#it’s hard to judge morals when they have a different society compared to our own | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fluxofthemouth · 8 months ago

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Piter listens gravely and respectfully, even nodding thoughtfully at the things meant as a challenge to him. He wasn't fully aware that Thursday has been carrying a dark burden, and he isn't sure what to make of it.

He isn't sure he even counts as someone who gets to judge other people. It was his job to cut people up and worse, so Baron Vladimir could achieve these desired results while keeping his own noble hands clean. That feels different from making some dark choices in one's personal history. Apples and oranges. A role and identity he shouldered vs. actions she has to live with.

He isn't inclined to 'toss her out an airlock' upon hearing she's made some hard choices, certainly. It was his role to be as perfectly objective as possible. Morality is a useful concept people invent, but it isn't fundamental. And he has to live with his own atrocities somehow. Even outside of work, he tends to be more curious about why people do the things they do, than he is judgmental about what it is they've chosen to do. He was never under the impression that a goal of society was to be 'moral'... perhaps there's a whimper of that pretense in the official story, but everybody grubbing for power in any capacity that they can is the true nature of the thing, and that's plain for anyone to...

Thursday is right. They waste time, comparing sins and shrinking into self-blame.

He puts his hand behind his back and looks mildly alarmed when Thursday offers to shake on a friendship.

"I'd get it wrong!" he whines. "I don't like to mix work and my personal life, sorry! And I hardly know you. I'll shake on our employment contract..."

He remembers the stipulation against recreational drugs just in time.

"...as it pertains to our dynamic, if you'd like. I'll work for you and for this ship like an ant. Do you... have any friends on board we can unfreeze for you, perhaps?"

Unlike Piter, Thursday is a complete whirlwind of emotion. She wants to get to the bottom of this right now, and her mind won't let her stop until she does. There have been many times over the course of her life where she has felt completely, utterly helpless - has been completely, utterly helpless - has had to watch things spiral out of her control, watch people die, and the idea of having something like that happen again. She can't. She has to take action.

So when Piter agrees to take action, it's like the sun comes out. Her expression brightens several shades and she has an extra spring in her step as they go.

Listening to him is a bit confusing, though. She isn't entirely sure what he's trying to tell her. The bit about the crew possibly being dead, that's easy enough to understand. She certainly hopes that's not the case, and if it is... well... they'll have to take it one step at a time. But at least then she'll know that they're dead and be able to face it head on.

And then he's talking about other things and it's mixing her all up and it almost shuts her own thoughts off, so she just listens and goes with it.

"Well- how were we supposed to know any of this was going to happen? How could we have possibly predicted sabotage, Piter? We were just sitting around drinking coffee and eating cookies and talking about music and stuff. There's no way we could have known this was going to happen. You can't hold yourself accountable for that - I mean, unless you can secretly see the future or something, but somehow I seriously doubt that."

"And I don't think emotions are a weakness, either. We feel them for a reason. Hell, we're born with them. If they had to- had to make you feel like feeling a certain way was wrong, well, then they'll have to answer to evolution. And I know what they'll probably say - something about how we don't need wisdom teeth anymore or our appendix. Am I right? Well. I guess that's a difference of our cultures. Then again," she says, relaxing a tiny bit since they're talking now, and running her mouth a bit more too, "you know... I never really told anybody this, but the place I came from? My last job? They were trying to manufacture emotions. And that's something different from another angle altogether."

"So you can tell me all you want about your culture and how you think I should be scared of you, but the thing is, right now, we're teammates, and if you knew some things about me... I think you'd probably want to toss me out an airlock. Or at the very least, you'd think of me very differently, Piter," she says. And she has no idea why she just said all that, but it was probably because he said so much in the first place, she thinks.

"So let's, stop- this- talking down on ourselves, please. Let's figure out what's going on here, and then later, once we've gotten this all settled and had our floor-breathing time, we can hash it all out. Right now I need my coworker and who I'd very much like to call my friend, and I'd like to be yours, and let's just- let's just get this done?" Thursday stops before they go into the cryo bay, wanting to shake on it - whether he means it or not, she certainly does.

Whether or not they shake on it, assuming they do still go in, Thursday is initially relieved when they check on their crewmates. At least, until they find the empty pods, and then she stops in her tracks.

"Okay," she says faintly. "Okay, so... That's a thing. I don't know what I expected. Um. Okay. So- Who- Okay."

That seems to be all she can say. Just "okay". And taking the piece of paper out of her pocket to just stare at the number written on it. Who did this?????

"Okay, I'm breathing. See? Breathing is happening. Let's- Let's check- Can we check the- the systems... I need- I want to see the- handwriting- handwriting- I want to check- Let me check that, please- Then we can sit on the floor- Just that one thing, I promise, then floor time."

Of course when they go to check the records, it's not anybody who's registered in there, and that's even more puzzling. But at least Thursday does as she has promised, and if Piter is agreeable to the whole breathing exercise thing, she certainly gives it a shot, because she certainly cannot parse anything else.

#the haunted office #lots of things going on!! I stopped it here to focus on this one & we'll pick up the other stuff soon #ty for waiting on threads! irl has been p wild lately ough

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tonya-the-chicken · 3 years ago

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I’m not going to change your views but it does feel a bit dismissive when you say it wasn’t that bad because he had rich parents who neglected him but hey they got a maid for him and he probably wasn’t outcasted or bullied so hey it’s not that bad right 🤷‍♀️! I don’t know he definitely didn’t have the worse out of the villains but I don’t know it felt a bit dismissive is all. Although we need to all remember these are fictional characters so have no idea why the other anon needed to get so aggressive! Also the person in the notes I don’t know how to say it but uh the whole the Todoroki’s had a rich father they didn’t have to work a day in their life take is not a good look. Just because someone has parents with money it doesn’t derail the fact that neglect can cause trauma.

Anyways for the real reason I sent this, you wonder why Dabi is so insane. Well take into account the neglect alongside the fact that he burnt to near death up on that hill alone at the age of what 13? That’s got to be extra traumatising, especially for a child that was already not mentally ok. We also don’t know what his circumstances were like after that fire, like was he homeless? Or picked up by someone nefarious? Kind of like AFO(not him exactly but someone nasty) who maybe fed on his brewing anger and hate instead of positive healing. I’m sure we will find out at some point? I don’t think it was just what happened in the Todoroki household or the fire that broke his mind? There had to be other factors after the fire after his “death”!

[[WARNING!!! I love Dabi as a character but I am not a woobifier so if you are too much into him don't read!!!! No complaints taken, y'all will be blocked for being rude I am too old to deal with people unable to interact with me in good faith (anon it's not for you, you are good and I can't understand your point of view I am just not as good as a person and too old for that shit)]]

I don't think I will change my mind either but I feel like the belief that every trauma is equally bad is just... Simply wrong. Like, we can legit compare this stuff and how badly it affects our brain, what do y'all think psychologists research 🤷‍♀️ Like, your therapist won't tell you this because it's not their job to make you understand you not the centre of the Earth (and it won't help because it is a legit trauma response that is very valid but is annoying you're fucking 25 yo). And to say that, neglectful parenthood is probably the worst parenthood style, as far as I know XD I wrote coursework about this (neglectful bitches are having a lot of need to make us the biggest victims (the bitches is me))... It also feels really American to me? Like, are we going to pretend people who got to live in a nice house and were neglect somehow got it as bad as people living in poverty or warzones? Hello? Imagine telling some orphan "I know you have no parents but actually, my trauma of my father not spending enough time with me is just as severe as yours". Bruh couldn't be me sorry... Like, even taking into account the fact that we can have weaker or stronger nervous systems or be more prone to depressive episodes *looks in the mirror and cries* I simply wouldn't find the guts to say my trauma is as severe as idk people who had physically abusive parents or no parents at all or who were disowned for being gay

And like **again** I am not saying that neglect is not traumatic I WAS NEGLECTED THIS IS TRAUMATIZING AS FUCK. I just am living in a country at war and with lots of discrimination problems and I like... Can't say I am the biggest victim. Sorry I can't though there were times when I was a lot more bitchy especially before being in therapy so I understand where you are coming from and I know what I am saying won't resonate with everyone (it's ok go on your own healing journey I believe in you) but this doesn't mean it is garbage and won't help me or someone else... I've already talked once about it but as a person, I am very easily irritated and envious and really not your local Jesus and partially my trauma turned me like this so being more humble about my sufferings helps me not be a complete bitch (believe me or not but people with traumas and mental illnesses are often insufferable *looks in the mirror* not me though I am perfect... BUT IT IS OK TO BE INSUFFERABLE OK??? like, bitch, that's normal. That's normal to stink when you are depressed it's ok to be a bitch when you are hurting. Forgive yourself because I forgive you (when you are not being an abusive asshole but if you apologize and explain yourself I will forgive that too)

The reason why I talk about the fact he is rich is that I've got a disease called leftism and I am a person of several marginalized identities and since this fandom LOVES looking at characters like real humans, I looked at Dabi this way. And if Dabi was a real human, I wouldn't sympathize with him one bit. I would fucking hate him for being the biggest entitled asshole who commits crimes for the reason his Daddy didn't give him attention. Bitch, my Dad didn't give me attention either! But somehow I don't kill people! And I don't even have money!!!! But like... I am not denying that neglectful parents are not a problem. It is. But he is overreacting, bro. He needs to humble down and recognize the fact he is a fucking idiot (he is). He has inherently so much more resources to recover and heal himself than I had... Yes, I am just being jealous at this point but honestly. Making an entire country suffer for you is not a good thing and y'all need to stop using trauma and mental illness as an excuse for people. No! Being abusive to people because of neglect is not valid, is overreacting and you had no reason to do that. I am dismissing your trauma because you are exaggerating it to make me sympathize with your asshole behaviour. I won't judge people with different sets of standards as I judge myself

I bet it would be dismissive and bad if I said it in conversation with someone who is currently struggling with mental health and is not a murderer. But guess what! I don't talk with humans and my friends the same way I talk on my Tumblr about fictional characters 🤷‍♀️ Not to mention I don't have rich friends akabsksbxm

I think with Dabi there's this whole thing where we saw him at 14 (poor baby boy) and 24 (a grown-ass boy) and... Like, I am so sorry for 14 years old Touya not receiving the help he needs (bruh so relatable) but I am not gonna act like 24 years old bitch can't get his ass to a psychiatrist (extremely unrelatable and infuriating). We shouldn't apply the same standards to kids and adults. We can talk all day long about how society is bad and how our parents ruined us but at some points, you gotta take your life into your own hands and do something and be an adult. And it's fucking hard when you're born with a shitty brain that was fucked up by your parents even more in a society where no one gives a fuck but I sincerely don't know another way to live. You will feel bad and want to die but you either keep on recovering or keep on getting worse and at this point getting worse is Dabi's *choice* That's how I live, that's my framework and I am, of course, extremely fortunate in a lot of ways but I just don't know how are you supposed to survive without the notion that grown people are responsible for themselves and their mental health. We can't act like adults are babies

But as a character, Dabi is fucking hot ngl. Like, do I sometimes want to murder my entire family, make them suffer AND commit terrorist attacks? We all do. Dabi is the dark fantasy of us neglectful bitches craving some attention. Gotta kill the president and tell everyone that my Dad sucks. Imagine the entire country hearing your Dad sucks? That's the juice, that's the dream. Trauma makes you vicious. I get the sentiment. Imagine all those fuckers who made you feel like shit pissing their pants and crying? Imagine your Mom being afraid of you the way you used to be afraid of her? People do have the desire for some violent justice but like... Think of bullied kids committing school shootings. But instead of a kid, it's a grown man who graduated school and who also have a rich father

Ok too much about irl stuff and philosophy shit. I know my way of talking is kinda brute so just know the way I treat people is different from that I treat fictional characters, in particular, I don't call real-life humans submissive and breedable... And stuff...

Damn Dabi is kinda good to project your hatred of your parents in bruh, I should write a fanfic about that (would be cathartic)

To the plotline, I am also very interested in what the hell happened with him after burning because... How the hell he wasn't found? I kind of DON'T want him to be groomed at this point because I feel like it won't be as cool as him just more naturally evolving into what he became. Like, surely, he is an asshole but consider this: as a villain, he is morally obligated to be an asshole

I feel like someone hiding him and Touya overstating the gruesomeness of his living conditions to the dude so he feels *bad* for him and hides him and feels sympathy and Touya gets attention but also begins to reassure himself in the fact his Dad needs to be punished... Idk it's a lot of mystery but I feel like more suffering won't deliver the point the way I want it... I mean it CAN be handled this way and initially I thought a lot about Dabi being brainwashed a bit or having his memories altered so it seems worse to him or even him being groomed or lied too but nowadays I am not into it. I mean I believe in Horikoshi and that he will handle him well 🛐

I talk a lot so I will summarize

If we judge him as a real human

14 yo Touya - DID NOTHING WRONG IN HIS LIFE PROTECT HIM

24 yo Dabi - go fuck yourself bitch you older than me and act like a child and kill people, I couldn't care less about your trauma rich boy

If you want me to talk as his psychologist

Yeah, it is painful and sad, I understand him so much and surely, his trauma is valid as is his hatred but probably revenge won't bring him what he wants. And what he wants is love and attention. But he gotta make choices that will lead to his healing. He needs to *want* to heal. And we will step by step go to the healing because it is possible. He is loved and he is enough. AND YOU ALL MOTHERFUCKERS WILL HEAL I BELIEVE IN YOU BESTIES

Also his therapist (behind his back)

You won't believe it but my client is the most infantile attention whore I've ever met

But if we talk about him as a character... Very delicious soup

If you talk with your friends

Please, if your friends are being abusive to you or someone else don't even LET them say how their trauma made them this way. No. Nothing allows you to be an abuser. Call them out and stop them and make them talk to the therapist. Like, surely, there are extreme situations like severe mental illnesses or extreme neglect where we should be more forgiving but babying adults won't do you any good and won't make them recover

Yeah, I guess this is what I forgot to say. When I say "it wasn't that bad" what I mean is that I would be more forgiving to people who had it worse. It's more of a personal measure where I can tolerate stuff from people who had particular traumas or from those who suffered greatly (it's not my place to be a bitch here). I can forgive 14 years old or a poor person for stealing stuff but not the 25-year-old man who got no need for money and is not a kleptomaniac. I would be more forgiving to Shigaraki than to Dabi because Shigaraki was groomed a whole lot. Same for Toga, who is not even an adult or Twice who is a poor orphan. But that doesn't mean I would forgive them completely. All of them are shitty people. It's just that they had fewer resources and possibilities to not be what they became while Dabi had more but he acts like he is extremely hurt and the biggest victim which is like... There will be people like this in your life, please, don't make friends with them, they WILL abuse you

I talked a lot damn. It's adhd I can't shut up

#asks #bnha #bnha manga spoilers #todoroki touya #bnha dabi #killing people is a legit coping mechanism #I mean I possibly do sound dismissive I am very brute in my talking but I really can't be bothered #all I am saying that I am not dismissing neglect what I am dismissing is the idea that is is bad enough to justify Dabi's reaction #neglect was bad Dabi's reaction is disproportionate though #you. don't get to kill people because your Dad didn't love you #you do get to kill people if those people killed your family #just so you understand #I got tired of talking

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letteredlettered · 4 years ago

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hi! ive been following your writing for a few years now and i drop by periodically to check if you have anything new posted, and im really surprised that you seem to be enjoying the untamed? im curious what you think about the show - its story and characters, the acting, the production, etc. idk if you know, but the untamed is the most successful example of a current trend in chinese entertainment, where popular online novels centered around a gay romance is adapted into a 'safe' drama.

continued:

due to the many explicit and implicit restrictions imposed on creative media in china, many crucial plot points have to be changed (often badly) or removed, including the nature of the relationship between the main characters. the untamed is considered the most loyal adaptation so far, but like all other works in the genre, it received criticism for weak acting and queerbaiting. that's why im really curious about what you think of the show as it is, as itself, free from its context.

if you're interested, you could also check out guardian! it features much better performance and chemistry by the leads imo, but the story was heavily botched bc the original incorporates and reinvents a lot of classic chinese folklore beautifully and stuff like that is considered disrespectful and not-pc. i think it's really sad how so many great pieces of writing with complex world-building and plotlines are simplified into... idek what to call them, but just, less than what they are.

im sorry this turned into a rant. as a mainland chinese person with oh so many frustrations about our current society, it's hard to comprehensively describe my feelings about the untamed's popularity. it's the first mainland chinese show/movie to gain this much organic interest abroad so i should be glad? but, but. anyway, yes, im sorry.

There’s no need to apologize for ranting, but I admit to some confusion as to whether you want your question addressed or the rant. Because I’m me and tend to be thorough, I’ll address everything, in reverse order.

First of all, I’m sorry that this show is sad to you. I’m sorry that the popularity of it is difficult. I’m also deeply sympathetic to your frustrations about your society, as I too am deeply frustrated by my own.

Secondly, yes, I’m aware of the context of The Untamed. I’m aware that the book it’s based on is a BL novel, and that, in order to align with Chinese politics, overt queerness was erased from the adaptation. I’m aware of the censure laws of gay media in China. I’m also aware that some aspects of necromancy and morality were adjusted to make the show more palatable for general audiences, but I’m fuzzier on those details. Lastly, I’m aware that the popularity of the show calls attention to certain things, such as fanfic, and that attention results in more censorship,

The fact of this erasure and this censure provokes a lot of questions: by consuming this product, which contains erasure and censure, do we engage in the erasure and censure? By posting gifs and writing fanfic and talking about this product, do we increase its popularity, thereby encouraging additional erasure and censure? By increasing the popularity of this product, do we diminish the popularity of the original gay morally gray canon, thereby decreasing representation? Do we discourage other authors in China from writing explicitly gay morally gray material? In short, are we allowed to enjoy this media?

I don’t know the answer to these questions. However, I do know that boycott is a very effective tool when it can inflict economic pain on the producer, or when it can exert pressure on an entity to change. That said, I feel like a lot of the calls to boycott certain media these days are a lot like telling people to stop driving their cars to stop climate change: it’s suggesting that individuals can solve the problem, which presupposes individuals are the problem, and therefore fails to address the scope of the problem, or present the possibility of a real solution. Not watching The Untamed isn’t going to change laws about portrayals of homosexuality onscreen in China, partly because the laws in China are a much bigger problem.

The other part of it is that The Untamed is coded queer, so if you run a successful boycott against it, you end up with . . . less queer TV. I know a whole lot less about China than I do about the Hays Code, but if you had told gay people during the Golden Age of Hollywood that they couldn’t enjoy movies that were coded queer because they weren’t explicitly queer, they’d have said you were crazy. In fact, many people will tell you that media that was coded queer was a big reason we got more explicit queer stuff later. And as I’m sure you’re aware, the US is still fighting that battle . . . partly because it wants to sell movies to China.

So then there’s a question about whether me, an American in the US, liking something coded queer from China but not explicitly queer--does that encourage Chinese censorship? Should I only support texts that are explicitly queer? But the answer is the same--it’s not addressing the scope of the problem, and by supporting texts that are coded queer, you could be paving the way in the future for something brighter.

But you weren’t talking about boycott! You were talking about your discomfort with the popularity with this show, which I accept. I understand feeling uncomfortable. I can only hope it makes you a bit more comfortable to know that plenty of fans are deeply aware of the context and do wrestle with the question of what liking this show means in the context of a society that would never allow aspects of the original to be portrayed onscreen.

Thirdly, I’m not against trying Guardian at some point, but by comparing the acting and chemistry of the leads to The Untamed, I feel like you prove our tastes are very different in these regards. I love the acting of the leads in The Untamed; I found their chemistry off the charts. It’s okay you don’t feel the same.

Lastly, you asked my opinion of The Untamed: its story and characters, the acting, the production, sans context of the canon upon which its based and censorship laws in China.

a. I love the overall story, but the plot has deep plot holes. Quite a few segments do not actually make sense to me, because the plot is so haywire. However, I’ve never cared that much about plot, except when it gets in the way of characters and themes, and for the most part, this plot serves its characters and themes, except when the parts they leave out are so confusing that I cannot follow the story. As for the story, it feels like it’s built for me, because ultimately it’s about moral decisions and how to make them; it’s about guilt and paying for mistakes; it’s about learning, changing your mind, and remaking yourself. Really, I’m not sure there are many stories I love more--except they killed my favorite character, and I almost quit. So, that certainly put a damper on things.

b. I love the characters most of all, although the villains are really two-dimensional. However, large parts of the plot are not Hero vs Villain, they’re Hero vs Society, and then some Hero vs Himself in a way that suggests the Hero is no longer a hero. I could talk about the characters forever, but suffice it to say I think they’re really strong. Also, the relationships are really exquisite, particularly when it comes to family dynamics. Unfortunately, they killed my favorite character off. Also unfortunately, there are six women in this show, only two of them are main characters, and every single one of them dies. It disgusts me.

c. I think the two leads are exceptional, in particular Xiao Zhan . . . when he’s not being too broad, which he is quite a bit. However, I do wonder how much of this is direction and production style, because in many instances, he’s quite subtle, and the choices he makes are astounding. Then there are times where it’s like they needed more footage, or wanted to drive home a point, and he turns on the extra, and it’s awful. It could just be him, but I actually feel it’s the case with most of the actors, which does make me think it’s a directing issue. Meng Ziyi never really has that problem though, because she is the most perfect of all. But then take He Peng, who I actually thought could be incredible, but every scene was just SO BROAD that I began to feel sorry for the poor dude having to act that part. But there is nothing to be said for Wang Zhuo Cheng, who really is just terrible, which is sad, because it’s a great part.

d. Production-wise, it’s really hit and miss. So much of the locations are truly beautiful. A lot of the costumes are too, unless the shot is too close. I actually don’t mind the wigs; I love the long hair. The CGI is terrible. And then while a lot of the shots are beautiful, some of them are awkward, and the pacing is really difficult, imo. It really seems like they wanted to drag it out, and there are so, so many scenes where I’m sort of embarrassed that we’re in the same scene or that we’re still looking at someone’s face, or that everyone is just standing there waiting for the shot to finally end.

I will say that film is a language that does differ from culture to culture. It could be that both the broadness of the acting and the awkwardness of the editing are my cultural lens based on American and a lot of western film. When I watched older Hollywood films, the acting is a lot more broad and maybe a little less “true” feeling, but I understand that it’s not the case everyone in the past was a bad actor. It was just a different style, so I’m not sure I’m equipped with the cultural knowledge of Chinese acting, cinematography, and editing to be able to really judge the value of these things.

I do know how I feel, which is that the editing is the biggest hurdle for me while watching the show. However, I feel that the beauty of it makes up for a lot, and the strength of the characters and themes really carries it.

I hope I addressed your points adequately, and I wish you well.

#Anonymous #the untamed #china

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frankendeers · 5 years ago

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Kylux and the Queer Literary Tradition

So, I have seen a lot of people talk about Kylux in terms of queer fetishisation or even labelling it a “crack ship”.

The discourse has somehow made Kylux out to be this straight-girl fantasy where two men are simply shipped because they are white and handsome. Such an unfavourable interpretation completely takes away from many Kyluxers being queer and/or poc themselves as well as shaming straight people for seeing queer potential where it’s not canonically stated to be. Since the comic came out, there has been much elation because it finally “confirms” some of the things that appeal to Kyluxers, therefore justifying the ship. I don’t think, however, that Kylux has ever been anything but rather conventional in its queer subtext. Kylux falls in line with a long tradition of homoerotic aggression between two men. I will try to put this into words as eloquently as I can.

First, let’s talk about how Kylo Ren/Ben Solo and Armitage Hux are queer coded on their own before moving on to their relationship.

Armitage Hux is almost comically queer coded. The act of feminising a villain to subtly convey to the audience that he is gay and therefore “morally reprehensible” has been a practice since the Hays code era (in some respects even before that -as the Victorian Age marks the beginning of our modern understanding of gender and subsequently, its subversion). He is seen to be physically weak, petty, moving and snarling and “bitching” in a way society would stereotypically ascribe to women.

His British Accent, at least from an American point of view, already marks his sexuality as ambiguous. This is not helped by the fact that he speaks in an abnormally posh way, alienating himself from the common people.Hereby, the movies draw a well-established line between decadence/queer and pragmatic/heteronormative.

In the “Aftermath” trilogy Brendol Hux states his son to be “weak willed” and “thin as a slip of paper and just as useless”, robbing him of his masculinity – no matter how ridiculous of an endeavour this is when talking about a four-year old boy. Hux is very early on criticised for not fitting into a socially expected form of manhood. This is especially evident when one compares him to his resistance rival, Poe Dameron. Now, Dameron has his own set of queer coding, but he is shown to be what is commonly viewed as “acceptably queer”. He is masculine, trained and proactive. When he ridicules Hux at the beginning of The Last Jedi, there is this juxtaposition of the helpless, feminine villain and the dashing, superior male hero. Hux is supposed to be judged as vain and arrogant while Poe takes risks and although reckless, is somehow to be admired. Further, Hux is constantly abused. He is thrown into walls letting out high pitched screams, runs away in the face of danger (as seen in the recent comic) and is pushed around by his own subordinates. His strength lies in being cunning and calculated, not stereotypically masculine virtues.

Hux’s destructive powers, his monstrosity so to speak, also follow a long-standing tradition of queer villainization. Harry Benshoff’s The Monster and The Homosexual articulates this as follows:

“[...] repressed by society, these socio-political and psychosexual Others are displaced (as in a nightmare) onto monstrous signifiers, in which form they return to wreak havoc […]” (Benshoff 65).

And what other, than a socio-political Other, is Armitage Hux - the Starkiller?

Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, too, is touched by the mark of queerness. It is no coincidence that despite his raw power and muscular physique, Kylo Ren has not been adopted by hegemonic masculinity in the same way Han Solo has, for example. When the logical is traditionally seen as masculine, the realms of pure and unfiltered emotionality is feminine. And Kylo Ren is unrestrained in his vulnerability, his tears, his pain – People make fun of the dramatic ways he gives words to his feelings precisely because it is regarded as weak, as whiny, as “womanly”. His long curly hair, full lips and dress-like costume only strengthens this impression. Kylo Ren is an amalgam of masculine aggression and feminine expressiveness. Some of his outbursts even remind of the pseudo-illness of hysteria. The gendered lines are blurred and unclear in Kylo Ren, diffusing any efforts to appease the binary. Benshoff describes this as a form of queer existence which does not only constitute itself in opposition to what is considered normal but “ultimately opposed the binary definitions and prescriptions of a patriarchal heterosexism” (Benshoff 63).

Both are not easily categorised. They are patched up by multiple, gendered signifyers. Kylo Ren’s masculine body in contrast to his femininized fashion. Hux’s slender body with his stiff and masculinised military get-up. Hux’s toxic tendency to avoid showing his emotions while also being shown as weak, womanly, cowardly. Kylo Ren is an excellent warrior, yet simultaneously being prone to emotional outbursts. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s famous work Monster Theory (Seven Theses) elaborates upon this further, while acknowledging that queer figures are most commonly depicted as the monstrous Other:

“The refusal to participate in the classificatory “order of things” is true of monsters generally: they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration.” (Cohen 6).

Nonetheless, many queer people feel empowered by these figures. Lee Edelman theorises in his polemic No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive about the nature of queerness as a force of cultural resistance. According to Edelman, the queer must always refuse societal expectations of a perpetual future and embrace the death drive instead. In this sense, queerness stands in direct opposition to futurity as it negates any meaning in sexual reproduction and marriage (cp. Edelman 13). When Hux destroys planets, when Kylo Ren proposes to burn it all down “The Empire, your Parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi”, they are not merely killing the past. They are also negating the worth of categories that make up future and present alike. They are resisting the heteronormative values of production.

Now that we have the puzzle pieces that illustrate how Hux and Kylo are queer figures in on themselves, it might be interesting to examine how they work together.

In her text “Epistemology of the Closet”, Eve Sedgwick talks about a common gothic trope where two men are caught in a feud full of mutual hatred. In this case, both men are mirror images of one another, making them especially vulnerable to the other’s advances: "[…] a male hero is in a close, usually murderous relation to another male figure, in some respects his 'double', to whom he seems to be mentally transparent."

Kylo and Hux are very clearly mirrors of one another. Aside from the gendered oppositions I have already illustrated, they are each other’s double in every sense of the word. Born on opposite ends of an age-old war. Both caught in complicated relationship with their fathers whom both have killed out of opposite motivations (loving them too much vs. hating them with a passion). They represent the opposite ends in the binaries for logic vs. spirituality, restraint vs. wildness, control vs. sensuality, technology vs. nature etc.

This shot from The Last Jedi shows both of them mirroring each other visually, henceforth strengthening this impression.

They are "mentally transparent" to each other, because they are different sides of the same coin which Snoke tossed around to his whims. Even their aggression takes on erotic forms. It is hard to deny the homoerotic implications in choking another men to make him submit, forcing him onto his knees. The breaching of personal spaces and looming over each other, the obsessive need to prove one’s own worth to the male other with which one is engaged in a homosocial bond:

“The projective mutual accusation of two mirror-image men, drawn together in a bond that renders desire indistinguishable from prédation, is the typifying gesture of paranoid knowledge.” (Sedgwick 100).

And through all of this, I have not even talked about the collaborative potential between the two of them. Their instinct to protect one another despite insiting the opposite. How both of them could overcome their trauma by engaging with the other, who suffered so similarly under family obligation and Snoke’s abuse.

Works Cited:

Benshoff, Harry: “The Monster and the Homosexual.” In: Harry Benshoff (ed. and introd.)/Sean Griffin (ed. and introd.): Queer Cinema, the Film Reader. New York: Routledge 2004. Pp. 63-74.

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)." Jeffrey Jerome (ed. and preface) Cohen: Monster Theory: Reading Culture (1996): 3-25.

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. ,2004. Print.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick. Epistemology Of the Closet. Berkeley, Calif. :University of California Press, 2008.

#Kylux #Armitage Hux #Kylo Ren #Ben Solo #General Hux #Hux #Benarmie #Kylux meta #sw #sw meta #sw analysis #tfa #tlj #long post #long text #hux comic #huxlo

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michaelbranch · 4 years ago

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A Brief Summary of Ideas: The Madness of Crowds

*These summaries are kept intentionally very brief, just hitting what I consider some of the important/interesting takeaways, most word-for-word or paraphrased. My goal is also to stick to ideas/principals that might guide others (or my future self) in deciding the value of a read (or re-reading). T = takeaway, Q = Question

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity

Author: Douglas Murray

Assumption that a heightened moral knowledge comes with being an oppressed/minority group. "Speaking as a ..."

All these causes started as legitimate human rights campaigns.

Gay

Can't award yourself the right to attribute motives to others that you can't see but which you suspect. Prerequisite for avoiding perpetual confrontation is an ability to listen to people's words and hold some trust in them.

Problem of changing societal positions so swiftly is that unexplored issues and arguments are left behind in the wake.

We still don't have much idea as to why some people are gay.

Hardware = something people can't change (and thus shouldn't be judged on). Software = can be changed (and thus may be available for judgement). Inevitably there will be a push to make some software issues into hardware.

LGBT groupings composition is unsustainable and contradictory. Internal frictions and contradictions even within groupings.

Some heterosexuals are genuinely disturbed by gay people. Plenty of stages between absolute equanimity and ease around people and a desire to violently attack them.

Marxist Foundations

See society not as an infinitely complex system of trust and traditions evolved over time, but solely through the prism of power.

Anyone who questions an "ism" finds themselves accused. Easy weapons to wield with no price to pay for wielding them unfairly.

When it is nearly impossible to tell what is being said, almost anything can be said, and exceptionally dishonest arguments can be smuggled in under the guise of complexity. T= be weary of arguments that can't be presented simply.

Women

Society has doubled down on the belief that biological difference can be denied or ignored.

T= When people make exaggerated claims about what someone else said, its likely an example of people deliberately and lazily adopting simplified misrepresentations of the argument in order to avoid the difficult discussion that would otherwise have to take place.

Contradictory statement = possible to be sexy without being sexualized

Presumption that almost all relationships in the workplace and elsewhere are centered around the exercise of power. Various types of power; many parties can hold different ones.

Privilege is unbelievably hard to define or quantify. How can strata be arranged to be flexible enough to include everyone but consider various comparative changes throughout life. Also, easier to see in others but more difficult to see in ourselves.

Intersectionality is not a fully worked out science.

Concept of the patriarchy has become so ingrained its rarely disputed.

Impact of Tech

If we are running in the wrong direction; tech helps us run faster.

Internet has allowed new forms of activism and bullying. To find people accused of "wrong thing" works because it rewards the bully.

"The one thing we can say with certainty about the advent of new technologies is that people overestimate their impact in the short term and underestimate their impact over the long term." -Variously attributed.

What we say in one place may be posted in another, not just for the whole world but for all time. Having to find a way to speak and act as though it may be in front of everyone. To speak in public is now to have to find a way to address or keep in mind every possible variety of person.

T= Don't sacrifice truth in the pursuit of a political goal.

Race

Some portion of black studies started attacking non blacks. Growth of "whiteness studies" w/ aim of disrupting racism by problematizing "whiteness". Displaces celebratory nature of many race studies to with problematizing others.

Catastrophizing has become one of the distinctive attitudes of the era.

Q= Should we seek color blindness (get beyond race to individual judgement, making skin color effectively an unimportant aspect of a person's identity)?

An idea that since everything was set up by a structure of white hegemony everything is laced with racism and therefore everything must be done away with.

If people got things so wrong in the past, how can you be sure you are acting appropriately today?

Important in crowd maddening mechanism: person who professes themselves most aggrieved gets the most attention. Rewards outrage over sanguinity.

Politicizing issues such that the speaker and their innate characteristics don't matter. What matters is the speech and ideas they give voice to.

Easy(er) to slip up not on an issue of motive but, especially when no other evidence is available, a crime of language.

Social media age has brought us opportunity to publish uncharitable and disingenuous interpretations of what other people have said.

Equality of opportunity AND outcome almost certainly impossible.

Forgiveness

T= Context collapse: conversation/act taken out of context and used to create a simplified version of a person or their beliefs.

Q= How, if ever, is our age able to forgive? Since everybody errs during their life there must be - in any healthy person or society - some capacity to be forgiven. Part of forgiveness is the ability to forget. The internet will never forget.

Actions have consequences that are unbounded and limitless. Constantly acting in a web of relationships in which every action starts a chain reaction. A single word or deed could change everything.

Without being forgiven we would remain the victim of the consequences forever.

T= Historically perpetrators and offended both die out and the grievance fades over time. Internet leaves a permanent record.

Internet helps people approach the past from an all-knowing angle. Retributive instinct of our time that suggests we know ourselves to be better than people in history because we know how they behaved and how we "would have" behaved.

To view the past with some degree of forgiveness is among other things an early request to be forgiven in return.

Trans

Every age before this one has performed or permitted acts that to us are morally stupefying.

A considerable range of cultures has adapted to the idea that some people may be born in one body but desire to live in another.

For intersex people, the question of what medical intervention might be suitable and when is a matter of serious contention.

Very hard to know how to navigate the leap beyond biology into testimony.

Still almost nowhere near understanding trans; including how common it is.

Autogynephilia: arousal that comes from imagining yourself in the role of the opposite sex.

Q= whether what one person believes to be true about themselves has to be accepted as true by other people?

Questions about the age at which people who believe they are in the wrong body should be allowed to access drugs and surgery are worth considering.

Q= What do you need to do to be content with your body, not change it?

Seems we're running to quickly on the trans issue, scared to be on the wrong side of history.

Some contention between trans and feminist ideas.

T= little contention that equal rights should be given. Issue is preconceptions and assumptions about how to go about tackling the issue.

Q=Claims of human rights violations are inversely proportionate to the number of violations in a country. -Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Only a very free society would permit (or encourage) claims about its own inequities.

T= when people attempt to sum up our societies in terms of simplistic structures ask, "compared to what". Not to say elements of our society can't be improved.

The victim is not always right, nice, deserves no praise, and may not be a victim.

Incline towards generosity when interpreting others words/acts.

-People are wiling to interpret remarks from their own tribe in a generous light while reading opposing ones in as negative a light as possible.

To assume that sex, sexuality, and skin color mean nothing would be ridiculous. To assume that they mean everything would be fatal.

The madness we are living through is an over-reaction to past injustice. Belief is that the fastest and best way to address this is to over-compensate.

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fleomae · 4 years ago

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MMS 194: JOURNAL

Beginning this journal with the ultimate art question of "What does art mean to you?"

I liked what Thomas McEvilley, professor of art history in Rice University said, "The last time I was in Houston, I went to a place called Media Center, where someone had set up posts as in a back yard with laundry hung all over. I immediately knew it was an artwork because of where it was. If I had seen it hanging in someone's yard, I would not have known whether it was art, though it might have been. It is art if it is called art, written about in an art magazine, exhibited in a museum or bought by a private collector.".

To continue with his point, "What's hard for people to accept is that issues of art are just as difficult as issues of molecular biology; you cannot expect to open up a page on molecular biology and understand it. This is the hard news about art that irritates the public. if people are going to be irritated by that, they just have to be irritated by that.".

Something I also find meaningful to this most asked question is perfectly worded by Arthur Danto from Art critic of The Nation, he says, "You can't say something's art or not art anymore. That's all finished. There used to be a time when you could pick out something perceptually the way you can recognize, say, tulips or giraffes. But the way things have evolved, art can look like anything, so you can't tell by looking. Criteria like the critic's good eye no longer apply. Art these days has very little to do with esthetic responses; it has more to do with intellectual responses. You have to project a hypothesis: Suppose it is a work of art? Then certain questions come into play -- what's it about, what does it mean, why was it made, when was it made and with respect to what social and artistic conversations does it make a contribution? If you get good answers to those questions, it's art. Otherwise it turned out just to be a hole in the ground."

And as a religious type of person I find this short saying from Robert Hughes striking. He says, "The Puritans thought of religious art as a form of idolatry, a luxury a distraction, morally questionable in its essence, compared to the written and spoken word.”.

From here you can see the art differences from Catholics, Orthodox, and the many many denominations of Protestantism. I guess growing up in the Philippines most art I experience is about the religious if not historical. It's always been my dream to visit France and Rome to come and see all the "art" people are identifying as but as society moves forward with nano technology, we can see many forms of Computational Art.

For example are the three below...

Digital illustrations, sounds cool right? Well, I was thinking of Digital Kinetic Art at first but I couldn't find an artist that purely does a digital version, so I had to look for other options until I finally found this amazing artist named Sean Charmatz. He was born on August 28, 1980, in San Diego, California. He is an animator of Spongebob Squarepants, LEGO Movie 2, and Trolls. He spent several years as a writer, artist, and storyboard director for the television show Nickelodeon. He also shared his digital art talents with the companies like Dreamworks and Disney.

He is making the mundane normal ordinary things as something worth looking at, with a story to portray from scratch!!! Looking into his art, I don't know if I have a bias reason because I grew up watching Spongebob and I really like the show and other types of cartoons too like "The Adventure Time", "Princess Sophia", "Barbie Movies", "Dora the Explorer", "The Amazing World of Gumball", and the like. It's something I find pleasurable as a younger child (actually until now, but I don't have the leisure time I used to have), and as I see his newest digital illustrations, I can't help but be in awe and smile with a childlike smirk. I might do something like this as he inspired me to make the mundane objects into something fun with a cool story to tell.

Especially now during pandemic, and everyone is asked to stay indoors and minimize social interactions at most. We should be creative to learn in entertaining ourselves and making the most of our everyday situations. He is truly inspiring, and maybe with the practice I'll do, I might be able to make cute short children's comics for the next generation.

Here are some of his recent digital illustrations,

Moving from visuals let's talk about our hearing, let's talk about Generative Music. Majority of my life I've been listening to Pop songs and classical ones, usually made the traditional way 100% human, learning about this algorithm or computer composed type of music is a bit odd for me because it feels technical and numbers complicated, in a way distant and out of touch. Computers are a recent invention by the human race, so we can understand why more and more innovations related to it are still growing everyday, a lot of people who doesn't see it's importance will be left behind and soon enough more and more generative music art will enter the music scene, digital divide will be inevitable.

This type of music scene is "experimental" as it's unknown to a lot of possibilities and very different from the traditional music producers and artists, we still don't know how will it click, is it a fad or here to stay? I'm not sure, but I think more types of sounds will be incorporated in music, specially in movies and other types of effects if it doesn't get popularity in the music industry.

Hatsune Miku, the first ever open-source singer is having popularity around people specially those who like anime and the things of its kind. Only this year I was able to discover this type of music scene and I never expected that Hatsune Miku Youtube music has millions and millions of viewers and subscribers. Music analysis software exists that can predict hits with increasing accuracy, and Google Labs have an ersatz neural network up and running that can make convincing music. Along with all the other jobs currently being destroyed by automation, it looks like the most human of all – music – is under threat.

To move forward let’s go back in 2017, I liked this guy from the College of Business Administration and he is one of those cool distant type of guy who gives this big mystery vibe, and what do you do when someone is mysterious? You stalk them online, so I did and that's how I found out about "hello poetry". I didn't know digital poetry actually has a term, a name but I knew it has a community online, which is cool because you can make an online library and records of all your poems easily accessible online if you're into this thing. I actually joined the platform "hello poetry" after reading a ton about my crush's online poems, in a way I was inspired. Once you join it's nice to see other poets about their works, what others are raving about, and sometimes judge inevitably although some are very beautiful others are also unconventionally short and seems like a tweet. This category of art can fall on art & literature which is something purely human, well as of now. Soon enough computers will be able to make their own poems, maybe there already is.

Here's a link to my first and only poem I published in the community, https://hellopoetry.com/fleomae/

#MMS194 artjournal computationalart #essay

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sepublic · 4 years ago

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Unusual opinion incoming, but I really feel like It Has To Be This Way from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance kind of works as a song about how Eda and Lilith view one another, with the perspective interchangeable between the two?

Just hear me out on these lyrics as I try to apply them to the siblings’ dynamic;

Standing here

I realize

You are just like me

Trying to make history

I’ve speculated before that Eda and Lilith, as much as they are polar opposites, are also very similar to one another; That they in some ways parallel Azura and Hecate, but the roles they take are also interchangeable as well. Meaning Eda could be Azura and Lilith is Hecate, but also vice-versa (and that’s not even taking into account the old lady that Azura hangs out with in the books, but I digress). They’re both frustrated with their sibling for doing something they see as morally wrong (Being an outlaw/Supporting a corrupt system), and stand strongly by their own choices. Still, they care deeply for the other sibling, while also possibly being a bit too dismissive of what the other has to say.

The lyrics above could work as Eda/Lilith recognizing the duality between the two, how they’re both the same person, with the same issues and the same sibling. Eda is ‘making history’ by actively defying the Coven System, while Lilith is fostering the next generation of Witches, ushering in a ‘new age of controlled magic’.

But who’s to judge

The right from wrong

When our guard is down

I think we’ll both agree

That

Violence breeds violence

But in the end it has to be this way

What we have here works with how Eda and Lilith both think they’re doing the right thing, and accuse the other of doing the ‘wrong’ thing. Mind you, in both the original context of this song as well as where we’re applying it here, one of the two in this duality is still framed from the narrative as being in the wrong, and rightfully so; But generally speaking, this line plays with the idea that both characters genuinely believe in what they’re doing. And for Eda and Lilith, both legit care for the other and want them to realize the error of their ways, so to speak.

“Violence breeds violence” doesn’t exactly apply to this situation, but then again this song wasn’t used to describe Eda and Lilith, but two very different characters in a very different situation. But the line could also be one sister admitting that their conflict with the other is possibly going to get worse due to their different stances; But alas, neither sibling can stand down. Both believe in what they’re doing, and both believe they’re doing what’s best for the other; In Eda’s case, she wants Lilith to abandon the Emperor’s Coven, but Lilith thinks Eda should join it instead. Eda in particular may have suffered from ostracization and been rejected by society, but I doubt she regrets what she’s done; She clearly lives by and embraces her deviancy, and if given the chance to do it again, she will. ‘It has to be this way’, indeed.

I’ve carved my own path

You followed your wrath

But maybe we’re both the same

This verse can refer to Eda and Lilith both suffering to get where they are; Lilith likely had to work incredibly hard to not only join the Emperor’s Coven, but basically help lead it for Bellows himself! And as for Eda herself… No doubt, she put in similar amounts of effort before she realized how corrupt the system is. And Eda herself ended up having to go through a lot of pain to defy the Coven System and become her own person, but it’s nevertheless a path she’s chosen for herself that she does not regret.

“You followed your wrath” could accuse Eda of being too rebellious and choosing to fight against the Coven System instead of just quieting down and conforming… But it could also be an accusation towards Lilith, potentially to her implied hidden temper, but also the admittedly-elitist attitude she’s begun to develop from her time in the Emperor’s Coven. Again, not every lyric is a perfect fit.

The world has turned

And so many have burned

But nobody is to blame

Things have changed a lot since their childhoods, all right. No doubt, many people on both ‘sides’ have suffered; Social deviants have been ostracized and imprisoned, while people who do conform end up losing their individuality as they stifle beneath a restrictive system. Obviously the system as a whole is undoubtedly corrupt, and there ARE Witches guilty of being complicit in enforcing it; But as it stands, most people are just trying to get by and are unfairly forced to make a hard choice because of an external institution. Deviants aren’t to blame for being different, and most Witches who conform aren’t to blame for being threatened with rejection and persecution. It’s the system that’s the true evil, not the people caught up within it, and they shouldn’t be pitted against one another.

Yet staring across this barren wasted land

I feel new life will be born

Beneath the blood stained sand

Ignoring ‘bloodstained sand’ (which could be metaphorical if one wanted it to be), I think ‘new life’ could easily apply to the new generation of witches; Especially people like Luz and Amity. That there’s this hope, deep down within Eda and maybe Lilith, that the young witches after them won’t fall for the same pitfalls as their predecessors. That there won’t be conflict, that they’ll be wiser. Luz and Amity are already doing better than Eda and Lilith, because they’re reaching out to one another and becoming close friends. There is just this small hope that maybe, just maybe, the new generation of Witches will be able to stand together, ignore the prejudices of the past, and actively change the system as a whole. Again, part of this works with how the duos of Eda and Lilith, VS Luz and Amity, can be interchangeable within the whole Azura parallel/metaphor.

Disclaimer: For anyone who wants to listen to the song online, I recommend avoiding the comments section. The song and its source material itself are not bigoted, but recently some unpleasant people have been appropriating the song by making transphobic jokes about a character from another game within the comments, by comparing them to a character from MGR.

#the owl house #owl house #the owl house eda #edalyn clawthorne #the owl house lilith #lilith clawthorne #parallels #metal gear rising

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brooklynislandgirl · 4 years ago

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It Gets You Coming and Going: Of all moral dilemmas, what's one that truly stumps you and why? {ginglymostoma cirratum}

Questionable Quotes || Accepting The question is posed in so very Anakin a way that it almost hurts for simply existing. There’s layers built up between the syllables that only someone who knows him well enough can pick out, and only the very rare amongst them that can tell you where they came from. The deepest is the bedrock of his anxiety, that deep down he believes himself so unworthy that it’s compressed down into the core of him and become the basic foundation of the rest of his personality. Closer to the surface is the silt of fear that he’s said the wrong thing and has reached the tether of her seemingly infinite patience with him. That she’s finally going to snap and savage him with tooth and claw, glutting on the softness of his emotional state until all that is left is something that once resembled the bones of his resolve. And she knows she’s mixing metaphors here but that’s how she conceptualises the things about Anakin she can’t pin to a board and press under glass. Not that she would ever do that, she finds it horrifying and cruel, especially when not that proverbially long ago collectors would do that to living specimens, murdering them with chloroform. Ether. She keeps from curling her lip.

And maybe for those few precious seconds when she can feel his gaze sliding off her and back to the edge of the water, so extremely uncomfortable in his own skin, she empathises with him. Finds it easier to make this about wanting to view himself through the prismatic lens he’s made of her, where every fractured splinter can be compared to the raw emptiness that sometimes fills his own mind and pushes everything out of the way. So he can lose himself in his perceptions ~and she can tell, so easily, when he is sinking in the stream of Time, which is almost always~ and escape for just a little while from the weight of everything resting on too fragile shoulders.

It’s entirely possible, too, and dangerously so that she interprets a good many of their conversations this way, focuses the spotlight on Anakin rather than herself because the idea of introspection makes her a little queasy. That she herself hides behind all the preconceived notions that people have of her that she twists and bends herself to fit into because without them she would be as shapeless as the infinite void of the darkness that lingers at the very edge of the Horizon in the deepest umbral reaches.

And of course she would also never admit to maybe spending too much time dwelling on the reasons why the question wounds her as a means of putting emotional distance and actual thought far out of the way ~out of sight, out of mine. Because it is not the easiest thing to answer. In fact she isn’t sure there’s one that would capture intent as much as interpretation.

The problem with morality as it would be defined by most people is that it is an arbitrary system. An socio-artificial construct that puts a distinction between right and wrong, or good and bad behaviour. And much like consensual reality, the guidelines of such behaviour are dictated by people. And all people are fallible. Even the Holy Father, though he’s not supposed to be.

There are other factors to consider as well. Does he mean specifically as the question relates to Sleepers? Does he mean as it relates to the Awakened as they, master and apprentice, are? If they are speaking about the masses, then are there certain cultural borders they’re straying across? What is good for one group of society is clearly not very often understood by others and so what might be wrong or atrocious in belief may have mitigating circumstances if viewed outside of one’s own group. Then of course there’s the difference between an individual's moral dilemmas and ethical ones, which are similar but still vastly different. Not unlike the Traditions versus the Technocratic Union. And this is obviously not what Anakin means because he’s never seen the heated debates that often took a twist at the dinner table between herself and her brothers.

She wants to tell him, that of course, there’s all of these factors to be taken into consideration. Wants to ask him what he means ~specifically~ in regards to whose morals are being questioned and she knows too that by doing so she will somehow manage to trample his self-worth because he’ll judge himself as not having spoken clearly enough, slowly or carefully enough. That he did not adequately set up the scenario and thus given her something incomplete to work with. There will come a stunning display of beautiful if heartbreaking physical manifestations of that internal grief and she might actually expire from the grief of it all. And she isn’t being nasty about it, she isn’t mocking him in that breath of silence as she considers all of this. It is something that she’s come to experience in the almost year that they have spent bound together by practice and...funnily enough...tradition. And she likes to think she knows Anakin this well by now, that however hard he tries to hide it, she will see.

She reaches into the bucket beside her and takes a hold of another chunk of meat and tosses it out across the murky water. It lands with a specific and yet sad little plop before disappearing below the surface. She watches the way his cigarette smoke rises up to wreathe around his curls a little wild tousled today. It’s a little ironic that she could see him as a dragon, and maybe there’s some Mokolé blood in his family tree, as much as there is shark in hers. But he’s still reserved enough that he doesn’t stick his converse down over the side of the decrepit little dock they’re on. To be fair, his legs are far longer, far too close to the dark, algae choked surface. He’s never had his calf nearly torn right off the bone and probably doesn’t need that experience. Not with his hand in the state it’s in, the way cold and weariness make his bones and joints ache with nothing to compensate for it.

And that’s the point where she realises that now she’s just stalling, letting herself drift along the paths of thought, further and further away from the question asked. So she breathes out a sigh and allows a soft curve settle to her lips that is neither exactly a smile or even a smaller grin. It’s something along the lines of patience made manifest, her natural inclination toward indulging Anakin, and it’s also...tired. The kind of thing that appears when she’s worked herself to the bone and hasn’t slept for days but continues to push herself until she’s at the exact point of inevitable collapse. And how often does she do that more and more these days. Doesn’t even try to make it to her room when he’s just as comfortable as his bed and far warmer even if it’s a slightly unhealthy symptom of his body’s attempt to keep his extremities in life-giving blood. She leans back, wiggling her toes out in front of her, though her legs are still covered by the broom-skirt she’s wearing, arms bracing herself from behind, slick and red, sure to leave prints she’ll have to clean up before they leave. “I don’ t’ink dis really a fair question, Anakin. I mean... dere’s factors. A precise synt’esis would define culture as a body of ideas; norms, rules, standards, values, an’ beliefs. So dat different cultures would derefore have different moral an’ et’ical impact. An’ mebbe even between one generation an’ anoddah, like dem boomers an’ millennials. I mean, you an’ me are kinda li’dat too, as technically I’m a millennial an’ you’re Gen Z. Between all people dere’s dis enforced, learned social norm dat are symbolically an’ practically reinforced an’ referenced in displays dat signal adherence to any specific system. Now, I know ya no talk story about all kine people, ya specifically aks me ‘bout my own issue an’ I guess...” She trails off trying to regather herself. When she speaks again she does that thing she does when she thinks something is important enough to give him the best chance of understanding her, but that slows her speech, gives it a brittle edge.

“Even as hapa ~being half Hawai’ian~ my mother taught me about kuleana. Loosely translated it means “responsibility”. It’s dis concept of reciprocal relationships between the person who is responsible, an’ the things or persons they are responsible for. As Hawai’ians, we have a kuleana to our ‘aina, our land. To care for it and to respect it, and in return... the land has the kuleana to feed, shelter and clothe us. Through that relationship we maintain balance within society and with the natural environment. But you look at the world and everything is for sale, raped by greed and the need to consume. To conform. This... this is a sign of what my uncle’s people call the Apocalypse, but not like in disaster movies. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll tell you all about that.

“Another concept is...Pono. There’s no real translation for it, it’s a concept that incorporates many things. But many people use it to imply righteousness, but not like the way it’s used in society today. For us, anyway, it’s a very strong cultural and spiritual concept for a state of harmony and balance. So you can see how they relate? By accepting your kuleana and making sure you act on them in the right way, you are living pono. Living pono means to make a conscious decision to do the right thing in terms of self, others, and the environment. And we make no distinction between human and animal or plant, in that way.” She slants that hazel gaze toward him via one eye slitted open to make sure he’s following along. “And I don’t mean that cutting down a tree is the same as say murder. But in a way, it is. You are killing something that was alive. You are taking its mana. If you do it with proper thanks and reverence, if you ensure that you are doing it sustainably, to feed yourself or build a shelter for your family, then you’re behaving within your kuleana. But clear-cutting an entire rain-forest so you can build a luxury golf-course and resort, displacing thousands and thousands of indigenous wild life and polluting the waters and destroying layers and layers of earth, not to mention the risk of exposing entire tribes of people who have no natural resistance to what are common, immunised illnesses? That is no different than slaughtering those very same lives in a far more expedient way. And I don’t know if you think I’m crazy, or if I am over-simplifying the tragedy that we as an entire world of people are creating and contributing to but you can see...the earth herself is restless. She is angry. And those throes of agony ~the global warming, the spirits crying out, the violence and disease...they are all symptoms of that anger, because people as a whole have lost their way. They trust too much in technology and in coping mechanisms that only breed more trouble...”

She’s momentarily lost in the weeds, but there’s no denying the passion in her voice as it trembles with pure and unbridled rage at society’s ills. And not just the ones that have landed on the Sleepers whom they are, in their own ways, charged with protecting, but the ones amongst their own kind and those of the others. “So I suppose, the dilemma I just cannot begin to understand is...with so much happening, and the world around us vanishing with every breath...why are we unable to reach an understanding. Why do we have to fight this war about whose mana is bigger, is better than someone else’s. And not just the Traditions ourselves. Our infighting is bad but we can typically talk things out. I specifically mean this war with the Technocrats. Their science isn’t doing much to improve lives these days and more and more people are looking for alternatives, for the Old Ways. Why not work with us instead of trying to kill or imprison us? Or why can’t some of us... Verbena and Dreamspeakers... some of you Euthanatos- why can’t we make a pact with the Wolfkin. Or the last of the lizard kings-” She glances askance at him a second time in a very playful and knowing fashion. Which is disturbing considering the nature of the remains in the ice chest she was tossing into the water just moments ago. “It isn’t like some of us hasn’t been busy keeping their kin fed. So I think just like the Traditions coming together, or the Technocrats forming their union, maybe it’s time we put political and spiritual beliefs to the side and just work together for the things we want. We’re all really trying to fight the same enemy, and I promise it isn’t you, and it isn’t me and it isn’t Bil..it isn’t any one person. There is evil out there. Real, terrifying evil. Take this guy. What he did to those kids...He was a disease. And like the healer I am and like...like the man you will some day become, we did what was right, for everyone.” Beth shudders then shakes her head. “I don’t even know how to answer your question, or if I did. All I can say is...there’s no part of me that has any shame for the way I live my life, and therefore there’s no moral dilemma. But if one comes up, I promise you’ll be the first line of defense for my understanding and sanity.”

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kingofthewilderwest · 5 years ago

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I don’t think it was wrong for hiccup to put his first best friend toothless over his people. Because I would do the same for my dog. Animal lives are far more important then human lives. Humans are horrible so why should someone who got bullied his whole life care about the people who tormented him over an animal who actually cares about him and doesn’t judge him. Humans judge you animals don’t. Thoughts on this?

Seeing a discussion topic like this gives me immediate flashbacks to my undergrad in Philosophy and those Ethics courses. XD

There’s several things that pop into my head about this ask, since you’re bringing up multiple topics that could be debated in depth ethically. I want to make several things clear in my response before I get the ball rolling:

I may be wrong, but you, friend, sound like someone who lives life through your heart. If so, I imagine that means you find emotions and feelings extremely important, and these are used to guide your life choices. It’d be the framework by which you see of the world. Your perspective is valuable and beautiful. I do want to make you aware, though, I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum. I’m not able to respond to this question with the same emotive values-based discussion because I think differently. I navigate the world with a logic focus. The fact the two of us differ and have different ideas about us is beautiful! Please understand none of what I say will be dismissing, devaluing, or decrying your perspective, just supplying my own alternate framework.Now, sometimes people talk about ‘cold logic’ as though it’s separate from morality, but I believe logical choices require conscientious moral judgment. If you ignore morality when you make a choice, you’re not being logical because you’re not taking all important factors into account. This means that my discussion will be a LOT more logical than you probably think about this topic, or expected me to handle it. But this is the way I can respect and tackle the ethical questions!

Interesting as the topic is, I don’t want to turn this into a back-and-forth discussion with anyone. But I do want to point out before I provide my thoughts: different ethical schools of thought have existed for millennia for a reason. Ethics is an extraordinarily nuanced topic and ergo, hard to arrive at a definitive “answer” for, even when we’re all acting out of love. And frankly, ethics is a topic I think humans are incapable of fully understanding.

As you discuss it, animals are worth more because you see them as morally pure. Humans, however, have moral failings and can do terrible things. The people of Berk hurt Hiccup, which makes them less valuable to you.

To me, this brings up three big relevant questions:

Is someone’s value based on their morality?

Can we judge animals on morality in the same way we do humans?

How immoral were the Hairy Hooligans?

But the final concluding remarks I’ll have (see Read More) will be looking at THW. I’m not 100% sure which part of canon you’re discussing, but since THW showcases Hiccup needing to make a choice between staying with Toothless or becoming a human leader apart from dragons…

In THW, it’s not a strict matter of putting animals or humans first. Either Hiccup hangs out with Toothless and puts both species in danger, or Hiccup gives humans and dragons and Toothless what is best for everyone. And if Hiccup wanted to stay with Toothless, he’d only be making a choice based on his own happiness, not on whether or not he’s actually helping his friend (Toothless will have a happy life even if he leaves New Berk). In the end, Hiccup’s two moral options mean his outcome is either “happy” or “less happy,” but the results for everyone around him is “saved” or “condemned” to war and possible death. And choosing a preference of happy vs unhappy instead of life vs death to me is something I wouldn’t call ethically responsible. Hiccup putting the people of Berk first before hanging out with Toothless is something I’d call the right choice.

The first question is one I care about a lot personally. It’s deep in my values, I mean. You don’t have to agree with me, that’s chill, but again: the reason different ethical frameworks exist is because ethics is complicated! XD

I have strong beliefs that all lives are inherently valuable. As I believe, neither productivity in society nor ethical choice changes the fact lives are innately valuable. When someone is evil, the reason that is disturbing isn’t because they’re “automatically bad” and “born horrible”; it’s because they have a valuable soul that they corrupted through their unseemly life choices. All of us are human and all of us err. All of us could have lived a life purer than we did, and all of us could have descended to worse evil than we did. We all have within us the potential to be horribly evil, and we all have within us the potential to be a thoughtful and considerate soul. Our value doesn’t wax and wane as we calculate our ratio of sins to virtue, because the tragedy of the sin is that our innately valuable soul is being used for evil instead of the good it could do.

This is also coming from someone who hates the idea that people “deserve” to have bad things happen to them. And I am also someone who hates ideas of revenge or “getting back at someone.” If a person hurt you, they hurt you and that’s wrong, but that doesn’t give you the right to stoop to their level and hurt them back. You’re just repeating what they did and making yourself as bad as they were in the first place. That’s petty and cruel. (Note: this is different than discipline, which is done with an intent to curb dangerous effects for someone’s actions, and to correct behavior to help someone grow.)

Humans can be horrible. Unfortunately, you’re right. Our species can be awful. I think that’s why we need to take actions to help our species grow. Helping other humans is a step we need to take to make society better and less horrible. The more we make choices to help people, the more we fight back on the horrible things humans do to one another - then in turn, the more we prevent those things from happening. For some, they’ll keep being evil. But for many others, they’ll be taught how to be better, and as they grow, they’ll become more acting agents working to make the world a better place. It’s to note that, in many cases, people make horrible choices because they were victims and weren’t put in an environment where they could fully learn to act healthily; this is unfortunately why abuse may continue generation to generation in families. Kids grow up to enact the same abuse their parents did to them. Ergo, someone can be both a victim and a perpetrator. Instead of condemning that behavior as an indicator of evil in human society, and say these people deserve to be left behind… I’d rather step in to prevent the cycle from continuing, and give the next generations a chance to grow and live happier, healthier, kinder, and more compassionate lives.

Hiccup abandoning the Hairy Hooligans makes no social progress and doesn’t give humanity a chance to grow to be better people; Hiccup helping the Hairy Hooligans does good work. This isn’t to say we’re morally obligated to help everyone who does a wrongdoing (we’re not), but it is something to keep in mind before we say that someone should suffer and/or be punished because they’ve done wrong.

And I think that Hiccup being the chief of Berk makes him especially responsible to them.

So for me, I don’t think that the Hooligans’ behavior toward Hiccup is any excuse for letting them suffer. The world is a better place by preventing a cycle of more suffering, not perpetuating it. And in the case of Hiccup’s conflict between him and Toothless, this is a matter of saving lives from an upcoming war - a pretty big deal.

But my ethical opinionating here can be sidestepped through the other two questions I raised. Whether or not you agree with me here, I think we can look at two other relevant angles fresh.

The second question deals with how we judge animal morality. I’ve heard debaters mention dolphins save lives and murder people, suggesting moral behaviors akin to humans. I’ve seen people talk about how dogs show guilt after they’ve done something they know will bother owners. I’ve seen people point out that whether or not humans can morally kill to eat meat is different than discussing whether or not carnivores like lions (whose entire biology requires meat) can morally kill to eat meat.

But honestly for me, I think it’s comparing apples to oranges, and we get nowhere by trying to put a human framework on a species that isn’t human. I don’t want to project my human values on their behaviors. Dogs, lions, and dolphins won’t have the same internal psychology as me on account of them being different species. I can’t judge a dog for acting like a dog because I can’t be a dog knowing how dogs think through choices.

So to say that one creature is more valuable than another on account of their moral perspectives… to me is impossible to do. To say one species deserves suffering more than another frankly bothers me. (And yes, that includes ants, spiders, snakes, and wasps. I squeed happily when I saw a snek the other night - what an adorable cutie

The third question I think is the most relevant. How much wrong did the Hairy Hooligans really do to Hiccup? And are they irredeemable for it?

Hiccup felt ostracized from his tribe because he couldn’t kill dragons like they could. He didn’t feel like his father respected who he was, and was hurt by some of the things Stoick said about/to him. He was taunted by peers for being a screw-up. The adults of the tribe could speak harshly to/of him, too.

Now, I don’t want to defend the people of Berk in their bad choices. I don’t think it’s okay to mock your peers, for instance. I don’t agree with disowning a kid ever. But at the same time, I think it’s important to look at both sides of what went down in Hiccup’s situation in HTTYD 1.

1. Hiccup is not innocent. Hiccup’s struggles are understandable. He wants to fit in in a society that’s filled with dragon-fighting Vikings. He wants to be a dragon-fighting Viking too because that means he’ll no longer feel like the odd one out. The desire to fit in and be respected is especially prominent in teenaged years. Teens want to fit in badly, and they can emotionally struggle thinking “I’m different and no one understands or respects me.” Ergo, Hiccup wants to murder dragons, JUST like everyone else.

Hiccup’s desire to fit in with a warrior culture is so strong he makes VERY BAD choices. Hiccup repeatedly charges into battle. Hiccup is an untrained teenager who shouldn’t be in a dangerous dragon fight. He’s a liability, not just for himself, but for everyone in the village. He can make the battle harder for the fighters, and he can put himself in harm’s way so that now others have to save him. Hiccup trying to fight dragons is outright irresponsible, and puts not only his own life at risk, but the lives of the adults around him. I can sympathize with him wanting to fit in and prove his worth… his emotional pains are relatable… but he’s going about it the wrong way. Trying to fit in by putting others’ lives in danger is not okay.

There’s a reason the Vikings of Berk are annoyed at this kid. Hiccup is repeatedly instructed not to put his and their lives in danger. He keeps doing it, putting his selfish insecurities first and their safety last. When the Vikings grumble, it’s because this kid is making bad, selfish choices.

And let’s be real: it’s not so different a world where Hiccup could have killed Toothless with his first shot. And if he did, would he have become a repeated dragon killer like the others? He’s living in a culture where that is the norm, and his desires (as evident in the start of the first film) show he’s not separate from his culture. A unique set of circumstances was what allowed Hiccup to stare deep into Toothless’ eyes, reflect on what he was doing, and make a choice to be different (a hard choice that he derided himself for, and only grew to accept as his friendship with the dragon grew).

2. They’re at war. The Hairy Hooligans do not know about the Red Death. They don’t know that the dragons are being forced to raid the village. All they know is that their livestock, their homes, and their lives are in jeopardy because enormous winged beasts attack them. The dragons are attacking their settlement, not the other way around. The Vikings have never made it to the dragon nest and the dragons’ environment, but the dragons appear to be the aggressors.

The Vikings, as far as they can understand their situation, are defending themselves. They’ve had to learn to fight dragons to stay alive.

In the middle of a war, a kid comes up to you and says the enemy’s okay. How easy is that going to be to accept? Especially when the Kill Ring turns into chaos, and both a Night Fury and a Monstrous Nightmare are fighting humans?

Hiccup might be trying to show them that dragons aren’t what they thought, but to be fair, most wars don’t evaporate when one kid tells you everybody can be friends. For generations, the dragons have been a proven aggressive threat.

The Hairy Hooligans killed dragons. The Hairy Hooligans were very harsh when Hiccup stated that dragons weren’t the enemy. That’s not cool… but in this sort of circumstance, isn’t it easy to see that the people of Berk could see Hiccup as a traitor putting their lives in danger? A society that’s trying to defend themselves from death… is in greater threat because this wild kid is bringing up a wild idea that’ll probably lead to more death.

Is that actually widespread thoughtless bullying?

3. Parenting is HAAARD and the entire plot of HTTYD is a rift between father and son BOTH being imperfect. Stoick said a few harsh and unwarranted things to Hiccup, but in many cases, Stoick was doing his best with what a father should do: calling out his son for bad behavior, and trying to connect in positive ways. Stoick is not a Bad Guy Dad. He and Hiccup have a rift that makes it hard to understand and communicate with one another (but the difficulties go BOTH WAYS).

Stoick does live in a society which values dragon fighting, and Stoick (as a good dragon fighter) values it a lot. Hiccup understands that and knows his father will respect him if he fights dragons. While Stoick would be ecstatic for his son to exceed in the warrior ways, he’s also not a father PUSHING his son to be a fighter. In fact, he protests when Gobber suggests Hiccup goes to training… Stoick doesn’t want his boy hurt. When he fans over Hiccup being chosen to kill the dragon in the ring, it’s because he thinks his son is already a fighter.

We can understand why Stoick makes the choices he did, and even though they’re not 100% perfect, they’re also understandable things that a caring parent does in difficult situations with difficult kids.

4. People change. AND THE PEOPLE OF BERK *DID*.

Hiccup got taunted by Snotlout, Ruffnut, and Tuffnut for being a screw-over. Now they’re his best friends and help him save dragons. Hiccup was dismissed as a nuisance by the tribe when he was a teenager. Now the tribe cheers his name and accepts him, with pride, as their leader. Hiccup was considered a problem because he wanted to befriend dragons. Now the tribe’s ENTIRE CULTURE changed because they realized the boy was right, and the entire tribe has taken on the duty of trying to protect, save, train, and befriend dragons.

You’re right that Hiccup got bullied and hurt by his tribe (I doubt this was his whole life, and I doubt it was the whole tribe, but yes, Hiccup had some bad interactions happen). But that’s not how it ended. The people of Berk profoundly revolutionized their society because they came to respect Hiccup’s ideas. They changed. They don’t bully Hiccup anymore, and the worst they do in THW is dismiss Hiccup’s ideas as youthful, naive, or impractical. That’s not some high level moral offense.

Tumblr is awful about decrying bad actions without understanding that humans constantly grow. What we once were isn’t who we are today and isn’t who we will be tomorrow. People grow, people become better, and life becomes better when a previously bad person learns the error of their ways… repents… and starts doing good.

If we don’t allow humans to change… then we can’t fully endorse moral behavior when it does happen. If we don’t allow humans to change… we’ll be punishing people for who they were rather than who they are. If we don’t allow people to change… we’re the assholes stuck in the past, not them. If we don’t allow humans to change… we lose allies, we lose friends, we lose agents who can make the world a better place. The Hairy Hooligans are agents of good change. As Hiccup says at the end of HTTYD 2, “We are the voice of peace, and bit by bit, we will change this world.”

So I suppose I don’t agree with your initial premise: that the Hairy Hooligans are bullies, horrible humans, tormentors who screw Hiccup over. On the contrary, I feel like the Hairy Hooligans are supporters of Hiccup, the Hiccup Fan Club, the people who believe in him, the people who follow him, the people who will leave their lifelong home and follow him on a quest to save dragons, because these are a people who value him. Are these horrible immoral people who don’t deserve help?

But I think the moral question all boils down to this:

In The Hidden World, Hiccup can either put his friendship with Toothless first, or he can put his leadership of New Berk first.

When Hiccup puts his friendship with Toothless first in THW, it starts by him trying to stay with Toothless. When Hiccup puts dragons first in THW, it starts by him wanting to protect over all dragons in Berk. Hiccup decides to leave Berk and search for the Hidden World because he’s thinking about the dragons. He thinks he’ll be able to live with humans and dragons together at peace, everyone safe, including Toothless. Hiccup isn’t thinking about the rest of his tribe so much as he’s thinking about how he can continue to save dragons and continue his friendship with Toothless.

Of course the solution in THW suggests that what’s best for Toothless is for them to part ways. If Hiccup and Toothless don’t part, the Hairy Hooligans AND the dragons (including Toothless!) stay in greater danger. Hiccup’s selflessness toward Toothless is letting his friend leave his side. It is a choice for Toothless, and ultimately, as THW wants to frame it, the best choice.

But of course, the conflict of THW is that Hiccup thinks that what’s best for the dragons is for everyone to stay together. And in doing so, Hiccup puts the Hairy Hooligans in danger. Because humans and dragons are still together, dangerous people like Grimmel and the warlords will be after them. Even if they defeat Grimmel and the warlords, more people will be antagonistic against them and the dragons. This means that, if Hiccup keeps putting his initial concept of “Toothless first” and “dragons first,” he puts the Hairy Hooligans in DANGER of war.

And this is where the moral choice becomes clear to me.

Putting you and your friend’s HAPPINESS over an entire population’s SAFETY is something I understand the desire of emotionally, but it’s something I can’t ethically condone.

You can either:

Save a city of people from tyranny, war, and possible death (while giving up hanging out with one friend, who’ll live a good life regardless) OR

Give you and your friend happiness, and in the process condemn the stability and safety of hundreds of people - who are the people you’ve officially sworn to protect as their official governing ruler.

One of these choices screws people over, the other doesn’t.

It isn’t a matter of animals over humans, because in one choice, the humans and the animals are both safe, and in the other choice, you get to have fun with one animal while putting everyone in grave danger.

Anyway! You got me pulled down a long response, haha! HTTYD is amazing because of how it gives us beautiful non-human characters like Toothless. I love that, too. Animals are important and beautiful! And so are you and I hope you have an amazing day! Take care!

#THW #The Hidden World #httyd3 #httyd 3 #How to Train Your Dragon 3 #httyd #How to Train Your Dragon #Hiccup #Toothless #Hiccup and Toothless #ask #ask me #awesome anonymous friend #anonymous #analysis #my analysis

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sliceannarbor · 5 years ago

Text

Ruth Reichl

Food Writer/Culinary Editor/Author Former editor-in-chief, Gourmet magazine Former restaurant critic for The New York Times/Los Angeles Times Spencertown, New York ruthreichl.com

Photo: Michael Singer

SPECIAL GUEST SERIES

In this, our 124th issue of SLICE ANN ARBOR, we are honored to present acclaimed food writer, culinary editor, and author Ruth Reichl. Reichl talks with SLICE about her long and storied career at Gourmet magazine, her passion for memoir writing — and life.

Special to this issue and time, Reichl shares some thoughts about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. She is currently self-quarantined at her home in Spencertown, New York.

_________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION

Ruth Reichl is a food writer, culinary editor, and the author of five critically acclaimed memoirs: Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir, For You, Mom. Finally, Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table, and Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table. Reichl served as editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine from 1999 to 2009. Prior to this, she was a restaurant critic for The New York Times and the food editor and restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times. Reichl is the recipient of six James Beard Foundation Awards for her journalism, magazine feature writing, and criticism. In 2015, she provided commentary for the Chef's Table (Netflix) series featuring Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York. Reichl also served as a judge on Top Chef Masters. She is the author of the novel Delicious!, and the cookbooks: My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life, and Mmmmm: A Feastiary. Reichl earned a B.A. and an M.A. in art history from the University of Michigan. When she's not working, you can find her cooking, walking, or reading. Reichl resides in upstate New York in a house on top of a mountain with deer, wild turkey, and the occasional bear prowling around outside, with her husband, Michael Singer, a television news producer, and two cats.

FAVORITES

Book: You must be joking! One book? It's usually whatever I'm reading at the moment, which is, right now, Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light.

Destination: Any urban city with good walks and great museums.

Motto: The secret to happiness is finding joy in ordinary things.

Sanctuary: My writing cabin

THE QUERY

Where were you born?

Greenwich Village, New York City

What were some of the passions and pastimes of your early years?

I have loved reading, cooking, and prowling the streets of the city since I was a very small child.

What is your first memory of food as an experience?

I am two. My mother feeds me a spoonful of something so disgusting I cannot swallow it. It is cold and fuzzy on my tongue and if I could have named the flavor I would have compared it to moldy herring. I spit it out. My mother looks surprised, takes a taste of the vile substance and says, ‘What is wrong with you? This is delicious!’ In that moment I understand that my mother cannot be trusted; she and I do not taste the same way. My mother was, in fact, totally taste blind. She had combined the dregs of three different cartons of melted ice cream, poured them into an ice tray, put it in the freezer and left it, uncovered, for weeks to absorb the various flavors of every leftover in the refrigerator. This was her idea of ‘dessert.’ Now, seventy years later, I can still taste it.

What intrigues you most about the art and science of food?

I believe that absolutely everything about food is interesting. The culture of cooking is what distinguishes us from other animals; we cook, they don't. We define ourselves as individuals and as members of society by what we choose to eat. Food brings us together — and sets us apart. And, above all, food is a source of immense happiness.

How would you describe the significance of Gourmet in the history of American culinary culture?

Gourmet was America's first epicurean magazine, and for almost 70 years it chronicled the way Americans were eating. If you want a snapshot of American history from 1941 to 2009, you could do worse than flip through the pages of the magazine. What you see is a country becoming increasingly conscious of the place that food has in our society. I was enormously fortunate to have been given the magazine just as Americans were beginning to understand that food is much more than something to eat, and that an epicurean magazine might offer more than recipes and travel articles. I hope that, at that pivotal moment in our history, Gourmet was able to help steer the national conversation about food to include issues of climate change, ethical eating, farm policy, gender and race — along with all the pleasures of the table.

Was there a period along the way [at the magazine] that presented an especially important learning curve?

For me the seminal moment was publishing David Foster Wallace's essay, Consider the Lobster. When he turned in what was, essentially, a piece about bioethics, I was stunned. It was a beautiful and important piece of writing, but I was also terrified. Were Americans ready to read about the morality of eating animals in a mainstream epicurean publication? As it turned out, they were not only ready, but eager to consider those questions — and it emboldened all of us to tackle the increasingly complicated issues that cooks face every day.

How did you begin to realize your fascination with the art of memoir writing?

I'd been a newspaper journalist for most of my career, and I wanted to see if I could write long. When I thought about what to write, it occurred to me that I wanted to write about growing up at the table — about the many extraordinary people who had influenced my ideas about cooking and eating. I intended it as a group of short stories, but it grew into a memoir. As I was writing I began to see that memoir really was my genre. It's not that I think my own life is so interesting; everyone's life is interesting, but mine is the one I know best. And isn't the point, really, to underline our common humanity?

Do you have a creative process you typically follow as you begin a project?

I wish! All I can say is that I just sit at my desk and wait for it to happen. And then rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

How do you envision the future of the culinary enterprise?

We're at a turning point right now and the future very much depends on how we go forward. Since the end of World War II, when the American government made food a crucial part of the cold war, our country has been focused on cheap food. The result of these policies — which involved the industrialization of farming, the overuse of antibiotics and fertilizers, the creation of animal confinement facilities, the overfishing of the oceans, I could go on and on — has given us the cheapest and most abundant food in the world. It has also contributed to climate change, the destruction of rural America, the devastation of our waters and a crisis of obesity and diabetes. The result is that six out of 10 Americans suffer from chronic disease. We are only beginning to realize the consequences of the policies of the last 75 years. We can change. My hope is that the generation of young people who have been brought up in a culture of food, a generation who understand that eating is an ethical act, will do their best to undo the damage and create a more sustainable world.

In all your travels, what stands out as the most memorable meal you shared with others?

It was in Crete. I was on my honeymoon, visiting a beloved art professor who taught a course called "Light and Motion." He took us up a mountain for dinner. We came to a tumbledown shack, with a huge pile of onions standing next to it. An old lady came out, set some chairs on the porch, and poured some olive oil into a dish. She picked herbs on the hillside and sprinkled them into the oil. She sliced onions. Set out some olives from her own trees. Gave us a loaf of bread she'd baked, and wine made by her neighbor. Then she picked up a fishing pole and went down the mountain. We drank wine. We ate bread and olive oil. We talked. The sun set. The air was fragrant with thyme. The moon was rising as the old lady returned and lit a fire of grape vines to grill the fish.There were some greens that she'd grown, more onions, and more wine. And for dessert, yogurt from her own sheep. It was a very simple meal. It was perfect. It could only have happened in that place, at that moment. And I realized that the professor had wordlessly made his point: in the right hands, food is art.

Who has had the greatest influence on your life, and why?

My parents. From my mother, who suffered from bipolar disease, I learned to be deeply grateful for my own sanity. And from my father, a book designer who loved what he did, I learned that if you follow your passions there is great joy in work.

Is there a book or film that has changed you?

I read The Grapes of Wrath when I was eight or nine, and it made me think about where our food comes from and all the people who grow it. As a city girl, I hadn't really considered that before. It made me see how much our community depends on food and farming — and it gave me a real desire for social justice for the people who work the land.

What do you consider your greatest life lesson?

Life lesson; it's such an odd concept. One of those words they always use to describe books. Not quite sure how to answer this, but I'll say that the word that I try to live by is generosity. If you always follow your most generous impulses, you can't go wrong. I mean that in every sense: be kind, be available, give away as much as you can. Be there — for your family, your friends, your co-workers. Even when your instinct is to say no, say yes instead.

How would you define a life well lived?

All you can ask, of anyone, is to live up to the best in themselves. Realize your own potential. Work hard, be kind, and have as much fun as you can.

What are you most proud of in your long and storied career?

Sometime in the late 80s I became the food editor of the Los Angeles Times (I was already the restaurant critic). At the time it was the biggest food section in the country with two sections, 60 pages every week. For the next five years, Laurie Ochoa and I reimagined what a newspaper food section could be. We thought of food as culture, not just recipes, and we tried to take as big a bite out of the world as we could. We covered the politics of food, science, agriculture, history, and anthropology. We did profiles. We brought in great people: Jonathan Gold, Charles Perry, Russ Parsons, and David Karp. We encouraged Toni Tipton to stop writing about nutrition and think bigger. We begged writers who'd never written about food to write stories for us. The paper's editor, Shelby Coffey, was skeptical at first, but after a while he said, ‘You've shown me that food can be a great way for a paper to cover the city.’ It was enormous fun. I was really proud of that section, and it ultimately became the template for what we would do with Gourmet magazine.

How would you like to be remembered?

I've been writing about food for fifty years. I hope I had some part in making other people think that it's an important subject. As MFK Fisher said, ‘I cannot count the good people I know who, to my mind, would be even better if they bent their spirits to the study of their own hungers.’

_________________________________________________________

Special to this issue and time, Reichl shares some thoughts about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. She is currently self-quarantined at her home in Spencertown, New York.

How are you weathering life in the days of COVID-19?

Like everyone else I'm edgy and irritable. As the days go by, it comes closer; people I love have died, others have tested positive. And I know this is only the beginning. At the moment I'm in self-quarantine. I read, I write, I do a lot of cooking.

What are you cooking in your home kitchen?

Fortunately I'm a condiment whore and my pantry is full of wonderful flavor enhancers. My freezer is filled with fruits and vegetables I put up last summer, and I live in the country, surrounded by farms and dairies so meat, milk, and eggs are easy to come by. And since it's just me and Michael, I basically get up every morning and ask, ‘What do you want to eat today?’ And then I make it. Lately it's been a lot of pizza, pasta, and Asian stir-fries. And of course, I'm baking bread. Isn't everyone?

How do you envision the future of the restaurant industry as it tries to rebuild in the months ahead?

I think it's going to be grim; restaurants are very low-margin businesses, and most squeak by in the good times. Many will never reopen. And many that do will become take-out only. That's the down-side. But a remarkable thing has been happening: independent restaurateurs have pulled together in ways they never have before. For the first time they're starting to understand what a huge industry they are part of, and they're using their political clout. Coming on the heels of the me-too movement it means that restaurants will be very different places on the other side of this pandemic. And I think customers will want different restaurants when this is all over. They'll cherish the ability to come together in groups. They'll want to talk, so restaurants will be cozier, quieter, and more comfortable. And I'm pretty sure the ridiculous excesses we've seen lately will vanish; people will want comfort food, not crazy food. And, of course, they'll be more demanding customers because they will all have learned to cook.

#ruthreichl #savemetheplums #gourmet

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blackswaneuroparedux · 5 years ago

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Anonymous asked: I really enjoy your intelligent and thoughtful posts about the experience of being in the military from the true meaning of courage to mental health and drink issues. You do it with the customary British wit and humor and pathos. It’s refreshing from the usual brainless posts about guns n’ big tits found on some ex-vet blogs. As a former officer in the British army who is now a civilian what’s the most valuable skill you’ve taken into your civilian life?

Thank you for your kind words and as always I have to acknowledge that I feel such praise is misplaced as it should be given to those I quote or whose example I highlight because they fight the good fight every day since leaving the military. By comparison my life is a privileged one that as a consequence I don’t take for granted, instead I count my blessings.

I would also say don’t judge those blogs that post as you put it ‘guns n’ big tits’. It may not be to your aesthetic taste or even offend you on some moral level. But I feel they can post whatever they wish. It’s a free society and more than anyone else here they have literally served and fought for that freedom of expression that you enjoy. I don’t share that taste but I get why some of them post these things. Trust me when I say tumblr posts are tame compared to what you might find on a soldier’s laptop or phone. Live and let live.

As for your question it’s an interesting one you pose but quite hard to answer.

I think anyone passing out of Sandhurst to become an army officer will have more than average leadership skills. And these leadership skills are amplified depending on which regiment or corps you join.

Obviously if you end up in any of the Foot Guards or the Parachute regiment then these elite regiments demand a special kind of man management leadership skills to lead men into battle - and the same goes for the other fine regiments with a proud history. If you end up in technical based corps like The Royal Engineers, Royal Signals, or Intelligence Corps etc then those leadership skills become manifest more in terms of power of persuasion that goes along with the good command of technical skill.

Irrespective of how you serve, basic leadership skills will always be invaluable in civilian life. How does manifest itself in civilian work? I think it could be in terms of: a disciplined mind to working a problem towards a clinical solution; taking responsibility and therefore standing out where the herd might retreat for fear of failure; inspiring confidence to those around you and lifting them up into a collective; taking initiative where the comfort of the status quo might make others risk averse; and perhaps an empathic understanding of human nature under duress and getting the best out of others when they are stressed and over-worked.

Leadership is a soft skill of course. So it will vary according to each person.

What about hardcore skills?

I think what hardcore skills you learn in the army will always find a use in civilian life in one way or another. So skills learned in the Royal Signals or the Royal Engineers will never go to waste and always make you an attractive proposition in civilian life.

Obviously those who have been in front line operations fighting then a proficiency with guns and weaponry and training others is all you know. Nowadays some choose to join the private security industry which has mushroomed to disturbing levels since the War on Terror began. They don’t make as much as one might think and their lifespan is not long. I’ve known my fair share of people who have gone down this road. It’s not a sustainable one - unless you own the firm itself then you’re fine running it as a business.

For me personally I would say the best skill I took into civilian life was how to iron.

I’m not joking. It’s true.

Your ironing board was your most prized possession at Sandhurst as an officer cadet.

I cannot tell you the grief and tears shed by every last man and woman officer cadet when they got bollocked for an unmade bed or wearing imperfectly ironed clothes on daily inspection. All of us at one time or another stayed up until dawn making sure everything was crisply ironed, even the bed sheets.

We had the fear of God put into us by our training sergeants. It wasn’t just to avoid a bollocking it was also the shame of not letting your fellow officer cadets down. You are only as strong as the weakest link. Nobody wanted to be the weakest link. You kicked yourself up the arse and made yourself better.

It wasn’t a sadistic punishment to iron. It was a simple philosophy that was behind the discipline of ironing. There is wisdom behind the simple act.

If you can’t do the little things in life correctly then how can you do the big things? If you miss the value of doing the simple tasks with pride then how will you motivate yourself for the real big dirty tasks in life? Do the simple act perfectly and you already start your day with an accomplishment that no one can take away from you, even if you fail or had a bad day.

The British army didn’t teach me how to shoot because I was already shooting grouse and game as a small girl when they taught me to be proficient in weapons and arms. The British army didn’t teach me to be super fit mentally and physically because I was already doing pentathlons, triathlons and biathlons as well as parachuting, riding fast motor bikes, and mountaineering when they taught me survival skills and how to lead under dire conditions. The British army didn’t teach me how to fly because I already had my pilot’s license at 17 when they trained me as a combat pilot supported by a tight knit dedicated ground crew.

The British army taught me how to iron when I was a privileged brat going through elite boarding schools and later Oxford and Cambridge with no clear meaningful purpose in life....and that has made all the difference.

You want to make a difference in the world? Start by learning how to iron.

ἀεὶ γὰρ ἥβη τοῖς γέρουσιν εὐμαθεῖν.**

- Aeschylus

Thanks for your question

**Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old.

#question #british army #military #personal #bio #leadership #ironing

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emptymanuscript · 5 years ago

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Lords of Pain 1 - 1/24/20

I am not actually one of those writers who is innundated with ideas. I know how to generate them but in terms of just having a decent story idea just strike me like lightning, I get one of those once every thousand years or so.

And having an idea is never the same as developing it. So, inspiration to story is long or never. So it goes.

One of the few bolt out of the blue ideas that I can feel has meat on it but which I still have no idea what to do with now quite a few years after I had it, I knicknamed for myself as Lords of Pain.

Lords of Pain is simple, as most good story ideas are. It’s the sort of thing that is easy for pretty much anyone to do. Also actually the mark of a good idea way more often than most people think. But one which lends itself to the execution being hard to produce identically. Which is actually the real key to good ideas. Not the story as a whole but to create the framework for something that any given individual writer will produce quite differently from any other given individual writer.

ONLY Tolkien would have written Lord of the Rings the way we got it. And even arguably better writers who tried to copy Lord of the Rings never managed to get the same thing. Same essential idea very different executions.

Lords of Pain is simple, as I said, The core idea is that there are Psychics whose only power is that they can literally feel the pain of others. An untrained psychic has chronic pain themselves as all the pain that is around them leeches into their system. So catching and training them is important even for their own health. A trained psychic is a valuable health care worker, able to feel exactly where it hurts, how much, and in what way even if the patient can’t communicate it. They can even accurately judge the pain because they have felt lots of different types from lots of different people and can actually compare apples to apples. Of course, the downside of all of this is that they are literally feeling it themselves. Their “psychic probe” of a dude with a broken leg feels like their leg is broken.

Unfortunately for me, that’s as far as I’ve ever gotten and while that’s very sticky it is simply not enough to make a story out of. So I just kind of sit on it.

But I think about it a lot. The original inspiration for Lords of Pain was being in pain myself while having a friend in much more serious pain and I wanted a way to know “FOR SURE” if I was just being a whiner or not. The Wish Fulfillment of the Lords of Pain fantasy was that knowing. Even if it hurts, now you KNOW. With the bonus double wish fulfillment of pain having purpose. At least there is a tangible benefit to my hurting. Which I wasn’t feeling so much at the time but my friend was.

These days the idea has been bouncing around in my head more and more often as my chronic pain is shooting up through my roof. These days I think a third wish fulfillment is coming through: the idea of pain maybe being combatible. Since the obvious plot twist somewhere in there is that the system benefits from the Psychic’s pain and therefore has a vested interest in it not stopping. Which means the Psychic will eventually get the choice about whether to accept that the benefit outweighs the cost to them - as I put it to a physical therapist trainee helping me out the other week: if a billion people aren’t starving anymore, that’s a fair trade for me having some medical issues and not being able to safely eat bread. OR they can reject that their pain is an acceptable price for whatever good they may or may not do.

Which by the way is the probably difference between an “Adult” story and a “Younger Audience” story. In the “Adult” version the Protagonist sacrifices their permanent interests for the benefit of their community. In the “younger” versions the Protagonist asserts their individuality against the harmful demands of their community.

Of course, adultness and maturity has nothing really to do with it. That’s just our arbitrary labeling. Society just has a vested interest in the “Adult” point of view so it works to encourage and reward that however it can.

Which is one of the reasons YA has been so popular the last few years with people who are very much not young adults. Beyond the quality of the stories, we’re in a time of deep disatisfaction with our Society and its direction. People, in general, no matter their socio-political affiliations, believe we’re going in the wrong direction and therefore desperately want the fantasy of telling Society to go shove it all the way to the grave.

“Good” and “Bad” as defined for us is being challenged at the level of our cultural psyche.

Which returns me to Lords of Pain. Because that’s the origin and now the struggle of the story. Lords of Pain originated because I wanted to make my pain, and how I acted because of it, “Good.” But these days I’m not feeling those old definitions. I don’t feel like I can make pain good. Which means the story is probably racing along toward becoming an actual story. When there’s no easy answer but you feel something anyway, that’s a story that’s going to work for you.

And it was pointed out to me this week that as I talk a lot about pain and all this outside of writing AND I have the wish fulfillment of expression, that this - what I’m writing here and now - might be the “Good.” I can’t feel other people’s pain but I can express my own. And for those who might not have that power, having someone who not only does but uses it, might be of real value. Which might give me some mastery and therefore relief: some feeling of being a Lord of Pain myself.

So, lying to myself that it is about writing, maybe as a reference. Yeah, everyone needs some references about pain. Totes. And probably using this as a distraction as much as anything - I think I’m going to try. These will not be happy posts. Because... well... pain. So I’m labeling them all. No surprises that way. And they’re going to be personal because it is personal, that’s the point. So I won’t have anything nice to say about someone trying to take a shot at what I’ve said. But if anyone wants to reblog and add their own personal experience or something that it inspires in them about their own life and interactions, I think that too is the point. Go for it.

For instance, you might ponder if Pain can be good in your outlook. Or if only certain types of Pain can have a moral value. Do you find yourself espousing a moral outlook toward Pain in your writing? Is it one you realized you had? If you’re in Pain, do you WANT it to have moral value?

#lords of pain #chronic pain

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travllingbunny · 5 years ago

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The 100 6x06 Memento Mori

Another late review from me, putting in one place all my thoughts about episode 6x06, from things that everyone has talked and posted gifs about a lot (like Bellamy’s emotional state) and had different stances on (such as, how you feel about Murphy and his character arc), to things that haven’t been discussed much (like some of my thoughts on the Flame and the Sheidheda plotline).

In the end, I talk a bit about my expectations and predictions for episode 6x07, Nevermind, which many will see tonight, and that I’ll get to watch tomorrow, and the following episodes.

I have huge expectations for Nevermind, but Memento Mori was a great set-up. I have to say, much as I loved other things in the episode (particularly grieving, emotional Bellamy and the hardest decision he ever had to make), my enjoyment of the episode rose by about 100% because of the last scene. Sometimes you don’t need to be surprised by a TV show: sometimes a reveal is something you expect and enjoy all the more when it finally happens. And oh, did it deliver. The scene was amazing, with the dreamy atmosphere, cinematography, the introduction to Clarke’s mind-wall (the prop department really outdid themselves with this one!), and the wonderful music. The 100 always has great, on-point musical choices, and this season has been one of the best in that regard.

Eliza Taylor continued to be amazing – maybe even better this episode than in 6x05, as Josephine was openly Josephine in front of some characters, continued to pretend to be Clarke in several others, with varying degrees of effort and success, and intentionally put on a pseudo-Clarke persona in front of someone who already knew she wasn’t Clarke, just to mess with his mind (the last one was reserved for Bellamy). While Josephine’s Clarke-act was absolutely terrible in 6x05 – because she didn’t even know almost anything about Clarke, so she was making blunders left and right – this time (after learning a lot about her from Murphy) she was, at times, a little more convincing and almost approached some version of Clarkeness, but this only produced the Uncanny Valley effect: it was like a skewed, caricatured version of Clarke and felt really, really creepy.

One such moment of Josephine playing a skewed version of Clarke was when she was fooling Raven, Emori and Echo. She was putting on Clarke’s serious, concerned look and tone of voice (Murphy must have coached her on all of that), but her phrasing at times still should have alerted them to her flippant attitude – as when she said that the whole murder and bodysnatching thing really lit a fire in Bellamy. Maybe that hint was too subtle - it was similar to her line “the Kane problem”, which Abby noticed, but Abby is Clarke’s mother after all and knows her better. Echo was surprised that Bellamy supposedly left by himself, not just that he didn’t ask her, but also that “Clarke” let Bellamy go by himself with the foraging party – but she was more concerned with Bellamy’s safety than she stopped to think much of Clarke’s behavior (and after all, she doesn’t know her that well compared to most others).

Josephine also used the same argument she tried to sell Bellamy in 6x04 and that served as more confirmation to him that she was not really Clarke – the whole “we have all done bad things, what right do we have to judge them, so let’s just do nothing and let the bodysnatchers continue doing their awful thing”. Real Clarke feels guilty and is critical of her own actions, but doesn’t start criticizing all of her friends unprompted and talking about how they’ve all done awful things, and certainly not in order to justify tolerating evil actions of someone else! But JosephineClarke’s argument is actually one that I have seen in the fandom – this idea that “there are no good guys”, that everyone is a villain, that Clarke and Bellamy and the rest of them are just as bad as the Mountain Men or the Primes (with some BS equations between completely different things such as “well, they all murdered innocent people” – so, apparently, defending yourself and your loved ones, the only way you can, from an evil overlord society in the process of horribly killing you to use your body parts, is exactly the same as brainwashing people into worshiping you as gods and stealing their bodies because you think you’re superior and should live forever!)… so therefore, they don’t have the right to fight against evil. After all, fighting evil also makes you do things like kill people, so why do anything? Just keep your head down and don’t do anything. But the show has (in the Abby/Jackson conversation in 6x05) addressed the fact that doing nothing and letting evil happen is as bad as doing evil. And there is something incredibly meta about Josephine, the show’s villain masquerading as the show’s hero Clarke, cynically uttering these lines to deceive our protagonists and make them complacent about the horrible things she and her family are dong, just as the same morally bankrupt argument is used by some fans to defend the show’s villains.

(In this episode, we learned even more (directly and through Xavier) about how awful the Sanctum society is – in addition to the fact they bodysnatch the hosts, they call people without the Nightblood gene (who therefore cannot happen to have Nightblood children) “nulls”. Nulls are not allowed to have children and get to do the lowest jobs, and there is also the sacrifice to the trees in the Offering Grove – which is apparently also “voluntary”, in the sense of people being brainwashed by a cult to sacrifice themselves.)

Bellamy never bought that this was really Clarke, and that Clarke would argue in favor of tolerating murder and bodysnatching, but Raven and the others swallowed it. It seemed to play right into Raven’s recent conviction that Clarke is not feeling guilty over anything and is just putting on an act, and into her self-righteous streak, which was in full force, even worse than before. Do I even have to point out the ridiculousness of Raven’s line that, unlike Clarke, she never did anything she regrets? I could start listing (as many of us have over the past week) facts such as: Raven tortured Lincoln with electroshocks, Raven tried to turn Murphy over to the Grounders to be murdered by prolonged torture for a crime that Finn had committed, Raven tried to get Clarke to kill Lexa and start a war over Finn even though that would have gotten many people killed including Clarke, Raven withheld medication from dying children because of rationing (and felt horrible about it), Raven made Clarke make a list of 100 people who would get to survive in Arkadia – while simultaneously bashing Clarke over it (“choosing who lives or dies is your specialty”), Raven gave Echo an OK to kill Shaw at one point, Raven participated in many of the hard and problematic things Clarke and the others had to do – blowing up Grounders on the bridge, burning 300 Grounders who had attacked them, etc., Raven was OK with potentially killing Raven left Clarke behind to die (and Clarke ended up alone on the deserted planet for 6 years as a result) and was ready to leave Bellamy, Monty, Emori and Murphy to die in the season 5 finale… Some of these things I don’t consider wrong under the circumstances, some of these were just one of the two bad choices – but that’s also true of most of the things Clarke has done. Being angry at Clarke for her recent betrayal is something I expected and was perfectly fine with, but being as hypocritical as Raven is now, that is really annoying. So what is going on with Raven now? Like many others, I haven’t enjoyed her characterization in season 6. It’s one of the few things I didn’t like this season. Murphy has also had his annoying moments, but he also has a real storyline, one that’s not just about being mean to Clarke. Raven currently does not. But maybe, as I’ve been hoping, this is all building up to a real character development and some sort of soul-searching. We have had many indications that Raven actually feels guilty and unworthy deep inside – Sinclair’s remarks to her in season 3, Shaw’s message “Tell Raven that she deserves happiness” – and that her high horse attitude is just a cover. I hope this is something that season 6 gets to really explore and resolve.

On the other hand, it was much more enjoyable to see Raven turning her anger and moral outrage at someone who really does deserve it – one of the Primes. And since Ryker is not a sociopath or narcissist, and does have the capacity for compassion and remorse, Raven’s words are, hopefully, going to make him rethink everything and realize he can’t go on like that. He’s been raised since teenage years and surrounded by people telling him that it’s OK to move from body to body and see others sacrifice themselves for you, but he’s over 200 years old and responsible for his own choices. And feeling sorry about hurting people is really meaningless if you go on and do the same thing again, without any intention to change. That makes you a hypocrite like Russell and Simone with their “thank you for your sacrifice” mantra said while murdering people who definitely didn’t make a choice to sacrifice themselves.

Speaking of which – Josephine really is devoid of any deeper feeling for pretty much anyone other than herself. We already saw it when she killed her “best friend” Kaylee Lee, but that was supposed to be a permanent death. Now she managed to convince her mother to wipe the entire Lee family. (Interesting that she referred to Russell as being led by the heart. The show is again going with the pseudo-parallel between Russell and Simone and Bellamy and Clarke, as in the parallel Power Couple shots in 6x03). Bye bye, four of the Primes, including one we got to know a bit better. I can’t say I feel sorry, since I think all the mind drives will have to be destroyed by the end of this season, so a definite end would be put to bodysnatching. Now there are 8 more Primes who are “alive”, but two of them are still just on the mind-drives and out of commission (the two members of Miranda’s family, whom we haven’t seen in the present), and Josephine got 4 empty mind-drives. She gave two as payment to Murphy for his part in coaching her to fool Abby and getting the others (mostly Bellamy) to decide not to take revenge for Clarke, she promised Abby one for Kane, and it still leaves one. But the other Primes would certainly not be happy if they found out about all these things – now it’s not just the fact that Russell and Simone skipped the line for their daughter, when Miranda’s loved one was next, but also that they permanently killed four of the Primes. A good way to defeat the Primes would be to start by turning them against each other. Just saying.

Abby and Murphy are two characters whose current role and actions are pretty controversial at the moment and that fans disagree on. Both of them are the most convenient target for Josephine to corrupt and get on her side due to their current issues. With Abby, the debates are mostly about whether she has realized that Josephine is not really Clarke, and is just playing along and planning to wake the people on the ship, or if she really has been fooled, which many hold against her. I’m really not completely sure, even after watching the episode twice and replaying the last shot of the scene between Abby and JC. Abby did indeed notice several weird things about “Clarke” and seemed on the brink of realizing the truth, but that time, Josephine really went for the jugular and used all the cards Murphy has taught her to play: guilt over her addiction, over cannibalism and the Dark Year, turning Jake over, failing Kane due to her addiction and indirectly causing his injury/death by indulging Vinson because of her addiction, her idealization of Kane which is a result of both love and guilt, and even her relationship with Clarke – the last card JC used was telling “her mom” that she cannot lose her. But during the hug, as we saw their faces, Josephine was not the only one who didn’t look like a loving family member: Abby’s weird, blank look could be read in different ways. And I’m sure this is exactly what the show is going for, ambiguity. We’ll probably only be sure in two episodes. Abby’s face almost made me believe the theory that she’s just pretending, but at the same time, it would be too easy if she simply goes to the ship to wake an army to come to Sanctum. Or maybe she almost knows it, but doesn’t want to admit it to herself? At the same time, Raven definitely still doesn’t know that Clarke is dead, and if Abby hasn’t figured it out, she still won’t learn it for some time.

On the other hand, it’s pretty clear where Murphy stands and what he wants, but fans seem divided over whether it makes him a bad guy, whether they hate him, and whether it is in character. I think it definitely is, and shouldn’t be surprising. Murphy certainly genuinely wants immortality – he straight up told Bellamy in 6x05 that he finds the idea appealing. While he’s always been motivated by his own survival, it used to be all about trying not to die any time soon. I don’t think it would have extended to wanting to live forever – until he died this season and saw what he thinks is “hell”. I don’t know if we’ll ever learn what he saw, or if it will remain a mystery, and just used to motivate him. His fear of going to hell is driving him, and, of course, he wants Emori as his eternal companion. (That sounded like something from vampire fiction, which is weird.) Now, that doesn’t mean that Murphy doesn’t also care about Bellamy, Raven and the others, including Clarke. I do think he was sad to learn of her ‘death’, but, of course, his reaction was never going to be as strong as Bellamy’s or Madi’s. He would only feel that way if Emori died. But keep in mind that Murphy doesn’t know that Clarke is still alive and can be brought back. From his point of view, there is no use in antagonizing the Sanctum people, and risking the lives of Bellamy, Raven, Echo, Jordan etc. and of course, Emori and himself, just to avenge someone who’s already dead. And he’s never been a person with deep ethical convictions who would care deeply about the morality of bodysnatching in general, or the lives of unknown people who mean nothing to him. I do think he cares about his friends, and that he wasn’t just doing what he needed to do for immortality, but what he thought he had to do to protect them, even from themselves –as I’m sure he thought while he was trying to manipulate Bellamy. Now, when he finds out that Clarke can be brought back, it’s only then that he will really be put into a dilemma to choose between friends and immortality/fear of death.

What can I say about Bellamy in this episode that hasn’t been said by so many other people already, both in reviews and meta and in hundreds of gifsets and videos? Even the released script pages confirmed what was so obvious. This was a great Bellamy episode, and Bob Morley’s best performance this season. While I have enjoyed most of Bellamy’s arc over seasons 5 and 6 (just as every other season), and while I disagree with fans who claim that we haven’t seen Bellamy be emotional since season 4 (he had a lot of emotional, angry, hurt, passionate, happy moments over the course of the second half of season 5), we haven’t seen this kind of outbreak of emotion in a very long time. We can only imagine how Bellamy grieved for Clarke after Praimfaya, but I think this was even worse for him – because it wasn’t her choice and her heroic act this time – she was murdered (as far as he knows), and because, after learning to love on, he got Clarke back and lost her again, just as they had finally fully emotionally reunited. And to make things so much worse, he has to look at this person who is nothing like Clarke, mocking him by walking around in Clarke’s body. Bellamy’s arc in this episode was all about his pain, grief and despair, and the way he had to be strong and reign in his anger and desire for revenge, for justice, for something other than having to be there among people responsible for these her death. I love the fact that, even shackled and tied, he managed to tear Josephine’s self-portrait. On top of it, he had to endure Josephine messing by propos(ison)ing him to “help each other get through it” (hmm) while putting on a pseudo-Clarke soft, caring face and voice (which felt so fake, like a caricature) – which made him turn around because he couldn’t even look at her. She could have almost killed him there, and I don’t even know what he would have done if she had tried, but Murphy saved him through his and JC’s manipulation of both him and Russell.

Was JC’s lack of concern over her daddy’s life just because she expected Bellamy to back down from killing him, or did she expect him to kill Russell? I tend to think she thought he wouldn’t kill him, but wasn’t too worried if he did. In any case, I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for Bellamy to decide to spare Russell and also agree to not take any actions against him and the Primes. And just like after Praimfaya, he decided to do “What Clarke would do” and what she would want him to do after her death – survive and try to keep all of their people alive.

Now, was their decision the right one? I think that deciding not to act out of revenge, prioritize that over survival and protecting people who are still alive, and especially, deciding not to get a lot of other people killed, was absolutely the right decision, and what Clarke would also do. Clarke could do all sorts of crazy and extreme things to protect her loved ones, but she never killed anyone out of revenge. However, that doesn’t mean that going along with the Primes is the right thing. Standing by and letting evil happen is not “being a good guy”. The Primes will keep killing and oppressing people and treating them like cattle if they are not stopped. And I don’t think Bellamy being for that in the long run. But right now, I think he feels defeated and has lost the will to live, rather than just survive and ensure his people’s survival. But everything will change when he finds out that Clarke is alive and can be brought back.

In the meantime, I really want to see Jordan’s reaction. He was MIA in this episode, but I don’t think he will be happy to play nice with the Primes, not just because of Delilah but also because he does have a strong moral compass and was horrified about bodysnatching.

Is anyone still pretending that Bellamy and Clarke are just BFFs? That’s a question I keep asking throughout the show. I’m sure that, if someone were to see just this episode out of the show, they would definitely conclude that Clarke was Bellamy’s girlfriend (wife?) that he is really in love with, while Echo is his good friend who works for him and may have a crush on him. Come to think of it, 90% of the show makes it look like that. He never seemed to think of his actual girlfriend while being broken up over Clarke, and Murphy never brought her up as a motivation for Bellamy to forego revenge and focus on his own survival and the reasons he has to live. Echo gave him a brief hug to try to comfort him, but Bellamy still left to grieve all by himself, away from all of them. He also once again rejected Echo’s suggestion (she assumed they would go and fight the Sanctum people) and instead chose the “What would Clarke do?” course of action.

At this point, I’m sure that the show is intentionally portraying their relationship like that, since it’s done that consistently, especially comparing Bellamy’s relationships with Clarke and Echo all season 6 – and the scenes where Echo gets some long-overdue character development have all been when she’s away from Bellamy. Echo figuring out that Clarke has been bodysnatched – not through JC’s behavior, as Bellamy, but based on other evidence, such as how Jade behaved – didn’t end up contributing to the plot, as everyone else already knew about Clarke, so it was there probably just 1) to confirm that Echo is indeed smart and perceptive enough not to be duped, as a spy is supposed to be, and, I think 2) to develop her relationship with Jade. These two could have an interesting dynamic, as both are soldiers/spies who define themselves by following orders. Echo threatened to kill Jade’s “master”, and during the eclipse, Emori taunted her that she was still just following another master’s orders (Bellamy now being her ‘master’) and this seemed to resonate with her. At the same time, this time, Echo showed that she does have a compassionate streak when she mercy-killed the guard who was being slowly eaten by the trees in the Offering Grove, in spite of Jade’s protests. It puts her in a completely new kind of dynamic – Jade is like an even more single-minded version of her old self. The fact that Echo didn’t kill Jade and instead promised to come back (she has to do it soon, though, before the trees get too deep into Jade!) suggests we’ll see more of that dynamic.

Bellamy had the hard task to tell Madi the news of her mother’s death. But Madi is the one person who is definitely not going to play nice and who doesn’t want to restrain her desire to “burn the whole place down” for revenge. The question I’ve seen brought up is, is the Sheidheda arc even necessary to motivate her? Isn’t an angry teenage girl with a head full of dead Commanders, most of whom believed in the “Blood must have blood” mantra, already enough? I think that Madi is going to take some extreme actions, or we are supposed to be afraid of what extreme actions she must take, and that this is why they wanted to give her an extra push – and another plot about “facing your demons”, with Sheidheda as a “devil on her shoulder” character.

The existence of Sheidheda also poses the question, why is it that the Grounders think that having the Flame in your head is a good thing for the next Commander, when at least one of the voices inside is one they fear and consider evil? When Titus said that the Flame makes the good and the bad in a person stronger – it is because Commanders literally have different voices, good and bad, inside their head. But really, how beneficial has the Flame “wisdom” proven to be, even without Sheidheda? Almost every time we learned about advice of past Commanders (with the exception of Lexa's in 5x12), and that wasn't often, it didn't seem to be good or useful advice. In 3x06, Lexa said that the past Commanders were upset with her new path of choosing to forego war and revenge. (Was it really all of them? Including Becca?) In 5x13, Clarke thought for a moment that Madi got the wise advice to not kill the prisoners of war from the Flame - but she didn't, she got it from Bellamy. And there's something about the Flame that never made sense and still hasn't been explained. It was created by Becca to help humanity by passing on knowledge and wisdom... and Becca was the first Commander. So how come Grounders managed to forget all about technology and history before the apocalypse? That never made sense even without the Flame. With it, and Becca's memories, they should have known even more about science and technology than the Mountain Men, and that could have helped defeat them. Mount Weather people were descendants of the US government employees, and some of them may have been great scientists, but Becca was a genius scientist. How did they instead turn into a medieval-level technology warrior society that worships violence and revenge? Something must have gone horribly wrong. And the only explanation seems to be Second Dawn, which seems to be behind the Grounder religion, and probably their world view as well. (That reveal really explained a lot.)

After we found out about Sheidheda from the trailer, there was some speculation to the effect of "since Grounder culture favors violence, war and revenge, what could have set this one guy apart, to the point that he is considered the Dark Commander?" From what we learned in this episode, Sheidheda was Chaotic Evil, whereas most Commanders were trying to stick to the tradition and were being either Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil or somewhere in between. This guy apparently said, Screw tradition, killed his mentor, and actually did whatever the hell he wanted. And, well, killing your Flamekeepers, no doubt, the exact thing that would make the Flamekeepers talk of you as a dark, terrifying presence. Flamekeepers are mentors to the Commanders who want to maintain control and influence over the charges, even if they are technically supposed to be their subjects. And what Sheidheda said about killing your mentor before they kill you.... he may have had a point? Not about Gaia, of course, but we've seen that with Titus and Lexa. He did try to control her, taught her toxic views like "Love is weakness", which are apparently generally a part of Flamekeeper teachings. He got upset when someone else - Clarke - started influencing Lexa with ideas contrary to his traditionalist Grounder ideas such as “Blood msut have blood”… and, well, he did kill his Commander, not intentionally, but it happened as an almost direct result of his desire to maintain his control over her and her views and political actions.

The B-plot with Octavia, Diyoza and Xavier had some big revelations in this episode, with the healing power of the sap from the withered trees, the temporal flare from last episode that has apparently withered Octavia’s arm and made it look like she is 150 years old (which, come to think of it, is roughly her chronological age) and the mysterious spirals that are signs of the Anomaly calling to her and Diyoza, as it apparently once called to Xavier. Now, some people speculate that Xavier is Gabriel, but I don’t believe that. His personality is nothing like Gabriel’s, from what we’ve seen of Gabriel so far, and I imagine Gabriel is even more guilty and sad these days – nothing like Xavier’s lively, snarky personality. I don’t think we’ll see these characters in 6x07, but (spoiler – if you consider titles of future episodes spoilers) we should learn what the Anomaly is in 6x08. I expect the bodysnatching story to be wrapped up in season 6, but I think this plot with the anomaly offers a lot of different possibilities, with its time-warping theme, and may continue to be addressed in season 7, kind of like the City of Light was set up in season 2 but fully developed in season 3.

The last scene was a perfect intro into the upcoming episode 6x07. I have huge expectations, because I have been wishing for a Clarke-centric, character-based episode like that for a long time. I love psychological SciFi stories, and Clarke fighting Josephine in her mind, while dealing with her own demons and her own past, seems like a dream. I must say, while it’s been fun analyzing and identifying various scenes and characters from the drawings from the walls of Clarke’s mind-space and various lines that were heard on top of each other and half-drowned in music, most of these are just Easter Eggs for hardcore fans. What matters most is what the show focuses on. In this episode (ignoring the sneak peeks), the scene focused on the drawing of Abby (as we heard lines from the very first scene of the show), then Lexa, and then Bellamy, which was an interesting choice. But I hope people don’t get too distracted by questions such as “which characters will be referenced and how many times”, “which past actors will have cameos”, etc. I don’t want the episode to be a clip show – I would love references to everything that has impacted Clarke, but what’s important is that it is all for the purpose of Clarke’s character development, her emotional state, her ability to fight her own demons and decide that she really wants to live and deserves happiness. And for her to be able to fight Josephine and signal Bellamy others that she is still there.

Rating: 9/10

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#the 100 #the 100 6x06 #the 100 season 6 #memento mori #bellamy blake #clarke griffin #josephine Lightbourne #john murphy #raven reyes #abby griffin #madi #madi griffin #sheidheda #the flame #echo #echo kom azgeda #xavier #the primes #sanctum

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