world grapples with unprecedented change and a lack of knowledge and answers, but to Eren this is all just a means to an end until he makes contact with Zeke. He’s never been more convinced that what he’s doing is right.

The post Attack on Titan Season 4 Episode 18 Review: Sneak Attack appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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petra-naverrians-diary · 3 years ago

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Name: Petra Naverrian

Real Name: Anezi Diasea

Nickname: The Heretic

Race: Protector Aasimar

Class: Cleric

Subclass: Blood Domain

Proficiencies: Medicine, Insight

Patron: Nytoria, Goddess of Judgment and Free Will

Alignment: True Neutral

Domain: Life, Balance

Symbol: Four hexagons, top and bottom two with arrows pointing up and down respectively, the other two with stars

Age: 21

Height: 5’6”

Weight: 100 lbs.

Hair: Blonde with a blood red streak, tied in a ponytail

Skin: Pale

Eyes: Heterochromia, one green eye (L), one blood red eye (R)

Fashion: Trench Duster with one sleeve torn above the wrist on the right side, leather armor over a gauze wrap across the breasts and tight black pants, a belt across the waist and a three corner hat

Weapons of Choice: A Saber and her divine gifts

Personality:

“Child, why do you deny your gifts? I have given you strength.”

“I never wanted this. I almost got my sister killed. I killed those people. I put people in danger with this magic. I will pay any price to make this stop, even if it’s with my own blood.”

#petra naverrian

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warsofasoiaf · 7 years ago

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Traitor Primarch Ask: Alpharius Omegon and the Alpha Legion (even if they may or may not be secret Loyalists)?

As might be expected, definite things regarding Alpharius, Omegon, and the Twentieth Legion are in very short supply. The Alpha Legion is full of both absent information and deliberate misinformation which makes pinning anything down hard, even their origin stories are fake, but there are some real concrete pieces of information there when we look.

Alpharius and Omegon are twins, but they shared a telepathic connection which meant that the two were never truly alone. This concept is writ large across the entire Alpha Legion, best emphasized in the metaphor of the Pale Spear. The Pale Spear can be disassembled and carried by the members of the individual Legion, but the Pale Spear itself isn’t broken, it remains the Pale Spear. Thus, even when an Alpha Legionnaire is alone, he is never truly alone, because he is still the Legion and can strike with the force of such.

The Alpha Legion borrows a lot from modern day non-nation militant groups including insurgency tactics, focus on sabotage and assassinating targets of opportunity, especially in their cell-based structure and largely independent commanders, meaning that the Alpha Legion cells can enact their own plots without knowing of the other or betraying the Legion, meaning that some Alpha Legionnaires may oppose another Alpha Legionnaire with a different idea or compete over the same resource or mission space. Thus, some members of the Alpha Legion could be actual Chaos Space Marines, worshiping Chaos and accepting their foul blessings, while others might be Renegades and still others secret Loyalists, fighting for the Imperium in the way that they know best.

The Legion isn’t just insurgency though, they also have some very strong Cold War vibes to them, including a Manchurian Candidate-like process of planting deep cover agents to be deployed when needed. While the Alpha Legion can (and has) fought conventional battle, they love to deploy false flag operations, attacking using enemy uniforms, and other means of PSYOPS to undermine the enemy.

This style of warfare annoyed plenty of Alpharius’s brother Primarchs. Konrad Curze despised the dishonesty of the Alpha Legion’s approach, his own terror tactics were certainly striking from ambush, but left no uncertainty as to what it was and why it was happening. Rogal Dorn considered the Alpha Legion to be assassins not worthy of bearing the Emperor’s mark. Roboute Guilliman felt that Alpharius’s approach left conquered areas seething with resentment, requiring resources to build them back up and maintain them. Mortarion and Leman Russ thought that the approach was cowardly and dishonorable. Horus was noted to have valued Alpharius’s approach, praising Alpharius’s panache and forging a close bond with Alpharius. It was speculated, of course, that Alpharius’s friendship with Horus was what led him to side with the Warmaster in the Heresy.

Dan Abnett’s Legion tells us that this is a lie, that the reason he joined the Heresy was due to the Cabal, a collection of xenos with prophetic powers. According to them, if the Emperor wins, he would give his life and become an undead monstrosity, then his Imperium would stagnate, feeding Chaos with the misery of humanity and empowering them. Eventually the spirit of the Emperor would fail and Chaos would consume the galaxy. If Horus won, the short-term victory would empower the Chaos Gods, but Horus’s guilt would cause him to embark on a cleansing crusade, fracturing Chaos, ending with the obliteration humanity and the Chaos Gods both. Alpharius made the decision to side with Horus because he believed that the Emperor would want such a sacrifice to stop the Chaos Gods.

Alpharius’s conduct during the Heresy is very interesting. When working with another legion, such as in the Dropsite Massacre, they cause great damage to the Loyalists, but they permitted the Raven Guard to escape with their Primarch (though with a few Alpha Legion plants mixed in among them). By the later stages of the Heresy, Horus couldn’t trust Alpharius with missions, stating that Alpharius had his own plots, thus Mortarion had to handle the Khan. During the Chondax campaign, the Alpha Legion delays Jaghatai Khan, allowing him to receive the missive from Rogal Dorn, but they attack the Space Wolves after the Burning of Prospero and do significant damage to them at the Alaxxes Nebula. In fact, when it came to his enemies, he fought the ones who disparaged him (Dorn, Russ) much harder than the ones who had not (Jaghatai Khan was one of the most live and let live Primarchs there was). While that almost seems too petty, remember that Lion knocked out Russ over a laugh and Magnus started his folly in part because he wanted to prove sorcery could be a benefit. The Primarchs are titans, and have titanic egos to match; Alpharius seeking validation from those who mocked him was not beyond reason.

The question is, was Alpharius, Omegon, or both secret loyalists, did they ever fall to Chaos, did they change their mind during the Heresy. The Alpha Legion at times even fought itself and prevented some loyalists from turning, and Alpharius and Omegon seemed to be of different minds about the ultimate goal. By The Unremembered Empire, the Cabal is convinced that the Alpharius gambit has failed (and Alpharius kills their representatives after Deliverance Lost, stating that he would act on his own initiative). Certainly, Alpharius also hindered the plans of the Chaos Gods, by refusing to destroy the genetic Astartes material Corax used after sabotaging his plans to rebuild the Raven Guard, but he didn’t turn over the material to Fabius Bile, instead giving him ultimately useless information that prevented Bile from creating newer and better Chaos Marines.

Rogal… I did this so that you would understand… So that you would see that you cannot win. I am not here to kill you, brother. I am not here for Horus. I am here to give you victory… I know the enemy, I know your weaknesses, and theirs. I know the truth… I can give you victory, brother.

What he does in Praetorian of Dorn is very fascinating. Alpharius launches his greatest Harrowing yet, challenging Rogal Dorn directly and using every weapon in his arsenal to subvert, destroy, and undermine Dorn’s defenses of the solar system. However, when the two Primarchs finally come to blows, Alpharius quite pointedly says that he was not there for Horus, and he references the enemy as not being the same person as Rogal. It hints that the “enemy” is Chaos, and that Alpharius can give Dorn victory, but what does that mean? Did Alpharius change his mind and now wished to return to the loyalists? If he had, why did he not deploy his Alpha Legion against the Traitor Legions, and why did he do damage to Dorn’s defenses and make it easier for Horus to attack Terra? Was he attempting to recruit Dorn even to the last hour in hopes of strengthening the Traitor Legions that would eventually scour the universe of Chaos at the cost of themselves? Or was it Alpharius’s addiction to complexity that led him to craft an overly elaborate plan instead of a straightforward one that ended up getting him killed at the hands of Rogal Dorn? Indirect and endlessly open to interpretation, Alpharius was true to himself all the way to his death.

When Omegon finally sensed that Alpharius was gone, what did that mean for him? Why did he take up the mantle of Alpharius, and why did he continue to work to prevent reinforcements from reaching Terra. Was Omegon a traitor the whole time, despite the fact that he seemed to be the one to oppose the switching to Chaos? Did he become Alpharius because he couldn’t stand being alone, and acted the way that he believed Alpharius would act? Or did the loss of Alpharius cause Omegon to accept Chaos into his heart? We may never know, and it might be better if we don’t ever know, so that fans can endlessly discuss what the Alpha Legion is.

Thanks for the question, Necromancer. I think only the arch-traitor is left.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#warhammer 40k #the primarchs

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cutsliceddiced · 4 years ago

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New top story from Time: Inside the Dangerous Mission to Understand What Makes Extremists Tick—and How to Change Their Minds

On a cool winter’s day in early 2014, the American academic Nafees Hamid was invited for tea at the second-story at the Barcelona apartment of a young Moroccan man. It started well enough; they sat down at the kitchen table, chatting amiably in French while two acquaintances of the host sat nearby in the living room. Halfway through the conversation, though, things took a turn. “He started saying things like, ‘Why should we trust any Westerner?’” Hamid recalls. “‘Why would we not kill every one of them? Why should I even trust you—you are an American—sitting here? Why should I even let you out of my apartment?’” The man briefly left the kitchen and went into the living room to speak to the others in Arabic, a language in which Hamid is not fluent. But he repeatedly heard one word he did know: munafiq—a term that, at best, means hypocrite; at worst, “enemy of Islam.”

“I realized that they were talking about me, and that this was going in the wrong direction,” says Hamid, who had arrived hoping to coax the Moroccan to participate in a study.

As quietly as possible, he opened the second-story window and jumped out, his fall cushioned by the awning of a fruit stand below. Adrenaline spiking, he bolted to the safety of a crowded train station a few blocks away.

Field research on jihad has its hazards. Hamid, now 36, had come to the apartment knowing—from a questionnaire he had already filled out—that the Moroccan man harbored extremist inclinations. The effort was part of a larger project to discover the roots of radicalization and what might cause someone to fight or die—or kill—for their beliefs.

Richard MillingtonNafees Hamid in London on August 19, 2020.

But the work goes on, a part of a larger undertaking by an unusual network of policy experts and international scientists, many of whom have their own harrowing tales of escaping danger or navigating dicey situations in pursuit of groundbreaking research. Recently, the group published the first brain-imaging studies on radicalized men and young adults susceptible to radicalization. The private research firm behind the group’s work, Artis International, is officially headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz., but doesn’t truly have a base. Its academics and analysts operate from far-flung places, tapping an array of funding from various governments, the U.S. military and academic institutions. The central goal of the firm is to advance peace by figuring out what motivates people to become violent—and how to reorient them toward conflict resolution, or prevent them from becoming violent in the first place.

Read More: This Researcher Juggled Five Different Identities to Go Undercover With Far-Right and Islamist Extremists. Here’s What She Found

That means getting as close to the perpetrators and their supporters as possible. Much of Artis’ work has been rooted in behavioral sciences and informed by straightforward research methods, like surveys. But Artis researchers have also pushed the boundaries of social science, through everything from experimental surveys on armed forces to psychological tests on imprisoned extremists. Its investigations have led researchers to the front lines of the war against ISIS, restive areas in North Africa, and lately into Eastern Europe and cyberspace.

Even by Artis standards, the recent brain-imaging studies conducted in Barcelona—the work that had Hamid leaping from a window—were remarkable for the level of risk the researchers undertook. The scientists wanted to find hard neurological evidence to support previous social-science findings and widely held assumptions: that extremists could be influenced by their peers, and later, that social exclusion may harden the beliefs of a budding extremist. To gather this sort of information, researchers like Hamid would have to scour the streets of Barcelona for extremists; somehow convince hundreds of them to take surveys; and then, after identifying the most radicalized, coax them to undergo multiple brain scans at a seaside hospital campus. What could possibly go wrong?

Origins: A Research Void

The roots of the Barcelona brain studies go back to 2005, when the U.S. government was still absorbing the 9/11 attacks. Richard Davis, who would go on to co-found Artis International two years later, had recently started working as a policy adviser for the U.S. Homeland Security Council (which reports to the President) and was alarmed by how the government came to its counter-terrorism strategies. “It became clear that many of the decisions that were being made—grand decisions about terrorism—were being made with little to no field-based scientific evidence backing them,” he says.

One key problem is that empirical extremism studies require access to materials that governments might not want to share, like transcripts of intercepted communications or interrogations, explains Liesbeth van der Heide, a research fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in the Hague. Ideally, the studies also involve access to extremists themselves, who are even harder to come by. “There aren’t many of them,” she says. And the ones that succeed in carrying out violent plans “tend to die in an attack or flee.”

So most terrorism research has tended to draw on secondary sources—reports in the media, for example, or other books or articles already published on the subject, resulting, she says, in “an echo chamber repeating what others have said.” An exhaustive 2006 review of 6,041 peer-reviewed studies on terrorism published from 1971 to 2003 found that only 3% were based on empirical data. “Thought pieces”—articles where authors discussed an issue theoretically or offered an opinion—accounted for 96%.

This alarmed Davis. He believed that any government interested in curbing violence needed not more thought pieces, but a more scientific understanding of the people who commit it based on primary sources. Academics already doing this sort of work were rare exceptions, but both Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer turned forensic and clinical psychiatrist, and Scott Atran, an anthropologist, had spent extensive time with members of militant jihadist groups, from the Afghan mujahedin to al-Qaeda. Davis sought them out in the fall of 2005, and by 2007 had convinced them to help him launch a firm dedicated to on-the-ground research into violence reduction. They named it Artis, Latin for “of art,” “of skill” or, in some usages, “of science.”

That same year, Artis cobbled together funding from a range of institutions—including the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the French National Centre for Scientific Research—to study the underlying causes of political violence. They decided to focus on a social-psychology concept called “sacred values”—a person’s deepest, most nonnegotiable values—which would lay the groundwork for their Barcelona brain scans.

Sacred Values

In the 1990s, social psychologists Jonathan Baron at the University of Pennsylvania and Philip Tetlock at the University of California, Berkeley, developed the concept of “sacred values” to counter economic theories that suggested everything had a price. Certain values (like human life, justice, civil liberties, environmental or religious devotion) could be so sacred to people that they would be unwilling to act against them, no matter the cost or consequence.

Atran, who had been studying values for decades through the lens of anthropology, began applying this concept to the study of violent extremists after 9/11. It occurred to him then that, perhaps, the perpetrators had committed the suicide attacks in defense of deep values the rest of the world had been overlooking. By 2007, Atran had advanced this line of thinking in several articles about jihadist terrorists. His Artis colleagues found evidence that material incentives may backfire when adversaries see the issues at the heart of a dispute (like land and nationhood) as “sacred.”

The Artis team continued to hone the connection between sacred values and violence into 2014, when a comment from President Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper Jr., gave them a renewed sense of purpose. In an interview, Clapper said that the U.S. had underestimated ISIS militants because predicting a group’s will to fight was “an imponderable.” In response to that comment, Atran and his colleagues decided to use their knowledge of sacred values to measure militants’ will to fight, which they believed was indeed “ponderable.”

That same year, they did survey-based research on networks in Spain and Morocco responsible for the 2004 Madrid bombings. It found that people were more willing to sacrifice their lives if they were part of a close-knit group that shared their sacred values. They also began laying the groundwork for a separate study, eventually published in 2017, that found that among members of various forces who fought against ISIS, those who expressed the most willingness to fight and die for abstract values like nationhood, heritage and religion tended to prioritize those values over their social groups, like family.

Still, by 2014 most such work had come from what fighters said in interviews or surveys. Atran was convinced that sacred values were so deep and powerful that the brain must process them differently than it processes decisions about more mundane issues. But to truly understand the relationships between neural pathways associated with such values and willingness to sacrifice for them, Atran and his colleagues believed they needed to get a look inside extremists’ heads.

Recruitment

Barcelona’s Raval district is a maze of graffiti-sprayed buildings and narrow streets. In recent years, chic galleries and boutique clothing stores have begun to spring up between halal butchers and Arabic-language bookshops, filling the boarded-up storefronts emptied by the waves of evictions that ravaged the primarily immigrant neighborhood following the 2008 financial crisis.

The locale has also been the epicenter for a number of foiled terrorist plots, and is carefully monitored by both Spanish and international intelligence bodies for jihadist activity. That made it an appealing place for Hamid and his colleagues to recruit radicalized men for their inaugural brain study on extremists. The Artis researchers planned to use a combination of behavioral tests and brain scans in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine to see whether a hardened extremist’s “will to fight” for his sacred values was susceptible to peer influence.

In early 2014, the group decided to target a small pocket of extremists in Barcelona’s Pakistani community that authorities had been tracking for years. They set their sights on 20- to 30-something first-generation Pakistani men who openly supported Lashkar-e-Taiba, an al-Qaeda affiliate based in South Asia. Initially, Hamid’s recruitment strategy consisted of becoming a regular at neighborhood cafés and conspicuously reading articles or books that he imagined might appeal to a jihadist, in hopes that someone would approach him. “That really didn’t work,” he says. “It was far more effective to be transparent.”

So he started to look for Urdu speakers who seemed like they had time on their hands. When he saw likely candidates chatting with friends on park benches or sipping tea at one of the many outdoor terraces in the Raval district, Hamid would approach them cautiously. “I didn’t want to seem like I was stereotyping an entire population … I think, also, I just didn’t want to get punched in the face.”

He explained that he was a psychologist conducting surveys on people’s strongly held values related to religion, culture and politics. After chatting for a while, he would invite them to take an initial survey designed to assess a person’s level of radicalization, according to three specific criteria: their support of the militant jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba; their approval of violence against civilians; and, lastly, their expressed willingness to aid or participate in armed jihad. The survey took 30 to 60 minutes to complete, and Hamid paid everyone who took it €20 ($22) for their time. For the purposes of the study, a person who fit all three criteria was considered radicalized, in which case, Hamid would call them to ask if their friends might also want to take the survey.

As a Pakistani American, Hamid was acutely sensitive to the fact that the people he was approaching might feel profiled. (And in fact, a number of the nonradicalized people who gleaned the thrust of the survey questions were offended, he said.) However, he also recognized the scientific importance of focusing on this particular population.

“We wanted to study radicalization in the context of violent Sunni jihadism, which at the time we conducted our research was the main international terrorist threat,” he explains. It made sense to focus on recruiting from population (and Moroccan population for a follow-up study on the brains of budding radicals) because they represented the two biggest Sunni Muslim groups in the area. And, “the majority of people pulled into terrorist groups from the Barcelona region came from those two ethnic groups,” he says.

The Artis team also believed that it was scientifically important to study groups that weren’t white college students—a population so overly represented in cognitive-science study that they have their own acronym: people from white, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic societies (WEIRD). “Studying sacred values and willingness to fight and die in two separate ethnic groups with very different cultural backgrounds allowed us to examine the generalizability of our claims,” says Hamid.

To protect both the extremists and the study itself, rather than using names, the researchers assigned each volunteer a number. They also tried to avoid asking any questions in the surveys that might put them in tricky legal terrain. “I would tell [the volunteers], ‘Do not tell me anything about a crime you committed, because that will implicate me,’” says Hamid. Instead, the researchers asked hypothetical questions aimed at assessing participants’ beliefs and values, rather than what a person had already done or intended to do with them.

By the end of 2015, Hamid and his team had convinced 146 people to take the survey. He and his colleagues then followed up with the most radicalized of the group—the 45 men who met all three criteria—offering them an additional €100 ($120) to come to a laboratory for the rest of the study. Thirty men, ages 18 to 36, agreed.

Into the Lab

The Autonomous University of Barcelona’s fMRI lab is located in the basement of a blocky gray building flanked by patches of green lawn where, on sunny days, college students like to picnic and read books. There, a team led by Clara Pretus, a neuroscientist in her mid-20s, put these 30 men through the next stages of the study.

The men came to the lab in groups of three or four. After a brief orientation to ease their nerves, the brain scans would begin. The men would lay prone on the bed of the fMRI machine, which would back them into a tube. They wore goggles affixed to a video screen that would flick on and project a statement written in Urdu: “Prophet Muhammad must never be caricatured” or “The Qur’an should never be abused,” for example. Each statement touched on an issue that mattered to the group, based on previous surveys and interviews. The scientists knew which statements aligned with each man’s sacred and nonsacred values, based on those same previous surveys, and they wanted to know how their brains would respond to each. To figure this out, they asked the men to rate how willing they would be, on a scale of 1 to 7, to fight and die for each declaration.

The machine snapped pictures of their brains as the men used a handheld device to make their ratings. After they had gone through all the prompts, Pretus offered them the opportunity to review the slides again—but this time, they’d be able to see how their own responses compared with those supposedly given by their “peers.” This peer group was presented to the men as “the average opinion of the Pakistani community in Barcelona.” But in reality, the researchers had fabricated the ratings for the sake of the experiment. In some instances, the researchers made them appear to align with the men’s responses. In other cases, their “peers” appeared to be more inclined to fight and die for specific values. In still others, less.

After the men had seen how the ratings of their so-called peer group differed from their own, they were given the opportunity to go through the slides one last time—this time outside of the machine—and rate their willingness to fight and die for each statement once again. The scientists wanted to see if the responses from their “peer group” would make them alter their initial responses. In cases where anyone changed his mind, scientists would go back through the fMRI images to see what was happening in his brain as he reviewed the peer information that ultimately compelled him to reconsider his initial answer.

After they completed the final task, the men, whose names they never learned, were free to take their money and go, disappearing into the streets.

Findings

Over the following weeks, the team analyzed the data. As expected, the men expressed greater willingness to fight and die for their sacred values than for their nonsacred values. More interesting were what parts of the brain appeared involved with each question. When participants rated their willingness to sacrifice for their sacred values (defending the Qur’an, for example), parts of the brain linked to deliberation (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus and parietal cortex, which Pretus describes as parts of the fronto-parietal or “executive-control network”) were far less active than when they rated their willingness to kill and die for issues they cared about less (like the availability of halal food in public schools). Dr. Oscar Vilarroya, the lead neuro-scientist on the team, says this indicates that humans don’t deliberate about their sacred values: “We just act on them.”

While this may seem like common sense, the finding was significant, since nearly all sacred-values research to that point had been based on surveys and other tools that assessed what people said—not tied to brain activity. “When you’re taking a social survey, you can lie,” explains Atran. “But brain patterns can’t be faked.” It was the first published study scanning the brains of extremists.

Knowing extremists essentially don’t deliberate when considering the values most important to them confirmed something Atran long believed: that deradicalization programs focused on altering extremists’ beliefs through logic and reasoning, or through trade-offs and material incentives, are doomed to fail. Others had made this argument to explain why programs like France’s civics- and reward-focused deradicalization program, launched in late 2016, had flopped within a year. Here was brain science to support the case.

There was one finding of the study, though, that provided a glimmer of hope for an alternative approach: the areas in the brain linked to deliberation lit up when extremists realized their “peers” weren’t as willing to resort to violence to defend a particular value. And when given the opportunity, post–brain scan, to revise their initial answers to the question “How willing are you to fight and die for this value?” many of them adjusted their rating to better align with their peers. Hamid says this shows that peer groups, like family and friends, play a powerful role in determining whether an extremist will become violent. They will never be able to change the extremist’s core views or values, he says, but they can convince that person that violence is or is not an acceptable way to defend those values. This finding, Atran believes, could have real implications for governments and organizations working in counterterrorism.

“The lesson … is don’t try to undermine their values,” Atran says. “Try to show them there are other ways of committing to their values.”

Critiques and Real-World Applications

The team’s work, published in the Royal Society Open Science journal in June 2019, has garnered a flurry of attention, especially from social psychologists and other academics interested in human motivation. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University and author of the controversial book The Coddling of the American Mind, commended Atran and his colleagues on their “ecological validity”—how relevant the studies are to real-world problems. “We often use the easiest subjects to obtain, which are college students,” he says. “But Scott, at great expense and with great difficulty has always been committed to ecological validity—to studying people who are truly involved in extreme behavior, including terrorist behavior.”

But academics with a background in neuroscience, including Jay Van Bavel, an associate professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, and Patricia Churchland, who studies the intersection of brain activity and philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, expressed more caution. Churchland reviewed the study for Royal Society. In her review, she says, she warned that the brain regions and neural networks from which scientists drew their conclusions are still not very well understood and have been associated with a range of functions beyond simply “deliberation.”

Atran points out that he and his colleagues never set out to map the connection between brain parts and behaviors. Instead, they sought to—and did—find brain patterns that lined up with the results of behavioral studies. (He adds the usual science disclaimer: “All results are tentative, and we look for replication.”)

Meanwhile, as the academic world weighs the research, the Artis team has published additional brain studies on radicalization. And the U.S. military and foreign governments are already plotting how they might put the findings to use. Since the Barcelona work first began, Davis and Atran have been fielding calls from security officials around the world seeking advice on how to deal with radicalized populations and how to apply their research to newer problems, like criminal groups spreading disinformation and taking advantage of weak governance amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Davis is adamant that his researchers steer clear of directly advising any military or government—he doesn’t want the fate of suspects or a nation’s security to be pinned on one of them. But he’s happy to send his colleagues around the world to share their research findings and even collaborate on projects.

And, in a twist, the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado got in touch in 2016 seeking to collaborate and study how a cadet’s sacred values and identity with varying groups affect their willingness to fight and die. This April, the Academy, with Artis’ assistance, completed a small study that found that cadets who both viewed religion as a sacred value and strongly identified as a member of a religious group took greater risks than their peers in virtual combat situations. One key takeaway, according to Lieut. Colonel Chad C. Tossell, the director of the school’s Warfighter Effectiveness Research Center, is that the “spiritual strength” of soldiers is as important as the weapons and technology they use. An early draft of the study says the simulation designed for the research could be “useful for selection and training.”

Davis is encouraged by the constant interest he gets from governments, from those in the U.S. to Kenya to Kosovo. The U.S. military continues to aid in funding as the firm sets its sights on the next frontiers: figuring out how and why democratic institutions collapse and how cyberspace is being used to divide people and harden their values, turning nonsacred values into sacred ones. Artis’ work is “first and foremost about field-based scientific research,” and giving policymakers the facts they need to responsibly respond to the problems of the day, Davis says. “We can debate what the meaning of the empirical evidence is, but it’s better to have it than not to have it.

—With reporting by Mélissa Godin and Madeline Roache/London

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

#Time #top stories #IFTTT #news

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feyreofthewildfire · 7 years ago

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We’ll Go Together - Chapter 8

I’m so excited for this chapter!! It’s by far the longest and most interesting one yet, in my opinion.

(Btw, I kept imagining Az in those really cute nerd glasses. Don’t ask me why cause I don’t know)

Enjoy!!

Chapter 1

I've broken free from those memories I've let it go, I've let it go And two goodbyes Led to this new life Don't let me go, don't let me go

When Nesta wakes up, it’s with a violent gasp and wide eyes.

Every part of her aches, though not in the way she remembers it. Her muscles ache from lack of use, not pain.

She can still feel every step of the marble stairs as she fell, her bones breaking into fragments and her blood vessels bursting open to color her skin purple. She can still hear Cassian’s bellowing her name as she does.

Cassian.

She turns her head and he’s sitting next to her bed, sleeping in such a way that she knows will hurt when he wakes up. She gently shakes his shoulder with a slow hand. He instantly wakes and jumps out of his seat, fists already curling in preparation of a fight.

She rolls her eyes, “Sit down. I woke you up.” The words don’t have the same bite they always do.

She’s come to expect the same response from him whenever she wakes him up and even when she doesn’t. That’s not what concerns her.

The dark smudges under his eyes are worse, and the forever haunted shadows have crept up further on him. Even after the first time he’d found the bruises from her vile husband, he had still looked the same. Even after she’d been unable to get out of bed, he had still looked the same. She’d needed him, whether she had wanted to admit it or not, and he had been unwaveringly there beside her.

There’s no way the darkness she’d banished before has reappeared in concern for her. It’s something else. It has to be.

Perhaps it’s the visions they’ve been having since they met. They had begun to become harrowing right before her fall, and even before then his own night terrors from his time in the Air Force had kept them both awake at night.

He blinks, “You’re awake.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Her sarcasm lashes off her tongue, though not as harshly as she’d like. Some of her walls have fallen, too shattered to raise once again.

She supposes that she owes it to him anyways. Tomas would have let her bleed out at the bottom of the stairs. Cassian must’ve been the one to take her to the hospital.

Her next wall cracks a little bit with that realization. He cares, even when she has nothing to give and he has so much to take. She can’t have him, she reminds herself. He deserves better. He needs better. She can’t give him what he needs.

He chooses that moment to sit himself on the edge of the bed and tightly lace his hand through hers. The action feels oddly domestic, and Nesta finds comfort in that. He’s not in a mood for jokes, it seems. All the notions from before fall away as he starts to talk.

“He pushed you down the stairs.” The words are quiet—horrified. He raises their hands to press his lips against the back of hers, shutting his eyes for a moment. “I could hear your bones cracking. When you finally stopped falling, you looked… dead.” He shudders violently, grip tightening in hers. “I thought you were dead.”

She softens ever-so-slightly for this man—this man who had chosen to care for her when she’d done nothing but lash out at him and push him away. “It’ll take more than that to kill me.” The words are still hard and defiant.

“No, Nes—it won’t.” He retorts, the strain in his voice worsening. “You are a… an inferno, but you’re also fragile.” Her eyes narrow at his words, grip on his hand slackening. He groans and shakes his head, looking away from her. “That’s not what I meant. Tomas has an ungodly cache of resources and now that you’ve survived this he’s going to attack you with the entirety of that cache.”

She scoffs, “Let him.” The confidence she feigns is the near flawless in contrast to the parasite of fear in her. Her world has flipped but Cassian is still the same. He is her only constant now. She has to remind herself that he cares, that he will not use and abuse her. He will not lure her in with a pretty smile before ripping out her throat when she gets close.

When the worry in his eyes doesn’t lesson, she sighs and scoots herself away from him. She pats the newly vacated space with her hand. “Lie down, you overprotective brute.”

A sparkle pushes away the worry, if only for a moment. “You’re usually more demanding than that, sweetheart.” Even as he says this he lies down without any true resistance, tucking his arm under the pillow and facing her, leaving his opposite hand in hers.

She breezes over the snark, “What happened?”

His face falls and those shadows creep in a little closer. She detaches her hand from his and brushes the pieces of hair that have fallen out of his hair tie as his eyes flutter shut. She doesn’t want to be protective, she doesn’t want to care so much, but she does. She does. She pulls her hand back as he leans into it and drops it in the space between them.

“The dreams,” he answers, though stops there. He reaches his hand across and throws it over her waist, gently tugging her to him. She wraps her arm over his torso and tentatively places her hand between his shoulder blades. There’s no point in resisting, not when her skin sings with the contact.

“What about them?” She prods, tilting her head up as he tilts his down.

“They’re real now.”

It’s a challenge to keep her face neutral and uncaring, even with the practice she’s had. There had always been something awfully visceral about them, and the actions of her dream self had begun to translate into her waking hours, but she had never believed in any sort of that magic or supernatural bullshit. Nesta had always liked tangible things—things that she knew were real without a doubt. Putting hope into anything that wasn’t concrete had only led to anger and disappointment.

Well, except Cassian. But she was bracing herself for this to crash and burn too.

“What do you mean they’re real.”

His grip on her tightens. “Rhys—my foster brother—isn’t dead after all. But he’s not Rhys. He’s a different Rhys. He looks like him but he doesn’t have any of the memories.”

Her next exhale shakes the slightest bit at that statement. She knows what his brother’s death had done to him. She knows that utter heartbreak that had encapsulated him when Rhiannon had been forced to close down Illyria two years later. She knows what he had done to himself when he had failed to reopen it.

His heart is a newly healed scar—one that she had soothed—now ripped wide open again.

She doesn’t say anything, only runs her hand soothingly over his back and pulls him closer. Words don’t mean anything. All she can do is offer herself.

Elain can barely breathe.

Everything has gone wrong. Everything.

The first flight had been cancelled and the second one had been delayed. Some man, who was way too old to be traveling, had elected to have a stroke and they’d been forced to land overnight.

Now she’s sitting on the plane again, and her sisters are still hours away. Her leg bounces with impatience and not even the bad, cheesy romance novel she’s been trying to read can capture her attention. She fidgets with the ring she still wears on her left hand, mind running a mile a minute with countless scenarios of what could have possibly gone wrong since Feyre’s last call.

A scarred hand stops the motions of hers, “Hey.”

Her eyes flick up to Az, who sits between herself and the isle. She sighs and laces her fingers through his. He grounds her with one, gentle word and a reassuring gesture. It’s a friendship she wouldn’t trade for the world. After Graysen, he had been the friend she needed.

“I’m sorry,” she instantly apologizes. “I’m just so nervous. Anything could go wrong while we’re up here. What if Nesta gets worse? What if she dies?” She knows that she’s working herself into a panic, that it’s more than likely that her older sister is okay but the probability doesn’t stop her from worrying.

“She’s going to be okay,” He placates. “If half the stories you’ve told me are true, she’ll make it through whatever’s happened.”

Elain supposes that he’s right. Nesta is angry and intense and she knows it only could’ve gotten worse with the influence of Tomas hanging over her. She hasn’t seen her sister in over three years, and she had been something begrudgingly close to happy. She’d moved across the country with her fiance only to find nothing but a facade taken off.

The calls had stopped after eight months. It’d been radio silence since, only the occasional check coming through instead. Elain would’ve given up every single one, no matter how vital they’d been, to hear her sister’s voice again.

She focuses her attention on the hand in hers, tracing the ridges and divots in the skin that she’d done only a few times before, when her head became too busy and she broke down. She’d never had the courage to ask how he’d gotten them, to cross the line from amicable friendship to something much more meaningful.

Though she supposed she had already crossed the line when she’d hysterically asked if he’d come with her, across the country for an indefinite amount of time. His answer had been an immediate Of course in that quiet way of his that knows that too many words will break her. He’d helped her collect herself and did everything for her, caring for her when all she cared about was Nesta. He’s essentially become her caretaker.

She’s not sure what she’s ever done to earn such loyalty from him.

Her heart has become a shriveled piece of betrayal and disappointment, filled in with shame and sadness. It’s been so long since she’s seen Graysen, but she also knows that she doesn’t deserve to see him. She’d broken one of the few rules he had set and instead of nodding her head and walking away like she should have, she’d snipped at him.

That had been the end of that.

Within the week she’d been packed up and kicked out. She’d found a listing for a temporary roommate in Azriel and had moved in, slowly adjusting and attempting to call her younger sister. She’d completely lost contact with Feyre during the transition period, and hadn’t been able to get back in touch at all.

That was, of course, until Feyre had called her in the middle of night in a frenzy. She’d calmed her down and promised to send a few checks until Feyre had settled herself. Her plans to move out into her own apartment had gone out the window with the promise, but she had found that she hadn’t minded. Not truly, at least.

Obviously, the Archeron Sisters had impeccable taste in men. It was the only thing in common she had with her two vastly different sisters—her two sisters who were near antagonistic to each other. There was a small sense of disgruntled loyalty that undercut the biting insults they would throw back and forth, but she knows it only stems from their promise to their mother.

Elain takes a deep breath and continues to trace Az’s scars, still with little bits of dirt wedged between her nail and finger.

She blinks and he’s handing her a short sword, no longer than her forearm. Blue stones are set in gauntlets on the back of his hand as silence rings around them.

It will serve you well.

As soon as it starts, it ends.

She looks over and finds him staring at her with a quiet thoughtfulness, a contemplation that she’s become familiar with. They’ve only known each other for a matter of months, and yet there’s something comforting about his presence that never fails to calm her.

Maybe it has to do with the visions. Maybe it doesn’t.

She’s too afraid to ask if he gets them too in fear of sounding crazy. She’s not sure if he’ll call her so or believe her, and she finds that the uncertainty is better than the betrayal if he does declare her insane. She’s rather omit a truth than run the risk of losing him.

He’s become infallibly important to her in only a matter of months.

It’s a terrible realization.

Elain finds that he’s still staring at her, with the patient look on his face that only causes her heart to drop of her stomach. When she shakes her head, he simply nods once and turns away and back to his phone, where she knows he’s talking to Rhiannon.

She almost wishes he had asked her anyways.

He’s recounting stories once again.

She’s not sure anymore if it’s for her or himself, if it’s to help her remember or to help him convince himself that it’s still her. Maybe it’s both.

It feels like she doesn’t know anything at all.

The tears had stopped long ago and now they sit in their hotel room, visiting hours long over. She’s perched in his lap on the bed, her head tucked into the space between his collarbone and neck. If she focuses hard enough, she can hear his heartbeat. It’s steady and soothing, a gentle pulse that reminds her of home—wherever that is.

“Rhys?” She asks quietly after he finishes speaking.

“Yes, darling?” The pet name feels natural, as if calling her by any other name would be wrong. It’s such a strange feeling, finding home in things not recognized.

“Do you miss the flying?”

She feels his breathing hitch, his grip loosen for only a moment, but the answer he gives is true. His answers are always true, “Yes.”

Her eyes flutter shut as she finds herself growing sleepy, “What do you miss?”

His grip, in contrast to before, tightens around her waist, “The wind. The feeling of a free fall. Seeing everything so far away.”

He continues to speak, to spin a tale of flying and how she had once been able to do it herself. He continues to place her on a pedestal that she can’t climb up and she finds that she doesn’t mind. As long as he stays, as long as she has him, everything will be ok.

Everything has to be okay.

Next Chapter

#we'll go together #acotar fanfiction

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chicagoindiecritics · 5 years ago

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New from A Reel of One’s Own by Andrea Thompson: Top Films Of 2019

By Andrea Thompson

I state that my list wasn’t too late, 2020 came too early. So here are my top 25 movies of 2019.

25. Avengers: Endgame

Walt Disney Studios

Fan service doesn’t have to be a bad thing. While “Avengers: Endgame” mostly gave fans what they wanted, it was also a fond farewell to an MCU that had been building for over a decade, one that would be greatly altered by the movie’s end. Making good use of its three hour runtime, “Endgame” takes it time wandering through its own universe in a way that’s both heartfelt and entertaining before getting the gang together in an absolutely jaw-dropping, action-packed climax that had the most jaded moviegoers cheering.

24. Knives Out

Lionsgate

Rian Johnson may have had a complicated year, but “Knives Out” has him on top of his game. Johnson has built a career around toying with audience expectations in the most enjoyable way possible, and he does so yet again in “Knives Out,” giving us a whodunit that seems to reveal who in fact dun it pretty early, only to provide even more layers to peel back. After wealthy patriarch Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) dies in an apparent suicide, gentleman detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is hired to investigate, only to discover some very combative family dynamics, with caregiver and audience surrogate Marta (Ana de Armas) caught in the middle. Anchored by an all-star cast that also includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, LaKeith Stanfield, Toni Collette, and Chris Evans, Johnson keeps the mystery and the fun coming from start to finish.

23. Monos

IMDB

Just when you think the eight isolated teenage soldiers in “Monos” are treating the unnamed war they’re fighting in like a neverending slumber party, tragedy strikes, and they become very aware of what the consequences of failure are, and the life or death stakes they’re involved in. As they descend from their remote base in the mountains to the jungles below, their bond is torn and transformed into something far darker, as the beauty of their natural surroundings likewise becomes less of a contrast and more of a complement to humanity’s brutality. Moisés Arias is a standout as the group’s charismatic leader, who likewise leads his charges (and peers) into their own increasingly insular culture, as the bonds of adolescence enable them to surrender more and more of their humanity.

22. Toy Story 4

Walt Disney Studios

“Toy Story 4” certainly had no business being good. It was another sequel in a franchise that seemed to wrap everything up neatly in the last film, not only giving Woody (Tom Hanks) and his pals a happy ending, but reassurance that life would go on after their beloved Andy grew up and grew beyond them. So what else was left to stir any kind of conflict interesting enough to prevent one of the most creative and commercially successful film series ever made from devolving into one of the most cynical cash grabs of all time? Thankfully, quite a bit, and it mostly amounts to a case of white male anxiety. Woody had always been sure of his purpose, but when he runs into Bo Peep (Annie Potts), he’s inspired to rethink his life, as his former love has transformed from the demure, delicate toy who stayed behind on adventures to a capable leader who’s embraced life without a child, assists other discarded toys, and plans to see more of the world. It all amounts to a progressive message, that of being who you are right now. Life may change, and your place in it can become frighteningly precarious, but you should never be defined by your past, whether it was scarred by tragedy, or was the source of your happiest moments. Throughout it all, friendships, family, and love can last. To infinity and beyond.

21. Hustlers

STX Films

“Hustlers” is one of those films that could’ve just been a puritanical cautionary tale about the dangers of girls gone wild. Good thing writer-director Lorene Scafaria saves her anger for the patriarchy rather than the strippers who come up with a plan to turn the tables on their Wall Street clients after the recession hits. Even smarter, Scafaria anchors her story in the friendship between Ramona (Jennifer Lopez in a career-best performance), the originator of the scheme, and Destiny (Constance Wu). Before 2008, they and their co-workers are able to earn more than a good living, but after the financial crisis, their profession becomes less than viable. So they decide to drug wealthy Wall Street men and get them to spend ridiculous amounts of money, which they would then keep for themselves. By giving women who are normally sexualized furniture center stage, Scafaria allows us to share their delight in scamming the scammers, then their fear as their world inevitably unravels, resulting in an insightful, female-centric crime story that mostly unfolds sans judgment.

20. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

A24

Gentrification has been given the movie treatment before, but “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” doesn’t just show the scope of its horrors, it makes you feel them. In this world, it’s perfectly feasible for a little girl to happily skip down the street while men in hazard suits are cleaning up the water, as long as she resides in a neighborhood the rest of San Francisco is determined to leave behind in its mad rush for profit. Jimmie Fails (co-writer Jimmie Fails, who plays a fictionalized version of himself) has one thing to cling to though: a beautiful house in the heart of the city, which was built by his grandfather after he returned home from WWII, and is now occupied by an older white couple. When the couple departs, Jimmie and his friend Mont (Jonathan Majors) decide to move in as squatters in a desperate attempt to reclaim it. A tribute to a city that provokes love and despair in equal measure, “The Last Black Man” is a devastating indictment of an America that claims to reward hard work, yet often condemns those who are born with the most odds to overcome.

19. Ready Or Not

In-laws can be tough, but the clan in “Ready or Not” could probably teach the Lannisters a thing or two. Having grown up in foster care, Grace (Samara Weaving) is eager to bond with her new family, so she happily participates in their tradition of choosing a random game to play on her wedding night. But when she draws the card “Hide and Seek,” she discovers that her new relatives believe that if they are unable to find her and kill her before the night is over, they will lose their vast family fortune. In addition to making the honeymoon awkward, Grace must fight to stay alive in an environment where everyone now regards her as disposable, an acceptable sacrifice to keep the money flowing in. As wickedly funny as it is violently entertaining, “Ready or Not” is a surprisingly heartfelt tribute to humanism and the benefits of being an outsider…especially when insiders have murder on their minds.

18. 1917

IMDB

Sam Mendes has a reputation for intensity, but his harrowing war drama “1917” brings more suspense and terror than most horror movies. During WWI, two young British soldiers are given a seemingly impossible mission of going behind enemy lines to deliver a message. If they make it through, they’ll not only prevent a disastrous attack, but save quite a few lives, including the brother of one of the soldiers. Shot to give the effect of one continuous take, Mendes turns what might have been a gimmick and uses it to capture the horrors of war, and the humanity that often emerges in spite of it, all in a technically masterful work that showcases a filmmaker at the height of his storytelling abilities.

17. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Sony Pictures

Given that 2018 saw the release of the critically and commercially successful documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” did 2019 really need another film about Fred Rogers? Hold that thought, because “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” makes an enthusiastic case for yes. It’s probably no coincidence that the posters for both films also mention kindness, since Fred Rogers not only advocated it, he seemed to embody it, and not only to the children who were the target audience of his wildly successful show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Even if Tom Hanks doesn’t have much of a resemblance to Mr. Rogers, he nevertheless seems to channel him and the values he tirelessly championed to an uncanny degree, enough to make journalist Lloyd Vogel’s (Matthew Rhys) journey from cynic to believer feel fresh rather than tired. Director Marielle Heller also brings the same clear-eyed compassion that made “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” and “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” so heartfelt to this story of a budding friendship between two very different men.

16. Her Smell

Elisabeth Moss has long since proven she’s a force of nature, more recently on the Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale.” So what more does she have to prove with the film “Her Smell?” Quite a lot it turns out. If “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a showcase for Moss’s powers of restrained passion, then “Her Smell” allows her to tear up the screen like a tornado, destroying all the mere mortals unfortunate enough to become swept into her path as the self-destructive punk rocker Becky Something. As Becky’s mood shifts with the rapidity of a deranged pinball, she can’t seem to latch on to anything resembling stability, despite the efforts of her bandmates, collaborators, and ex-husband to steer her towards a healthier direction. Or just anywhere other than the rock bottom she seems determined to hit with full force. If Becky’s downward spiral is difficult to watch, it’s even harder to look away, as Moss infuses her with a charismatic talent that makes the inescapable tragedy feel Shakespearean in scope.

15. Varda By Agnes

If the documentary “Varda By Agnès” is difficult to define, it’s because the late great filmmaker Agnès Varda herself defies anything resembling easy categorization. Like her other films, the premise of “Varda By Agnès” is deceptively simple, yet soon reveals layers of complexity which unfold throughout, as Varda looks back on her life and career while articulating her style of filmmaking. However, the doc is far more than a retrospective, and far less predictable, at one moment reminiscent of a casual chat with an old friend, the next an imaginative journey wherein a great artist instructs devoted cinephiles and neophytes alike on how she not only viewed, but interpreted the world. It’s a fitting end to a decades-long career and life, both of which 90-year-old Varda defined on her own terms to the end.

14. The Farewell

IMDB

A movie with a character who happens to be a terminally ill grandmother is a tough sell for a comedy. But the matriarch who receives a fatal cancer diagnosis isn’t just a side character in “The Farewell,” she’s the central plot point. After struggling New Yorker Billi’s (Awkwafina) beloved Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao) is diagnosed, her family opt to keep her illness a secret and decide to throw a fake wedding to provide an excuse for them all to gather in China and celebrate Nai Nai one last time. And it’s…pretty funny, with not just the expected dark humor, but a wide spectrum of hilarity abounding alongside the touching moments of grief. Based in part on writer-director Lulu Wang’s own experiences, “The Farewell” is apt to make you laugh and cry not just in equal measure, but simultaneously.

13. Little Woods

IMDB

You can never have too much of Tessa Thompson, and “Little Woods” allows her to fully immerse herself into a role and world where a single wrong step could tear through a life with the force of a tornado. And she downright mesmerizes as Ollie, who finds herself in tight circumstances with a mere eight days left on her probation and the hope of a new life. Or rather, her somewhat estranged sister Deb (Lily James) does after their mother dies, and Deb and her son find themselves on the verge of homelessness and destitution. To help her family, Ollie decides to reenter the world of prescription drug smuggling, a dangerous but profitable business in their bleak rural North Dakota town. Remarkably, this is director Nia DaCosta’s feature debut, and the fact that she gives us a brilliantly realized modern Western with a feminist twist, where a drug run to Canada also doubles as an attempt to receive a safe and low-cost abortion, is hopefully indicative of much more to come. Thankfully, there are already hopeful signs of just that.

12. Dolemite is my Name

IMDB

Just when you think Eddie Murphy might be teetering on the edge of irrelevance, he reminds you why he’s a pop culture phenomenon by tearing up the screen as Blaxploitation legend Rudy Ray Moore, who became famous in the 70s for his portrayal of alter ego Dolemite in his film and stand-up career. Even if we’re aware of how this is going to end, with Moore investing – and risking – everything he’s built to make a film based on his Dolemite character, Murphy is astounding, radiating joy as he brings his larger-than-life energy and charisma to Moore, who was similarly magnetic. And it’s not just Moore, but the people he’s gathered around him who succeed as well, many of whom were just as underused by the mainstream entertainment industry. As they all revel in building and profiting off a film made on their own terms, it’s the kind of tender, inspirational tribute that earns every bit of its charm and intensity.

11. Queen & Slim

Universal Pictures

“Queen & Slim” kicks off with its title characters on a date that is only remarkable for its lack of spark, but things get heated in the worst way after a police offer pulls them over for a minor issue, and things escalate, with Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) getting shot and Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) shooting the officer in self defense. The two then go on the run together, with their bond and their relationship blossoming as they drive south through a lush vision of Black Americana. That they both come off as deeply human while remaining symbolic of the tragic human cost of racism seems due in large part to the near symbiotic creative melding of director Melina Matsoukas, who also directed Beyonce’s “Lemonade,” and writer Lena Waithe, the creator of the series “The Chi” and who also wrote the acclaimed “Master of None” episode “Thanksgiving.” Their story is tragic, but it is also full of beauty and humor as Queen and Slim dare to hope for something better, even as they know the odds against such a thing are overwhelmingly stacked against them.

10. Fast Color

Lionsgate

It’s said that not all heroes wear capes, and certainly none of the women with superhuman abilities do in “Fast Color.” This criminally underseen gem has many of the beats, but almost none of the familiar tropes of typical superhero fare. Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays a woman named Ruth, a fugitive on the run from authorities attempting to harness her abilities, and most critically, from herself, since those abilities have become a destructive force she’s unable to control. In this bleak dystopian future which is rapidly running low on resources, the key to Ruth’s future may just lie in the home she fled years ago, where her estranged mother (Lorraine Toussaint) and daughter (Saniyya Sidney) embody a past she tried to escape, and a more hopeful future they may be able to bring to fruition.

9. The Souvenir

IMDB

Joanna Hogg’s semi-autographical film “The Souvenir” is like a deceptively calm pond which conceals a raging torrent just beneath the surface. Honor Swinton Byrne, the woman responsible for the storm that’s eventually unleashed, may still be constantly referred to as Tilda Swinton’s daughter, but this film suggests that won’t be the case for long. Her performance as Julie, a young film student in the 80s whose dreams are nearly derailed by her involvement with an older man who is also a heroin addict, is the kind of on-screen arrival that the term breakout role was made for. With part two arriving next year, it’s hard to imagine how Hogg or Byrne will match the kind of urgency they brought to this film, but this creative pairing – which feels like a match made in cinematic heaven – could feasibly pull it off.

8. One Child Nation

One Child Nation

Director Nanfu Wang grew up in a time when China’s infamous one-child policy was at its height, with every facet of society extolling the virtues of having a smaller family…and the consequences of disobedience. After Wang had a son, she decided to investigate the policy she’d never given much thought to and its impact. When she uncovered was a complex and horrific hidden history of forced abortions, child abandonment, and infants who were literally torn from their arms of their families and given to American couples for adoption, who were tragically unaware that they were abetting kidnapping. Wang fearlessly confronts her own complicity and that of her family and community as she delves into the past, and how China is attempting to erase it from its future.

7. Uncut Gems

A24

If we’re our own worst enemies, then Adam Sandler’s New York City jeweler Howard Ratner will never have a worse one. A gambling addict who’s always in search of that next big score, his need for his drug of choice has wreaked havoc on his personal and professional life. He’s managed to get his hands on the titular gem that may finally change his luck…if he can somehow hold off on his on self-sabotaging impulses. Anchored by not only a career-best performance by Sandler, but a breakout one by Julia Fox as Howard’s mistress, the Safdie brothers immerse us into Howard’s world, then his mindset as he unravels, all the while clinging to the belief in that one big break that could still change everything.

6. Bedlam

Sundance Institute

In exploring the history of mental illness in America, director Kenneth Paul Rosenberg explores his own family, and how they reacted to his sister’s mental health struggles, then expands his scope into the personal and political ramifications of how we decide to treat a hidden social crisis of our time, one that is steadily worsening. As he travels to jails, Ers, and homeless camps, Rosenberg grounds his documentary with subjects who permit him a staggering amount of access to the highs and lows of their journeys to stability, and more often, how ill-equipped the system is to assist them. It will leave you emotionally gutted, but also with a much-needed greater understanding of a large population who are in desperate need of both compassion and assistance.

5. Luce

IMDB

No one escapes unscathed in “Luce,” including us, as director Julius Onah slowly but surely tightens his grip on our collective throats, forcing us to realize how even the most privileged among us are caught up in a system that ultimately demeans us all, with little doubt as to just who bears the brunt of the consequences. The titular Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) first seems to have it all and more. Adopted as a child from war-torn African county by suburban white couple Amy (Naomi Watts) and Peter (Tim Roth), Luce is a star athlete, a top student, and popular with students and teachers alike. It’s only when his teacher Harriet (Octavia Spencer) alerts his parents to a potentially disturbing essay by Luce that the cracks in the facade start to show, and Amy realizes just how little she may know the son she’s loved and raised, and perhaps also tokenized. Harrison’s masterful performance is equal parts chilling and heartbreaking as a young man who may be capable of great and terrible things. Just what will Luce become? The film has no answer.

4. Little Women

Sony Pictures

Greta Gerwig didn’t just write and direct Louisa May Alcott’s beloved 1868 novel, she brought it to life, with each of the four March sisters getting their due. Yes, even Amy. One of the most brilliant decisions Gerwig makes is to bring the book to the big screen in a nonlinear fashion, juxtaposing scenes from the sisters’ idyllic childhood with their darker adulthood. While the Civil War rages, depriving them of their father, the March family becomes a matriarchal worldutopia, wherein Meg (Emma Watson), Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Beth (Eliza Scanlen), and Amy (Florence Pugh) are free to explore their hopes and ambitions, guided by their beloved Marmee (Laura Dern), and befriended by their wealthy neighbor Laurie (Timothée Chalamet). As each sister struggles to find her way, Gerwig takes care to ensure that their lives not only feel familiar, but relevant as each wrestles with how to balance their dreams with the narrow expectations imposed on them.

3. Atlantics

IMDB

Mati Diop made history in more ways than one with her feature debut “Atlantics.” She was the first black woman to have a film in the main competition at Cannes, where “Atlantics” won the Grand Prix. The film more than lives up to the hype, with a touching love story that is also part supernatural fable and devastating indictment of modern exploitation and rampant poverty. Ada (Mama Bineta Sane) lives in a Senegalese suburb, and is promised to a wealthy man. But she is in love with Souleiman (Traore), a construction worker on a futuristic tower which is due to open soon. Souleiman and his co-workers haven’t been paid for their labor in months, so they decide to take their chances and depart by sea in search of something better. As Ada waits for news of him as she prepares to marry, she gradually learns that the spirits of Souleiman and the other young men are possessing the bodies of the living and demanding justice. As Ada slowly comes to accept the truth and take control of her own life and body (she’s forced to take a virginity test), Diop infuses her story with a beauty that never belies its sense of urgency for compassion in a world that can often seem short on it.

2. Parasite

IMDB

The word parasite conjures up images of a creature which takes from a victimized host without a thought of giving or the consequences thereof, but as Bong Joon-ho’s latest slice of brilliance unfolds, it’s unclear just whom is feeding on whom. But in the vicious capitalistic times we’ve arrived in, perhaps everyone is feeding on everyone, whether they know it or not. In the story of the impoverished Kim family, who manage to scam their way into various positions of employment with the wealthy Park family, Bong Joon-ho serves up a scathing indictment of the inequality which twists haves and have-nots alike. As one jaw-dropping development after another threatens to deprive the Kims of their newfound prosperity, both families suffer the horrific consequences. And even if you are able to free yourself from the dark obsession inherent in wanting a good life which remains tantalizingly out of reach, the vicious cycle, one borne out of a need that will never be quenched, continues.

1. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

IMDB

If Céline Sciamma had just wrote and directed a romance between two women who find the kind of love that leaves the screen burning from their mutual passion, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” would still have been one of the best films of the year. But Sciamma does so much more, making the case for an entire history that has mostly been unacknowledged by the art world. Not just of the female artists who managed to create in spite of the obstacles, but the lives of women in general, who are often not considered worthwhile subjects. (Times have sure changed, huh?) “Portrait” may take place in 18th century France, but its insights into the dynamics between artist and muse, how art is created, and how those who are silenced manage to find a voice, feels very much needed in our present moment.

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chaos-in-pandoras-box · 8 years ago

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When is Spirit Trauma not actually Wrought by a Spirit?

Potential triggering ahead. Please read at your own risk. <3

I see this topic come up a lot in the spirit keeping community. Spirit trauma. "What is it? How does it happen? How do you recover?" Here are my opinions. Now keep in mind that I am only stating what I think--not ruling out that trauma from spirits can actually happen. If you have been traumatized by a spirit, then I feel for you. I really do. This is a sensitive topic, and you’ve been warned. It’s also my personal POV. Do with it as you please.

The human mind is vast and complex. Much more complex than people think it is. In fact we are so complex that we can even trick ourselves into believing the worst of situations or mistaking feelings for outer influences.

Spiritual trauma is a real thing. I have been through it and know how it feels. This is one of the only times I'll openly state that I was abused continuously by a Jakos Demon. And yes, in all aspects of the word "abuse." Mental, verbal, sexual, etc. I would wake up in the mornings physically sick with distress and fear, because he would be there waiting for me. This demon stole my first kiss and took my virginity. He slapped me--punched me. He bit me and laughed in my face when I sobbed. And over time he turned me into an emaciated insomniac. I pulled all-nighters just to make sure he didn't hurt my friends, and my school grades started to decline. Whenever he came close, I would literally convulse. I got these shakes that started in my abdomen and legs, and they would be so intense that I would have to lay down and wait for them to subside. I was literally terrified, and for years it was extremely difficult for me to think about the incidents involving him.

My trauma happened because this Jakos Demon had nails sunk deep into my psyche, and he knew exactly what to say and do to get me to pay attention to him.

Now get this. Eight years later, and this Jakos Demon and I are lovers.

WHAT???!!!

Yeah, I understand the confusion, but bear with me. His name is Lucien. I won't give his full, true name in case some people out there think rather ill of him and would wish him harm. Lucien was not in his right state of mind. He was guided by a dark hand and left alone for too long. He became unstable and confused as to who he originally was. It wasn't until I'd told him my angelic name that he began to come to. One day he simply "awoke." He gained a sudden realization of who he truly was, remembered his Jakosian name, and even remembered a past life that he and I had had on Jakos. He introduced me to Zan. (For those of you who don't know, Zan is the rehabilitation center worker who manages all of the Jakosian special needs adoption forms.) Zan is his best friend. He told me of my past with him, and helped me realize that I was once Jakosian as well. He awakened a part of me at the same time he awakened himself. All because he recognized my angelic name.

And then just like that, the trauma healed. I only vaguely remember my interactions with Lucien before his change. He was misguided and lost, but upon establishing a healthy connection with me, he came to--as if he'd been asleep for a very long time. He was apologetic for the way he had treated me, and told me that he had not been right in the head. He and I are extremely close now, and although we still have our small tiffs here and there, he has not once hurt me on purpose since.

So why do spirits try traumatizing people like this? Is it because they are all Black Arts? Is it their nature? Are they just plain old assholes? Are they crazy? I think there are a number of contributions, but the main one being this: They want your attention. The more you ignore them, the scarier they get, because they don't have the same morals as you. Pandora once lived in a house with a teenage human spirit who hid in her closet. His deceased father roamed the hallways at night and terrorized Pandora and me with scratching on the doors, boots on the floorboards, and nightmares. We weren't traumatized, but we were pretty scared out of our wits a couple times. But he wasn't after us--he was after the spirit in Pandora's closet. He didn't want us messing around in what he considered his territory, or throwing off the opportunity he had to torment his dead son. Because we stood in his way, he tried making our lives hell.

There are instances like this. Occasionally. But my theory is that most of our trauma lies within our own minds. Some people, and I'm not pointing out anybody here, but some people actually want to experience that trauma. They want something to be afraid of, for whatever reason. Sometimes it's a conscious decision, but often times it's subconscious. They don't realize they're turning a regular spirit into an enemy because they want to feel unique or have a unique situation. I've played the victim card in the past. I know how it goes. If it isn't the spirit that wants attention, it's the human who subconsciously does. I'll tell a little story. A true one.

I met a man a couple years ago. It was about the time when Pandora and I had first opened our conjuring shop. We had a lot of people coming to us for advice concerning spiritual activity, and this guy was one such person. He had an entity who was tormenting him, or so he said. He was fixated on his situation, and asked me every day if there was something I could do for him to make it better. He told me he was being molested by this spirit. It was doing things that made him extremely uncomfortable, and he was dead certain it was male. For a time I believed him. I told him that I would help him out, and so I did. I did find a being with influence on what was happening to this man, and I broke the attachment he had on him. For a few days everything was well. I felt that I had successfully helped him out... but then he came back.

"It's back," he said. "I can feel the sensations again. It's still attacking me. Are you sure you removed him entirely?"

"Absolutely," I answered. "There's no possible way that this entity could be attacking you anymore. I had Immortals help me out in removing him. There's no way."

He wasn't convinced. He told me to try again. I gave this my all. I tried multiple spells, multiple spirit tasking sessions, multiple readings. The cards said he was doing it to himself. I told him flat out what they said, and of course he denied it. A couple of days later, he came back. "Lu, I had the weirdest dream," he said. "I dreamt of a man who looked just like me sitting in a chair, and asked him who he was. He said he was me, and told me that I'm doing all this to myself."

Well that was pretty resolute. Even his own subconscious was attempting to contact the conscious to tell him he was in denial. But you know what?

...He still didn't believe.

He wanted so badly to believe that it was some outer force, because his subconscious desired that kind of attention. But he was not ready to open himself up to new avenues and explore his own psyche--his shadow self. He was fixed on the thought that his deep, inner desires were uncouth and taboo, and so he'd shut himself off from his own subconscious and turned himself into an imagined enemy.

That isn't spirit trauma, and yet I see it so often in the community. It may have come forward due to some physical trauma that happened in the past or during childhood, such as family abuse, but 75-80% of the time, a real spirit isn't involved. It's a thoughtform created out of the tormented, stagnating thoughts of what we internally want. Many of us internally want that "trauma" so that we can give our problem a name and face in an attempt to more easily come to terms with it.

Lucien was not such a case. I was never abused during childhood, and never experienced any form of tragedy or trauma growing up. Hell, I didn't even break a bone. My parents were, and still are, great people who love me and care about me, and my extended family are all a bunch of lovable softies. The most traumatic experience I ever endured was witnessing my poker-faced, assertive father reduced to tears because my older sister was marrying a guy ten years older than her. I'd never seen him cry until that time. But... that was it, and it only scared me because I was so empathic.

Lucien was inherently cruel for attention, simply because he could be, and he got away with it time and time again. I didn't know how to deal with spirits at the time, and he was the first one that I ever encountered on such a harrowing basis. There are still some songs and words I cannot hear without feeling that hot, sweaty adrenaline rush of dread and feeling those impending trembles in my body. That is trauma from an outer force, invoked for no other reason than to satisfy lust and cravings for attention. Lucien doesn't scare me anymore, but remembering some incidents in the past are still very hard for me.

So how can you tell whether it's an actual spirit or it's just your subconscious trying to come to terms with what has happened in the past? It's easier than you might think. Recollect on your life. Consider past lives, even. What truly scares you? What gives you that feeling of dread and makes you quake in fear? Did something happen to you when you were younger? If you are able to remember any past trauma, try connecting the dots. Is this spirit doing similar actions to what had happened to you? Is it after something that means a lot to you? If there is utterly no connection and you feel like you're simply being attacked for no reason, then you have the power to stop it in its tracks much easier than if it were your own subconscious. Take the necessary steps to banish a real spirit. If it's mental trauma reaching from your subconscious, then seek a professional, because it's time to put the past to rest.

I know it's a lot easier said than done, and there is a lot I didn't cover, but this blog has gone on too long already. Can you traumatize yourself? Absolutely. So I'm not flat out denying that the subconscious can't be traumatic. But differentiating real spirit trauma from mental anguish is a big thing. While Pandora and I were tormented by Lucien, I couldn't tell anybody. I was terrified to talk about it. I didn't even tell my parents what was happening in their own household because I feared what Lucien would do to me and to those whom I loved. One trend I see that happens to those who have subconscious thoughtform trauma is that they like talking about it. They like bringing it up, and they'll say it to practically anybody who asks. When people asked me what was wrong back in the day, I lied. I wasn't about to tell anyone that I had a spirit attacking me, because the very thought frightened me so much. People with no actual spirits attacking them continuously bring up what happens to them on a daily basis because they hunger for someone to know. They are indirectly looking for some way to pinpoint what's going on so that they can fix it, yet they don't know how, so they tell everyone under the sun to see if anyone can give them pointers. Yet they are so very confused upstairs that they don't even see that they are doing it to themselves.

It's a very sad situation, and yet it is so very common. But don't get me wrong--I feel for anyone who goes through trauma of any kind, be it subconsciously created to provoke stimulus or not. This blog is not to invalidate your trauma if you have it. Trauma is serious, despite where it comes from, and it’s never your fault. But whether your troubles are wrought by a spirit or not is for you, alone, to decide in the end.

~Lu

#spirit trauma #triggers #spirit keeping #spirit companion #demons #inner demons #thoughtforms

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queerfictionproject · 8 years ago

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Queer Fiction Rec List #1: Contemporary Novels

WLW:

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour: A love letter to the craft and romance of film and fate in front of—and behind—the camera from the award-winning author of Hold Still. A wunderkind young set designer, Emi has already started to find her way in the competitive Hollywood film world. Emi is a film buff and a true romantic, but her real-life relationships are a mess. She has desperately gone back to the same girl too many times to mention. But then a mysterious letter from a silver screen legend leads Emi to Ava. Ava is unlike anyone Emi has ever met. She has a tumultuous, not-so-glamorous past, and lives an unconventional life. She’s enigmatic…. She’s beautiful. And she is about to expand Emi’s understanding of family, acceptance, and true romance. [Notes: Hold Still seems interesting, although I don’t think it has any queer narrative or characters. It also deals heavily with suicide, so a warning in that respect].

This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp: Everyone has a reason to fear the boy with the gun.10:00 a.m.The principal of Opportunity high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve.10:02 a.m.The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class.10:03 The auditorium doors won't open.10:05. Someone starts shooting.Told from four perspectives over the span of 54 harrowing minutes, terror reigns as one student's calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival. [Notes: Obvious violence here. Don’t worry, they survive].

Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira: It begins as an assignment for English class: Write a letter to a dead person. Laurel chooses Kurt Cobain because her sister, May, loved him. And he died young, just like May did. Soon, Laurel has a notebook full of letters to people like Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Amelia Earhart, Heath Ledger, and more -- though she never gives a single one of them to her teacher. She writes about starting high school, navigating new friendships, falling in love for the first time, learning to live with her splintering family. And, finally, about the abuse she suffered while May was supposed to be looking out for her. Only then, once Laurel has written down the truth about what happened to herself, can she truly begin to accept what happened to May. And only when Laurel has begun to see her sister as the person she was -- lovely and amazing and deeply flawed -- can she begin to discover her own path. [Notes: The LGBT romance is a side romance, although it is given as much attention as the main one].

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley: In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever. Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented daily. Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town's most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept separate but equal. Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another. Boldly realistic and emotionally compelling, Lies We Tell Ourselves is a brave and stunning novel about finding truth amid the lies, and finding your voice even when others are determined to silence it.

About A Girl by Sarah McCarry: Eighteen-year-old Tally is absolutely sure of everything: her genius, the love of her adoptive family, the loyalty of her best friend, Shane, and her future career as a Nobel prize-winning astronomer. There’s no room in her tidy world for heartbreak or uncertainty—or the charismatic, troubled mother who abandoned her soon after she was born. But when a sudden discovery upends her fiercely ordered world, Tally sets out on an unexpected quest to seek out the reclusive musician who may hold the key to her past—and instead finds Maddy, an enigmatic and beautiful girl who will unlock the door to her future. The deeper she falls in love with Maddy, the more Tally begins to realize that the universe is bigger—and more complicated—than she ever imagined. Can Tally face the truth about her family—and find her way home in time to save herself from its consequences? [Notes: This is the third book in a “loose series”—apparently they’re pretty much stand alone.]

Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz: Etta is tired of dealing with all of the labels and categories that seem so important to everyone else in her small Nebraska hometown.Everywhere she turns, someone feels she’s too fringe for the fringe. Not gay enough for the Dykes, her ex-clique, thanks to a recent relationship with a boy; not tiny and white enough for ballet, her first passion; and not sick enough to look anorexic (partially thanks to recovery). Etta doesn’t fit anywhere— until she meets Bianca, the straight, white, Christian, and seriously sick girl in Etta’s therapy group. Both girls are auditioning for Brentwood, a prestigious New York theater academy that is so not Nebraska. Bianca seems like Etta’s salvation, but how can Etta be saved by a girl who needs saving herself?

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld: Darcy Patel is afraid to believe all the hype. But it's really happening - her teen novel is getting published. Instead of heading to college, she's living in New York City, where she's welcomed into the dazzling world of YA publishing. That means book tours, parties with her favorite authors, and finding a place to live that won't leave her penniless. It means sleepless nights rewriting her first draft and struggling to find the perfect ending... all while dealing with the intoxicating, terrifying experience of falling in love - with another writer.Told in alternating chapters is Darcy's novel, the thrilling story of Lizzie, who wills her way into the afterworld to survive a deadly terrorist attack. With survival comes the responsibility to guide the restless spirits that walk our world, including one ghost with whom she shares a surprising personal connection. But Lizzie's not alone in her new calling - she has counsel from a fellow spirit guide, a very desirable one, who is torn between wanting Lizzie and warning her that... BELIEVING IS DANGEROUS.

Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan: High-school junior Leila has made it most of the way through Armstead Academy without having a crush on anyone, which is something of a relief. Her Persian heritage already makes her different from her classmates; if word got out that she liked girls, life would be twice as hard. But when a sophisticated, beautiful new girl, Saskia, shows up, Leila starts to take risks she never thought she would, especially when it looks as if the attraction between them is mutual. Struggling to sort out her growing feelings and Saskia's confusing signals, Leila confides in her old friend, Lisa, and grows closer to her fellow drama tech-crew members, especially Tomas, whose comments about his own sexuality are frank, funny, wise, and sometimes painful. Gradually, Leila begins to see that almost all her classmates are more complicated than they first appear to be, and many are keeping fascinating secrets of their own.

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King: Astrid Jones desperately wants to confide in someone, but her mother's pushiness and her father's lack of interest tell her they're the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours lying on the backyard picnic table watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn't know the passengers inside, but they're the only people who won't judge her when she asks them her most personal questions--like what it means that she's falling in love with a girl. As her secret relationship becomes more intense and her friends demand answers, Astrid has nowhere left to turn. She can't share the truth with anyone except the people at thirty thousand feet, and they don't even know she's there. But little does Astrid know just how much even the tiniest connection will affect these strangers' lives--and her own--for the better. In this truly original portrayal of a girl struggling to break free of society's definitions, Printz Honor author A.S. King asks readers to question everything--and offers hope to those who will never stop seeking real love.

Between You and Me by Marisa Calin: Phyre knows there is something life-changing about her new drama teacher, Mia, from the moment they meet. As Phyre rehearses for the school play, she comes to realize that the unrequited feelings she has for Mia go deeper than she’s ever experienced. Especially with a teacher. Or a woman. All the while, Phyre’s best friend—addressed throughout the story in the second person, as "you"—stands by, ready to help Phyre make sense of her feelings. But just as Mia doesn’t understand what Phyre feels, Phyre can’t fathom the depth of her best friend’s feelings . . . until it’s almost too late for a happy ending. Characters come to life through the innovative screenplay format of this dazzling debut, and unanswered questions—is "you" male or female?—will have readers talking. [Notes: Alright, so. This one sounds like it could get sketchy, but we’ll try it out anyway].

MLM:

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz: Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

Bi-Normal by M. G. Higgens: Brett Miller is one of the kings of Elkhead High. Everyone knows the kings rule the school. Football stars. Pretty girls. The in-crowd. Brett and his buddies are the tormentors; nobody messes with them. Then Brett meets Zach …”It’s a crush. I’m crushing on a friggin’ guy. That’s sick. And I don’t know what to do about it. … I want these feelings to go away. At the same time, I don’t want them to go away.” And his life is turned inside out. Everything he knows about himself is wrong. And he doesn’t have anywhere to turn for answers. He’s heard the word “bi” before; it has nothing to do with him. But in his gut he knows. And he doesn’t have a clue what to do about it.

Trans:

Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky: Alone at home, twelve-year-old Grayson Sender glows, immersed in beautiful thoughts and dreams. But at school, Grayson grasps at shadows, determined to fly under the radar. Because Grayson has been holding onto a secret for what seems like forever: “he” is a girl on the inside, stuck in the wrong gender’s body.The weight of this secret is crushing, but leaving it behind would mean facing ridicule, scorn, and rejection. Despite these dangers, Grayson’s true self itches to break free. Strengthened by an unexpected friendship and a caring teacher who gives her a chance to step into the spotlight, Grayson might finally have the tools to let her inner light shine. [Notes: This is actually middle grade lit, one of the first of its kind].

I Am J by Cris Beam: J always felt different. He was certain that eventually everyone would understand who he really was; a boy mistakenly born as a girl. Yet as he grew up, his body began to betray him; eventually J stopped praying to wake up a "real boy" and started covering up his body, keeping himself invisible - from his family, from his friends...from the world. But after being deserted by the best friend he thought would always be by his side, J decides that he's done hiding - it's time to be who he really is. And this time he is determined not to give up, no matter the cost.

Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher: Everyone has that one line they swear they’ll never cross, the one thing they say they’ll never do. We draw the line. Maybe we even believe it. Sage Hendricks was my line. Logan Witherspoon befriends Sage Hendricks at a time when he no longer trusts or believes in people. As time goes on, he finds himself drawn to Sage, pulled in by her deep, but sexy feminine voice and her constant smile. Eventually Logan’s feelings for Sage grow so strong that he can’t resist kissing her. Moments later, he wishes he never had. Sage finally discloses her big secret: she was born a boy. Enraged, frightened, and feeling betrayed, Logan lashes out at Sage. Once his anger has cooled, however, his regrets lead him to attempt to rekindle their friendship. But it’s hard to replace something that’s been broken—and it’s even harder to find your way back to friendship when you began with love. [Notes: This one.... does not look like it will be the best, so read at your own risk. I could be wrong, though].

Being Emily by Rachel Gold: They say that whoever you are it’s okay, you were born that way. Those words don’t comfort Emily, because she was born Christopher and her insides know that her outsides are all wrong. They say that it gets better, be who are you and it’ll be fine. For Emily, telling her parents who she really is means a therapist who insists Christopher is normal and Emily is sick. Telling her girlfriend means lectures about how God doesn’t make that kind of mistake. Emily desperately wants high school in her small Minnesota town to get better. She wants to be the woman she knows is inside, but it’s not until a substitute therapist and a girl named Natalie come into her life that she believes she has a chance of actually Being Emily.

Happy Families by Tanita S. Davis: Teenage twins Ysabel and Justin Nicholas are lucky. Ysabel's jewelry designs have already caught the eyes of the art world and Justin's intelligence and drive are sure to gain him entrance into the most prestigious of colleges. They even like their parents. But their father has a secret—one that threatens to destroy the twins' happy family and life as they know it. Over the course of spring break, Ysabel and Justin will be forced to come to terms with their dad's new life, but can they overcome their fears to piece together their happy family again?

Brooklyn, Burning by Steve Brezenoff: Gorgeous, sad, and hopeful Brooklyn, Burning is a love letter to Brooklyn, a love letter to music booming from the basement, and most of all, a love letter to every kind of love (but especially the punk rock kind). [Notes: This is really vague, but from what I understand, its about a trans teenager not finding love at home, so they “search for it on the streets”.]

Luna by Julie Anne Peters: Regan’s brother Liam can’t stand the person he is during the day. Like the moon from whom Liam has chosen his female namesake, his true self, Luna, only reveals herself at night. In the secrecy of his basement bedroom Liam transforms himself into the beautiful girl he longs to be, with help from his sister’s clothes and makeup. Now, everything is about to change-Luna is preparing to emerge from her cocoon. But are Liam’s family and friends ready to welcome Luna into their lives?Compelling and provocative, this is an unforgettable novel about a transgender teen’s struggle for self-identity and acceptance.

Asexual:

How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford: From bestselling author Natalie Standiford, an amazing, touching story of two friends navigating the dark waters of their senior year. New to town, Beatrice is expecting her new best friend to be one of the girls she meets on the first day. But instead, the alphabet conspires to seat her next to Jonah, aka Ghost Boy, a quiet loner who hasn't made a new friend since third grade. Something about him, though, gets to Bea, and soon they form an unexpected friendship. It's not romance, exactly - but it's definitely love. Still, Bea can't quite dispel Jonah's gloom and doom - and as she finds out his family history, she understands why. Can Bea help Jonah? Or is he destined to vanish?

Bonus Round:

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray: When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island's other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition. [Notes: Obviously, this one seems a bit.... out there. But I know a lot of people seem to like it, and it has just about the whole spectrum of representation. I say have at it].

If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan: Seventeen-year-old Sahar has been in love with her best friend, Nasrin, since they were six. They’ve shared stolen kisses and romantic promises. But Iran is a dangerous place for two girls in love—Sahar and Nasrin could be beaten, imprisoned, even executed if their relationship came to light. So they carry on in secret—until Nasrin’s parents announce that they’ve arranged for her marriage. Nasrin tries to persuade Sahar that they can go on as they have been, only now with new comforts provided by the decent, well-to-do doctor Nasrin will marry. But Sahar dreams of loving Nasrin exclusively—and openly. Then Sahar discovers what seems like the perfect solution. In Iran, homosexuality may be a crime, but to be a man trapped in a woman’s body is seen as nature’s mistake, and sex reassignment is legal and accessible. As a man, Sahar could be the one to marry Nasrin. Sahar will never be able to love the one she wants, in the body she wants to be loved in, without risking her life. Is saving her love worth sacrificing her true self? [Notes: WLW +trans (obviously).I’ve heard the ending isn’t great, but there’s no death.]

Boyfriends With Girlfriends by Alex Sanchez: Lance has always known he was gay, but he’s never had a real boyfriend. Sergio is bisexual, but his only real relationship was with a girl. When the two of them meet, they have an instant connection–but will it be enough to overcome their differences?Allie’s been in a relationship with a guy for the last two years–but when she meets Kimiko, she can’t get her out of her mind. Does this mean she’s gay? Does it mean she’s bi? Kimiko, falling hard for Allie, and finding it impossible to believe that a gorgeous girl like Allie would be into her, is willing to stick around and help Allie figure it out. [Notes: WLW and MLM.]

Geography Club by Brent Hartinger: Russel Middlebrook is convinced he’s the only gay kid at Goodkind High School.Then his online gay chat buddy turns out to be none other than Kevin, the popular but closeted star of the school’s baseball team. Soon Russel meets other gay students, too. There’s his best friend Min, who reveals that she is bisexual, and her soccer-playing girlfriend Terese. Then there’s Terese’s politically active friend, Ike.But how can kids this diverse get together without drawing attention to themselves?”We just choose a club that’s so boring, nobody in their right mind would ever in a million years join it. We could call it Geography Club!”Brent Hartinger’s debut novel is a fast-paced, funny, and trenchant portrait of contemporary teenagers who may not learn any actual geography in their latest club, but who learn plenty about the treacherous social terrain of high school and the even more dangerous landscape of the human heart. [Notes: MLM and WLW].

#lgbt fiction #lgbt fiction rec #queer #queer fiction #book recs #reading list #ya lit #gay lit #queer fiction project #johnlock #representation #lgbt representation #queer representation

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divorceyourring · 6 years ago

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Funny How The Second Amendment Is Absolute And All-Encompassing, But The Fourteenth Amendment Can Be Basically Line-Item Vetoed

“You’re gonna need congressional approval and you don’t have the votes / Such a blunder sometimes it makes me wonder why I even bring the thunder.” — Lin-Manual Miranda, “Cabinet Battle #1” (Hamilton)

As I was driving through Mississippi on Devil’s Night, Maureen Corrigan’s book review of Let the People See The Emmett Till Story, by Elliott Gorn, broadcasted over the local National Public Radio (NPR) station. It was a haunting reminder of the legacies we have all inherited. As I was passing through Mississippi’s endless-night horizon, Corrigan’s bone-chilling narrative bled through my car speakers:

‘Let the people see what they did to my boy.’ Those were the words spoken by Emmet Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, after viewing the brutalized body of her son.

During his night of torture near the Delta town of Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Till’s right eye had been dislodged from its socket, his tongue choked out of his mouth, the back of his skull crushed and his head penetrated by a bullet.

Shortly after Corrigan’s Fresh Air segment, NPR commentators and their guests spoke about the Tree of Life synagogue massacre, yet another act of domestic terrorism in a seemingly endless string of mass shootings our country has witnessed this decade. With a sense of foreboding, the on-air commentators and their guests were not only concerned about Robert Bowers’s 11 executions via his AR-15 rifle and three handguns on October 27, but the broader, recent rise and empowerment of white nationalism throughout our country.

In 2015, prior to the most recent presidential election, I warned:

Maybe it’s hard for me to stomach the recently renewed attack on the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because I fear the root cause of these sentiments. As Mark Twain supposedly said, ‘History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.’

The strong anti-foreigner feelings of past generations are being revived as a rationale to make our country great again. At what cost?

I fear America’s deep legacy of anti-Asian racism will continue to haunt our future generations. Now the anti-immigrant rhetoric — of ‘sanctuary cities,’ ‘border walls,’ and ‘anchor babies’ — is bringing xenophobia to the front of our country’s consciousness once again.

In the seminal Citizenship Clause case involving Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court stated: ‘We are entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in the constitutional amendment, that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law with others.’

Back then, some politicians argued that the Chinese were so different in so many ways that they could never assimilate into American culture, and they represented a threat to the country’s principles and institutions.

Just last year, I documented the harrowing death of Aylan Kurdi and the refugee crisis:

Since the conflict in Syria began in 2011, until the photography date of Aylan Kurdi’s [three-year old] lifeless body, the United States had taken in only about 1,500 Syrian refugees. That is not a typo: 1,500 Syrian refugees total. When Obama raised the Syrian ceiling to 10,000 — a more reasonable number I suppose, but still an unbearably low moral figure, he faced a massive outcry from conservatives. Last week, many politicians paid tribute to Holocaust Memorial Day and the millions of innocent lives lost, and these politicians pledged, ‘Never again.’ Yet they turn a blind-eye to our current refugee crisis….

Whereas Canada has accepted almost 40,000 refugees to much celebration by its citizens, Obama’s 10,000 target has now become, under Donald Trump, a complete and total shutdown of Syrian and Muslim refugees.

The current refugee crisis is the issue of our lifetime and we have met it with little to no fanfare. America was once viewed as a beacon of hope. Lady Liberty represented freedom and opportunity. But now we have plans to build a much vaunted wall while we permit our most at-risk communities to drown in lead-contaminated water.

We pledge to never let millions of innocent lives suffer again or deprive our communities of their most basic needs. But how easily we forget. Humanity washed along the shore, and we walked by. We are witnessing so many refugee hands reach out, but we refrain from reaching back. For the first time in my life, I don’t recognize this country.

Shortly after Kurdi’s death, his relatives were admitted into Canada as refugees. At least, in Canada, Aylan Kurdi did not die in vain.

Now, with only days until the midterms, the Trump administration is continuing to amplify its dog-whistle propaganda campaign on immigration and crime, to dehumanize migrants and others and arrest asylum seekers. Meanwhile, acts of domestic terrorism receive much less consternation. For too many of our country’s leaders, it’s always “too early to talk about gun control regulation” and “too soon to react, politically or otherwise, to the latest mass murder.”

They deem the Second Amendment to be absolute and interpret its words — “[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” — to mean that citizens have every right to tote around AR-15s. Surely many would protest, one hand on the heart and the other hand’s finger on a trigger, if any president declared he alone could change this interpretation and the law with an executive order.

Yet the Fourteenth Amendment is much less sacred to those same people who pledge such loyalty to the Constitution. Its words — “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside” — have been interpreted the same way for the past 150 years. With one fell swoop of the pen, Trump believes he alone can change this. And so do many of his loyal followers.

This would be funny, if it weren’t so sad… and scary as hell.

My ATL colleague Elie Mystal opined on the subject recently in his column Post Runs White Nationalist Propaganda Masquerading As Law-Talkin’:

WHERE IS THE MISINTERPRETATION? These white assholes keep saying that we’re misreading the Fourteenth Amendment. HOW? The writers of the Fourteenth Amendment wanted to do a thing. They did it in the only way they could. THEY WROTE IT DOWN. Where’s the freaking confusion?

If you pin one of these jerks down, they’ll start talking about Native Americans. The Fourteenth Amendment didn’t confer citizenship to Native Americans, who were clearly born here, and thus, they argue, citizenship wasn’t meant to be a birthright. I have little patience for people who use our racism towards the First Americans to justify racism towards New Americans, but there you go. If you think that our treatments towards Native Americans was a feature instead of a bug, that’s your argument.

This excerpt doesn’t do Mystal’s piece justice. I highly suggest you check out his full article to see how he systematically breaks down the entire misinterpretation argument. If you are a legal nerd, you will thoroughly enjoy it.

In June, for World Refugee Day, I wrote about the harrowing historical acts of the current administration:

We are directly violating Article 31 of the Refugee Convention. Instead of addressing this issue, the Trump administration is aiming to amplify its wanton and reckless ignorance of historical precedent. The Department of Justice now plans to send Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG) Officers to our southern border to prosecute migrants. Maybe this administration should do better to understand the rule of law before it deploys JAG Officers, who specialize in military justice and military law, to interpret and enforce immigration laws.

The vaunted wall that the Trump administration so desperately plots to build is already being constructed brick by brick. Even if we refuse to admit it to ourselves. A separation of families’ strategy was executed on our borders, while the separation of society continues to happen within them.

Our country’s withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council isn’t a bug, it’s a feature of the current administration. I’ve spoken to so many others who also feel within and without. When did we get here… while America slept?

The United States Constitution may be color blind, but our leaders certainly are not. The vast majority of the murders in our country are done with the accomplice of the Second Amendment, not the Fourteenth Amendment.

If we’re talking about how we have misinterpreted an amendment the wrong way for quite some time, let’s focus on the one that has been such a god-awful enabler of mass murders in our country.

People can talk all day about their Second Amendment rights, but we need to begin the discussion about our responsibilities. How many more mass shootings in schools, synagogues, and churches can we endure before we accept some responsibility?

Reminder: The 2018 mid-term elections will be held on Tuesday, November 6, 2018. Make sure to vote!

Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at [email protected], follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.

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