#i might make a post about both women as mothers and their circumstances and flaws

[alicentflorent]

The way lucaerys acted around aemond is perfect example is why adults should teach and disapline their kids instead of acting as if the did nothing wrong and of taking the time to talk with him about the fact that at 7 years old he maimed another child who now has to live without one of his eyes and instead of taking the injury seriously that room full of adults were like “it was an accident, just an oopsie and that aemond kids mama is just a crazy lady” and now Lucaerys is smirking and laughing when he sees the boy who he stabbed in the eye wearing an eye patch for life because the adults around him let him believe it was just child’s play and not a serious thing and that his actions and use of a damn knife in a fight with other children had dire consequences that a young child won’t understand unlesss he is taught by those who know better” also this kid seems to be younger than he’s supposed to be? so i suspect his development was stunted after the incident or from being coddled in a bubble privilege idk but it frustrates me so much that this kid was not even privately taught to feel remorseful and sorry for his actions that cost his mothers own kid brother an eye

[sapphicscribbles2222]

Latin significance in THG that nobody asked for

Went to Rome on a school trip and realised exactly how much of THG relates to latin and roman stuff so I decided to make a post so I can rant about some of the instances. Also, please be aware that my knowledge isn't perfect, so there might be some mistakes, but this is just a bit of fun really anyway.

Also spoilers for all of the hunger games books

Panem- probably the one everyone knows about, it's the name of the country, and means "bread" in latin, which I find ridiculous. That's like me calling my country "Victoria Sponge" or something (I'm British :) )

The Capitol- Probably less well known, it's named after the Capitoline Hill, considered one of the most important places in Rome. It was where there was a temple to all their gods (I think). There's a museum there now. So, sort of narcissistic to name your capital city after that? Idk.

Caesar Flickerman- Pretty self explanatory, Roman dictator, got stabbed. This man should under no circumstances do TV appearances on the 15th March

Seneca Crane- Ok, this one's kind of ironic, because in the books, Seneca is head gamemaker and close to Snow, right? But Seneca (roman) was a philosopher who wrote a satire and criticised roman habits (one prescribed source for the course I'm taking is literally him being annoyed at roman gladiator fights), so the character and historical figure are pretty different here

Plutarch Heavensbee- Another head gamemaker, also kind of ironic. And based off another philosopher. Plutarch (roman) wrote a load of letters and things commenting on stuff like who got voted in for things, who did what. He, unlike Seneca, didn't write satire though (to my knowledge). So I guess the whole thing with them is giving the name of the satirist to the law abiding citizen and the average philosopher to the rebel, which I find kind of amusing.

Coriolanus Snow- It fits tbh. Coriolanus (not Snow) might have been a real historical figure, idk enough about it, maybe not. He appears in the works of this guy called Livy, who wrote stories for model romans, but his is more of a cautionary tale. Essentially, Coriolanus was a great roman military general, but then decided to betray Rome and go work with the guys they were fighting, who were called the Etruscans, and now they're sieging the city. The roman woman figure out he's betrayed them, and go beg for help from his wife and mother. They agree to help, and the roman women, Coriolanus's mother, his wife and their two sons go to the Etruscan's camp to try and persuade him to stop sieging the city. They get there, and his mum proceeds to yell at him for betraying her and Rome. Coriolanus hears this, and is like, "ok, I'll stop sieging your city. But you, mother, will never see me again." So he gets the Etruscans to leave, then proceeds to get killed by them for backing out. Honestly? I can see it.

Sejanus Plinth- Don't know of any Sejanus specifically, but it may be a reference to Janus, god of doorways and paths (kind of fits, given that he comes from D2 but lives in the Capitol, so that's sort of like a doorway between livelihoods). That's the best I've got, but I think it fits.

Arachne Crane- This one works as well, in my opinion. Basically, Arachne was a weaver, but she was kind of prideful, so she starts boasting that her work is better than Athena/Minerva's (y'know, the literal goddess of weaving?). Anyway, Athena/Minerva challenges her to a competition, where the loser can't weave on a loom anymore. Athena/Minerva wins (obviously) but she sees how upset Arachne is and takes pity on her, turning her into a spider so she can still weave. Honestly, the whole thing kind of fits, since they both basically have the same fatal flaw of superiority, which leads to Arachne getting killed in tbosas, and Arachne getting turned into a spider in the myth.

That's all I've got for now, folks (also congratulations for reading this far). There's probably way more references to myth and roman society in the series, but these are all I can think of at the moment. Anyways, hope you have a good day, thanks for stopping by :)

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Okay but I would LOVE to here your heretical opinions on Padame if you ever want to share them or any of your other views on star wars prequel characters. Your character analysises are INCREDIBLE and really fun to read <3

Oh boy, are you sure about that? Well, the ask has been made so here, we, gooooooooooooooo!

Padme’s one of those strange characters who appears as one thing but in actuality is quite different. Because she appears as the first thing, and it’s something people really like, most people accept that at face value and if she’s not always consistent--well, she came from a series of screenplays written by George Lucas.

Padme comes across as a very noble, kind, and courageous character who is also quite politically savvy. At fourteen, against all odds, she saves her planet from invasion when the Senate did nothing, secured herself an ally in the chancellor (nevermind him being secretly Palpatine), and even after relinquishing her title as queen remains a major player in the senate for years and is seen as enough of a threat to warrant several assassination attempts (one so bad she has to be guarded by Jedi and sent home to Naboo for several weeks). 

And I’m not saying she’s not any of these things. Padme is very courageous, is one of those odd politicians who... believes she stands for what she believes in (more on this later), and has a remarkable political career.

However, she’s also romantic to the point of being completely and utterly delusional, self-centered, and frankly a little nuts.

(Yeah, you knew you were waiting for me to say something terrible, WEREN’T YOU?!) Right, so what’s wrong with Padme?

Well, if you look closely at a few of her choices, the ones that never seemed to make much sense, then you can look at her other choices and... Well, it all sort of comes together. 

That’s right, I’m talking about “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith”.

Attack of the Clones we have the very lackluster and strange romance of Anakin and Padme.

On Anakin’s end, his infatuation with Padme makes a lot of sense. She was part of the party that rescued him from slavery, she was very kind to him, and was the prettiest girl he’s ever seen in his life. Ten years later, always having harbored a crush on her memory and keeping it alive through whatever news he hears of her, she’s grown into a very beautiful woman and Anakin is by chance introduced back into her life. I get why Anakin falls head over heels for Padme, I’ll get more into this later and how their relationship has some major issues (aside from the obvious), but I understand why he marries this girl out of nowhere even when it could get him thrown out of the Jedi. (As an aside, since this is more of a Padme post, I think Anakin was spurred on in part also by the death of his mother and his massacre of the Tusken Raiders. Anakin’s life was flipped upside down in a very short amount of time, one of his great emotional ties is suddenly gone, and I think he has this internal crisis that culminates in him deciding to marry Padme. Without this, he and Padme may have become lovers, but I don’t think he’d marry her).

On Padme’s end... it’s a little less clear. Anakin has grown into an attractive young man, yes. Take out all of George Lucas’ dialogue, and maybe Padme finds Anakin very charming. However, Padme secretly marries a Jedi she’s known for three weeks. Now, I’d be a bit more forgiving of this, love is love and we can’t always think rationally, but there’s some other things.

Unlike Anakin, Padme hasn’t been spending the past ten years romanticizing her memory of Anakin Skywalker. When they met in Phantom Menace, Anakin was not only five years younger than her, he was nine-years-old. To fourteen-year-old Padme, Anakin was not then dating material and was instead this poor boy in slavery. Which means while Anakin has build up justifying this rapid romance, Padme really doesn’t. What this means is that her romance with Anakin reads a lot more like a romantic fantasy. Cute dashing bodyguard shows up, saves her life, through contrived circumstances they’re sent back to beautiful Naboo where they spend time together, only cute bodyguard is a Jedi and can’t marry, which makes their love excitingly taboo! 

Everything Padme does, before and after this point, lends itself to this overdeveloped sense of romance. Padme wants to be whisked away, wants to have this secret unsustainable marriage with a man who cannot be married, she’s in love with the idea of being in love. Given how little time she spends with Anakin, how little they really know of each other, I’d say she’s more in love with the idea of Anakin than Anakin Skywalker himself. And this isn’t a bad thing necessarily, or at least not a grievous flaw, however, that’s not all. 

Padme chooses to marry Anakin knowing he murdered an entire village of men, women, and children. She marries him almost immediately after the massacre of the Tusken Raiders. Note, she does not learn about this later and have to come to terms with it, she is right there. She is on Tatooine with him and sees him go to do it and then return. 

Padme doesn’t take it... particularly well, that said, she also seems to shove it under the carpet immediately. She, first, marries Anakin within days after this event. She second, never really has a “holy fuck, Anakin” conversation with him. And worst yet, she never confesses to anyone else. Padme is a hypocrite and willing to sacrifice everything she believes in, albeit I believe unwittingly, for her romantic fantasy.

She tells no one about what happened. An entire village was brutally massacred, those who are already poor and oppressed and have no voice, by a man who is supposed to be a protector of all people in the galaxy. I’m sorry, Anakin, but if Padme was who you think she is then she would have to tell the Jedi Order at the very least if not the Republic. Instead, there are no consequences, only Anakin’s descent into guilt and madness as three years pass with it festering in the back of his mind.  Padme does not stand for the poor, for the people, or for justice. She only does so when it does not conflict with her own interests, i.e. her actions regarding the invasion of Naboo. More, I do not believe Padme has the introspection to realize this about herself, she never realizes that not narking on Anakin was very very very bad. Three years pass and she lives the whirlwind romantic fantasy that she and Anakin both want. They’re secret lovers/spouses, meeting up at the oddest hours of the day and... This is three years of this ridiculous affair. Three years to come to terms with the fact that something must change. And then the kicker, Padme gets pregnant, and this is where the extra delusional comes in.

The child should have been a signal of the end. There can be no more secret now. Padme is having a child, presumably out of wedlock, and even if space is very very very different from our society I imagine this would be quite the scandal that could even get her thrown out of the senate. I believe Padme mentions as much to Anakin. More, Anakin is no longer a lover, he is now a father. What’s supposed to happen now? They raise this secret child, instructing them that Anakin is only a father in private, never in public?

Anakin and Padme briefly flirt with the idea of Anakin leaving the order. Anakin even wants to do so, but it... never happens. Now is the time it absolutely should happen. Yes, Anakin’s a big part of the war effort, but he could at least start talking to the Order and they could decide if it’d be a slow or fast exit. 

My theory, Padme’s too in love with the fantasy. Anakin leaving means he’s no longer a Jedi, it means he’ll come to Naboo, be unemployed and be around. Anakin visiting will no longer be this romantic, fraught with the danger of being found out, passionate, short lived event for Padme. It’ll become real life. He’ll be a real, ordinary man, she’ll be a real, ordinary, woman, and that spark of romance will be gone.

I don’t think Padme wants that. 

Which is why, even with the child on the way, we see Anakin and Padme continue to play out this ridiculous secret lovers fantasy. And then, of course, Anakin goes insane off screen.

Padme is told that, once again, Anakin has murdered dozens of children. Of course, this is a terrible thing to be told and she can’t process it. She needs to find Anakin and confront him, but people always criticize Lucas here and feel it’s out of character for Padme to have run to Anakin in sobbing hysterics with no plan of enacting vengence.

Frankly, I think it’s very in character. She did nothing about the Tuskens, remember? I think at the end of the day, the murder of the Jedi children means very little to her. What hurts Padme the most is that the fantasy of Anakin she married is not real. The Anakin she married would never murder the Jedi children, betray the Republic, or do any of what he’s done. And I think Padme only has that strong, iron, will when she knows the world she’s in. With the Trade Federation, her stance was obvious. Her people were being oppressed, butchered, and invaded. In this case, the world she knew no longer exists.

The Republic is gone, perhaps hasn’t existed in thirteen years, as it turns out the senator who had always been her biggest supporter was a Sith Lord. The Jedi are gone, children murdered by Anakin while those in the field are picked off by their own clone soldiers. Padme’s world has fallen apart, and I think that makes it much harder for her to be the girl we saw in Phantom Menace. In time, perhaps, she would have joined the rebellion but... I do think Padme might have also given into despair.

So, yeah, that’s Padme for you.

[beautifulterriblequeen]

A Tiadrin theory

I woke up this morning with a sudden headcanon about Tiadrin, and as I poked at it, it filled out nicely, so I’m gonna go ahead and call it a theory at this point.

It gets angsty, as all good Moonshadow theories do. If your heart doesn’t weigh 6 tons by the time you reach the end of this post, I didn’t capture the feeling properly.

Several bits of detail flutter around this mysterious woman, and I’ve theorized various versions of her circumstances, her relationship with Runaan and Ethari, her former position before the Storm Spire, the reasons she went there, and the reasons Runaan was so hellbent on avenging her dishonor.

I don’t think any of them landed as well or tied together as neatly as this one, though. Hence “theory” instead of just “headcanon.” Here we go:

FIrstly, some meta information. This is a fun tweet, but in this post I’m looking directly at “belief systems as sources of both comfort and restraint” and at the “weight of guilt” and “cycles of trauma” lines, in regards to Moonshadow culture, and specifically Moonshadow assassin training.

And raise your hand if you’ve been looking further afield than the front-and-center Janaya-with-Soren nod from “ripped women who teach soft boys to stab,” because I have. TDP is full of parallels and imperfect mirrors.

So, in the spirit of soft yet angsty cycles and the ripped women who perpetuate them, Theory Part I: Tiadrin trained Runaan, because she was the leader of the assassins before he was.

She’s referred to as a mastermind. Assassin leaders need to be good with plans of all sizes. We’ve seen how Runaan silently adapts to chaos and doesn’t tell anyone what his new plans actually are. He’s a good leader. But he also had to learn those skills from someone. Whoever instructed him was a tactical genius, and also very Moonshadow, and Runaan was an adept student.

Also, Tiadrin is a goddamn badass. She’s several inches shorter than Lain, Runaan, Ethari, and Viren. But she is a powerhouse in battle. She knows her physics well enough to drag this 6′2″ human battle mage skidding across the floor. Monster thighs, monster intellect.

As a 5′4″ woman who trained in jujitsu for several years, let me just say: gender equality in battle is great, but physics does not care. It will crush your popsicle-stick ass if you try to chuck a 250 lb person across the room and your math is off. The most accurate fighters are the ones who know how hard physics hits back when you’re sloppy.

Tiadrin earned every inch of respect, and every inch of her thigh circumference, the old-fashioned way. She worked for it, all day every day. Runaan does the same thing. He might have half a foot of height on her, but he trains like the world will crush him if he’s not perfect. And that’s very Moonshadow assassin in its own right, because it will, and it tried. Tiadrin knew what she needed. And she knew what Runaan, soft boy that he is, needed. And she made sure she trained it into him, all day every day.

Tiadrin is one of the reasons that Runaan survived the fight in Harrow’s chamber. She made him the fighter he is, the person he is, and that was just enough to pull him through... so he could see his own mentor trapped in a coin. Yay, thanks Viren.

Theory Part II: Runaan’s squad was made up of all the elves Tiadrin has personally trained, or trained by proxy.

If Tiadrin was Runaan’s trainer and mentor, then her honor was his honor. And when she supposedly faltered and fled at the Storm Spire, that suddenly cast him, as an individual assassin and as the current assassin leader, in a terrible light. If his mentor was a coward, what did she teach him? Would he also duck and run when things got hopeless, and abandon his duty?

The doubt that must’ve swirled around him when the village learned the terrible news about Lain and Tiadrin must’ve sliced right through him. Thousand-yard stare, biggest internal Oh No ever. Runaan lives to serve his people, and to have them doubt him, after all he has done to train them and protect them from harm, would be the worst kind of pain. He had to make it right.

But not just him. Assassins seem to take solo missions even for their first kill, if Eljaal’s covered shoulders are any indication. You can Moonshadow your feels if you don’t have to watch your friend kill someone, if you don’t have anyone watching while you stab someone to death. You can pretend it’s all serene and just and smooth and valid and honorable. You can hold to your love of life and dance right past your embrace of death, if no one else sees it. But Runaan’s mission had 6 members. They were definitely going to have to watch each other murder people. Why?

Tiadrin’s honor was their honor. An extended family of brothers, sisters, cousins, fosterlings, anyone who was drawn to Tiadrin, or her to them, bonded together over their family feels and protective instincts. They were family. And then their leader fell, her honor crushed.

They had to make it right.

They all carried Tiadrin’s honor with their own, taught by her personally, regarded as honorable assassins. Until she seemed to have a fatal flaw in her character. Then everyone wondered if that flaw got passed down, too. The assassins had to prove that it hadn’t been, for the sake of their people, and for all of Xadia who trusted them to take out threats in the dark. They had to go set right Tiadrin’s “mistake” and take Harrow for Zym’s death. All of them. Every single one, no exceptions.

No exceptions. That’s why Rayla had to go, too. Tiadrin taught Runaan everything he knew about being an assassin, and when she moved to the Storm Spire, Runaan dutifully passed Rayla’s mother’s teachings to Rayla herself, feeling like part of the family, an essential connection between mother and daughter, between assassin mentor and mentee. He tried to get it just right, just perfect, so Rayla would feel like she’d been trained by her actual mom as much as possible. Not just because Tiadrin was Rayla’s mother, but because Runaan respects Tiadrin’s prowess so much. She was the best, and every bit of Runaan’s efforts to be his best reflects his respect for her.

You don’t get to be the assassin leader unless you’re the best there is. Runaan knows that from both sides. And just like Tiadrin did with him, he does his best to teach Rayla everything she needs to stay safe and alive, so she can do her duty too, and come home safe to her family every day.

And, in the end, part of that duty had to be avenging her mentor’s mentor, her own mother, by accompanying Runaan on his mission. Her lessons were from Tiadrin, one step removed. If there was a flaw in her training, no one would trust her when it was her turn to lead the assassins, and she’s not even done training yet! Rayla understood Moonshadow honor, assassin honor. She was driven to ask Runaan to take her with him, and he could see exactly where she was coming from. Their honor was tangled up with Tiadrin’s. They couldn’t back out. They had to go to Katolis, them and everyone else Tiadrin had trained.

That’s why the binding ribbons came out. They were in a do-or-die situation, in the most literal sense.

They could not go home in failure. If they all failed, it would take out a whole line of assassin training, possibly the same one that had lasted for countless generations (okay maybe we can count them and there are like 30) and crush the Moonshadows’ spirits. And they’d literally rather die than see that happen. They were all ready to give their lives to restore Tiadrin’s honor, and their own, because without her legacy, there would be such a crater in the assassin corps that it might never recover.

Yes, this is basically my angsty “Runaan’s found family went into battle together and most of them died” headcanon again, but this time with a solid theory behind it. I’m not sorry. I love this angsty idea, it’s horrible. Do you see the cycle of trauma? I’ve got one more part to add, which may make it clearer.

Theory Part III: Assassin leaders always go serve at the Storm Spire once they successfully train their own replacement.

In this theory’s version of Why Laindrin Went To The Storm Spire, Tiadrin was always going to end up at the Storm Spire, once she became the assassin leader. That’s where the veteran assassin leader goes, see, to liaison between the dragon throne and the current Moonshadow leader. They know the assassins’ skills far better than any Skywings or dragons do, and they know the leader in charge of them, so they can give guidance or direction as needed, or simply phrase the Dragon King or Queen’s request in such language that the assassin leader knows intuitively what really needs to be done.

Yeah, Tiadrin writing Runaan mission directives. I can see it.

Tiadrin’s mentor would’ve left for the Spire when Tiadrin got promoted to leader. The person she trusted most in the world, who had trained her, left her behind, only to communicate by long distance. Moonshadow deniability, amirite--we’re not stabbing people, we’re sending tactical correspondence, yep that’s it. But Tiadrin was still surrounded by Runaan and the other young assassins, and she bonded with them all, and life was bright.

Then, the shadow came once again. Runaan was an excellent student, and she knew he was ready. Maybe she delayed, and delayed, Moonshadowing her reasons. Maybe she wanted the chance to bring life into the world, to try to balance out some of the death she had dealt. Maybe she wanted a few more years of domestic life in the Silvergrove with all her favorite elves, to bolster her heart for the years to come. Maybe her mentor at the Spire was up to shenaniganry in dragon politics and she wanted to buy them more time to lay those plans in place.

Knowing Tiadrin even the slightest bit, I will assume it was all this and more. But eventually, she couldn’t put things off any longer. She had to go fulfill her duty to the dragon throne and join the Dragonguard as the representative of the Moonshadow assassins who had bound themselves to the protection of Xadia long ago. She had to walk away from her bright life, her family, her friends, her allies, and climb up into that misty stone tower, to spend who knows how long away from everything she knew and loved.

And she did. She chose to walk away, for love of Xadia. She took her beloved husband with her, but she left the Silvergrove, Xadia’s protection, and her own daughter’s upbringing in the hands of the elf she chose to replace her. The soft boy she’d taught to stab, who would teach her baby girl to stab, too.

Because this is The Way.

I know I’ve had an angsty headcanon that assassins don’t retire. But, consider this: maybe one of them can. One of Tiadrin’s many plans could have been counting on Runaan’s extreme prowess and devotion to Rayla. If Tiadrin knew that she could return to the Silvergrove in peace and retire there with Lain once Runaan trained Rayla to take his place as the assassin leader, then she could live in the Silvergrove again for the rest of her life, and also get to see Rayla grown big and strong and become the assassin leader herself, another proud elf in a long line of honor and tradition. She might feel that was a big accomplishment, considering the dangers they all face. And it would be.

Yes, this would hinge on the fact that Runaan would have to leave the Silvergrove to replace Tiadrin at the Storm Spire, to serve as Rayla’s liaison to the dragon throne. Cycles of trauma, remember? Tiadrin can’t have all of her family back in one place, ever again. She has to love and train someone enough to put them through the life that she’s having to live, and she has to be strong enough not to let that break her. And then, she has to choose between them. She chose Runaan first, so that she could hope to choose Rayla later. She trusted him with all the future happiness of her heart. And he did his best with it.

But they didn’t quite make it, in the end, because of Viren.

I know this has been a lot of angst. I know. But there is a moonlit lining to this theory, and I think we all need to consider it. If there is a cycle of taking the assassin leader out of the Silvergrove to serve the dragon throne for ancient promise reasons, then if that ancient promise is ever rescinded or redressed in an effective way, the family won’t need to keep yeeting loved ones out of its orbit. And if assassins cease to be a necessary evil as a result, then no one will have to leave, or stab, again. At least, not for the same angsty reasons. They could stay together and never need to leave again.

It won’t be easy to break such a cycle. It might be impossible. But if anyone can manage it, it’ll be Tiadrin, and her family.

extra headcanon for this theory:

Tiadrin, packing up for the Storm Spire: One last thing, Runaan.

Runaan, stoically attentive because what are feels on the day your mentor leaves you: Yes, Tiadrin?

Tiadrin: Ethari will need to pick an apprentice to replace him, too. He should start looking now.

Runaan: Why? Only the Silvergrove’s Master Craftsman gets to pick an apprentice, and Ethari isn’t--

Tiadrin: *wink” Not yet, he’s not.

Runaan: Tiadrin, please, what have you done?

Tiadrin: I want to come back here someday, Runaan. I want to see your good work with Rayla. And I can’t do that if you flat-out refuse to leave your husband when Avizandum calls for you to replace me. So he needs to be ready to leave, too.

Runaan: I, I, I would nev-- I couldn’t--

Tiadrin: *patting his shoulder briskly as she strides out* Mmhmm, sure thing, kid. The council votes him in next Thursday. Be good while I’m gone! I want to find this place exactly the way I’m leaving it. Lain, honey, get your coat!

Lain, in the next room: Yes, Tiadrin!

Runaan, soft-eyed, to the silence in her wake: Yes, Tiadrin.

[wtffundiefamilies]

This is from 2013, but holy hell I hope Anna finds it.  Entirety of the post beneath the cut; it’s both long and not something people should read with no warning.  But I wanted to copypaste in case the link goes down one day.  It’s insane to me that these “little details” and “clues” are obvious and screaming red flags to people raised in a normal world.  (And no, looking at legal porn is not a “red flag” that someone is a child molester.  But, like...again, given the circumstances I’m not sure what we’d expect; we all saw what Jessa said.)  It’s part one of a series, and it’s amazing just how much this dude sounds like Josh.  And how much their “courtship” sounds like Josh and Anna’s.

Part of my mission, my purpose in life, is to educate others about child predators.  I’m not here to stir up some kind of crazy hype, but to present the facts and to give you a bit of insight as to what happened in my own life.  How was I so blinded to the fact that for forty years I was living with a practicing pedophile?  How did I not see the signs?  How did I not pick up on something being very wrong with the man I married?  

The truth is that I sensed something was wrong even before we got married, but I didn’t listen to my inner being.  I didn’t pay attention to those nudgings that something was wrong.  Why?  Because as a Christian it had been taught to me from little up that people who went to church were good, honest, moral people.  I was taught to trust people who said they believed in God and followed His teachings.  And, I did just that.  I was, unfortunately, one of the most trusting women who ever walked the face of the earth!

Pay attention to this, please!  Just because a person tells you that they walk by the teachings of God does not mean it’s true.  In fact, the word of God warns us against “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, and I learned first-hand just what that meant.  But, it would be years before my eyes were totally opened to this fact. As a bit of background information, I came from a broken home.  My parents divorced when I was fourteen, a sister of mine died when she was thirteen, my mother was an alcoholic, and my father was by today’s terms a “dead beat dad.”  Needless to say, I longed for a different life, and I prayed constantly that God would send a good, righteous, faithful Christian into my life so that I could build a home on godly principles and a firm foundation.

I worked hard all through high school so that I could go to college.  But, I didn’t want to go to just any college.  It had to be a Christian college because I sincerely believed that was the only place I would ever meet a Christian man to marry.  Because I worked so hard all through high school, I earned a four-year scholarship to a four-year state school.  BUT, you guessed it!  The idea of finding and marrying a Christian man was so ingrained in my heart and mind by now that I passed up the scholarship and instead went to a very small, two-year Christian College.  Little did I know that this one decision would lead to so much heartache for me and for those who are most special in my life — my children.  While it’s true that we can’t see around every bend in the road, there are signs and signals along the way.  I didn’t pay attention to anyone who tried to talk to me.  One thing was on my mind — finding a Christian mate!

Every person wants to feel special, and longs to be told that they stand out among all of the rest.  During the summer between my first and second year of college I met a young man who was articulate, bright, funny, witty, and who also told me that I stood out.  He was spending the summer at college and so was I.  A friendship developed, and even though I was engaged to marry someone else, this young man worked very hard every day to convince me that I was with the wrong person.  He pointed out all of the flaws of the man whose ring I was wearing until he finally convinced me to break off the engagement.  That’s a story in and of itself — maybe I’ll share that with you another day.

What was a bit strange to me was that the man I would soon marry had a quiet control over me like nobody ever had before.  Even though I had low self-esteem I was used to making my own decisions and being very independent.  For the first time in my life I found I was reporting my every move to this quiet, shy young man. He told me I was special.  He said out of all the girls on campus I was the only one that he thought was pretty and was a true Christian.  He told me just what I wanted to hear.  It was the word “Christian” that nailed me!  I knew he was the one I had been praying about since my youth!

One of the greatest stories my now ex-husband loved to tell was how he spotted me from across campus and said to his roommate, “See that girl?  I’m going to marry her.”  This was totally absurd because at the time he said that we had not even met!  He later told me he would hide and watch me — study me — and he knew my schedule, when I was going to eat, when I’d walk back to campus, when I would go to work.  He said, “I knew everything about you.  I knew where you were from morning until night. I knew I would marry you.”

Instead of being freaked out and thinking this guy was some kind of stalker psycho, I was flattered.  “He chose me.”  Out of all of the girls around, he chose me and that again was more evidence of answered prayers.  Deep inside, though, was a gnawing feeling that something wasn’t right.  He didn’t talk much.  And, for a man who said he loved God, he made fun of people in a mean way.  He mocked people’s insecurities.  Yes, you guessed it!  He mocked me on several occasions and I felt like a piece of dirt he had stepped on.  He made fun of the size of my nose.  He made fun of my feet calling them “hammer head toes.”  He made fun of the space I have between my teeth.  I cried myself to sleep many, many nights, but still……..he was a Christian man, and he was so nice when we were together in public.  He opened the car door for me (it was my car, by the way).  He paid the bill when we went out to eat and left a nice tip.  (It was my money that he used.)  He talked me into giving him my car (which I had since I was 16) and I found myself asking him for permission to use my own car.  This was really weird!

Why did I put up with it?  Why does anybody put up with abuse?  Because they’ve been so used to being beaten down that they think this is the norm. Please, please — if you’re in a situation like this run for your life!!!  This is NOT the way a good relationship works!  And, it’s a red flag indicator of many other problems — in my case, it was a big red flag that I was being masterfully manipulated.  Groomed to be the wife of a pedophile who was already deeply involved in porn and child sexual molestation!  

Learn to listen for “clues” that a decision you’re making might not be right.  I had BIG clues that I passed off as “odd”, “not making much sense”, “silly”, or “not that big of a deal.”

Clue 1:  For the last four months we dated, my fiance was in Israel doing overseas study.  We corresponded by letter only.  We were to get married less than one week after he arrived back in the states.  In his letters he would write to tell me how he would hide behind the grasses on the beach and watch girls changing out of their clothes and swimming nude.  He said he’d skip class and stay there all day.  In other words, he was openly telling me he was a “peeping Tom.”  This was a test of how far he could manipulate me and I passed with flying colors! I never questioned him about it.  Oh, I cried lots, but I never questioned him!

Clue 2:  He told me while we were dating that he and one of his cousins spent the summers together and they would steal cartons of cigarettes from stores and sneak out of the house at night and smoke the cigarettes and look at “porn” all night long.  Another test!  I looked at him quietly but never questioned him.  If you want to know the truth — I didn’t even know what porn was!!!!!  I had to ask my college roommates.  Again, I was being tested.  Could he get away with doing things right under my nose?  Sure he could. I’d never question a man of God!

Clue 3:  He was almost 21 and his favorite job was to “babysit all the little kids at church for free because he loved to give them baths and powder their little butts.”  I’m totally sick now as I write these words.  Why in heaven’s name didn’t I run from this man? There were so many clues that something was wrong, and I passed them off as being a little odd.  Nothing more — just a little bit odd. In fact, I actually thought this was kind of nice.  I never saw my father get involved in parenting like that, and I thought, “Wow!  This man will make a wonderful father!”    

Porn.  Lying.  Peeping Tom.  A young man who loves bathing and powdering little kids.  Masterfully manipulating.  Gaining the trust of adults. (Church people loved him babysitting their kids!)

I was another one of his victims.  I was being set up. I was being groomed  I would be the perfect alibi for his continued evil behavior.  He was calculating.  He studied me.  He used me.  He used my faith as a means to get what he wanted.  He knew what he was doing! His actions were no mistake.  He worked very hard to plan every detail.  

Listen up everyone!  Please don’t do as I did!  If your gut is telling you something is wrong, it probably is!!! Pay attention to the little details and the little voice that is whispering something is wrong!!!

This is just the beginning of my story.  I will share more in the weeks to come in hopes that others will not be blinded to the facts as I was.   We must get educated about child sexual molesters so that we can protect life’s most precious blessings — our children!

Why am I sharing the ugly, sad parts of my life?  That’s simple.  Because children are beautiful.  Children are precious.  Children deserve to be protected.  Statistics (according to information found here ) tell us that 1 in every 3 girls and 1 in every 6 boys are molested by the age of 18.  Please help me to stop this!  Let’s get educated!  Let’s do all we can to make it incredibly difficult for the molester!  Let’s be vigilant on behalf of our children — at all times!!!

Every child should have the ability to grow up feeling safe and loved and whole and pure!

It isn’t easy or comfortable for me to write about this, but I must.  I must take this terribleness and do something positive with it.  I must work for the safety of our children. Thanks so much for stopping by and for taking the time to read this.  Thanks even more for making yourself more aware of what is going on right under our noses — in our schools, our churches, our camps, our homes.  Let’s do all we can to work together to make this a safe place for our children!  

Love, Clara

[austenmarriage]

New Post has been published on Austen Marriage

New Post has been published on http://austenmarriage.com/giving-thanks-with-austen-2/

Giving Thanks with Austen

This blog originally appeared last year. With my blog now scheduled on the fourth Thursday of each month—Thanksgiving in the U.S.—I decided to reprise it.

Thanksgiving makes me wonder whether there was any formal giving of thanks in Jane Austen’s work. The November U.S. holiday has spread to most of the Americas. The English have a more general harvest-related tradition of providing bread and other food to the poor, often through the church. That tradition was extant in the Regency and continues now.

Though today’s American celebration is secular in nature, the practice has spiritual roots. It was religious settlers in Virginia and Massachusetts who began the celebration. Most Americans know the tradition of the Pilgrims inviting the native tribes to join in. It was the Indians who provided the food that enabled most of the early colonies to survive the first desperate years.

President George Washington created the first official Thanksgiving in 1789 “as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God.” President Abraham Lincoln memorialized the date as the fourth Thursday in November, beginning in 1863, when, in the middle of the Civil War, he proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

Austen’s family was religious, of course. Her father and two brothers were clergymen. Her works contain strong, though not didactic, moral strains. I wondered: Did any of her characters ever directly express thanks—to God, to Providence, to the universe? Did anyone express gratitude in a way that recognized any higher power?

I could not find any direct use of “giving” or “offering” thanks in any of Austen’s six novels. Most of her novels contain fifty or sixty ordinary thanks each. Persuasion is the least thankful with only eighteen, but it includes the most fervent. Most of the thanks are a polite reflex to ordinary behavior or a specific response to a good deed performed by another.

“Thank God!” occurs once or twice per book. The sense is usually general. Sometimes the phrase is a positive and sometimes a negative. In Persuasion, Mrs. Croft thanks God that as a naval wife she is blessed with excellent health and was seldom seasick on the ocean. Perversely, William Elliot writes “Thank God!” that he can stop using the name “Walter”—the name of Anne’s father—as a middle name. Anne Elliot stiffens upon learning the insult to her family.

“Thank God!” is a remark that is canceled out in Northanger Abbey. Catherine Morland’s brother James writes her to say “Thank God!” that he is done with Isabella Thorpe, who is now pursuing Captain Tilney. The next post brings a letter from Isabella, telling Catherine “Thank God” that she’s leaving the “vile” city of Bath. By now dumped by the Captain, she doesn’t know that Catherine knows what’s up. Isabella pleads “some misunderstanding” with James and asks Catherine to help: “Your kind offices will set all right: he is the only man I ever did or could love, and I trust you will convince him of it.” Catherine doesn’t.

The only real “Thank God!”, as an appeal to the Deity, comes in Persuasion after Captain Wentworth’s inattention contributes to Louisa’s fall and concussion: “The tone, the look, with which ‘Thank God!’ was uttered by Captain Wentworth, Anne was sure could never be forgotten by her; nor the sight of him afterwards, as he sat near a table, leaning over it with folded arms and face concealed, as if overpowered by the various feelings of his soul, and trying by prayer and reflection to calm them.”

Everyone’s prayers are answered. Louisa mends and becomes engaged to Captain Benwick. Wentworth is free to marry Anne.

A deeply thankful attitude does exist with two of Austen’s characters. Readers who pause to think can probably guess the two. Beyond the village poor in the background, which characters are most in distress and most likely to be thankful for any relief?

We might think first of Mrs. Smith from Persuasion, who had the “two strong claims” on Anne “of past kindness and present suffering.” Her physical and financial straits are dire, yet “neither sickness nor sorrow seemed to have closed her heart or ruined her spirits.” Mrs. Smith, however, is more shrewd than thankful, using Anne’s marriage to help end her own suffering.

What character, living on the margins, has a level of energy that often sets into motion her active tongue? We find her in Emma:

“Full of thanks, and full of news, Miss Bates knew not which to give quickest.”

When Mr. Knightley sends her a sack of apples and the Woodhouse family sends her a full hindquarter of tender Hartfield pork, Miss Bates responds with the sunniest appreciation: “Oh! my dear sir, as my mother says, our friends are only too good to us. If ever there were people who, without having great wealth themselves, had every thing they could wish for, I am sure it is us.” She might be auditioning for a role in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

In contrast, the social-climbing new vicar’s wife, Mrs. Elton, feels thankful in a prerogative way. “I always say a woman cannot have too many resources—and I feel very thankful that I have so many myself as to be quite independent of society.”

If anyone has the right to feel a lack of thanks in life, it is Fanny Price of Mansfield Park. When she is not being forgotten, it is to provide some service for someone else. When she is not being ignored, it is to be abused by her aunt, Mrs. Norris. Just about every word that can convey melancholy, sadness, or anguish serves to repeatedly describe her.

She feels misery at least eight times; some variety of pain at least ten times; wretchedness half a dozen times. The best she normally manages is to feel both pain and pleasure, four times. She is oppressed three times and suffers stupefaction once. Her circumstances and personality leave her in a “creep mouse” state of mind. She trembles a dozen times; she cries a dozen times and sobs at least four other. The stress is so great that she comes close to fainting at least three times and is ready to sink once; she suffers fright or is frightened six times; she reacts with horror or to something horrible five times.

Yet for all her misery, and though she lacks a sunny disposition, she manages to look on the sunny side of life.

Fanny feels gratitude at least fifteen times, for things small and large. Gratitude for her cousin Edmund tending to her when she first comes to live with her wealthy relatives. For his providing her a horse to ride. For her uncle once letting her use the carriage to go to dinner. Even gratitude once “to be spared from aunt Norris’s interminable reproaches.”

Kindness comes up about 125 times in the book. The most common use again relates to Edmund: his kindness to her throughout, and his encouragement of others to be kind to her. Fanny can even feel grateful toward Henry Crawford, despite his character flaws, for his kindness to her brother and, a couple of times, for his kindness to her.

It seems to be a fundamental aspect of human nature that those with the least to appreciate in life treasure what they have the most. Austen’s treatment of Miss Bates and Fanny does not, I think, reflect a conscious attempt at moral teaching. Their attitudes flow directly from the women’s character. Fanny and Miss Bates are gentle souls with big hearts. They give thanks naturally for the joy of existence.

So should we all.

—

The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen, which traces love from a charming courtship through the richness and complexity of marriage and concludes with a test of the heroine’s courage and moral convictions, is now complete and available from Amazon and Jane Austen Books.

[crazy-acey-hate-blog]

“I know that rape is bad and abortion is sometimes necessary but how can I make this about my hatred of allosexual people?” This whole response comes across as just oozing condescension and their trademark superiority complex.

I actually do not know what to say. “Birther” just comes off as dehumanizing but they’ve already resorted to “abortion is basically just for irresponsible people” despite there being a chance that the birth control/ contraceptives used might have just been ineffective and caused fertilization anyways. And would you really want a child to be born into a family and situation that doesn’t want or welcome them? Would you really? Because, to me, that seems like a recipe for disaster. I realize that adoption/foster care is an option but we should address the flaws in both of those systems that can still cause considerable harm to the child involved.

Birth can and does kill women. (In the states, black women at a higher percent then other races.) Even a healthy birth can cause irreparable damage and changes to the body of the person carrying the baby. (See: changes in hips, stretch marks, foot growth, c-section complications, post partum depression, abdominal muscle separation, preeclampsia/toximia, pregnancy related anemia, urination problems, perinatal depression, changes to the vaginal cavity, changes in breast tissue, etc) An ill or disabled person can often be forced to go off their meds and cause themselves damage because they are pregnant. A stillbirth can become necrotic and kill the mother from the inside if the stillbirth is not removed (ie aborted). There is more than just “irresponsible allos” that can lead to the choice (a choice that is often traumatic and difficult) to have an abortion. And for the last time stop trying to being your nasty ideology into a set of circumstances that you clearly do not understand or have any empathy for.

[miss-musings]

“THE BLACKLIST” & WHY PEOPLE HATE LIZ SO MUCH

I’ve discussed on here several times how much I’ve been annoyed with the way TPTB have written Liz’s character over the course of the show. But, I tried to keep my frustration and annoyance directed more so at the writers/showrunners and less on the character herself or the actress Megan Boone.

However, after watching 6x10 “The Cryptobanker,” I think I may have finally hit the point where I really started to hate Liz in and of herself. So, I started writing this post, which I’ve added to and edited over the past few weeks, but I still stand by my original point.

Now, I follow the Blacklist on Facebook, and almost every single time there’s a new post, the top-voted comments are always praising Spader/Red and hating on Liz. I’ve seen people say she’s annoying, that they didn’t like this S6 plotline with her and her sister, that they hoped the show kills her off for real soon, etc.

I always thought that most of the comments were somewhat valid but maybe a little overblown (especially the ones about wanting her off the show). But, it really made me wonder why so many people hate -- and I mean HATE -- Liz so much.

While I admit that her character is starting to really get on my nerves, I’m going to try to put my personal feelings aside and tackle this objectively. I want to really look at what reasons within the show, its writing, its format, etc., Liz receives so much more hate -- vastly more than any other character on this show. As I said, Red/Spader is always highly praised along with Dembe, and I rarely if ever see comments complaining about Samar, Aram, Cooper and Ressler. I would guestimate that 95 percent of complaints about any one character are directed at Liz.

A THEORETICAL POSSIBILITY

Now, I will theorize -- and keep in mind that this is only a theory -- that part of the reason for this hatred toward Liz has to do with some male fans being misogynistic/sexist and some female fans’ annoyance at what a crappy avatar Liz makes for. (I’m talking about straight viewers, FYI.)

With regard to male fans, I think they look at Liz -- who at times has been terse, mean-spirited and vindictive -- and see her as a giant bitch. After all, that was the whole idea that Liz herself sets up in the pilot. She is not who her male colleagues expect her to be. She doesn’t play into the traditional feminine role of simpering, smiling and content to sit on the sidelines and let the men sort things out. (And, I’m really generalizing here.) So, I think it’s a fair assumption that some male fans have the same sentiments about Liz that her colleagues canonically have too.

As for the female fans, I think Liz might come off as a poor avatar. When you’re plunged into a fictional universe, usually there’s a character who’s plunged into the story along with you, and you learn as they do, to the point where you start to project yourself onto them. Think Neo in “The Matrix” or Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker. It’s every person’s fantasy to discover some great power within, harness it to defeat the bad guy and win the heart of the beautiful woman/handsome man in the process.

Liz was clearly meant to be our avatar into this universe. We were brought into the world along with her, saw her learn about Red, begin the Task Force, and plunge into this world of the FBI and the Blacklist.

Now, I imagine that for older women, especially, the fantasy is to be the kind of gal that a guy like James Spader would absolutely devote himself to. And that’s exactly how Red treats Liz -- like a woman he would do anything for. However, unlike many viewers, Liz is ungrateful for Red’s devotion and continual sacrifices for her benefit. Instead of seeing him as a savior and white knight, she often sees him as a nuisance and a terror in her life. I personally think she’s often justified in that, but I’d guess that 80 percent of the current audience is watching it simply for Spader’s performance alone. So, when the favorite actor’s character is not appreciated and is continually hated on by his co-lead character, it makes for uncompelling television from a “I want to project myself onto this character” kind of way.

But, with the theoretical discussion out of the way, let’s examine some more concrete reasons as to why people hate Liz.

LIZ IS OFTEN WISHY-WASHY (ie, has little conviction) WHEN IT COMES TO HER FEELINGS AND DESIRES.

This is what I’ve often described as the “Liz loves Red, Liz hates Red, Liz forgives Red” song-and-dance routine. But, there’s much more to it than simply Liz’s relationship with Red.

Liz was first introduced to us as a woman who wanted to start a family, and yet she thought about giving up her baby for adoption and then later gave Agnes away to her mother-in-law so she could spend more time on her revenge plans. The entire pilot goes out of its way to show Liz struggling with the demands of being an FBI agent and a prospective parent, and drives home the whole “Mommy Liz” vibe with the admiral’s daughter.

Yet, when she finds out she’s pregnant, she hesitates and thinks about giving it up for adoption. Then, when she has Agnes, she agrees to Kaplan’s plan to fake her death so she and Tom and Agnes can be happy and safe away from his world. And, later when Agnes gets kidnapped, she frets and worries about her constantly.

But, the minute she wakes up after being in a coma, she’s totally cool with pawning Agnes off to someone she’s never really met. Cool.

I realize there are mitigating circumstances, but this is a woman who made all her loved ones -- Red, Cooper, Ressler, Samar, Aram, any family members she had left (except Tom) -- believe she was dead so she could live with her daughter in a safe location!!!

The idea that Liz wouldn’t just drop everything and give up the Task Force indefinitely to heal and spend time with her daughter after losing 10 months of time with her is absurd, IMO.

But, no, revenge is far more important.

It’s also really annoying that after finding out Tom had betrayed her, she was able to give him a second chance and continued to love him despite all sorts of stuff in Seasons 2-5, but the minute Red does anything, she wants to drop him like heavy airline luggage.

So, in case you forgot: in S1, she found out that Tom had been lying to her, manipulating her, and abusing her. So, after shooting him in the S1 finale, she chains him up on a boat for several months in an effort to make him useful to the Task Force. However, the minute that she hits the “hates Red” part of her “love Red, hate Red, forgive Red” cycle, she runs right back to Tom and very quickly forgives him. And, while her positive feelings for Tom continue from late S2b until his death in 5x08, her feelings about Red are all over the place, as mentioned.

Now, in her defense, her feelings about him seem to waver whenever a crucial piece of information about his involvement in her life is discovered. When Tom’s fake passports were traced back to Red in 1x06, she blamed him and said she didn’t want to work with him anymore. But, then the very next episode, when he offers to leave the Task Force completely, she doesn’t tell him to do so.

And, when Red admitted to killing Sam toward the end of S1, she was again ready to let him leave. But then at the end of the episode, she stops him.

In S2, when Liz believes that Red was only interested in her for the Fulcrum, and never really cared about her, she gives him the cold shoulder. And then when he admits that he did hire Tom to be in her life, her coldness toward him again grows.

While they’re on the run together in S3, their relationship is at its best, arguably. Until she finds out she’s pregnant and he tells her that the fight is not over, and she doesn’t want her child to be in Red’s world. (Which is understandable)

And on and on it goes through S4 and S5 and now S6. The minute Liz realizes  that he stole her father’s identity, she’s ready to burn him to the ground. But then only a few episodes later, she’s teary-eyed and regretting that she turned him into the authorities.

AS OPPOSED TO RED’S ... 

But, what really makes this all so annoying is the fact that while Liz’s feelings toward Red are cyclical, his feelings for her are constant, enduring, and never wavering. I mean, he’s basically Garth Brooks’ “Shameless” in human form. He is completely devoted to her, would give his life for hers without hesitation, and has loved her (in some form or another) far longer and far deeper than she has seemingly ever loved him.

If both of them liked each other, or if both of them disliked each other initially but then grew closer over time, the show would be much better. For instance, ABC’s Castle -- while it definitely has its flaws -- started off with the two leads liking each other from the start. Yeah, maybe they’re trying to get used to each because he’s a goofball and she’s kind of a hard ass, but it seems like by the end of the pilot, they both generally like each other as acquaintances.

Or NBC’s “The Enemy Within” -- which is eerily similar to TBL and I’ll have to do a whole post on their similarities some other time -- which starts off with the two leads being tenuous with each other. He hates her, and she is kind of neutral toward him, but the two of them need to cooperate to accomplish a shared goal.

This was never the case with Liz and Red on TBL. In the pilot, Liz is very wary of Red, as she should be. However, he -- according to Zamani -- is obsessed with her, and it’s clear that he cares about her far more than he should. To our knowledge, Red has never met adult Liz. He’s seen her from afar and kept tabs on her, of course, but this was the first time he’d met her (presumably) since The Night of the Fire. And from that meeting, his love has only grown, while hers -- as discussed -- has been all over the place.

THE TWO ARE NOT EQUAL

As I’ve said in previous posts, while the show wants Red and Liz to be partners, they are really so unequal on multiple levels. The same could be said of the two leads on “The Enemy Within, but their inadequacies tend balance each other out. She has all the know-how, but he has the freedom and jurisdiction to do things, and he is the one who ultimately makes the decision on what his team should tackle and how. She has some of the power in their dynamic, and he has some as well. Thus, their advantages tend to cancel each other out.

This is not the case with Red and Liz. All this time, Red has withheld crucial pieces of information from her, which he gives to her in piecemeal and only when she demands them. I won’t judge whether that’s the right or wrong thing to do, but it puts her at a disadvantage as far as their dynamic goes. And while Liz should be given some advantage of her own, she really doesn’t have one. Red has an immunity agreement and gets to do pretty much whatever he wants, unlike on “The Enemy Within” where the male FBI agent has some say over what privileges the female CI has because she’s still in custody.

I guess the one advantage that Liz has over Red is that he’s told her he will never lie to her. And she has confronted him and asked him direct questions before because she knows he *has* to tell her to truth if she does. But, that doesn’t stop him from stalling, changing the subject, or trying to do a verbal workaround.

And then, when the show was promoting S6, they made it seem like the power was finally in Liz’s hands -- she knows he’s an impostor and he doesn’t know that she knows.

But, while the show tried to give Liz a bit of an edge over Red, it ultimately fizzled out. She knows he’s an impostor, but she no longer has an interest in pursuing it. Which goes back to my previous point about her not having conviction. She wanted to destroy Red, and betrayed him to ensure that he wouldn’t get in the way of her and Jennifer’s quest to find out his true identity. But then, she drops it.

Again, I realize there was a lot going on -- Jennifer was kidnapped; Red was almost executed. And while I think the fact that, right now, she’s fine with not having all the answers is a sign a maturity, it’s also incredibly frustrating to see how she went from 0 to 100 in such a short span of time.

Anyway... moving on to my next major point:

LIZ DOESN’T FEEL LIKE A REAL PERSON

Relative to the screentime she’s received, Liz does not feel like a real person, but merely a plot device or a vehicle for Red’s schemes and/or the Task Force’s missions.

Very rarely do we get to see her on her own, doing her own things, outside of Red/the Task Force -- going to the store, doing chores at home, hanging out with her kid, etc. The only times we do are when it’s relevant to the overall plot. Like when she gets beat up in the parking lot in 3x11 or when she brings that Lady Ambrosia kid over to her house, tries to cook him something, and then the fire alarm goes off.

She seems solely to exist within Red’s/the Task Force’s orbit.

I feel like the fact that Liz doesn’t have any friends or family outside of the Task Force, Red and Tom (when he was alive), really speaks to how she seems to exist more as a character, not as a person within a fictional universe.

She doesn’t seem to have any hobbies, and outside of her mentioning the Wizard of Oz and a few other things, she doesn’t really seem to have any interests in anything.

By comparison, we have lots of scenes with Red and Dembe, doing puzzles, playing cards and board games. We know Red enjoys art and food/alcohol and traveling, and he has a penchant for some types of drugs -- his favorite being sex.

And even Aram enjoys Doctor Who, biking and cooking.

I’m not saying that Liz needs to start chatting with Ressler about Monday Night Football or playing pool at some local dive bar, but something! Just a line about how she Skyped with Agnes last night, or her talking to Samar or Aram about her trying to decide whether she should download Tinder and try to get back into the dating scene, or a scene of her running around a park but she’s disturbed by memories from her past. Just something. Something to make her feel like a real person, who does things outside of the Task Force.

Again, I always hate the fact that Liz was supposed to have all these friends in S1 (the house party at the end of 1x03 and the vow renewal later in S1), and yet, they seemed to have vanished. I hate the fact that Liz doesn’t have any support system outside of Red and the Task Force. The girl needs friends! Hobbies! Interests! Something!!!

LIZ TRIES TOO HARD TO PROVE HERSELF, GETS IN TROUBLE, AND OFTEN NEEDS TO BE RESCUED BY RED AND/OR THE TASK FORCE AS A RESULT

This gets into a personal pet peeve of mine where Liz reassures people that she can do things. In the most recent case, she told her sister that she was definitely capable of deceiving Red and keeping him from finding out that she knows.

But then within the episode or two, Red definitely knows that Liz is up to something because she has been acting weird around him. And, before she begs Dembe not to tell Red that she was the one who betrayed him, Red was pretty certain that she was the one who did. I would suggest that the minute he was arrested, he had a good suspicion it was her. Hence why he said that what he would do to his betrayer would depend on who they were. He was hedging his bets, in case it was Liz.

Liz and Jennifer kept going back and forth on trying to convince the other that they could pull off this “Find Red’s true identity” side-plot, but ultimately, Jennifer got kidnapped, Liz killed a dude, and ended up having to recruit Ressler and Red to help her find Jennifer and confront the people who took her.

This type of situation happens A LOT on the show. Liz will try to do her own thing (finding Red’s true identity, etc.) and it ultimately gets her into trouble. It seemed to happen more often in S1-3. One example I can think of was when she didn’t kill Tom, but instead captured and imprisoned him, and then he killed the Harbormaster and forced Liz to face charges for murder. Red and the Task Force and even Tom had to come to her rescue to make sure she didn’t face the consequences of her choices. Yes, Tom did kill the Harbormaster, but Liz was the one who had decided to chain him up on the boat in the first place. The murder is on him, but the imprisoning is on her.

Liz also killed the Attorney General, and Red and the Task Force (and Tom, once again) were ultimately responsible for saving her from the Director’s plot while she was trapped in The Box, bringing the Cabal’s actions to light, using the Director as the scapegoat for Hitchen and then getting Liz out of the murder charges by bringing in Karakurt. And then, later, Red was responsible for leveraging the President into pardoning her so that she could become an agent again.

Now, there have been a few occasions where Liz was kidnapped simply because she was an FBI agent, not because of her connection to Red or anything else. For instance, in 1x04 “The Stewmaker,” she’s kidnapped and almost killed because she had her own personal history with that Lorca guy.

But, again, too many times Liz is put in the “damsel in distress” position where either she’s in trouble or her life is threatened and others have to be the ones to save her, either by saving her life or by saving her from legal repercussions, etc.

In a way, this whole S6a has been the consequence of Liz’s actions, which she regretted and then was looking for any and all help to make sure Red wasn’t executed after she’d turned him in. Yes, Red was the one who insisted on the death penalty, but he never would’ve been in that situation if she hadn’t betrayed him. And ultimately, it was Cooper who came through and pressured the President into staying Red’s execution.

Going back to the “Red and Liz aren’t equals” thing, very rarely is Red the one who needs saving. And, even when he is, it isn’t always Liz who’s rescuing him. Again, Cooper was the one who saved Red from execution. Liz has saved him a few times that I can recall -- she stopped that guy from shooting him in 2x14 and she leveraged the Director into calling off the hit in 2x19.

But, again, Liz seems to be in trouble far more often than Red is, and she very rarely is able to save herself (with the solo-Liz episode being one of the few times she does). Meanwhile, Red is able to get out of jams on his own much more often, such as when he escapes Anslo in 1x10. And, he and the Task Force save her far more often than Liz and the Task Force save him. And, even then, sometimes Red saves her single-handedly (like in the S2 Super Bowl episode) while she usually has to work with others to save him.

Once again, I realize there are a lot of mitigating circumstances. Red has a vast criminal empire and more knowledge and resources than Liz does, most of the time. But, I do wish that 1) Liz wouldn’t be kidnapped or have her life/livelihood threatened so often and 2) that Red’s would be a tiny bit more frequently, so that *she* can save *him.*

It also doesn’t help that she was sidelined in S3b partly because she was a felon who was no longer able to be an agent on the Task Force and because both Liz the character and Megan Boone the actress were pregnant. And then she was sidelined again in S4a because of the whole felon thing / trying to get Agnes back.

TL;DR

I believe the reasons why people hate Liz  are similar to why people hate Sakura from the “Naruto” Universe (as YouTube channel SwagKage describes in this video):

Liz doesn’t get the character development she should relative to her screentime; and any development she does get seems to be cyclical and inconsistent. (ie, she acts however the writers need her to for the given arc/episode)

Liz often tries to do her own thing, despite warnings not to; and while she’s by no means useless to Red or the Task Force, she often has to be rescued (either directly or indirectly) far more than she does the rescuing.

Liz often acts demanding, ungrateful, and selfish -- or at least relative to how the audience might want her to act, especially with regard to Red. And, jumping off the second point, also has a bit of an ego and can be proud and willful, which as I theorized, might be a turn-off for some male viewers.

Also, the Lizzington shipper in me could point out the parallels between Sakura liking Sasuke (who was a giant dick to her) and hating Naruto (who was constantly helping her out) and Liz’s dynamics with Tom and Red, respectively, but I’ll leave you all to watch the video for yourself.

Overall, I think some of the reasons for hating Liz are valid, but as I said, I *try* not to direct my annoyance toward the character of Liz herself or Megan Boone, the actress, but rather the writers, who I feel need to take responsibility for what they’ve done and continue to do with this character.

Don’t take this to say that I hate the writers, but rather that I want them to do better. I want to see this show succeed and I want to see Megan have some amazing material to work with the same way that James seems to with Red.

I’ll say it again: I don’t hate this show; I merely want to offer up my criticisms and objective-ish insights into why I think people hate Liz so much. In that way, we fans can have a discussion and perhaps maybe the writers will take some of our points to heart.

For my next major TBL post, I’ll try to tackle the similarities between TBL and The Enemy Within. :D

[snowstcrm]

I keep seeing posts trying to say how grrm has been a “misogynist all along” and I just don’t agree with that sentiment. There are definitely flaws in his writing and things that might have been more “girl power” in the 90s that seem sexist through a newer lens, but I still think his story overall has a narrative that supports its female leads.

There’s a big difference between writing a sexist story and having a story take place in a sexist environment. Yes, the world of asoiaf is extremely unfair towards the woman in it, but the narrative has never suggested that the misogynists in the story are right. Even in the show, misogynistic characters were the wrong or evil ones up until the very last season where the writers decided to reinforce the sexist society by proving Varys and Tyrion’s abhorrent conversation to be right. (”she needs to be tempered” “dicks are important”)

I can’t remember where the quote is from, but I remember grrm talking about how he wanted to write his female characters as flawed humans, effected by the environment they live in-- an environment that is terrible and suffocating towards women. The entire story is a piece on how terrible sexism in society is and how much it can hold back progress not only for women, but the society as a whole. The most sexist cultures on Planetos tend to be the least advanced.

As for our female characters, we get to see how different women navigate Westerosi society and how it’s betrayed them. Without fail, it is the root of each woman’s complex(es).

You get a woman like Cersei who internalized the misogyny and takes it out on other women. Beauty plays a big part in this too, not only because of the witch’s prophecy but because as youth fades from women, society begins to not value them as much. (”younger more beautiful to cast you down”, also “too old” to be valued for marriage)

You get a girl like Sansa who was raised to be a perfect lady in the eyes of her society, and for a long time this effected her ability to stand up for herself because “ladylike” behaviour is inherently demure. Her journey is that of a girl who can learn to be an empowered political player without having to discard her femininity and values.

You get a girl like Arya who never fit the mold and was always bullied for not conforming to her society’s standards. She claims she doesn’t want to be a lady because the only ladies she’s ever seen are feminine-performing pretty girls. She’s so so young and all on her own and will have to define what she is on her own. For a period of time she even thinks being “no one” is better than being Arya Stark of Winterfell. Her journey is one of a young girl learning to balance the feminine and the masculine and (hopefully) learning that it’s okay to be a girl. You don’t need to reject all things feminine.

You get a woman like Catelyn who many would consider the perfect lady. She performs well in her society. She’s a great mother and loves her husband dearly, but her biggest flaw is being cold and cruel to Jon since he was a baby. She was able to forgive her husband for his perceived infidelity because that’s what a good loyal wife should do, but that deep bitterness of being betrayed never left her and was turned onto innocent Jon instead.

You get women like Lysa who was constantly compared to her perfect and prettier sister, especially in the realm of love. No matter how much she loved Petyr, he would still love the perfect and prettier sister. When she got pregnant by him as a young girl, her father forced an abortion which nearly killed her and effected her fertility for the rest of her life. A lifetime of struggles caused her to develop a severe inferiority complex towards her sister and became emotionally unstable as time went by. Hers is the tragic mirror of Catelyn’s better life.

You get a woman like Brienne who never had a chance at conforming to the beauty standards of Westeros. She’s tall and ugly and spent a lifetime of being mocked by the men in her life. Growing up, these cruel jokes caused her to close in on herself and reject males completely due to her broken trust in them and lack of self-esteem as a woman. She couldn’t perform femininity, but she could perform masculinity and wanted to become a knight. Psychologically, she needed to find achievement somewhere and since she’d never be accepted as a lady she became the complete opposite. Her journey is that of a damaged woman who hid her heart behind a suit of armour, but will see that she can be loved by a man, even if she’s not a feminine-performing woman.

Lastly you get Daenerys, a girl forced into a marriage on the other side of the world. You see her miserable, suicidal, convincing herself to love her abuser to survive, and then once she starts getting her footing she loses it all. With her deep grief and blood magic, she rises from the ashes as Mother of Dragons. They are not only her children, but unmatched prizes that deify her to the people around her. Now that she has this power she’s not just a woman, but a goddess- maternal figure that now has to struggle with the fact that she’s not a human to most people anymore. She’s either a god, a goal, or a witch. There begins her long journey of learning to navigate the political world and keeping systems from collapsing at 16 years old. There is an incredible amount of responsibility placed on her and she keeps trying her best, even if she’s just “a young girl weary from war” that wants a peaceful home and a family. Her dreams are “feminine” but she sacrifices them in order to perform a “masculine” journey of a hero and leader. I hope her story, like Arya’s ends with the girls learning that it’s okay to have both.

Personally, I think grrm is writing a fascinating commentary on women and how society has failed them time and time again, and how we as women learn to make our own paths based on the circumstances life has given us. There are some women in his story that take the wrong path like Cersei and Lysa (both turned their hatred onto other women), but the majority are stories about young girls finding self-empowerment in an otherwise hateful and cruel environment and supporting the other women around them.

[lj-writes]

Rey is selfish and flawed (and that’s a good thing)

I immensely enjoyed Mara( @jewishcomeradebot)’s recent Rey-centric meta (link with my addition), and the central thing I appreciate about her take on Rey is that she doesn’t posit Rey as this vaguely positive altruistic figure. Rather her read of Rey is fiercely self-interested and focused on her own desire, a rare perspective in fandom. Mara’s posts helped me bring Rey into clear focus as a character for the first time.

I think people’s perception of Rey is distorted in part because we tend to attribute altruism as the primary virtue for women, both real and fictional. This is reflected in the characterizations of the Star Wars heroines as well: Leia and Padmé are defined by their dedication to the well-being of others, or the greater good. They have things they want for themselves, primarily close relationships such as romance, but their primary driving motivations are to save others through armed struggle or politics.

I get that female characters being driven primarily by larger galactical matters rather than romance was and to an extent is still revolutionary. I don’t mean to detract from anyone’s love of characters like Leia and Padmé, and I love them myself. In fact, it is almost impossible not to love them because there is nothing controversial about them and what bad things did come out of their decisions (such as Padmé marrying Anakin post-Sand People massacre) came out of the men in their lives being trash.

That said, I am also dissatisfied by heroine motivations that basically go, “she loves the entire UNIVERSE and wants what’s best for it.” It’s a continuation of the old stereotypes of women being selfless nurturers, just with more politics and guns. While the politics and guns are arguably progressive, these arcs are in stark contrast to those of male protagonists who get to want things for themselves.

Luke is a good case in point. His goal was primarily for himself, to leave Tatooine and to become “a Jedi like my father before me.” He ended up helping the Rebellion and defeating the Empire along the way, but it was his personal goal to claim his heritage and realize himself as a Jedi that his story revolved around. Anakin’s ultimate goal was to keep his loved ones safe, which can be framed altruistically but in the end turned out to be about himself and his trauma, not the people he said he loved. Luke’s goal could also have turned out badly if he had chosen his desire to connect with his father over the desire to be a true Jedi and joined Vader. Anakin’s goal could have turned out well if he had chosen to let go of his need to control Padmé’s fate and overcome Palpatine’s temptation.

Luke and Anakin’s self-interested goals were thus morally neutral and could have gone either way depending on their choices, unlike Leia's and Padmé’s goals which were inherently moral. Framed more precisely, Luke's and Anakin’s goals had conflicts built into them that led to a moral dilemma, such as “do I kill my father or join him?” Leia and Padmé, on the other hand, were never seriously morally conflicted. The boys choose between good and evil, but the girls are all good.

In Jyn from Rogue One we see a female protagonist with a conflicted goal, but with a thumb, no scratch that, a giant boulder on the scale. Jyn wants to stay away from the Empire that destroyed her life, but behind her trauma and cynicism she wants to reconnect with her father and the love she once knew as a child. Well guess what? We’re going to shut down her desire to run away by blackmailing her and taking away her agency. Also her dad was working for the Rebels all along. Saw, her foster dad, also wants her to save the Rebellion. And, with her father gone, it is only through the Rebellion that she will carry on his legacy and find the love and connection she yearns for. Yay for choice!

So while Jyn has the appearance of a conflicted goal that she wants for herself, the actual story pushes her toward the altruistic choice for the greater good. If anything Jyn has even less choice than Leia and Padmé, who at least chose their paths and did not have to be strong-armed. Leia’s and Padmé’s choices were in the distant background, however, and the stories did not hinge on their moral choices like they did on Luke’s and Anakin’s. As far as the stories are concerned Leia and Padmé doing the right things are simple constants.

In this tradition it’s no wonder that a lot of us have trouble seeing Rey as wanting something for herself and striving for her own goal. The proud but chequered tradition of SW women, to say nothing of the cultural background that casts women as either caring angels or depraved villains, predisposes us to see her as another altruistic, or driven-to-be-altruistic, heroine in Leia’s, Padmé’s, or even Jyn’s mold.

Rey’s actual goals are very different from Leia’s or Padmé’s, however. Much like a younger Luke she dreams of heroism and admires the legends of the galaxy including Luke and Han, but her primary goal was not to reconnect with her heritage by becoming a hero herself. In fact she had no reason to believe, though the fandom may have, she had any kind of heritage or famous parents. If heroism were her primary goal she would have jumped at the chance to leave Jakku and join the Resistance, but instead what does she want to do after she was forced to leave? She wants to go back. She doesn’t want to be special, nor does she believe she is. She just wants her parents back. A special destiny was thrust upon her against her will, not because she sought it out.

The character whose driving motivation is most like Rey’s is Anakin Skywalker, the “Chosen One” who was taken from his mother and spent a lifetime aching from the loss. Anakin may have been a hero, but that was a job he did because he was told to, not because he was driven to it by his own needs and desires. His underlying desire was to love and be loved again, and after being separated from his mother he found that in Padmé. When his own fears and Palpatine’s deception led him to dread losing Padmé, he chose to take Palpatine’s offer of ultimate power to avoid losing his loved ones ever again.

Rey’s goal, then, like Anakin’s, is a) something she wants for herself and b) something that could be moral or immoral depending on her choice. It is not an altruistic and inherently good goal but a self-interested, morally neutral one. This is the Star Wars heroine who is the protagonist of her own story with the agency to match, and not a helplessly good inspiration and role model.

That is not to say her arc was necessarily handled well. The events of TFA take away her ability to return to Jakku by having her knocked out and kidnapped by the bad guy, much like RO did to Jyn’s ability to avoid the Empire-Rebellion conflict by having her jailbroken, knocked out, and kidnapped by the good guys.

Obviously both TFA and RO would have been boring stories if Rey and Jyn were simply allowed to return/disappear, but the stories could have been designed differently so the heroines had opportunities to make actual choices while still engaging with the plot. Rey, like Finn, could have returned to the fight of her own free will. The Rebels could have dangled a potential lead to finding Jyn’s father to lure her in. Creators make choices when they tell stories, and they chose to advance--or fail to advance--these female protagonists’ stories by using tired kidnap plots.

Thankfully Rey did get the chance to make a choice at the climax of TFA, when she chose to take up the lightsaber and fight Kylo Ren instead of using Finn as a distraction to run away and find the Millennium Falcon on her own. Of course the outcome was hardly in doubt; she was clearly an important character with newly emerging Force powers, her kindness toward others was an established trait, and her preexisting bond with Finn had grown nearly unbreakable when he came back for her. No one thought Rey might turn her back and run, and so there was no suspense.

From an in-story perspective, however, it was still a choice and a difficult one for her. Ren is a powerful Force user, one she had just managed to get away from, one who had tortured her, whom she had watched murder his own father and cruelly cut Finn down. Her mysterious Force abilities, which allowed her to push him out of her mind and escape him, were a source of uncertainty and fear. She had vowed to Maz never to touch Luke’s lightsaber again after it gave her traumatic visions.

Most of all, there was her prior drive to go back to Jakku where her parents could find her. She would never have a chance of seeing them again if she were killed or captured here, or if the duel simply took too long and the planet exploded with them on it. Given her history and personal goal, running for it while she could was actually a pretty logical choice.

So why did she stay and fight? Had she given up on her goal to reunite with her parents and belong with people who loved her?

I would say her goal was still constant, the path to reaching it had simply shifted. To borrow from Maz, the belonging Rey sought was not behind her on Jakku, it was ahead, and she had found it in Finn. Finn was the first person in memory to ask her if she was all right, the one she begged to stay with her, the one who came back for her. He was the love and belonging she had sought. He was worth fighting and dying for.

This is another distinction between a self-interested goal and an altruistic one, by the way, and why Rey’s story doesn’t revolve around Finn or Anakin’s around Padmé even if Finn and Padmé, respectively, were key to their goals. Story-wise Rey’s goal isn’t to do whatever it takes to defend Finn. Rather she is doing whatever she can to defend Finn because she is pursuing her own goal through him--to be loved and cherished as she never got to be as a child. Under the right circumstances the person to fulfill her goal could shift, as it shifted from her parents to Finn, and potentially could shift again. And that is a key point of TLJ, as I will discuss below.

So how do we know Rey’s path to her goal shifted from her parents to Finn? Two points: First, after the ground opened up, separating her and Ren, she ran to find Finn but not to escape with him or seek help. She lay down to, for all intents and purposes, die with him. She did not try to find the Falcon, did not try to carry Finn away, did not try to attract the attention of passing vessels while the planet disintegrated around them. She felt for his heartbeat, wept over him, then lay down on his chest sobbing in a way that reminded me of nothing so much as Juliet collapsing on top of Romeo.

The second point is that after she and Finn were rescued and she was free to go back to Jakku if she wished, she instead went to Ahch-To to bring Luke back. And why? She’s helping the Resistance, sure, as she was before, but how does that tie into her established goal?

I think TFA was heavily setting up a deep emotional bond between Luke and Rey, with her literally dreaming about his island, her Force vision when she touched Anakin’s lightsaber, her immediately thinking of Luke when Maz said the belonging she sought lay ahead and not behind, and their incredibly emotional meeting at the end.

However, since TLJ borked all that, I now think Rey was helping the Resistance primarily for Finn much as he helped them for her sake. This way Rey’s departure still ties into her story goal and makes her a protagonist, not a passive plot point that bounces around whereever she’s told to go. This way Rey becomes a self-interested character with potential for moral conflict, and not yet another entirely altruistic, inherently good heroine who does whatever is in the greater good.

Think about it. Finn is injured and needs intensive medical care. He has nowhere else to go, no one else both willing and able to take care of him and protect him. The FO if possible hates him worse than they did before for his role in destroying their superweapon. Yet the Resistance is a target too, and they need Luke. Finn and the Resistance are on the same storm-tossed boat now, and if Rey is to think about any kind of future with Finn she has to save the Resistance first.

If you view TLJ in this frame, this is the movie where Rey has an actual self-interested goal and takes actions that could be morally complex. If we posit that her goal is consistent from the end of TFA and she hasn’t become a completely different person between one movie and the next, she still wants the same thing as she did at the end of TFA: Save the Resistance and protect Finn. She thought Luke was key to that, but he refused.

In her desperation she turned to Kylo Ren because, again, she has a self-interested goal--be with Finn--that could lead to moral or immoral outcomes depending on her choices. She’s not being an all-good and all-altruistic figure whose sole wish is to save Ben’s soul or the universe as we expect of our heroines. Rather she is desperate to achieve her goal and willing to push the moral boundaries in service of it.

I can also answer the criticisms of Rey being out-of-character. Daisy Ridley has said in a cast interview that she played Rey as always thinking of Han on some level, which seems at odds with her playing nice with Han’s murderer. On the other hand, what did Han die trying to do? Redeem his son.

Therefore I read Daisy’s comment to mean that Rey is still grieving Han--it’s only been a few days since she watched him murdered, after all--and wants to believe that he did not die in vain. If she can turn his son, then she can prove that Han was right and his life was not wasted.

But why should that grief take the form of being so solicitous to Kylo Ren, the man who not only killed Han but hurt her and Finn so badly, in addition to numerous other crimes? Isn’t that out of character for Rey, who is so strong and a fighter, who fought back in rage at the end of TFA?

Rey is not primarily a fighter, though. Those are the parts we remember the most vividly, but she is primarily a survivor who adapts to her circumstances. That means employing whatever means necessary to survive, including fighting if the need arises, but also being passive and accommodating if that serves better.

We have in fact watched Rey be passive in the face of numerous wrongs done to her in her interactions with a character who shaped her life: Unkar Plutt. I mean my Reylutt ship manifesto (link) may have been a joke, but her interactions with Plutt do a great deal to foreshadow her interactions with Kylo Ren. Plutt was an abusive authority figure who kept her on starvation rations and systematically exploited her, but she still stayed with him for over a decade in seeming passivity. We see her visibly swallow down her rage when he cut her portions yet again and can only imagine how many times she had to do so over the years. The only time we see her fight back physically was when he used violence first by sending his goons to seize BB-8.

The thing is, much like saying someone can’t be a victim of abuse if they fight back, it’s also inaccurate and hurtful to say the only “right” way to react to abuse is by visibly fighting back, or, worse, that you’re not really a victim unless you’re angry. A lot of victims are forced to stay passive, for the sake of their own physical and psychological safety, in the face of mistreatment because that is oftentimes how abuse works. Rey, especially in her early years, could not have survived as she did if she were always dwelling on how she was being treated and lashing out. She had to take a variety of strategies including passive waiting and patience in the face of injustices, not just fighting back against immediate threats, to survive deprivation and exploitation.

How is this relevant to her scenes with Kylo Ren? When she was actively defending herself with Force and violence he was an immediate threat to her, to the Resistance, and to Finn. In the Force(d) Bond situation, on the other hand, she had no way to get away from him but at the same time he did not know where she was and could not get to her. Raging at him might be satisfying, but was hardly practical especially as he became increasingly useful to her. She had, after all, a lot of practice burying her resentment for the sake of survival and her own goal of reuniting with her family. Once the threat moved from acute to a “merely” persistent thing, a different set of reflexes took over.

Another fact about abuse is that the victim may traumatically bond with their aggressor. It is how people psychologically survives at times, gaining a sense of control in a situtation where they have very little, believing that you can be safe and not be hurt anymore by gaining your tormentor’s approval and love. Subjectively it can feel a lot like love, too, because this is a powerful psychological mechanism for our survival and, in the immediate situation, our subjective mental well-being. It’s one of those things that make the unbearable bearable.

This was another way that Rey’s personal, selfish goal could have led to an immoral or unhealthy outcome: She could have mistaken Kylo’s manipulation and her own traumatic bond to him as the love and belonging she sought, and chosen to stay with him at the end of the movie.

In this Rey closely parallels Anakin, who accepted Palpatine’s offer of power as a substitute for love and so became Palpatine’s servant. Her overriding goal of knowing love and safety once again had transferred once before already, from waiting for her family on Jakku to protecting Finn and reuniting with him. Could it transfer once again, as self-interested rather than selfless goals can, this time to a fundamentally destructive relationship that only had a facade of love and belonging?

I think this was the reason, little as I may like it, that Rey was separated from Finn for most of the movie and why Luke treated her so poorly. If she hadn’t been isolated from Finn, or had been nurtured better by Luke, she would have been much more centered and healthier and there would have been no suspense about the outcome when she reached out to Kylo on board the Supremacy. I would dispute how well it worked, but I think that was the intention. 

Ultimately Rey made the right choice, as we know. The point as far as this essay is concerned, though, is that she COULD have made the wrong choice as Anakin did in the pursuit of her own goal. This makes Rey the first Star Wars heroine in the theatrical releases with a genuine moral choice to make, who is not all-good and all-nurturing and therefore morally unassailable like Leia and Padmé, and who is not strong-armed both by her “friends” and the story to make the right choice as Jyn was.

Like Anakin and Luke before her, Rey is a selfish and flawed character. Her self-interested goals and her own complex psychological profile lead her to genuine moral choices and mistaken judgments. Flawed execution aside, that is a very good thing indeed. To me it’s more progress than any amount of guns and politics.

Rey ultimately failed in her mission, as Luke warned, though she at least managed to return to the Resistance with her conscience and freedom intact and to save it. Now she is faced with the reality that she has to be the Jedi and hero. Luke is gone, Kylo is the Big Bad, and she can’t look to anyone to solve her problems for her.

What’s more, Finn himself, who had asked her to leave with him in the first place, now has a new commitment to the Resistance/Rebellion and possibly a personal and emotional commitment to someone new. As John Boyega who plays Finn has said, the look she gives Finn and Rose says it all.

These developments point to interesting directions to take the character. I hope Episode IX carries Rey’s development forward with better writing and challenges her harder, developing her more and having the story hinge on her moral--or immoral--choices.

[the-small-cimarron-paparazzi]

i choose to embrace it

Everything is just coming together too neatly.

Let’s try to piece together how the human side of the boxes situation might be like.

Basically, we know that at the start of Carolia Arc Big Cimarron had (just got?)  the Wind box

"In this world, four objects exist that are not to be tampered with under any circumstances," said Conrad. "The humans, and the humans of the superpower Shimaron at that, have managed to bring one of those objects under their control. The name of the box is 'the End of the Wind.' If it remains in their hands, they will open it sooner or later."

(quoting BT, c1, n5)

and was sneaking into Shinma with Wincott’s Poison to try to get control of its key. (and yes, they knew it was Con, though they [accidentally? intentionally?] cut off Con’s arm)

The Wincott’s poison they got from Flynn, offering her a deal:

“A secret messenger from Big Shimaron came with a proposition.  The Wincott poison is supposed to be in the recesses of the Gilbit Estate.  They wanted that terribly.  Furthermore, they were in a great hurry.  It is the only substance in the world that will let one control another at will.  If a body is afflicted by that poison, it will become a puppet of the descendants of the Wincotts.  Whether it’s alive or not.  I gave them that poison.  In exchange for the lives of the Calorian soldiers.”

(BT, c8, n6)

In the same chapter we hear from Hube that Small Cimarron has put their hands on another one, the Earth Box, having got it via the rotten Luis Biron (from novel 4) and ultimately from Suverera, before which the royals in Suverera tried to open it with Hube’s left eye, but failed.

Again in the same chapter Hube speaks of how the Earth Box was originally buried in Suverera’s soil, near the parts of the MA flute (from novel 3), and either because of the box or flute that part of Suverera harbored houseki of strange property (only mentioning maseki won’t do this not how normal houseki would do?), and the removal of box followed by flute made the place stop turning out these houseki.

Although the esoteric stones certainly brought them immense fortune, that was simply a byproduct.  Svelera wasn’t mining for stones; they were looking for something much more terrible in the places where many esoteric stones were.

[...]

Yes, they were looking for a box. 

[...]

While Svelera was digging for esoteric stones, they finally dug that up.  Deep, deep within the rock formation, where only emaciated women and children can reach, in a place like a labyrinth.

And near that place, the treasure of the demons, the Demon Flute, was sealed.  As soon as they discovered the box and brought it out of the esoteric stone pit, I had my acquaintance inconspicuously sneak down there and secure the Demon Flute.  The power slowly leaking out of the box over hundreds of years may have slowly changed the surrounding bedrock into esoteric stone. Or, the part of the earth fighting against the power of the Demon Flute may have resulted in its quality being changed.  At any rate, once the two objects were removed, for some reason esoteric stones completely stopped appearing and the Sveleran citizens lost their jobs.

(BT, c8, n6)

he also said Suverera’s king acted strange mining those houseki (as the cover of looking for the box)

At that time, the kingdom of Svelera had put much effort into the procurement of their esoteric stones for the betterment of the kingdom and many of the unemployed citizens began to work in the mines.  

[....]

Anyway, it is no exaggeration that there was something abnormal with the mining of esoteric stones in Svelera.  No matter how little rain fell or if the drinking water dried up, at the bare minimum they had to raise the crops for the next year’s seeds.  However, the king of Svelera did not protect the farmland or the farmers and continued to do nothing but dig up esoteric stones.  If he wanted to dig, he should have at least dug a well.  It was as if the finances for the next year were in some way guaranteed.

(BT, c8, n6)

Skipping forward into the story, from Seisa Arc we know this about Seisakoku’s houseki via Sara:

Do you know what power this country has? Manpower and houseki in abundance

(BT, c7, n11)

there being also:

On the other hand, the pale pink ring Saralegui put on my finger has not budged at all, acting like a normal stone. Apparently it’s a precious houseki that can only be mined in Seisakoku, and yet it hasn’t reacted in the slightest.

(BT, c11, n12) though I mildly suspect this can be just a metaphor about Sara

And we know that the Fire Box has been in Seisa for

After staying in the same country for seventy years, I know a lot more about this country than the kids born here.

(BT, c3, n12, not remembering where to find other sources I turned to the timeline of Hazel) 

Although to be honest we don’t know what the houseki relevant circumstance in Seisa had been like before this, but this time span is long enough to cover the whole experience with Seisakoku of Sara +Yel+ Probably Alazon.

Also Gilbert might have been able to tell.....? randomly off topic

Back to Suverera c8n6, Hube talks about how

Naturally, the king of Svelera did not know the significance of the box nor the power it had.

[...]

Since Svelera did not have the key – the left eyeball of a certain bloodline – and could not open the lid, they sold it to a large country. 

even if they had the right idea of where to look for it and some idea of possibility of opening it with the left eye of whom.

So did they originally came to know about this box all by their own?

(OR: Another possibility- them selling it was not about reasons above but failure in opening it lead to practical worries about having neglected about finances.)

And did Small Cimarron find out about this Earth Box after it was put out to be sold by Suverera or did something else entirely just happen here?

Although certitude regarding this might never be achieved, but we know that in chapter 10, novel 6, Maxine was saying:

「ところで諸君、労働に従事する日々とはいえ、現在この小シマロンを始め、シマロン両国を宗主とする大陸全域が、魔族との聖戦に向けて一丸となっていることはお聞き及びだろう。その一翼を担う諸君にも、非常に関わりのある朗報がある」

But gone are your days of repetitive manual labor! No doubt the whispers have already spread to you; here and now starting with Small Cimarron, this continent with the Cimarrons as its countries’ suzerains, is coming together to wage our holy war against the mazokus. This is a much relevant and joyful news for you, who are after all going to undertake a part in this feat.

and answering Yuuri’s question about if the boxes are in fact things fairly easy to come by, Flynn was saying:

“It’s not easy.”

Flynn had a look on her face that looked like she was going to start chewing on her thumb’s fingernail.

“Numerous countries have been competing and searching for them for decades.  They weren’t quickly found.  But for them to fall into people’s possession one after another… I thought only Big Shimaron had a box and key.”

(BT, c10, n6) 

which means something must had changed between the current situation and that of the last decades (or more innocently it can be just the miracle of perseverance but anyways I’m asking↓).

So this added to Maxine’s talk about how this new (yet-to-happen-or-be-stopped) war the humans were planning to do with mazoku was engineered by Small Cimarron, 

Would this something be SARALEGUI?

Though Sara claimed he didn’t remember anything from his early years in Seisa

“But Saralegui, why didn’t you mention to me that you were born in Seisakoku? Not only that, back when we were in Shou Shimaron, didn’t you say that be it your country or yourself, this is your first time contacting Seisakoku?”

This means that throughout that long journey before, he was always lying to me.

“Yuuri, I never lied to you. That’s because all that happened when I was young, so I don’t have any recollection of it myself.”

(BT, c7, n11)

but for one thing he was fluent enough in Seisa language to write up a treaty for both Seisa (able to read it and thus held possibility of exploiting flaws?) and Shinma to sign. (or it can always be forgotten and re-learnt later in life but anyways I mean to say↓)

Then there were mentions of the shinzoku twins-lords corresponding after Saralegui became king in Small Cimarron

「だからって、十三年間一度も連絡取らないはずはないだろう。双子の兄弟がさ、一方は父親の国の王子様で、一方は母親の国の王子様だぞ？国交が無かったのは本当だとしても、白鳩の一羽くらい飛ばすだろう」 Even if you say so, it’s hard for me to believe you never had any contact throughout these whole 13 years, the pair of you twins being the princes of your father’s and your mother’s countries. Even if you didn’t have an alliance, do you expect us to believe there wasn’t even a single letter?

「飛ばしたよ。わたしが即位してからだけど」 We did write letters. But that was after I became king.

(c7, n11)

Also in the catacombs he was showing signs of some knowledge about (at least this part of) Seisa

“Although I heard that there are ruins underground, I never thought they would be this large in scale.”

After walking for around an hour, Saralegui seems to sigh with emotion. In contrast to me now, his condition is much better than it was a while ago.

(BT, c10, n12)

Which leads to the conclusion of this post (finally), that

If he had any impression about the circumstances of houseki yield in Seisa and a legend of miracle box, or if anything along the lines was brought up in any casual (?) correspondence with Yel,

→having the advantage of insight about a country with plenty of houseki (Seisa) and experiencing the lack of it (houseki being rare and valuable at opening of c8, n3) in the world outside Seisa

→Saralegui might be able to realize what the Suverera’s houseki mines really mean (or he might be guessing like us everyone else and happening to come to the same conclusion as marumafan-san did in here)

and this could lead to him discovering about the key to finding boxes. or just the one box to par and panic and affect Big Cimarron.

Sara being Sara, it seems legit if he just found out about the Suverera box and sold the royal family a lie making them locate and extract it only to inevitably let go of it for Small Cimarron to get.

(Although he actually seemed to not know if the arm would work...or can it be intentionally done so only to wreck Carolia and punish Flynn? Then, how about his way of pinpointing where the soushu forces strike? Was it in fact a successful opening of Earth box because things more or less went his way?)

So the last thing is, if we remember Guenter said in novel 1 that Yuu-chan was summoned back to the other world earlier than planned because Humans were making a move (it must be somewhere in n1 but I don’t seem to kind the source)

the situation named Saralegui might very likely be the reason everything STARTED TO HAPPEN

And though it’s not the point of this post but since we’ve got this far there’s no need in holding back before asking:

Are we really not having the slightest chance of Shinou being all benign (+only YANDERE about Daikenja or whatever old acquaintances) and really arranging all things trying to save the day?

(OR: Another possibility- Shinou somehow made Saralegui happen and that lead to everything else.)

why it is suddenly Shinou or Sara I somehow want to be able to love them both

MY GOD THAT WAS HARD FOR MY STARVED BRAIN TO SORT OUT

AS SOMEONE ORIGINAL ONLY CONCERNED ABOUT SARA’S PERSONAL HISTORY AND CHANGES IN STATE OF MIND I’VE REALLY COME VERY FAR

At the VERY end I’d like to quote a certain Professor Quirrell from chapter 26 of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:

"Mr. Potter, one of the requisites for becoming a powerful wizard is an excellent memory. The key to a puzzle is often something you read twenty years ago in an old scroll, or a peculiar ring you saw on the finger of a man you met only once. I mention this to explain how I managed to remember this item, and the placard attached to it, after meeting you a good deal later."

Because he is probably very right.

[welcometothisby]

//WAIT WHAT YES PLEASE TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH PEG (whispers don't mind me i shouldn't be sending shit on my mostly unrelated rp blog but here we are)

Hello, hello! Glad you asked! So, because Maggie writes characters that I can’t ever hate completely (STOP MAKING THEM SO REAL AND FLAWED AND HUMAN MAGGIE!!!), I have SO MANY mixed feelings about Peg. I’ll probably fail miserably at keeping this short and coherent, but oh well, you asked for it! ;)

Even before Maggie revealed the affair backstory, I struggled with Peg, largely because she often gave really bad advice. It wasn’t bad advice for her time period, but it was bad advice for Puck and I’m glad Puck didn’t listen. I don’t fault Peg her internalized sexism, because I think she mostly did life on her own terms within the patriarchy, which is really admirable for the time, but I would hate for Puck to turn out too much like her? There are, of course, many things Peg deserves praise for: she’s fierce and independent and respected. She’s perceptive. She flouts many conventions of her time. She’s solid. She’s clever. She’s friendly. She gives tough love. 

But there are other things about her that don’t seem so healthy. For one, she never struck me as a particularly happy person. She works, she has a family, a home, she doesn’t cook (shocking!), she’s prominent in the community, and yet she often appears to just be going through the motions, because that’s what’s expected of her. Thisby can grind a person down, unless one chooses their own happiness, and Peg seems more comfortable with the appearance of happiness than actually being happy. She doesn’t really let you see past her mask.

I also think, on some level, Peg resented what Puck was trying to do, as so often happens when different generations of women have attempted to rise above their circumstances with wildly different tactics. (If you’ve seen the show Mad Men, then you’ll recognize a similar struggle between Joan Holloway and Peggy Olson). Peg Gratton, like so many women of that period, learned that they could use or overemphasize their sexuality and gender to manipulate men (see the “a mountain they have to climb” quote). Peg’s brand of mysterious femininity is not exactly mainstream (she’s not that conventionally attractive), but you can bet she has very carefully cultivated her image as a woman who could cut your heart out neat. 

Puck, on the other hand, instinctively knew that she shouldn’t have to change who she is to suit or impress anybody; her fierceness isn’t a mask. Peg knew how to work the system, but Puck already acted like the system didn’t exist, which some could perceive to be more dangerous because the system did still exist and one false move could’ve resulted in the loss of whatever amount of control women found within it. Peg might have had a good grip on reality, but Puck knew herself and what she was capable of. Her risk paid off because sometimes breaking small, unspoken rules (riding in the races) and changing your lot in life can be just as important as breaking the big, spoken ones (the suffrage movement) that technically affect everybody. If you’re “all for women,” like Peg claimed to be, that has to mean all, for all and in all, in big ways and small (trademark Dr. Seuss, probably).

Ultimately, I think Peg accepted what Puck was trying to do and supported her in it, as shown with the symbolic gesture of (literally) passing the (bird) mantle to her right before the race. Peg represents the past, women like her may have paved the way for Puck to get where she is, but Puck is the future of the island and the world. 

But then there’s the elephant in the room: the affair. In this post, @wickedwinterwillow​ does an excellent job of showing why Peg engaging in an affair with Gabriel is so predatory and loathsome. I really don’t want to comprehend the reasons behind the affair, but because I have a terrible need to try to understand everything no matter what, all I can think of is that after years of familiarity, Tom saw her as a teacup, and everyone else saw her as a mountain, and maybe (???) Gabe just saw her as herself (???). Anyway, that’s enough of that because CREEPY and EWW and NOOOO.

It’s so hard to interpret Peg and Puck’s interactions in light of the affair. I cannot fathom how or why Peg could attempt any sort of normal relationship with Puck while all that was going on, but I guess to her credit, Peg always seemed sort of pained. I almost think that maybe Gabe convinced Peg to check in on Puck in his place because that seems like just the sort of cowardly yet brotherly yet wildly inappropriate thing he’d do. Also, the whole scene at the Gratton’s house (where I believe we get a better glimpse at the “real” Peg) is AWKWARD AS HELL. Puck says, “The only time Peg Gratton addresses me is to tell me that I’m welcome to give Dove more hay if she needs it before the end of the night, before the storm gets bad.” She’s not exactly going out of her way to build a relationship with Puck because things suddenly just got TOO REAL under HER OWN DAMN ROOF.

So I almost get the sense that Peg didn’t ask to be a mother figure to Puck, but ultimately she ends up doing a fairly decent job of it (Puck draws out the best in people), minus the dubious life advice. I mostly respect Peg (if we pretend the affair didn’t happen), but she’s not without nuance, both good and bad. That’s just my interpretation of her character, so if anyone is a full-on Peg stan, I want to hear about everything I’ve missed! :)

[benchgenderstudies]

Chloe Dykstra:The Groupie that Expected Too Much Out of A Celebrity's Rebound Relationship

Why Women  Are Not Above Bad Relationship Blame When Their Decisions Insist Bad Relationships for Ulterior Motives. The environment of the abuse

by Michael Bench

The scandal surrounding Chris Hardwick broke in the recent hours centered around a past relationship and a blog alleging itself a confession by Chloe Dykstra. What should raise your awareness is “Why” and “Who is she?” I don't mean like “Who is she to allege this?” I mean “Where do her wants choose compromise against what she wants.”  In her post on Medium she said she desired to have a 1) a partner, 2) someone to confide in ,3) someone to share things with ,  4)not be judged ( you're going to be judged , stop being insecure),5) “Someone to be there for me”, 6)”What I felt that this man wanted was a woman who would feed him, sleep with him and go to events with him”. In most of these, she's asking for a therapist. For the same reasons women are asked “Why didn't you leave”, they also get bugged out why men leave them. Judged:Not working out, snoring, adult acne, interest conflicts, not wanting kids, wanting too many kids,  prefers wood heating, prefers Birkenstocks, White Inferiorist etc etc.

Alright, do we have that? 6 reasons that Chloe Dykstra says she wants.  I'm going to alter number 6 a bit . Beings that Dykstra was attracted to the scenery around Chris Hardwick, we can rewrite that “ I want to go to events”. Further on  in the blog we have the clarity moment “Nobody can save me but myself”. Exactly, So this is where female relationship checklists have to move into the new age of deciding when they aren't getting something, making sure they SPEAK UP as to whether it's available, or whether its time to move on ..even if the person is bound for fame. If a characteristic is not available or not changing, its not any females role to try to mother it either. It's their duty and responsibility to MOVE ON and not self induce frustration for no reason at all. These are hardset rules'; don't fuck with it.  

Whether the person is bound for fame or not ..their fame isn't your fame and a lot of fame is a poisonous batch of the wrong people making it popular.. such as Dykstra's obsession with diets.

What aggravates me about Dykstra's so called confession is she admits what she wanted out of a relationship with Hardwick is an arm on his redcarpet moments. It goes without saying that if she didn't like anal sex ; which she is yet insecure of, that its the wrong relationship from the beginning. In a broader sense of the topic, people who desire celebrities must understand they should make no expectations of monogamy, make no requests of exclusive relationships , and let celebs be celebs as far as you are willing to be okay with what they want.

Dykstra accepted a condition of staying in a hotel during a San Diego Comicon? Are you kidding yourself? Did you want to go or not?  This is why I started the blog “Who is Chloe Dykstra (for herself).This is your life Dykstra, you have to be willing to know what's more important to you:Codependent carpet rides or experiencing it for yourself. Nobody can “live you” but you. If being Hardwicks pet is what you decide on , that's on you. Congratulations on deciding to get out eventually. I'm not going to pat you on the back for airing his dirty laundry specifically for your revenge though.

Perhaps it's good his flaws are out.

If Hardwick is that person lets not ignore he didn't give his so called friends much time in his life either. I don't say that to normalize the treatment. I say it for females/everyone to realize your minimal treatment should be expected at least on par with (his) longer term friends. What seems to be outted here at least from this blog is Hardwick might be gay and the result of trying to play a heterosexual male is lousy treatment of women around him. If he's not bisexual , then his needs of dominance either suggest low self esteem despite his celebrity status (as alcoholics will be) or a flawed want of dominating people for his own sadistic impulses. This is usual for people with Narcissistic personality disorder; a factors which I feel both Dykstra and Hardwick share? Expect an apology? Not likely. Dykstra's blacklisting from the industry isn't something I can fact check.

There's a lot of reciprocity expectation in this Dykstra confession blog but she doesn't make expectations of reciprocity early enough. If you want a relationship, demand the same of it. Don't loiter for this random schmuck to roll the carpet out for you to walk on. Don't be the chick behind the scenes, Own your own fame, Dykstra. That's what I don't like .. seeing women awestruck with trophy dating taking a backslide to traditional underserving roles for their own conveniences.

Is it convenient to not demand a night of pegging Chris with your own strapon if anal sex isn't your thing??? Dammit Dykstra, a relationship is about self respect. The relationship with Hardwick was a task of disrespect according to you. So who's to blame for knowing what creepy and uncomfortable is and not walking away? Unlike many other cases of domestic abuse where we have no alibi for why women stay, this one was clear: Dykstra wanted her trophy Comicon star for the secondary flashbulbs and tabloid images. It's part of her own eating disorder. She wants to reinforce her presumptions being emaciated is normal when .. its not. And for the people at home, don't buy this “ I just didn't see the flags”. She saw the fucking flags .. she was in it for herself and as anorexics will be.. accepted the external pain for her wants well into an unhealthy casual relationship. Its a relationship she distortedly told herself was going somewhere. It wasn't . Are you a woman or a hermitcrab, Chloe? Do you have decency for yourself or just keep looking for shiny shells?. The “Confession”Concludes Dykstra was settling to be a sidegirl for her own life. Thats whats sad

I'm not sure if Chris Hardwick also wants a dick in the ass or whether its an obsession with his celebrity status. I'm suggesting the latter. Since I have a ref shirt on here for Gender Studies.. if the starfishing was done to be painful and perhaps even rectally tearing , Dykstra can elect a pitch hitter to settle that up. Flag on the play!!!!  

Sex is physical love Hardwick. If you need dominance, get in the ring and have an even bout for the pain, to the pain.  There's people out there that stick their gonads together with disgust and vile treatment of each other in roleplays. That's their choice. I suggest look at the whole relationship and decide if spicing it up is just prolonging something thats over by treating each other badly. In that case, Go to your corners. Go to your locker rooms. Leave the building from separate parking lots and begone with both of you.!!  Still , I'm troubled but this accusation “Dykstra went along with a sexual assault. “ Went along with? Were you having sex and he wanted a rape role play you weren't into ? This is not clear. After 17 drafts of anger its thrown into the mix like a “whatever” situation. Like it was needing a “#MeToo coattail when it didnt. If it applies , it applies.

I'm not sure whether its better to speculate he cornered into her hotel room when he couldnt get laid by any famous other comicon celeb or whether this was part of his personal assault as a narcissist. Lack of details disservices the seriousness of the accusation/crime. Since I did suggest he brought along  a backup sidegirl for his comicon appearances, it occurs to me this situation is a double fault outcome of how two narcissists feeding each other with nothingness and role playing come to injure each other.  Hardwick is a former game show host and Dykstra is unknown to me; Both are not familiars.

This story deserves the attention of a new movement that does not excuse women for ulterior motives and loitering a relationship with nothing in it other than avoiding the fear of being single. It's a real tragedy.. The women who are owed respect cannot be offset by those that crawl along a sidewalk gutter looking for their quick meal ticket to fame. The Melania Trumps for example. Low an behold, they'll let themselves be treated like the gutter and thats no woman; They have to own up to their bad decisions, their lousy low bar for what being a female is and thats why I wrote it. “The #DontDefineFemaleLikeYoureAFuckingIdiot Movement”.  

So as you ought clearly see. I apply blame to select situations where the female owed her person better of known wants and settled to be the codependent sidecar. Too long we’ve heard the term victim blaming instead of address the circumstances being raised. If we are a competent race then we understand that blaming a female for her assailant isn’t on the table. The assault behavior is by one actor’s own decision. Shout it out when you see the victims posse try and raise it like its a norm of the conversation. Its not. Females who will not face the blame of their issues will not seek to change the behaviors that enable male bad behavior. Its real, so don’t ignore the blame. The first one I can name is women who either “play hard to get” or endorse it when they really caved to unwanted repetitive harassment. 

Final points:

Females.. before you decide on dating celebrities, read the various “Guides to Dating Musicians”.:Never invest time today you expect to get back tomorrow.  If you have a spotlight, its you're  duty to also not make it too easy for random groupies of your own just to slink in and out of. Be mindful of  your own accomplishments or why the lack thereof is happening. All people have a right to hookup so just don't presume more of celebrities if you managed to hook up with one. The sea of sex partners is many. Choosing to settle for the “very next one', “being fed up with dating”, “looking only for someone invested in long term relationships”... are the people insecure and lazy for themselves. Long term dating rests on good short term dating. I can tell you why women don't leave bad relationships. They “feel above the bother” of meeting more people. Women settle, Men exhaust them for attention and thats the street level problem of the laymen dater too insecure to let things change.

Dating is like a Buffet, Not a Crowded Parking Lot. Get better at dating, not eating.

Till Next Time..

Sincerely

Michael Bench, MEP,GCERT

[recentanimenews]

Editorial: How not to honor women in comics

It was a mistake. It was very obviously a mistake.

I’m always a bit leery of publicly criticizing institutions that generally deserve support. I’m aware of how damaging bad press really can be, and that mistakes are unavoidable when you’re running on a tight budget. So before I even state my complaint, I’d like to preface it with the fact that I know this was a mistake, and that nothing I’m going to say here is intended to undercut the importance of this institution and the work that they do. Are we clear on that? Okay.

So, when I say that I was thoroughly appalled to see the following in my Facebook newsfeed this afternoon, please remember that it is not my intent to belittle the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund or the important First Amendment work that they do.

Those who are regular readers of Korean comics will recognize the immediately that this post, originally entitled “Fifteen Banned and Challenged Comics by Women,” is accompanied by the cover image from First Second’s publication of The Color of Earth, the first book in the series commonly known as The Color Trilogy by a male author, Kim Dong Hwa. That the CBLDF realized their mistake at some point is clear upon clicking the link, where the title has been changed to “Fifteen Banned and Challenged Comics by or About Women.�� The mistake, perhaps, was made by a blogger unfamiliar with “Kim” as a common surname and perhaps, too, the fact that Korean names (when they haven’t been deliberately switched around for western readers) are written surname first. But hey, the series’ main characters are, in fact, women, so one could make an argument that it is, as the revised title suggests “about women.” “Good save,” one might say, and move on.

I’m having a hard time moving on. Yes, it was a mistake. But, wow, it’s an unfortunate one. The post is intended to honor Women’s History Month by presenting a list of comics by (or about) women that have been frequently banned or challenged. It’s a noble cause to be sure. And, in his own way, the author of the series I think does believe he’s honoring women. But he does so from a perspective so steeped in male fantasies about what is good and beautiful about women, and SO thoroughly rooted in the male gaze, that it is, in my opinion, nearly the worst choice possible to appear on a list like this, let alone at #1.

It was a mistake, but really so avoidable, as even a search in the CBLDF’s own archives reveals that at least someone at the organization already knows that the book was written by a man. And while the series has gotten a lot of praise in the general comics press, a little jaunt through the manga blogosphere (which historically tends to include more female voices) reveals a less universally enthusiastic view. Here are a few from Manga Bookshelf bloggers alone:

Melinda Beasi (me) & Michelle Smith, Off the Shelf: MMF Edition

I think what you’re reacting to (and I mentioned this in comments, but I’ll reiterate it here) is not the story’s historical context, but the author’s own sexism which he reveals in the way he portrays the realities of the period. My immediate thought upon finishing the series was that I found it inexpressibly sad. Ehwa’s mother spends almost the entire series teaching her daughter about what a woman’s life is in their world and helping her learn how to endure a lifetime of waiting and heartache that can only be relieved by the companionship of a beloved man. And I suspect there is quite a bit of historical accuracy in this sense of utter helplessness and lack of worth placed on a single woman in that period.

But despite the bleakness of their circumstances, Kim portrays it all with a loving nostalgia. Even when expressing the sadness and longing felt by Ehwa and her mother as they wait for their men, he portrays it all as beautiful and even romantic. This isn’t matter of being true to the period. These are Kim’s own values being revealed here, and that’s what we’re reacting to. The same story could be told without that veil of fond nostalgia and it would read very, very differently. If this series had actually been written during that time period, that would be different matter as well, but Kim is a contemporary writer, and as such, he’s responsible to contemporary readers for the story he’s chosen to tell and how he tells it.

… while it’s true that coming-of-age stories do tend to revolve around sexual awakening, it’s notable I think that though we experience Ehwa’s sexual development in meticulous detail, there’s very little attention given to the development of her romantic attachments. In fact, I’d say out of Ehwa’s romantic episodes, the one that’s best-developed is actually her early crush on the young monk. That’s played out very realistically for a crush–all shy meetings with a heavy spark, leading to lots of mooning about. By contrast, her true love story with Duksam is barely developed at all.

I think it’s partially this strong bias towards Ehwa’s sexual development that leads me to distrust the author’s feelings about women. He’s quoted as saying (in an interview at Newsarama), “I consider the process of a girl becoming a woman one of the biggest mysteries and wonders of life.” But he appears to regard that process as being primarily about sexuality. Not only are we shown very little in terms of Ehwa’s emotional development, but she never shows interest in really anything besides learning about sex and men, though she carefully remains a virgin throughout. That seems like such an exclusively male fantasy.

David Welsh, Good girls don’t

I’m not a cultural historian, so I have no idea what things were like for women in pre-industrial Korea. I just know that I don’t really care for its portrayal of “good” women as passive and patient, no matter how elegantly drawn it is. “I think that the process of a girl becoming a woman is one of the biggest mysteries and wonders of life,” the creator said in an interview. I wish he had thought harder about that mystery and hadn’t imposed what strikes me as such a male notion of wonder upon it.

Young Ehwa lives with her widowed mother, who keeps a tavern in the countryside. Mom advises Ehwa on womanhood, pounding in the notion of the woman as flowering shrub, patiently waiting and gently blossoming until a male pollinating insect will deign to settle upon her, and all will be well. Just look at Ehwa’s friend, the porcine Bongsoon, who actually lets curiosity lead to action. Bongsoon is less attractive than Ehwa, and her mother clearly isn’t giving her the lecture on the botany of desire or instructing her that true love waits. You can be damn sure that, should Bongsoon find a man stupid enough to marry damaged goods, birds won’t fly from the trees and every bell in the countryside won’t ring when that marriage is consummated. Bognsoon is an object of ridicule and contempt because she has the nerve to act on her desires.

Erica Friedman, The Color of Heaven

Laced heavily with unrealistic platitudes that are increasingly heaped upon our heads, many of them about the “lot of women,” I began to find the dialogue burdensome. Women, we are told, are plain trees in the winter that wait for a butterfly man to alight on our branches to adorn us. Waiting is punishment for women’s love. Women are, in fact, nothing without men. While the language is beautiful, it fails the Bechdel Test completely. The women do nothing but discuss men. As David Welsh so cogently summed it up, “not a fan of the notion that the power and mystery of women lies in their ability to wait for men.” When I read a few of these “us poor women” lines to my wife, she asked quite sincerely, if the mother hated her daughter. It was depressing to tell her that she did not, she was just indoctrinating Ehwa into life as a woman …

The series has a happy ending, which redeemed much of the “woe is us” feel of the early pages, but I absolutely could not recommend this book to a young woman…

Most likely, had this series not been mistakenly attributed to a woman by the CBLDF’s blogger, it never would have appeared on this list at all, and rightfully so. Though it’s a work worth discussing for both its flaws and its merits (and certainly none of us would suggest that it should be banned), it honestly has no place on a list that is intended to shine a light on books by or about women. Yes, the artwork is beautiful. Yes, the author is well-respected. But, at its core, it’s a series dedicated to male fantasy, not unlike a million other comics, and for that, not particularly remarkable.

It was a mistake. And it’s too bad.

By: Melinda Beasi