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j-reau · 4 years

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a hiatus or something

I didn’t want to post this. I told myself to give it until morning and sleep but I’ve been laying here for over an hour and I can’t sleep and I know I’m not going to sleep until I get it out. And I decided I’m not going to do the pretend things don’t bother us mentality that tumblr likes, the don’t show emotions on the dashboard, don’t let people know you’re hurt or angry out of fear it’ll be seen as ~drama or whatever thing stop me from just saying how I feel. Because I feel pretty shitty? I’ve been feeling shitty for a few days now. Maybe more. Last week I told myself that the drama that had randomly cropped up was just too much and I wasn’t going to let tumblr be something that made me cry or panic or kept me up at night over bullshit like arguing with someone over things that happened years ago. So I set my focus on my friends, on my dashboard, on reminding myself why I love RP and why I’ve been in it for this many years, for so long, with all of these people. Those Valentines I posted were part of that project for me. It was a reminder, for myself and my dash about all of the human connection that happens here, all the people we meet, all the little pieces of each other we take on and take with us, all the ships, all the conversations, however brief. From the people we just see on our dash to the ones we talk to about all our fears and insecurities. And how all of it matters.

I know how much we all love to say calm down gregg, it’s tumblr RP. I know how we all loathe this hellsite when we’re being our worst. I know how we all talk about how we’re too old for this now or we’re tired. We’re just here to write. I’m just here to write. I love writing. But what brings us all back time and time again, what keeps us here is the fact that it’s not just tumblr RP. It’s a community. Whether you have a real life that keeps you busy or your whole life is here, whether you have plenty of friends offline or all your closes people live on discord, we’re all people. And we all take this with us. We make friendships and we talk to each other. We open ourselves up to the constant trust and fear of interaction, of plotting, of who is going to reach out or send the meme. We build friendships based on that, we care for each other, we see each other’s bad days on the dash, and great days and inspiration. And it means something. It may just be tumblr RP, but it matters to us. Because of the people here, because we give a fuck about each other. Or at least I’ve always liked to hope we do. I have friends on this website I’ve had for ten years, some just for 3, and others just a few months. It always floors me how we can always come back to it, how we stick with each other or don’t, how we see the good and the bad and the ugly.

So to get on with it, I wrote those Valentines. I hit refresh on my blog and put the weird random drama in the past and moved forward. I made this blog for JJ only about 3 months ago. I don’t know how I got 500 followers in that short time but I did. And it’s. been the wildest experience I can possibly explain, having that happen so quickly, finding so many people out in the RPC that I hadn’t before on my other blogs. I felt fucking good. I was excited. Not just to write a character I had wanted to and loved for years but to find so many people who I vibed with. I remember writing a post about a month in and being so fucking ... floored. By how much I loved you all, by how amazing it was to be received like that still, to find people my age and who wrote things I liked and loved their female characters. I fucking love JJ. I LOVE THE SHIT out of my partners on this blog, even the new people I’m still itching to write with. And yet, I did that little refresh, posted my valentines , got ready to go and felt .... sad.

I tried to explain it. I tried to tell myself it was a bad mood. I hoped maybe it was medication. But I couldn’t shake the weird funk. And everywhere I looked it seemed like things were .... not good. My friends taking breaks, people feeling sad too, relationships splitting, people I liked and respected separating themselves. Tonight, one of my closest friends I’ve made on this blog blocked me. Someone I adored and trusted and absolutely loved to write with. Tumblr says we’re not supposed to care. That we’re supposed to let people draw their lines in the sand and take their leave and maybe we are. Maybe it’s important to let people make their choices. But I also think it’s important as fuck to talk to your friends, to mean what you say when you tell someone they’re important to you. I think it’s important that we remember on the other side of every blog and discord user is a person. Who has bad days and bad feelings and cries and feels insecure and tells themselves it’s just tumblr RP even when they know somehow it feels heavier when it’s bad. This was a friend I had talked to at length about all of those exact things, about how personal the community can feel sometimes, about feeling replaceable or invisible, even for the toughest most confident most take no shit people. I’ve always considered myself a pretty tough, confident, take no shit person. I think anyone who has known me for as many years as I’ve been around has seen that first hand. I don’t like how sad I’ve felt lately. I don’t like the insecurity that’s making me want to know why things feel way or why people vanish without so much as an explanation. I had to block a mutual last week I saw making fun of me on their twitter. A mutual. Someone who chose to follow me and on a public place where my other friends could see it made fun of what I posted. And I just don’t know what we’re doing anymore. It didn’t bother me. I don’t have hurt feelings over it. That’s the kind of stuff I definitely know I’m confident about. But .... it did really fucking floor me. Because here we are, on a sight where users talk about positivity and not sending anon hate, and we can treat each other like that.

I’ve been sitting up in bed for hours trying to figure out what to say or what to do. That’s what I do I guess. I try to figure out what to do, how we fix it, like somehow there’s some unified we and some responsibility to make things better. A lot of you have only known me for a few months so this probably sounds all kinds of nuts. And you’re probably going JJ you’ve been an emotional mess since the moment we met you. Because I feel like that’s how it’s been for the last few months. But that’s not how it’s always been for me. That’s not who I am. So for now I guess I’m just trying to figure out what I do. Instead of sitting here and spinning and trying to figure out how we as a community fix these gaping holes and the way we talk about each other like we’re disposable and treat each other like names on a list instead of people.

For now, I think what I do is take a little break. It’s the very thing I don’t want to do. Because it feels like quitting and it feels like being scared away. So I feel the need to promise whoever has read all of this and myself that that’s not what it is. Maybe I’ll be back in two days, maybe two weeks, who knows. But I need a break. From whatever this feeling is that seems to have come over things lately. I’ve loved these few months on this blog so much. And maybe that’s half the problem. Maybe I got spoiled and this is the come down. Maybe I’m just an idiot who thinks what we all want on this website is to find people and love each other and write together. I never knew that me -- the person often accused of being aloof and feelingsless and distant would somehow turn into the emotional bitch on this website but here we are I guess. I just don’t know how to navigate this anymore. I don’t know how to put my heart into relationships and friendships that can just be switched off like we can just stop caring about people. I don’t know how to ignore people who say horrible things and do horrible things to each other just because we don’t want to see it on our dashes. I don't know how to give enough of everything to everyone so that every single one of my mutuals and partners knows they’re valuable to me. I don’t know what I hope to accomplish. I don’t know when I got to be so much of a raw, frayed edge on tumblr dot com but that’s how I feel. And I hope in a few days or sometime soon I’ll have an answer or at least get my hard shell back.

I want to keep writing. I want to keep talking to you guys. I don’t want to lose anyone. I truly mean what I say when I say you’re all important to me. I plan to still be around on discord. I’ll write on discord if anyone wants to keep writing. If we aren’t discord friends yet and you want to be, send a message. I plan to come back. I don’t want to abandon anything. I’m so deeply fucking sorry for this rant, for all the overflow of feelings lately, for anyone that’s had to listen to them, for putting them on your dashes, for fucking all of it. Please be good to each other. Please talk to each other. Please remember that if we’ve crossed paths at any point on this blog, I value you. I value all of your friendships, your writing, your shitposts, your dash commentary, your tiktoks you dump at me on discord. I love you. Every last fucking one of you.

#💛✌🏼💛✌🏼💛✌🏼💛✌🏼💛✌🏼✌🏼✌🏼💛#i am dead fucking serious please feel free to stay in touch i just #need my dash closed for a while #message me if you want my discord

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fallout-lou-begas · 4 years

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A lot of people have accused yjj of being racist, particarily in regards to one of their comics involving Joshua graham, and in general saying that they glorify colonization. I mainly understand the other things they’ve done, but the racism seems inexusable. A lot of people have also been saying that yjj and their followers have harassed people. I want to get both sides of the story on this, so basically I’m asking what the deal with all this is?

Hi, anon. I'll provide my thoughts since you asked politely.

This post is quite long and can be considered an extension of my previous post on the matter.

Besides the infamous and self-admittedly ill-informed chancla comic, for which they've apologized, essentially all of the claims that Yesjejunus is racist stem from their depiction of the Dead Horses and Sorrows relative to their depiction of Joshua Graham and their original character Joan in their fanfic No Light (and to a lesser extent Learnin’ the Blues), which is heavily grounded in the setting of Honest Hearts. I think it's unambiguous that the depiction of vaguely defined "tribals" in Honest Hearts, assembled through a mishmash of disparate signifiers and recycled stereotypes and named like Warrior Cats and completely helpless without Joshua Graham's guidance, is indeed thoroughly racist, even if it was intended to be more nuanced and came from a place of self-admitted ignorance on the part of the developers. What I struggle to understand is that the developers and writers of Honest Hearts—and of Fallout: New Vegas as a whole since the entire game is rife with such mishandled, insufficient depictions of "tribals" with no explicit inclusion at all of any specific Indigenous people or presence—are given miles and miles more sympathy and leeway for their poor handling of these characters in the source material than a fanfic writer is for using the tools and setting that they were given by that source material, including the "lore" and naming conventions of the Dead Horses and Sorrows, to tell a story that means a lot to them personally, inspired by their own deepest fears and experiences with abuse, and ignited by their charismatic yet deeply and blatantly monstrous interpretation of Joshua Graham. Given that it uses the setting of Honest Hearts as a backdrop, there aren't any living characters in Honest Hearts who aren't "tribals" besides Joshua Graham and Daniel, and post-canon, Daniel wouldn’t be there. When Yesjejunus is accused of sidelining the Native characters or relegating them to the background, it's because they're just not writing a fanfic about Follows-Chalk or Waking Cloud as main characters: they're writing a specifically intentioned story about the Courier and Joshua Graham, a story that for better or worse remains faithful to the source material’s depiction of Joshua Graham’s unilateral authority over the tribes in Zion, a baked-in element of Honest Hearts and a critical narrative component of No Light. To accuse Yesjejunus of being racist on this principle in and of itself would be like accusing me of being lesbophobic if I wrote a Dead Money-set fanfic with Father Elijah as the main character instead of Christine. If you want something that centers these other characters then you'd just have to read a different story, or write it yourself.

As a final note, I do think that Yesjejunus is a skilled writer. This thought exists simultaneously with the acknowledgement that like everyone else in fandom, they're writing as a hobby and do not have the oversight of an editor on the work that they produce personally and for free. It's not lost on them that there's things about their story that they could have handled differently or more sensitively, such as the oft-cited example of the death of the pregnant Dead Horse character in No Light, with more forethought or planning at the time—even if they were bound by the constraints of Honest Heart's own setting (such as the dearth of non-tribal characters who could have possibly been in the scene instead) while writing the story. Everyone is free to critique this aspect of the story as much as they are to critique any other aspect, or to be discomforted by the whole thing (given it's a very intentionally uncomfortable story throughout), but the suggestion of so many of these "callouts" that Yesjejunus must have been cackling maniacally about the plight of poor access to medical care among real Indigenous people is a suggestion made entirely in bad faith, and one that I simply don't care to entertain.

As for the point about harassing people: if anyone's only evidence of being "harassed" by a single, specific person is anonymous messages on tumblr dot com, then I don't believe the evidence. If people are accusing Yesjejunus' "supporters" or "associates" of harassing people, then if the accusation is that this harassment is occurring either on Yesjejunus’ behalf or otherwise with their approval, then it is also going to require more evidence than the mere existence of the mean anonymous messages themselves. This goes for the rumor that they have "spies" in fandom Discord servers or whatever, too, which is a rumor that I think has only manifested among its spreaders by either self-appointed individuals speaking on no one's behalf but their own, and by the metaphorical snake eating its own tail in paranoia. Yesjejunus, and I, and all of our mutual friends have been nothing but annoyed at best and horrified at worst by the efforts of some self-appointed individuals to "defend" them with such excess vitriol. Speaking plainly, we generally avoid literally any kind of anonymous or public interaction with anyone who's vocally opposed to us as a rule, specifically to avoid this kind of debacle, and when I say "we" and "us" I'm not referring to some sort of shadowy cabal of conspirators scheming to advance the nefarious YJJ agenda, but to a group of friends. I don't know how to explain to some people who question why we praise their work or share their art sometimes how normal friendships work online.

I also take severe umbrage with the validity of the breadth of these anonymous harassment accusations because of how patently fraudulent several other claims are. Yesjejunus has recently been accused of "grooming,” for example, an accusation only even worth considering if one temporarily forgets what grooming actually is and pretends that grooming is when someone older interacts in literally any capacity with someone younger. Some will say that they’re not accusing them of grooming per se, or not of grooming by that name, but in any case, the meaning is that Yesjejunus has interacted with minors and this on its own is intended to scare and upset you. I have seen only two users actually named as "victims" of these “interactions,’ however, sas-afras and comrade-shrimp, but both users have publicly refuted this accusation because neither of them were minors when they first interacted with Yesjejunus. Frustratingly, though, these literal refutations from the literal so-called "victims" are either dismissed out of hand or muddied by hand-wringing mutterings of "well, I could have sworn they were actually minors, though" and "well they claim that they weren't actually groomed, but who really knows." The spreading and trust in completely anonymous accusations, combined with the total rejection of statements from the only people named in these accusations when their statements contradict the accusations, suggests to me that the existence of these actual interactions (and assuming these interactions occurred both intentionally and with Yesjejunus’ being fully aware of the other person being a minor) is not nearly as important as pushing the narrative that "Yesjejunus is a groomer" or “preying on minors” onto the fandom, and ensuring that anyone who doesn't take this claim completely at face value appears complicit in something horrible. As for anyone who still feels "uncomfortable" at how sas-afras or comrade-shrimp or me or anyone who is very much an adult but just so happens to be younger than Yesjejunus could ever become endeared to them, I reiterate that sometimes I don't know how to explain to people how normal friendships work online.

I want to conclude by saying something that I've said many times before: you don't have to like Yesjejunus (or me, or everybody, or literally anyone else) and no one is holding a gun to your head to befriend them or read their work or look at their art. The block and filter and unfollow buttons are very conveniently located on your dashboard and are totally free to use. Everything I've written here is not intended as some argument as to why everyone on the planet needs to be following their blog and leaving kudos on Learnin' the Blues. Still, while I think everybody has the right to curate their own dashboard and remove the content that they don't want to see, I also think it's reasonable for me to not want my friend to get their name dragged through the mud by the exaggerated and misinformed claims of petty, grudge-bearing brigadiers and self-aggrandizing fandom security guards when they'd like to just dump funny shitposts about the Burned Man's chode in peace.

#asks #anon #yesjejunus #discourse

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milfmacbeth · 3 years

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tagged by @euphcme (thank you!)

1. why did you choose your url?

i'm interested in philosophy and a lover of both greek mythology and shitty puns.

2. any side blogs?

i used to be all "no side blogs we cram all our interests into our main like men" still am to a degree but i recently caved and made this aesthetics blog @oldgodscore

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

time is an illusion and i don't know exactly. years and years.

4. do you have a queue tag?

i do not. i will simply reblog 50 things my followers don't care about in a row onto everyone's dash like the gods intended

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

i honestly don't know. i was a lonely teenager who found a webbed site with some pretty pictures and anime characters to distract myself from the fact that i exist. fast forward a few years and now this is home.

6. why did you choose your icon?

didn't want a fandom icon cause i knew it'd change like every two weeks so i picked a character that i like from a show that i have a relatively constant level of interest in instead of a show that i'm obsessed with for a month and then largely don't care about until the obsession strikes again

7. why did you choose your header?

wanted something neutral but not boring. also black and red fucks as a color combination

8. what's your post with the most notes?

a post in the miette format about how i love people who comment on fics. no idea why that one blew up it sat at like five notes for MONTHS i forgot it existed and then someone found it and now i get annoyed when the post gets notes again because having a popular post on tumblr dot com is hell.

9. how many mutuals do you have?

uhh... i haven't counted. somewhere between 10 and 20 maybe?

10. how many followers do you have?

few. not displaying follower counts is one of the best features of this hellsite and i'd like to keep it that way.

11. how many ppl do you follow?

242

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

who hasn't

13. how many times do you use tumblr a day?

i close this site and 5 min later i'm back again. sometimes i literally open tumblr, look at the first post on my dash, then close it again. i have stopped counting. it's becoming a problem

14. have you ever had a fight with another blog?

yes it lasted the 3 seconds it took me to find the block button

15. how do you feel about need to rb posts?

go directly to hell. do not pass go. do not collect $200. fuck these posts. anyone who subjects me to that bullshit gets unfollowed. as soon as i see a "you need to reblog" the entire point you were making, no matter how good, evaporates into the fucking ether. yes i know you're pro-good things and anti-bad things and you feel very righteous about that but have you considered shutting the fuck up?

(sorry for the rant but god these posts need to die)

16. do you like tag games?

yup, they're fun and a nice way to get to know people instead of just observing them from afar

17. do you like ask games?

in theory? yes. in practice? every time i've reblogged an ask game my inbox has been a barren wasteland so i don't do it anymore.

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

probably @taxinealkaloids because her art is gorgeous and her taste is flawless

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

the bond mutuals on tumblr dot gov share goes deeper than any temporary crush could my friend

20. tags

i'm tagging @ante--meridiem and @first-only

#tag game

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ask-artsy-oncie · 3 years

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So I’m kinda in a meh/apathetic headspace in regards to my mental health right now. Maybe it would be best to just let some thoughts out.

Firstly, I do want to apologize for making stupid, borderline inflammatory posts and throwing them out there onto tumblr dot com, I know that’s never the best course of action. However, I really, really do not appreciate anons sending vague “are you okay”s at me. If you’re not close enough to me where you can’t PM me (relatively) face-to-face, then I really wouldn’t like random inquiries about my mental health from you. Maybe it’s just because I don’t 100% trust anons (I’ve been here for a decade, I’ve seen some shit, can you really blame me?) but I think I ought to make myself clear on that. Are we clear on that? cool.

I don’t know... I’ve felt so lost and tired recently, moreso than usual.

I’ve always had a massive complex about annoying people, being too self-indulgent, not having good ideas or opinions or what-have-you. People who have known me for a while almost definitely know that. I don’t think it all necessarily exists in a vacuum, either I have a genuinely hard time coming up with objectively good ideas. Sometimes I’m just straight-up “head empty” mode. I’m also often really opinionated and sometimes intend to die on hills that people aren’t really meant to die on (or are even necessarily worth dying on). I can get way too wrapped up on meaningless things because my brain is too hyperfocused on this one thing, or maybe something I rely too heavily on for comfort is... I don’t know how to put it.... put at risk? Challenged? I have a lot of mental issues and real life issues, though I’m not claiming to be massively oppressed or anything, but I tend to cling to comforts a little too desperately. And I’m not just talking about like. Media. Just comforts in general. Sometimes I’ll spend too much of the day laying in bed. Sometimes I cling to old relationships or old forms of relationships or I constantly worry about the day I’ll inevitably no longer have the same relationships I have now.

I’ve known I needed therapy for a while now. I’m waitlisted and everything, but I need to go about actually choosing a therapist to see and I’ve been dragging my feet on that so I guess that’s my bad. I’ll get to it. Shit’s overwhelming, yknow?

Anyways I know I have a lot of these flaws and problems and I think my horrible anxieties about being too annoying and whatnot is just a really extreme form of self-reflection. Maybe. Not entirely sure. Maybe a therapist could tell me.

I get way too passionate, way too easily, and it’s almost always followed by a super intense period of shame, like, to the point where I’m desperate to isolate myself and destroy my relationships with other people, because then at least I’m actually trying to destroy a relationship by being a bad person, rather than someone leaving me for... I don’t know, being too happy? Caring too much? Talking too much? Just. Shit I have less control over.

I’ve tried putting a cap on it, suppressing everything. Trying not to indulge too much, trying not to be so happy and talkative, straight-up deleting messages I think might be too annoying the second I send them. Trying to be inoffensive through being unnoticeable. I’m trying to do that now, honestly. It’s why I joked about deleting my blog. All it does is hurt and make me go fucking nuts because I’m bottling up a lot in doing that, I know. I’m just not fully convinced I don’t just deserve to feel that way.

There are a lot of points in my life where I’m convinced that my best course of action in succeeding or keeping people from being put-off by me is to just sit down and shut up and draw what I’m told to draw. To just completely lose my agency in drawing. It makes sense, when you feel like you don’t have any good ideas of your own, you just illustrate others’. And there are many, many points where I have done this out of a place of love. Fuck, most of what I’ve drawn for Lolly’s writing has come out of a place of genuine love, not just for her work, but for her. A lot of what I’ve drawn for Bethany (for any REAL long-time followers reading this) has been like that, too. But there are also points where it honestly just feels like my only purpose is to be a tool through which others may visualize their whims. That if I dare inject too much of myself into things, they’ll be permanently ruined. And then there’s the shame I feel in having wanted to impart a piece of myself into a work - a demerit for being too selfish or self-important to deem my whims anywhere near good or important enough to be included.

I have so many ideas. So many opinions and thoughts and feelings and genuine insight that I’ve suppressed or deleted because I either feel like that’s what’s expected of me, or I’m straight-up told that my thoughts and opinions are bad and wrong. Like. Fuck me for having opinions on animated media levels of being shut-down. And you know, I’ve noticed something in the past decade of being an insufferable opinionated prick about things like that - that it’s actually easier for me to enjoy media when I’m allowed to be negative and critical of it. When I am allowed to just share my thoughts. And I don’t mean like, without being disagreed with, I mean like, in an environment where I’m made to feel like I actually can share these thoughts. When I can pinpoint and analyze what I didn’t like or what made me upset, it can be a lot easier for me to then move on and be able to focus on aspects that I genuinely do like. Like, holy fuck, it is SO much easier for me to pick-and-choose aspects of a certain sequel film that I actually like and feel comfortable saying I like than it was for me to do with the original, because I no longer have an incredibly toxic person in my life (or at least, in my life as much).

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had this kind of experience since then, like. There are STILL things I struggle to move past because I have been made to feel like I just can’t fucking talk about them without being insufferable (sorry if I’m overusing that word - it just feels like the best word the feeling I’m trying to describe) or just straight-up ruining something for someone I care about. Keeping shit like this in does crazy shit to me, for real, and there’s still a large part of me that tells me “Fuck you. Suck it up. None of this shit matters.” Y’know? Because in the grand scheme of things, I know it doesn’t. And then there’s the shame that comes from having cared so much in the first place. It’s a fucking cycle. There’s some shit that’s just irreparable ruined for me because of this and that SUCKS.

I don’t like losing comforts. Fuck, I hate it, really. And I’m not talking about new comforts coming along and catching my attention as an old comfort begins to wane, I’m talking like. Destroying relationships, feeling SO MUCH shame surrounding a comfort media that it’s too difficult to enjoy it no matter how hard I try, or having too hard of a time disassociating a comfort with a horrible event or person. And it’s feeling like at LEAST one of these is starting to happen to me again and Good Gods it’s just. It’s so terrifying.

But who do I tell? When my primary worry is annoying or offending or hurting people? Y’know? I can’t just vent to one single person to this all the time, that isn’t fair. But it gets to a point where my brain tells me “No, you can’t talk to ANYONE about this because that’s rude and wrong and a true friend wouldn’t do that. There’s a reason why you can make any number of concerning posts, messages, private ramblings, whatever, and the people you’re closest to won’t ask you what’s wrong.”

And, yeah, honestly, I do think it’s true that the people I consider my closest friends won’t read this. I actually don’t believe the average person will read this, or at least get this far. I genuinely do just talk too much and it’s a lot for most people to deal with. Otherwise, I talk too little, and probably enter the “you should be able to read my MIND” level of expectations, which, of course, isn’t far. I understand, I swear I do, it just takes some time to come to terms with every time I get wrapped up in my stupid mental stuff. And I also promise that I try to give these people the same kind of response I want, y’know? I try to look out for any worrying behavior and try to offer an ear and help in any way that I can. I don’t think expecting the same in return is fair, I just worry about any of them being like me, and I’m willing to play to that if it’s necessary. I’ll break quiet streaks for that shit, y’know?

Honestly, these stupid quiet streaks are probably more unbearable for me than they are even noticeable for most people. It sucks. I just wish my mind was normal so I A) wouldn’t have these insecurities to begin with, because B) I would never end up exhibiting the behavior to warrant such insecurities.

There’s so much shit I want to talk about, to analyze, or explore, that I want to share with the world, or at least with people I love, that I probably never will because my stupid brain has already decided that all this stupid shit is better kept to myself where it can rot and be forgotten eventually. Which is fine, in the grand scheme of things, I guess, because I functionally have never really been the guy who comes up with ideas (at least, good ideas) I’m just the pencil, the one who I guess makes things visual? I can’t even bring myself to say “I bring the ideas to life” because that’s pretentious and untrue. These ideas are already alive because they come from brilliant minds.

I don’t even think it’s fair for me to call myself a character designer unless the characters are my own. Otherwise, I’m just following the directions of a much more competent conceptualizer (there’s a reason my characters barely have any... well, character). That’s the reason why I removed my unearned credit as the character designer for Ty from Swindle’s description, because I really don’t deserve that kind of credit. It’s why the asks about the designing process of Ty have been left unanswered, because, fuck, what do I even say? “I just did what Lolly told me to do, just like I did with all of Swindle. Please don’t give me that kind of credit, I know I falsely ascribed it to myself earlier, and I want to rectify that”? I guess I could have, actually, now that I’m typing this. But people always get fucking upset with me when I try not to take credit, even when it’s shit that isn’t mine!! So I don’t know what to do!! I don’t know what to fucking do!!! Because I just don’t fucking want to make people upset or unhappy!!!!!!!

I’m sorry, this post is too long and I’ve worked myself up and I’m no longer apathetic. I’m gonna go cry myself to sleep so big win for my complexion, honestly.

Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I guess getting this shit out of my system is probably best to do in a big tumblr post no one will read.

I don’t want anons about this. If I can just ask one thing. Please.

#do n/ot reb/lo/g #rant #vent #long post #probably won't delete tbh #i don't know it's the most competent i've been about weird mind shit for a while now #so maybe it would be best to just leave it

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wiseabsol · 4 years

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WA Reviews “Dominion” by Aurelia le, Chapter 13: A Start

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6383825/13/Dominion

Summary: For the Fire Nation royal siblings, love has always warred with hate. But neither the outward accomplishment of peace nor Azula’s defeat have brought the respite Zuko expected. Will his sister’s plans answer this, or only destroy them both?

Content Warnings: This story contains discussions and depictions of child abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and incest. This story also explores the idea that Zuko’s redemption arc (and his unlearning of abuse) is not as complete as the show suggested, and that Azula is not a sociopath (with the story having a lot of sympathy for her). If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, I would strongly recommend steering clear of this story and my reviews of it.

Note: Because these were originally posted as chapter reviews/commentaries, I will often be talking to the author in them (though sometimes I will also snarkily address the characters). While I’ve also tried not to spoil later events in the story in these reviews, I would strongly recommend reading through chapter 28 before reading these, just to be safe.

Now on to chapter 13!

CHAPTER 13: A START

Alright, on to chapter thirteen. Before I begin, since there have been some people in the comments expressing interest in my full reviews, they can be found at: wiseabsol (dot) tumblr (dot) com (slash) tagged (slash) dominion (percent sign) 20by (percent sign) 20aurelia (percent sign) 20le. I might also run the idea of setting up a forum for “Dominion” by Aurelia. That way, you all would have someplace to read my reviews on this website, as well as discuss the story with each other outside of the reviews section.

On to the review. Zuko has slept past sunrise, which may be an indication of how bad a shape he’s in, since firebenders are supposed to rise with the sun (Azula, note, still rose with the sun while hospitalized). But he managed to sleep the night through without nightmares, which is progress for him. Turns out he’s achieved that by drinking a sedating tea left by Iroh.

“The old man had even gone do far as to pretend Mai told him, to try to get Zuko to talk. It was the kind of thing Azula would do.”—Iroh and Azula are both cunning, strategic thinkers, which may be part of why she makes Iroh uncomfortable. She probably reminds him of himself when he was younger. If she’d been a boy, it’s possible that he might have tried to take Azula under his wing…but given that she was a girl, and thus had gender roles that she was supposed to conform to (hence him giving her a doll), he didn’t. That and Ozai snapped her up quickly, with Iroh soon afterwards writing her off as Ozai’s “creature.” But I wouldn’t be surprised if we later find out that part of why Iroh considered her so dangerous was because she reminded him of his younger self, rather than Ozai.

Apparently Zuko blew up at Iroh for the deception, and said some things he shouldn’t have. Old habits die hard.

“What his uncle couldn’t know was that there was no help for what he did.”—Yeah, sleeping with your sister is not something you can take back.

Zuko has some manservants in the room with him, who offer him fruit, foot washing, and hot towels, which he doesn’t accept. What even is the point of being royalty if you can’t enjoy some nice things, Zuko? Though you probably don’t think you deserve nice things. As the manservants go about getting him ready, Zuko has this pleasant memory of Mai: “Mai used to put his hair up for him, when she woke at the same time as Zuko. She wasn’t much good with hair, in truth, but that hardly mattered. More often than not, it was just thinly veiled foreplay”—So they were a genuinely sweet couple at one point.

But then it’s time to go to Squicktown: “But when he tried to recall those mornings now, it was his sister’s slim fingers that raked through his hair, her mouth that he tasted, the warmth of her skin—“—That’s gross, buddy. While we could chalk this up to being a sign of his continued obsession with Azula, it could also be a sign of trauma. Good memories triggering associations that trigger bad memories. If he was wanking off to the memory of Azula, then I’d say it was an obsession thing. As it is, it’s causing him distress, so trauma seems more likely.

��A memory made all the more painful by having to wonder how much of that Azula did at their father’s command, those years he abused her under the guise of training….”—Sadly, I think Ozai does believe it was training. Though this is also the dude who believes that suffering is instructive.

“With such dark thoughts as he had for company, he barely noticed the comings and goings of the palace staff anymore.”—Losing your situational awareness is not good, Zuko. Especially when you know there are people who aren’t happy with your reign.

“Uncle thought it started shortly after Zuko was banished. She would have been eleven.”—Ugh. That is vile. Though I suspect that Ozai was grooming her before then.

Ozai is dying from his burns. While I’m inclined to say “Good riddance,” if he dies, it means that Zuko will have committed patricide, which will cause a public outcry and earn him more enemies. Also, Azula will never forgive him for it.

“The man lived to plague him, he knew.”—Ozai is absolutely that spiteful.

“He remembered asking Iroh if his banishment might have been planned. If his father might have sent him away just to do that to Azula, to remove the last family member she might have turned to for defense, the last witness to his crimes. He remembered the look his uncle gave him then, when he said they may never know.”—I think it’s probable that Ozai was looking for an excuse to get rid of Zuko, just like he did with Mai and Ty Lee. He wanted to isolate Azula, but he also wanted to get Zuko out of the picture so he could make Azula first in line for the throne.

That being said, I don’t think Ozai believed that Azula would turn to Zuko for help. The siblings were already poisoned against each other back then. I think the look Iroh gave Zuko wasn’t because he knew the answer to the question—it was because he knew that it wouldn’t have mattered whether Zuko was there or not. Ozai would have done this to Azula anyway, and given how careful they were to hide it, I don’t think Zuko would have noticed that something was wrong until the abortion. I doubt that Iroh would have noticed either, since he was so focused on Zuko. While the idea of, “If I was there, I could have done something!” is a comforting one, it’s also naïve on Zuko’s part. He was a child then, too. And given Zuko’s disposition at that age—to confront evil head on, without thinking through the potential consequences—he probably would have ended up in a much worse position than he did in canon. He would have been a security risk to Ozai—a security risk that can’t lie well. No, I think Zuko being there would have resulted in disaster. Iroh, on the other hand, might have been able to figure out a quiet solution. But he wasn’t there, and so the possibility passed.

Iroh, in any case, left after receiving a letter from Rai, without telling Zuko the contents of said letter. Iroh says this is so Zuko can have plausible deniability, but because Zuko is in bad mental shape, he’s slipping into some paranoia about it—paranoia rather like Azula’s at the end of the series. He’s unkempt, he can’t sleep, he is wracked with self-hatred and guilt (Azula was, too, though her mind expressed it through Ursa’s hallucination). If he starts banishing people, it will probably start rumors that madness runs in the family.

“He wondered if his uncle began to mistrust him around Azula. If he knew what you did, he would never trust you with her again, he reminded himself.”—Which would be fair of him, Zuko. But Iroh is too convinced of your goodness to suspect that you would hurt her intentionally. He was ready to handwave away you killing her as an act of self-defense.

“And Mai would not receive the old general at her parents’ house, sparking rumors she had left the palace to avoid him, rather than her husband.”—I think because Mai knows that Iroh will side with Zuko in a conflict, and that’s not something that she wants to deal with right now. I do not blame her.

Zuko continues to contemplate Iroh’s visit, sliding into self-pity as he thinks of how tired Iroh must be getting of him: “[Iroh] was probably just as relieved to go as Zuko was to see him away….”

“‘It isn’t fair,’ [ . . . ] That one mistake with Azula should poison the only healthy, loving relationship he had with any blood relative. It wasn’t fair.”—Zuko thinks this, but he’s the one who is pushing Iroh away. I think he could have told Iroh a portion of the truth—that he and Azula argued, that he got angry and intentionally hurt her, and that he feels horrible about it now. I think that would shake Iroh’s faith in Zuko, but I think he would still be supportive, and would understand, finally, that Zuko still has lingering behavioral problems from Ozai’s abuse that need to be worked through. It might have opened up some routes to healing faster…though I daresay that Mai wouldn’t have been pleased with Zuko giving his uncle a sanitized version of the truth.

Zuko’s chamberlain comes in, with a list of what sounds like some very important meetings that Zuko should go to, but Zuko has other plans for his day. He’ll still keep the meeting with the “Advisory Board for the Reformation of Asylums,” which Zuko created sometime in the last few weeks. For now, though, Zuko is going to see Mai and Lu Ten.

We transition to Iroh meeting with Rai. Apparently, Iroh recruited her after her banishment from the Fire Nation. Rai catches Iroh up on how her time with Azula went, but feels that she could have done more for Azula. Iroh interrupts her by placing a hand on her knee—weird choice there, Iroh—and says that it was for the best that she didn’t reveal that she knew who Azula was, because, “‘She might even have killed you.’”

Rai, though, has more faith in Azula than Iroh does: “‘No.’ The cook shook her head, surprising Iroh. ‘She makes threats when she’s under duress. And she certainly knows how to sell them [ . . . ] But she never struck me as particularly bloodthirsty, either then or now. She would avoid unnecessary violence, if only to keep a low profile.’”—Thank you, Rai!

Rai, bless her, also dismisses Iroh’s question of whether the wounds could have been self-inflicted. I see why he would ask this, given the self-harm Azula committed in the asylum, but it does make it clear that he hasn’t seen her any time recently, after she started getting better. He then wonders if maybe the asylum had been mistreating her and covered up the signs, since his visits were announced in advance and he only ever saw her from a distance.

Then he wonders if Zuko was the one who injured Azula—ding, ding, Iroh, you are correct! “It would go a long way toward explaining his obvious guilt, and Zuko had always been given to emotional excesses.”—No kidding. In regards to the burn, he thinks, “He could not see what purpose it had served, except to hurt her…”—CORRECT AGAIN!

Rai, meanwhile, wonders about Azula being sent to the asylum. She thought that Azula might have been jailed or banished by Zuko instead. This ticks Iroh off: “Her brother showed her compassion,” he insists, but Rai is not convinced, since the workers at the asylum might have hurt Azula. When she expresses that, Iroh responds hotly, “‘He knew naught of this, woman,’” and breathes out flames. I’m not fond of him calling her “woman” here, because when men do that, it’s often meant to be dismissive or demeaning. The show of flames is also not cool of him. Control yourself, Iroh.

Rai isn’t impressed by him and plans to leave, but Iroh has more questions. He asks what happened to the man who assaulted Azula, and Rai responds: “‘Dead,’ Rai told the woodplank floor, her voice barely breaking a whisper when she crossed white arms under her ample bust.”—Why are you noticing the size of her breasts, Iroh? But also, this does seem hard for Rai to talk about.

Iroh assumes Azula killed the guy, but Rai corrects him, telling him that she did it herself. “The woman raised her eyes to his, and Iroh was reminded uncannily of his missing sister-in-law.” Oh, I hope that Ursa kills Ozai. I feel like it’s improbable that that will happen, but I want it. Also, the phrase “silk hiding steel” comes to mind here, both for Rai and Ursa.

Rai discusses her reasons for killing Lee—both to give Azula a measure of protection and for justice—and how her own husband, Shou, abused her. “If she had been abused, of course this cook would look coldly on what she likely viewed as excuses for the abuse of Azula. Her own husband probably made her parrot lines like that, that it was an accident, she did it to herself….”—As much as I obviously empathize with Azula, I should point out that there is, theoretically, some danger in Rai doing the same. If Azula had continued to behave abusively towards others, Rai’s empathy for Azula’s suffering might have made her inclined to excuse Azula’s actions, much like Iroh currently does for Zuko. And if she’s excusing those actions, then she might have been caught off guard and hurt by Azula during their time together.

That being said, in this case, Rai’s empathy is refreshing, and also lends itself to a more accurate reading of Azula’s character than Iroh has. Iroh, very confused by this point, asks Rai why she would go to such lengths to help his niece. As it turns out, Rai worked in the kitchens at the palace, while her husband was an imperial firebender. She couldn’t accuse him of abuse or get away from him, but when Azula started banishing people, Rai was banished before he was—and so she managed to escape and stay ahead of him all of this time.

“‘Rai,’ he said quietly, a little concerned for her sanity at this point, ‘you must know she didn’t mean to help you. She banished her servants because she was crazy, not out if any altruistic urge.’”—It rubs me the wrong way that Iroh thinks that Rai might be crazy. There’s a part of me that wants to throw at him, “You only think that because you’ve never known what it’s like to be helpless,” but I know that’s not true. It’s not like Azulon was compassionate to Iroh or cared about his emotional needs, and losing Lu Ten would definitely have made Iroh feel helpless. Still, this grates on me, possibly because Iroh is a very privileged man and hasn’t faced the same hardships as Rai. I feel like Ursa would understand Rai, though. I don’t know if they would get along—somehow, I doubt it, since Rai has faith in Azula and Ursa does not—but I’d love to see a conversation between them someday.

Much to Iroh’s discomfort, Rai talks about how the palace staff knew that Ozai was mistreating Azula, and hints that there were rumors about the sexual abuse, too: “Those years Prince Zuko was banished, her father kept her so close [ . . . ] She turned up all manner of strange injuries [ . . . ] and even disappeared for a week once. There were some as said he killed her. And those were the least of the rumors. [ . . . ] There was something…wrong there. [ . . . ] Everyone knew it. And no one did anything. [ . . . ] Not even me.”

When Iroh points out that Ozai was the Fire Lord and there was nothing that she could have done, Rai is not consoled: “‘And she was a piece of work,’ Rai finished bluntly, holding his gaze. ‘I know. She was also a child, with no one to treat her like one. I thought I might be someone to look out for her, even years too late’”—God, it’s so nice to hear someone point out that no matter how cruel Azula was, she was a kid and didn’t deserve what happened to her. It’s so good to see someone want to look out for her and help her. I’ve never thought that Rai could have been an inspiration for Tam, but she’s hitting the same points, even if she’s a very different person. I wish we had more of Rai in this, but I suspect her role in the story is done by the end of this chapter.

As their conversation winds down, Iroh reassures Rai that she did help Azula and pays her for the information. Rai urges him to help Azula, even if Azula pushes him away. “‘She really seems to hate you,’” Rai says, and I think that’s due to, A.) Ozai turning Azula against Iroh, B.) Iroh’s claim of killing the last dragon, C.) Iroh sending Azula gifts that catered more towards who Ursa wanted her to be, rather than who Azula wanted to be, and D.) Iroh choosing Zuko and telling Zuko to confront Azula and take her crown from her. Iroh says his goal is to help Azula, but he inwardly admits that he’s not sure how.

We shift back to Zuko, who is just arriving at Mai’s place. Mai’s uncle, the warden from the Boiling Rock, is there, and isn’t happy to see Zuko. He escorts Zuko in, and there is a brief exchange with Mai’s parents, during which her mother seems to imply that Mai’s uncle better not mess things up with the Fire Lord. Once the rest of the family is gone, Tsutomu quickly establishes that if it weren’t for Mai, he’d gut Zuko, because Mai has told him everything.

I’m not sure this was a wise call on Mai’s part—the more people who know a secret, the harder it is to keep—but I understand why she did it. She knows that her uncle is loyal to her. She knows that he doesn’t like Zuko. It would feel safe to go to him with this. That and he has contacts who could help her.

“Zuko was glad Mai had him to support her through this. But the warden would have done his utmost to poison her against him”—You did that yourself, Zuko.

“But then, a man who lays with his sister and tries to kill his father, what would you know about [family]?”—Woof, yeah, Zuko is a walking Greek tragedy. I’m curious about what Hu Xin did to be considered an equivalent.

“And I’m not sure that’s something I can allow in my niece’s life, regardless of her wishes.”—Fair, but you can’t support Mai if you’re executed for committing treason and regicide, Tsutomu.

Zuko asks if Mai’s parents know, but Tsutomu dismisses the idea: “‘They still think you fucked that waterbender.’” I am slightly amused by the confusion there, but not amused by the warden calling Katara a “nubile little savage” right afterwards. Gross and racist, Tsutomu.

“Zuko could only stare at him, sick with the realization that Mai’s parents suspected he cheated on her, even if they didn’t know with whom. And they still treated Zuko better than their daughter.”—More evidence that monarchies and patriarchies are terrible. The warden acknowledges that, saying that Mai’s parents expect this sort of thing from a noble husband, and that they think that Mai should suck it up and make sure her son’s and her family’s futures are secure, rather than let her hurt feelings get in the way. Which the warden thinks is bullshit, and as much as I don’t like him, I agree with him.

“‘Be the man that she deserves,’” he tells Zuko, and I’m like, “You tell him, Scary Warden.”

Zuko goes to find Mai, who is still wearing her crown. “She wouldn’t if she meant to desert him, would she?”—Dude, she earned that. I wouldn’t give it up without a fight either. Like, I don’t like monarchies, and I’d set up a council if someone gave me a crown…but like hell if I’m giving up that crown! It’s shiny!

Mai has been waiting for him to approach her to talk. I don’t know if I’m supposed to find the bed exchange amusing, but—Mai, come on. The bed needed to go. How could you sleep in it again knowing that Azula was raped and impregnated there? No, let it burn. Throw some oil on it while you’re at it. There’s bad juju in that mattress. I don’t think making Lu Ten in that bed erased the aura of squick. Though also, Zuko, you should have offered her a different bed. Come on, my dude.

“‘Really?’ Mai sprang like the jaws of a trap snapping closed. ‘So you were thinking of me the whole time you were with her?’”—Yikes!

Mai continues to press him on why he slept with Azula, with him getting “unaccountable angry that she wouldn’t just accept his explanation.” She doesn’t buy that the fight spun out of control, though that was a part of what happened. But that isn’t why it happened. Zuko reveals the ugly truth of it: “‘She made me so angry [ . . . ] I just lost control.’”—Meaning that Zuko didn’t have sex with Azula because he loved her. He did it to punish her.

Mai then asks why Azula would sleep with Zuko, and Zuko tries to explain that it’s because Ozai abused Azula. Mai isn’t convinced by this—maybe she thinks that this is some kind of Morgana plot on Azula’s part—and doesn’t believe that Ozai would admit to the abuse, either.

“‘He just let it slip, in a moment of anger!’” Zuko says, to which Mai responds, “‘Really? Because that sounds a lot more like you.’”—Yes. Yes, Mai, Zuko and Ozai are very similar people. Similar explosive angers, similar self-centered natures, similar disregard for Azula’s personhood. Yes, you got it in one, even if you don’t realize it yet.

“‘You’re a fool if you think it ever happened.’”—This is so ugly. Mai, don’t be this person. Don’t be the person who thinks that the rape victim is lying.

“‘Because I know Azula, I know how she thinks [ . . . ] She makes you feel sorry for her, you give her want she wants. You let her bend again when she starved herself, maybe you’ll give her a royal pardon when it turns out Daddy fu—’”—Mai, I don’t think you’ve ever understood Azula. Not really. Right now, you sound like all of the Azula-haters out there, who see Azula as a conniving snake, rather than a deeply troubled girl. And honestly, when did Azula ever act weak to try to get what she wanted? And why would she want this story to be spreading about her? It will make everyone look at her differently. At best, they’ll pity her; at worst, they’ll find a way to blame her for what happened, or say that it served her right, even though she was a child.

Zuko raises a hand to strike Mai at this point, almost adding wife-beater to his sin list, but Mai intercepts him and tries to kiss and come onto him. When Zuko pushes her away, Mai asks him why he didn’t push Azula away, too—which HE SHOULD HAVE. Which he had opportunities to do! But he didn’t and he doesn’t know why.

Mai has a theory, though: “‘It wasn’t just the fight. You wanted her. You lusted after her. Your own sister. [ . . . ] You act like you caught some disease that impaired your judgement. [ . . . ] But people don’t do what you did without feeling that way for a long time. And you never said a word to me.”—I think Mai is correct here, though this doesn’t touch on how his resentment towards and his desire to dominate Azula pushed him over the edge. I also want to sit her down and say, “He didn’t know, so he couldn’t have told you,” because I don’t think that Zuko knew on a conscious level what he felt for Azula, besides anger. Also, Mai, would him telling you have made it better, somehow?

“‘You would never talk about her! I had no one I could talk to about her—’”—Ty Lee is glaring at you from the other side of the planet, Zuko.

Mai accuses Zuko of raping Azula, which he denies, but Mai asserts what I’ve been saying for chapters now: “‘If she was crazy, how could she give consent?’”—Thank you, Mai! Thank you for calling him out on this!

Mai wants to play the blame game, either having Azula or Zuko be entirely at fault for what happened. It’s not that simple, though. The truest answer here is probably Ozai—he’s the one who messed both of his children up—but at the same time, Zuko was in full control of his actions, unlike Azula. So we can’t and shouldn’t absolve him of responsibility.

As Mai starts to cry, Zuko tries to hug her, but she pushes him away. “‘I want my husband [ . . . ] I want the man who would never do this! I want the man I trusted!’”—This reflects the pain that people feel when they find out that one of their loved ones has abused someone, except without the denial that usually comes with it. It feels impossible to reconcile the person you thought you knew and cared about with who they’ve been revealed to be. As much as I don’t like how Mai demonizes Azula, I understand and feel for her here.

Zuko asks if this means that she won’t come back, but she clarifies that she will, with some conditions. After all, there’s Lu Ten to think of. “‘He asks for you every day.’ A tear dripped from her chin, and watching this, Zuko needed a moment to realize she was talking about their son.’”—Dude, think more about your son! You barely seem to!

Mai’s conditions are reasonable: Talk to her before telling their son about what’s going on. Give her her own quarters. Don’t come into them unless she summons him. Keep her in the loop about the search for Azula. She’ll probably have more requests in the future, but this is a good start.

We switch over to Aang and Katara, who are visiting Bumi in Omashu. Bumi captured Azula at one point and she escaped, which is what the pair are here to discuss with him. We get the detail that there are now bounty hunters looking for Azula, and that the people of the Fire Nation aren’t thrilled with the search.

“[Aang] began to realize that he was not these people’s hero. He wondered if Azula might be.”—Honestly, Aang? Yeah, she is. Their princess is the youngest firebender master in centuries, she has blue fire (which could be seen as a sign of Agni’s blessing), and she conquered Ba Sing Se with only two comrades, after their most famous general failed to. Iroh and Zuko are also, technically, traitors to the Fire Nation, since they defected and helped overthrow the king. This isn’t even touching on the dismantling of the Fire Nation’s military, the trials against many of the Fire Nation’s nobles and generals, or the massive amounts of reparations that Zuko has given to the other countries. Are these things, in the broader sense, justified? Of course. The Fire Nation’s imperialist regime brought 100 years of suffering to the world, suffering that is still fresh for the other countries. But from the perspective of the people of the Fire Nation, this looks like a deep betrayal from their leaders. The fact that the economy is tanking and the crops aren’t good must look like further signs that Zuko is bringing disaster onto the realm. Of course the people would look up to Azula instead. She brought them glory. Zuko is forcing them to feel shame. It’s little wonder that they prefer her to him.

Moving on. Bumi is apparently 117 years old now. I know that Kyoshi lived to 230, but this is still wild to me. It’s also wild that Bumi became the king of Omashu, considering that he was a commoner and is still illiterate. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things—I think that compassion is a much more important quality in a leader, and Bumi has that in spades—but I’m surprised that the Earth Kingdom allowed it. I have to assume his prodigious earthbending was part of what elevated him. I bet there’s a whole story there, which we’ll sadly never see.

Katara is offended to learn that Bumi shared a meal with Azula, but Bumi reminds her that he shared a meal with them, too, when they were prisoners. “It’s the little things that count, you know, Aang [ . . . ] Never forget that.”—Bumi knows how important kindness is, and probably suspects how little of it Azula has been shown in her life.

Bumi doesn’t buy that Azula is crazy and dismisses the danger she poses if angered: “‘Oh, all Fire Nation people are like that’”—Which is too much of a generalization for my tastes. He thinks that Iroh might be an exception, but given that Iroh breathed out flames at the suggestion that Zuko put Azula into an abusive environment, I’m not convinced.

When Bumi compares Azula to her “prince” brother, Aang worries that he might be going senile, but Bumi gently corrects him. They then get back to business—Bumi reveals that Azula stowed away in a cargo caravan and was caught by inspectors when she fell asleep. Aang is surprised by this, but Bumi reminds him that Azula was sick during her stay in Omashu. Azula was with Bumi for two days—god, I would have loved to see that—before he let her go. Aang and Katara are shocked and ask why. Bumi confides that he’s worried that Azula’s capture and death will lead to war, since Zuko threatened as much.

Aang and Katara don’t believe Bumi at first, with Aang going so far as to say, “‘He wouldn’t endanger [the peace] for personal concerns.’”—I’m sorry, Aang, but have you met Zuko? Family is super important to him, even if that family is dysfunctional. Katara understands, since she’s the girl who went on a revenge quest to murder her mother’s killer, but only stopped when she realized that the killer wasn’t worth damaging her soul over. But if Sokka’s life was on the line, you better believe that she would start a war for him. Katara is just as ruled by her emotions as Zuko is, and just as inclined toward dramatic gestures. Aang’s own culture works against him somewhat here, since it emphasizes the communal over blood relations (which are functionally erased, though there must have been someone keeping records of who was related to who, to avoid accidental incest). It makes it difficult for him to grasp how deep a bond with a family member can go, even one who you have a bad relationship with. Zuko and Azula are parts of each other’s identity, difficult though that is for both of them to accept.

Bumi points out that the Earth Kingdom is part of why he didn’t turn Azula over to the Fire Nation or Aang—the Earth Kingdom is more of a collection of countries in a trench-coat, rather than a single, organized government. If Omashu defied the wishes of Ba Sing Se by turning Azula over to safety, rather than to them, the people of Omashu would pay the price. We also learn that since Bumi outed himself as a White Lotus member, he hasn’t had access to privileged information, like Azula’s trial in absentia.

Regardless of who catches Azula, though, the Earth Kingdom sees it as a win. Either they catch and kill her and restore their honor, or Zuko shelters her from them and they can start a war over it—a war which would help them seize Fire Nation resources and recover from the occupation. Zuko has, apparently, suspended reparations to them.

Bumi adds that a war with the Earth Kingdom would be extremely difficult to fight: “‘A continent this vast supplies almost unlimited troops, and plenty of places to hide private armies. And our chain of command is more convoluted than the 52nd Earth King’s family tree.’” The technological gap between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom has also been closing since the war ended, and with the Fire Nation’s military gutted, it would be challenge for them to get an edge on the Earth Kingdom again. Overall, our heroes are in a bind, but there’s still time for them to find a way out of it. Until Azula is captured, that is—that will force the issue.

At this point, some letters arrive. The Gaang, thinking that Azula went to Kyoshi Island to recruit Ty Lee, are relieved that Ty Le “refused.” In truth, Ty Lee would have gone with Azula, but Azula told her no, because she understands the pain that she caused Ty Lee by forcing her to choose between her friends, and doesn’t want to do that again. Zuko tells them that he’s going to Kyoshi Island himself to ask questions, and that they shouldn’t waste the trip, which they accept…but Aang is starting to feel like he can’t trust Zuko, which troubles him.

We cut to Zuko as he arrives on the island. It turns out that Kaede actually bought that Azula and Ty Lee were fighting, and gave Ty Lee some light work to cheer her up. Zuko thinks that maybe Azula told Ty Lee everything and that’s why she’s not acting like herself. I wish that Azula had told Ty Lee, since it would be good for her to have someone in her corner who knows what happened from her perspective. But I understand why Azula didn’t say anything—it’s a memory that causes her shame, she’s used to keeping stuff like this a secret, Ty Lee might have let it slip to someone else, and it would have driven a wedge between Ty Lee and her other friends, something Azula is being careful not to do. But even so, I wish Azula had someone who knew and was supporting her in the aftermath, rather than her carrying it on her shoulders alone. But Azula isn’t used to accepting help from others, especially with things that are this sensitive.

When Ty Lee and Zuko meet, Ty Lee says that she didn’t think that Zuko would want to see her, and Zuko contradicts this with, “‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’” I don’t think that is true, given how Zuko thinks about her and how dismissive he’s been to her in the past. Zuko tries to apologize for that, but Ty Lee is more upset about how he’s treated Azula than with how he’s treated her. Zuko gets to the point: he wants information about Azula, such as why she was crying. Ty Lee refuses to give him that info because it’s personal to Azula, which tells us that Ty Lee wouldn’t have shared what happened to Azula if Azula had told her.

When Zuko says that he’s just trying to help Azula, Ty Lee calls bullshit. “‘You’re just trying to help yourself! She never would have ran if she thought there was any chance of you ever letting her out! But you never saw her; you wouldn’t even answer her letters! [ . . . ] Even I could tell you just dropped her there to forget about her—”—So true, Ty Lee. Especially the part about him never seeing her, which works on both a literal and figurative level.

“‘I never forgot!” Zuko insists, but this is actually more damning. It suggests that he kept Azula there so he would always know where she was and have control over her life.

“‘You never helped her, either [ . . . ] I know she didn’t always treat you right. I know, because she hurt me too. [ . . . ] But that’s not all she was. She’s not a monster. [ . . . ] She feels remorse, and she can repay kindness with kindness. She’s just—seen so little of that, I don’t know if she knows what it looks like anymore.’”—Clearly Ty Lee dumped most of her character creation points into Wisdom (and Dexterity). She might not be cunning, but she understands people, Azula included, much better than most of the other characters do. She has a lot of empathy, which I deeply appreciate.

Interrupting their conversation, though, June the bounty hunter storms into the clearing, with her shirsu paralyzing Ty Lee with a lash of its tongue. And that brings us to the end of another chapter! As always, thank you for the read, Aurelia!

Sincerely,

WiseAbsol

#Dominion by Aurelia le #Azula #avatar: the last airbender #Fanfiction #Review #WiseAbsol

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verdiprati · 5 years

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Looking Ahead

[NOTE: this post is now out of date. Check the schedule tag on my blog for the most recent version of this list.]

Hello, Tumblr friends.

I have been, for a while now, hesitating to continue my customary series of posts chronicling the future public performance plans of my favorite singer, Dame Sarah Connolly.

I have decided to keep compiling and updating the list, but I also want to share some of my thoughts on the matter. Discussion, followed by list of performances, after the jump.

As you will probably have heard by now, Dame Sarah announced in July that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and would have to withdraw from certain performances while undergoing treatment. She also expressed at the time a hope to fulfill all her other concert and recording commitments.

In the weeks since that announcement, Dame Sarah has made a few further alterations to her performing schedule while also maintaining some scheduled appearances: I myself heard her sing beautifully at concerts in Exeter and London earlier this month. A recent blog post by Jessica Duchen, written after that London concert, mentions that Dame Sarah now faces “a new journey, through chemotherapy.” Chemo protocols and how well individuals tolerate them can be really variable; the soprano Erin Wall has written about how she managed to keep performing between chemo treatments, but chemo can bring on a host of side effects that can make it extremely difficult to carry on one’s normal activities for the duration of treatment, which may take months. (Frankly, just reading that list from the American Cancer Society makes me feel sympathetically ill.)

I am sure you can see the delicacy of maintaining a public list of Dame Sarah’s scheduled performances. There is a lot that Dame Sarah herself probably does not know yet about her own treatment experience and how it will affect her availability (and desire) for work, and we the public may not know whether she is going ahead with any given engagement until relatively late.

I do not want to prematurely write off the next several months of Dame Sarah’s work, and I would still encourage anyone who lives near one of her performance venues to consider buying a ticket. It is a bit of a gamble, but if you can afford the risk of disappointment, go ahead and give yourself the possibility of hearing this wonderful singer.

At the same time, I think ticket buyers for whom Dame Sarah’s participation would be essential to the enjoyment of a concert should be aware that the likelihood of her withdrawal for health reasons is higher than usual in the next several months. What I provide below is the best information available through public channels; I’ll make an effort to update the list if and when I learn of any changes, but editing this list is not exactly my full-time job, and if there is a performance date that you care about, I would urge you to monitor the sponsor’s website and social media feeds for yourself.

Finally, and most delicately, although I consider this blog to be a fairly obscure corner of the internet, I would not want to embarrass Dame Sarah or damage her future employability by chronicling cancellations that might arise from her illness. No singer really wants to be associated with a record of frequent cancellations, however good the reasons for them might be. This consideration has been my greatest point of hesitation. I have, however, concluded that: (a) the circumstance of her illness is already well known in the industry, by her choice; (b) I really hope prospective employers will be understanding of her current circumstances and optimistic about her post-treatment future onstage; ( c ) I am only compiling information that is publicly available elsewhere; and (d) the intended audience for this list is fellow fans who, like me, want to keep tabs on possible opportunities to hear Dame Sarah perform live.

So. Here is the latest edition of my list:

Upcoming Performances by Dame Sarah Connolly

Those of you in Britain might catch a performance in London, Cheltenham, Chipping Campden, or Buxton. Those on the Continent might see Dame Sarah in Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Hamburg, Köln, Rotterdam, Basel, or Vilabertran. An as-yet-unconfirmed performance may be on the horizon in New York.

The usual disclaimers:

This is not an authoritative list. These are the upcoming performances by Dame Sarah Connolly that I have been able to learn about from Dame Sarah’s new website, Dame Sarah’s agent's website (Askonas Holt), Operabase, Bachtrack, Dame Sarah's Twitter, and generally ferreting around the web.

I sometimes list concerts that are not yet officially confirmed; you should of course check official sources before making plans and be aware that cast changes and cancellations can happen at any time.

I have added links to venue, ticketing, and broadcast information where available. Tips on new information are always welcome! Please contact me via email (verdiprati [at] selveamene [dot] com), Tumblr messaging, or ask box (plain prose only in the ask box; anything with links or an email address will get eaten by Tumblr filters) with corrections or additions.

Recital with Julius Drake at Temple Church, London, November 25, 2019. The repertoire includes Robert Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben, Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, Judith Bingham’s Adieu Solace, and “songs by Alma and Gustav Mahler.” The Judith Bingham piece is apparently based on the life of Mary Queen of Scots, as are Schumann’s Gedichte.

Elgar, Sea Pictures with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, London, December 12, 2019. In a concert conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano that also includes instrumental works by Tippett and Vaughn Williams. UPDATE: as explained in a note on the LSO’s website, Dame Sarah has had to withdraw from the concert due to her treatment for breast cancer. Karen Cargill is scheduled to sing Sea Pictures instead.

[New! Deferred broadcast] Bob Chilcott, A Christmas Oratorio (Mary), on BBC Radio 3, December 19, 2019. World premiere performance recorded live during the Three Choirs Festival on August 1 of this year, at Gloucester Cathedral. The other vocal soloists include Nick Pritchard (Evangelist) and Neal Davies (Simeon). The Philharmonia Players are conducted by Adrian Partington, and the combined cathedral choirs that give the festival its name also participate. The recording should be available for listening on demand for about a month after the broadcast.

Wagner, Die Walküre (Fricka) at the Teatro Real, Madrid, February 12, 16, 21, 23, 25, and 28, 2020. Co-stars include Tomasz Konieczny (Wotan), Ricarda Merbeth (Brünnhilde), and Stuart Skelton (Siegmund). (James Rutherford, Ingela Brimberg, and Christopher Ventris appear in the roles respectively on the 23rd.) Pablo Heras-Casado conducts; the production by Robert Carsen is a revival from Oper Köln. Single tickets go on sale November 4, 2019 if I read the Teatro Real website correctly. UPDATE: Although Dame Sarah’s name still appeared on the Teatro Real website well into December 2019, she replied to a fan on Twitter on November 3, “sadly I won’t be singing Fricka in Madrid this time. Waltraute in [Autumn] 2020, Paris is still on!” (Note that as of February 21, 2020, this is no longer the case: Dame Sarah has been replaced by Michaela Schuster in the Paris cast.) In late December, the Teatro Real announced that Dame Sarah had canceled her participation and Daniela Sindram would sing the role of Fricka

Oskar Fried, Verklärte Nacht with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, London, March 13, 2020. From the Barbican website: “Dame Sarah Connolly is currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer and regrets that she must withdraw from this performance. BBC SO are grateful to Christine Rice for replacing her and wish Dame Sarah well in her recovery.”

Recital at Wigmore Hall, London, March 19, 2020. From the Wigmore Hall website: "As Dame Sarah Connolly continues a period of treatment and recovery following her breast cancer diagnosis, she needs to limit her schedule and therefore has had to withdraw from the above concert. We are grateful to Fatma Said (soprano) for taking her place.”

Conversation with Mahan Esfahani at Sir John Lyon’s Theatre, London, March 20, 2020. Per the RPS: "With regret, Dame Sarah has had to withdraw from the event and we wish her all the very best at the current time.” Esfahani is still booked for the event; he will engage in conversation with the conductor François-Xavier Roth.

Appearance at “Bringing the House Down” charity concert at Glyndebourne, Lewes, April 5, 2020. Update: Dame Sarah’s name has been quietly removed from the list.

Mahler, Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, with the Sinfonieorchester Basel, Basel Minster, April 22, 2020. Update: Catriona Morrison is now the listed mezzo soloist.

Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Festival Hall, London, April 30, 2020. Update: a statement on the Philharmonia’s website reads, “Dame Sarah Connolly has had to withdraw from this performance due to ongoing treatment for breast cancer. We are grateful to Claudia Mahnke for stepping in. Dame Sarah intends to return to performing later this year.”

[Canceled] Mahler, Symphony No. 2, Resurrection with the Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest, De Doelen, Rotterdam, May 14, 15, and 17, 2020. Chen Reiss sings the soprano part; Lahav Shani conducts. UPDATE: As of this writing on April 6, the orchestra’s website now explains that “Following the government decision regarding COVID-19, this concert cannot take place on the planned dates.”

[Canceled] Recital with Ashley Riches, Joseph Middleton, and Tony Robb at the Chipping Campden International Music Festival, May 22, 2020. The recital was originally billed as a collaboration between Connolly and Middleton only, with repertoire TBA. Now that Riches and Robb have been added to the group, the program has been listed with repertoire by Duparc, Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Caplet, and Fauré. The Festival website explains, “Following treatment for breast cancer Dame Sarah has made changes to this programme to reduce her workload while her recovery continues. She hopes very much the audience will enjoy the variety these changes afford.” UPDATE: As of March 23, the entire festival has been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[Canceled] Mahler, Symphony No. 2, Resurrection with the Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest, Köln Philharmonie, May 27, 2020. Chen Reiss sings the soprano part; Lahav Shani conducts. (A repeat of the program from Rotterdam, above.) UPDATE: See the note on the May 14-17 concerts, above.

[Canceled] Recital at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, June 6, 2020. With Malcolm Martineau. The program includes Ravel’s Shéhérazade, Elgar’s Sea Pictures, Debussy’s Trois chansons de Bilitis, and various works by Hugo Wolff, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Charles Villiers Stanford, and Cecile Chaminade. UPDATE: as of this writing on April 14, I am now observing the word “Annulé” at the bottom of the concert information page (below the word “Tarifs”), which I take to mean that the concert has been canceled.

[Canceled] Mahler, Symphony No. 8, Symphony of a Thousand with the Wiener Symphoniker at the Musikverein, Vienna, June 12 and 13, 2020. Three Vienna choirs add their forces; Philippe Jordan conducts. The other scheduled vocal soloists are Camilla Nylund, Irène Theorin, Martina Janková, Michaela Schuster, Burkhard Fritz, Iain Paterson, and John Relyea. UPDATE: Although the informational pages for these concerts do not mention their cancellation, the Wiener Symphoniker website has a news post explaining that the Austrian government has canceled all indoor events with more than 100 participants through the end of June, and thus the orchestra’s public performances will not take place during this time period.

[Canceled] Duruflé, Requiem with the Choir of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, at Ferrandou Musique in Beaulieau-sur-Dordogne, Turenne, and Carennac, France, June 20-22, 2020. UPDATE: this series of concerts is now marked with a “CANCELED” banner on the Ferrandou Musique website.

[Canceled] Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde (in a chamber arrangement) at the Proms at St Jude’s, Hampstead Garden Suburb, July 2, 2020. With Andrew Staples and the Aurora Chamber Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Collon. The orchestra played the same arrangement, with the same vocalists, in 2017; here’s the (very positive) Bachtrack review. UPDATE: Although, oddly, I can find no direct reference to the cancellation of this concert or of the whole festival on the Proms’ website, a tweet from the Proms at St Judes on March 24 announced the cancellation of the 2020 festival.

[Canceled] Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde (in a chamber arrangement) at the Cheltenham Music Festival, July 3, 2020. With Andrew Staples and the Aurora Chamber Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Collon. UPDATE: On April 7, the Senior Management Board of the Cheltenham Festivals announced that the 2020 Cheltenham Music Festival is canceled (along with its sister Jazz and Science Festivals).

[Canceled] Recital at the Buxton International Festival, July 11, 2020. With Joseph Middleton. Songs by Poulenc, Duparc, Mahler, and Schumann. Note the noon hour and the short duration of this performance. UPDATE: Although I am late to pick up the news, cancellation of the Buxton International Festival was apparently announced on March 18.

[Canceled] Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde (in a chamber arrangement) at Wigmore Hall, London, July 17, 2020. With Andrew Staples and the Aurora Chamber orchestra conducted by Nicholas Collon. UPDATE: On March 30, Wigmore Hall announced that it would close for the remainder of the ’19- ’20 season and all performances through July 31 would be canceled.

[Canceled] Recital at Schubertíada Vilabertran, August 21, 2020. With Malcolm Martineau. Songs by Mendelssohn, Liszt, Elgar, Debussy, Ravel, and Chaminade. UPDATE: Although the Schubertíada announced on June 10 that it would go ahead with a schedule of live concerts, Dame Sarah’s has been eliminated. The Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia reports that “[el] concierto con Sarah Connolly ha caído por cuestiones de salud de la mezzo británica” (the concert with Sarah Connolly has fallen due to the British mezzo’s health concerns).

[Canceled] Mahler, Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, with the MDR Rundfunkchor and Sinfonieorchester Basel, in Basel, August 26, 2020. Christina Landshamer sings the soprano solo and Yoel Levi conducts. Part of a concert with a work called “Epitaph” by Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini. UPDATE: I am not sure on what date the concert was deep-sixed, but the MDR website now marks it as “abgesagt” (canceled).

[New details!] Recital at Wigmore Hall, London, September 30, 2020. With Roderick Williams and Julius Drake; the first concert of the Wigmore’s Mendelssohn and Liszt series.

Recital at Sant Pau Recinte Modernista, Barcelona, October 2, 2020. With Julius Drake. Part of the LIFE Victoria series of recitals; originally announced for November 27, 2019, but postponed due to Dame Sarah’s treatment for breast cancer. Songs by Brahms, Wolf, Debussy, Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler, and Zemlinsky. As of April 30, LIFE Victoria has issued a press release indicating that they still plan to go ahead with recitals scheduled for the fall of 2020.

Wagner, Götterdämmerung (Waltraute, Zweite Norn) at the Opéra national de Paris, November 13, 17, 21, and 28, and December 6, 2020. Update: the roles of Waltraute and Zweite Norn are now assigned to Michaela Schuster, one of a handful of casting changes reported by OperaWire on February 21, 2020.

[New details!] Handel, Agrippina (title role) at the Dutch National Opera, January 17-27, 2021. Finally, a year and a half after the news started leaking on Twitter, we get the official announcement, complete with a bizarre (even by DNO marketing department standards) video of a rubber-covered woman dancing in a ball pit. The production is Barrie Kosky’s (previously seen at the Bayerische Staatsoper and the ROH, and later moving on to the Staatsoper Hamburg). Ottavio Dantone conducts; co-stars include Ying Fang (Poppea), Franco Fagioli (Nerone), Gianlucca Buratto (Claudio), and Tim Mead (Ottone). If I read the DNO website correctly, tickets go on sale June 3, 2020.

[New!] Stravinsky, Oedipus Rex (Jocaste) at the Dutch National Opera, March 10-27, 2021. In a double bill with the new commission From ‘Antigone’ by Samy Moussa. Other singers in the Oedipus cast include Sean Panikkar (Oedipus), Bastiaan Everink (Creon), Rafał Siwek (Tiresias), and Ramsey Nasr (Speaker). Erik Nielsen conducts; Wayne McGregor directs. If I read the DNO website correctly, tickets go on sale November 17, 2020.

[New!] Stravinsky, Oedipus Rex (Jocaste) with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Hamburg, April 10 and 11, 2021. Even though these concert performances follow on the heels of Dame Sarah’s engagement for the same opera in Amsterdam, the two gigs appear to be administratively and artistically unrelated. Her co-stars in Hamburg include Brenden Gunnell (Oedipus), Tomasz Konieczny (Creon), and Sir John Tomlinson (Tiresias); the MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig supplies the men’s chorus. Alan Gilbert conducts. The program also includes Le sacre du printemps. Tickets can be ordered starting May 26, 2020, with payment due six weeks before the concert. There’s some background information on the NDR website.

[New!] Recital at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, May 18, 2021. With Julius Drake. Songs by Mendelssohn, Liszt, Elgar, Debussy, Ravel, and Chaminade. Tickets go on sale June 1, 2020.

[New!] Elgar, The Dream of Gerontius with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Berlin, May 27, 28, and 29, 2021. With Allan Clayton and Roderick Williams, as well as the Rundfunkchor Berlin; Simon Rattle conducts.

[Livestream] The concert on the 29th will be livestreamed on the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall platform.

[Unconfirmed / details TBA] Brett Dean, Hamlet (Gertrude) at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, sometime in 2021-22. Allan Clayton, who starred in the title role of Brett Dean’s Hamlet at Glyndebourne in 2017, mentioned in an interview with the Telegraph that he would be reprising the role at an unspecified date and venue in the US. When prompted on Twitter, Dame Sarah indicated that she would be participating in the revival, too (“I shall be misunderstanding my confused boy again”). In a later interview with Opera News, Clayton reportedly specified that he would reprise Hamlet at the Met. The Future Met Wiki places the production at the Met in the 2021-2022 season (as does this New York Times article). Hat tip to Christopher Lowrey, who sang Guildenstern in the original production at Glyndebourne, whose tweet praising Allan Clayton brought the Telegraph interview to my attention. (No indication whether Lowrey will also be cast in the American revival.) Additional hat tip to the Tumblrer who submitted information on this topic via the ask box.

Previous versions of this list can be found under the schedule tag on this blog. This list published October 29, 2019. Updated November 2 to reflect Dame Sarah’s withdrawal from the LSO Sea Pictures. Updated November 3 to reflect her self-declared withdrawal from the Teatro Real Walküre. Edited November 21 to add Das Lied at Cheltenham. Edited November 23 to add the radio broadcast of Chilcott’s Christmas Oratorio. Edited December 15 to add Das Lied at Wigmore Hall. Edited December 20 to update the casting information for the Teatro Real Walküre. Edited December 15 to add the Proms at St Jude’s performance of Das Lied. Edited January 24 to reflect Dame Sarah’s withdrawal from concerts on March 13 and 19 due to ongoing cancer treatment. Edited January 28 to add the Wigmore Hall recital in September 2020. Edited February 10 to cross off the “Bringing the House Down” charity concert. Edited February 22 to reflect Dame Sarah’s withdrawal from the Royal Philharmonic Society event, the Basel Mahler 2 in April, and the Paris Götterdämmerung. I also updated the link for the Philharmonia Das Lied von der Erde / Song of the Earth and added newly-available details for the Chipping Campden recital, the Proms at St Jude’s performance of Das Lied von der Erde, and the Schubertíada Vilabertran recital. Edited February 29, 2020 to add the two Dutch National Opera engagements, the Concertgebouw recital, and the Buxton recital. Edited March 10 to reflect Dame Sarah’s withdrawal from Das Lied von der Erde with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Edited March 23 to add the Ferrandou Musique dates, to reflect the first round of COVID-19 cancellations, and to add cautionary notes for concerts up through July 11. Edited April 6 to reflect the cancellation of the Wiener Symphoniker’s Mahler 8 as well as the Proms at St Jude’s and Wigmore Hall performances of Das Lied von der Erde; to add a link to the Cheltenham Music Festival’s announcement changing its ticket sale dates; and to confirm and clarify the cancellation of the Rotterdam Phil’s Mahler 2 concerts. Updated April 7 with the cancellation of the Cheltenham Music Festival and the Buxton International Festival, and to update the link to the Wigmore recital on September 30, 2020. Edited April 14 to indicate the cancellation of the Musée d’Orsay recital. Edited April 22 to add the Berlin Gerontius. Edited May 6 to update repertoire details for the LIFE Victoria recital and add the Hamburg Stravinsky concerts and the Basel Mahler 2 in August. Edited May 8 to reflect the cancellation of the Ferrandou Musique concerts. Edited June 19 to reflect the cancellation of Dame Sarah’s recital at the Schubertíada Vilabertran and the second (August) Basel Resurrection. I may continue to edit this list as I receive new information.

#sarah connolly #schedule #performances

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veryimportantsparkles · 5 years

Photo

Alright I’ve kept meaning to do sort of an infodump on my projects because I’ve been really slipping lately. I dunno how obvious it is? Probably kind of obvious. I’ve also been really bad about checking messages and responding to people. So I figure I can write up a status report and then point to it when I’ve been inadequate about communication.

My IRL job has been wiping me out. I’ve been getting short, labor-intensive shifts in the evenings, and then random surprise morning shifts shortly after, which has been really hard to manage my time around. My sleep schedule has been extremely broken and it’s affected my productivity a LOT. Leadership in my department is about to shuffle around and I’ve been interviewed for the manager position. If I get it I’ll be working an entirely different schedule, which could potentially be good for my sleepy brain but will definitely leave me with less art time overall. I’ve also been enduring some back/shoulder issues over the past few months. Nothing urgent, but it’s limiting how much I can draw each day. I think replacing my desk chair is going to be a big factor but it’s not the only factor. I just need to be a smart human and take care of my joints and not hunch over so much. Working on it.

Here’s the current status of my various art projects:

Laserwing

I ended chapter 5 in June and said I would finish up some other side projects before I start concept work for chapter 6. One of the projects I needed to finish was the Popkas Yugioh season 4 special, which I finished. The other big one was my Neonmob card set, which is most of what I’ve been posting lately. Once that’s out of the way (see below) I need to do concept art. Chapter 6 will put all the Laserwing characters in new outfits which will need reference sheets. I’ll need background sketches and layout diagrams so I don’t have furniture shuffle randomly around between scenes. I also need to sketch out the chapter 6 draft page by page. I’ve made Laserwing in GIMP up until this point and am going to try switching to Krita for chapter 6. I might need to do a test page to make sure my process transfers over well into a slightly different system. Once I’m ready to make real pages, those take a while. Chapter 5 pages were going up maybe every 2-3 weeks. I don’t know how many pages are going to be in chapter 6, nor can I say for sure how many chapters are in Laserwing. An old outline had maybe 40 chapters. It’s a story with a defined end point, I can say that for certain, but it’s intended to be long.

Popkas

I’ve had issues with Popkas for a while. I keep picking new themes for dailies, thinking they’re going to be quick and easy, but then end up making them hard for myself. It’s been to my benefit, I’ve forced myself into learning new art programs and techniques through Popkas. But it’s hard to keep up the daily schedule. Currently I’m doing the Paper Mario: TTYD bestiary, which has 124 enemies. At a rate of one per day, by the time I’ve finished them, Pokemon Sword and Shield should be released and we’ll have all the info about the new Pokemon. Those will be drawn in ‘Popka classic’ style (scribbly shitposts). After those are finished, unless my IRL work situation dramatically changes, I’m considering putting Popkas on pause. In order to do any other monster dexes I’d have to do a lot more research (for example, people have suggested Yokai Watch but I’ve never played one) in order to have anything meaningful to post. Same deal with Popka Specials (the anime writeup things), those take prep time and anime-watching time that I might not have. I don’t ever want to end Popkas, but a hiatus might be necessary.

Angelfire Hime

Did anyone even know about Angelfire Hime? Well I want to post more but that involves finding, scanning, retouching, and transcribing my old high school scribble comics. It takes as long as any other project but is also low priority because it’s all old content. Nobody is waiting for the latest update because nobody but me actually knows what that content is, and possibly nobody but me can even read it. It’s more a personal journey of self-reflection than anything. I want to return to it but not at the expense of better work.

MeganFantastic dot com

I had a domain name linked to a tumblr that was supposed to be my news blog/front page and I barely use it. Also, I let the domain registration drop. Also, I had let a typo in my banner graphic go unnoticed for YEARS and still haven’t fixed it. Even now, I’m writing this big post to my personal blog instead of the one for news. The idea was to eventually buy some real hosting and make MeganFantastic a whole site of its own, but that’s a lot of work. I’ve got a generally good idea of HOW I’d do it (probably wordpress) but I’m not a coder, it would take a lot of trial and error. This would be a huge undertaking and eventually Laserwing, Popkas, and all my other junk would be contained on one big non-tumblr website. But it’s uhhhhh not happening yet.

Hundera Youtube

My contribution to our LP channel is to show up, talk about video games, and then draw title cards. All recording, editing, and channel management is maintained by Josh, and I can’t speak on his behalf about our update schedule. I will say there are a lot of half-finished games we want to return to. I will also say that when the new Pokemon comes out Josh is dead set on recording it. I don’t know if he intends that to be a stream or a regular LP. In the meantime he streams Minecraft with his friends every Sunday and we fit in our own streams and recordings when we can.

Commissions/Patron Art/etc

I’ve not been very good about this lately and I’m truly sorry! I have a few things I’m working on, a few things I’ve promised to start working on, and a few things I’ve told people I can do once my workload lightens up, which hasn’t been happening yet. I really don’t have an answer. I almost never delete anything so if I’ve been sent a message in any form I should still have it, and I’ll be sure not to forget anyone. And if I do forget someone feel free to throw rocks at me!

Rane Story 2

What the heck is Rane Story 2? Well I guess I have to explain Neonmob. Imagine if ChickenSmoothie and DeviantART had a baby. It’s a virtual trading card site, which is fun and cute, and I’m drawing out a card series to release on there. I’ve been using it as practice for painting backgrounds and to fill out some backstory for some 4th-string Laserwing support characters. Before Mistaire came to Earth, she went to space high school, and that’s where Rane Story takes place. You can preview the series, and when it’s finished I’ll post about it. I’ll also repost all the art to DA. If you scroll through the last several pages of this blog you’ll see some of the art. I’ve put a lot of my brain energy into getting this done in spite of my work/sleep issues because I don’t want to resume Laserwing until I’ve finished it. This is what’s stolen my life, guys. Right now I have 6 more cards to make, and then I have to write and finalize all the text. I should be done SOON.

Pokemon Nonsense

When my back and shoulder get too hurty and I have to take a break from drawing, one of the easy things to do is whip out a DS and play Pokemon. I’ve done a lot of twitter shitposting about it lately. I’ve also drawn up a bunch of gijinkas for my Pokemon. I’m talking about it now because I also intend to draw up gijinkas for Pokemon to trade away. I’ve already done a few. However, I don’t know for sure how I’m going to distribute them. The idea is people can trade actual Pokemon with me (in either X or Let’s Go Eevee) and the Pokemon they get will come with a character design for you to keep. I was thinking I might do a discord server for organizing trades and such, but I haven’t yet. Mostly because it’s low priority and I have SO many other things going on. But actually playing Pokemon can happen when I’m too fatigued for real work, so the horde keeps growing. Hopefully my posts and scribbles about it are entertaining.

I feel like there’s other projects on hold that I wanted to discuss, but right now I’m too braintired to remember, and some of my ‘projects’ never actually got talked about online so nobody’s waiting for an update. My greatest problem seems to be that I try to juggle too many pointless side projects and then drop them all over the place. Sometimes I’ll shitpost about an idea and even I won’t be sure if I was serious or not. How do I end this post? I don’t know.

tl;dr Megan is SLEEPY and dropped her spaghetti everywhere but somehow still has time to play POKEMON and WON’T STOP TALKING ABOUT IT

#long post #what do i even tag this as

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ceriseskies · 5 years

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It’s 5am Let’s Fucking Do This

Dear Transgender Transmedicalists.

You’ve been on my mind recently. I made this very emotionally driven post to get some of my frustration out, and well, the response I got from one of you, was— well, I got roasted.

So. Feeling like I owed a debt or something, I’ve done a little research, I’ve gone through some of your blogs. I have read actual trans people’s takes on you. And I think I’m going to to bring a new weapon to the ring: empathy. It’s not one I see a lot of use of on Tumblr.

Because there’s one thing you’re absolutely right about: Most, or at least a sizable amount of “truscum” are transgender.

(For the uninitiated, that means they believe you need gender dysphoria to be trans—non-dysphorics are called “transtrenders” or “tucutes”. Usually, but not always, comes with nb-phobia.)

First of all, I want to say where I think you’re right, because it’s only fair, and I want to show I’m being sincere about this.

For starters, I know Tumblr has this “you’re perfect and valid just the way you are babey!!!! Don’t change a thing!!!! <3<3<3!!!” And I can see why someone who suffers from severe dysphoria and needs medical transition for their mental health is scared off by that. I’m not here to police your positivity. If hearing someone tell you “your hormones are coming, and your transition will be smooth, quick, and soon, and you’ll come out of it a beautiful girl/handsome man” is what keeps you alive, then surround yourself in it. I want you to be healthy and happy.

Also, I believe that no one should have to date a trans person. That’s rapey. HOWEVER, I would question what makes someone uncomfortable about it. The genitalia? Okay, that’s valid. But a lot of other excuses are pretty thinly veiled transphobia, because no matter what kind of man/woman you like, a there’s a transgender person who fits those requirements. And don’t date someone transitioning away from the gender you’re attracted to. That’s sleazy.

And honestly, I think a lot of the “non-dysphoric” trans kids do experience some dysphoria, judging by their accounts. Just not an overwhelming, crippling level like I see most transmeds experience. There’s a lot of misinformation about it, and can see why they might not recognize it. And there’s a lot of dysphoric people would don’t even realize they have it until they become acquainted with their real gender. I would estimate that 90% of trans/nb people will experience some degree of it at some point in their life.

But even if 100% were dysphoric, I’d still be opposed to it being the defining characteristic. Why? Well, it makes being transgender sound like a medical disorder. And the idea of an LGBT (and continued, but that’s for another day, kids) identity being considered a disorder gives me major ick vibes—think conversion therapy, religious exorcisms, homosexuality being in the DSM…

Let’s start by breaking down the philosophy, because I can’t start telling you what you believe is wrong until I assess what you believe.

The belief of your average “truscum” is that gender dysphoria is the core of ThE TRanS eXpErIeNcE, whereas “trenders” believe gender to be a less tangible and more fluid concept.

It’s essentially dysphoria cure-seekers versus the gender truth-seekers, which, are the terms I’m gonna use now, because as a non-trans individual all these words feel dirty in my mouth.

Dysphoria sucks. And a lot of the cure-seekers are very much displeased with their trans identity. To them, being cis is good—they want to be cis. They encourage those comfortable with their assigned gender to be happy about it! Therefore, they’re completely at odds with the gender-is-a-social-construct, down-with-cis ideology of the gender “truth-seekers” who are encouraging kids to create new genders and just find what feels right. They can’t imagine having fun being trans—it hasn’t been for them.

And because of that, well, I can never be too mad at them.

There’s also an element of deep insecurity. Pretty much every dysphoria cure-seeker has latched on hard to the idea of brain sex, despite the science being shaky at best. It gives you the explanation you need for your dysphoria. You want a solid scientific ground, not just cheesy platitudes about it being ~how you feel inside~.

Just like every other trans person on Tumblr dot com, you’re seeking validation. That’s normal. Even you worry about being fakes sometimes.

But let’s not get too ahead ourselves here, it’s still mostly about people who aren’t “trans enough”.

The problem here is that in seeking your own validity, you’re stomping on other trans people.

I’ll let Casey, a lovely, 100% bona-fide trans woman, take it from here.

Now, usually when I hear the word “transtrender”, I find it’s not usually used at someone who has professed a lack of dysphoria. It’s usually someone who is being trans “incorrectly”.

For example, Riley J Dennis gets called a trender a lot, despite her talking about her own dysphoria on several occasions.

See, there’s a real fear that all these new gender experimenters are going to make the trans community look like a joke.

There’s a belief that these cool-new-gender-flexible-trans-kids are reinforcing trans about trans being a trend, and thus, blocking “real trans” from getting the help they need.

And you’ll notice that neither of these complaints has anything to with dysphoria. This is whining about people being annoying.

This is… very optics-focused. And hey, I think Tumblr downplays the importance of looking good to the average public. However, actual people matter more than outside impressions.

And also, who is the audience for this? Transphobes?

This tangential comment thread on Innuendo Studios’s “White Fascism” video gets it.

A lot of you simply want to assimilate into society as your real gender. You want to pass, be given the right pronouns, and get the hormones and surgery you deserve. And you want cis people to acknowledge you the correct way.

And so you try your best to be the “ideal trans person” for the cisgendered. You experience dysphoria, you want to pass, you’re actively seeking transition.

Sometimes you even join in the bullying.

There’s a lot of sucking up here. All lot of trying to to prove yourself to someone who wants you to suck them off.

And I refuse to suck the cishets’ metaphorical dicks. However, their real dicks might still be on the table if they treat me right,

Look, there’s quite a few transphobes out there who are unwilling to admit they’re transphobes, are looking for a cop-out. And this rhetoric enables their transphobia, using this guise which even comes with free trans supporters!!!

But eventually, they’ll turn on you. When you start challenging their perceptions, when you start stepping on their toes, when you become too inconvenient to be a shield against accusations of transphobia, they’ll toss you right in the garbage with all the “trenders” and “tucutes” you’ve been stomping on, and something tells me you’re not getting a warm welcome in that “garbage can”.

And they’re going to treat you like shit. And you’re going to be surprised when they teach you like shit. You’re going to have to learn the hard way that a conditional ally is not a real ally, and your beliefs are all about being conditionally accepting.

Transphobes don’t care about you or your struggles. If they did, they wouldn’t be transphobes.

What’s all of this going to get you?

What’s the endgame? Like when you kick out all the transtrenders, what will you have earned?

Will you have taken back your “trans spaces”? Will you have gotten rid of those annoying kids at the expense of actual people who need those places?

Will you have more of the non-finite trans resources?

What will that earn you?

You do realize that if you achieved your goal, you’d probably just start attacking each other, right?

And then we’d be back at square one. Because if there’s one thing all humans, cis, trans, or nonbinary, it’s someone to feel better than, no matter how stupid or toxic the reason is. Look. I don’t know what’s going on in each of your individual heads, and I don’t know any of you personally. I can’t tell you what has personally driven you to transmedicalism, but I hope you leave it behind one day.

All I can say is that I know a lot of you have had your own struggles, and as a (maybe?) good cis ally and fellow LGBT person, I sympathize with you. I’ve done my best to try and dismantle your worldview.

And I want you to know: it gets better. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but I know someone does, especially someone who’s ideology portrays their very being as inherently suffering.

Look, my PMs are open if you want to talk to me about this (or anything else). Please be polite, don’t come at me with callous accusatory questions you don’t actually want me to answer.

With love,

Cerise

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starberry-cupcake · 6 years

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Extensive Les Mis fanon character interpretation Discourse under the cut, read at your own risk

I’ve been thinking about this for an embarrassingly long while and I know I’m not the best person to discuss this, because talking about Les Mis is like opening this huge box of things which you need to be a scholar to be prepared to back up fully. That’s why this is under ‘read more’, because I am aware and accept my own ignorance and limitations BUT I also think this is an interesting topic, so here we go.

One thing that has been increasingly bothering me in what we can call “the current fanon interpretation” of Les Mis, namely the fanon interpretation that arose/became popular post 2012 movie and through tumblr/ao3, is this idea that Enjolras is a toxic person and he tramples selfishly over people’s feelings.

This is something that escalates sometimes a lot, even to a point in which I had to one time witness someone on tumblr dot com saying that Montparnasse was a better person and preferable ship partner than Enjolras which made me just stop and stare at the screen for a long moment trying to comprehend where this was coming from.

There was an escalating fandom acceptance of Enjolras being incredibly selfish towards people in the benefit of “his cause”, which makes him a sort of childish persona who is unable to take care of himself and who doesn’t understand people’s feelings in the slightest.

This is 99.999999% of the time paired with Grantaire’s interpretation, which I think is a key to understanding why this happened in the first place and why it evolved into turning Enjolras into an unfeeling person who understands nothing of human emotions.

And I think it’s a fascinating thing to think about and deconstruct, even if I’m not fond of the interpretation.

I think that Grantaire is, to the current Les Mis fandom (more so than ever before, but I’ll talk about that in a bit), what Éponine was to the musical fandom (and creators) in the 80s/90s.

A big problem I have with Éponine’s interpretation in the musical (and again, I’m in no way the most qualified person to talk about this and my word should be taken with a bucket of salt) is that she was taken as the victim in a made up “love triangle” that never was. The musical uses Éponine as a tragic figure whose love for Marius is depicted as wholesome and romanticized, whereas Cosette is reduced to a Cinderella story and a very shallow characterization once she becomes an adult (let’s remember her storyline is reduced to being an object to Fantine’s hope, Valejan’s salvation and Marius’s survival without much of an own agency since her entire plot and growth and storyline are cut after she’s rescued by Valjean). So the musical puts the two against each other as the two “options” Marius has, but doesn’t focus on Marius and Cosette’s relationship aside from a couple songs and moments, instead gives Éponine a solo on how much she’s unrequited and a death scene where the entire plot point of her wanting Marius to go to the barricade is erased.

Éponine’s character complexity is reduced to the character people is meant to feel for and women are meant to root for because she is “the underdog”. And, most often that not, that’s what love triangles do, the underdog is the one people root for because they’re meant to identify with their unfair situation and their tough luck.

This is a disservice to Éponine and to Cosette, who are much more complex than this and it’s something most people tend to let pass because the musical didn’t have as much time to expand, but it isn’t a matter of amount of content depicted but on which perspective to focus and what lens to see the story through.

Ask anyone who was a fan of the musical in the 80s and who hasn’t read the book or seen any other adaptation who they prefer between Éponine and Cosette, if you don’t believe me. I mean, On My Own was adopted as the “anthem of the female friendzone” as cringe-y as hell as that sounds.

Anyway, what does that have to do with Grantaire, you ask me? Well, first of, it’s very easy to see how modern fandom tends to interpret Grantaire and Éponine as friends, really really close to one another. This is a very common occurrence that results from the comparison of their situations and strengthens my point, but it’s not where I’m going with exactly.

What I think that has happened with Grantaire, and here is the anthropological/sociological hypothesis nobody asked for, is that he became the embraced character for the current tumblr/ao3 fandom as Éponine was for that 80s/90s musical fandom, due to the interpretation he is given, to satisfy certain fandom needs that are current. Which isn’t wrong in itself, it’s what happens with archetypes all the time (and a subject of study for me, which is why this interests me specifically, I’m currently writing two projects that involve literary archetypes, but I digress).

Grantaire’s drunkenness and confrontational nature were turned into coping mechanisms for a battle with severe depression, in most cases, or other underlying mental illnesses. Which isn’t that much of a long shot in itself, all things considered, it has a canon basis to stand on, but creates a complex case when it comes to the consequences of the things he does.

Fanon transformed Grantaire’s confrontational nature into a constant cry for help, one which Enjolras most often, if not almost always, ignores. Sometimes out of being oblivious, sometimes out of selfishness, sometimes out of derision and contempt. Sometimes all of them at once.

And one consequence of this was that it started becoming more and more often for Grantaire’s actions to be fully embraced by fandom because he was starting to be conceived as a vessel for a lot of self-reflection. It isn’t completely random that Grantaire’s characterization became more inclined towards the narrative of mental illness and conflicting coping mechanisms, because they are all subjects we talk about more openly now than ever before, especially in the platforms where this interpretation is more often seen, namely tumblr and ao3. Not that they didn’t exist before, but that they’re discussed more freely now, especially through the idea of safe zones that social media and the internet in general allow.

What Éponine’s character was for the female fandom of the 80s looking for an underdog to root for, in a market filled with products about the female underdog who was unrequited and deserved to be loved, Grantaire somewhat became to a fandom needing to express this idea of existential emptiness and overall doubt about not only one’s state of mind but also where one is going with their life when others seem so certain about it.

And talking about being certain about a life goal, what’s going in with Enjolras, meanwhile? I believe that, much like Grantaire’s fandom characterization having somewhere canon to stand on, Enjolras’s severity has some places where it came from which we can all clearly see. I am a little bit tired of how many times people use the “capable of being terrible” phrase at this point, and then there was the whole thing with Saint Just which I’m not getting into because this is already too long.

But, much like characters written to be two sides of the same coin, Enjolras and Grantaire tend to be connected to each other’s characterization. They were like that in canon, they were written to be a pair which influenced, directly or indirectly, the other, so it isn’t strange to see that in fanon interpretations, the two also go hand in hand. Pun very much intended.

The issue I have with Grantaire’s interpretation isn’t that his perspective is more directly viewed, or that fandom goes more in-depth with his underlying issues, but the fact that sometimes identification turns into idealization. It happens very frequently in writing (and not only in fic) that authors who see themselves reflected in a character tend to try to erase any blame from them in a way to channel a sense of embrace for their own actions, and that can be counterproductive to the character’s complexity.

Because it isn’t really the problems and hardship what make a character relatable, it is their growth which comes from learning, which, in turn, comes from making mistakes.

When Grantaire’s mistakes are characterized as reactions to things that are outside his capability to control, when they are seen as mechanisms of what anyone would do if they were in his place, Enjolras’s reactions to them turn not severe but unfair.

Suddenly, all of Grantaire’s mistakes, jokes, derision and his unfavorable actions are seen as a product of an inescapable situation, out of his control, which, in turn makes Enjolras’s anger unjust and an over-reaction. Which, paired with the fact that Enjolras’s “cause” varies from interpretation to interpretation (especially in modern contexts, which are the most popular among this generation of fandom, where the “cause” has to be determined from social and political contexts that tend to be very vague out of the global state of the world and the intersectionality of issues, which overlay in every one of them), makes him unfairly distant and overall incapable of feeling empathy.

Something that can be seen very clearly in the way in which, when it’s written as a ship, Enjolras often has to “choose” between Grantaire and “his cause”, whatever that is in each specific narrative.

More so than making Enjolras too severe, my problem is with his desensitization. I feel that making Grantaire a constant victim (out of fandom willingness to grab onto him as a vessel of current issues of the generation he represents due to his canon-ish age) makes Enjolras desensitized to human emotion, especially because, most often than not, it is only him who is represented as oblivious or uncaring, while the rest of the group understands and sometimes even defends Grantaire, in stances even turning their backs on Enjolras for that reason, which always baffles me, truly.

Enjolras is a very complex character and his actions are matter of many essays and interpretations, but one thing I don’t think he can be seen as is uncaring. Even less so uncaring towards human emotion. His constant inner turmoil during the barricade is something to behold and I always turn to his decision to execute Le Cabuc/Claquesous as one of my favorite parts in the entire thing, and the fact that he grieves his decision in the way he does is a proof of his emotional complexity and empathy.

I don’t have a problem with Enjolras’s severity or Grantaire’s motives, I have a problem with the simplification of their narratives into a judge and a victim, which I think is what leads to these conversations of toxicity among them, opening another bag of complications.

But even if it’s something that bothers me, it also fascinates me to see how these interpretations shift so much and how they change according to the audience that embraces the text at a certain point in time. How we charge it with additional symbolic value as we go, transforming it a bit with each read.

I want to clarify, very strongly and vehemently, that these ramblings are IN NO WAY meant as derision of fandom interpretation or anyone’s particular writing. I too have written Les Mis fics and have fallen into interpretative conundrums that now, with experience, I judge unfitting to my current views, some which I have deleted, others which are still around. So this is in no way a call out of any form, not at all.

It is also not to criticize Grantaire’s interpretation, as someone who suffers from mental illness myself, I find it not only positive but necessary the inclusion of these topics in writing, whether it is in fic form or in any other type.

I find this a fascinating topic because, like Tournier said: “In some masterpieces - and that is why they are first among universal literature - there is an incentive to create, an infection of the creative verb, a way to put in motion the creative process of readers. I confess that, for me, that is the peak of art”. That is the magic of works like Les Mis, that we can use them to see ourselves, no matter how much time has passed, and if these characters still help to see ourselves and our reality in a way in which we can observe it better, I think Hugo would be glad.

#les miserables #luly rambles #i was gonna be brief about this and I ended writing an essay whoops #i know i'm not the best person to talk about this but I have thoughts to share i guess idk #les mis #essay posts

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hockey-jews · 6 years

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For anyone who wants to learn more about Judaism! Also, kind of a post about how to deal with some Things and Stuff. This is a long post so I’ll put it under a read more for those interested:

This is really for an anonymous message I got that described struggles with things that I think many of us struggle with or have in the past: not being “Jewish enough” in the eyes of other Jews due to your heritage being on the “wrong” side (read; on your father’s side), yet still experiencing antisemitism from goyim. Not learning very much, if anything, about Judaism as a child but wanting to learn more as an adult. Not being comfortable with some traditions or laws of Judaism because you are a) a feminist b) LGBT c) an atheist. Living in a place with few to no Jewish spaces. Not feeling welcome in the Jewish community due to any or all of these things.

Book recs!

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading (or can at least tolerate it) I highly recommend these books! They’re all books that I have either read/started reading/or plan on reading. (Please keep in mind that none of these are Jewish texts such as the Torah or the Talmud and that I do understand the importance of such religious texts but am not recommending them because I feel those are obvious sources of information)

A Bride for One Night if you aren’t familiar with the Talmud, it’s a collection of writings and explanations of Jewish laws and traditions and it’s old as balls. The author of this book, Ruth Calderon, takes a bunch of Talmudic stories and makes them into these wonderful beautiful stories that are easier to read than the original ones from the 3rd and 6th centuries. Even if you don’t know anything about the Talmud this book is so fascinating and fun to read.

The G-d Who Hates Lies is literally perfect for you if you have issues with how women are viewed and treated in the most traditional sense of Judaism. It’s a really great criticism by people who are extremely qualified to make those criticisms (both are rabbi’s and I think they both have doctorates in theology, specifically Modern Orthodox Judaism, which makes for a really cool viewpoint). I can’t find anything about the third author of this book, who is a woman, but it’s comforting to know that a woman had a part in this as well. Obviously these people love Judaism, they just want to see it adapt to modernity. Just in general it’s a really thoughtful book that challenges dogma.

Jewish Literacy was recommended by an anon (thank you!) The rest of the title is “The Most Important Things to Know about The Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History” so like. Ya get what ya see here folks. HOWEVER I did see a review that mentions there is some Islamophobia and hostility towards Jews who are antizionist. It does genuinely look informative and I haven’t read it myself so I can’t attune to whether or not that review is accurate, but maybe be cautious if you read this in knowing that the author may not be objective.

Book of Mercy made me openly weep and feel something tender and weird in my heart and like. Okay so it’s not informative so much as it’s a book of poetry by Leonard Cohen (he was Jewish if you didn’t know!) He calls his poems “modern psalms” and honestly this would be a good read even if you aren’t religious at all because his writing is just so gorgeous. But it does have references to Judaism and his identity as a Jew

Understanding Judaism is really a “building blocks” kind of book to me, if that makes sense? It’s really informative but also really basic and is fantastic for people who know very little about Judaism or just want a well presented understanding of the core aspects of the Jewish religion. Even if you aren’t a Jew who’s looking to learn or someone who is considering conversion it’s still a good book if you’re interested in world religions regardless of your faith or lack thereof. (man I’m starting to sound pretentious lmao I just mean like, if you’re an atheist or Catholic or whatever, it’s pretty interesting and also this guy is kinda dorky-funny so it makes for an easier read than some other books about religion)

Shmooze I think this is meant to be more for a group to read an discuss, and like, also maybe meant for a younger audience (I’m talking about teenagers so not really that young, but if you’ve been reading dull infodumps by 90 y/o Jewish rabbis with doctorate degrees this is gonna be a change of pace lmao) I should mention that I’ve only read like two pages of this book because I saw it at Barnes and Noble and just kinda briefly checked it out so I don’t know a ton about it but it stuck in my head and the reviews look positive so

Obvious I don’t think you have to read all of those because I haven’t even read all of those so maybe just check one of them out if it seems like it could be helpful to you.

Judaism here on tumblr dot com:

Okay so like. This is really my personal diced onion so take it however you will but keep in mind that this really only reflects things I’ve come across and how I feel.

Obviously there are a lot of really great blogs about Judaism but I don’t have any specific ones to recommend I’m sorry :O I really really hate ~Discourse~ and like, in-depth arguments about the Holocaust because I get so wrapped up in it and let’s be honest, tumblr is all about the discourse and ignorance. That being said, I like to follow other people who are Jewish and blog about whatever because that usually leads to safer discussions and also is a great way to find really helpful thoughts and discussions by other Jews about topics like being LGBT, being a woman, being an atheist, etc. These are just nice to read and also if you aren’t familiar with certain Yiddish or Hebrew terms that are commonly used it’s a good way to see how and when they’re used in certain contexts.

I’m going to tag anything like this that I post here as “good info” just so me and anyone who wants can find this stuff easier. No they won’t necessarily have anything to do with hockey.

Also please be very careful when you’re reading a post that is presenting certain things as facts, always double check what someone is saying because misinformation is spread so quickly, and it’s almost always unintentional. The things that I find genuinely helpful/safe/fun involve opinions, common feelings and experiences, little personal stories and jokes, cool stuff like that.

I’m Jewish on my father’s side :0

Me too boo. Unfortunately that’s an unending discussion, and one that is often held by matrilineal Jews and doesn’t actually include patrilineal Jews, nor does it consider our thoughts/feelings/experiences. Without sounding like an idiot, it is absolutely buckwild to me that there are people who have been raised Jewish, have never known anything other than Jewish tradition, have been subject to antisemitism, but still aren’t considered Jewish.

And then this is where I see matrilineal Jews who hold this viewpoint bring up Reform Judaism, which is one of the three main branches of Judaism and does recognize patrilineall Jews as Jews. I’ve seen some discrepancy as to whether or not patrilineal Jews had to have been raised Jewish in order to be considered Jewish. This is all well and good for Jews like me whose family practices Reform Judaism, but for patrilineal Jews who wish to practice in an Orthodox or Conservative synagogue, it gets tricky.

Basically, yes this is a huge topic that inspires a lot of disagreement, and that sucks, but here’s what it comes down to. No one else is allowed to make you feel inferior because of your heritage. So many people, even modern Orthodox Jews, recognize that certain aspects of Judaism need to adapt to today’s society. I don’t want to offend anyone here, but I really do feel that most matrilineal Jews who don’t consider us Jewish are extremely hypocritical (for a lot of reasons but mostly like...y’all really follow every aspect of Jewish Law? Like do you really? All of it? Girl do u? Or are you maybe just being elitist). Learning about your heritage, talking about shared experiences, combating antisemitism, these are all things that are fair game for you (especially for the anon who said they were atheist) and going to Shabbat services, praying, participating in holy days. That’s all yours if you want it, bubbeleh.

Can I be an atheist Jew?

Sure you can! I, personally, am not an atheist so I wasn’t comfortable finding specific resources about this because I don’t really know much about it? It’s fine with me if you’re atheist that’s none of my business, I just don’t want to direct you to a bad source. But yes, many Jews are atheist, many are secular, I’m sure there are many here on tumblr. It’s absolutely okay, Judaism is an ethnoreligion, and while you may experience Judaism different than the rest of us, you’re still a Jew and still belong.

Here’s an excerpt from a short lil synopsis of Judaism:

These three connotations of Judaism as a monotheistic system, as a literary tradition, and as a historical culture are sometimes viewed separately. For example, there are Jews who see themselves as culturally Jewish, but who are also non-religious or atheist, often identifying more strongly with Jewish “peoplehood” than with traditional understandings of God and Torah. Even so, all Jews would recognize that these three points of reference have shaped and guided Jewish experience through the ages.

Jewish “peoplehood” that they talk about is like. Culture, customs, food, art, history, etc.

One last little note on this, you’ll hear a lot that Judaism focuses more on actions than on beliefs. This is an excellent article that is pretty short and worth reading that I want to include because I think that even if you don’t believe in G-d or even if you are seriously questioning, the focus on just. Doing good. Actively doing good things and trying to be a good person (I know that’s objective but bear with me) is a such a huge part of Judaism that you can try to incorporate into your life without having to subscribe to any sort of dogma or beliefs that you don’t hold. “Judaism is certainly a faith-based tradition. Belief in G-d is central to our religion. It just isn’t a prerequisite. If you are Jewish, you are so regardless of belief.”

But I’m a feminist....

As you should be. This is probably another personal statement you gon’ wanna take with a grain of salt, but I think Judaism, especially in the last 50 years or so, has made huge strides in this. Especially Reform Judaism, but that kind of goes without saying.

Example, my synagogue was founded as a Conservative synagogue. Our website still says we are. I’m not actually sure tbqh, like I said, my family are Reform Jews, and so are most other families in our congregation I think but this is literally the only synagoge for like hundreds of miles so. Anyways our rabbi is female (Rabbi Shaina!) and she does great work, we all love her. She’s really adament on teaching kids that gender shouldn’t keep you from anything, that Judaism is for all Jews, that it should enhance our lives. She wears a tallis, lays her tefillin, and reads from the Torah.

My point here is that while this isn’t like, the end of misogyny in Judaism as we know it, it’s still a big deal in most religions to have a woman as their religious leader, essentially a position of religious power. For men to accept a woman as a religious leader is not something that is super common in most religions. And we’re like, a tiny congregation over a hundred miles away from anyone else, technically a Conservative synagogue, that’s super loving and accepting of a feminist running our shit... female rabbis are super common and I think it speaks a lot to how we’re progressing as a religion. Reform Judaism is going to be your best bet when it comes to tolerance but knowing that all three of the main branches are progressing, at least with this, is really comforting to me.

However, that’s an extremely one sided view and doesn’t really show the issue as a whole. This super short article (? not sure) is a bit pessimistic in my mind but presents the other side of things and gives a good explanation of the traditional sources of misogyny in Judaism, so this could further your understanding as well.

By no means are we perfect but we’re workin on it. Look into Jewish Feminism though, if you have the time. That article is just a lil intro to the topic.

I’m Q*eer/LGBT and I’m not sure y’all are gonna be cool with that...

Well this one’s a doozy.

I’ll kick this right off by presenting an article that is objective and does not reflect the author’s opinion, just lays out the issues at hand. It also has some links to other good pieces, including one cool story about a transgender man, Rafi Daugherty, embracing his role as a father and details his experience with pregnancy and giving birth. I should mention that I am cisgender so I’m interpreting this article through a different point of view, but it really does make a point of celebrating Rafi and his daughter and sharing their story. It does include a little cultural background context, but this is a positive story that I think deserves to be shared :)

Then there’s this statement from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism that confirms its absolute acceptance and support of LGBT Jews.

On the other side of things, there are still homophobic and intolerant Jews. Conversion camps were not just a Christian thing, there were Jewish conversion camps as well, which is horrific. Idk what to say because I think homophobia and transphobia in Judaism is really similar to what you would find in Christian settings.

I’m bisexual and I feel completely welcomed by other Jews who know this about me, and I certainly don’t feel any less Jewish because of it.

I live in a place where Jewish spaces are rare.

I really hate to disappoint with this one but I don’t have any specific sources or anything like that. Alls I got to say is that’s why the internet is so great? I really don’t feel like that’s helpful at all, but I think for the most part, the Jewish side of tumblr is pretty accepting and welcoming. Obviously that’s not always gonna be true though idkdjaskfl;dj

I spose with this one I wanna encourage anyone who has any good resources for involvement or something like that to reply to this post or drop by my inbox and let me know! Or maybe just your thoughts on some Jewish spaces you’ve encountered?

I hope this was helpful

In conclusion, don’t let anyone make you feel less Jewish. Your sexual identity, gender identity, and even your belief in G-d doesn’t take away from your Jewishness. I’d like to say that since I started delving into Judaism a little more I’ve found a lot of peace. And yeah that sounds cliche and also vague but it’s really a breath of fresh air to learn about my family and know more about this community. Also if you’re comfortable with or willing to try prayer, even if you’re atheist, it can be a good way to decompress sometimes, a really therapeutic kind of way to voice your thoughts and feelings and reflect on them.

There’s so much information and culture to delve into but it’s so so worth it to learn and I’m really happy for you that you’re interested in getting more in touch with your Jewish roots.

If any of these links don’t work and you’d like to see them let me know!

#this took 78 years sorry #ok for anyone to rb #there are TYPOS galore I'm sorry #judaism

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