#not his interpretaton

[blood-orange-juice]

Now that everyone is also in awe of that twitter thread about Childe being Smart I want to rebutt half of it.

Personally, I think he's perfectly average/a bit smarter than average, or rather good at some things and bad at others.

He's a quick thinker, proven by his character stories (people are indeed not assigned into vanguard just for dumb strength) and by how he used Traveler to check whether the forged sigil worked and sow some discord in the process (obviously his own plan and a good one at that. and he came up with it in a matter of minutes). Being able to lie through omission is no easy feat either.

He's quite poetic and it's usually a sign of intelligent person. (modern AU untraumatized Childe would 100% be a literature major, don't @ me. he'd also like Manowar)

However, he is also young, had no proper mentor and no formal education. Also brash and too self-confident at times. You *need* to be comfortable with doubting youself to be smart, it's thinking 101.

*

For starters, not suspecting Zhongli to be Rex Lapis was... an accomplishment in and by itself. The city breathes of this story. There are at least three books on the topic, it's told in every tea house, the traveler learns it through a single conversation with a trader in port. A golden-eyed person with excellent taste is always Rex Lapis or at least should be suspected to be him.

Childe somehow missed it, while being able to analyze intricacies of Qixing politics. This is bizarre and means that either he's extremely narrowinded (he doesn't show signs of that, quite the opposite), or that he was simply repeating someone else's ideas. His subordinates obviously bring him news and reports. So… how do we know his ability for political analysis is his and not someone else's?

He does look like the type who would repeat another person's good idea as his own (I'm imagining that's exactly how Zhongli tricked him into that whole sigil of permission thing).

Having said that, being able to listen to information brought by your subordinates is a rare and precious trait, I wish some of my bosses were more like that, haha.

(alternative option: that is in fact his own skill and one of the few skills where he did get actual mentorship. Pulcinella drilled attention to politics into his brain because otherwise things always got too messy when Childe got involved

it would also mean that nothing can drill attention to cultural stuff into Childe's brain because fuck it we ball)

*

Being able to copy sigils well enough? First, it's the job for the r&d team (can we have some appreciation for the Fatui r&d team, please)? Second, I'm not sure anyone truly copied those. Maybe Zhongli just enchanted every single one.

I they were actually succesfully copied, we have a problem of fatui being able to mass-print them and I don't want to think of the consequences. I hope Zhongli didn't let that happen.

*

Manipulating Traveler to do what he wanted in the Liyue arc? It's not like the Traveler had a lot of options or any personal loyalty to the Qixing. Did anyone really trust him to be our friend? What other choice did we have though but to follow his lead.

That's 10/10 for opportunistic thinking but it's not really a showcase of his manipulation skills (I'll keep thinking his social skills are abysmal until proven otherwise).

*

Being able to tell you just came from the blacksmith? Please, it's not him being observant, he just had you followed.

*

So, yeah... he's smart but he's also, what, 19? 20? (I hc him on the younger side because it helps me overlook his bad traits). It's amazing he got this far and he'll become smart one day but that day hasn't happened yet.

In other words he is far from dumb but the fatui do treat him as dumb muscle because what do you expect.

[princeescaluswords]

A lot of Scott haters generate very poor analysis of the show because they are operating on a fundamentally flawed premise, namely, that the characters they like have the same opinion of Scott that they do. (This isn't exclusive to Teen Wolf fandom, I've seen it in other fandoms, it's a common error fandoms make.) I may have problems with certain actions taken by Stiles but I would NEVER claim he doesn't love or care about Scott or would choose Derek of all people over him. That's not Stiles.

Nothing supports your conclusion more than fandom's "re-interpretaton" of Master Plan (2x12). In this episode, Stiles makes several very clear (and very emotional) statements about how he feels about the most important people in his life: his father, his mother, Lydia, and Scott. His actions conform completely to those statements.

He makes it clear he loves his father, Lydia, and Scott. He acts to protect his father, Lydia, and Scott. He lies, concealing the truth behind his kidnapping, to his father, because he doesn't want his father anywhere near the Hale-Argent feud. He shouts at Lydia to try to dissuade her from pursuing Jackson, revealing the depth of his feelings toward Lydia, the danger she is in, and how that is influenced by his own mother's death, but he still guides her to the climactic confrontation in the warehouse. He doesn't seek out Scott immediately because he knows that his kidnapping and beating is meant to apply pressure to Scott "And look at my face, huh? Come on, you actually think this was meant to hurt me?" In the aftermath, he reassures Scott that he has his back always.

Stiles always figures it out, and he recognizes the dangers that the people he loves are in, and he acts accordingly.

But then here comes fandom. Since the majority of fandom seems not to be all that attracted to Lydia, they don't care about her. Since the majority are busily projecting their own issues with their parents onto the Sheriff, they don't recognize how his position in law enforcement complicates his relationship with Stiles. Since the majority of the fandom are outraged that Derek isn't the main character, they are primed to see Scott in the worst possible light.

The fandom wants a Stiles who dwells exclusively on his own physical and emotional pain and who doesn't look at what has happened -- as the Canon Stiles does -- in terms of the health and safety of his family and friends. The fandom also wants a Stiles who worships Derek the way they do, so they conjure concern for the Hale pack, even though Stiles didn't mention Derek (and Derek didn't mention Stiles) during the final two episodes of Season 2. They want Stiles, as their stand-in, to make the case for shifting the focus of the show to Derek, so they perform incredible feats of doublethink, taking Stiles's earlier shots at Scott (which they have interpreted before as Stiles's way of showing his love for Scott) as literal, critical and damning judgment of Scott's value while simultaneously believing that Stiles would be shocked and blindsided by Scott's behavior.

Of course, to accomplish this new paradigm they have to eject 70% of canon. Derek didn't try to kill Lydia, Derek hasn't been alternatively brutal and manipulative toward his best friend, Isaac and Erica didn't attack Stiles on Derek's orders, and Derek didn't create the kanima which almost murdered Stiles's father. Fanon Stiles doesn't love Lydia enough to challenge Peter and Gerard, he doesn't care for and have faith in Scott enough to ignore his own physical and emotional trauma to support him , and he certainly didn't leave Boyd and Erica in the Argent basement in order to prioritize protecting his father. I imagine this level of editing is hard work.

Of course, when people like us point this out, they have two primary and contradictory declamations. "We're not bound by canon!" fandom cries only to follow that up immediately with "Why can't you let people enjoy things?" But by discarding canon to this degree, they're not just enjoying things: they're creating things. And when anyone creates something and puts it out for public consumption, the audience for it -- which includes you and me -- gets to react to that creation, just as we react to Teen Wolf.

And the red flags in their creation are consistent and widespread. Fanon Stiles is not Allison's friend and not in love with Lydia but still pays attention to their actions, he resents the fact that Scott simultaneously relies on him but doesn't do anything to discourage it, and desperately wants to be part of Derek "Like a hyperactive spaz" Hale's pack. Fanon Stiles cannot stand Scott because he hid his plan against Gerard from Stiles (even though there's no evidence Scott actually did that) but is more than willing to defend Derek's repeated instances of concealing information (the existence of the alpha, biting Jackson, the approach of the alpha pack, and Peter's resurrection). Fanon Stiles cannot forgive Scott for the Neck Grab of Destiny because it is morally wrong and crossed boundaries (regardless of the threat to Allison), but literally has not the slightest concern that Derek dispatched teenagers to execute an innocent Lydia repeatedly.

When we interrogate them about the choices they made for their creation, they get defensive. If they're willing to rewrite that much of canon, why does their product consistently celebrate the white male characters and diminish or demonize female and/or minority characters? After all, as they'll state forever, they're not beholden to canon. Yet, there has been no other offered consistent explanation for the specificity of Fanon Stiles's behavior from the fandom, because they obviously can't come out and say that they wanted to discard Canon Stiles's fantastic personality and actions for one that takes revenge for a Latino being the main protagonist and not a white man.

BUT IT'S NOT RACISM.

[tonydaddingham]

i saw your tags about the oxrib discourse, and thank you so much for putting into words what's been bothering me about this entire thing. i'm sooo tired of how much emphasis is put on authorial intent rather than peoples own interpretaton of the text, and how people feel the need to have neil vaildate their reading of a scene and then accuse him of gaslightning/queerbaiting when the doesn't. like, just interpret the scene however you want and stop looking for validation from the author in order for it to be meaningful to you!

hi anon!!!✨ ahhhh you're very welcome!!!💕

[handgiven]

███████, the messenger, the follower, the voice.

███████ was created as a lesser messenger. Their job was to carry words that were not their own, or very interesting for that matter. In fact, for a long time they were all they could speak, as not to give space to any sort of interpretaton. They were a part of the same garrison as Anane who’d treated them kindly in spite of their rough exterior. That was why when Anane decided to change sides, ███████ followed. They would rather repeat the words of one who respected them than be overtaken by God or his mighty archangels ever again.

At first, the rebellion had its perks. Such as talking to Lucifer, Kesabel, and others that had a stirring of creativity and free will in their core. For the first time ███████ was forming their own words and opinions, much shaped however by their gratitude and newfound loyalty to this side of the War. It did not all go according to their hopes, however. The War was bloody, both sides losing important beloved angels left and right and as it went on, ███████ grew to understand the danger of losing even Anane as they threw themself into the frontline any given chance.

That was why, upon observing Michael with his sword, mere seconds after having felt a strange pain in their heart, closing in on Anane that had rested, defeated upon the ground, they were fast to interfere. Throwing themself right between the two, they managed to shield Anane but got their wing sliced off in the process. In a way, it aided their escape, because upon losing a wing, the angel lost balance and fell from grace at last, pulling Anane with him. Had he not lost his wing, he doesn’t know if they could have escaped quite fast enough from Michael’s wrath.

It was not just the wing he lost. Having lost it to Michael’s sword he’d lost semblance of who he once was, his name, all that connected him to Heaven once. He took on the name Antonius, Anton, Antoine, in many varieties throughout the centuries. He became an upstanding resident of the Earth, with only Anane’s presence reminding him of what he once was. He tries to stay out of supernatural problems, he tries to work a dayjob and move around frequently enough to go unnoticed by the humans as one who barely ages. He writes poetry, now, which might just be his favourite part of this whole ordeal. Not only are his words his now, he rules them with a gentle touch, and may gift them to others if he chooses, no sooner.

the caretaker, the poet, the healing

[mask131]

I'll end my wendigo rant of the day with this very informative and useful reblog about the evolution of the Wendigo's appearance - and where the whole "wendigo has a deer/stag head" thing comes from, when the original wendigo had no deer traits at all.

On my part, I only knew of the 2001's Wendigo movie as the earliest depiction of the creature as deer/stag associated - I didn't know of the existence of the "Frostbiter" movie, which places everything under a new perspective.

Something that must be said is that 2001's Wendigo and "The Last Winter" are actually made by the same person, Larry Fessenden. The fact he was behind these two works, that heavily influenced the modern "antlered wendigo" idea, explains a lot, since he reused a set of imageries in a way. But what is also very, very interesting is that in those two movies, the actual existence of the wendigo is left unclear. These antlered visions and animalistic creatures could be wendigo and are read as such by some within the movie... but there are also strong evidences of hallucinations, madness or unrelated tsupernatural perceived as wendigo (this is especially true in the 2001 movie where the whole point is that the main character undergoes a descent into madness, and as such the "wendigo" he believes to be persecuting him can be entirely read as his own sick psyche building up an entire creature out of his personal experiences - and the death of a deer is one of the main incidents at the beginning of the movie). This is part of the internalized imagery of these movies, which is supposed to make sense within the context of the stories and the themes of the tales (having the wendigo-associated creature be animalistic feeds the entire environmental theme of The Last Winter for example). But of course, once you take the "antlered wendigo" outside of the context of these specific tales, it suddenly makes no sense anymore.

What is even MORE interesting and fascinating is that Larr Fessenden worked for a third and last time on the wendigo legend... in "Until Dawn", the video game. Which has been praised for having one of the most accurate depictions of wendigos of the early 21st century, as pale, skeletal humanoid creatures. This does support the idea that Fessenden always knew about the proper and true wendigo imagery, but purposefully strayed away from it for his earlier movies in an attempt to have much more personal, non-mythical creatures that would belong to the world of fiction rather than real beliefs - only for it to backfire into massive misinformation about what wendigos look like, and him returning to the actual classical "normal" wendigos to avoid the misconception his own movies brought.

At least, that's one possible reading. I am not sure of it, and I don't know enough about Fessenden himself to claim this is actually what went on through his mind, but from contextual clues it seems to be this.

A few more notes to add:

I wanted to point out how, in a big ironic twist, the Cthulhu Mythos' depiction of wendigos through Ithaqua was much more fathful than any modern depictions of the creature with antlers - but you beat me to it X)

I find it so hilarious that the Beast from Over the Garden Wall is being called a wendigo when... it is just an antlered being with wintery themes. And that's enough to make a wendigo? The Beast of Over the Garden Wall borrows much more from the ideas of the "European Horned God" and of the Devil mixed with the Cernunnos-like figures in a strange mashed-up imagery - since Over the Garden Wall itself feeds from semi neo-pagan folklore (harvest festivals, Halloween celebrations, witches, there was a fascinating video somewhere about the use of New England folklore within the mini-series) , and from a loose interpretaton of Dante's Inferno (which explains the Beast's association with winter, since in Dante's Divine Comedy the Devil is associated with endless cold and eternal ice).

It should also be noted that - if my memory serves me well - Blackwood's take on the Wendigo was popularized by "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark", which contains a simplified version of it. This also showed how popular the story had become, that it had been reduced to the rank of "campfire stories", "ghost stories for kids" and other "urban legends". (It also explains why still recently some people were convinced that wendigos were "urban legends")

(But seriously I never heard of Frostbiter before, I NEED to watch this movie now)

In general... It is quite fascinating, when you are European, to see how the United-States (and modern Canada too) have taken the very European imagery of the "antlered man" a la Cernunnos and completely plastered it and reused it everywhere in so many fashions... The wendigo becoming an antlered monstruosity is one, but I think something should also be said of the Wiccan Horned God's popularity, or of how in many fantasy works you will have a god of the hunt depicted as a man with a stag head or deer head. There's something to dig there...

Monster Art History: The Wendigo

You may be wondering why the wendigo, which has become very popular in pop culture over the last 10 years or so, is usually depicted in Western sources with a deer head. This appears nowhere in Native American traditions, despite the creature having lots of folkloric variations. The association of the wendigo with deer is 100% Western, 100% modern, and has a long, weird history.

Just in case you need a primer, the windigo or witiko is a supernatural being from the Algonquin speaking nations of the eastern American continent. It appears as an emaciated figure, sometimes giant, sometimes covered in ice, sometimes both. In many stories, they have a literal heart of ice. Windigos are manifestations of cannibalism and winter, and hunt, kill and eat people. Someone who resorts to cannibalism to survive, or otherwise abandons their community for personal gain, will become one of them. A few stories tell of someone being “cured” and turned back into a human, but usually the only cure is to kill the monster. In the last several decades, native writers have  associated windigos with capitalism and deforestation as an extension of their selfishness. If you would like to know more about the properly Native windigo in context, I recommend Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth and History by Shawn Smallman.

The creature first came into horror fiction with Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo”. Note the spelling, which would become the standard in horror, and generally in non-academic Western sources. In that story, it is not associated with cannibalism, but instead is a more generic “evil spirit of nature”. This wendigo stalks white people in the wilderness and turns a Native character into a new wendigo by seizing them and flying with them into the sky. This definitely better fits fears about non white people, fears about nature, and how the one is closer to the other than “civilized” people. Its description in the story is vague (the most we get is that it has burned its feet away by running into the sky). But when the story appeared in Weird Tales in the 1930s, Virgil Finlay illustrated it like this, the first antlered wendigo I know of.

This story was ripped off by August Derleth, a prominent Weird author in the 1940s and the main popularizer of HP Lovecraft. In his Cthulhu Mythos stories, he introduces Ithaqua the Wind Walker, which is an alien version of Blackwood’s monster. This fits into Derleth’s vision of the gods and monsters of HP Lovecraft falling into the four classical elements, with Ithaqua being invented to represent Air. Ithaqua is usually depicted as an icy, emaciated giant, so ironically is one of the more accurate wendigos to Indigeonous beliefs in pop culture.

Image from a recent French edition of Call of Cthulhu RPG, by Loic Muzy

In Pet Sematary, Stephen King uses a wendigo as the reason for why the titular cemetery is cursed. This is an update of the classic racist trope of the “Indian Burial Ground”, except this time what gets buried there comes back animalistic and evil. The racist implications of that are pretty apparent. This wendigo is seen briefly and has ram’s horns. It does not appear in the first film adaptation, but does in the more recent one… with deer horns instead, because those are trendy right now.

A good scholarly look at the real windigo versus the 20th century horror wendigo is “The Appropriation of the Windigo Spirit in Horror Literature” by Kallie Hunchman.

In the 1980s, a movie called Frostbiter: Wrath of the Wendigo was produced, but it wasn’t released until 1995 by Troma. From what I’ve read, it’s a pretty transparent ripoff of Evil Dead 2, with the characters being picked off in a haunted cabin with a zombie in the basement. The “twist” is that the origin of the horrors is a wendigo released by breaking a Christian demonology-style sacred circle. This wendigo is realized in stop motion animation, and has the most deer-like body yet.

A number of other independent horror movies in the 90s and 2000s used wendigos as a plot element. These follow the Blackwood/King approach of having the wendigo being something evil, ancient and Native American, reflecting white anxieties about living on stolen land more than Native anxieties about cannibalism and greed. Wendigo (2001) has the creature sicced on a white family when they hit a deer with their car. The Last Winter (2006) posits that global warming and fossil fuel extraction have unleashed the ghosts of dead animals, which are wendigo apparently, to revenge themselves on mankind. Which approaches the idea that greed is wendigo sickness, but I don’t think intentionally as a reference to modern Native literature. The “wendigo” in this movie are spectral moose and caribou.

The mainstream breakthrough of the deer-headed wendigo was in, appropriately enough for this blog, Pathfinder RPG. In ��Spires of Xin-Shalast”, the last volume of Rise of the Runelords published in 2008, a wendigo is a major encounter. I suspect that either the author (Greg A. Vaughn), or one of the editorial staff had seen Frostbiter, as the setup involves a cabin haunted by dwarven cannibal ghosts who all killed and ate each other due to a wendigo’s influence. This wendigo is a hybrid of the Blackwood and Cree versions in terms of its MO: it is a cannibal ice spirit that wants to make more cannibals, and does so by abducting people and running off into the sky with them. Its design is the standard for what most Western artists depict wendigos as these days: an emaciated humanoid with the head and antlers of a deer (and the burned off feet of Algernon Blackwood, which are less common):

Image by Tyler Walpole, © Paizo Publishing

This wendigo definitely made a splash at the time; it was the first time I remember seeing a deer-headed wendigo, and art of that design started to become common. It pushed away previous wendigo depictions, which were typically werewolves (as French Canadian trappers had blended the concept with their own loup-garou, and Werewolf the Apocalypse had a whole faction of racist Native American “wendigos”) or shaggy and ape like (based more on the look of the Marvel Comics villain). 

What turned wendigos from “folklore/horror monster” to “fandom blorbo” was Hannibal, which first aired in 2013. In that series, the first murder is a woman’s body impaled on a stag’s head, after which protagonist Will Graham has visions of a black stag, and a man with the antlers of a stag, representing murder, evil, and of course the cannibalistic murderer Hannibal Lecter.

Since Hannibal was super popular with the shipping fandom set, wendigo themed characters became popular in its wake, creating a wholly new way to culturally appropriate the wendigo. This was magnified by Over the Garden Wall, which came out in 2014, and its villain The Beast. The Beast is never called a wendigo, but is an antlered giant associated with winter, and so is commonly head-canoned as a wendigo and associated with them in fandom circles.

Which gets us to the modern day, where teenagers have misunderstood wendigo OCs, any character with antlers can be called a wendigo on the internet, and actual First Nations people with an actual cultural connection to the legend wish that people would just knock it off.

[natalyarose]

Hi,first of all you're very beautiful,had to mention it,I saw you have opened free reading for now so I was wondering if I could request one. My question is what kind of person is my romantic soulmate-romantic life partner?

aww thankyou!! 🩷

Sure thing- I drew The Emperor, The Lovers, and the King of Pentacles

I can see two possible interpretations for this.

This could be eluding to a potential romantic partner who is very traditionally masculine or assertive as well as very adept & 'at the top' in their career (The Emperor). With the Lovers, it could be somebody who while they know how to command a room and lead the way with tenacity, they truly value loving connection and intimacy in their life. They could be very gentle and sweet natured outside of their workplace. The King of Pentacles further signifies somebody who likely has a very traditionally masculine manner of being & is extremely financially literate, stable and resourceful. Very generous, wise and calm. I'm definitely feeling that this is somebody who makes a lot of money/has a strong career, but also has that strong drive for human connection and to have vulnerability and sensuality in a relationship.

The second possible interpretation would be that spirit is saying that whoever ends up being your life partner will depend on your own decisions & life path (the Emperor) influenced by what your own values in love are + the connections you create with others (the Lovers). The King of Pentacles could be saying that it depends on the physical environment you find yourself in and who you meet as a result of that.

I often believe that readings can have multiple viable interpretatons that are equally true and offer valuable insight, especially when it comes to future related questions 💟

[submarinerwrites]

can u talk a bit more about what you think jameson doesn't get? (I have the same impression but I've never been able to rly articulate why(

yes! absolutely! apologies for the late reply and also the essay! also, I should clarify—I don't strictly dislike Jameson: he says a lot of things that I agree with, and my opinion on The Political Unconscious has a lot more to do with my opinion on Marx than it does Jameson. for instance, I find his claim that Marxist criticism is “the absolute horizon of all reading and all interpretaton” extremely compelling. [1] like Jameson, in my own research, I find myself absolutely entranced by the infinite varieties and potentialities of Marxist theory. on a more functional level, I do use structural Marxism on like, a daily basis, so there's also that.

likewise, when it comes to Jameson's theory of literature, I also am actually obsessed with this one quote that I'd like to share:

Religion is thus here the distorted or symbolic coming to consciousness of itself, of the human community... The religious figures then become the symbolic space in which the collectivity thinks itself and celebrates its own unity; so that it does not seem a very difficult next step, if, with Frye we see literature as a weaker form of myth or a later stage of ritual to conclude that in that sense, all literature, no matter how weakly, must be informed by what we have called a political unconscious, that all literature must be read as a symbolic meditation on the destiny of community. [2]

basically, according to Jameson, religion is indeed what Bataille would describe as “the search for a lost intimacy,” which is in turn unconsciously replicated, embodied, and transformed through the literary work. [3] so to Jameson, every text is implicitly political, which is something that I agree with on a very fundamental level, and is also phrased in a very beautiful way in this passage.

that being said: Jameson rejects, in a way that is really uncomfortable for me, Marx’s dialectic, and therefore Marx’s materialism. Jameson writes (and I don’t like this):

Marxism is, however, not a mechanical but a historical materialism: it does not assert the primacy of matter so much as it insists on an ultimate determination by the mode of production. [4]

ohhh, man. look I know a lot less than you in a lot of respects but, Jameson, I am pretty sure you are wrong. throughout his entire oeuvre, Marx is deeply concerned with the sensuous world, the real and inescapable importance of matter. in his dissertation, for instance, he describes matter as a continual folding and refolding, a dialectical process which actually allows for self-awareness and the existence of the world itself. matter in motion is Marx, is the dialectic that’s so central to the entirety of his work. for instance, in the preface to Capital, he writes that the dialectic is

a scandal and an abomination to the bourgeoisie and its doctrinaire spokesmen, because it includes in its positive understanding of what exists a simultaneous recognition of its negation, its inevitable destruction; because it regards every historically developed form as being in a fluid state, in motion, and therefore grasps its transient aspect as well; and because it does not let itself be impressed by anything, being in its very essence critical and revolutionary. [5]

here’s a little diagram of the dialectic that expresses the process as a negation and elevation, production and consumption, existence and essence: [6]

it’s an evolving, iterative process, which I think has truly transformative, radical implications for the reading of the literary text, but sadly one that Jameson appears to be largely uninterested in. instead, he is more concerned with the use of the Greimas rectangle as a hermeneutic tool. here’s an example using the sacred and profane, which I’ve filled out with various adjectives. [7]

so, on a very material level, the Greimas rectangle is predicated on binary opposites and physically closed off, which should stand in sharp contrast to the image of the dialectic I’ve provided. from just a pedagogical perspective, I’ve met a lot of people who take issue with the Greimas square. like, I am not the only one who doesn’t want students to base their hermeneutical approach to literature on binary opposites and logical operators. #sorrynotsorry

Jameson does acknowledge that most Marxists view the rectangle as fundamentally anti-dialectical, but he simultaneously claims that it can be “reappropriated for a historicizing and dialectical criticism by designating it as the very locus and model of ideological closure.” [8] I take issue with the word “closure” here. the dialectic, as Marx himself understands it, actively resists closure, conclusion, neat resolution, because it is cyclical and iterative, in a state of constant motion and metabolism. as I mentioned earlier, Marx actively describes the dialectic as transient and fluid. 

frankly, I feel that Jameson just doesn’t understand the potency or function of Marx’s dialectic. the kind of logical (or ideological) closure that Jameson seeks throughout The Political Unconscious is just fundamentally incompatible with Marx himself, which is deeply problematic, because this book has been used as a pedagogical tool basically since it was published. in essence, I’m truly not sure that The Political Unconscious produces truly critical, original thought, which I feel strongly should be the goal of literary theory as a discipline. if we want our students to think dialectically—and I very much think we do!—we need to actually teach the dialectic. so, tldr, I think The Political Unconscious just doesn’t fully grasp the potency of Marx’s dialectical materialism, and that makes me very sad.

Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 17.

Ibid., 70.

Bataille, "General Economy," 57. likewise, Bataille argues that man is a fundamentally religious animal, which... if you're not ripping your hair out over him giving that as a definition and then saying that... idk what to say.

Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 45.

Marx, Preface to the Second Edition of Capital, 103. 

c.f. Nail, Marx in Motion, 34.

c.f. Hébert, “The Semiotic Square,” 2. if anyone has any ideas for my Greimas square... please hit me up, I desperately wanna hear them.

Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 47.

[kanohivolitakk]

Also regarding Mata Nui and Makuta as paralells, I find this quote by Gordon Klimes of Templar Games regarding Makuta’s characterization in MNOG rather interesting

“Good and evil just wasn’t good enough any more. It didn’t make any sense any more. But this was okay, because from the beginning, that’s not what it was about. The Makuta wasn’t evil, and his brother, Mata Nui, wasn’t good.

We knew that while building was fun, it was just as much fun to destroy. They were two sides of the same coin, and neither were wrong: it was all part of the play, part of learning, part of having fun. Not good or evil: Creation and Destruction, equal powers in the universe, natural and necessary. Both good. Both bad. Both neither. It’s true, we’d painted Destruction a bit negatively - using words like “Infected” Mask, or “Monsters,” but we’d needed the conflict.

So the Makuta, for all its darkness and danger, was not evil after all, and he says as much at the end. The final act was the confrontation, not between Good and Evil, which was meaningless, but between Creation and Destruction, where everything comes from nothing, and goes back to it, eventually. This was the struggle between the Toa and the Rahi, and Mata Nui and Makuta, and a LEGO fan and her kid brother, building and smashing happily, in equal measure. Our world had gone a bit mad, but to us, this helped make some sense of it. We wanted to share what small comfort it brought.” ~ Gordon Klimes

I find this quote fascinating. Not only does it pretty much confirm that MN and Makuta were always meant to be foils of each other (I mean that’s obvious as the “good and evil brother dynamic”), it also states that neither were meant to be as good or evil, instead being avatars of creation and destruction respectively. Templar didn’t want to put any moral judgement to the concepts, just have them present the concepts themselves.

With Makuta, yeah the fandom pretty much has accepted that he went through multiple iterations, and his original incarnations were far different compared to the “chess master with a god complex” he eventually became (how different Bob Thompsons Makuta and post time Trapped Makuta are is a whole nother story, though I’d personally argue they aren’t that different.)

But what I find interesting is that from the very beginning there was some debate regarding Makuta’s characterization. While yeah, Templar did use Alstairs storybible as basis, they basically invented MNOG Makuta themselves. As such, there’s actually a decent amount of differences between Templars interpretation and Alistair’s interpretaton. According to the Shadow Emperor/Makus Original Bionicle ideas, Alistair had intended Makuta to be a devil archetype, an omnipresent evil. The fact that Alistair had inteded Makuta to be evil is pretty much different from Templar’s incarnation being less evil, and moreso a force of nature, though Alistair’s incarnation walked a fine line between a character and an entity as well.

But while I have more to say about Makuta,I find it rather interesting that despite being the “benevolent god that needs saving”, Klimes said that MN wasn’t good. Again, like Templars take on Makuta, it feels that their take on MN paints him more as an entity or a concept than an actual character.

[lizardodecahedron]

Gabriel killed Minos in Hell after he had died the first time, but it’s not elaborated upon if Minos was that large before his second death. Considering the size of the other Supreme Husks we see in game (insurrectionists, Ferrymen, and Sisyphus’ corpse) It’s hard to tell how he’d be based on how he was revered alone. Personally i think he’s just huge in Lust as a game-wise setpiece as i have no clue how a dude that tall would direct ppl to build a city like we see in Lust lmao

also there’s near to 0 canon info on Minos and Sisyphus on their size before dying and becoming kings in hell so. also up to interpretaton

BUT,

In the ~~Minotaur~~’s terminal entry, it is mentioned that when presented with the ~~Minotaur~~, Minos was disgusted by it. Possibly implying his theological existance is partially accepted to be true.

Goes to show how weird Theology intersects with ULTRAKILL, as the divine comedy is similar with how it treats historical/mythological greek figures. As, they are just There sometimes.

[alterrune]

BACKGROUND PROGRAMS #3: THE EAVESDROP

CENTER FOR CHAOS & CONTAINMENT DESERT OUTPOST, 10:30 PM (SIX MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENTS OF ATO)

NOTE: This event occurs directly after Event #2 had ended.

(A woman concealing herself in a dark purple hood is seen sneaking through the hallways of the CCC outpost. She finds a man with a nametag marked "Citrus", along with his assistant, with his nametag marked "Pinker". She quickly hides behind the wall and eavesdrops on a conversation the two are having.)

Can you believe that guy? Protesting against us? "Oh, those people have lives too! You can't just freeze them and blah, blah, blah!" Ah, to hell with all that bullshit. I'm just glad we sent that agent over to plant him with a "high chaos reading" so we could freeze him for life, and the government is none the wiser!

Clarker, sir, with all due respect, don't you think what we're doing is wrong?

The government is paying us TRILLIONS to do this, Parkson. And that's a whole lotta moola.

It's a shame you can't use that as a bail bond, then!

(As the hooded figure says that, she shoots a bolt of lightning out from a heavy-duty sword and hits Clarker [Citrus] down to the ground. Parkson [Pinker] tries to run, but the lady shoots him down as well, and he lands right next to Clarker. The lady then walks up to them, and pulls her hood down to reveal her face to the two corrupt men. Clarker knows that bright purple hair anywhere: The lady in the cloak is none other than Violet Wolfsbane.)

I snuck in here because I had a suspicion that there was more going on here than it seemed. And from what I overheard from your little conversation, Citrus, I was right.

(Violet picks up Clarker and holds him by his shirt collar.)

Why are you cryogenically freezing people just because they don't agree with your ideals, Citrus?

(Clarker simply gives a sly chuckle.)

You think we actually care about "containing chaos"? Go back into the kitchen you clearly belong in and grow a spine in there, Wolfsbane.

We don't care if we're capturing innocent people, or staging chaos readings so we can capture someone who we don't like. All we care about is that we're getting government funding for this, and getting money for this is all we care about here.

So why don't you let go of me, go into the kitchen, and make me a sandwitch, bitch.

(Violet, absolutely DISGUSTED at what just came out of Clarker's absolutely sexist mouth, chucks him out of his office window, shattering the glass and sending him careening from the top floor to the ground below. With a loud SMASH, he lands face-first onto the pavement, but somehow, still alive! She then jumps out, lands skillfully, and moves in to get some final words in.)

Citrus, you're very lucky I don't want to kill you. Severely maiming you and embedding glass shards into every part of your body for what you said was more than enough. You are a sexist PIG, you sick fuck, and I hope you burn in hell for what you've done. I've teleported the people in the stasis chambers to my location, the Chaos Creation Center. You may wanna rename your company to something with a different acronym. Something like, oh, I dunno, the "Institute for Idiots and Imprisonment".

(As Violet walks away, dropping her CCC badge down onto Clarker's paralyzed body along with a letter of resignation, she realizes how good of a nickname her interpretaton sounds.)

Hmmm..."Institute for Idiots and Imprisonment"...I think I could use that!

NO NEW BIOS OR ACHIEVEMENTS AVAILABLE FROM THIS EVENT

[tilia-cacophonous]

I’m bored and I’ve been thinking about homestuck classpects a lot recently, so here are my very vague ideas for how Death Note characters could be classpected, because my brain took my interests and decided to make a soup haha

Heavily based on optimisticDuelist’s class interpretatons

Light Yagami: Witch (Wizard?) of Hope. As for the choice between passive and active, to me his actions throughout the story seem more selfishly motivated. Even in the Yotsuba arc, his need to catch Kira seems more like a quest for vengeance; I will catch him to clear my name. Yes, he genuinely disgusted by Kira’s actions, but as a Hopebound it wouldn’t suprise me if his morals,  goals, and worldview would be naturally  linked to actions. At the same time, Light’s way of acting at the beginning of the story seem more fitting for the passive counterpart of the Witch- the Heir. That could be just roleplaying  the class for the sake of pleasing  Soichiro, becoming an active class player the moment the situation he’s in leaves the comfort zone of daily life. Another option is Light starting as an Heir, out of fear of consequences (death) starting to roleplay a Witch to stay interesting in Ryuk’s eyes, and as Light uses the Death Note at some point he actually Inverts from an Heir (passive) to a Witch (active).  Or Light could have just really been one the entire time. Heirs’ storyline focuses on taking the intrinsic, surrounding  them aspect and trying to find balance; working for the benefit of others. On the other side there’s the witch, who is very powerful but is bound to the whims of a Familiar figure (who I think would correspond to Ryuk).

L: Mage of Mind. First thinking about the passive-active alignment, but ultimately I decided that yes, he solves the hardest cases.... but he was doing that primarily for his own entertainment. That placed him in an active class. At some point I was contemplating a Thief, but I think  that Mage fits better.

[yourbuerokrat2]

Dark!Q song Starkiller by Bear Ghost (https://youtu.be/s9LxdEFGnr4)

Seems like a darker version of Q together with a Continuum that no longer cares about what he does, especially if you take 'Starkiller literally.

What I think shows this song is a version of Q that goes around and dragging other people to his level by bringing out the worst in them and controlling them for awhile till either he gets bored of them or they leave and Q feeling like he never meant anything, because in the end everyone and especially the people he manipulates are nothing but toys to him.

Now, this Q getting an interest in Picard would be interesting.

Because Picard does have a bit of a mean streak, can act immoral and if Q could feel a certain attraction for him and the things he offers coming from Picard he would decide to play his game aagain.

This too could end in a 'an unstoppable force meets an immovable object', because I can't really see that as soon as Picard would see what an even more immoral and sadistic version of Q tries to do that he would let himself be corrupted.

Í mean Q is not dealing with a Dr. Faustus that already secretly craves power and already is a bit rotten on the inside with only needing someone to bring it to light.

Q is also not dealing with someone relatively young or in an identity crises who he could manipulate into seeing him as a guiding hand to take their life into their own hand and do what they want.

Sure, you could take Picards crises after Locutus, but even though Picard was vulnerable, the thought of taking revenge on the Borg would be sweet but I think that his morals and his fears of becoming anything even close to Q would be too big.

Besides, Picard has a good support system and I think that Q clearly wanting to show and bring Picard to the Dark Side would be something the crew would reassure Picard they would never let happen and that he is too much of a good person.

I just think, that perhaps it would be uninteionally funny to have a dark!Q repeatadly try again and again to get Picard to join his dirty and mean games, only to get rejected again and again.

Let's say this version of Q makes up games and tests, where Picard would be forced to do something immoral to save a bunch of people.

Like dude, Picard is already forced to make decisions like that on a regular basis. He wouldn't feel good about it, but together with Troi he would be able to overcome it.

It would be even worse for Q since he would be able to feel that deep down Picard is attracted to him and that despite everything Picard tells him Picard is tempted from time to time

But even if Q would bring up Picard feeling tempted and having him admit it in front of his crew, Picard would tell him that he knows and that it is only human to have feelings of want for power and revenge and atttraction towards something forbidden.

What matter though are not the thougts and feelings, but wether or not one chooses to act on them. And Picard can reassure Q however many times he needs to hear it, that Picard never intends to act on his.

In the end Q could just snap his fingers and make Picard bad, but what Q here is after is the victory of finally getting Picard to see things his way.

Also dark!Q ending up being the one having a crisis, when he actually starts to care about Picard and ends up falling in love/obsession (depending on wether you want this to have a good or a bad ending).

Side Note: If you take away the more evil aspects, what I do find interesting is the obvious need of the singer to control the other. Which I do think is kind of canon between them and I do think that in a more unhealthy interpretaton of their relationship there would be a constant conflict of control and domination (not in a sexual sense just general).

[aspoonofsugar]

Hi!

Ah, yes transformation is both Creation and Destruction! Sorry, that part was very quick and kind of built on previous thoughts on Creation and Destruction, which are not in this meta :)

In short, RWBY explores the 4 gifts both in their positive and negative declinations. For example:

Knowledge is good, but only when coupled with Choice. Knowledge without Choice leads to passivity and fear > aka Raven

Creation is life and beauty and creativity, but can sometimes be coupled with Control. The way Ironwood wants to control Penny or the God of Light humans.

What about Destruction? In this case we start with its negative declinations > death, grief and loss... However, Destruction is still a gift, so obviously it needs to have a positive declination. So, what wouldn't exist without Destruction? Easy, Transformation.

Because as this volume is making clear, every transformation, every change starts with a loss, with a risk, with Destruction. The fact ascension is transformation, but is also associated with death made me think about it. It is transformation, which in itself is linked to a positive interpretaton of Destruction, but only when it is coupled with Creation, as you said.

Hope this makes sense :)

In general, though, I agree the Tree is both Destruction and Creation. This is why in my opinion, neither Blake or Weiss is right this episode:

Blake: The Tree isn't death. It is rebirth. Weiss: Maybe from a certain perspective yes. But then what happened with Lewis?

Blake has already embraced the idea the Tree is Life, while Weiss is wary of its potential dangers linked to Death. Both are right and wrong because the Tree is both. This is why ascension stands for a metaphor of both death and life.

As for Ruby, Jaune and ascension, I personally think Ruby isn't ascending, while Jaune might or might go through a similar process of rebirth, which from a practical point of view leads him to go back to his younger self. I also don't think the human characters are losing their memories, though.

The reason why I think Ruby isn't ascending, while Jaune might has to do to their respective flaws this season.

Ruby's flaw this specific volume is that she is running away from her feelings and so from herself. She seems to be considering ascension as a way of escaping her own pain and self-hatred. Except that ascension isn't supposed to work this way. As the Cat said, the heart rarely forgets. Ruby would change superficially and find all her current struggles and problems in a different package. Exactly like the Red Prince who symbolically refressed from King to Prince.

After all, to properly ascend you need to do what Herb explained:

You need to know who you are to envision who you want to become

Weiss, Blake and Yang currently know, so they are symbolically already ascending aka evolving and becoming their better selves. Ruby doesn't.

See, the truth is humans do not really need the Tree to ascend, to change. They can do it by themselves. The characters have been doing it throughout the whole story.

Then why should Jaune need the Tree to ascend? Because symbolically he has been refusing to change for years now. This is why he is literally "rusted" now. So, I am expecting an evolution on his part, which is commented by the magic of the worldbuilding. Just like his psychological stagnation and regression has been conveyed through a magical fruit that literally turned him back in time.

In short, Ruby wants to use ascension to run, while Jaune is refusing ascension to run. Both are running from themselves, but in opposite ways. Narratively, they need then to overcome their flaws and face themselves in opposite ways. We'll see, though :)

As for the Tree, I doubt it is getting destroyed because it symbolizes alchemy, which is the discipline the whole of RWBY is designed after and stands as a metaphor for. In short, the series uses tons of symbolism linked to alchemy to convey its themes and messages. It is even structured after a specific narrative structure considere called alchemical (which is used in many other stories, like Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings and even A Song of Ice and Fire). If you are interested, I advise you start with this post by @hamliet. She has a whole tag dedicated to RWBY and alchemy btw and I have made some posts, as well, inspired by hers :)

Anyway, the Tree is alchemy, so it really makes no sense for it to be destroyed. It represents the cycle of death and rebirth, so it is symbolic of one of the main themes of the series.

As for the Jabberwalker, you are right they probably represent a negation of the theme. Aka what happens when the cyle isn't complete. When it gets interrupted. It is probable that whatever happened to the Jabberwalker is a result of the loss of self. Ascension, transformation is a modification of the self, but what happens when you lose yourself completely? You become an anonymous, someone with no proper identity. Which is what Grimms really are:

Pyrrha: They are creatures of Grimm, the manifestation of anonymity.

This is also why Grimms are something negative. They too are introduced not just as bad and ugly monsters, but as a manifestation of the lack of self. Probably the Jabberwalker is a declination of a similar concept, coupled with the complexity they probably used to be a person.

Thank you for your reblog and have a nice day!

About You, About Me

Jaune: What about you?! It's all about you!

This line is what the episode is about in a nutshell. As a matter of fact it conveys 2 ideas central to the whole situation:

1 - The "you" Ruby is talking about is different than the "you" Jaune means.

Ruby is asking about herself as a person, while Jaune speaks about her as an ideal. This dychotomy is the crux of both their current situations. Ruby has been lving as the embodyment of an ideal, so now she struggles to express how she feels in a healthy way. Jaune is instead trying to hide who he is behind the ideal of a hero.

So, Ruby wants to be seen as a person, while Jaune as a hero. Interestingly, both fail, as WBY's reactions to them make clear:

WBY immediately understand Jaune's pain and can see through his very thin (paper-thin I would say) facade.

WBY fails to pick up on the many red flags Ruby has been showing throughout the whole volume. They try to address Penny's death and her frustration on a couple of occasions, but never really go deep.

2 - Jaune is lashing out at Ruby, but he is really projecting on her his own frustrations.

This is made clear by the rest of the conversation:

Jaune: On that bridge, I was the only one, who could do it... I was the only one! And I... And now I have to live with it forever, in here or back home.

It is all your fault! It is all my fault! Jaune just keeps swinging between these 2 extremes. It is exactly like when in Mistral he goes on a rampage against Cinder, but the one he really hates is himself. There he lashes out at the villain, here he lashes out at the hero. The villain is a monster, the hero just could not live up to her role.

Ruby on her part does exactly the same. To be specific, she lashes out on everybody, but I would say she does so in 2 distinctive ways.

BLAKE AND JAUNE - STOP BEING LIKE ME!

Ruby: Shut up... Don't do that... Just don't.

The fight ends with Ruby telling Blake to stop trying to be positive. This complements her previous outburst directed at her (and Yang):

Ruby: Gotta stay positive, right?! Smiles all around!

Ruby can't stand how Blake is behaving because it reminds her of how she is supposed to feel. And she doesn't feel it anymore.

Thematically, Blake has been stepping into Ruby's role since the beginning of the volume:

I would not say she has substituded Ruby as the leader. Still, she is being the optimistic one, the idealistic one, the hopeful one. She realizes they are in a fairy tale and is enthusiastic about it. She knows the right definition of what being a Huntress means. She is Ruby's past idealistic self and Ruby can't stand it. Ironically, our Black Beast is now more optimistic than our Little Red.

Which is why both moments Ruby shares with Blake and Yang past volume are now bittersweet:

Blake: I know you don’t always know what to do, but that’s never stopped you from doing something. I was like that as a girl, but time and… a lot of other things, took their toll on me. Then I wasn’t sure if that kind of girl could actually survive in the world… until I met you. It was a little strange at first because you were younger, but I’ve always looked up to you, Ruby. And I still do.

Yang: You were being optimistic. Look, blind optimism isn’t great, but no optimism means we already lost. We need hope. We need to take risks.

Sure, everybody loves Ruby because she is optimistic and pure and inspiring... but what when she can't be it anymore?

This episode addresses precisely this and takes Ruby and Blake's current foiling to its extreme conclusion:

Blake: Then we won't run this time.

Blake charges into battle to protect strangers, while Ruby runs away from her loved ones.

If Blake reminds Ruby of her past, Jaune is a spitting mirror image of Ruby's current self. This is why she doesn't even talk to him directly, but keeps mentioning him:

Ruby: What about me? No time, right? Gotta get home! Gotta help Jaune! Gotta find someone, who isn't just going to screw everything up!

Ruby: I'm sorry, is this a bad time? Are we supposed to be mourning Jaune's make believe friends?!

Notice the 2 references to time. Ruby, just like Jaune, feels she has no time. It is just, Jaune feels he has not enough time to save everyone, while Ruby feels she has not enough time for herself. No time for others to care and nurture her. This is what she is trying to convey.

Similarly, the remark about Jaune's make believe friends is cruel, but it has definately to do with Ruby's own very real lost friend:

The one she has yet to mourn. The one nobody is mentioning anymore because everybody is too focused on other things. So, yeah, why should they all be mourning a bunch of afterings they know nothing about? When Ruby herself did not even take the time to properly mourn Penny?

Throughout the whole episode,Jaune (unwillingly) steals Ruby's spotlight and caters everyone's attention on himself.

He's obviously been through a lot. We can be frustrated later. Right now, Jaune needs us. And we need him. We just can't count on him.

While Blake says so, the one in focus is Ruby because this phrase is actually about her. Except nobody realizes it. Nobody (or almost ;)) notices she is struggling.

This pattern keeps going throughout the whole episode:

Weiss and Jaune insist Ruby should just grab her weapon and fight like always

Weiss aka Ruby's partner chooses to assist Jaune instead of her. Symbolically, even the Walker that almost kills Ruby is the one Weiss and Jaune launch in the river while they are fighting

When Ruby lets Crescent Rose fall, Yang's question to her is cut off by the paper town being floaded, which leads to everybody comforting Jaune

Even Ruby's own outburst is overshadowed by Jaune's one, which leads to Ruby finally leaving

All Ruby wants is for someone to look at her properly and empathize with her. Still, everybody has been too focused on their own feelings and losses. At the same time, Ruby herself has been refusing to open up with her friends for several volumes now. Everybody believes she is alright because she has always repressed her negative feelings, so nobody really knows she has any.

Everybody thinks she is Blake, when she is actually Jaune.

WEISS AND YANG - LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME!

You don't need me anymore No, you don't see me anymore I'm alone in this war I am a trap door

Ruby lashes out at Blake and Jaune because they are like her. When it comes to Yang and especially Weiss, instead, she is angry because they don't realize her pain.

Yang is too caught up in her new love life to notice her little sister needs help. Or at least, this is what Ruby thinks tbh because there is not that much evidence of this in the story. It is just that when you feel very low, you can end up resenting others for their own happiness. And this is what happens with Ruby and Bumbleby:

Ruby: Good for you, by the way. We are all soooo happy for you.

Weiss is too caught up in her own pain and grief to realize how much her partner needs help. Even in this episode, when she sees Ruby has not Crescent Rose, Weiss bitterly reprimands her. Just like she did at the market. Not only that, but after Ruby has made clear she is absolutely not okay by letting Crescent Rose fall... all Weiss has to tell her is to help support Jaune.

Weiss: It's what they wanted. Right Ruby? Ruby: Why are you asking me? Because I am the leader? Because I am just supposed to have something to say? Cause I don't.

Nobody looks at Ruby or notices her low spirits... well, actually someone does... a small soul ; )

RED HOOD AND LITTLE

Ruby leaves and the only one she has left is Little. Her new friend. Her Ever After's guide. Little is the only one this episode who notices Ruby is off. And they are also a lot how Ruby used to be when the series starts. Little is someone who sees her and also someone like her.

It is going to be interesting how Little will impact Ruby going forward. Especially because we might get some new Little Red Riding Hood's references this volume.

Ruby leaves her family/loved ones/home and enters a wood alone. Where is she going? Maybe she just wants to go back home:

Yang: Return home, eh?

And yet, the woods are dangerous and full of wolves, who want to eat our Little Red Riding Hood:

And just like with the Hound aka another representation of the Big Bad Wolf... the monster hides a person:

In general, the situation is the reversed one of volume 6:

There Ruby enters the woods, discovers dangerous things, but also meets a mentor figure who teaches her something about her Silver Eyes. She is able to inspire everyone to move on and steps in the role of leader.

Here Ruby enters in this strange new world and can't find an ounce of optimism. They are in a literal fairy tale and she doesn't give a crap. The same girl, who started volume 7 eager to explore Atlas after having crossed a whole continent on foot.

In any case, I am curious to see where we are going with Ruby. Especially because she might very soon have a meeting with the true Neo, aka her Shadow. Little as the Little of her Red Hood and Neo as her shadow and the wolf. Probably both ingredients are needed to see where Ruby is going in the future.

Speaking of Neo, there is this:

Yang: But that's... those were more than her usual tricks. They eat and growl and... how has she gotten so powerful?

Yang openly questioning Neo's new powers make me thing there is more than just a semblance evolution. The power-up happening in the Land of Darkness makes me thing it might have something to do with it. Darkness in Jungian psychology is the Shadow and the Repressed. What if this land lets you tap into your buried potential? For better or worse?

Scratched through the surface And you found a key Unlocking what you thought was safe inside a box But it's somehow been set free (Finally)

THE FALL OF ATLAS- ONCE AGAIN

So far, the protagonists have experienced the fall of Atlas twice now. The first time at the market. The second time at the paper town.

In general, the 2 episodes clearly parallel each other. To better say, the paper town is an escalation of the market.

Both times WBY and Jaune fight Neo's Jabberwalkers, while Ruby freezes up. Both times Ruby is reprimanded for apparently spacing out when she is experiencing psychological distress. Both times the protagonists feel as if they are living Atlas fall once again. And yet:

Neo's presence is made clearer, as if we are building a climax toward a final meeting with her. The real her.

Ruby consoles Weiss at the market, but refuses to console Jaune at paper town.

Ruby buries her feelings at the market, but explodes here.

The Rusted Knight is introduced as a dependable hero and a saviour at the market, but Jaune is revealed as a broken and grieving person here.

The most interesting thing is that when it comes to the Fall of Atlas specifically the 2 characters in focus are Weiss and Jaune:

This fits the foiling set up in the Ponder Storm mirror gallery. There we see how they both are still struggling over what happened in Atlas.

Weiss thinks about her Kingdom, her people and how they risked their homes without gaining anything.

Jaune thinks about Penny and his role in her death.

Both can't forgive themselves for failing to stop Cinder and to save Penny. This makes sense considering how they are the last 2 to fall and the ones who hold on the longest. They were both blooming in Atlas and were in very positive moments of their life. And yet, last volume's climax changed things. They were brought down when they were at their strongest... so what can they really accomplish?

And yet, even if they clearly blame themselves, they end up lashing out on others, as a coping mechanism (even if in different degrees). This volume both are shown particularly rude, sassy and cynical, in ways they usually are not. Or at least not anymore and not as often. The result is that they both enter into a conflict with Ruby. Weiss's insensitivity and ignorance of Ruby's feelings coupled with Jaune's exploding at her are among the reasons why Ruby leaves.

It is clear the dynamic among Weiss, Jaune and Ruby is going to be important for the resolution of this volume and for all 3 their character arcs. Especially, there is still something that hasn't been addressed:

I thought this episode was perfect for the reveal Jaune killed Penny. And yet, it doesn't happen. Which makes me wonder when this truth is gonna come out and how it will impact Ruby, Jaune and Weiss's dynamic. What is sure is that Jaune and Weiss clearly have a role to play in this volume's climax and in Ruby's arc.

WEISS - SNOWHITE, SNOW QUEEN, SNOW ANGEL

Weiss: Then, who does that leave us with? It's obvious we need someone to guide us or we can end up throw back in time or killed by the tree or worse.

Weiss keeps looking for someone to look up to, to guide her, to console her and to support her. This is not wrong per se, but hilariously Weiss is the one who is probably the most put together compared to the characters she wants to depend on.

She opens up to Ruby about her loss. There is nothing wrong in this, but we as viewers can really see it should be the other way around. She should be the one Ruby can lean on. Even in this episode, when it comes to support Jaune, she asks for Ruby's help. Now, she doesn't really need to. She can say something kind to Jaune by herself and neither Blake nor Yang ask Ruby to butt in. Weiss does and, as little as it is, this is what sets Ruby off. Because once again Ruby is asked to ignore what she feels for someone else's sake. Even if Weiss and the others can really handle the situation on their own.

This is why Ruby calls out Weiss specifically this episode:

Ruby: Gotta find someone, who doesn't screw everything up!

Something similar happens with Jaune, as well:

Yang: And when did you get so... Weiss: Mature...

This is both ship-teasing and a joke, but it hides an important truth. Notice that Weiss doesn't say "handsome" or "hot", but mature. Jaune is an adult, he is Weiss's childhood hero, so he must be dependable. And yet, he is not because he is still RWBY's old awkward friend and he has spent years alone with his guilt. Weiss should understand better than anyone else why Jaune isn't well. I mean, she was there when Penny died. She outloud states Penny sacrificed herself, so I think she knows what Jaune had to do. And yet, her reaction this episode to Jaune's predicament is this:

Weiss: But how? He's clearly not... all there.

Just like with Ruby, she makes a snappy remark, which is heard by Jaune and this starts a discussion and escalates an already difficult situation.

I don't say this because I think Weiss is a monster or a bad person, obviously. She is clearly suffering as well and really means no harm. Still, it is important Weiss stops looking only at herself. She failed to save Atlas, but she can still save her friends. She has the inner strength and the wisdom to succeed:

CC: I am talking about you, Wise Huntress.

It is through helping others that she will move forward from her loss. Just like Jaune did it in volume 5 by saving her.

JAUNE - HERO, VILLAIN, MAIDEN

Jaune is instead the opposite of Weiss. He tries to overcome his grief over Penny's death by trying to help other people. I mean, it worked with Pyrrha in Mistral, right? So, why shouldn't it work here? Sorry Jaune, but that coping mechanism is not functional anymore because your past self has been shattered:

And yet, Jaune refuses to let go of the heroic self-image he has worked so hard to built. Basically, he has regressed, as well and is stuck here:

Jaune: I don't want help! I don't want to be the damsel in distress! I want to be the hero!

Jaune's arc has always been about integrating with the anima, aka his most feminine parts. He refuses them, but it is through them that he will eventually become the hero he wants to be. He needs to accept he is a damsell in distress to be the hero. Even more so, to truly complete his journey he needs to become a symbolic maiden. Only in this way, he will be complete. He will truly be himself. After all, he alludes to the very famous Maid of Orleans ;)

So, right now Jaune is once again refusing his anima and this is why the once promising hero has turned into a toxic version of himself. He thinks he is protecting the paper pleasers, but he has actually trapped them. He is not the one saving them, but they are the ones saving him by offering him a coping mechanism to keep himself together:

Weiss: Then why do you care so much about this village? Jaune: Because I can actually protect these people!

They are pleasing him in a relationship, which is honestly detrimental for both parties. Jaune protects them, yes. Still, he also stops them from evolving. The same is true the other way around. The paper pleasers are keeping Jaune functional, but they are also stopping him from making any real progress.

This is why after years Jaune is still a prisoner of the Ever After. It is because (obviously) the way out one way or the other has to do with the tree. And yet, Jaune keeps avoiding it. Just like he is avoiding any real change.

This is because "changing" is a risk and a risk means you can't be sure if things are going well or badly:

A new me, I am ready, but who will I find?

And you know what else is a risk?

Weiss: Trust is a risk

Interesting...

Jaune: Afterlings are all either too clever, too stupid or too crazy to trust!

And who is the last person Jaune trusted exactly?

Penny: Trust me...

Jaune is clearly trying to "fix" what happened to Penny through the Afterlings, but he is wrong. There is no fixing the past this way and what he obtains is just that he is making people suffer for no reason. Not only that, but his stubborness puts the paper pleasers in real danger:

If the Jabberwalkers get them, Jaune's friends would never ascend. There is no escaping death, one way or the other.

Jaune needs to accept this and he is actually starting to accept it. Symbolically, the day after he finally reunites with RWBY, the time starts moving once again. After years of delusions, Jaune starts facing what he has done. His delicate stability, which is symbolically represented by a paper world evaporates and dissolves into water (this episode starts with fire and ends with water > 2 elements linked to alchemy and transformation).

He starts the episode claiming he is fine:

Jaune: This isn't crazy. I'm not crazy.

He ends the episode admitting he isn't:

Jaune: I'm sorry. I know I am not okay. I know I am not right.

And even asking himself the key question:

Jaune: What am I supposed to be?

What are you? Only by facing this question head on Jaune can hope to finally evolve. Only by letting fo of his armor, which is rusted already, he can hope to find his new more refined self. A hero, who is also a maiden.

GRIEF

It seems that after the first 5 episodes exploring the 5 stages of grief, we are getting calls out to them in different ways:

Ruby bargains her emblem in order to help her friends. Another way to run away from Summer, but also to sacrifice her pain for others. She failed to get the ingredients in time, so obviously now she has to sacrifice something so personal, like her mother's memento, right?

Ruby, Weiss and Jaune walk in a mirror gallery, which reflects their grief and fail to discuss it. They didn't even properly discuss Penny's death and how it happened. They are negating it on some level.

Ruby and Jaune explodes into anger this episode and in this way they can finally both start their self-actualizing journeys.

We'll see where it goes...

ASCENSION VS DEATH

Personally, I think we need an exploration of this dychotomy on a thematic level.

On the one hand ascension is clearly a metaphor for death. However, the Jabberwalker, which is clearly a creature of Darkness seems to be offering a different idea of death. More similar to the one the characters have. What is the difference? What is ascension really? And why does the Jabberwalker embody something different?

This a very interesting mystery thematically speaking and I am curious to see how it is solved.

Is it about introducing 2 different flavors of Destruction?

Cancellation (death)> negative

Transformation > positive

We'll see...

On another note, the reveal of Jaune's role in the paper pleasers' town gives more context to the Cat's dislike for our Knight. The CC's role is to lead the Afterlings to the Tree, but Jaune goes in the way of this. Symbolically, this makes them antagonists.

MISCELLANIA

Here come some miscellania thoughts:

The time motif is interesting. This episode specifically times keeps being mentioned by Jaune and Ruby. Jaune keeps saying they don't have time and that he is late. He also keeps asking what time is it. Ruby is annoyed there is no time and sarcastically asks if that is a bad time. In general, Jaune and Ruby are also opposites when it comes to time. Jaune is currently a man who has spent too much time alone with his trauma. Ruby is a child who has had not enough time to properly process hers.

Jaune's allusions just keep multiplying. He is the White Knight in Alice (also that character sings a song whose alternate title is litterally The Aged Man :P). He also fits the Hatter to an extent in how he killed time (aka spent years alone making no progress and broke the time fruit). And now he is also the White Rabbit.

Speaking of Jaune... meta-narratively the Rusted Knight is very interesting. Judging by the girls' enthusiasm and by Jaune's own excitement when he mentions realizing he was that character, the Rusted Knight is surely portrayed very positively... And yet, Alyx poisons him. I think @harostar suggested what we saw in this episode might offer us a glimps of why. Jaune might have been controlling to Alyx and Lewis and Alyx may have felt trapped by him. And yet, the story still portrays Jaune as a hero. If Alice wrote the story or if Jaune was really that terrible to her and her brother, then why isn't he portrayed as a villain? This question is interesting and seems to confirm Alyx might not be the writer of the story... At the same time, Jaune might have failed to leave up to a fairy tale- standard. However, if the writer still felt to write him as a hero, maybe he did better than what he thinks.

This is the third time Ruby hallucinates three people. The first one when she falls (Oscar, Yang and Penny), the second one in the Blacksmith's place (Penny, Alyx and Summer), the third one while fighting the Jabberwalker (Cinder, Penny and Salem). Clearly they relfect Ruby's deteriorating mental state. The first time, she isn't hallucinating, but seeing Neo's illusions. The second time she is subjected to the Ever After's strange magic. This time, though, she is having a straight out panic attack. In all this, Penny is fittingly present all three times. Ruby needs to properly mourn her or she will never move on.

WBY's discussion about the Tree this episode is interesting because we have: Blake (destruction) believing the Tree is rebirth, Weiss (creation) being wary of the dangerous power of the Tree and Yang (knowledge) wanting to know more. Fittingly, Ruby (choice) is silent and so they fail to reach a resolution.

I think this volume might introduce a key theme, which will probably keep going in later volumes. The idea of need vs wants in a reverse sense. Jaune and Ruby both want to be needed to the point Ruby fears that now she isn't needed anymore, she is going to be left behind. It is the same as Yang's conditional love idea (see the Auction)...I think the resolution is going to be that you don't love people because you need them, but because you want them in your life. It is the same concept expressed by Blake last volume... Others are just a part of you... you don't stay with them out of codependency or need, but because you are happy and wish to be with them.

[grelleswife]

Where would Sebastian take Meyrin for on a date you think? Im asking because I like your interpretaton of him and how Baptdemonprincess does Meyrin so thank you ^^

Hi, anon! I think Sebastian would take a similar approach to Miss Sutcliff in the Grellerin Valentine’s rp that bapy and I wrote together. Although the Phantomhive servants‘ basic needs are met, Mey Rin doesn’t normally partake of the finer things in life—she’s a maid, after all. Sebastian would want to take her someplace where she was treated like a lady and truly felt special. Probably an elegant café or restaurant, or maybe a carriage ride through a beautiful city park, or even a shopping trip in London where he bought her a few pretty dresses, shoes, hats, etc. Anything that made Mey Rin feel like the princess she is! 🥰

[antiqua-lugar]

How Black Books Supports Bisexual Bernard

What I personally find really interesting about this joke is that Bernard says he is not gay not because he is not into men, but because he is trash and not into dancing which could mean that:

a) he is misinformed by society on what being gay means b) he gave up on identifying as queer because he gave up on pursuing queer men because he does not fit in with the local gay community - the thinks that if he cannot partecipate in the “gay lifestyle”, then he cannot identify as queer.  i mean, he must have read about identity and performance at some point in his life and he has higher chances to stumble into a relationship with a woman than a man after all  (his comment about standards of hygene could also be interpreted as being about the beauty standards gay men suffer through but i might be reaching here) d) all of the above This interpretation adds a lot to the whole show, which is entirely centered on the friendship between Bernard, Manny and Fran and in the way they can be completely themselves with each other but also, thanks to Manny, on how Bernard and Fran are becoming slightly better versions of themselves. The show in particular focuses on the relationship between Bernard and Manny, which is not framed like a conventional bromance or friendship but instead mirrors  a “traditional” religious marriage. So it is possible to take Bernard coming to terms with his sexuality and identity as one of the ways he gets better and the show 100% supports this interpretaton.

Marriage Tropes

Bernard is the provider in the traditional sense (it is his bookshop they are living out of, literally) while Manny’s role is pretty much “supporting” Bernard or “contributing”*. Manny makes Bernard’s business better thanks to his accounting and salesman skills, cooks, cleans and fullfills Bernard’s emotional needs. The show also depicts their relationship by resorting to common marital tropes in old comedies, such as Manny (the wife) feeling unappreciated, Manny wanting to “get out of the house”, Manny managing the household and trying to get Bernard to get his shit together, and generally the husband being a dick to his wife but it always work out in the end because they love each other so much.    

If we consider that Bernard was probably raised in a Catholic religous environment (like Dylan Moran was) and had already actively questioned his sexuality, it is high probable that he pretty soon becomes aware of having accidently stumbled into the queer version of a traditional marriage which he had never thought would happen to him because he does not “fit in” as a queer man and he has no clue what to do. Bernard and The Power Of Love

From Bernard’s two romantic relationships with women we notice that he usually goes into Sickening Sweethearts mode(2) to the point that the only woman he ever loved faked her death just to have a clean break-up (according to Fran Bernard was always an asshole, so I don’t think Bernard being an asshole was the deal breaker here). He does not go into Sickening Sweethearts mode with Manny, but everytime Manny leaves, Bernard pretty much rolls over and waits for death. And when Manny is there, Bernard feels entitled to the entirety of his time, effort, attention, obedience and care. He claims proudly that he is “mine” and his own “human plaything”. Since the intensity of his feelings seems to be the same, Bernard probably does not go into Sickening Sweethearts mode because he has no idea of how to act in a queer relationship and moreover he thinks that Manny is straight, since he does not know about what happened with the photographer. 

[image credits: this post from aleks91slnk ]

We can see that Bernard goes through character development during the series from the way he slightly gets better as the series goes on - Bernard does more nice things for Fran and Manny, pretends to be Manny’s business partner to make his parents happy, goes to parties, goes on holidays, all culminating in Bernard helping Manny get a girl to make him happy. The series also clearly presents this character development as a consequence of his relationship with Manny, as both Bernard and Fran acknowledge that he has changed their lives for the better. There is something else to consider however when considering his relationship with Manny and the idea of Bernard having feelings for him when it comes to Bernard’s sexuality. While he and Manny mirror a husband-wife relationship, there are still important differences from traditional depictions of this trope in comedy - Manny cleans but the place isn’t spotless - they have to hire a cleaner for that. Manny cooks but nothing special. He washes their clothes but it takes Manny’s mother to restore Bernard’s clothes to their original color. Drinking and smoking abound. If Manny wants to talk about gossip, he calls Fran and leaves Bernard alone with his books. They have a ridicolous contraption to make toast in the morning. It is a husband-wife relationship and a queer relationship which does not require either of them to mold themselves into anything they are not. It is exactly what Bernard, who thinks that you cannot being gay without high hygene standards and too much dancing, needs. Manny is influencing him in subtle ways, they compromise and they fight about Bernard’s being a jerk, but Bernard is still allowed to be Bernard Black, human disaster. Two notes on framing

It is interesting to notice that they discuss their sexuality during the second episode of the first season and Bernard’s (presumed) dead girlfriend during the last episode of the last season, while discussing Manny’s interest for the girl he eventually hooks up with thanks to Bernard. Both the fact that the discussion happened at all and the fact that it happened so early in the series provides immediately a possible frame of interpretation for the whole show (or at least for series 1, which ends hinting that Manny might not be as straight as he thinks he is while Bernard has never completely ruled it out). In particular, Bernard’s girlfriend faking her own death to get away from him is put in direct contrast with Bernard’s decision to help Manny get a girl. Bernard realizes that his previous understanding of relationships was flawed and costed him the only woman he loved, and changes his approach towards Manny as to not lose him as well. At the same time, the first time we see Bernard as openly feeling lonely and alone is when he has made peace with it for the sake of Manny and Fran. Fran’s role on the episode is also particularly interesting - during the whole show she is costantly encouraging Bernard to openly admit his feelings for Manny instead of pretending he does not care, and in this episode she is now the one providing Manny with key information about Bernard’s love life. Bernard’s character development is contingent on Bernard coming at peace with his own emotions and feelings - and why not, his sexuality. 

Another interesting thing to notice is that every time Manny leaves (or is planning to) or is taken away, it is usually done in relation to a male figure clearly presented as in direct competiton with Bernard - the photographer, who not only treasures Manny but also compliments his beard (which Bernard hates), Simon Pegg as a librarian with his new clean shiny shop and a positive attitude and even the famous world-travelling charming explorer (who Bernard also gets a crush on). Even the girl he hooks up with at the end shows up thanks to the “leaving something behind” trick that Bernad expressely and explicitely mocked. 

At the same time, all the male figures who are not like Bernard are also not like Bernard in the sense that they do not care for Manny as a person. Bernard is an asshole but an asshole who cares and will actually fight Simon Pegg for wanting to cut Manny’s hair. Which by the way is another incredible common husband-wife trope in comedies.

tl;dr Black Books is a show about the friendship between three weirdos who love each other because they can be their true selves together but also change together, and if we want to interpret Bernard as a queer man struggling with his identity and getting better because his relationship with Manny, romantic or not, helps him, there is enough in the show to make it a perfectly valid and consistent interpretation

*(note: not being religous myself I had to google exactly what the wife is supposed to do in a marriage according to the Catholic doctrine and apparently there is not agreed upon term, unlike “the husband is the provider”. It really says a lot about what they thought of the role of women that there is not even a fucking word for it.)

[blossompuppy]

Hi, I just want to let you know that some people consider it inappropriate to romantically pair Miku an Luka together, since official sources give their ages as 16 and 20. If you interpret them differently that's fine but ppl usually see by them as that and it's best to let others know when you use a different interpretaton

yeah i actually didn’t look up their ages until later after i drew this unfortunately agh!! thank you so much for the warning, i totally didn’t kno when i was drawing this. i probably shouldn’t have posted it after i found out haha

sorry about that, and thanks again!! i won’t be drawing them as a couple anymore knowing that