#leaving aside historic attitudes towards how children are to be treated

[yonezawacastle]

Maybe this is the result of me not being a longtime player, but there's a great deal about the Date family that never quite adds up to me.

Terumune in particular is an enigma. He's seen so rarely that it's hard to get a real grasp of his relationships with his wife and children. Has he come to love Yoshihime, I wonder, or does he merely respect her role as his wife and the mother of their children?

And how much did he know about Yoshihime's abuse of Masamune? Her contempt for her eldest child appears to have been open and unrestrained. It's not clear to me that Terumune ever attempted to put a stop to it. Did he see it as a necessary toughening up, or as simply out of his hands?

[balticapocalypse]

THE SNAKE IN BALTIC RELIGION

"Chronicles, travelogues, ecclesiastical correspondence and other historical records written by foreigners often made mention of snake worship among the Old Prussians, Samogitians, Lithuanians, and Latvians. The snakes were frequently referred to as žalčiai (cognate with Žalias 'green') which has been identified as the non-poisonous Tropodonotus natrix. Sometimes the chronicles also referred to them as gyvatės, a word which is clearly associated with Lith. gyvata 'vitality' and gyvas 'living'. The following historical records should more than suffice to demonstrate that snakes were worshipped widely among the Balts.

In the eleventh century, Adam of Bremen wrote that the Lithuanians worshipped dragons and flying serpents to whom they even offered human sacrifices (Balys 1948:66).

Aeneas Silvius recorded in 1390 an account given him by the missionary Jerome of Prague who worked among the Lithuanians in the final decade of the fourteenth century. Jerome related that:

'The first Lithuanians whom I visited were snake worshippers. Every male head of the family kept a snake in the corner of the house to which they would offer food and when it was lying on the hay, they would pray by it'.

Jerome issued a decree that all such snakes should be killed and burnt in the public market place. Among the snakes there was one which was much larger that all the others and despite repeated efforts, they were unable to put an end to its life (Balys 1948:66; Korsakas, et al 1963:33).

Dlugosz at the end of the fifteenth century wrote that among the eastern Lithuanians there were special deities in the forms of snakes and it was believed that these snakes were penates Dii (God's messengers). He also recorded that the western Lithuanians worshipped both the gyvatės and žalčiai (Gimbutas 1958:35).

Erasmus Stella in his Antiquitates Borussicae (1518) wrote about the first Old Prussian king, Vidvutas Alanas. Erasmus related that the king was greatly concerned with religion and invited priests from the Sūduviai (another Baltic tribe), who, greatly influenced by their beliefs, taught the Prussians how to worship snakes: for they are loved by the gods and are their messengers. They (the Prussians) fed them in their homes and made offerings to them as household deities (Balys 1948: II 67).

Simon Grunau in 1521 wrote that in honor of the god Patrimpas, a snake was kept in a large vessel covered with a sheaf of hay and that girls would feed it milk (Welsford 1958:421).

Maletius observed ca. 1550 that:

'The Lithuanians and Samogitians kept snakes under their beds or in the corner of their houses where the table usually stood. They worship the snakes as if they were divine beings. At certain times they would invite the snakes to come to the table. The snakes would crawl up on the linen-covered table, taste some food, and then crawl back to their holes. When the snakes crawled away, the people with great joy would first eat from the dish which the snakes had first tasted, believing that the next year would be fortunate. On the other hand, if the snakes did not come to the table when invited or if they did not taste the food, this meant that great misfortune would befall them in the coming year' (Balys 1948:67).

In 1557 Zigismund Herberstein wrote about his journey through northwestern Lithuania (Moscovica 1557, Vienna):

'Even today one can find many pagan beliefs held by these people, some of whom worship fire, others — trees, and others the sun and the moon. Still others keep their gods at home and these are serpents about three feet long... They have a special time when they feed their gods. In the middle of the house they place some milk and then kneel down on benches. Then the serpents crawl out and hiss at the people engaged geese and the people pray to them with great respect. If some mishap befalls them, they blame themselves for not properly feeding their gods' (Balys 1948: II 67).

Strykovsky in his 1582 chronicle on the Old Prussians related:

'They have erected to the god Patrimpas a statue and they honor him by taking care of a live snake to whom they feed milk so that it would remain content' (Korsakas et. al 1963:23).

A Jesuit missionary's report of 1583 reported:

'...when we felled their sacred oaks and killed their holy snakes with which the parents and the children had lived together since the cradle, then the pagans would cry that we are defaming their deities, that their gods of the trees, caves, fields, and orchards are destroyed' (Balys 1948: 11,68).

In 1604 another Jesuit missionary remarked:

'The people have reached such a stage of madness that they believe that deity exists in reptiles. Therefore, they carefully safeguard them, lest someone injure the serpents kept inside their homes. Superstitiously they believe that harm would come to them should anyone show disrespect to these serpents. It sometimes happens that snakes are encountered sucking milk from cows. Some of us occasionally have tried to pull one off, but invariably the farmer would plead in vain to dissuade us... When pleading failed, the man would seize the reptile with his hands and run away to hide it' (Gimbutas 1958:33).

In his De Dies Samagitarum of 1615, Johan Lasicci wrote:

'Also, just like some household deities, they feed black-colored reptiles which they call gioutos. When these snakes crawl out from the corners of the house and slither up to the food, everyone observes them with fear and respect. If some mishap befalls anyone who worship such reptiles, they explain that they did not treat them properly' (Lasickis 1969:25).

Andrius Cellarius in his Descripto Regni Polonicae (1659) observed:

'although the Samogitians were christianized in 1386, to this very day they are not free from their paganism, for even now they keep tamed snakes in their houses and show great respect for them, calling them Givoites' (Balys 1948: II 70).

T. Arnkiel wrote that ca. 1675 while traveling in Latvia he saw an enormous number of snakes.

'die night allein auf dem Felde und im Walde, sondern auch in den Häusern, ja gar in den Betten sich eingefunden, so ich mannigmahl mit Schrecken angesehen. Diese Schlangen thun selten Schaden, wie denn auch niemand unter den Bauern ihren Schaden zufügen wird. Scheint, dass bey denselben die alte Abgötterey noch nicht gäntzlich verloschen' (Biezais 1955: 33).

The Balts' positive attitude towards the snake has been recorded also in the late nineteenth century in the Deliciae Prussicae (1871) of Matthaus Pratorius who observed: 'Die Begegnung einer Schlange ist den Zamatien und preussischen Littauern noch jetziger Zeit ein gutes Omen' (Elisonas 1931:8.3).

Aside from the widespread attestation of snake-worship among the Balts and its persistence into Christian times, these historical records also suggest an intriguing relationship between Baltic mythology and our folk tale. Both Simon Grunau (1521) and Strykovsky (1582) mention the worship of the snake in close reference to the god Patrimpas. This deity is commonly identified as the "God of Waters" and his name is cognate with Old Prussian trumpa 'river'. The close association between the snake and the "God of Waters" has prompted E. Welsford to suggest a slight possibility that the water deity Patrimpas was at one time worshipped in the form of a snake (Welsford 1958:421). A serpent divinity associated with the water finds numerous parallels among Indo-European peoples, eg. the Indie Vrtra who withholds the waters and his benevolent counterpart, the Ahibudhnya 'the serpent of the deep'; the Midgard serpent of Norse mythology; Poseidon's serpents who are sent out of the sea to slay Lacoon, etc. A detailed comparison of the IE water-snake figure would far exceed the limits of this paper, nevertheless, it is curious to note that except for the quite minor Ahibudhnya, most IE mythologies present the water-serpent as malevolent creature — an attitude quite at variance with that of the ancient Balts.

From the historical records it is difficult to determine to what extent the ancient Balts might actually have possessed an organized snake-cult. Erasmus Stella's account of 1518 concerning the Sudovian Priest's introduction of snake-worship into Prussia might suggest such an established cult. In any event, that the snake was worshipped widely on a domestic level cannot be denied. In general it was deemed fortunate to come across a žaltys, and encountering a snake prophesied either marriage or birth. The žaltys was always said to bring happiness and prosperity, ensuring the fertility of the soil and the increase of the family. Up until the twentieth century, in many parts of Lithuania, farm women would leave milk in shallow pans in their yards for the žalčiai. This, they explained, helped to ensure the well-being of the family.

In 1924 H. Bertuleit wrote that the Samogitian peasants "even at the present time, staunchly maintain that the žaltys/gyvatė is a health and strength giving being" (Balys 1948: II 73). To this day in Lithuania, the gabled roofs are occasionally topped with serpent-shaped carvings in order to protect the household from evil powers.

The best proof of the still persistent respect, if no longer veneration, of the snake (or žaltys in specific) is provided by various folk sayings and beliefs which were recorded during this century. Some of them clearly reflect the association of the snake with good luck, while others depict the evil consequences which will befall one if he does not respect the snake. The following are some examples:

Good luck

1. If a snake crosses over your path you will have good luck.

2. If a snake runs across your path, there will be good fortune.

3. Žaltys is a good guardian of the home, he protects the home from thunder, sickness and murder.

4. If a žaltys appears in the living room, someone in that house will soon get married.

Bad consequences

5. In some houses there live domestic snakes; one must never kill this house-snake, for if you do, misfortunes and bad luck will fall on you and will last for seven years.

6. If you burn a snake in a fire and look at it when it is burning, you will become blind.

7. If you find a snake and throw it on an ant hill, it will stick out its little legs which will cause you to go blind.

8. If s snake bites someone and the person then kills the snake, he will never get well.

9. If a snake bites a man and another person kills it, the man will never recover.

10. If you kill the snake that bit you, you will never recover.

11. If a žaltys comes when one is eating, one must give it food, otherwise one will choke.

12. When children are eating and a žaltys crawls up to them, he must be fed; otherwise the children will choke.

13. If you kill a žaltys, your own animals will never obey you.

14. If someone kills a snake, it will not die until the sun has set.

15. If you kill a snake, the sun cries.

16. If you kill a snake and leave it unburied, the sun grows sick.

17. When a snake or a žaltys is killed, the sun cries while the Devil laughs.

18. If you kill a snake and leave it in the forest, then the sun grows dim for two or three days.

19. If you kill a snake and leave it unburied, then the sun will cry when it sees such a horrible thing.

20. If you kill a snake, you must bury it, otherwise the sun will cry when it sees the dead snake.

The snake's name.

21. If one finds a snake in the forest and wants to show it to others, he must say: "Come, here I found a paukštyte (little bird)!", otherwise, if you call it a gyvate, the snake will understand its name and run away.

22. If you see a snake, call it a little bird; then it will not attack humans.

23. While eating, never talk about a snake or you will meet it when going through the forest.

24. Snakes never bite those who do not mention their name in vain, especially while eating and on the days of the Blessed Mary (Wednesdays and Sundays).

25. On seeing a snake you should say: "Pretty little swallow." It likes this name and does not get angry nor bite.

26. If someone guesses the names of a snake's children, the snake and its children will die.

27. If you do not want a snake to bite you when you are walking though the forest, then don't mention its name.

28. A snake does not run away from -those who know its name.

29. Whoever knows the name of the king of the snakes will never be bitten by them.

30. One must never directly address a snake as gyvatė (snake); instead, one should use ilgoji (the long one) or margoji (the dappled one).

Snakes and cows.

31. Every cow has her own žaltys and when the žaltys becomes lost, she gives less milk. When buying a cow, a žaltys should also be bought together.

32. If you kill a žaltys, things will go bad because other žalčiai will suck all the milk from the cows.

Life-index and affinity to man

33. Some people keep a žaltys in the corner of their house and say: if I didn't have that žaltys, I would die.

34. If a person takes a žaltys out of the house — that person will also have to leave home.

35. If a žaltys leaves the house, someone in that household will die.

Enticement.

36. When you see a snake crawl into a tree trunk, cross two branches and carry them around the tree stump. Then place the crossed branches on the hole through which the snake crawled in. When the sun rises, you will find the snake lying on these branches.

37. When you see a snake and it crawls into a tree-stump, take a stick and draw a circle around the stump. Then, break the stick and place it in the shape of a cross and the snake will crawl out and lie down on the cross.

Miscellaneous.

38. If a snake bites you, pick it up in your hands and rub its head against the wound. Then you will get well.

39. When one is bitten by a snake, say: "Iron one! Cold-tailed one! Forgive (name of person bitten)," while blowing in the direction of the sick person.

40. If you throw a dead snake into water, it will come back to life.

41. A snake attacks a man only when it sees his shadow.

42. They say that when a snake is killed, it comes back to life on the ninth day.

43. If a snake bites an ash tree, the tree bursts into leaf.8

44. If someone understands the language of the snakes, whey will obey him and he can command them to go from one place to another.

45. If there are too many snakes and you want them to leave, light a holy fire at the edge of your field and in the center; all the snakes will then crawl in groups through the fire and go away, but you must not touch them.

Some folk-beliefs show an obvious Christian influence and are possibly the products of frustrated Jesuit anti-snake propagandists:

45. When you meet a snake you must certainly have to kill it for if you fail to do so, then you will have committed a great sin.

46. If you kill a snake, you will win many indulgences.

47. If you kill seven snakes, all your sins will be forgiven.

48. If you kill seven snakes, you will win the Kingdom of Heaven

Such examples as these, however, are quite rare in comparison to the folk-beliefs which are sympathetic to the snake.

Considering the evidence amassed from both historical records and folk-belief that the Balts possessed a positive and reverent attitude towards the snake, it is little wonder that the snake husband's death is viewed as tragedy. If, as the proverbs suggest, a snake's death can affect the sun, then what consequences might the death of the very King of the Snakes have among mortals? This tragic outcome, as Swahn has indicated, gives the tale a character which is foreign to the true folk-tale (Swahn 1955:341). This tale could not terminate on the usual euphoric note typical of the Märchen (although the tale does contain numerous Märchen motifs) because the main event of the story relates to a "reality" which the people who tell the story still hold to be true. The tale is thus well-nourished in a setting where such folk-beliefs about the snake persist. On the other hand, the tale itself may have played a part in affecting the longevity of the beliefs. Whichever case may be true, it is obvious that both are closely related.

A specific element of folk-belief that survived as an ideological support to the tale is that of the snake's name-taboo. The tragic killing of the snake king is implemented only because the name formula is revealed. Thus, the general snake-taboo proverbs (No. 21-30; receive a specific denouement in the snake-father ordering that his name and summoning formula not be revealed to others. There appear to be two important aspects that surround this name-taboo. First of all, it reflects the primitive concept of one being able to manipulate another when his name is known. A second aspect is that the name-taboo may rest on the reverence and fear of a more powerful supernatural being that requires mortals never to mention the deity's real name. For example, Perkūnas, the all-powerful Thunder God of the Baits, has many substitutes for his real name which are usually onomatopoeic with the sound of thunder, eg. Dudulis, Dundulis, Tarškulis, Trenktinis. In our tale the general reason for the name-taboo may be partially related to this second explanation especially since there are a number of variants for the name of the snake-king, eg. Žilvine, which have no etymological support but bear a suspicious resemblance to the word žaltys 'snake'. This might then indicate a deliberate attempt to destroy the name žaltys in such a way as to avoid breaking the name-taboo but still retain some of the underlying semantic force. On the other hand, it must be admitted that many of the summoning formulas include a direct reference to the husband as žaltys. In these cases, since the brothers know his name, they can extend their power over him. It is likely that both these aspects should be considered when explaining the name-taboo of the story. The clear distinction between the obviously Christian folk-sayings (No. 45-48) and the underlying pro-snake proverbs carries considerable significance when one views the substitution of the Devil for the snake in many of the Latvian variants. This substitution occurred in all probability with the increasing influence of Christianity and its usual association of the serpent with the Devil as in the Garden of Eden story. It is interesting to reflect that in some cases the entire story proceeds with the same tragic development despite this substitution (Lat. 2, 7, 9, 15). Even in the Lithuanian variant (Lith. 4) where an old woman tells the heroine that her snake-husband is actually the Devil, this does little to alter the tragic tone of the tale's ending. Thus, it would seem that the Devil is a relatively late introduction, sometimes amounting to little more than a Christian gloss of the snake's real identity. On this basis, one might well conelude that the tale must have been composed in pagan times and is thereby, at the very least, four or five centuries old if not far older.

The effect of the diabolization of the snake among the Latvian variants seems to have led to a disintegration of the tale's actual structure. In some of the Latvian redactions (Lat. 4, 8, 15) where the Devil is the abductor, the story simply ends with the killing of the supernatural husband and the heroine's rescue. In variants of the tale which progress with such a rescue-motif development, it is important to observe that many of the other elements are consequently dropped. There is no name-taboo or magic formula, sometimes no children, and, of course, no magical transformation. Thus the tale is stripped of all these other embellishments and appears rather bare. It simply relates an abduction of the heroine and her rescue, usually accomplished by some members of her family or a priest and thunder storm (Latv. 15). In any event, the abductor is one whom she quite definitely cannot marry and therefore, there can be no Märchen marriage-feast. When the tale has been altered, the rescue motif can then be correlated to the other Märchen tale-types where the heroine is abducted (rather than married) and is eventually rescued by an eligible marriage partner. One might even speculate that this will be the eventual fate of those particular Latvian variants which no longer specify that the snake, a sacred and positive being, is the supernatural husband. We then have an intimate relationship between folk-belief and folk-tale which ultimately may be mirrored in the very structure of the story.

The place of the snake in Baltic folk-belief and its relation to our tale now having been well established, the obvious next question is whether similar beliefs exist in the neighboring non-Baltic countries and, if not, might we propose this as a possible explanation why the story as a Baltic oicotype has not spread to these other cultures. A complete analysis of the role of the snake in Germanic and Slavic folk-belief would far exceed the time allotted for the composition of this study, nevertheless, some of the evidence arrived at by way of a cursory review should be brought forth.

Of sole interest in our investigation of snake beliefs among the Germans and Slavs is the extent to which these cultures parallel the Balts with respect to the latter's quite sympathetic attitude toward the snake. Bolte and Polivka, Hoffmann - Krayer and J. Grimm all mention that among the Germans there are some beliefs which view the snake in a positive light. A few specific entries in Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens are similar to some folk-beliefs already cited among the Baits (Hoffmann - Krayer 1935-36: VII 1139-1141). Bolte and Polivka in listing parallels to Grimm's Märchen von der Unke cite several instances of snakes bringing great fortune to those who treat them well and disaster to those who disrespect or abuse them (Bolte and Polivka 1915: II 459-465) .9 Both Hoffmann-Krayer and Grimm, after listing various "remnants" of what they maintain might be evidence for an ancient snake-cult in Germany, state that under the influence of Christianity the snake is usually diabolized and its image as a malignant and deceitful creature predominates. Only in some very "old" stories are there traces of the original heathen positive attitude towards the snake (Grimm 1966: II 684); Hoffmann - Krayer 1935-36: VII Sp. 1139).

Welsford, in writings about the snake-cult among the ancient Slavs, states that it was probably quite similar to the one which persisted among the Balts, but that the latter seems to have retained it much longer. In the Slavic countries the snake was usually regarded as a creature in which dead souls were embodied and through time came to be viewed mostly as a dangerous animal. It is this aspect of the snake which appears most often in Slavic stories. The snake seems to be similar or even identical with other evil antagonists such as Baba Yaga (Welsford 1958: 422). There are also many stories involving a hero or heroine who has been transformed into a snake by evil enchantment. These stories primarily relate how this "curse" is ultimately overcome.

These remarks indicate that the respect for the snake and its association with good fortune was also known to both Germans and Slavs. The heathen past, however, is farther removed from these peoples than form the Latvians and Lithuanians. If similar snake-cults existed in Germany and in Slavic lands, they were not practiced on the same scale within recorded history as they were by the Baits. The cited fourteenth to eighteenth century reports on the Baits were written by Slavs and Germans and already then the surprise and disgust with which they viewed Baltic snake-veneration gives us a good indication of the place of the snake within their own cultures.

Cursory perusal of present-day Germanic and Slavic beliefs about the snake seems to verify the fact that, indeed, the snake is usually considered deceitful and malevolent. The majority of folk-beliefs, expressions, and proverbs reflect this general negative attitude. There are only a few examples of a positive regard for the snake, usually associating it with powers of healing. One may speculate that the folk medicine beliefs which prescribe the use of a snake as an effective cure may be partially explained by the notion that evil conquers evil (ie. an extension of similia similibus curantor). This, however, is mere speculation for it is also likely that the snake's obvious vitality may be responsible for its specification in various folk cures. This latter case seems to be well supported in the Baltic beliefs (cf. folk-belief 38, 39) since the name for snake, gyvatė, and its association with gyvata 'life' helps one to consciously sense the logical correlation.

Stories which mention the affinity between snakes and children are probably known throughout the world because they describe an unexpected occurrence. W. Hand has suggested that the credibility of such stories rests on the notion that the child's innocence and helplessness can not be breached even by a snake (Hand 1968). Note that this kind of logic presupposes that the snake is evil.

Hence, although a more thorough investigation is definitely required, one may still suggest that the Balts have sustained through their history a more sympathetic regard for the snake than either the Germans or Slavs. Assuming that this hypothesis may be true, let us now see how it might be related to the discussion of our tale.

When one assumes no comparable folkloric basis among the Germans and Slavs with regard to the snake, then the Baltic tale would make very little 'cultural sense' to these people and even if it penetrated into their cultural spheres, it would probably by altered by the same process which seems to be occurring with the Latvian tales. Secondly, even if we posit the existence of a similar positive attitude toward the snake in these cultures at a pre-Christian time, these beliefs would now seem to have almost entirely died out. In any case, even though there may be some survivals, there has been no comparative retention of respect and reverence for the snake among the Germans and Slavs as one finds with the Baits. The narrative motif of this tale clearly rests on a folk-belief which serves as an ideological backbone to the story. Conversely, people unfamiliar with the underlying folk-belief or possessing quite antithetical beliefs would find this tale lacking in cultural meaning and, therefore, 'untransferable,' at least in its original form".

By Elena Bradunas, 'If you killed a snake the sun will cry' in Lituanus: Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Science (21).

Illustration by Aleksandra Czudzak.

[fymagnificentwomcn]

What are your thoughts about Silhatar Mustafa?

Mhm pretty much indifferent to him, but as many, deserved so much better?

I mean later on he was horrible, but he wasn’t himself anymore following Gevherhan’s death and his disastrous marriage to Atike.

When we meet him we know he’s Murad’s best friend and has a reputation as ladies man, seems like a guy seriously devoted to his work, but having a messy private life lol.

The person he seems most attached to was Murad, we see he is very much concerned about his well-being and happiness, for example he is very glad seeing Murad being happy after a ride with Farya (later changes his attitude towards her after the pig incident). He also has a soft spot for Ayşe (in platonic sense), which mirrors Ibrahim’s fondness for Mahi due to being treated as part of their family (and this relationship stays strong until the end, even in her last episode, he pleads on her behalf with Murad).

It’s clear he and Kösem aren’t great friends, but they both have learned how to co-operate with each other for Murad’s sake, he also seems to have similar relations with the rest of family – there doesn’t seem to be exceptional closeness between him and the rest of the family other than Murad, but everybody manages to get along.

The show starts when Mu/rat loses his previous main male favourite (and I don’t intend here any romantic undertons either ahaha) aka Musa, and Silahtar is given his position. In later flashback scene we see what Mu/rat expects of him – absolute loyalty. Obviously Musa has left big shoes to fill in and Silahtar is undoubtedly aware of this.

Suddenly Silahtar’s professional life and his messy private life intersect because he gets caught between two sultanas – one which he begins to have feelings for and the other who begins chasing after him for a change.

He was well aware Gevherhan might be too far above him and perhaps got scared about having for the first time real feelings for a woman, so he entered into what he thought a casual relationship with Ester. However, he could have sensed that Ester wanted something more, she was pretty vocal about bearing her loneliness aka widowhood badly and wanting to have someone by her side long-term. Then he actually did decide to pursue Gev and like he said start a new chapter with his life, close the previous messy private life and start anew with the woman he truly loved. He also intended to immediately come clean to Mu/rat and ask for Gev’s hand, even at the risk of being executed.

Ironically, what proved to be an obstacle was not where he actually was at fault (Ester), but where he was innocent (Atike).

As I said, Ester serves here as foil to Atike – she has much better reasons to be bitter and want revenge, but ultimately she draws a line and leaves the matter. And LBR nobody would have cared so much about her as about a sultana… but this sultana is lying, even if she herself believes in her delusions.

The whole situation truly gives me Atonement vibes, and as in Atonement it has a bad ending, but here it gets a bit more complicated because of Silahtar’s love and loyalty being connected also with another person – Murad.

I said it multiple times – in the end the real love triangle is Silahtar-Gevherhan-Murad.

As I mentioned in the beginning, from beginning Silahtar is very protective of his friend and sultan and also wants to do as best as he can in his job. He is also a bit naïve about Murad – during the Kasim matter, he scolds Kemankeş for having helped Kösem hide the truth, but he himself has no bad intentions and does not want Kasim hurt – he believes Murad will not pursue the matter as far as he ultimately does.

Similarly, he makes digs at Kemankes to not switch sides for Kösem’s.

When he asks Murad for Gev’s hand, he is sure his friend will treat him at least justly. But boy he was disappointed. Murad doesn’t even ask him about the whole matter and trusts Atike blindly. Then puts him in that praying cell to make Silahtar understand that the most important thing in his life is his padişah and absolute loyalty to him.

To make matters worse, once Silahtar is released from prison, his “friend” decides to complete the “lesson” with “absolute loyalty test” – marry Atike.

Murad is well aware Silahtar does not love Atike and does not want to marry her. He actually uses his beloved (?) little sis and traps her in marriage that has no chances of being ever happy to test Silahtar’s loyalty.

And Silahtar, traumatised and brainwashed by everything – chooses loyalty to Murad. Of course if he had said no, he would have been executed (though Gev would have more strength to live seeing he didn’t abandon her), but he still chooses a sad life trapped in his private life with a woman he now despises… what is left is truly only Murad and his service to him.

In a way, it’s strange that following Gev’s demise Silahtar becomes obsessed with the person who caused him this misery – but at the same he lost everything, all he has left is Murad, he made his choice, chose Murad, so now all he can do is stick to his choice and save what he still has.

When Murad comes to Silahtar when the latter is mourning Gevherhan we see he has learned his lessons by now – Murad is distraught because his mother told him he was guilty of his sister’s suicide, so Murad (as always) makes his friend’s pain be about him and asks whether it’s true. Silahtar now knows what answer Murad expects and states that “all our lives and our paths, life and death, belong to you” and remarks that if Gev had accepted Murad’s will as we all should, she would have been alive. It’s deeply sad to state, but Silahtar knows Murad truly wants no other answer than this. However, before Murad’s appearance, Silahtar recalled telling Gev that only she made him feel alive and now he tells Murad he is practically dead and trapped in his life, and that he needs to live with his pain and regret forever. He actually says similar thing to Atike - yes, he chose loyalty to Murad over the woman he loved and now has to bear the consequences for the rest of his life. Atike, of course, does not get it and still belives they might have a happy ending.

It’s a very dark reality for him now, no wonder he pretty much loses his mind out of this grief, and it only gets worse because he realises Atike will never divorce him and will not even rest until he tries to be a husband to her.

When he comes to her and they “kiss” he taunts her to divorce him and sees that even when he mocks her she’s so obsessed with him, she won’t go let go no matter what. Kösem actually would be happy to see Atike divorcing Silahtar because we know she never liked him, the only obstacle is Atike’s obsession. So later he tries to play the husband part even though it’s clear he continues to despise her.

Ironically, he develops sort of his own obsession, but with Murad. Pretty much tries to remove everyone around Murad and most sadly tries to turn Murad against his mother and brothers. He suggests both changing the law and putting Murad’s brothers to kafes, which is an action very uncharacteristic of his old self. Still, it’s clearly not a vendetta against Murad because we see he still clearly cares about him, e.g. when he hides from him the fact that Farya (whom he strongly dislikes) had connection with Murad’s children death. He does confide it in Kösem though because he knows that while she will scold Farya, she will also keep quiet not to cause Murad any more pain. It again proves that while these two never liked each other much, they were able to set their differences aside for Murad’s sake.

This is not just restricted to his family, but also to Murad’s other men – Abaza, Kemankeş – because he shows Murad the letter from Kösem to Kemankes not only to strike at her, but to make Murad doubt Kemankeş too and he taunts Kemankeş with being Kösem’s spy (which is true because now Kemankeş is reporting Kösem Murad’s tyrannical behaviour, the opposite of what he was sent to Kösem, I love this irony sm ngl)

Kemankeş however is not interested in becoming Murad’s male favourite, but a new serious rival pops up – Yusuf. And a new triangle emerges 😊 Silahtar cannot hide his jealousy at all, even Atike notices it, though as always she mistakes it as him being jealous of her, same with Kemankeş who taunts Silahtar that Yusuf’s relationship with Murad curiously resembles his relationship with “someone else”.

I really despair we didn’t get more of Silahtar/Yusuf/Murad thing NGL, but I’m sure it would have gone this way if Caner had not left the show, I doubt Silahtar would have ever abandoned Murad at that stage, especially since historically he was his most loyal man until the end (“the person who was always loyal and genuinely attached to him since his youth” as Du Loir suggests) and was even in terrible despair upon Murad’s death, sooo.

In short again, he’s not among my fave characters, but he truly deserved so much better because he was living in actual hell and dark place later on, and ironically Murad was well aware of this as he remarked over his body that “for some people living is so painful, they feel trapped and in chains, death is actually relief for them, and only those who remain suffer” (aka exact repetition of what Sil told Murad about Gev following her death).

- Joanna

[somuchfuckingsalt]

The Faerie AU

Alright I just found this post about faeries and Ireland and how even though it’s a very modern country there’s just places you don’t go and things you don’t fuck with because even if you don’t believe in faeries, you don’t want to find out they exist by pissing them off.

So anyway, here’s my Fae AU where Annabeth unwittingly puts herself in danger because Fae are Not Real and why would she believe in children’s stories.

One year, after the Chase family has spent many an hour in therapy together, Frederick decides to take the entire family on an extended vacation to Ireland, where his uncle resides. Said uncle is going to be spending the summer elsewhere and has offered his very large house for their use while he’s gone.

Annabeth finds both good and bad things about the trip.

For good, her great uncle lives in a very old, historical home and she has been studying it obsessively with great fascination.

For bad, her father insists on ‘bonding time’ since the whole point of the trip was to help them work through their collective shit.

For good, Annabeth can escape bonding time by going into the local village.

For bad, the local village is a bit of a trek on foot and she’s not allowed to drive her uncle’s nice cars.

For good, there’s this hill that she can climb over that will cut the walk time nearly in half. It’s a large hill, with a few dips and rises but nothing major or terribly difficult. It’s spotted with trees and there’s a natural path made out of the roots of trees breaching the ground that provides an easy way not to get lost.

For bad, it’s One of Those Hills.

The first time Annabeth walked across that hill, it was shortly after lunch and she was following a google search that told her that the village was home to a small second hand bookstore that she wanted to explore. When she started out she slowed herself down though because the path was scenic and she had a healthy appreciation for how green and beautiful Ireland is.

When she emerged in town the first person who saw didn’t even bother to greet her, just asked if she’d come from the hill and then proceeded to inquire whether she’d littered or taken anything from the path. She hadn’t, but she was both baffled and annoyed by their behaviour. Since she had done neither of those things the local had let her be and she’d brushed it off as someone who just didn’t want the American Tourist to mess up their home.

Later that day when she had started home the same way, a young woman who introduced herself as Katie, had warned her to stick to the road because it would be dark soon. Thinking she had meant wild animals were more likely to come about at night on a remote hill rather than road, Annabeth had listened and walked the long way home.

It didn’t take long for Annabeth to learn that those incidents were not because the locals were concerned about wild animals, but rather because of the Fae. Each time Annabeth took that tree root path or mentioned her shortcut some local would warn her about being respectful and never, ever taking the path at night. 

Annabeth never failed to roll her eyes at the warnings, laughing slightly and asking if the newest well-intentioned local actually believed in fairies. They never did, agreeing whole-heartedly that the Fae (as they called them) didn’t exist.

But don’t go to the Hill at night. 

She found this endlessly confusing, however, she also never failed to take the long way home when her trips to town ran a little bit late.

Maybe it was the story Katie told her of some drunk high school kid who’d thrown his empty beer from the paved road high up onto the hill and spent the next three weeks in the hospital because of an unknown but extremely aggressive stomach bug.

Or perhaps it was the story the bookstore owner Anthelia told her, about a nature hiker taking a pretty, crystal looking stone from the path and find the next morning that every tire in her care had somehow gone flat from running over sharp rocks.

Or it was the story of the dairy farmer’s daughter, who’d taken the short cut but wandered off the path, not to be seen for three days and with no memory of where she’d been. 

Most likely it was the fact that there was an apparent string of missing persons who were last seen heading towards The Hill at night. 

Meanwhile there’s Percy, 100% Fae and 100% up for stirring some shit among the humans. He knows about the American girl with the pretty, long blond hair, and very time he heard a tale of her rolling her eyes at the stories the locals told he rolled her eyes at her, just waiting for the day that she’d specifically do something the locals warned her against just to prove them wrong.

Part of him hopes he’d be the one to catch her tossing her crips bag into the grass or picking a flower, mainly because her smarter-than-thou-foolish-fae-believers attitude was pissing him off just a bit. It had been a long time since someone had managed to do something that warranted more than having a minor inconvenience bestowed upon them and quite frankly, Percy was a bit bored.

Percy’s hopes of tying the girl’s long pretty hair to the bars of her headboard (or perhaps to the branches of a thorn bush) were dashed when his only and favouritest little sister came home one day and told her about the human princess with golden hair she’d met on the Hill who’d given her half a chocolate bar and rigged the straps of her dress with a ponytail when a button fell off.

Estelle was too little to give the girl a gift, or do her a favour, herself so could her bestest big brother do it for her? Pretty please?

Well fine. He could do something nice for her now but that doesn’t mean he still won’t switch all of the covers of her books around.

He’d planned on watching her a bit for a day or two so he could know what she’d appreciate best without noticing it as an outright gift (although he’d played around with giving her the most FaeTM gift possible just to watch her question everything but that would not fall under the ‘nice gift/favour’ category).

He’d been thinking about slipping some kind of precious book or an interesting antique into her belongings when she’d left a dinner out with her family abruptly, pissed off, and heading straight for The Hill.

Percy was astounded. Truly baffled. Because of all the dumbass ways to prove the local legends wrong, going to The Hill at night was the dumbest of the dumbass ways.

Quite frankly, Percy didn’t entirely think fixing his sister’s dress and giving her some chocolate was enough of a good deed for him to catch shit for rescuing the girl from herself and preventing the local Fae community from having their first kidnapping in decades. And he knows, deep in his heart, that Beckendorf is going to tease him for the next century about saving the pretty human girl and he does not want to deal with that even a little bit (he does think she’s pretty, and that may or may not be why he’s been paying extra attention to the gossip about the American vacationers, but that’s besides the point). 

However, if his sister found out her golden princess was going to have her pretty grey eyes added to someone’s collection, she’d probably be upset.

So Percy followed her in, keeping his distance at first, until words began to whisper and began to slow, her eyes scanning the land for what could possibly be making the noise. She probably didn’t even notice she was slowly moving off of the path until Percy kicked a rock to get her attention with the noise.

Now both scared and angry, she directed her venom at him. “Who are you? Why are you following me?”

“The locals warned you about coming up here. Stellie would be upset if you got carried off.” Percy replied, thinking at first she was freaked because on a regular day his appearance could be *ahem* alarming to humans. Until he realized he’d glamoured himself and he was a boy and she was a girl and it was night and even Fae know human girls should not be around strange boys at night.

“I don’t believe in children’s stories and I don’t know who that is.”

“My sister. You helped her with her dress and gave her a treat, so she asked me to help you.” That last bit he wasn’t looking at her as he said it, instead passed her to the land beyond the path and those that occupied it. They weren’t entirely pleased with him but even though they’d complain and kick up a fuss about their lost prey, fighting with him would be fruitless.

She didn’t look like she particularly trusted him, though she believed that he was the brother of the little girl she had helped. That wasn’t entirely comforting to her though, because that little girl had freaked Annabeth out just a touch with her too big eyes and odd speech and the way Annabeth swore there were little growths underneath her hair.

He offered to walk the path in front of her. That way she could keep an eye on him and he could tell his sister he walked her home safe and sound.

Along the way he couldn’t quite help himself, he asked why in the fuck she would go for a nature walk in the middle of the night when everyone who knows the area has told not to do. Children’s stories aside, it’s still partial wilderness and she’s alone.

That was the wrong thing to say, because she was not a happy camper and no matter what Percy said she was not pleased.

To be fair to Annabeth, he was a strange boy who’d apparently appeared out of nowhere, she’d been plague by chills and an ominous feeling the entire walk, and she had just gone through one (1) horrendous dinner with her family. The Boy was also infuriatingly smug for a reason she could not for the life of her comprehend and every word coming out of his mouth was a frustrating mixture of annoying as hell and super sexy because goddamn that accent.

Percy manages to get her all the way home, respectfully staying at the gate while she walks to the front door, and waiting until said door is locked before he turns to leave.

(To his chagrin both Beckendorf and Grover are waiting to give him hell but goddammit word travels fast).

Annabeth may or not be slightly obsessed with the hot boy who appeared one (1) time in a village small enough that by week two of their family vacation everyone knew her name and where she went to high school. A boy who was rather strange but no one seemed to know when she gave them a description.

She also may or may not have been plagued by bad luck until the end of her trip (lost items, ripped clothes, tripping lots, etcetera). Percy thinks it’s a decent trade off for being carried off in the middle of the night.

It’s not until her next summer trip two years later that she finds out why Percy was so very smug when she insisted that Fae aren’t real. 

[antoine-roquentin]

ON DECEMBER 11, 1981 in El Salvador, a Salvadoran military unit created and trained by the U.S. Army began slaughtering everyone they could find in a remote village called El Mozote. Before murdering the women and girls, the soldiers raped them repeatedly, including some as young as 10 years old, and joked that their favorites were the 12-year-olds. One witness described a soldier tossing a 3-year-old child into the air and impaling him with his bayonet. The final death toll was over 800 people.

The next day, December 12, was the first day on the job for Elliott Abrams as assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs in the Reagan administration. Abrams snapped into action, helping to lead a cover-up of the massacre. News reports of what had happened, Abrams told the Senate, were “not credible,” and the whole thing was being “significantly misused” as propaganda by anti-government guerillas.

This past Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo named Abrams as America’s special envoy for Venezuela. According to Pompeo, Abrams “will have responsibility for all things related to our efforts to restore democracy” in the oil-rich nation.

The choice of Abrams sends a clear message to Venezuela and the world: The Trump administration intends to brutalize Venezuela, while producing a stream of unctuous rhetoric about America’s love for democracy and human rights. Combining these two factors — the brutality and the unctuousness — is Abrams’s core competency.

Abrams previously served in a multitude of positions in the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, often with titles declaring their focus on morality. First, he was assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs (in 1981); then the State Department “human rights” position mentioned above (1981-85); assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs (1985-89); senior director for democracy, human rights, and international operations for the National Security Council (2001-05); and finally, Bush’s deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy (2005-09).

In these positions, Abrams participated in many of the most ghastly acts of U.S. foreign policy from the past 40 years, all the while proclaiming how deeply he cared about the foreigners he and his friends were murdering. Looking back, it’s uncanny to see how Abrams has almost always been there when U.S. actions were at their most sordid.

ABRAMS, A GRADUATE of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, joined the Reagan administration in 1981, at age 33. He soon received a promotion due to a stroke of luck: Reagan wanted to name Ernest Lefever as assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, but Lefever’s nomination ran aground when two of his own brothers revealed that he believed African-Americans were “inferior, intellectually speaking.” A disappointed Reagan was forced to turn to Abrams as a second choice.

A key Reagan administration concern at the time was Central America — in particular, the four adjoining nations of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. All had been dominated by tiny, cruel, white elites since their founding, with a century’s worth of help from U.S. interventions. In each country, the ruling families saw their society’s other inhabitants as human-shaped animals, who could be harnessed or killed as needed.

But shortly before Reagan took office, Anastasio Somoza, the dictator of Nicaragua and a U.S. ally, had been overthrown by a socialist revolution. The Reaganites rationally saw this as a threat to the governments of Nicaragua’s neighbors. Each country had large populations who similarly did not enjoy being worked to death on coffee plantations or watching their children die of easily treated diseases. Some would take up arms, and some would simply try to keep their heads down, but all, from the perspective of the cold warriors in the White House, were likely “communists” taking orders from Moscow. They needed to be taught a lesson.

The extermination of El Mozote was just a drop in the river of what happened in El Salvador during the 1980s. About 75,000 Salvadorans died during what’s called a “civil war,” although almost all the killing was done by the government and its associated death squads.

The numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. El Salvador is a small country, about the size of New Jersey. The equivalent number of deaths in the U.S. would be almost 5 million. Moreover, the Salvadoran regime continually engaged in acts of barbarism so heinous that there is no contemporary equivalent, except perhaps ISIS. In one instance, a Catholic priest reported that a peasant woman briefly left her three small children in the care of her mother and sister. When she returned, she found that all five had been decapitated by the Salvadoran National Guard. Their bodies were sitting around a table, with their hands placed on their heads in front of them, “as though each body was stroking its own head.” The hand of one, a toddler, apparently kept slipping off her small head, so it had been nailed onto it. At the center of the table was a large bowl full of blood.

Criticism of U.S. policy at the time was not confined to the left. During this period, Charles Maechling Jr., who had led State Department planning for counterinsurgencies during the 1960s, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the U.S. was supporting “Mafia-like oligarchies” in El Salvador and elsewhere and was directly complicit in “the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads.”

Abrams was one of the architects of the Reagan administration’s policy of full-throated support for the Salvadoran government. He had no qualms about any of it and no mercy for anyone who escaped the Salvadoran abattoir. In 1984, sounding exactly like Trump officials today, he explained that Salvadorans who were in the U.S. illegally should not receive any kind of special status. “Some groups argue that illegal aliens who are sent back to El Salvador meet persecution and often death,” he told the House of Representatives. “Obviously, we do not believe these claims or we would not deport these people.”

Even when out of office, 10 years after the El Mozote massacre, Abrams expressed doubt that anything untoward had occurred there. In 1993, when a United Nations truth commission found that 95 percent of the acts of violence that had taken place in El Salvador since 1980 had been committed by Abrams’s friends in the Salvadoran government, he called what he and his colleagues in the Reagan administration had done a “fabulous achievement.”

The situation in Guatemala during the 1980s was much the same, as were Abrams’s actions. After the U.S. engineered the overthrow of Guatemala’s democratically elected president in 1954, the country had descended into a nightmare of revolving military dictatorships. Between 1960 and 1996, in another “civil war,” 200,000 Guatemalans were killed — the equivalent of maybe 8 million people in America. A U.N. commission later found that the Guatemalan state was responsible for 93 percent of the human rights violations.

Efraín Ríos Montt, who served as Guatemala’s president in the early 1980s, was found guilty in 2013, by Guatemala’s own justice system, of committing genocide against the country’s indigenous Mayans. During Ríos Montt’s administration, Abrams called for the lifting of an embargo on U.S. arms shipments to Guatemala, claiming that Ríos Montt had “brought considerable progress.” The U.S. had to support the Guatemalan government, Abrams argued, because “if we take the attitude ‘don’t come to us until you’re perfect, we’re going to walk away from this problem until Guatemala has a perfect human rights record,’ then we’re going to be leaving in the lurch people there who are trying to make progress.” One example of the people making an honest effort, according to Abrams, was Ríos Montt. Thanks to Ríos Montt, “there has been a tremendous change, especially in the attitude of the government toward the Indian population.” (Ríos Montt’s conviction was later set aside by Guatemala’s highest civilian court, and he died before a new trial could finish.)

Abrams would become best known for his enthusiastic involvement with the Reagan administration’s push to overthrow Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government. He advocated for a full invasion of Nicaragua in 1983, immediately after the successful U.S. attack on the teeny island nation of Grenada. When Congress cut off funds to the Contras, an anti-Sandinista guerrilla force created by the U.S., Abrams successfully persuaded the Sultan of Brunei to cough up $10 million for the cause. Unfortunately, Abrams, acting under the code name “Kenilworth,” provided the Sultan with the wrong Swiss bank account number, so the money was wired instead to a random lucky recipient.

Abrams was questioned by Congress about his Contra-related activities and lied voluminously. He later pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information. One was about the Sultan and his money, and another was about Abrams’s knowledge of a Contra resupply C-123 plane that had been shot down in 1986. In a nice historical rhyme with his new job in the Trump administration, Abrams had previously attempted to obtain two C-123s for the Contras from the military of Venezuela.

Abrams received a sentence of 100 hours of community service and perceived the whole affair as an injustice of cosmic proportions. He soon wrote a book in which he described his inner monologue about his prosecutors, which went: “You miserable, filthy bastards, you bloodsuckers!” He was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush on the latter’s way out the door after he lost the 1992 election.

While it’s been forgotten now, before America invaded Panama to oust Manuel Noriega in 1989, he was a close ally of the U.S. — despite the fact the Reagan administration knew he was a large-scale drug trafficker.

In 1985, Hugo Spadafora, a popular figure in Panama and its one-time vice minister for health, believed he had obtained proof of Noriega’s involvement in cocaine smuggling. He was on a bus on his way to Panama City to release it publicly when he was seized by Noriega’s thugs.

According to the book “Overthrow” by former New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer, U.S. intelligence picked up Noriega giving his underlings the go-ahead to put Spadafora down like “a rabid dog.” They tortured Spadafora for a long night and then sawed off his head while he was still alive. When Spadafora’s body was found, his stomach was full of blood he’d swallowed.

This was so horrific that it got people’s attention. But Abrams leapt to Noriega’s defense, blocking the U.S. ambassador to Panama from increasing pressure on the Panamanian leader. When Spadafora’s brother persuaded North Carolina’s hyper-conservative GOP Sen. Jesse Helms to hold hearings on Panama, Abrams told Helms that Noriega was “being really helpful to us” and was “really not that big a problem. … The Panamanians have promised they are going to help us with the Contras. If you have the hearings, it’ll alienate them.”

Abrams also engaged in malfeasance for no discernible reason, perhaps just to stay in shape. In 1986 a Colombian journalist named Patricia Lara was invited to the U.S. to attend a dinner honoring writers who’d advanced “inter-American understanding and freedom of information.” When Lara arrived at New York’s Kennedy airport, she was taken into custody, then put on a plane back home. Soon afterward, Abrams went on “60 Minutes” to claim that Lara was a member of the “ruling committees” of M-19, a Colombian guerrilla movement. She also, according to Abrams, was ”an active liaison” between M-19 ”and the Cuban secret police.”

Given the frequent right-wing paramilitary violence against Colombian reporters, this painted a target on Lara’s back. There was no evidence then that Abrams’s assertions were true — Colombia’s own conservative government denied it — and none has appeared since.

Abrams’s never-ending, shameless deceptions wore downAmerican reporters. “They said that black was white,” Joanne Omang at the Washington Post later explained about Abrams and his White House colleague Robert McFarlane. “Although I had used all my professional resources I had misled my readers.” Omang was so exhausted by the experience that she quit her job trying to describe the real world to try to write fiction.

Post-conviction Abrams was seen as damaged goods who couldn’t return to government. This underestimated him. Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., the one-time chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tangled fiercely with Abrams in 1989 over the proper U.S. policy toward Noriega once it become clear he was more trouble than he was worth. Crowe strongly opposed a bright idea that Abrams had come up with: that the U.S. should establish a government-in-exile on Panamanian soil, which would require thousands of U.S. troops to guard. This was deeply boneheaded, Crowe said, but it didn’t matter. Crowe presciently issued a warning about Abrams: “This snake’s hard to kill.”

To the surprise of Washington’s more naive insiders, Abrams was back in business soon after George W. Bush entered the White House. It might have been difficult to get Senate approval for someone who had deceived Congress, so Bush put him in a slot at the National Security Council — where no legislative branch approval was needed. Just like 20 years before, Abrams was handed a portfolio involving “democracy” and “human rights.”

By the beginning of 2002, Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, had become deeply irritating to the Bush White House, which was filled with veterans of the battles of the 1980s. That April, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Chavez was pushed out of power in a coup. Whether and how the U.S. was involved is not yet known, and probably won’t be for decades until the relevant documents are declassified. But based on the previous 100 years, it would be surprising indeed if America didn’t play any behind-the-scenes role. For what it’s worth, the London Observer reported at the time that “the crucial figure around the coup was Abrams” and he “gave a nod” to the plotters. In any case, Chavez had enough popular support that he was able to regroup and return to office within days.

Abrams apparently did play a key role in squelching a peace proposal from Iran in 2003, just after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The plan arrived by fax, and should have gone to Abrams, and then to Condoleezza Rice, at the time Bush’s national security adviser. Instead it somehow never made it to Rice’s desk. When later asked about this, Abrams’s spokesperson replied that he “had no memory of any such fax.” (Abrams, like so many people who thrive at the highest level of politics, has a terrible memory for anything political. In 1984, he told Ted Koppel that he couldn’t recall for sure whether the U.S. had investigated reports of massacres in El Salvador. In 1986, when asked by the Senate Intelligence Committee if he’d discussed fundraising for the contras with anyone on the NSC’s staff, he likewise couldn’t remember.)

Abrams was also at the center of another attempt to thwart the outcome of a democratic election, in 2006. Bush had pushed for legislative elections in the West Bank and Gaza in order to give Fatah, the highly corrupt Palestinian organization headed by Yasser Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, some badly needed legitimacy. To everyone’s surprise, Fatah’s rival Hamas won, giving it the right to form a government.

This unpleasant outburst of democracy was not acceptable to the Bush administration, in particular Rice and Abrams. They hatched a plan to form a Fatah militia to take over the Gaza Strip, and crush Hamas in its home territory. As reported by Vanity Fair, this involved a great deal of torture and executions. But Hamas stole a march on Fatah with their own ultra-violence. David Wurmser, a neoconservative who worked for Dick Cheney at the time, told Vanity Fair, “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen.” Yet ever since, these events have been turned upside down in the U.S. media, with Hamas being presented as the aggressors.

While the U.S. plan was not a total success, it also was not a total failure from the perspective of America and Israel. The Palestinian civil war split the West Bank and Gaza into two entities, with rival governments in both. For the past 13 years, there’s been little sign of the political unity necessary for Palestinians to get a decent life for themselves.

Abrams then left office with Bush’s exit. But now he’s back for a third rotation through the corridors of power – with the same kinds of schemes he’s executed the first two times.

Looking back at Abrams’s lifetime of lies and savagery, it’s hard to imagine what he could say to justify it. But he does have a defense for everything he’s done — and it’s a good one.

In 1995, Abrams appeared on “The Charlie Rose Show” with Allan Nairn, one of the most knowledgable American reporters about U.S. foreign policy. Nairn noted that George H.W. Bush had once discussed putting Saddam Hussein on trial for crimes against humanity. This was a good idea, said Nairn, but “if you’re serious, you have to be even-handed” — which would mean also prosecuting officials like Abrams.

Abrams chuckled at the ludicrousness of such a concept. That would require, he said, “putting all the American officials who won the Cold War in the dock.”

[woozapooza]

Poldark: The Verdict

THIS POST IS SO LONG OH MY GOD

I haven’t read the books so idk how much of the stuff I’m praising or criticizing comes from the books.

Really wish Ross hadn’t raped Elizabeth, folks. Really cannot get past that. But other than that, it was a good show. Beautiful visuals, memorable characters. I have seen a lot of criticisms I agreed with and a lot I didn’t.

Uh, rapist tendencies aside, I’m not a big fan of Ross. Obviously I don’t want my protagonist to be perfect, but sometimes it felt like Ross wasn’t even really trying all that hard to improve. His tendency to keep Demelza in the dark is really annoying. He doesn’t tell her when her BROTHERS ARE ON DEATH ROW. He sneaks off to duel Monk Adderley and just before the duel starts he whispers like “forgive me Demelza” or something like that, so you know he knows he’s doing something wrong BUT HE DOES IT ANYWAY. And even in the very last episode he’s sneaking around with Tess and the French guys, leaving Demelza to think he’s lost interest in her. I’ve only seen the show once so I don’t have the best grasp of everything that happened, but based on my limited memory I feel like Ross doesn’t really make an effort to change very often. Even when he comes home after his night with Elizabeth, he seems more concerned with how Demelza is reacting than with the fact that he betrayed her.

DWIGHT BEST CHARACTER DWIGHT BEST CHARACTER DWIGHT BEST CHARACTER. I liked that his indiscretion with Keren Daniel (which, by the way, he never made excuses for and which he regretted because it was morally wrong—take notes, Ross—actually, I might make a separate post about this) came up in the finale. It felt like the show was saying “this guy doesn’t just exist to be friends with Ross and take care of people and display good values, he’s his own character with his own journey.” Sure, it’s a little weird that Caroline would bring it up in the context of her jealousy of Kitty, when he wasn’t being unfaithful with Keren because he wasn’t in a relationship at the time, but hey, sometimes people say things that don’t make sense when they’re in their feelings, and besides, the point (from a plot standpoint, not from Caroline’s POV) was to spur Dwight to confront Ross about acting in ways that hurt people. And what a satisfying confrontation! Sure, it would have been more satisfying in a context in which Dwight wasn’t working with incomplete information and therefore Ross would actually be convinced to change his behavior in the present moment, but “Ask George. He lives with [the consequences of your actions] every day” was a real oh snap moment. Dwight is so much better than Ross. As I’ve said before, why isn’t the show called Enys?

George second best character. WHAT a dude! WIthout reiterating everything I said in this post, the show was definitely unfair to him. He is not as evil compared to Ross as Debbie Horsfield wants us to think. I wish his s5 arc had been a little less all over the place. He’s having delusions of Elizabeth, he’s abused by Doctor Whatsit to the point that he tries to kill himself, he bonds with Dwight, he apparently forgets that he was ever mentally ill (???), he’s working with the Slavery Guys, he can’t condone collusion with the French, he kind of neglects Valentine but then in the finale he’s like VALENTINE IS MY SON NOT YOURS, at the very last minute he has some genuinely positive interactions with Ross…? That’s a lot to process. Well, taken in isolation, his scenes in the finale were SO good. WHEN HE SUDDENLY SHOWS UP AT THE DUEL AND SHOOTS HANSON AND THE FRENCH GUY! WOW! I found it hard to explain why Hanson and Merceron’s complete lack of integrity was such a dealbreaker for him. Unless I’ve forgotten something, that could have been better foreshadowed. But still! I feel like it’s basically the law that if you’re going to such a consistent, long-lasting, not to mention interesting antagonist, by the last season of the show you have to give them at least a little redemption, not because no bad person ever stays bad all their lives (I’m not talking about full redemption anyway) but because it’s just boring to not follow through on the promise of the character showing some decency. Despite what some reviews I’ve read have implied, George was never a one-dimensional villain to me and I would have been really disappointed if his dynamic with Ross ended where it began.

Caroline third best character. It was nice that she and Dwight got to do something new in the final season, but their conflict all felt so forced, both Caroline’s bitterness and Dwight’s impatience. While I was relieved that Caroline’s jealousy didn’t play out as the tired old “oh no my heterosexual partner is paying attention to a person of the opposite sex, there can be no innocuous reason for that” trope, I found it hard to buy that Caroline contrived her jealousy of Kitty because she was afraid to open her heart to another child. That’s an incredibly elaborate excuse not to have sex with Dwight. I guess I can buy it slightly more if I assume that her insecurity wasn’t 100% feigned...but in that case, I still have a hard time buying that Caroline would suddenly be all that distressed about her husband seeing her as vapid and sheltered. Also, I was disappointed that it was implied that Caroline wanted to have more children after Sarah died. It had been refreshing to have a female character in a period drama who was not the maternal type. I know Dwight loves kids but he’s got friends who have kids that he can borrow.

The Ross/Demelza aspect of the first three episodes was super rushed. They had, like, no chemistry for the first two episodes, then in the third episode they have sex AND get married?! Is this really how we want to introduce our main couple?

One thing I respect about this show is that it frequently surprised me with its willingness to have things go irreparably wrong. For example, I thought Francis wouldn’t drown; I thought Geoffrey Charles and Cecily would get married; I thought Morwenna would get custody of John Conan. But none of those things happened. The show can be sappy, but it’s not that soft.

I respect the show trying to deal with mental illness in a way that’s both sensitive and historically plausible, but the results were mixed. You have that wonderful storyline about Caroline not understanding that Dwight has PTSD and Hugh coming along to help him process, and then at the episode either Hugh or Dwight says that while Dwight isn’t fully healed, he’s moving in the right direction...then after that Dwight never shows symptoms again, and the only time I can think of it even being mentioned was when he was trying to reach out to Morwenna. (Side note, I was sad that Morwenna shot down his attempt to relate. I understand that his trauma was not identical to hers, but it would have been nice if later on she had been like “actually, can we talk some things out?” Fanfic idea, anyone?) On the other hand, Dwight’s interest in mental health in season five is a nice bit of continuity—not explicitly linked to his bout with PTSD, but I know from interviews with Luke Norris that the connection was very intentional. In Morwenna’s case, her trauma lasts longer than an episode, which is a step up from Dwight’s case, but letting go of John Conan and becoming ready for another child apparently cures her fear of physical intimacy all at once. Finally, George’s delusions of Elizabeth...give way to amnesia? That was weird, but his s5 storyline allows my main man Dwight to be the voice of justice and compassion.

Apparently unpopular opinion, but I liked the inclusion of the Ned storyline. I liked the concept of Ross coming face-to-face with his own flaws in Ned, even if I feel like he didn’t really use that experience to change much.

Tess was a pretty pointless character. She kind of reminded me of Sarah Bunting from Downton Abbey in that her unpleasant personality is used to make her political opinions look bad. Except at least Sarah was actually sincere in her opinions and not just trying to get in her married boss’s pants. Idk which storyline is more annoying. But I actually liked the part in the finale where Demelza expressed sympathy for Tess. It shows progress from her attitude toward Elizabeth back in the day.

I know it’s in the books but LOVEDAY IS A TERRIBLE NAME WTF DRAKE

Cornwall pretty.

Overall grade: B+. I really wish I could give it an A-, but, well the main character is a rapist but isn’t treated as such. Ugh, let’s not end this post on such a heavy note. DWIGHT BEST CHARACTER DWIGHT BEST CHARACTER DWIGHT BEST CHARACTER

Oh, that reminds me! Anyone want to recommend me any juicy Warlenys fics? :)

[putris-et-mulier]

Why do I love X-Men: kind of a bummer story for normal people

Will I get asked this question quite often and I’ve tried to give the most succinct answer but as promised this is the full version. It's about disability and disability representation so please skip over this if you are in favor of eugenics. Also, knock that off.

I was born in 1985 which makes me extremely old for this website but it also means I was the generation of X-Men fans that got obsessed with the franchise because of the 90s cartoon. It was a lot better than the X-Men comics at the time because it was the 90s and that should explain it all

Awesome

For context I'm going to tell you little more about me. Coincidentally I was born with a genetic mutation which made me born disabled. It's actually pretty rare because I have MD (muscular dystrophy, not multiple sclerosis) and for some reason people born with XX chromosomes very rarely get it and I have a supposedly one-of-a-kind variation in that I am technically type II but I have traits of type III which means I have a terminal condition but I can live longer as long as I stay healthy, you vaccinate your children, and I have minimal stress. For those of you that follow me you know that means I'm probably going to drop at any second. Anyway, I'm super weak and use a wheelchair, always have.

I was this kid

and my explanation goes through about when I was in my early teens

Note the difference between how I was dressed and how I dressed myself

Being disabled, especially being born disabled, is practically undescribable to someone who is able-bodied and neurologically typical. I'm not really a person, or at least not technically human; the term human is casually used to refer to our species but historically/politically/socially distinguishing who is human or not depends on how much a particular society wants you. Africans were seen as not being human because they were considered less evolved than Europeans and you know how that went. Being disabled is still unacceptable in our culture so until we get "cured" we can't live lives as regular humans. Because my whole physical existence depends on the charity of others or services through tax dollars I've been considered a ward of the state.

A little bit of what that entails is you aren't guaranteed an education, you become what they call a "county" kid so you don't actually attend public school as a student but a sort of native exchange student. Going to "mainstream" classes is a privilege and at least here in Northern California the privilege depends on how compliant you are. 

I had to stay on the honor roll. I couldn't get in any kind of trouble; when I was in second grade they almost took me out of mainstream school because I had questioned the merit of a homework assignment. I had to do the same work in a lot less time because riding the short bus means even if you live a block away from the school it could take hours for you to get there or back. I had to take my lunch separately with the rest of the special ed students at a time when the regular students were in the cafeteria so looking at us wouldn't make them lose their appetite. Everyone I associated with had to be approved by someone from the special ed staff or I wasn't allowed to go to recess or have break. 

We had to use a segregated bathroom that was located in the most high-traffic hallway and we were only allowed to go to the bathroom 1 time a day at a specific time and even if you didn't have to go you were required to at least try so all the disabled kids had to line up against the wall and go to the bathroom one by one. Like I said, it was a high-traffic area so the students would walk past us and of course they said horrible things (luckily they couldn't do anything physical because the staff was there) but we weren't allowed to speak so we were told that if it bothered us we should put our heads down so we don't encourage people with eye contact. 

Forced sterilization was also still a thing at the time as it hadn't become illegal in California until 2014 but at that point it was still  routine in prisons and the schools to drop the "forced" part but not the sterilization. When I neared puberty my parents were called into a meeting and it was explained to them that if I started my menstrual cycle I might get kicked out of school because I needed help getting on and off the toilet and it would be too much of a hassle, besides I would never have children. If I ever did get pregnant it was going to be because I was raped and having a genetic condition such as I do my parents wouldn't really want to have to send me in for abortions when it would be easier if I just got a hysterectomy, would they?

I didn't get one, by the way. My parents were and not very educated and had very little resources as we have always lived below the poverty line (that's usually a given for a disabled person) but my mom thought that was a decision I should make, mostly so she didn't have to. I think it started around 10 years old and I wasn't sheltered so I knew would period was so the suggestion of not having one sounded good but going through surgery did not so I refused. As I aged closer to 12 I started being pulled out of class to go to special ed for lectures about I why should at least be sterilized and how it is really selfish of me not to get hysterectomy. I didn't want to lose my education but this was something I actually could risk repelling against so I chose not to to spite them. 

I also had to go to special ed every few months because different grades got treated to an inspirational lecture from a disabled person and I was required to go to every single one. I had to go to every lecture and stay for at least an hour after no matter what was going on in class so I could meet these "inspirational" disabled people. K-12 every few months an inspirational speaker and every single one was a man, usually white, that had become paralyzed because of some sports accident or from drunk driving.

Everyone's disability is different but someone who was born disabled and someone who becomes disabled later in life are completely different. These people were originally able-bodied so they retain a certain amount of able-bodied privilege and no concept of what actually living your life disabled is like. Out of everything, that was the hardest thing for me to deal with. 

Try to imagine how demeaning that is. That you live in that stressful world and this able-bodied person suddenly visits telling you they understand you like no one else can and as long as you keep a good attitude, smile, and keep "fighting" you'll be fine. I could do anything I put my mind to it and it I insisted there were things I couldn't do it was because I was bitter about being disabled and that was punishable by disciplinary actions. Usually detention. Also, it always came with a lecture about my language because the one thing I refused to do was to give up terms like cripple and gimp. I gave them the choice of me not speaking and they agreed to that solution.

Another thing people don't consider is that we are born into families that are not of the same marginalized group and given how prevalent bigotry toward disabled people is it's likely a disabled person will be born in a family that doesn't want them. In some cases it would be as if an African-American was born into a white supremacist family. I was extremely lucky but there was still a family meeting about what to do with me when I was a baby and my grandpa still tells me he prays every night that I will die so I can walk in heaven. Even if your family doesn't hate you it's not easy because they have no concept of what it's like to be a disabled child/adult.

And then there are just the usual things disabled people deal with like our minimum wage legally being as low as salary of $0.22 an hour, not being allowed to have a savings account or anything over $2,000 at any given time, and so on

So what does this have to do with X-Men?

So far X-Men is the best representation disabled people have ever had because they utilize SFF world building to present what society is like for someone like me, intentional or unintentional, and it's something able-bodied people will actually watch/read. Depending on your disability someone in my condition can't equate my marginalization with someone who is able-bodied and GSM even though that's an easy way for me to explain why our families tend to be the ones that murder us, putting aside euthanasia, because we have no option of leaving and the passing privilege doesn't work quite the same way as people still don't seem to understand that if you have passing privilege either in person or online you are in the closet and much like being GSM you constantly have to come out to people. 

So, I was a little kid going through all this and there was a cartoon, a kind of grown up one, where the characters lived in a world that was like mine.

I have a reputation for being contrary so people always assume that I was an empowered little cripple kid and I don't take shit from anyone, not so. If I'm in public and someone comes up to tell me that if I love Jesus enough my punishment would be over I thank them and then quickly go home. I may not be considered human by everyone but I am of the same species and have the same urges for self-preservation. You may think you would stand up for yourself in my position, pun acknowledged, but you try getting through grocery shopping without agreeing with at least someone that you shouldn't be alive. The X-Men were a group of people like me dealing with ableism and they were heroes to me for that alone, I could care less if they were saving fictional characters or fictional planets.

Throughout my life I've been told by school staff, people in the medical field, and anyone from the government I've had to talk to that I need to be my own advocate because no one else will be. That's impossible. You can't tell a silenced people to just speak up, we didn't choose silence. The X-Men were advocates.

The X-Men mansion seemed amazing to me despite the fact that it's drawn completely inaccessible. It was a place you can go to be with people like yourself. It's not about companionship, it's about culture. Just like any other marginalized group we have our own cultures and subgroups therein. But the X-Men weren't the Morlocks and I was definitely a Morlock which was also really cool because they and the Ninja Turtles had convinced me that my dream home is the sewer. I was also keen on the idea of marrying Callisto but Rogue was my first pick.

First of all, she looked amazing

Yes, all the reference photos are going to be silly  

I related to Roque because she was kind of transitory between the different mutant groups. She wanted her civil rights but even with them she would be ostracized so the appeal of just being human still nagged at her. Physically she is the opposite of me, I'm super weak and she's super strong but she appealed to me because of her inability to touch people because I felt untouchable as well. People always avoid any physical contact with me and being so low and attached to something like a wheelchair makes it inconvenient for people to hug or kiss you or they are just too scared they might hurt you. She also didn't know what she really agreed with, Charles Xavier's philosophy or Magneto's.

They had the most amazing relationship that I was convinced included marriage until I was like 10 years old.

They both wanted relatively the same conclusion but their philosophies were completely different and neither was completely right or wrong. Both are wrong if you base it off of results. Their conversations helped me to articulate what I couldn't at that age. It also encouraged me to be critical of the world around me. 

On my first day of school I was completely terrified but there was a little girl in a wheelchair my age going to the same school and she also loved X-Men so that's the way I made my first friend. We had a lot of time to talk as the morning bus ride was about 2 hours and the evening bus ride was on average 3 to 4 hours so we talked about what we had seen on X-Men. Neither of us could decide whether Xavier or Magneto was right and who we sided with usually depended on what we went through that day. X-Men gave me the language skills and the opportunity for companionship for me to feel safe to ask "do you think it would be better if we just died?" My friend didn't get upset, she didn't think I was threatening suicide, she knew what I meant: people aren't allowed to be disabled unless they are continuously forcing themselves to appear as if they aren't and we couldn't do that.

I didn't get to stay consistent with the X-Men comics when I was a kid or even a teenager because in my local comic book store girls were only allowed so far in the store which pretty much just consisted of the front counter with all the trading cards. I had guy friends who would go there as well but if they helped me they would lose status. Contrary to what The Hold Steady says, guys go for status. 

one more

You can share this and you can ask questions or anything just please don't say "feel better soon" because I'm not sick

[zorilleerrant]

I read Maze Runner (the first book) a while back, to see whether I wanted to watch the movie, and because it’s pretty popular. I couldn’t continue past the first book, because there’s something downright appalling about picking the hundred or so brightest babies, and they all turn out to be boys? (Also, the fact that the single girl is named something other than Marie, which is the obvious choice, but also neither Rosalind nor Sally.)

The thing is, it’s written by this extremely uncritical dude (I’m assuming dude here; I haven’t actually researched him), who presents what we have to assume is a group of people from roughly modern Western society. It goes on to have some white dude show up a bunch of poc, because of course it does; it’s n-1 boys, which is overkill even for this genre; all of the boys are immediately and aggressively sexual towards the one girl, despite having previously demonstrated zero in the realm of sexual thoughts or behaviors; she somehow seems to find it amusing and then acts as if it’s simply not okay to behave that way towards her, rather than being like, ‘hey, your mindset is fundamentally flawed’, but whatever, she’s the smartest of all of them, despite being a girl and shit, you know, how occasionally you get a woman who’s a person too.

On a more technical note, he seems to have confused the verbs ‘grieving’ and ‘griefing’ and is apparently unaware that ‘Newt’ has always been short for ‘Newton’ when used as a name. The lack of profanity is obscenely noticeable, but that’s not his fault children’s literature is so prudish, so it’s pretty unsatisfying to be mad at him personally for it.

The thing is, what he’s done is an extremely common thing for SFFH authors to do; he’s assumed his cultural worldview is somehow innate to civilization.

Now, we can assume that these kids were raised in an environment that presents a binary gender system, and so are more likely to be inculcated into a binary gender than something else. So most of them would be either girls or boys. Half of them should be girls, but leaving that aside, maybe we can assume that none of them are trans. That’s pretty rare in a strictly and violently binary society, and we’re not working with an extremely high number of samples, so statistically, it’s probably fine. What doesn’t make sense is that none of the boys act overtly feminine in any way.

Since none of them have more than vague memories, they obviously don’t remember social taboos. What internalized self-concept they have wouldn’t change, but their attitudes towards what they and other people do would no longer have the pall of social enforcement hanging over it. Thus, any boys that wanted to act strongly feminine would simply do so, which should cause very little in the way of problems. Any boys who wanted to act moderately feminine would do so. Any boys who wanted to do one particular feminine thing (or a few, or act very mildly feminine across the board) wouldn’t even stand out in this context. Instead, all the characters are presented as very typically adventure-novel masculine fare (this is also boring). The only reason most (and, honestly, nowhere near all) boys act masculine and constantly eschew feminine things is because society keeps telling them they should.

Then there’s the part where none of the boys are in relationships with each other (or, if they are, it’s extremely sidelined to the point where I’m not finding it). The thing is, we can find a lot of historical studies, done during times with a much stronger homosexuality taboo than now (or, presumably, this future), that are pretty clear on the fact that when you remove all the chicks, even the dudes who would ‘usually’ or ‘always’ prefer a chick start pairing off with each other. This is more pronounced during adolescence (raging hormones), which is the life stage of all the characters in the book. This is despite taboos that they know and remember. Take that away, and why would anyone stop themselves or anyone else?

Also, at least of couple of them ought to be attracted to other boys. Even if this were only a very mild attraction, it would be amplified by the raging hormones and the fact that there are only boys around. We know they haven’t been selected (or programmed) not to have that kind of desire, because they express it very strongly as soon as the one girl appears. And while it would make sense, for efficiency reasons, to only select a team that had no sexual or romantic desires, it doesn’t make any sense to select specifically for het kids, especially when they have a negligible chance of pairing off, which would only make them irritable and resentful, causing them to sabotage each other and focus on a goal other than whatever the hell mission they have and generally be distracted and distractable.

Then we have the sexism. Why would they be so pervasively overtly sexist? Certainly they’ve internalized some things, but they wouldn’t remember any taboos or cultural expectations. Instead, they’d just have a low level feeling that she’s unqualified. They would most likely constantly say that this was because she was the newest one, or because the circumstances of her appearance were strange. They wouldn’t know they dislike her for being a girl. They would also not call dibs on her, because where would they even have the idea that only one of them could be with her? Certainly, if more were, they would begin to get jealous of each other, but there’s no reason for them to know that would happen, as they obviously haven’t developed their own structure of how relationships work.

Plus, it’s an imaginary future society, so it would be easy enough to pretend sexism was just over and not have them treat her in a shitty way like that regardless of all the other implications.

Point being: CULTURES DON’T WORK THE SAME WAY AS EACH OTHER. If you’re imagining up a culture, think through the implications. Think how the setting would change. Think how the average interaction would change. Think how characters would perceive the world, what they would expect to happen, what they would think of as common knowledge and what they would have no way to know, what things they would think ‘just work that way’, and what they would assign into moral categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

Having a revolution isn’t a normal thing to plan in a society that never teaches about revolutions. Thinking ‘that’s unfair’ is not a normal idea to have in a society that doesn’t prize fairness, or in a context where society has deemed unfairness the morally correct state of existence. Wanting freedom of speech and freedom of expression in a society founded on censorship and self-censorship doesn’t make sense unless an outside source explains how it works and that it does work, and even then there might be a lot of backlash, given how awful some speech and other expression is. You can’t just transplant someone from the modern world into an alien society and expect that they would grow up with the same personality and the same plans.

[ragtimecatt]

Putting Belle to Bed

Originally published in The Euphony Review, this article drew significant Facebook commentary and spurred further research efforts, which I felt should be documented here as well 

For close to seventy years, now, we’ve grown accustomed to stories about Scott Joplin’s first wife, Belle, with whom he had a child who died in infancy, after which the couple separated, with Belle returning to Sedalia, where she died a short time later.  According to Arthur Marshall (as told to Rudi Blesh and published in They All Played Ragtime), she was a widow, and Scott Hayden’s sister-in-law. Blesh quotes Marshall verbatim:

“Mrs. Joplin wasn’t so interested in music and her taking violin lessons from Scott was a perfect failure.  Mr. Joplin was seriously humiliated.  Of course, unpleasant attitudes and lack of home interests occurred between them.

They finally separated.  He told me his wife had no interest in his musical career.  Otherwise Mrs. Joplin was very pleasant to his friends and especially to we home boys.  To other acquaintances of the family other than I and Hayden and also my brother Lee who knew the facts, Scott was towards her in their presence very pleasing.

A shield of honor toward her existed and for the child.  As my brother, Lee Marshall, Hayden and I were like his brothers, Joplin often asked us to console Mrs. Joplin—perhaps she would reconsider.  But she remained neutral. She was never harsh with us but we just couldn’t get her to see the point.  So, a separation finally resulted.”

Blesh points out the respectful deference both Hayden and Marshall showed Mrs. Joplin, which he attributes to Marshall’s great tact.   My own impression was that both Marshall and Hayden treated Mrs. Joplin as if she were someone they didn’t know well, odd for two “home boys” from Sedalia who would, presumably, have known her for many years.

Something very important that is left out of the story, either by Marshall’s omission or perhaps Blesh’s storytelling, is that, at the time the events take place, Joplin had moved in with his brother Will and his wife, Sophorinia….and that Arthur Marshall and his brother Lee, and Scott and Nora Hayden had moved in as well., presumably working to complete “A Guest of Honor”.

There WAS a Belle Hayden, and she may have been Scott Haden’s sister in law, but all of his brothers were still living at the time the stories take place, making a marriage to Scott Joplin highly unlikely.  What’s more, Belle died around 1930, in Chicago, not in Sedalia in the early 1900s, as reported by Marshall.  We now know that Freddie Alexander, whom Scott Joplin married in 1904 died in Sedalia the same year, but she wasn’t at the house in St Louis with Joplin, Marshall and Hayden.

Interestingly, by 1904 Will and Sophorina had split.  The 1904 St Louis City Directory lists her as Will Joplin’s widow (though he turns up elsewhere later, very much alive).  I can very much imagine the split was precipitated by having five new people added to the household, at least three of them working musicians.

The newly discovered marriage documents for Scott Joplin and Lottie Stokes indicate that Freddie Alexander was Joplin’s first wife, not his second, and Freddie’s marriage documents give no indication of a previous marriage.

Given the evidence at hand, I believe there was no “Belle Joplin” as such, and that Marshall’s memory, fogged by nearly fifty years of intervening events, was erroneous, merging memories of three women: Belle Hayden, Sophorinia (Mrs Will) Joplin and Freddie Alexander to form “Belle Joplin”, and that Marshall’s comments about Belle Joplin draw elements from all three.

I think the time has come, nearly seventy years after the first publication of They All Played Ragtime, to put our understanding of Belle to bed.

Email from Bryan Cather to Dr Edward A Berlin, about Joe Hayden, purportedly Belle’s deceased husband,and older brother of Scott Hayden:

I'm looking for Scott Hayden's older brother, Joe (Joseph) in census records and I'm confused as hell. I simply cannot find the guy.

Scott Hayden's parents were Marion (or Martin) and Julia Hayden.

The 1870 Census lists the family as follows, living in Sedalia

Marion, M, 33

Julia, F 23

Sarah, F 2,

Mary E, F ten months,

Littie, F age 65

(as an aside, I suspect Littie is actually Julia's mother, as Marion is listed as "Mulatto" while Julia is listed as "Black"....Littie is also listed as "Black" and as being born in Africa.. None of that bears on my question, though)

However, in the 1880 census the family is listed as follows:

Marion M 30

Julia F 29

Sarah F 13

Mary F 11

Nannie F 8

Charlie M 4

Earnast M 1

Scott Hayden was born in 1882, and another daughter, Julia was born in 1884. In the 1900 Census, Julia is listed as having given birth to seven children, four of which were still living. By my count, the seven children born of Julia Hayden as of 1900 are Sarah, Mary, Nannie, Charles, Earnast, Scott and Julia....so where does Joe fit in that count?. I thought for a moment that "Joe" might be "Charles Joseph" or "Earnast Joseph", but both Charlie and Earnest turn up in census records into the 1920s, long after Joe's presumed date of death.

Family history apparently indicates that Joe Hayden was born in 1870, but its strange that he doesn't turn up with the rest of the family in 1880, and his existence would skew the count of how many children Julia had given birth to by 1900. In fact, I couldn't find evidence of Joe in census records at all, which seems very strange, considering all the other family members turn up consistently, well into the 1920s.

To add to the confusion, if Belle Jones was Joe Hayden's widow, why was she not listed as "Belle Hayden, widow" instead of "Belle Jones", a single woman in the 1900 census?

Alonzo Hayden being the son of Joe Hayden and Belle Jones further complicates things. If Belle Jones is Alonzo Hayden's mother, it seems odd to have her living both without her son and apart from the Hayden family in 1900. Alonzo Hayden would have been five years old in 1900, but he's not listed as living with either Belle Jones or Martin and Julia Hayden in 1900....he doesn't turn up at all until the 1910 Census, when he's 15 years old, and living with his grandparents, Martin and Julia. That would mean that Alonzo's parents might have been Charlie, or even Earnest, or maybe one of the older sisters. That said, on his WWI draft record, Alonzo lists a spouse and grandparents, but no parents...shedding absolutely no more light whatsoever on who his parents were, nor on Joe Hayden.

It occurs to me that "Joe Hayden" might not be a brother, but rather some other kind of relative, a cousin perhaps...but that then places Alonzo's status in the family as Marion and Julia's grandson in question.

I'm completely bewildered by the whole thing....the records simply don't indicate the existence of a "Joe Hayden", despite the testimony of Alonzo, Arthur Marshall and, probably others....unless I'm missing something.

Comments [from a Facebook discussion in Ragtimers Club]  by Edward A Berlin, in part summarizing comments made by myself, Reginald Pitts and others about the “Putting Belle to Bed” article, edited for clarity

Is the  St Louis City Directory listing for Sophronia Joplin in 1904 [as widow of Will Joplin] is proof that Scott Joplin’s brother Will had died? Researcher Reginald Pitts supplies several pieces of evidence that Will had not died and had lived into the 1920s.

Reg found a William Leon Joplin, born 1880, living in Detroit. The documents that Reg offers present several problems and inconsistencies, but these are not unusual in historic documents. For example, in the 1880 census of the Joplin family, Will appears as age 4, suggesting a birth year of 1876 or ’77.This contradicts William Leon’s claim of an 1880 birth . . . but people often lie about their age, suggesting they are younger (Scott Joplin did so consistently). A 1924 marriage record lists William Leon’s parents as Charles Joplin and Florence Hicks. As Reg points out, the name “Jiles” might sound to someone as “Charles”, accounting for an erroneous entry. But I don’t see how “Givens” can sound like “Hicks”. However, overriding these doubts and convincing me that the Detroit Will Joplin was Scott Joplin’s brother is the handwritten draft registration of 1918 on which this Will wrote that his father’s name was “Jiles” and that he lived in Little Rock. It is not likely that there were two William Joplins with fathers named “Jiles”. (I had actually found this document in 2011, but it had not registered in my mind and I had forgotten about it.)

But I came across something a few days ago that awakened the issue. I had been invited to write an article on Arkansas, and in researching came across this entry in the 1906 Little Rock directory: “Joplin Florence, widow Giles (c), res. 1211 Spring”. Is this evidence that Scott Joplin’s father Giles had died by 1906 and could not be the person named in the Detroit Will’s draft registration? Or does it mean that there were two women named Florence with husband’s named Giles (or Jiles) Joplin? (The two spellings are interchanged without distinction in various historic documents.) Such a coincidence would be equivalent to two men named Will Joplin having fathers named Giles.

I find a certain satisfaction in accepting this Florence Joplin as Scott Joplin’s mother. He had announced in Dec. 1903 that he was leaving Chicago to visit relatives in Texarkana (where his brother Monroe & a few others lived) and Hot Springs. His mother being in Little Rock would provide a reason for his having visited that city, also, where he met and married (in June 1904) Freddie Alexander. It might explain, also, why Joplin and Freddie had an AME Zion minister officiate at their wedding, for Florence Joplin lived across the street from the minister’s church (1200 Spring). She also lived next door to Charles Brooks (1209 Spring), who signed the marriage license.

But while this theory provides satisfying explanations, it also has substantial problems. The 1900 census shows Florence in Texarkana, Arkansas, living with her daughters Osie and Myrtle. Why would this 65-year-old woman have left Texarkana and moved to Little Rock? Perhaps Osie or Myrtle had married and moved there with her husband, and Florence went along. Without knowing the married name of the daughter, tracing becomes difficult. But the most significant problem is that the 1906 Texarkana directory has Giles living with Monroe. He was still living in 1905 (when the directory was probably compiled) and possibly in 1906 and later. Dating becomes crucial, for Giles may have died after his name was collected for the volume, but before the Little Rock data had been completed, thereby accounting for Florence’s widow status. Directories probably reflect the resident status of their respective towns and cities in the year prior to publication. [Bryan Cather pointed out that the significant stigma associated with divorce may have been the reason that both Sophorinia Joplin and Florence Givens Joplin listed themselves as widowed, even though they were divorced (or at least separated).]

Further research makes it clear that the Florence Joplin listed in the 1906 Little Rock directory is Scott Joplin’s mother. As I had suggested previously, one of the points supporting that conclusion is that Charles Brooks, a signatory on the wedding license of Scott Joplin and Freddie Alexander, lived next door to Florence. I’ve just found additional evidence linking them: Brooks had married Myrtle Joplin (one of Florence’s daughters and Scott Joplin’s sisters) in Texarkana, Arkansas, on 25 July 1901. So Florence moved to Little Rock to be with this daughter. That Florence listed herself in the directory as “widow of Giles” while Giles was living with their son Monroe in Texarkana, probably reflects (as Bryan Cather pointed out) the stigma attached to divorce.

Does that stigma of divorce also explain Sophronia Joplin’s listing as the widow of Will at a time that Will might still have been living? As to the question of whether William Leon Joplin living in Michigan was Scott Joplin’s brother, I am still bothered by the marriage record, in which his mother is recorded as Florence Hicks, and the death record, in which she is listed as Arene Hicks. However, I’ve just noticed something that supports the proposal that Willliam Leon Joplin was Scott Joplin’s brother: the Sedalia Capital, 11 Oct 1899, has an item about Scott Joplin’s brother performing in Sedalia with the Kentucky Rosebud Quartette. Will’s name is listed as W. L. Joplin.