#is being treated like automatic complicity in genocide

[lith-myathar]

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[takerfoxx]

The Owl House, Season 2, Episode 20, "Clouds on the Horizon," First Impressions!

In this season’s penultimate episode, I have two things to lead off with.

First of all, “Crikey!”

Second of all, kinda pissed off right now.

Well, with that click-bait lead-in out of the way (I’ll explain later), in our second to last “normal” episode (thank you, that one unnamed Disney exec. Thank you so much for gutting one of your best shows. Really appreciate it, bud!), here we have something that serves more to accelerate things toward our big climax rather than to sit alone as its own story, but there is still a lot to dissect and talk about.

So let’s start with the main focus here today: the Blights.

Odalia

Ah, the snobby narcissistic parent, a tried and true character type. I mean, every show directed toward kids needs a hate-sink, right? And as awful as he is, Big Bads like Belos are often too cool and too unrealistic to properly hate. So we add in a side-villain that is more just infuriating.

Odalia is that. I always pegged her as a Mr. Northwest type, and this only hammers it home, from her valuing the family name over the actual members of her family to her abusive control over her children (that necklace has a lot of parallels to that bell Mr. Northwest used to control Pacifica, just sayin’) to her treating her marriage to Alador like a business deal rather than a relationship. Like, what is going on? They were childhood friends! Surely there had to have been an actual relationship at some point. But here we have Odalia straight up threatening to change their “deal” and firing Alador instead of divorcing him!

And oh yeah, she knew the truth about the Day of Unity. She was fully prepared to aid in genocide in exchange for her family. No, wait, it wasn’t to spare her family, it was to give them power and station in Belos’s promised new world. It was completely out of greed.

Well, you know what they say!

That having been said, if I do have one criticism for this episode, I would have appreciate just a short moment of pain and regret from her family after she split on them instead of them seemingly not caring. I know she’s a terrible person that they’re better off without, but she was still their wife and mother, and those sorts of feelings are complicated. Like, I criticized the She-Ra finale a bit for how Shadow Weaver’s exit was handled, and I stand by a lot of what I said, but I did like how upset and confused Adora and Catra were because of it. It’s just an extra layer of emotional realism that could have made the moment feel more impactful.

Anyway…

Alador

There’s been a lot of talk about Alador and how he fits in as a Bad Parent. His initial introduction as being someone who is clearly fed up with Odalia’s bullshit and would rather be pursuing his interests endeared him to a lot of people, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was neglectful and dismissive to his kids’ needs, and he was complicit in Odalia’s abuse. Yes, the reveal that she was threatening them to keep him in line adds a new layer, but that doesn’t automatically give him a pass.

But while he has screwed up, he at least is now trying, and he definitely isn’t as bad as Odalia. Finally realizing how much he has failed (in part thanks to a cute little pep talk with King), Alador is now doing the right thing, even if it costs him everything. And, hey, might be quite a bit overdue, but I’m getting the feeling that he was Odalia’s first abuse victim, so him standing up to her for his children’s sake is a huge step toward his personal redemption. And also toward everyone not dying.

So hey, good on you, buddy!

Now you gotta just deal with the fact that you’re now on the side same as Darius. Oh please, let them interact! I want to see this pettiness play out!

Amity

Our little Mittens is all grown up!

For years she’s had to mold herself to meet her parents’ expectations. For years she’s put her own wants, own needs, and even own identity aside just to be Odalia’s perfect little daughter. For years she’s allowed herself to continue the toxic cycle, becoming an arrogant bully to squelch her insecurities, and never allowing herself to just be the good person she wanted to be.

Luz changed all of that. Luz showed her compassion, acceptance, and love. Luz held her accountable for her mistakes, but also didn’t reject her for them. Luz showed her that she was someone worth loving, and that she could be a better person.

We’ve seen her steadily work on that, seen her turn away from her toxic behaviors and relationships, seen her work to make amends for her poor treatment of others, seen her confront her own insecurities, and come out the better for it. Her relationship with Luz has lifted her up and helped them both, well, help each other change for the better.

And now she finally confronts the source of all that toxicity, the source of all those insecurities, the source of all of that unhappiness.

Her own mother, Odalia.

In a way it was a coming out moment for her. Perhaps not in the traditional sense, as not even Odalia fucks with homophobia, but for her to finally stand up for herself and say no more. And in doing so, she finally got the full support of her father, whom she takes after the most.

Again, I would’ve liked to have seen more inner turmoil. I know they were in a rather harrowing situation and didn’t have time to really process things, but I do hope that Amity, Alador, and even the twins are given the space to process being betrayed by Odalia.

Eda

I’ve wanted to give Eda a hug many times these last few episodes.

Eda’s only weakness has ever been those that she loves. Nothing else has ever gotten her down. Even with her own impending petrification, her only thought was taking care of her kids. And now she is willing to make yet another massive sacrifice: her own ability to use wild magic.

Or will she?

I mean, she obviously believes that to be the case. But I’m willing to bet that she gets an out, whether it be because defeating Belos renders the sigils powerless, or maybe she’ll just detach that arm completely, breaking the sigil’s hold over her. I mean, her detachable body parts have kind of been forgotten lately only to suddenly come back. I wonder if that is the case…

King

Poor dude. My guy just learned that he’s basically a god, and people are still treating him like a little guy, even the other kids. I mean, they’re not wrong, but it can’t be great for his self-esteem.

However, he still has his own part to play. I’m better that he’s going to start talking to the Collector through that bond they now have, maybe even convince him to turn away from Belos. The Collector seems to be pure chaotic neutral rather than actively malicious. I mean, he gets a kick out of evil, don’t get me wrong, and he certainly has no reservations about participating in what amounts to mass genocide for funsies (and as a way to escape whatever prison he’s in), but he strikes me as being more amoral rather than “evil,” if you get my meaning.

So what I’m saying is that he strikes me as someone who can be convinced to make a turn. Let’s see if our little Titan is the one to do it.

Luz

An egg.

Well, I didn’t see that coming. It’s a nice sentiment, though we still have to wait to see what it ultimately ends up being. Bat, cat, otter, or snake are still the popular choices.

Also, while I did catch “Luz” suddenly using Hunter’s flash step and wondered where she had learned that from, and while I was confused about Hunter blowing a raspberry at Kikimora, I somehow didn’t put it together that they had switched places until it got revealed. I wonder why they specifically made that switch, though. Or rather, I wonder why Luz wanted it to happen. She wanted to be captured and taken to Belos. But what can she do? What’s her game?

A couple of minor notes before we move on to the main event. Firstly, you know those rather strikingly designed wild witches that got captured for a couple frames?

Yeah, those guys. I’ve heard it speculated that this might be a cameo of the creative crew, but as it turns out, they’re actually K-Pop artists that one particular storyboard artist is a fan of and wanted to include, which is really sweet and dorky. So hey, K-Pop is canon to the Boiling Isles!

They're everywhere...

Second, Kikimora mentioned Belos having eyes everywhere. People have taken this to mean that there’s a traitor in the CATS’ ranks, which very well could be, but may I offer up an alternative theory?

Maybe when one of your enemies controls plants, don’t take one of her plants as a trophy? Just sayin’.

Well, okay, now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way, let’s talk about the real reason people are talking about this episode.

Guys, gals, and nonbinary pals. We got ‘em.

Yeah. This was quite lovely.

So why am I pissed off about it?

Well, the reason is quite simple. See, I planned to watch this episode during my dinner break on Saturday evening, and made sure to unfollow the Owl House subreddit to avoid spoilers. And yet someone still saw fit to post the screenshot with no spoiler tag to a completely unrelated subreddit that I also follow, and someone else uploaded the clip to youtube almost immediately, and since I watch a lot of Owl House videos the almighty algorithm saw fit to throw it up on my feed! So I got spoiled twice.

Damn it! Like, when I got spoiled for the Catradora kiss, at least I couldn’t be mad because the season got dumped all at once so when I finally got around to it the episode had been around for several days! But the same day? Guys, please, don’t do that!

Well, whatever. The kiss itself was still wonderful, and you can tell that they put most of the animation budget into this moment (as they should have). I needn’t tell you what a huge moment this is for kids’ television, to have this plainly depicted and be seen. I’ve watched adult lesbian women start crying because of this moment, because they didn’t have something like this growing up, but kids who are like them will. They’ll be able to see themselves on screen, to realize that what they feel is okay and normal, and that they don’t have to hide from themselves.

There’s been a lot of speculation of whether or not Lumity is the reason that the show got gutted, like what happened to Steven Universe. If so, then there still is clearly a lot of work to do. But Korra finally cracked the door open and many shows since have been steadily pushing it wider and wider. Things are getting better. Voices are being heard. And while there continues to be resistance, the momentum is against them, and I for one am so eager to see what new shows come walking in through that door.

[itsclydebitches]

Why do you think it is people can't accept or view woman as abusive? Whether it's mothers, wifes, girlfriends, or just friends? Is it because men are usually the abusers in media and therefore accepted as the abusers in real life always? Do people out there really not think woman can be both physically or emotionally abusive to men in their lives just as men can be?

As with all of these topics there’s no one reason why such thinking comes about, but rather a complicated intersection of ideas, teachings, assumptions, personal experience, culture, etc. Part of it is that statistically men (in the US and UK anyway) are more likely to be the abuser and the media does reflect that, so some people tend to conflate “usually” with “always.” Even though those are obviously two distinct situations. Which is how you get antagonistic responses to those who advocate for men who suffer from abuse. Some see it as a means of drawing attention away from the ‘real’ problem of women victims, rather than acknowledging that both things exist simultaneously: a predominance of one gender being victims and the other gender facing a unique hurdle because of that predominance. When we teach - overtly or implicitly - that only women can be abused, we set up a scenario where men must first prove that what they’ve suffered can and does exist at all, let alone that they as an individual suffer from it. We see this with rape as well. Women must navigate a world that acknowledges that they can be raped, but tends to deny that it happened to her (she was asking for it, she should be grateful, etc.) Men, meanwhile, often hear that they simply can’t be raped, full stop. Because that’s something that only happens to women, because men always want sex, because a man could have put a stop to it, etc. And if this seems at all confusing, contradictory, complicated, and other difficult ‘c’ words, it’s because it is. Different genders who experience abuse simultaneously have commonalities that should inspire solidarity among the groups as well as individual circumstances that have to be taken into account. There is no one size fits all explanation here, which is precisely why intersectionality exists. 

Thinking about those individual factors though, gender norms absolutely come into play and feed those broader ideas about who can and cannot be abused. To put it simply, the concept of (toxic) masculinity does not provide room for men to be victims of abuse via women, simply because they are supposed to be inherently stronger and thus protected from assault. I experienced a perfect example of this bias while discussing Caroline Flack’s assault arrest. To be clear, we had almost no details about the case and were speaking very generally about abuse as a whole, rather than what actually happened between her and her boyfriend. This was also prior to her suicide, so take this as a conversation pretty much entirely removed from her specific situation. Basically though, the conversation revolved around the utter disbelief that a girlfriend could assault - let alone consistently abuse - a boyfriend. This person was grudgingly accepting of emotional abuse, but physical was off the table. After all, he’s a big strong guy and she’s so tiny. You’re telling me he can’t catch her arm when she goes to hit him? Or just hit her back? When I began to point out the problems in this thinking, the lack of understanding as to how abusers work, and begin to introduce the concept of victim blaming, they responded with, “I’m not blaming the victim, I’m blaming his inability to defend himself!” Which is a response that made me stare into an invisible camera like I was on The Office. Frustration aside, this conversation does a decent job of demonstrating the biases at work here: 1. Men are pretty much immune to abuse because abuse is almost entirely physical. 2. That immunity stems from clear-cut ideas about how man and women develop: he will be big and strong while she will be tiny and weak. 3. Abuse is not a complicated form of conditioning but a one time thing that anyone with the correct tools (strength) can stand up against: just stop her from hitting you. 4. If you somehow fail to stop her you can (and will instinctively want) to get revenge by hitting her back. That will demonstrate dominance and put an end to things. Problem solved. Obviously there is a lot to unpack there and that’s coming from a liberal, progressive, otherwise empathetic person. This kind of thinking runs deep. 

I want to emphasize that people get degrees in this, write books, spend their whole lives studying and working through such a nuanced subject... so a blog post response does not a perfect answer make lol. Nor does a BBC vid with a clickbait-y title, but experiments like this - simple as they are - can help to demonstrate that thinking: 

“My first thought was... he looked a bit soft... he looked a bit soft letting her hit him like that... I wouldn’t let a girl hit me.” 

“I think the man must have done something to the woman” 

There’s such a pervasive idea that men, as men, are the dominant gender that any evidence of abuse is automatically reframed as a) something he secretly enjoys, b) something he brought on himself, or c) proof that he’s not a “real” man and is defective for suffering from this. It’s a view that is perpetuated in fandom as well as real life. When Salem kills Ozpin it means he obviously did something to deserve it (trying to escape with the kids) because only guilty men suffer like that. When Yennefer takes control of or invades Geralt’s mind it means he secretly liked it because only weak men would stick around to suffer through something they were uncomfortable with - and Geralt is the opposite of weak. Then these stories - as stories written by an author who controls all events, responses, and outcomes - further paint these assumptions as correct: Ozpin is condemned as a horrible person (see, he deserved it!) and Geralt’s true love is shown to be Yennefer (see, he secretly doesn’t mind!) because these are characters who adhere to the whims of fallible authors. That doesn’t represent reality, but it can help perpetuate our perception of it. The author who fails to acknowledge a man’s abuse that they’ve written is no different from an author who fails to acknowledge a woman’s abuse that they’ve written. How the audience responds to those relationships, however, is very different. We’ve reached a point now where we can say stuff like, “Just because fictional Anastasia Steel has been written to think the way Christian Gray treats her is sexy and healthy doesn’t mean it is,” but we often fail to apply that same fiction/reality distinction for men. Instead, women abusers of all varieties - from genocidal Salem to “just” insults/threat of magical retribution Yennefer - are painted as badass or secret victims because the alternative would be acknowledging that men have the capability to be victims at all. Especially powerful men who (supposedly) have every means of defending themselves. 

As one woman in the video puts it, “the stereotype that women have less power than a man” is ingrained in our culture and it hurts men and genders not on the binary as well as women. It’s just that the damage to women is the most obvious and, as said, at times much more common. But that doesn’t mean these other impacts don’t exist. This is why feminism is inclusive and anyone who tells you it’s only for women hasn’t done much research. There’s a difference between people who may use such situations as a means of erasing all the shit women have to deal with (Men’s Rights™) and those who acknowledge that the limitations put on women and the abuse they suffer has the added concern of negatively impacting those around them. They’re baises that don’t help anyone. 

[aspoonofsugar]

reiner doesn’t deserve to be a hero because of what he’s done? what? who does then? armin mikasa jean connie and all the other mains participated in killing people be it soldiers or civilians at this point and at least reiner is the only one who shows extreme guilt over his past actions and actually did change for the better. while the Sc still get civilians killed and prioritize themselves over the world reiner is willing to sacrifice himself to save it. (1)

reiner fought eren& zeke so hard and he’s the only one who showed absolute distress at the idea of the world being destroyed while jean and the others were more okay with it like “eh we can benefit from this genocide”. if there’s a character who deserve to take eren down and be the hero it’s reiner. he realized eren’s threat since day one and tried to stop him while the others enabled eren for years and even now seeing where eren is going they still won’t make an effort to stop him(2)            

if reiner doesn’t deserve the title then the characters who helped eren get where he is and refuse to stop him don’t deserve it even more. reiner redeemed himself long ago, anon, just say you hate reiner and go don’t give the “he killed innocent people” card because everyone did at one point and at least he regretted it and stopped killing people long ago ps tries to do best by everyone unlike the ones you want to take the title. (3)            

why worry abt reiner being isa’s fav?jean n ymir were his favs n look how they got treated. he doesn’t take sides just does what his story requires. ntm if the new helos is gonna be another fake then what’s the point?magath said the world needs a real hero so the new one will def be real. reiner is obviously the best candidate we didn’t get all that development and foreshadowing for him to play no role he’s eren’s rival. the fact that he’s mixed could play a role, he will be a hero to both races            

Hello anons!

Reiner is an important character and he will surely have a central role and it will most probably have to do with him bringing the two sides together since he has ties and relationships on both sides. I have talked about it in the last asks.

That said, he is not the only important character left. Armin and Mikasa are just as important as him and Historia may also play a role. I don’t know if one of them will bring Eren down, but what I am sure of is that all of them should give a huge contribution to solve the situation.

What is more, the series has already deconstructed the idea of a single hero coming and saving the world over and over again. It has done so with Eren, Levi and Erwin and all Reiner’s backstory is, among other things, him realizing how empty the concept of being a “hero” is. The point is not that these characters are not positive ones or that they do not have heroic qualities (because they have), but that deep down they are still people. They are individuals and as such they should not be seen as neither gods nor demons. Seeing Eren as either a God who never fails or a Demon incapable of nothing else, but destruction is exactly what led to this situation. The rest of the world decided that Eren was a demon despite having never met him. At the same time, many people in Paradis decided that he was a God and so that he should be followed without any question. In short, what is happening is the result of people like Gross and Yelena. I have mentioned these two characters simply because they are two extreme examples of these behaviours, but of course many people in different degrees have contributed to this. Among these many people there are also Reiner, Mikasa, Armin and the others.

Reiner has known for years now that the people of Paradis are no devils, but he has kept his mouth shut and has done nothing to change the situation or to avoid the war with Paradis.

Similarly, Armin and Mikasa have known for years that Eren was growing distant from them and that he has always had a very violent and dangerous side. However, they both chose to ignore it and kept following him no matter what.

In short, Reiner is not like Gross, but he has done not enough to fight people like Gross. Similarly Armin and Mikasa are not the Yeagersists, but they have not done enough to oppose them.

Sure, one can argue that Reiner has been in no position to fight back because he is a part of a minority which is exploited and discriminated. However, one could also argue that Mikasa, Armin and the others too have found themselves in a very complicated situation since the world has decided they have no right to exist. In short, both Reiner on one side and Mikasa, Armin and the others on the other side found themselves in a horrible position and have been passive about it. It is about time that they become more active.

As far as the first anon is concerned, I disagree about the fact that Reiner is the only one who showed regret over killing people:

Mikasa, Armin and Jean have all shown regret and they have all been shaken by what happened in Liberio. Similarly, they are all very shaken by what Eren is doing even if they are reacting to it in not ideal ways:

Once again this chapter shows all the main characters being too passive.

In short, I agree with you that using arguments about one character being morally superior to another doesn’t work and I think all the key players are similar when it comes to morality. They have all done things they regret in the attempt of helping their respective side and country.

As far as the second anon goes, I simply meant that I don’t think there is going to be a single hero against a single villain. This dychotomy has been criticized since the beginning of the series. This is why Eren aka the protagonist is currently playing the part of the villain. We as readers are meant to know that even if he is doing something terrible he is still a person and that in a different context things could have turned out differently. Similarly, the world might come to see a single person like some greater good who opposes Eren, but we as readers will probably see that things are more complex than that and how more people’s contributions will be necessary to reach the conclusion. In short, this doesn’t mean that if Reiner were to become this symbol of hope he would not get a positive character development and he would be “fake” in that sense, but I simply meant that the title of Helos will necessarily oversimplify things and Reiner’s own feelings about him acquiring it might be complicated.

That said, I agree that whoever gets the title of Helos (if the title is taken) will need to be seen as a hero by both Eldians and not Eldians. And just to be clear, I also like the theory that it will be Reiner the one who gets it. I simply don’t think that this would automatically make Reiner’s contribution more important thant the ones by other characters. I think all key characters by this point should matter more or less equally even if in different ways and with different focuses.

Thank you for the ask!

[janiedean]

archetteetc ha risposto al tuo post “Lavinia, are Italians a mixed race people? Because of moorish and Arab...”

Also, “Italians are white” is another statement of US-centrism in action. Ask any darker-looking Italian in Northern Europe if they feel othered, if they get asked “where they’re from” and all the questions that POC everywhere get asked. Urgh. Racism exists everywhere, but the discourse and context are vastly different.

THANK YOU, and like... the problem is that italy has a lot of racism but it’s directed at various categories and just, on a language level, poc in italy means only black people when it the US it doesn’t, and it doesn’t have the same weight, and for that matter there’s discrimination in between northern and southern italians never mind the romanians/romani which get a whole different brand of shit never mind that a black american gets treated differently from a black african immigrant same as some rich russian person who comes to buy fashion clothes in milan will be treated differently from some poor person from idk belarus who cleans houses for a living and so on. no one ever said that we don’t have racism. but ffs it doesn’t work like in the us of a and *race* is not a socially acceptable term to use. like, the moment you say that human races exist, people deduce you’re yourself racist and nope out of the conversation. because after wwii it just doesn’t fly to do it when such a worldview is what led to, uh, mass genocide. I understand it’s not the same in the US, but if europeans would rather use ethnicity or nationality it doesn’t mean we’re negating the existence of racism, it means we talk about it in different terms, and I’m honestly tired of even US *language* being used to describe our issues when it’s not right for them.

like, doesn’t seem to me like it’s such a hard concept to grasp and I’d have no issues talking to an american who uses race as a word bc I know that to them it’s not inherently racist to use that term, but ffs can I not use since it makes me feel dirty? thank you very much.

ETA: btw italians all identify as white and people in europe in general do too so I don’t like to describe this issues as a white vs nonwhite problem because we’re not poc even if we’re subject to discrimination especially in northern countries still, I just wanted to make that clear in case someone says that now I’m saying italians are poc which I never said, but like... in europe the concept of white privilege is useless bc you get privilege over nonwhite people and it’s a factor but being from the nation in question is the key privilege card, like in italy a white romanian and a black african both get discriminated over people who are born in italy and live in italy out of not being italian so while the white card has weight when it comes to the black african, it doesn’t when it comes to the romanian, and anyway everyone here considers themselves white regardless of shade unless they have a black parent (if you have a parent from idk china you’re half chinese not poc and so on). like... it’s complicated. it’s not the same as the US. and it’d be nice if people could just make peace with the fact that white/WASP privilege in the US is a thing that exists in that context and doesn’t automatically apply to others.

[softlyfiercely]

@talesfromthescriptkeeper2 did me a huge favor and the world a disservice by providing me with the following Discourse Invitation: What's your least favorite TV show and why?

There are a few TV shows I absolutely fucking hate. I’M IN AN ABSOLUTELY MISERABLE MOOD LET’S GOOO

under the cut are my hot takes on why Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Jackass, and America’s Next Top Model are bad and stupid TV shows.

Breaking Bad. This show is terrible and I will tell you why. I watched the whole first and second season when everyone was whacking it to the genius of this show and the first thing that bugged me was that it’s just all plot-driven, no character. The characters act however they need to in the service of More Crazy Shit Happening. Which I found annoying.

And also, having a shitty person as a protagonist doesn’t automatically make them an “anti-hero.” Walter White is a bad dude and the show doesn’t do much besides go “hey look at this dude’s fun adventures!” Don’t come at me with “oh, you don’t always have to root for the protagonist” - the world isn’t a fuckin undergraduate literature course, and the basic way humans engage with narrative is not that complicated. We kind of have no choice but to enter a story through the perspective of the main character. That’s why the genocidal settlers are glamorized by American history, because it’s told as their story, from their point of view.

The way the show is written and shot makes Walter White the protagonist, full stop. There’s a scene early on where his pregnant wife Skylar is suspicious that he’s up to something shady. We as the audience know he’s doing methy shit, and he’s hidden the evidence in the baby’s room. Skylar is looking through the room. The music, the cinematography, it’s all tense. I realized I was on the edge of my seat HOPING THAT SHE DID NOT FIND THE EVIDENCE. I was actively rooting against a pregnant woman, struggling financially, raising a disabled child, who had done absolutely nothing wrong, and whose husband is violating her trust in half a dozen ways.

A show that makes you care more about Walter White and his motives, while pretending to be all philosophical and morally complex and therefore somehow above the riff-raff nonsense of how 99.9% of all stories are told? Bullshit. The show is bullshit. It’s also just brutally unpleasant. Violence and intrigue can be fun but this show is just bleak and miserable for no reason. 

Jackass. This show glorifies being an asshole. There is a scene where the dudes take one of their mom’s antique china cabinet outside and bulldoze over it, while she screams and cries and begs them not to. They all laugh. Even if this was staged, the show’s target audience is adolescent boys who don’t quite grasp the nuances of reality TV production. Instead, it teaches them that it is fun and cool to be cruel to other people, and if someone gets upset at your abuse, that just makes them an even more fun target.

Honorable mention here goes to Family Guy, which similarly tells young men that it is fun, cool, and somehow righteous to be cruel to the vulnerable people in your life. I spent the first 17 years of my life living with a brother who had been strongly influenced by this kind of media and it was hell. Everyone involved in the production of these shows should be deeply ashamed of themselves. But they aren’t, because they’re soulless sadists. I hope someone trashes their prized possessions, then makes it out like they deserved it for committing the unforgivable crimes of Caring About Something and Having Feelings.

Game of Thrones. The camera lingers on the rape of Daenerys, as if assuming that viewers are interested in seeing a young woman be brutally assaulted. Then, when a CGI dog is killed, the camera does a tasteful cut-to-black. Violence against animals is treated as something that the audience doesn’t need or desire to see. Women are not given nearly as much dignity. This is the fabric of the show, how it’s constructed, the reality and the narrative as presented.

A show can include misogyny without itself being a misogynistic show. However, the “artistic” choices made by Game of Thrones are something else entirely. What they choose to celebrate and glorify with their plot, characters, and cinematography are just awful. It’s a bad and stupid show and I could tell that from the first few episodes, RIP to everyone who got tricked into slogging through the whole thing but I’m different. (P.S. The books are the same way, with narration and world construction that affords moral validity to some fucked up shit.)

ANTM. This show was big when I was in college and people would watch it in common areas all the time. It’s vile. It’s like a fucking parody of the way we critique and control women’s bodies, except it takes itself completely seriously. If anyone is a “double agent for the patriarchy” it’s the hosts of that show. They go out of their way to demand drastic changes to the women’s bodies, then mock and punish them for being upset. They often talk about the women in terms of how they can be attractive, or belong, to men. Contestants are often shamed and punished for standing up for their basic needs or having any kind of boundaries. Tyra Banks should pay damages to any young woman who grew up watching it. 

[ghostmartyr]

Hi Immi. I'm new to the fandom--joined around the drop of ch107. Since then there's been a big buzz about historia, regarding her sexuality, her character regressing and her relationship with ymir. i'd seen snk s2 and honestly never occurred to me to ship yumikuri because i hate ships but being on tumblr, well, it's everywhere. I see people get hate on shipping her with males but i'm not sure where i stand. Is she explicitly lesbian? If not then why is it so bad? Is the tumblr fandom just toxic?

Hi.

Uh.

Hell, dude, you pretty much summarized all the reasons I stopped checking the tags. I’m not exactly in the fandom anymore. I do my stuff, but I am actively avoiding mostly everyone, and that’s just because of the immediate aftermath of the chapter. So uh, welcome, I guess, I’m not here.

I answered–well. No, I covered a bit of what I’m going to go over here in my chapter post, aka the unfun section of it. Making this a bit of a rehash, but most things I type are anyway.

The most obvious thing is that people should not be getting hate. That is a general statement, disconnected from anything that’s going on. It is applicable in every fandom, in every situation. Even in the cases where someone is doing something that poses a very real danger, the solution is not sending hate. Sending hate is exactly what it sounds like, and people should behave themselves better.

Where you end up standing on any of this does not make the behavior magically okay.

And again, I basically left the fandom. I have no idea what’s going on, and frankly, I do not want to, so none of this is based on anything that’s happened in the past three weeks.

My perspective on fiction is that it is entirely selfish. People want what they want from it. While I don’t like most of what other people like, the fact that they’re capable of enjoying things should be celebrated. Go them.

That doesn’t mean I think stories are beyond reproach, or what happens in fiction can’t be offensive or damaging.

Fandom is not the same as canon. A personal pet project is very different from something being consumed by millions of people. Fandom currently has a very black and white style of thinking, and so it neglects that difference.

For an easy and relevant example, Kurt and Rachel from Glee getting it on in a fanfic is not equal to it happening in the show. One is someone’s random fantasy, the other, unless it’s handled with the kind of respect Glee has never dealt in, is going to be very inflammatory.

(See: Blaine and Rachel (for different–-but still relevant!-–reasons))

A lot of people do not agree that the difference between fanon and canon is relevant to some of the things people end up enjoying. The reason being that stories never feel that different to the individual experiencing them. Who creates it, or how wide its reach is, is not automatically something that matters to the emotional experience. It will hurt in roughly the same way, so often the argument that one is excusable and the other isn’t is done before it starts.

I’m meandering a little because I do not really know how to handle this delicately. So far this is all just foundational. stuff.

I guess I’ll go with blunt.

yumikuri is a canon romantic bond. Ymir is implied to be a lesbian because one character says she looks like one, Historia is a complete blank slate outside of that relationship because Ymir is her sole love interest.

The status of Historia’s sexuality is that she is romantically interested in Ymir, a girl. That is the entire sum of what the manga’s covered.

107 heavily indicates that Historia is coerced into having sex.

That should never have opened up a discussion into what her sexuality is. Someone being forced into sexual intercourse is indicative of nothing except that they are being forced into it. That is the exact opposite of desire.

Yet it opened the door to people reminding everyone that it is absolutely okay for a character to be bisexual.

That is a true statement.

(Editing in emphasis, because it really is.)

I do not know how to adequately describe why the context makes that statement so tone deaf and infuriating.

The manga has been running for almost ten years. In that time, there has been no indication of Historia having interest in anyone outside of Ymir, a girl. That could cover a lot of different sexualities, and there’s nothing wrong with someone wanting any of them.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t incredibly insulting ways of going about introducing them.

Historia’s first major appearance after her girlfriend is killed off-screen (if you believe that, which all but three people reading this and the person writing this do) is all about forcing her to fuck a guy to make babies.

Even in some hypothetical where her pregnancy is the result of a happy relationship, it would be insulting. As far as we know, it isn’t, so we are dealing with the full brunt of how disrespectful that summation is.

There is this common thing that happens in stories, where you have the gay relationship, one dies, the other lives on to go have a happy life with someone of the opposite sex. The subtext is that this weird one-off sexual thing may have happened, but don’t worry, they’re still normal.

I don’t know how to say that convincingly, because it’s a subtext that I’ve picked up on throughout hundreds of different stories. I don’t know how to cram that history into one post.

Girls liking girls is seen as an aberration, even in stories about liking girls. The relationship will be an exception. The more femme character won’t really like girls, just this one. The concept of a girl liking another girl as a normal facet of her sexuality, which exists outside this relationship, is commonly disregarded, or given to the non-POV partner.

This should be a problem that it’s easy to agree on. Lesbians like girls as a rule. Bisexuals like girls as a rule. Not exclusively, but Likes Girls is still very much a part of the identity (unless we get into discussions of bi covering multiple genders but not necessarily binary ones).

Then there’s fandom.

I can’t count the number of times I have seen the argument that Historia only sees Ymir as a friend. I have been invested in her character and that relationship for five years. Barring the last month, which I don’t want to know about, probably at least once a week, someone would make the case that okay, maybe Ymir likes Historia, but Historia doesn’t like her back.

Many, many times before I left the tags last month, people were saying that Historia’s pregnancy isn’t an LGBT issue, because Historia’s interest in Ymir was never canon.

I get twitchy when people are staunch supporters of her being bisexual. Because as much as I want to trust people, and as much as I know that every marginalized identity is desperate for scraps, the conversation about Historia has always felt like, “it’s important to remember you can’t prove she doesn’t like men.”

When it’s not full on, “it’s important to remember her liking a girl is in your imagination.”

Because she’s the pretty one in the girl on girl couple.

I want her to be gay or ace. Nothing disproves that, but I feel like an idiot for wanting that, because the classically pretty one isn’t going to be a lesbian, and years of consuming anime and manga should have taught me that. Beyond the first sentence, none of that perspective is particularly healthy.

Queer fandom can be really complicated to navigate, because some of the things people want to see–-which are fundamental to their identities, and that’s why they want to see them–-run exactly counter to what other people want to see.

There’s a post from Yuri on Ice fandom that I think encapsulates this. I don’t know the background, or what has been shouted back and forth since I saw it, but here’s the gist. Someone suggests that one of the figure skating gays could be ace. Dozens of people go, “bad post op,” and it’s treated humorously.

Asexual representation sucks. An episode of House, noteworthy for using the word and having someone quote the statistic occurrence of asexuality, ends with one half of an asexual couple having a hormone imbalance, and the other lying about her interest in sex so she could date him.

Yeah.

Gay guys also have a hard time with their sexuality being policed. Holding hands is okay (sometimes), but kissing? Sex? The dirty homosexuals are depraved for enjoying such things. Gay women can have degrading sex because it’s hot.

People want their identities respected.

That is not an unreasonable thing.

What tends to happen on Tumblr is that people forget that they aren’t the only ones being treated like crap. There are layers of pain and anger they bring to every fight, and over and over again, people who should know what that pain is like, and help each other through it, sharpen theirs until they can use it to chop off someone’s head.

107 is insulting in a lot of ways. The aftermath was worse for me. From what little I saw, many people were very eager to say that the part where a queer woman was dealing with a coercive pregnancy shouldn’t be judged for the queer part. Because there are people issues, like war and tragedy, and then social justice issues, which aren’t about people. They don’t really matter in a war story with internment camps and genocide.

I’m being glib, but… that’s what it felt like. That’s what a lot of people I liked shrugged and agreed with.

I want Historia to be a lesbian (or ace), but for right now, we do know she’s queer. That is a part of her character, and it is one that people have been talking over for years. Having post after post reminding everyone that her being queer does not matter to the story? That her being queer is not a lens worthy of being looked through when it’s clearly not about that?

I don’t agree with… basically any of the fandom behavior I’ve seen touching this. I think people should behave themselves better, and treat each other more kindly, and pain is no excuse for bleeding all over everyone.

But where that pain comes from has been repeatedly dismissed, and where it comes from is not insignificant, no matter what route you want canon to go.

…And as far as Historia’s character goes, this is a regression, and the writing should be ashamed of itself. It violates the themes of her arc with such direct intent that it’s painfully easy to believe there’s a twist to it, but for now it’s just infuriating, because the girl who fights fate has been made its tool, and Ymir, aka her love interest, is very relevant to the whole arc where we covered this. 107 is bad and should feel bad, and I am extremely not happy that I think that is exactly the feeling I am intended to have, because being emotionally manipulated is much more annoying when it works.

Hopefully that gives your questions an answer.

[writingwithcolor]

Including Jewish characters in my primarily polytheist fantasy worldbuilding

I am a second gen. polytheist. The fantasy world my story is set in is also polytheistic, but I really want to include a Jewish central character. I’ve considered having the Jewish community be the lone monotheists, but I’m worried that would automatically “other” them. So, instead I was considering having a Jewish-in-all-but-name group of people (they would keep kosher, observe shabbat, and as many other aspects of culture/ religion as possible without referencing real world historical events) who are devoted to one god out of the pantheon.  Would this be appropriate? If so is there anything I should steer clear of with regards to the god (aside from the obvious like he shouldn’t be god of moneylenders and shitty stereotypes)? 

I strongly dislike "coded Judaism that isn't supposed to be actually Jewish." There is some information on this post about why: Religion in Fiction & Fantasy

Besides, at that point you're not going to be able to say "but they're not actually Jewish", so it's not going to serve any purpose. Just start treating them as your Jewish characters.

Coexisting alongside polytheists is a normal part of our existence. Think of your cast as being a dorm full of girls who are fans of the girls on the softball team, and we're fans of this one girl who's a really fast track runner instead. Being othered doesn't have to mean being treated badly as long as it's okay to be different, in your worldbuilding--which you are in charge of. You can have your characters react neutrally to the fact that they have religious minorities in their midst, rather than negatively.

By the way, it sounds more realistic to me to have them devoted to their own separate god who's not part of the majority's pantheon -- the track and field runner in my analogy -- rather than fixating on one specific member of the "softball team", if that makes sense. That sounds more like what happens in the real world, if it doesn't ruin your plot to make that change. There are definitely polytheist societies that develop worship-fandoms for one specific god out of the bunch, but that's not what modern-day Judaism feels like to me. And then you won't have to worry about whether one of your created gods contradicts Jewish theology.

However, as Nik points out below, we possibly had something like that in our history, so it's complicated. I just feel like you run less of a risk of creating a fictional character out of a deity many gentiles don't understand if you separate our way of seeing god from the ones you make up.

What not to do? I guess please don't make whoever we worship "the mean one" -- there's often a Christian perception of the "angry Old-Testament God" in contrast with the comforting New Testament and trying to unravel that is too complicated for me right now but basically: if we weren't being comforted by our beliefs, they wouldn't have stuck around through multiple genocides for thousands of years so that view is incredibly reductive.

Honestly, our ideas about the nature of God are so uniquely overdiscussed that I'd feel more comfortable if you didn't make up too many details about your version unless you've hung around in temple listening to "the discourse" :P Can you just sort of handwavey around it and mention that someone is part of a monotheistic sect that does this or that without describing the nature of the worship itself?

-Shira

Shira's suggestion of having a clear favorite while acknowledging other gods (or at least acknowledging that other people worship other gods and aren't necessarily wrong for doing so) is pretty well-situated as an analogue of the development of modern Judaism (and hence other Abrahamic, monotheistic religions).

There's a common, and pretty strong and accepted argument that the Jewish god was previously the national god of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and while all the surrounding nations had their own pantheons, many of which included the god of the Israelites, in Israel and Judah, that god alone was worshipped (common people might have had their own, varying opinions on the existence and worshipability of other local gods).  This was uncommon in the ancient Near East but not unheard of.  The national god of the Assyrians was Ashur, who was also part of the larger Mesopotamian pantheon.

Before this, the Jewish god would have been a favorite god of the Hebrew tribes, very much like the girls who get really excited about the softball team's pitcher but couldn't really care that much about the rest of the team.

The historical development of monotheism in Judaism (at least, according to the argument outlined above, which like I said is pretty well-accepted among historians), went something like "one of many gods" -> "favorite god" -> "national god" -> "best god" -> "only god."  Ahistorical would be plopping a group of monotheists in a world of polytheists with no discussion of how they arrived at that position.

--Nikhil

[sasukerevolution]

I know that we, as Sasuke fans, can collectively agree that his redemption journey+guilt tripping+getting beaten into submission+not getting justice+the way they treated him after his final fight with Naruto is horrible. However, he did commit a few very serious crimes and terrible actions, and he really should answer for them. What I'm asking is: in a miraculous scenario where people actually decide that, yeah, they really should give Sasuke the justice he deserves and even think about(1/2)

changing the goddamn shitty Shinobi system still established, how would you handle Sasuke’s criminal record? Not as bad as how it was in canon, but he really did do some shitty things, so how should we… er, for a lack of a better term, “punish” him?(2/2)

Hmmm. I think to answer this question I need to break down what’s actually on Sasuke’s criminal record. This is a list that doesn’t include my personal feelings:

- Left the Hidden Leaf Village to train under Orochimaru: In the Naruto universe, this is an offense punishable by death. According to the rules of the Narutoverse itself, Sasuke automatically gets a death sentence for this. However, as a favour to Naruto, Tsunade chose to have this not be listed as a crime nor to pursue Sasuke as a criminal. Then Danzou redacated Tsunade’s decision, and then Kakashi redacted Danzou’s. Assuming the same things go down with regards to the line of Kages in this scenario, to avoid complications, we’ll work under the assumption that Sasuke is pardoned for this crime.

Sasuke committed no crimes that we know of while working under Orochimaru, so none will be counted. I would argue that Sasuke is not responsible for the death of Deidara or even Itachi, but regardless of how one views it both were criminals and their deaths caused no direct harm to the Leaf.

- Fought Naruto: The first two times this happens (Sasuke Retrieval arc and Tenchi Bridge Reconnaissance Mission arc), it’s in response to pursuit. This would maybe count as a crime of resistance to apprehension, but I don’t recall that ever being specified as a crime in the series so we’re going to pass over it.

- Joining the Akatsuki and attacking Killer Bee: If I recall correctly, the Leaf had already decided to pursue the Akatsuki before Sasuke even joined it, but the window of time between Sasuke joining and the Kage Summit that affected the law is so brief I’m not going to speculate on it too much. I say that Sasuke attacked Killer Bee because he actually did not succeed in killing him or in capturing him: as a ninja not affiliated with any Village, this is not an act of war. As we know, this led to the mobilization of the Five Great Shinobi Countries against the Akatsuki and to Sasuke’s subsequent death sentence, which was actually in effect this time. I’m not sure, however, what the punishment in the Naruto world is for attempted kidnapping. When Itachi and Kisame failed to kidnap Naruto, they weren’t even subsequently pursued for it, but that may be because they were already in the Bingo Book. Personally, I think Sasuke’s aid of the Five Great Shinobi Countries during the Fourth Shinobi World War may entitle him to a lighter sentence.

- Attacking Karin: Karin is not affiliated with any Village and was an affiliate of Sasuke’s. I don’t think the Leaf Village has a system that deals with crimes committed between criminals, so we’ll say he’s off the hook for this one.

- Killing Danzou: Since he’s no longer affiliated with the Leaf, this doesn’t count as treason. However, he did murder a leader of the Leaf Village. I’m not sure what “punishment” was attributed to Orochimaru when he killed the Third Hokage, which in my opinion is a precedent, but just based off of how the Leaf works in general I’d venture Sasuke earns a death sentence for this. This is without taking into account Danzou’s own illegal operations and lengthy criminal record.

- Threatening the Leaf Village: Threatening to harm a Village isn’t the same as actually harming it, but, again, considering the way the Leaf tends to handle stuff in general, I’m gonna say they’d throw a death sentence at him for even uttering his intent to destroy the Leaf. He fought Naruto again here but since it was in response to pursuit I’m going to go with the same thing I said above.

- Threatening to kill the Five Kage: Yeah, I think I’ll put this one under “probable death sentence” too.

- Challenging Naruto to a fight and attempting to murder him: This one wasn’t in response to being pursued. I don’t know what the punishment is in the Naruto world for challenging a shinobi to a fight when you are unaffiliated with any Village is. After all, rogue ninjas are supposed to be kill-on-sight just, like, in general.

Basically, by Naruto world standards, just judging his actions, Sasuke should be dead a couple times over. But if we’re discussing justice for Sasuke, we have to account for the crimes that were committed by the Leaf Village as a state against him.

- The biggest and the most obvious, The Uchiha Clan Massacre: Genocide is a very serious crime, and as the survivor of a state-ordered genocide, the Leaf really ought to be kissing Sasuke’s ass just in apology for the injustice that was committed against him.

- Negligence: In a fair system, the Leaf would have to acknowledge their failure to provide any sort of support or accommodation for an orphaned and traumatized child who is registered and that they are perfectly aware of. Especially because the reasons for his trauma are their fault.

- Negligence again: Namely, during the Chuunin Exams. The Leaf Village became aware that Orochimaru was a participant in the Chuunin Exams even while the second stage was still occurring. At that point, it was too late for them to do anything about Sasuke’s cursed seal, but even at Anko’s request to pull Sasuke from the exams during the preliminaries, the Hokage still insisted on allowing Sasuke to continue. They already knew that Sasuke was Orochimaru’s target as well; he should have been heavily guarded during the entirety of the exams.

- Inadequate retrieval measures: Though the Village was aware that Sasuke had left the Village, they sent genin who were Sasuke’s age after him instead of well-trained Jonin during the Sasuke Retrieval Arc. He wasn’t yet a missing-nin, at this point all they needed to do was apprehend him and bring him back to the Village, but their attempt was half-assed and they let him get away.

If this system is fair, then the Leaf Village’s own hand in creating Sasuke’s motives for his crimes must be acknowledged. I don’t think the Naruto universe even has a fucking court, lmfao. Sasuke had no lawyer or even an opportunity to represent or defend himself. 

Personally? I think all things considered, Sasuke is a victim far more than he is a criminal. As you can see from my list above, many of his crimes were mere threats or unsuccessful attempts: the only crimes he actually successfully committed were leaving the Village, which as you can see above the Leaf is at least partially if not entirely at fault for, and killing Danzou, which considering the crimes Danzou committed against him and his motivation I think a fair court would pardon him for. 

If I were the Leaf Village, I’d be on my knees begging for his forgiveness, not daring to so much as consider punishing him.

[ersahtz]

Hell hath no fury

Guys this is a work of fiction, one that I'm especially proud of. Anti religion, atheist.

DISCLAIMER: Work of fiction. No offense intended. 

A few hundred people wearing white entered the hall. They were quiet, solemn, and exceedingly polite to one another. None of them spoke very loudly, just in low tones. Not that there was a rule against loud speaking – it was just not in their nature. When they had all gathered in the hall, a sudden hush fell over them. Their blood ran just a little faster in their veins – not that their heartbeat mattered because it was physically impossible for them to die. When they had ascended, they had had the choice of any corporeal or incorporeal form, but it was an unspoken convention that they chose their human form out of respect for their Creator and His wisdom in the best form for the human mind.

As their blood ran faster, they experienced a strange feeling – a serenity and an ecstasy at the same time. Some felt that the feeling lasted a few seconds, while it seemed to last a few years to others. The feeling faded away slowly, so slowly that they could almost imagine it was still there.

 It was the Presence of God that they felt, and though they felt the presence all the time, the sudden blood rush was the satisfaction of the Supreme Being in his loyal followers, which they felt at a periodic cycle. For some, it was a daily routine, while for others it was a monthly or an annual occurrence. Each soul in heaven experienced time as it wished to. No one would say “I want my day to be two Earth days”, but they automatically experienced time suited to them. They never had to dawdle to kill time or rush to make a deadline. The only measure of time was their perception of it.

As the feeling faded away, so did the walls of the hall. They found themselves out in the open. Nobody had measured how big heaven was – they had never felt the need to know. They had never felt crowded, nor had they occasion to complain about long distances (since they neither felt pain nor time).

Some beings moved away in groups, while others wandered off alone. They were able to speak, but did not need to use words as communication. Most of them still spoke to each other out of habit. Their world was in their minds. They could go through a normal daily routine, do a different thing each day, compose music, write books, play games, visit real or imaginary places, worship or do anything else that struck their fancy. 

Most of them had ongoing projects, such as the composition of a song, writing of a novel, or any other mental activity that they performed habitually. They were never very complicated activities – there was no rule against complicated activities, it was just not in their nature.

Among them was not a single adulterer, murderer, homosexual, liar, prostitute, gigolo, or any wrongdoer of any kind. They were all persons who had led utterly blameless lives. Any small sins they committed, such as white lies, were either justified or properly repented for.

**************************************

“Andrew, let’s see, straight, no murders, negligence or otherwise, not a gigolo, never had relations with a prostitute, yes, yes, oh, but you entertained adulterous thoughts? And your child hasn’t been to Mass in, what, ten years? Had you heard of religious instruction? No, no, sorry, down you go.”

“Wolowitz, circumcised, well-behaved at the Bar Mitzvah, very good for you. All religious pilgrimages complete. Oh, but you were an astronaut? I’m sorry, that counts as building on the work of a known Helldweller. And wow, your wife is Catholic? Bye.”

“Meghna, hello, you seem like a good candidate. Only white lies, great. Did pooja even after you moved out, doctor, good profession, intelligent, and oh a known murderer died on your table, very good indeed. But oh, what’s this? You had premarital sex? From a rape? Hmm, that can be taken care of. *wink wink* Oh no. You disrespected your father? Shouted at him? Do you not know your place? So what if he didn’t think girls could be doctors? Sorry honey, no can do. Maybe you can do penance really hard down there and earn a chance to go up, huh?”

“Amir, welcome. What do we have here, beard correct length, treated all wives equally, etc. etc. Haj completed, regular namaaz, lawyer, all good. Ah, you have a weakness for your daughter, hmm? What a pure bond. Yes, really touching relationship, but oh she works as a receptionist now and doesn’t cover her face. You supported her, didn’t even try to excommunicate her. Ouch. Sorry. You’ll be going down.”

**************************************

A number of souls are scattered at the entrance to hell. They are wandering aimlessly, their minds overcome with sorrow at the prospect of hell. A few souls in human form walk briskly in and herd them together.

“Hello, yes good morning everybody. No, its okay, its okay, nobody will hurt you. Now, I understand that you have probably just had a very traumatic experience but I need you to focus. You can take any shape you like. You can be a human, a snail, a cucumber, a dog, a plant, anything. But whatever happens to your form, you cannot die. Obviously, this is because you’re already dead. You can even choose to remain without form, like this, as souls. Now a few smarty-pants will probably try to be a bear or a dragon or something, and feel free, but we find that a form that you are familiar with, such as the human form, is less of an extra thing to get used to. You will find that you can take form by concentrating on the image of the form you want in your head. Everybody, please take form, now. Its okay if you need a few minutes. Great, all humans. Form one, two, three four lines and follow me, please.”

“We will begin with a brief history. Hell was set up by Devil, for the people whom religion rejected. Now Dante and everyone else was right, there are different levels of hell – one for the really justified misdeeds like suicide, killing in self-defense, marrying outside your religion, adulterous thoughts, not succumbing to gender roles etc. Its kind of like Earth, without all the religious maniacs trying to make you feel bad about yourself. The second is for stuff that’s not yet quite considered justified even on earth – homosexuality, transgenderism, euthanasia, asexuality, atheism, nymphomania, nonviolent sociopathy. The third is for really bad stuff – bestialers, pedophiles, child murderers, genocidal people etc. Now you can choose where to be. The misdeeds are really a sort of guideline to help you decide, but you can be anywhere. Now, explore.”

Anastasia stayed in place uncertainly as the other souls slowly moved away. She decided to first add a little detail to her form. She had, on reflex, taken her own human form. She was short, yellowy complexioned with shoulder length dark brown hair to match her eyes. She wasn’t fat but she wasn’t thin enough to be considered hot. Looking down at herself, she increased her height by a few inches, added a curl or two to her hair, made her complexion a nice tan, and got green eyes with golden flecks. She increased her cup size and shaved off a few inches of tummy. She got rid of the bloodstained dress and dressed in capris and a T-shirt. She thought about a sexy dress, but decided she didn’t want the others to think she was trying too hard.

She looked down at herself appreciatively as she moved toward the first level. It seemed the safest. She shook her head at her own choice of phrase – safety didn’t matter, she could hardly die again. The level looked almost just like a regular city. She walked into what looked like a bar and ordered a drink.

The bartender looked her up and down, and said, “New, are you? The drink isn’t going to give you the courage you’re looking for and you can’t get drunk. Still want it?”

Anastasia considered. Finally, she nodded. She just wanted a familiar motion. She added as afterthought, “I don’t have any money. What do you use for money?”

The bartender laughed as he poured her drink and told her that there is no cost for anything in hell, “Your soul’s already damned, what good’ll money do?”

“Then why do you work? Why don’t you get everything for free and stay home?”

“Who says I work? I bartend because I like watching folks talk to each other, and occasionally have a newbie come talk to me.” He winked at her.

Anastasia felt her usual apprehension of strange men, but then decided she had nothing to lose. He couldn’t kill her, and if he tried to rape her, she’d just turn into a box or something. The thought of rape made her ask a question.

“Do you feel lust?”

He looked at her, genuinely interested, “That’s your second question as a newbie? Quite original. Well, you see, we’re souls. We can love. I can look at you and appreciate your body. I can think that I would like to have sex with you if we were human. But lust, my child, is a hormonal event. Fortunately, or otherwise, there are no hormones inside you. Your human form is like a façade. It is not the real thing. There are no actual veins and arteries and everything else. You imagine yourself to be so, and thus you are so. If you imagine yourself to be cut by what you imagine to be a knife, you would see blood, but not perceive pain, simply because you expect to see blood and thus subconsciously imagine it. Are you understanding?”

“Not really. Basically, I can’t feel lust or pain but I can love?”

The bartender nodded, disappointed that his theorizing had been wasted. “How do you know all this?”

“I have spent quite a lot of time here. In that time, I have observed and talked to people, and learnt things.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Let me see, when did you die?”

“2018”

“My, my, it will be fifty years next year. But I must tell you, here, everyone experiences time differently. You will not know whether a second has gone by or a year.”

“Then how did you know what I meant when I asked how long you have been here?”

“First, it’s a standard newcomer question. Second, I know because I can see your thoughts. Yes, yes, I can see the thoughts that you choose to share with me. When you share the question with me through your mouth, you intend to share it in its true sense with me, so it’s like you’re giving me permission to go in your head for the purpose of that one question only. Some people just have open thoughts that anyone can see.”

“Basically, if I let you, you can read my thoughts?”

“Yes.”

“So why doesn’t everyone communicate like that instead of speaking?”

“Some people do it out of habit. Others communicate like this.”

“I see. So, I can be a bartender too, if I want? I don’t have to send out resumes or do interviews?”

“Yeah. But unless enough people imagine your bar to exist, you’re just playing bartender in thin air and that doesn’t sound like fun.”

“But why would anyone imagine my bar to exist?”

“You tell them to? They like hanging out with you as a bartender?”

“I see. Thank you.” Anastasia turned and left. 

She didn’t like it when people implied that she should know things that she didn’t know. It rarely happened. She was, after all, in a different… dimension? Planet? How did it matter?

She decided to continue exploring. The first level of hell had really no semblance of social structure. People were just scattered about, doing their own thing in their heads. If Anastasia tried, she could see some of their worlds. They were mostly going about a daily routine. Anastasia thought most people would imagine themselves to be rich, but she kept forgetting that they didn’t have to eat, could look however they liked, and couldn’t die. What good was money here, really?

It was quite sad. People imagined married lives with people who had rejected them in life, or who continued to live while the helldweller was dead. They imagined lives with family members who were dead or estranged. Quite a few people who were probably from orthodox communities dreamt of a married life with their loved one and acceptance by their family. Infertile people dreamt about having kids. Some took revenge against the people who killed them, or the people they thought killed them. A lady who had died of cancer at seventy repeatedly shot her doctor because she thought he had been negligent.

Going around, Anastasia thought this wasn’t so bad. Where was purgatory? The legendary inferno? The red guy with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork who she had been taught to fear? She could get used to this. This was actually quite peaceful.

As she ventured into the second level, she began to see the beginnings of organized society. People were in groups, adding their bits and pieces to the collective imagining. Some were playing Earth games like scrabble with their imaginations.

Some created imaginary towns and cities and controlled the inhabitants. A man who had probably been a paraplegic created a hospital with every medical facility he could think of, which, of course, allowed euthanasia. An adulterer created a world without the institution of marriage – just what Earth people would call open relationships. Homosexual men and women fantasized a world where their orientation was normal – not bold, hated, illegal, frowned upon, used as a slur, or drew stares. A world where marriage was not assumed to be between man and woman and nobody would assume that any more than they would assume what someone else ate for lunch. Transgenders imagined a world where they could wear and behave as they liked.

These worlds connected to each other, because of the social nature of the second-level helldwellers. They did not make one continuous world, but they could, with a little effort from the helldwellers. Some were open and friendly to one another. Others had worlds of their own and preferred to be alone. Still others alternated. Everyone just did what they wanted. It did not hurt any of the others. They were all quite happy in the moment, although they felt sadness when they thought about their Earth lives.

As expected, there was a lot of hate for authority figures – a gay man had a dartboard with his father’s face on it. Anastasia later found out that the man had been sent to Catholic boarding school to ‘cure’ him of his ‘disease’ where he had been picked on, ridiculed, and traumatized to the point of needing intensive therapy. He developed an inferiority complex and social anxiety. He stopped growing from the age of ten to fifteen, and grew a few inches when he started going to therapy after the death of his father. His father was in heaven for having taken appropriate steps to weed out the boy’s ‘disease’, having asked forgiveness for it, and having attended Mass every Sunday for the better part of five decades.

A woman had a torture cell in her world for a Minister of State, her entire joint family, and a few police officers. Born in an affluent orthodox Brahmin Indian family, she had fallen in love with a lower-caste scholar. As soon as her family found out, they promptly had him killed. The Minister was a close family friend who had kept the killing out of the courts and the newspapers, and the police officers, instructed by him, had quietly looked the other way. Her twenty-five-year old lover with dreams of the Nobel had been beaten to a pulp and left dead in the sewers like vermin. She shot herself and her father after getting a hold of his gun.

Nearly everyone had a person that they hated with all their soul. It was not always for such serious things – mothers-in-law who had demanded that her daughter-in-law not pursue a career, drunken good-for-nothing husbands, disowned family, etc.

Anastasia liked the place but decided that it would take a little getting used to. She ventured into the third level of Hell with a sense of foreboding and gasped when she saw it. Here was the inferno that had inspired Dante. Here was the hellfire. The people were of all sorts – some looked like investment bankers and others could barely pass for human. Anastasia’s stomach turned as she realized that the hellfire was in their minds. They had created this, and their perversion had made them lose control of their own imaginings. The air was oppressive with heat and smoke – although there was a fire and a burning sensation, nothing actually happened to your body. The burning sensation, obviously, was not a physical one. Anastasia dimly registered that the feeling was similar to the burn of shame.

She stared, transfixed, at the visions created by their minds. One man held a little girl in his hands, she so small and he so big that his hand covered her torso. She could speak, but with a lisp, the picture of innocence. She wore a pink frock that just covered her behind which rode up as the man sat her in his lap. She turned, wide-eyed and smiling, to the man. With one gesture, the man ripped off the frock at which tears started running down her cheeks and she tried to free herself. Dirt from his hands smeared her chest as his fingers poked at nipples that could have been a boy’s. The large hand cupped her tiny bottom and as his fingers forced their way in between the child’s butt cheeks, Anastasia screamed. She resisted her impulse to try and save the child, since she knew it was a figment of his imagination.

She turned and ran.