#some think it’s praiseworthy or at the very least honorable

[kantraels]

Would Zed be interested in hanging out with other teenagers on the Morningstar, or are they just so in deep with the Krieger mindset of born to kill and die that they don’t care?

So the whole arc it’s going through is that it doesn’t consider itself a teenager (and it doesn’t really consider itself a person, either, in the strictest sense of person.) What it does see itself as is a guardsman; as a Krieger; as a reject (which over time transforms from a stinging mark of shame to a genuine badge of honor as it survives, thrives, and makes a name for itself on the Mourningstar.)

So… as a roundabout answer… probably not, unless those teenagers are also housed in the veteran’s barracks. It’s a bitter anomaly and nobody expected it to last as long as it has. For age, for mental state upon delivery to the Inquisition (bad), for mission types of choice, for… well, you know, an abundance of factors. And then by the time it’s opened up enough to start making friends it’s fully a part of the vet frat.

[wedreamedlove]

Jesse and Greek Mythology - Character Study (At a Glance)

This is a simple essay to gather my thoughts about the use of Greek mythology with Jesse, and what I think this might mean for his future development.

First, I honestly believe he’s being written as a Greek tragedy:

The usual irony in Greek tragedy is that the hero is both extraordinarily capable and highly moral (in the Greek honor-culture sense of being duty-bound to moral expectations), and it is these exact, highly-admirable qualities that lead the hero into tragic circumstances. The tragic hero is snared by his own greatness: extraordinary competence, a righteous passion for duty, and (often) the arrogance associated with greatness (hubris). [Wikipedia]

Second, in his personal route, there are two references that support this. In Chapter 1, Jesse plays Orpheus in his musical. In Chapter 2, the story of Hippolytus gets brought up between Jesse and K, his cousin from an exiled branch family.

The TL;DR about Orpheus and Eurydice is that they were lovers until Eurydice died one day. Then Orpheus went down to the underworld to bring her back but under the condition that he could not turn around to look at her shade as they traveled up to the mortal world. In the end, Orpheus turns to look and Eurydice returns to the underworld and then Orpheus dies in his grief.

The TL;DR of Hippolytus is that Hippolytus offends the goddess Aphrodite because of his worship for the goddess Artemis and so Aphrodite creates a tragedy where she makes Hippolytus’ stepmother fall in love with him. The stepmother commits suicide rather than disgrace her son, but a letter after her death accuses Hippolytus of raping her and so Hippolytus’ father prays to the god Poseidon to curse his son with death or exile. Hippolytus ends up grievously injured because of this but, on the verge of death, Artemis appears before the father and clears up this misunderstanding. Hippolytus dies after forgiving his father (in some versions, he gets revived and is then exiled to become king elsewhere).

Naturally, there’s many versions of these Greek stories but, in my opinion, the tragedy that happens in them is because the hero refuses to stop being who they are; they are trapped in their tragedies by the very traits that caused the tragedies to begin with.

For example, it can be argued that in all versions of Orpheus and Eurydice, it is because of Orpheus’ love that he can brave the underworld to get back Eurydice and it is because of love that he ends up looking back. (Eurydice trips and Orpheus turns back to help her, Orpheus cannot hear Eurydice and turns back because he fears he’s been tricked and he wants to make sure she is there, Orpheus makes it out of the underworld and turns around to hug Eurydice but forgets that they both need to be out of the underworld, Orpheus cannot tell Eurydice that he cannot look back but he does so to reassure her of his love when she anguishes over how he doesn’t love her anymore).

For Hippolytus, his worship and honor of Artemis is praiseworthy but it is precisely because his worship gets coveted by Aphrodite that a tragedy gets set in motion, and then it is because he never changes in his worship of Artemis that in the end he dies because of his father.

Now, how does this relate to Jesse? Up to now in Chapter 14 of the main story, there has been this tragic irony of Jesse being the person with the least amount of information about everything going on, and the information that he does manage to get comes from using taboo magic that corrodes his body.

There has been some criticism of the heroine for not sharing her information with Jesse; however, the fact is that both Jesse and the heroine suffer from loving each other so much that they don’t wish to drag the other person into their current affairs. They literally have no idea what the other person is going through because they are too good at protecting each other. Do you see how it’s precisely their love for each other that creates this tragic irony?

However, there is another view of these Greek tragedies. In Jesse’s personal route, Chapter 2:

Jesse: A long time ago someone asked me, if I were Hippolytus, how would I avoid the tragedy from happening? I couldn't answer. MC: If I were him... Ah, this question is really hard. MC: But I think I wouldn't change my faith to avoid a disaster. MC: If he dies due to faith, then he can live due to faith. MC: Maybe the next Hippolytus will be saved by Artemis. [...] K: What exactly is Hippolytus supposed to do to be able to live... I don't agree with your answer. K: He was cursed to death by his father and his tragedy is because his father was king, so when his father wants him to die then he can do nothing but die. K: So, he needs to become king. K: You said one thing wrong, Jesse, my alias “K” does not come from my surname, it stands for “King”. Jesse: But would the Hippolytus who wants to be king still be that original Hippolytus? Jesse: Before you even achieved your goal, you've already lost your original intention. Jesse: Those who die due to their faith, will live due to their faith. This is the best answer I've heard and I'll share it with you. K: Hahaha, this is an answer that's extremely like Hippolytus. K: Jesse, maybe you're the true Hippolytus...

The heroine and Jesse (and essentially the game) believes that remaining true to yourself is not a tragic crime, and that perhaps fate may change one day because of this.

Future development of Jesse? In Jesse’s first trajectory, [SSR If I Am In Disorder], another Greek mythology gets brought up:

He didn't understand, why did he have to have this damnable talent? If someone else wanted it, then he would give it to them. Why couldn't he be a normal person, why did he have to bear so much heavy things? His father's expectations, his family's revival, they were all like heavy shackles crushing his shoulders. He was like Sisyphus pushing the boulder, climbing up the steep mountain top with difficulty and repeating this futile and hopeless action every day.

Then, in the release PV, Jesse has the line “I will be the one to end the Möbius strip of fate”. In concept, the Möbius strip represents infinity and endlessness because, as you travel along the strip, you actually traverse the entire strip but end up right where you started.

We can see that story of Sisyphus and the Möbius strip thematically mirror each other, where the action taken is futile and endless.

So, putting everything together, what I’m afraid of seeing is that Jesse’s nature of protecting the heroine, but not letting her in on everything that he’s doing, will bring him very close to things that have happened in his life before, ex. the loss of people close to him (the heroine?) or nearly dying himself (his dad’s sacrifice for him).

Of course, given that this is an otome game and we can’t have a male lead die, I’m sure he’ll accomplish breaking out of this repetitive loop and change his and his heroine’s fate somehow (this includes her potential fate of needing to sacrifice herself as the goddess of creation for the supernatural world).

[bananaofswifts]

For Women's History Month 2021, GRAMMY.com is celebrating some of the women artists nominated at the 2021 GRAMMY Awards show. Today, we honor Taylor Swift, who's currently nominated for six GRAMMYs.

When we met Taylor Swift in 2006, it was immediately apparent that her songwriting approach was like ripping a page out of her diary.

"Just a boy in a Chevy truck/ That had a tendency of gettin' stuck/ On backroads at night/ And I was right there beside him all summer long/ And then the time we woke up to find that summer gone," she lamented in the first verse of her debut single, "Tim McGraw(opens in a new tab)." The way the then-16-year-old Swift could turn personal anecdotes into instantly memorable hooks mirrored the prowess of an industry veteran, appealing to more than just the teenage girls that could relate to a short-lived high school romance.

Now, nearly 15 years later, Swift has introduced another layer of intrigue with a foray into indie folk, unveiling a pair of albums, folklore and evermore, last year. Recorded entirely in isolation after the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, folklore has been widely acclaimed(opens in a new tab) as Swift's best album, touted for its intimate songwriting and cinematic dynamics; evermore has received similarly glowing reviews(opens in a new tab).

folklore was 2020's best-selling album(opens in a new tab) and earned Swift five GRAMMY nominations at the 2021 GRAMMY Awards show, including her fourth Album Of The Year nod. (evermore will be eligible for the 64th GRAMMY Awards in 2022.) As her 10 previous GRAMMY wins suggest, though, this new chapter isn't an abrupt departure for the star—it's a masterful continuation of her evolution as a singer/songwriter.

If there's one thing that Swift has proven throughout her career, it's that she refuses to be put in a box. Her ever-evolving sound took her from country darling to pop phenom to folk's newest raconteur—a transition that, on paper, seems arduous. But for Swift, it was seamless and resulted in perhaps her most defining work yet. And folklore’s radiance relies on three of Swift’s songwriting tools: heartfelt balladeering, autobiographical writing, and character-driven storytelling.

While there was always a crossover element to Swift's pop-leaning country tunes, her transition from country starlet to pop queen began with Red. The album’s lead single, the feisty breakup anthem "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together(opens in a new tab)," was Swift's first release to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and, ironically, scoffed "indie records much cooler than mine"). She declared a full pop makeover with 2014's 1989, but the response proved that her bold move was the right one: Along with spawning three more No. 1 hits, the project won Swift her second GRAMMY for Album of the Year.

From there, 2017’s Reputation, a response to media scrutiny, and 2019’s Lover, an often bubbly exploration of all facets of affection, followed. Although they shared similarly grandiose production, Lover featured a handful of poetic ballads, including "The Archer(opens in a new tab)," a self-reflective love song that teased Swift's folk sensibilities through storybook lyrics and ambient textures.

Swift’s ballads are key in understanding the full essence of folklore. They’ve regularly marked standout moments on each of her albums, both thanks to her poignant vulnerability and rich tone. Fearless standout "White Horse" earned Swift two GRAMMYs in 2009; Red's painstaking "All Too Well" was an instant fan favorite; 1989's "This Love" and Reputation's "New Years Day" provided tenderness amid otherwise synth-heavy sounds.

The raw emotion she puts into her downtempo songs comes alive on folklore, introducing a new wave of neo-classical sonics that elevate her fanciful penmanship to an ethereal level. Whether or not Swifties saw a full indie-pop record coming—at least not yet—the shift isn't all that surprising. Folklore’s romanticized lyrics and relatively lo-fi production are arguably what many fans have been patiently waiting on.

Lyrically, the super-personal nature of Swift’s music has always captivated fans and naysayers alike; diehards and critics dissected each of her albums for its real-life subjects and hidden meanings. While she played into those conspiracies at the time—whether she was revealing names in titles like "Hey Stephen(opens in a new tab)" and "Dear John(opens in a new tab)" or scathing the other girl on "Better Than Revenge(opens in a new tab)"—even Swift herself admits that her teenage method had an expiration date.

"There was a point that I got to as a writer who only wrote very diaristic songs that [it] felt unsustainable for my future moving forward," she told Apple Music's(opens in a new tab) Zane Lowe in December of 2020. "It felt like too hot of a microscope ... On my bad days, I would feel like I was loading a cannon of clickbait when that's not what I want for my life."

That realization is what helped make folklore so memorable: Swift stripped away the drama to let her artful storytelling shine. Sure, there are occasional callbacks to personal happenings ("invisible string(opens in a new tab)" references sending her exes baby gifts and "mad woman(opens in a new tab)" alludes to her legal battle with Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun). Still, she largely shies away from her autobiographical narratives to make way for her imagination.

"I found myself not only writing my own stories, but also writing about or from the perspective of people I've never met, people I've known, or those I wish I hadn't," Swift wrote in a letter to fans(opens in a new tab) on social media the day folklore arrived. "The lines between fantasy and reality blur and the boundaries between truth and fiction become almost indiscernible."

folklore might be her first full project dedicated to creating characters and projecting storylines, but Swift has shown a knack for fantasy from the start. Tracks like "Mary's Song (Oh My My)(opens in a new tab)" on her self-titled debut and "Starlight(opens in a new tab)" on Red saw Swift craft stories for real-life muses ("Mary's Song" was inspired by an old couple who lived next door to Swift in her childhood; "Starlight" was sparked from seeing a picture of Ethel and Bobby Kennedy as teens). Even when songs did pertain to her real life, Swift often had a way of flipping memories into whimsical metaphors, like the clever clap-back to a critic on Speak Now's "Mean(opens in a new tab)" or the rebound relationship in Reputation's "Getaway Car(opens in a new tab)."

To think that we wouldn't have folklore without a pandemic is almost surreal; it's already become such a fundamental piece of Swift’s artistic puzzle. There was no telling what may have come after the glittering "love letter to love itself” that was Lover, but it seems isolation made the singer rethink any plans she may have had.

"I just thought there are no rules anymore because I used to put all these parameters on myself, like, 'How will this song sound in a stadium? How will this song sound on radio?' If you take away all the parameters, what do you make?" she told Paul McCartney in a November (opens in a new tab)Rolling Stone(opens in a new tab) interview(opens in a new tab). "And I guess the answer is folklore."

Even if she hasn’t been making indie music herself, Swift has shown an affinity for the genre over the years through curated digital playlists(opens in a new tab). Those included four songs by The National including "Dark Side of the Gym," which she references on folklore single "betty(opens in a new tab)," and "8 (Circle)" by Bon Iver, Swift's collaborator on folklore's gut-wrenching "exile(opens in a new tab)" as well as evermore’s title track. (“Exile” is one of folklore’s GRAMMY-nominated cuts, up for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.)

The National’s guitarist Aaron Dessner co-wrote nine and produced 11 of folklore's 16 tracks, soundtracking Swift's imaginative tales with sweeping orchestration and delicate piano. Their partnership started with "cardigan(opens in a new tab)," a melancholy take on teenage love(opens in a new tab) that's up for Best Pop Solo Performance and the coveted Song of the Year. The team-up was a dream come true for Swift, a self-proclaimed National superfan and a career highlight for Dessner, who shared in an Instagram post(opens in a new tab) about folklore that he's "rarely been so inspired by someone." He sees the album as a pivotal moment for both Swift's career and pop music.

"Taylor has opened the door for artists to not feel pressure to have 'the bop,'" Dessner shared with (opens in a new tab)Billboard(opens in a new tab) in September. "To make the record that she made, while running against what is programmed in radio at the highest levels of pop music—she has kind of made an anti-pop record. And to have it be one of the most, if not the most, successful commercial releases of the year that throws the playbook out.

"I hope it gives other artists, especially lesser-known or more independent artists, a chance at the mainstream," he continued. "Maybe radio will realize that music doesn't have to sound as pushed as it has. Nobody was trying to design anything to be a hit. Obviously, Taylor has the privilege of already having a very large and dedicated audience, but I do feel like it's having a resonance beyond that."

Swift's other primary folklore collaborator was Jack Antonoff. He has been her right-hand man since they first paired up on 2013's promotional single "Sweeter Than Fiction(opens in a new tab)" (Swift referred to him as "musical family" in her folklore announcement(opens in a new tab)). Even after years of creating stadium-ready pop smashes, Antonoff said in his own folklore Instagram post(opens in a new tab), "I've never heard Taylor sing better in my life / write better."

As Swift recognizes herself, folklore ushered in a new way of thinking for the superstar that not only brings out her best, but sets a promising precedent for what's to come. "What I felt after we put out folklore was, 'Oh wow, people are into this too, this thing that feels really good for my life and my creativity,'" Swift added in her interview with Lowe. "I saw a lane for my future that was a real breakthrough moment of excitement and happiness."

Her enthusiasm is tangible on both folklore and evermore. Dubbed folklore’s sister record, evermore further expands Swift’s newfound mystical atmosphere. Much to the delight of many Swifties, the follow-up also calls back to her country beginnings on tracks like the HAIM-assisted “no body, no crime(opens in a new tab),” as well as her pop expertise on more uptempo cuts like “long story short(opens in a new tab).”

Together, the albums are a momentous reminder that Swift is a singer/songwriter first. Her wordcraft is some of the most alluring of her generation, and that’s never been lost on her music, regardless of the genre she’s exploring. But now that Swift also feels she's at her best, it’s evident folklore was just the beginning of Taylor Swift in her finest form.

[ofravensandgenesis]

The Investment of an Antagonist - Part One

Entry 04. [Trigger warning content: post contains discussion of Far Cry 5 details including cannibalism, graphic violence, brainwashing, torture, child abuse mention, neglect, mentioned fatalistic/suicidal character pov, dark backstories, etc. Spoilers naturally. Part 01 of 03.] [Link to part two here.] [Link to part three here.] I was cooking dinner and had the sudden EUREKA moment of trying to figure out what exactly I want with regards to an antagonist for an original fic setting. Originally I was going to have a general state of conflict between two nations/city-states/etc on a larger, more impersonal scale, but that didn’t do anything to really interest me in that level of conflict. So I was thinking on why Far Cry 5′s villains and the conflict interests me so, and the eureka moment was realizing that they as villains have a personal stake in all this, and go about it in ways that are reflective of their stories. Specifically for the Seeds, it has me realizing it’s more interesting to me when the villain is acting due to personal motivations of an emotional nature and/or relating to their belief system, and in ways that compliment those internal motivations that can build out into or off of their backstories and other areas of the tale.

Like, it’s more than just a universally formulaic method of brainwashing for all of the people they kidnap during the Reaping (and before it, since it’s a cult and that means there’s a process of indoctrination, ie brainwashing.) All of the Heralds have their specific manner of doing so, and said methods are tailored to the particulars of each Herald’s backstory as is revealed to us.

— Jacob —

Jacob starves the Deputy and other “recruits,” exposes them to the elements, doesn’t give them enough water, keeps them near hungry and dangerous animals (pre-Judge wolves and Judges it seems.) He then gives them a bowl of raw meat that one can read as implied to be human flesh, particularly if Pratt’s anecdote about going hunting in what ends up being not-a-dream from online sources is taken into consideration, as mentioned in a previous writing-about-writing post. Link here to the audio, (credit and thanks to hopecountyradio,) transcription below: “I had a dream once that Jacob took me on a hunt. We shot some deer and he asked me to skin 'em. As I was cuttin’ ‘em open they changed. It wasn’t deer. I...I don’t think it was a dream.”

Obviously one can make some assumptions of Whitetail Militia imagery being used here, particularly given that one of the slides on the projector screens during the Trials includes a picture of Eli with antlers iirc (that may be only during the later trials or the last one, I am uncertain.) Ties right into the whole “the weak must be culled,” and “you are meat,” slogans Jacob’s got all over the place. The “only you” slogans and graffiti could also serve to foster the loneliness and isolation aspect of making the choice “to make the sacrifice” ie, the symbolic choice of killing Miller, or his surrogate equivalent in the case of everyone else that Jacob puts through his trials. I haven’t seen a lot regarding Miller’s ties to Jacob from in-game content but I could have missed something easily. The wiki labels Miller as Jacob’s friend, though I wish we had more detail on that. Most certainly, Miller was a member of Jacob’s unit, which based off of some reading and browsing on the internet, should still be a pretty close tie whether or not they were friends. The following speculation is based on my own interpretations of the matter and I have no history of serving in the Armed Forces, so if I’m mistaken or such feel free to drop me a line to let me know. Continuing: even if they theoretically hated each other’s guts, they were still a part of the unit, a part of the Army. That means they and their other brothers-in-arms lived together and fought together. They ate as a group, slept as a group, watched each others’ backs while on watch or during a firefight, fought along side each other, and did their best to keep each other alive while fulfilling the mission objective, working together as individuals brought together in a cohesive unit that also was a part of the whole. They all knew they had each others’ backs and that the others did the same for them in turn. Shifting between life-or-death situations and more peaceful times, it creates a bond and social structure that is very unlike most common, modern civilian social structures. There certainly at least seems to be a bit of culture shock in the US between the two environs, and Jacob seems to have experienced that, based on what we hear of his backstory in The Book of Joseph of having little to no support once back in civilian life (ie: deeply traumatized and staying in veteran hospitals until he ran out of money and ended up in homeless shelters) after being discharged from the Army. In the Armed Forces it’s about the group, rather than the individual. Imagine having that, knowing that, after being through all that Jacob has potentially been through. To have brothers in arms if not by blood by his side who he protects, who also protect him against the hostility of the world they’re fighting against. This is not to ding Joseph or John as characters by the way, all three of them were children at that point and shouldn’t have had to deal with any of that. Jacob loses what ties of family he holds dear with his blood brothers once he’s put into Juvie, perhaps makes friends there but is likely on his own once he’s out again, with very poor prospects given his history, and then he enlists. He’s alone and without support before he joins the military, and then suddenly he’s in an environment where there IS a form of support, and it’s predictable and structured down to the last bootlace (note: that’s a very broad statement and does not include variance and personal experiences, nor possible issues with potential power abuse or other flaws that might arise in such group structures.) Imagine Jacob being in the Army long enough to get used to that, to enjoy that aspect of it all, to share the camaraderie of bitching about the heat of the sun, sand in their socks, and getting yet another package of their least favorite MRE while trying to wheedle a trade with someone else for something better. Imagine him doing that with Miller, knowing how the other man likes the sugar cookie desserts in one MRE package and hates how the chocolate bars melt from the desert heat in another. Knowing what each others’ tells and bluffs are from playing poker on their down time while on a tour. Swapping stories about home...and noticing who doesn’t want to talk about the life they had before enlisting. Talking about the things they miss, the people they miss. Knowing who snores, who’s a light sleeper, all those things you learn when you’re in close proximity to a person for perhaps up to two years or so depending on deployment length. It could also be they’ve been deployed together more than once, as Jacob certainly went out on multiple tours per The Book of Joseph once again. Imagine Jacob knowing all of that and more about Miller. Then, day after day after day of being lost in the desert, with starvation eating away at their rationality, that hollow pain in their guts as their bodies start burning through their own cells and reserves to try to stay alive, running out of water and having to take chances with any drinking source they can find in the environment and having to expend precious energy to try or die early from dehydration, probably not sleeping well from the hunger, exhaustion, stress, possible enemy presence, dangerous wildlife... The brain starts shutting down real quick once we don’t have the resources it needs to run optimally. Some faster than others, but in Jacob and Miller’s case, their ordeal is definitely long enough to put them into that mindset of feeling that primal fear of a slow death by famine, weakness, scarcity. The psychological toll would have been heavy without a doubt, and that might’ve been compounded by experiences in Jacob’s childhood if his parents were not dutiful in buying food more regularly, which easily could be the case. Old Mad Seed needs more whiskey this month to fuel his raging, drunken fits of spewing biblical verses in a tyrannical fashion? There goes the money for the last few days of food. Easily could be how Jacob got into stealing candy (and likely also food in that case) for himself and his brothers. So Jacob would have a good idea of some of what’s coming down the pipe in that case. He knows how long the trip is, can reckon how fast the two can travel. Maybe he starts out hopeful in a grim way to start... ...but over time as things get more and more desperate (and it could be a familiar desperation he’s felt before as a kid going hungry, only worse,) “And I looked at Miller and I could tell we were as good as dead. And I accepted that. And in that acceptance...came clarity.” That clarity could very well be that Jacob decided that morality was futile if it meant you didn’t survive, which could very well be a very world-breaking revelation for him, since he is mentioned in his backstory to have had a praiseworthy sense of honor among other things. Certainly is potentially spirit breaking to go from being the older brother, the brother-in-arms who relied on and was relied on, who was trusted, to being a betrayer of that trust. A Judas, one could say, as he calls Pratt in his video after Pratt has helped the Deputy escape. And what does Jacob make the Deputy become, in relation to Eli? Eli, the man the Deputy was rescued by, was aided by, has been working alongside this entire time. Eli, who trusts and relies on the Deputy. Eli, who it could be said betrayed Jacob’s friendship with him by choosing not to hand over the Whitetail Militia and join Eden’s Gate (from Jacob’s perspective, based on his final fight dialogue.) “Hey. Only you could have gotten this close. Only you could have earned his trust. It was always only ever you. Good work. You did it. You passed your test. You made your sacrifice. But now...you’re alone. And you’re weak. And we know what happens to the weak.” That might seem contradictory at first, since in theory making the sacrifice should make one “strong” by Jacob’s line of reasoning, one might think. But the Deputy is a “traitor” now—to the Whitetail Militia by brainwashing (temporarily as we the audience know, pending Jacob’s death,) and to Jacob by choice, if one takes the following lines from Jacob into consideration: “You’ve forgotten your purpose, Deputy. You were on the path of the Chosen but now you’ve strayed. Fear did this to you, but don’t worry, I can help with that. I can remove your fear and give you strength. It’s not too late. Come back to me. Remember your purpose.” ”Deputy, know that I still have hope for you, but if you continue to support Eli and his merry band of cowards, that hope will cease to exist. Your judgement is cloudy because your mind is weak, but I have confidence you’ll make the right choice in the end. If not—you’ll all pay in blood.” Link to the audio for the above two lines here (credit and appreciation to hopecountyradio once more.) As with the other Seeds, Jacob starts out trying to persuade the Deputy to “see the light” and join the Project, but as with all of them, as the resistance meter rises and we draw closer to the final confrontation with him, he and the others abandon that idea in favor of trying to end the Deputy instead. So in this possible interpretation, it could be that Jacob views both the Deputy and Eli as traitors both. However...the two situations while both likely quite weighty with the Deputy being “the chosen one” to kick off the Collapse (or a herald of the Collapse if one wants to be cute with wording,) and Eli being an ex-good-friend or perhaps even ex-best-friend of Jacob’s, are potentially vastly different in emotional weight to Jacob. The Deputy is all tied up with this Collapse business, and while Jacob isn’t sure if Joseph talks to God, he does support him, what with being a Herald in the cult and all that. It involves the fate of the family, and in particular, Jacob’s family—his brothers and sister. Eli, however, Jacob has known for a while, likely years, back during the construction of the bunkers which Eli helped with, possibly and likely before then. I personally lean towards interpreting that as they struck up the beginning of a friendship, and Jacob hired Eli and his crew to help with the construction of the cult’s bunkers. Where they had their falling out is less clear as far as I’m aware. It could be it was during or after construction that Eli got a bad feeling about all of this Eden’s Gate business, or perhaps even as late as the beginning of the Reaping if that’s when Jacob gave Eli the “chance” to hand over his Whitetail Militia members, as mentioned in his final boss battle red-bliss section. That could’ve been the breaking point for Jacob and Eli, and if Jacob was expecting Eli to side with him due to friendship and perhaps some shared beliefs...perhaps Jacob took that...poorly. And by poorly I mean went full out on revenge of having Eli killed by betrayal of someone he’d chosen to trust—someone that Jacob had already gotten his hooks into. Someone Eli needed, in this fight against Jacob. Someone like the Deputy. The Deputy, who’s been put through starvation, exposure, and ingrained through conditioning and likely a liberal use of Bliss to facilitate said conditioning, to hunt. To train. To kill. To sacrifice. “You take away a man’s basic needs, and he will revert to his primordial instinct in just ten days.” [Chuckles.] “Ah, that’s a difficult thing to understand unless you’ve lived it...” This is what Jacob is putting the “recruits” and the Deputy through—his revelation. His experience. His choice. In the end as Jacob succumbs to his injuries, he is weak, he is dying, and he knows it, looking at the Deputy in his final scene. This time, he is the one who is sacrificed, by the Deputy, and in Jacob’s eyes by Joseph, to either try to end the chaos spread across the county, or to break a seal respectively. Jacob’s death is a means to an end—as Miller’s was. And Jacob “accepts that,” as he puts it. Does he accept it because now he’s betrayed the trust and faith of potentially two people he might’ve been close to? Miller, and then Eli? Is Jacob conditioning the Deputy during that red-bliss sequence of his boss fight to kill Jacob, based on how there are bliss-hallucinations of Jacob to shoot while destroying the beacons? There’s the generic Whitetail fighter, Judges, and Jacob himself scattered across the landscape before ending that sequence as far as I’m aware. Both Jacob and the Whitetail fighter present could be interpreted in this line of thinking as echoing the supposed betrayal of both sides and being “alone” against the world in a nightmarish fashion while Jacob potentially tries to break the Deputy through talking and said nightmare. The way Jacob talks though...is he strictly speaking to us, or is the Deputy actually a mirror as it were, with the things Jacob says being applicable to himself? “Don’t you find it ironic that everyone you try to help ends up worse off? Eli...Pratt...Tragedy just follows you. If you really wanted to keep people safe, be a hero...you’d just off yourself. Safer for everyone that way.” Is Jacob REALLY talking to us, or to himself through a medium? Through a glass darkly, as it were. He “tried” to “help” Eli and Pratt, in his twisted fashion, by trying to get Eli previously to join the Project and to make Pratt strong enough via brainwashing to also join the Project, which in Jacob’s perspective if he’s following his and Joseph’s dogma, is the only way to survive the Collapse. But Jacob has failed, repeatedly, to protect the people he held dear—his family. His friends. He’s become the threat they need protecting from. He has irrevocably perhaps proven to himself that under the right circumstances? He’s willing to betray people he holds dear for his own survival. Would he betray his family? That is the question, isn’t it. Perhaps Jacob fears finding out. Maybe he fears, that under the right circumstances, he would. Maybe that’s why he goes so willingly to be Joseph’s sacrifice, in part. Maybe having orchestrated Eli’s death, the death of yet one more person whom he was once friends with, yet one more person Jacob himself has betrayed, maybe Jacob doesn’t want to continue either. Maybe that’s the last straw, the nail in the coffin of underlying beliefs that Jacob is inherently not someone who can be fully trusted. Maybe he genuinely thought Eli would join him if given the chance. Maybe Jacob was still hollow and brittle as hell from the first time he’d killed a friend, when he killed Miller. All the Seeds bear the weight of their pasts heavily, and Jacob’s no exception. Jacob survived the first time, barely. He survived the second time, but not by long. He starts talking about his potential death at the Deputy’s hands quite early on during the red-bliss segment. Neither John nor Faith nor Joseph to my knowledge do so. Maybe he was waiting for the Deputy to be strong enough to finish what no one else could. Maybe that was what he wanted. “There’s no “win” for you here. It all ends bloody. For everyone. You die now, or you die later. It’s up to you. But either way? You won’t die a hero.” Perhaps that line from Jacob also is one of the things he fears most—dying without purpose. Dying being not a hero, a person who’s done good for others, but rather the opposite. Ironically so, given that he and his family are all in the torture and brainwashing business, but Jacob in particular gave up on being a good person a long time ago, I think, even by the cult’s standards. [Link to part two here.] [Link to part three here.]

[arlingtonpark]

Attack on Titan and the Myth that Won’t Die

Sigh, I really don’t want to be a rain cloud. I’m very caustic and critical in my posts and don’t want to come off as a sourpuss. Attack on Titan is a very political series in a time when the series’ politics is particularly relevant. It’s been fascinating to follow along, to say the least. 

But I can’t really let this one go. This is a travesty. I can’t describe it any other way. If I learned I made a mistake as awful as Isayama’s made, I’d be crushed. 

So it seems Isayama named, or even flat out based, Erwin’s character after Erwin Rommel.

Why?

Why?

Why?

And he made Erwin’s birthday the same day as when Rommel killed himself!

Goddamn it!

Damn it!

Damn it!

You know, people say SNK is Nazi propaganda, and they’re wrong, but Isayama himself isn’t helping. 

Here are the facts: Rommel was an OP tactician. His tactics were cunning, clever, and he wasn’t like the others. He was a good man, not a Nazi. 

He defied inhumane orders from his superiors, didn’t believe in Nazism, and, in fact, was directly involved in an assassination attempt on Hitler’s life.

LOL, not! 

As World War II was coming to a close, the US military’s historical division began the work of creating an account of the war. Part of those efforts involved interviewing high-ranking members of the Nazi military. Those members did not have access to archival records (and neither did the historical division; those records were in the hands of war crimes prosecutors) and were speaking entirely from memory. As you can imagine, their accounts were rather rosy. 

Not helping things was the person who oversaw the project: Franz Halder, a Nazi general who was thrown into a concentration camp after getting on Hitler’s bad side. When the camp was liberated, he proclaimed his desire to aid the Allies, which he did. Halder served as a star witness in the Nuremberg Trials. However, while he may have been willing to testify against members of the Nazi high command, he was also involved in white washing the actions of the Nazi military in general. Halder would use his position to help formulate this narrative of an apolitical Nazi military victimized by Hitler. 

This would form the foundation.

After World War II and as the Cold War was beginning, Germany was split in two: an East, allied with the Soviet Union, and a West, allied with the United States. The West German government needed to remilitarize in order to deal with the threat of the Soviet Union and its allies, including East Germany, which was literally across the border from them.

To sell the public on remilitarization, Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of West Germany, directed a PR campaign to convince people that the German military of the Nazi era, the Wehrmacht, was clean of any Nazi taint.

To this end, the Adenauer government worked to influence how the history of the war was written to cast the Wehrmacht in as positive a light as possible. They even enlisted former Nazis to write autobiographies that fudged the facts and pushed the government’s narrative.

The United States was partly complicit in this, since Adenauer demanded that the Western powers stop “defaming” former Wehrmacht troops and that soldiers charged with war crimes be released. The western powers accepted this, though not completely.

The German people were also partly complicit in this. Many Germans either served in the Wehrmacht or knew someone who did, so to taint the Wehrmacht was to taint yourself or someone you knew. Thus, the German people were largely receptive to this narrative.

And thus, one of the most enduring myths of history was born: the Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht.

The Nazi military was separate from the Nazi government!

The Wehrmacht was OP as fuck! They lost because it was all Hitler’s fault!

Wehrmacht soldiers had nothing to do with the Holocaust!

Erwin Rommel was a brilliant general and a good man!

The truth is far less rosy.

When the Nazi’s invaded the Soviet Union, Wehrmacht soldiers were informed that if they committed rape, murder, theft, or any other war crime, they would not be prosecuted.

The Nazi’s saw the war with the Soviet Union in ideological terms. The Soviet Union was a communist country and in the Nazi ideology, communism and Judaism are the same. Thus, the USSR was a branch of the globalist Jewish conspiracy to destroy the Aryan race.

With this in mind, the Nazi high command issued the Commissar Order. In the Soviet Union, commissars were agents of the communist party who supervised the rank and file troops. Their job was to enforce the communist party line. To the Nazis, this made them targets; they were the enforcers of the globalist conspiracy. Wehrmacht troops were ordered to kill any and all Commissars on the spot.

Wehrmacht troops were also ordered to kill all Jews immediately upon capture.

The general policy towards Soviet POWs for the first year of the war was to corral them behind fencing and leave them to starve. That policy was changed and afterwards, captured Soviet troops were used as slave labor instead. Over 3 million Soviet troops died while in Wehrmacht hands.

The Wehrmacht actively aided and abetted the Final Solution. They helped transport Jews to the camps and even took part in killing them.

Captured Wehrmacht soldiers, while living in Allied POW camps, would talk about their actions amongst themselves when no one was listening.

Except people were listening and their conversations were recorded, so we actually have a good idea about how much the rank and file knew of the Nazi war crimes.

They all knew. They knew because many of them perpetrated it. And in general, they supported it.

People will do many awful things when they think their race’s existence is on the line.

So that’s the Clean Wehrmacht Myth in general. What about Rommel?

The Good Guy Rommel Thing is the product of both the German government and the other western powers, especially the British. The two strains are separate, but there’s a strong interplay between them. 

The short of it is that Rommel was elevated because everyone needed a “good German” to contrast with the “bad Germans” like the ones on trial at Nuremberg. 

West Germany was remilitarizing and would eventually join NATO, and there was a push by some elements of British society to make Rommel the face of the Wehrmacht to soothe any anxieties from the general public. Several bestselling books about Rommel by British historians, all of them gravely inaccurate, were published shortly after the war ended. 

The same was true on the German side of things. Adenauer made Rommel a point of focus in his PR campaign to soften the Wehrmacht’s image in the public conscious. 

By this point in time, Rommel had already garnered a reputation for being a brilliant general not just from the Nazi’s (duh, for propaganda reasons) but even from the Allies (who wanted to save face after suffering some embarrassing loses at Rommel’s hands).

Rommel also supposedly played a role in Operation Valkyrie, which if you remember the movie from 2006, was a plot by a group of Wehrmacht troops to kill Hitler and end the war. Rommel committed suicide and this was lionized as an honorable act of defiance, an act memorialized in SNK with Erwin’s birthday being the same day as Rommel’s suicide.

In reality, while Rommel was indeed a talented tactician, he was also heavily criticized for being a rash leader who’d sweat the details too much. In any event, Rommel was far from the best the Nazis had to offer. That would probably be Guderian or Manstein. He was a respectable general, but not particularly praiseworthy.

Rommel committed many war crimes throughout his career. The Afrika Corps that Rommel commanded was not chivalrous. Like, seriously, is that a joke? They committed pogroms against Jews and utilized Jewish slave labor.

But it didn’t stop with that. Rommel gave license to acts of brutality in general. His troops would execute enemy soldiers summarily, sometimes via hanging. Those that weren’t killed had a good chance at being enslaved.

Rommel was also directly involved in the Holocaust. He used Jewish slaves to build concentration camps, which those slaves were then sent to die in.

The most famous vehicle for how the Nazi’s implemented the Final Solution were the camps, but less well known are the kill squads the Nazis employed, the einsatzgruppen. Rommel worked closely with the einsatzgruppen and even said that when the Nazis captured Palestine, it would be the job of the einsatzgruppen to kill the Jews there.

(A major reason why Rommel is so fondly remembered is because the first major biography of him was written by David Irving, who we now know to be a neo-Nazi and a holocaust denier.)

And as for Operation Valkyrie?

Rommel was charged with aiding the conspiracy but there is no proof that he did. None. At all.

Rommel’s suicide was sacrificial, but it was not an act of defiance. The Nazi’s had previously praised Rommel for propaganda purposes and that left them unable to put on a show trial and execute him. So instead they coerced him into killing himself lest his wife and kids be punished.

Rommel was a Nazi. He believed in the Nazi ideology. This was attested to by Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, who literally wrote that Rommel “…[I]s a national socialist.” Read: Nazi. 

In fact, Rommel wrote to his wife saying he was shocked about the assassination attempt and was happy Hitler survived.

You see, he was a close personal friend of Hitler’s.

Soooooooooooooooooo………..

I knew the Good Guy Rommel Thing was popular, but God, wading through posts online about it was unbearable. I almost wanted to throw up. 

Forget teaching financial literacy to high schoolers. We need to make information literacy a part of the curriculum. People need to learn how to gather information and evaluate its authenticity.

And maybe some education on logic would help. People admit Rommel fought for the Nazis but say he only did it out of loyalty to his country as if that makes him a good guy!! I am embarrassed for these people for saying something so ridiculous!

If there is an institution whose existence is unambiguously a problem and you are part of that institution, then you are part of the problem. If you are being coerced then that’s potentially exculpatory, but that’s a moot point because Rommel wasn’t coerced.

He. Believed. In Hitler.

I am completely dumbfounded by this! Rommel fought with full faith and conviction for the Third Reich. Does it matter that he loved his wife and kids?

No.

Loving your family is a given; you don’t get credit for that.

The Rommel Thing is a lot like how it is with Robert E. Lee in the United States.

For any non-American readers out there, the US once allowed slavery within its borders. But a movement to abolish slavery increasingly gained momentum and in the 1860s several states, wanting to preserve slavery, basically conspired with each other to destroy the country. War broke out and the rebellion was crushed.

The American Civil War was a momentous occasion in human history because it marked the first time a government was founded specifically on the ideology of racism. The Confederate States of America was an abomination. It was unlike anything that had ever come before. The people who gave their lives to defeat it truly are heroes.

Robert E. Lee was no such hero. He fought for the Confederacy. For slavery. For racism. Like Rommel, Lee is mythologized as a brilliant tactician who had an aura of nobility to him. It’s all bullshit.

And just like Lee, Rommel. Fought. For racism. Isayama, in his ignorance, has chosen to honor this man. 

Let’s just take a moment to appreciate how incredible this is. A bestselling manga has a character based on a Nazi because the author cares enough about history to pepper his story with references, but not enough to do actual research! This can’t be happening!

If Isayama weren’t successful, famous, and popular, I’d feel bad for him. 

I mean, it’s like, “Hey, check out this character I created. He’s a brilliant general who fights for his people over his government. I based him on Erwin Rommel.”

“Didn’t Rommel use Jewish slave labor?”

“...” 

*cue sad trombone*

It’s not as if Isayama thought to himself “I want to name this brilliant general-type character after a similarly brilliant general from Germany” and just settled on Rommel because that the first person he thought of.

No.

Erwin’s birthday is the anniversary of Rommel’s suicide. Isayama is specifically choosing to honor the memory of this man. He could have chosen other generals to honor. Helmuth von Moltke. Carl von Clausewitz. Frederick the Great.

Or hell, it didn’t have to be a Germanic general. The Germanic setting isn’t a hard rule. He could have chosen Charles De Gaulle. Or Bernard Montgomery. The Duke of Wellington. Or maybe Horatio Nelson.

But no, it just had to be Rommel. Why?

My guess is that Isayama saw something in the Good Guy Rommel Thing that lined up with the story he wanted to tell. In the myth, Rommel is something of a freedom fighter. He was a good man who tried to do good in spite of the bad system he was embedded in, and ultimately died trying to overthrow that bad system.

If SNK in any way reflects Isayama’s own values, then it makes sense he would be enraptured by that accursed myth. There are elements of it all over SNK.

SNK is all about people living under oppression and trying to either overthrow it or work within it. There’s the oppression of the titans, of King Fritz and the Reisses, the oppression of the Marleyans, and hanging over all of this is the oppression of Ymir’s curse.

In the myth, Rommel is a good guy in a bad place who dies trying to change the world for the better. No wonder Isayama loves this tale so much.

But shit like this reeks of an annoying thing I see sometimes. One thing I’ve feared about SNK is that the author is the kind of guy who thinks he’s a Civil War buff because he read Shelby Foote. By that, I mean I fear Isayama only cares about history in a superficial way.  

Attack on Titan is about freedom and what’s so cool about it is that it’s not about any one particular kind of freedom, but just freedom in general. SNK’s conception of freedom is very well developed.

Attack on Titan embraces a pluralistic view of freedom. Freedom means different things to different people, but at its core is self-actualization. Achieving some level of happiness or accessing the potential to be happy.

Having a loving family. Seeing the ocean. Being able to say you saw the ocean. All of these things mean freedom in some way to some one. They are each of them a different path up the same mountain.

The problems start to arise when the series tries to be more than a story with an interesting theme. Whenever the story pointedly tries to impart wisdom to the reader, it fails. 

I can think of a number of examples of SNK trying to be smart and failing miserably.

Like when Armin said the people “have a screw loose” for thinking the titans won’t breach the wall after 100 years of trying.

Or when Armin said that Erwin being a bad person was a good thing.

Or when Armin said good people are just people who do things you like.

(Armin is supposed to be the smart one, which unfortunately means he ends up saying a lot of silly stuff whenever the author uses him as a mouthpiece.)

There have been some exceptions to this. Return to Shighanshina tackled themes of rising above nihilism well. I’m not sure it stuck the landing, but it handled things well enough.

And things are a bit interesting now that the story is tackling the theme of nationalism more explicitly. The way the series deals with nationalism is actually kind of nuanced and that’s appreciated. I guess.

My sense is that the Good Guy Rommel Thing is an example of this. He didn’t just base Erwin on Rommel. He apparently also based Pixis on a Japanese general. Mikasa is apparently named for a Japanese warship from the imperial era. Isayama clearly has a passion for history.

But if you’re ignorant enough to buy the Rommel Thing, then do you really care enough?

Isayama cared enough about Rommel that he knew the day of his suicide and he cared enough to mark that day in his story. But he doesn’t care enough to look deeper and see the myth for what it is. And if you haven’t reached that threshold, you can’t really call yourself a history buff; you’re just reading Shelby Foote.

It’s the difference between pop history and real history.

Pop history is history that’s been crafted for mass consumption. It is simplified, often times to the point of being misleading, and it’s not particularly rigorous with the facts, again often times to the point of being misleading. Pop history is often tempted to go with the more dramatic interpretation of events just to get more viewers. It’s history as reality tv.

Real history is both much more rigorous and much more messier. It involves work with primary sources and it involves heavy analysis of those sources. And if no definitive answer can be drawn from those sources, then so be it. Most people don’t think of history in this way, and that’s a shame, but the truth is that a lot of the historical record is murky or even completely blank. There’s a lot we don’t know.

But from a pop history perspective, that’s a problem. People pick up history books to learn about history, usually by being told a story; history is taught to people with a storytelling format. They don’t want to hear shit like “We don’t know what happened.” It’s bad storytelling, which is why you don’t see stuff like that in most pop history. In the world of pop history, it’s style over substance.

The Good Guy Rommel Thing is (bad) pop history, not real history. It’s awful that so many people believe in it.

I don’t want people who like reading pop history to feel diminished though. There’s good pop history out there. The Oxford History of the United States is excellent. Anything by David McCullough, Ron Chernow, Eric Foner, and Robert Caro is great. 

Basically everything on the r/AskHistorians book list is worth seeing, if you’re into the subject matter. Those are real historians overseeing that sub. They’re professionals. You can trust them. 

There’s nothing wrong with preferring pop history over real history. *I* prefer it over real history.

Have you ever seen what historians do? They wade through mountains and mountains of firsthand accounts and try to make sense of what’s happening. There’s a certain sherlockian aspect to it all, trying to piece together what happened from what clues we have left, but mostly it seems like trying to draw meaning out of a lot of noise; I’d rather read the final report.

Isayama may have a thing for history, but he seems almost glib about it. You’d have to be to buy into the Good Guy Rommel Thing. I mean, yeah, Japanese schools don’t go into detail about the European theater of World War II, but you’d think if a man cared enough about Rommel to base a character after him, he’d care enough to read a book about him. 

So in closing:

One of the most important things about Erwin’s character is the fate of his father, who died for rejecting the government’s official account of history. It’s an important little side story, because it’s true. Governments can and do try to push certain narratives. It’s usually not for nefarious purposes, but it does happen, and it’s great that SNK highlights this fact.

Ironically, Isayama himself seems to have fallen hook, line, and sinker for just that sort of thing.  

[tulilatus]

Entry 1

I recently had the pleasure of reading for the first time the series of novels written by Sven Hassel beginning with The Legion of the Damned, after a friend, under the impression that it would glut my hunger for good historical fiction, lent me his set. The novels have many aspects upon which I would like to comment, but I will try to distill my thoughts as best I can.

On the whole, I didn't dislike the novels. Yes, they have plenty of faults: they are rife with inconsistencies, the characters aren't well developed, the writing is at times poor and stilted, et cetera. But so long as you suspend your disbelief and treat the novels as they are—military-pulp fiction—and not as an account of WW2 with historical or literary merit, I think they can be quite entertaining to read.

The rest of this entry is longer than I anticipated, so here is a roadmap: First I discuss a chapter of Assignment Gestapo which I liked, then a chapter of March Battalion which I did not like. After that a few paragraphs about translation issues, and finally some brief remarks. The beginning of each section is in bold.

Of the series my favorite book is Assignment Gestapo, and of this book my favorite chapter is undoubtedly the fourth, "On Guard at the Gestapo". Ms. Dreyer's monologue near the end of the chapter is particularly brilliant. She appears only for a few pages in this chapter, but through her speech alone the reader is able to draw a clear impression of her character (or at least her type of character). But even more praiseworthy is the monologue's deft use of dramatic irony, which I can't even express here how much I love.

I also like the juxtaposition with the callousness of the soldiers—during the monologue itself, their disdain for and neglect of Ms. Dreyer, whom they consider a stupid and naïve old lady; throughout the chapter, their blackmail, theft, plot of murder, their hand in Krug's suicide, et cetera. By no means are these characters good and moral men, yet all the same they feel shame for their complicity in Ms. Dreyer's fate. And on the other hand, they are able to forget this shame so easily afterwards...

Ultimately, I think this chapter could easily stand alone as a short story or play. Nearly every thread brought up in the beginning is resolved neatly within the chapter itself: Krug, Ms. Dreyer, even the minor thread of Heide's gambling debts. Furthermore, the lack of development and complexity in the characters works in favor of the writing here in that the reader can pick up and understand this chapter without going through the entire series beforehand. All in all, a very well-done episode.

I also quite enjoyed SS-General and March Battalion—the latter, with a few exceptions. First, I did not at all like Chapter 10. Second, the death of Heinz Berner in Chapter 9. I had no sympathy for this character, who raped and murdered his fiancée, and who couldn't face his death with dignity, unlike the many better men who whose executions were also shown throughout the novels. The only reason Berner thought his appeal would go through is the leverage of his family's connections in seeking an audience with the General, something most men in Torgau (such as Grun) couldn't even hope for. And when he receives his sentence, he breaks down completely, again in contrast to Grun, who consoles Berner even as he himself is being led to the firing squad!

Anyway, I don't require that all characters be virtuous—what I found objectionable was not that Berner isn't shown to be a good person, but rather the undeservedly sympathetic portrayal of his death. There are many instances throughout the novel in which the author takes care to show that charges of "desertion" or "cowardice" are given to honorable men, but Berner is not one of these—he is, again, a rapist and murderer. I don't like that sympathy is elicited for the—what seems to me rightfully deserved—death of an entitled Brock Turner-like. I think the sympathy afforded to him would have been palatable if the reader were to have seen at least some kind of growth or redemption from Berner, but after his introduction he is not depicted in any meaningful way until his execution.

By contrast, I did enjoy reading Lt. Ohlsen's execution as a tragedy of a sort—with misfortune befalling a decent man, through his human error, et cetera—but there was no such catharsis in Berner's execution, which stirred up in me only feelings of irritation and immense dissatisfaction. I don't know how to put into words how much this section made my blood boil—it is, in fact, the reason why I decided to write this entry at all. I suppose it's not a bad thing for an author to elicit an emotional response from the reader, or perhaps I'm only angry because I'm judging it with a modern eye. Nevertheless, I thought this section ruined an otherwise excellent chapter. The rest of Chapter 9, which highlights the hypocrisy and unpleasantness of the top-brass and is full of politics, is one of my favorite chapters from March Battalion, alongside Chapter 4, which describes a tank battle.

I usually don't read books from this genre, so I emerged from the experience with a newfound respect for translation. The series was translated into English by multiple people, many of whose credentials I could not find, so the quality of each novel varies drastically. Particularly, I did not like the translations done by Tim Bowie. I found most objectionable the decision he made to write phonetically one of the characters a strong British accent, which made the dialogue frustrating and unnecessarily difficult to read. A phonetic accent is used despite its drawbacks usually for characterization, but this character is not British, and I could not find any other justification for Bowie's decision. It adds nothing to the story to offset the confusion it makes. Ultimately, I wasn't able to withstand more than a few chapters of the four or five books he translated.

There was another novel, whose name I can't recall, in which many references—which I had to look up—were made to things in British culture. Because I can't read Danish, I don't know this for a fact, but I strongly suspect that these references were not present in the original text. And so I wondered what else the translator has adulterated. At what point am I reading the work of the translator rather than of Sven Hassel?

Another issue that arises from having multiple translators is the varying ways ranks, names, firearms, et cetera, are translated. It was at times difficult to keep track of certain things, and I'm still not certain which inconsistencies in the writing are faults of the author and which are faults of the translators. Lastly, some translators left certain terms, mostly ranks, untranslated, which I couldn't understand. Why translate everything else, but then I still have to look up what a Feldwebel is?

I didn't like the portrayal of some of the Russians—although I may be biased on this point—as well as other incidences of racist commentary. Some may say it's understandable when taking in consideration the perspective of the narrator and the circumstances of the era, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth when reading the novels.

Lastly, my friend mentioned that there was some controversy over the author himself, but I don't know much about this.

[hollowandeceptivephilosophy]

Chusingura and Punching Nazis

Some background here Since I’ve commented on the Nazi Punching debate, it seemed worthwhile to actually sketch my understanding of the action. Short version: I think punching nazis is not immoral, and in some cases is morally compulsory, however doing so and then endeavoring to avoid punishment if one’s society has a functional justice system is not morally blameworthy. 

For those disinclined to read what I posted above, the story of the 47-Ronin incident is as follows.  1: Member of the Japanese Court abuses his position to make a feudal lord miserable, when the feudal lord attacks him in anger, feudal lord is forced to commit suicide. His estates are confiscated and his men are forced to disband. 2. They, realizing that they cannot avenge their master, pretend to be utterly dissolute for several years until he lets his guard down, and then break into his compound and kill him. 3. After fulfilling their oath, they surrender to the government, which eventually decides to require them to commit suicide (instead of pardoning them or executing them, suicide was viewed as an honorable death). The reasoning of the Japanese government was that while the action, and the loyalty displayed in it were morally praiseworthy, the government had to sanction such actions to prevent a complete breakdown of law and order into a series of violent vendettas (and of course, failing to act against those Samurai would undermine the legitimacy of the government’s own earlier decision).  I think a similar rule should apply to vigilante actions generally: they are sometimes morally justified, and the government can even recognize that they are morally justified, but they should still be punished according to the law, and the participants in them should vountarily give themselves up in order that they may be justly punished.  My reasoning here is as follows: ultimately, I do not think that the right to decide the “state of exception” to laws can only rest with the government in a democratic system, there has to be some space for citizens to exercise this power as well. However, I would argue that each such act, however legitimate, is a wound against the entire society, and the society should punish it. The damage that society suffers from a broken law is not the harm inflicted upon one of its members, since obviously society as a whole might benefit enormously from some individual act of murder, thievery, blackmail etc. (imagine that we discovered that Bill Gates enormous generosity flowed from being blackmailed, such a crime should be punished, but it seems reasonable to think that society has benefited enormously from the blackmailers action). Rather, the problem is the gradual  dissolution of certain norms that enable the continued existence of society at all: thus, exceptional acts can, and might have to occur in a democratic state, whether by officials or private citizens, but such acts should be confessed to as soon as they are completed, and punishment should be administered.  If nothing else, such an understanding prevents people from engaging in exceptional actions without some grave matter, and decreases the slipperiness of the political violence slope. Ideally, we want a system where people can choose to rationally act in extrajudicial ways when this is absolutely necessary to protect society without said acts undermining the very society that they ostensibly want to protect.(the classical case being tyrannicide, at least arguably the assassination of Julius Caesar was justifiable insofar as he was subverting the structures of the Roman state, based on the model sketched above his assassins probably should have gone a bit farther and killed Antony as well, and then resigned their offices and submitted to the punishment of the law. One of the problems of the Roman Republic, was that faith in the system of laws was undermined with each alternating “state of exception’ established by dictators to remedy the ‘injustices’ of the previous administration. They never really submitted themselves to punishment to restore confidence in the institutions that they desperately tried to prop back up in the aftermath of their victory). Now, my personal belief is that whoever punched Spencer probably wouldn’t have done so if he would follow these rules, and thus he was probably unjustified (in addition to being a coward for being unwilling to face the consequences of his actions). However, the above is meant to provide an actual structure for determining whether or not one is in fact justified in engaging in political violence which goes a bit beyond the rather meaningless “Nazis are always a state of exception” that gets bandied about at the moment. For example, given Trump’s rhetoric, I would be far more worried about Asian-American and Hispanic populations, and groups that have expressed nativistic views directed against them as being more likely targets for ethnic cleansing in America. So, I find the willingness to engage in political violence against Nazis somewhat unimportant, because it is vanishingly unlikely that they will achieve any real power, some other movement with a name currently unknown to us is far more likely to be dangerous.  The reasons that the Nazis were so bad grew out of specific pathologies of the European Enlightenment and the European Christian tradition, and particular ways that both of those were intensified in Germany. I suspect that the pathologies of the American system are sufficiently different, including our preferred forms of political religion, that an American totalitarian movement would look substantially more inviting to most of us than Nazism, and in fact Nazis are likely to be a convenient “radical fringe” for whatever new right-wing totalitarianism emerges to define themselves against. “See, we are not Nazis, that’s what the alt-right is really like, just ignore us as we build walls, establish relocation camps for immigrants, and discover that the countries of origins will not accept relocation and another solution needs to be discovered.”  However, I fully expect that solution to be more like slave-labor on the model of the American prison system and surveillance in an increasingly East German fashion, and that American totalitarianism will be the continued growth and extension of that system of control rather than the implementation of anything that resembles Nazi Germany. The American system is much more efficient than mass slaughter, since it actually produces value for the ruling elite while giving them an effective means of control and extracting wealth from those who oppose them. Extending and modifying that in increasingly totalitarian ways, and using various crises to entangle more and more Americans within the extension of the correctional system (or making it increasingly explicit how exposed Americans are to being branded by being forced into that system) seems like a more plausible extension of current American trends.  (It should be pointed out that I can easily see this system continuing to develop regardless of which party is in power: Trump’s rhetoric might accelerate aspects of this future, but both parties advance ideas that will continue to extend the coercive power of the government over more and more of human life. )  It is certainly plausible to me that some situations even now might require ‘direct action’ in a more direct sense, that figures or movements might acquire the power such that more speech is not a sufficient counter. But I’m not convinced that is presently the case, though I’m willing to judge each instance on its own merits.  To give an example, I will say, that if Spencer had been giving a speech which contained some of his past rhetoric, I would be substantially sympathetic to a crowd or individual doing what was necessary to silence him, even if that involved some violence [say, throwing a shoe at him]. 

[khokhovula-gundabaloyi]

Power gluttony and Power greed is a disease that kills some Legacies

Power gluttony and Power greed is a disease that kills some Legacies

A strong spiritual Sensation

People must maintain the good deeds to the good ending that is a good spirit and sure a good and ongoing Legacy filled with Godliness and worth remembering all lifelong, it is praiseworthy.

To be the leader of a nation, of the country and its people is by the will of God and the country’s guide ship spiritually. In other words the leader is born and spiritually chosen. Some leaders are born great but others achieve greatness from the blues and both the greatness can be greatness that thrusts upon them if they derail from their righteous channel. In Babylon in the biblical times according to some bible passages; there lived a leader by the name Nebucadinezar, a king and a ruler who ruled with a tight hand being ruthless. He wouldn’t mind sending men and women to the lion den as punishment or death sentence.

This Babylonian leader lived very long according to the bible, each and every day people woke up with a death wish for him but he went on alive and stronger until those who wished him dead had died before seeing his death. Some people who had suffered brutality and what we may call abuse of human rights today by the hand of Nebucadinezar ended up losing faith even with God and their Oracles. It is not that God and the countries’ spirits were not watching, it is not that the spirits and the gods did not want to come to the people’s rescue from the hand of the cruel Nebucadinezar, it is because it was time, there had to be a revelation. Power hungry and power mongering Nebucadinear had to be exposed at last.

It is said that God came to Nebucadinezar through a dream, he dreamt of a very big man who was made out of silver, bronze, metal, gold etc. there came a huge stone in his dream and smashed the man into pieces. Nebukadinezar was very worried with the dream, he had to find the interpreters to intepret what the dream meant to his life and kingdom. He found Belshazar/ Daniel who interpreted his dream that it symbolized the bitter ending to his long ruling / kingdom, Daniel went on to tell Nebucadinezar that when that time come it will be hard for Nebucadinezar to relinquish power. He went on to tell him that the signs that would be strong omens of such will be wars/violence and droughts in that land.

In other words, what Nebucadinezar was seeing in his dream is the alertness that his monarchy regardless of his toughness and power is a cursed kingdom. Nebucadinezar wouldn’t relinquish power, he would even query or want to fight even the Gods for the power, he ruled with cruelty and brutality. He was honored and followed by everyone even by those who wished him dead. It is not because everyone followed and loved him but feared him. Citizens lived in perpetual fear and terror to such an extent that they could not even trust their shadows.

Now My dream, Khokhovula’s dream about Great President Robert Gabriel Mugabe

It was towards the end of the second quarter of the year last year twenty sixteen (2016) that I Khokhovula Gundabaloyi dreamt of President Robert Gabriel Mugabe. In my dream he was in a deep navy suit, somebody came and removed the suit from him and shortly he was wearing a two piece blue working overall (worksuit). After that I saw him in a train greeting people and being very nice to people. I in a dream then said “look at Mugabe he is very kind to people, he even have adjusted to take the level status of ordinary people, that really means he is a good President”. I went on to tell people in the dream that “look he is even using a train than those expensive luxurious cars as the symbol and significance to the love and interaction with people on the ground”. Just after my saying  (in a dream), the clouds started to show the sign of forming rains and there after I saw the earth’s trees and all plants blossoming but President Mugabe the man was still in his overalls waving to people in a train that was moving slowly.

From that dream I started suspecting that the last quarter of the year twenty seventeen (2017) can be President Robert Mugabe’s fall of power or possible death, I also suspected or was made to believe that he will hardily finish the year twenty (2018). I told my wife of this dream and what I thought of the dream in its meaning, I went on to talk with my trusted people and friends about it and as I have posted this article those people will remember.

I remember when I went to Zimbabwe and heard that President Robert Mugabe went to Matopo hills to celebrate his birthday, I told the elders that I personally don’t think he was celebrating the birthday but solely think or suspect that he was there to plead for clemency with the spirits/ the goddesses of Njelele for the shootings and the wrong doings that took place in Njelele during struggle.  The goddess that gave people of the land enough rains was provoked, so I solely think he was going there to plead for clemency with the rain Goddess. (To think and suspect is not a crime but only the shrewdness of a thought)

Asking for forgiveness and a kiss goodbye

I went on to tell the elders about President Mugabe’s birthday that I suspected something wrong and very wrong was going to happen to him after the Matopo so called birthday celebration. Not to say that he did not have a right to celebrate a birthday there in Matopo; who am I to say that, but what I’m clearly saying here is that people have a feeling on certain things; a strong spiritual sensation and the reconciliation; I think that is exactly the matter with President Mugabe’s Matopo birth day celebration. In other words, I call this birth day a plea for clemency and compassion by the President to the spirits of Njelele.

What followed the President Robert Mugabe’s Matopo birth day celebration?

The celebration party was looked upon by many as the campaign for the next elections but I told them that it is no campaign but the plea for forgiveness and reconciliation by the President to the spirits. He might have not known or was not aware he is doing that but that is exactly what he did. The spirits might have understood and forgave President Robert Mugabe. I’m saying this because after his Matopo birth day; should I call it party or celebration, there was enough rains and people harvested after many years of dry seasons and droughts.

The curse and signs of ending of his monarchy

Signs of curses followed as well for the rains were not culm, they destroyed a lot of things, roads and bridges were heavily destroyed, plants and many properties were destroyed by the rains and these forces of nature, which is likely to be the anger of the spirits God and ancestors in particular. It is in two ways; you might find that the country got too much rains than they needed because God wanted to clean the blood shed of the liberation struggle and or that of some massacres in our political brutality; nobody knows only the spirits and the Oracles.

My dream opion from my waking life

From the dream I had about the President Robert Mugabe, I in a waking life suspected it might be meaning that after the spring into summer he will lose power or possibly pass on. I even went on to tell trusted friends and some pastors that the President will lose power in the last quarter of the year and will hardily finish his year next year.

Why do I publish it only now?

I knew that social networks are monitored, if I would do so by that time I would find myself in trouble maybe. It was my wish to find someone from that family and share my dream with them or perhaps try to interpret the dream to them, but where would I find them. It is not a crime to dream I think many people do dream during their sleep, it is the same with me but mine dream are in most cases very accurate and very meaningful.

We thank you President Robert Mugabe for Resigning though I feel that you took time to make that decision. You are undisputed hero you messed it by holding too long on to power and doing first things last. God kept you so long in power for his own reasons, Blessed or cursed administration, it is not in our hands now only god knows.

You are not the only one, God deed the same with lot of leaders in the bible history, and it is not you who chose yourself, the suffering of the people was all from the will of God. Thank for the role you played.

Condolences to President Robert Mugabe

You wouldn’t be the president for ever like you know you are not going to live forever, I was watching television and looking at you struggling to make just one decision and resign for the goodness of the country and the people; I said to myself; Oh God is power so much of a disease; is my old man and a hero not seeing he is making himself feel a great deal of pain, what kind of spirit is that which make a hero fail to see he has no power to hold on any more. I thought of my grandfather and I was near tears. But still there was this thing in me that your refusal to resign is killing my spirit and everyone you call your people. But at least at last you deed the right thing. Go well Old man you have played your part.

Bless those who are coming after you that they may not be power greedy, that they may take that what we consider good works of yours and bury to the intestines of the earth that which we consider the negative in you.

Be blessed and forgiven in whatever may be looked upon as transgressions, bless us never turn to us in a bad way, be a good spirit even when God may decide your departure on earth as he decided your fate in your long and hard administration. Give powers to the one who will succeed you in good faith and good spirit. Reeeeeeeest, Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeest and Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeest at home.

Oh———–otherwise these guys have helped you relieve your headaches from the Tony Blair, Bush and European warfare; just rest at home, you are still a hero though you nearly killed your heroism and legacy by holding on to nothing.

Conclusively, his leadership must have been questioned by many, though the same God that has been keeping him is the same God that has been prayed by the innocent and the suffering.

True leadership must be led by the spirit of integrity and humbleness in governance  

Your Great Spiritualist Khokhovula Gundabaloyi

+27 730373093  / +27 726143795  Email; khokhovulakhokhovula@gmail.com / vulakhokho@gmail.com

Izinyembezi Zabantu Aziweli Phansi

Mithodzi yavhathu ayiweli fhasi

Misodzi yevanu ayiwiri pasi

[sarahburness]

How to Step Out of the Drama Triangle and Find Real Peace

“Keep your attention focused entirely on what is truly your own concern, and be clear that what belongs to others is their business and none of yours.” ~Epictetus

 Are you addicted to drama? I was, but I didn’t know it. I thought I was just responding to life, to what was happening. I really didn’t think I had a choice! The drama triangle is so pervasive, and can be so subtle, that it just seems normal. But it’s not, and there’s a much saner way to live, I found.

Dr. Stephen Karpman first described the drama triangle in the 1960’s.

All three of the roles—Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor—are very fluid and can morph easily into one another. We all have a favorite (usually the role we assumed most often in childhood), but most of us are pretty good at all three of them, depending on the situation.

My personal favorite was Rescuer, although I also did a very credible Victim from time to time. I was a Rescuer in my family of origin (middle children often are). I felt virtuous, strong, and necessary when other people turned to me for help or depended on me to take care of things.

But there’s always a downside. Being a perpetual Rescuer led to chronic stress, as I constantly monitored how everyone else was doing and was never available to take care of my own needs.

That’s when I’d slip into the Victim role: I’d feel sorry for myself, since no one seemed to appreciate how hard I was working to take care of them. Which made me feel angry and resentful, and before I knew it I’d find myself picking a fight with my husband or fuming at some unwitting clerk. (Yep, there’s the Persecutor.)

See how the drama cycles from role to role? They all have their payoffs too. It feels good to be a Victim, at least for a while. We get a lot of attention. We don’t need to take responsibility for our actions and their consequences, because we can always find someone else to blame for them. Often people will help us (those nice Rescuers).

And being the Persecutor can feel powerful, especially for someone who has never learned the skill of asking directly for their needs to be met. We get to “blow off steam.” We might even get to have our way for a while—but at what cost?

It’s an exhausting way to live. All of the roles are driven by anxiety and the ways we have learned to “control” it in our lives. The drama keeps us absorbed, and it keeps us enmeshed (unhealthily) with others, but it leaves very little room for real peace and joy. And no room at all for a truly healthy relationship to form.

But how do we step away from the drama triangle, when almost everyone we know is still playing the game?

The first step is simply to be aware of the game, how it works, and what roles you play most frequently. What role did you play as a child? Can you identify the roles that others in your family played? Are they still playing them?

The role of Rescuer may be the easiest to admit to, since it actually sounds praiseworthy or noble on the surface. This is not genuine philanthropy, however—it’s really about control and being in someone else’s business, thus neglecting your own.

If you’re accustomed to being a Victim, on the other hand, you’ll find yourself often looking for someone or something outside of yourself to blame. (In fact, the hallmark of all the roles is that your attention is usually directed outward.)

Finally, although no one likes to admit to being a Persecutor, if anger is your go-to emotion when things go wrong, you’re probably operating in that role. In reality, the anger is just a mask for underlying fear, shame, and powerlessness. Sadly, adult Persecutors were often Victims as children. In the drama triangle there are no good guys and bad guys—everyone loses.

Once you’ve become aware of your patterns, it becomes much easier to recognize the game and, eventually, step out of it. Since the drama triangle is all about being in other people’s business, stepping out of it requires you to remain firmly in your own!

What helped me with this was a concept I call the “zone of integrity.” Imagine a circle around yourself; this represents your business (your true responsibility). In the zone of integrity, you are responsible for being 100 percent honest, both with yourself and with others. This means acknowledging and honoring your own feelings and needs, and allowing others to be responsible for theirs.

It also means taking responsibility for your own actions and their consequences, and letting others do the same. This might require some “tough love,” both toward yourself and others. You might not be the most popular person at the dance for a while. Codependence (which is essentially what the drama triangle describes) is a system. It requires multiple players to function, so people will probably be upset when you opt out. In fact, you can count on it.

During my own withdrawal phase, I would regularly find myself getting sucked into the old dynamics, but it’s become easier and easier to spot when that happens and to use the “zone of integrity” concept to pull myself back into my own business.

Recently my mother asked me to help smooth over a squabble between some of my siblings—exactly the sort of thing I have done all my life. Even in the act of saying yes I suddenly stopped and thought, “Is this really my business? Do I really have to take this on?” And then politely declined.

It’s not always easy in the beginning to recognize whose business you’re in, especially when it involves your family of origin. These are the people who taught you most of what you know about the drama triangle, after all!

For me, I feel a very familiar sense of obligation and guilt when those Rescuer urges start kicking in, which prompts me to pull back and look more closely at the situation. It took practice for me to hear and trust those feelings, but now they’re easy to spot.

The zone of integrity, when I manage to stay there, feels so good. I still care about people, and help when it feels right, but I no longer feel obligated to rescue. That means that I don’t end up feeling victimized, or resentfully persecuting someone else in return. In the long run it’s much better for everyone involved.

My life now has a lot less drama, it’s true. You might miss that sometimes, when people are trading war stories at Friday night happy hour. What you will have instead is true peace of mind, much healthier relationships and a passionate addiction to staying in your zone of integrity. It’s worth the trade-off.

About Amaya Pryce

Amaya Pryce is a spiritual coach and writer living in the Pacific Northwest. Her newest book, How to Grow Your Soul, is available on Amazon. For coaching or to follow her blog, please visit www.amayapryce.com.

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The post How to Step Out of the Drama Triangle and Find Real Peace appeared first on Tiny Buddha.

from Tiny Buddha https://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-to-step-out-of-the-drama-triangle-and-find-real-peace/

[khokhovula-gundabaloyi]

Power gluttony and Power greed is a disease that kills some Legacies

A strong spiritual Sensation

People must maintain the good deeds to the good ending that is a good spirit and sure a good and ongoing Legacy filled with Godliness and worth remembering all lifelong, it is praiseworthy.

To be the leader of a nation, of the country and its people is by the will of God and the country’s guide ship spiritually. In other words the leader is born and spiritually chosen. Some leaders are born great but others achieve greatness from the blues and both the greatness can be greatness that thrusts upon them if they derail from their righteous channel. In Babylon in the biblical times according to some bible passages; there lived a leader by the name Nebucadinezar, a king and a ruler who ruled with a tight hand being ruthless. He wouldn’t mind sending men and women to the lion den as punishment or death sentence.

This Babylonian leader lived very long according to the bible, each and every day people woke up with a death wish for him but he went on alive and stronger until those who wished him dead had died before seeing his death. Some people who had suffered brutality and what we may call abuse of human rights today by the hand of Nebucadinezar ended up losing faith even with God and their Oracles. It is not that God and the countries’ spirits were not watching, it is not that the spirits and the gods did not want to come to the people’s rescue from the hand of the cruel Nebucadinezar, it is because it was time, there had to be a revelation. Power hungry and power mongering Nebucadinear had to be exposed at last.

It is said that God came to Nebucadinezar through a dream, he dreamt of a very big man who was made out of silver, bronze, metal, gold etc. there came a huge stone in his dream and smashed the man into pieces. Nebukadinezar was very worried with the dream, he had to find the interpreters to intepret what the dream meant to his life and kingdom. He found Belshazar/ Daniel who interpreted his dream that it symbolized the bitter ending to his long ruling / kingdom, Daniel went on to tell Nebucadinezar that when that time come it will be hard for Nebucadinezar to relinquish power. He went on to tell him that the signs that would be strong omens of such will be wars/violence and droughts in that land.

In other words, what Nebucadinezar was seeing in his dream is the alertness that his monarchy regardless of his toughness and power is a cursed kingdom. Nebucadinezar wouldn’t relinquish power, he would even query or want to fight even the Gods for the power, he ruled with cruelty and brutality. He was honored and followed by everyone even by those who wished him dead. It is not because everyone followed and loved him but feared him. Citizens lived in perpetual fear and terror to such an extent that they could not even trust their shadows.

Now My dream, Khokhovula’s dream about Great President Robert Gabriel Mugabe

It was towards the end of the second quarter of the year last year twenty sixteen (2016) that I Khokhovula Gundabaloyi dreamt of President Robert Gabriel Mugabe. In my dream he was in a deep navy suit, somebody came and removed the suit from him and shortly he was wearing a two piece blue working overall (worksuit). After that I saw him in a train greeting people and being very nice to people. I in a dream then said “look at Mugabe he is very kind to people, he even have adjusted to take the level status of ordinary people, that really means he is a good President”. I went on to tell people in the dream that “look he is even using a train than those expensive luxurious cars as the symbol and significance to the love and interaction with people on the ground”. Just after my saying (in a dream), the clouds started to show the sign of forming rains and there after I saw the earth’s trees and all plants blossoming but President Mugabe the man was still in his overalls waving to people in a train that was moving slowly.

From that dream I started suspecting that the last quarter of the year twenty seventeen (2017) can be President Robert Mugabe’s fall of power or possible death, I also suspected or was made to believe that he will hardily finish the year twenty (2018). I told my wife of this dream and what I thought of the dream in its meaning, I went on to talk with my trusted people and friends about it and as I have posted this article those people will remember.

I remember when I went to Zimbabwe and heard that President Robert Mugabe went to Matopo hills to celebrate his birthday, I told the elders that I personally don’t think he was celebrating the birthday but solely think or suspect that he was there to plead for clemency with the spirits/ the goddesses of Njelele for the shootings and the wrong doings that took place in Njelele during struggle. The goddess that gave people of the land enough rains was provoked, so I solely think he was going there to plead for clemency with the rain Goddess. (To think and suspect is not a crime but only the shrewdness of a thought)

Asking for forgiveness and a kiss goodbye I went on to tell the elders about President Mugabe’s birthday that I suspected something wrong and very wrong was going to happen to him after the Matopo so called birthday celebration. Not to say that he did not have a right to celebrate a birthday there in Matopo; who am I to say that, but what I’m clearly saying here is that people have a feeling on certain things; a strong spiritual sensation and the reconciliation; I think that is exactly the matter with President Mugabe’s Matopo birth day celebration. In other words, I call this birth day a plea for clemency and compassion by the President to the spirits of Njelele.

What followed the President Robert Mugabe’s Matopo birth day celebration?

The celebration party was looked upon by many as the campaign for the next elections but I told them that it is no campaign but the plea for forgiveness and reconciliation by the President to the spirits. He might have not known or was not aware he is doing that but that is exactly what he did. The spirits might have understood and forgave President Robert Mugabe. I’m saying this because after his Matopo birth day; should I call it party or celebration, there was enough rains and people harvested after many years of dry seasons and droughts.

The curse and signs of ending of his monarchy

Signs of curses followed as well for the rains were not culm, they destroyed a lot of things, roads and bridges were heavily destroyed, plants and many properties were destroyed by the rains and these forces of nature, which is likely to be the anger of the spirits God and ancestors in particular. It is in two ways; you might find that the country got too much rains than they needed because God wanted to clean the blood shed of the liberation struggle and or that of some massacres in our political brutality; nobody knows only the spirits and the Oracles.

My dream opion from my waking life

From the dream I had about the President Robert Mugabe, I in a waking life suspected it might be meaning that after the spring into summer he will lose power or possibly pass on. I even went on to tell trusted friends and some pastors that the President will lose power in the last quarter of the year and will hardily finish his year next year.

Why do I publish it only now?

I knew that social networks are monitored, if I would do so by that time I would find myself in trouble maybe. It was my wish to find someone from that family and share my dream with them or perhaps try to interpret the dream to them, but where would I find them. It is not a crime to dream I think many people do dream during their sleep, it is the same with me but mine dream are in most cases very accurate and very meaningful.

We thank you President Robert Mugabe for Resigning though I feel that you took time to make that decision. You are undisputed hero you messed it by holding too long on to power and doing first things last. God kept you so long in power for his own reasons, Blessed or cursed administration, it is not in our hands now only god knows. You are not the only one, God deed the same with lot of leaders in the bible history, and it is not you who chose yourself, the suffering of the people was all from the will of God. Thank for the role you played.

Condolences to President Robert Mugabe You wouldn’t be the president for ever like you know you are not going to live forever, I was watching television and looking at you struggling to make just one decision and resign for the goodness of the country and the people; I said to myself; Oh God is power so much of a disease; is my old man and a hero not seeing he is making himself feel a great deal of pain, what kind of spirit is that which make a hero fail to see he has no power to hold on any more. I thought of my grandfather and I was near tears. But still there was this thing in me that your refusal to resign is killing my spirit and everyone you call your people. But at least at last you deed the right thing. Go well Old man you have played your part.

Bless those who are coming after you that they may not be power greedy, that they may take that what we consider good works of yours and bury to the intestines of the earth that which we consider the negative in you.

Be blessed and forgiven in whatever may be looked upon as transgressions, bless us never turn to us in a bad way, be a good spirit even when God may decide your departure on earth as he decided your fate in your long and hard administration. Give powers to the one who will succeed you in good faith and good spirit. Reeeeeeeest, Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeest and Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeest at home.

Oh-----------otherwise these guys have helped you relieve your headaches from the Tony Blair, Bush and European warfare; just rest at home, you are still a hero though you nearly killed your heroism and legacy by holding on to nothing.

Conclusively, his leadership must have been questioned by many, though the same God that has been keeping him is the same God that has been prayed by the innocent and the suffering.

True leadership must be led by the spirit of integrity and humbleness in governance

Your Great Spiritualist Khokhovula Gundabaloyi

+27 730373093 / +27 726143795 Email; khokhovulakhokhovula@gmail.com / vulakhokho@gmail.com

Izinyembezi Zabantu Aziweli Phansi

Mithodzi yavhathu ayiweli fhasi

Misodzi yevanu ayiwiri pasi