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kitomyx · 1 year ago

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CHARACTER BIO TEMPLATE

GENERAL INFORMATION

NAME: Kitomyx NICKNAMES/TITLES: Kit / Kit Paine (when playing human) SPECIES: Nobody (Shapeshifter) AGE: 32 HEIGHT: 6' 3" (190.5 cm) PRONOUNS: Any (Most commonly goes by 'he' or 'they') DATE OF BIRTH: 13 March 1991 NOTE-WORTHY ABILITIES: Shapeshifter, artist (mostly sketches of what he sees), highly adaptive/flexible (both literally and figuratively), high tolerance for pain, high kinetic ability, good overall control of his body, appreciation for life CURRENT RESIDENCE: Verse-dependent OCCUPATION: Verse-dependent; generally an artist of some sort AFFILIATIONS: Verse-dependent SPOKEN LANGUAGES: English

PERSONALITY

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic neutral ASSETS: The clothes off his back, his jewelry FLAWS: Heartless/emotionless without his heart (though acts on memories of his emotions to hide this), generally shameless, has trouble dealing with emotions, lack of imagination, lack of respect for personal boundaries, often comes off as a creep due to habits such as people-watching/sketching and flirting LIKES: Change, people, pleasure, pain, physical sensation, living in the moment, colors, drawing, stories, story-telling, symbolism, symbols of change (mood rings, chameleons, butterflies, dragonflies, etc.) DISLIKES: Getting wet, being stared at, being called childish/compared to a child, children, being emotional/emotions FEARS/PHOBIAS: Being overcome by emotions

CONNECTIONS

FAMILY: Tymiko (heart), Rakiak (younger brother) FRIENDS: Verse-dependent ROMANTIC INTEREST: Verse-dependent ENEMIES: Verse-dependent

FACTS AND TRIVIA

-Kit's element as a Nobody is change, so his primary ability is to shapeshift his body. His most common form (when not pretending to be outright human) is humanoid with cat ears on the sides of his head where human ears would be and a fur-tufted tail. Occasionally, when feeling particularly ostentatious, he manifests three sets of wings: feathered, insect, and leather. These seem to be more symbolic or for show than anything, though he can and does fly with them.

-He has a difficult relationship with Tymiko (the personification of his heart) which to an outsider may seem akin to a sibling relationship. As they are a part of the same person, he loves her as himself. However, their priorities, beliefs, and values differ quite a bit so they usually have trouble getting along (reflecting the self-conflict and inner turmoil they faced when they were one person). Kit embraces reality, change, and growth while Tymiko values staying the same, believes in defying reality with imagination, and fears growing up.

-The closer physical proximity he has to Tymiko, the more emotional Kit gets. Since he doesn't like to deal with emotions and fears being overwhelmed with them, he has a certain aversion to being around her which directly contradicts his instinct as a Nobody to rejoin his body and soul with his heart and his fascination with her as a person so opposingly different from himself. Thus he is simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by her at the same time, but constantly finds himself chasing after her and seeking her out when she escapes and hides from him.

-Though Kit fears being overwhelmed with emotions and dislikes having to deal with them, he considers the extremely emotional and temperamental Tymiko to be far stronger than him for enduring and experiencing those feelings (in contrast to her view that her strong emotions make her weak) and respects her for it.

-Despite his respect and love for her, Kit often doesn't know how to deal with Tymiko and her strong emotions/passionate outbursts/temper tantrums much like how adults often find it hard to relate to and thus deal with children. As a result, his default method of dealing with Tymiko is trying to temporarily shut her up somewhere (such as a locked room) when she seems as though she might get out of control.

-Kit dislikes children and being compared to them due to their generally egocentric perspectives and selfish natures. He considers these to be some of Tymiko's major flaws, especially when it comes to her wanting to stay a child forever because she doesn't seem to see what a selfish wish that is.

-Kit's dislike of being wet seems to have something to do with the symbolic connection between emotions and water as well as the fact that Tymiko, the personification of his heart (and therefore his emotions), is a water elemental. (She dresses as a pirate and goes by the title of 'Tymiko the Pirate Girl', however, due to her association with the worlds of Neverland and Pirates of the Carribean.)

-Kit's favorite/lucky numbers are 3 and 13 which may have something to do with his birthday (3/13) but also the symbolic significance of each number. (3: Heaven, Earth, Hell. Moraltiy, amorality, immorality. White, gray, black. 333: Only half evil. Etc.)

-Due to Kit's appreciation of change, colors, and physical sensation, his favorite piece of jewelry is a mood ring. Due to his appreciation of symbolism, change, and colors, his favorite animal is a chameleon and his favorite insect is a butterfly (specifically the Blue Morpho Butterfly).

-As a shapeshifter who can alter his appearance at will, Kit places very little value on people's personal appearances. He is, however, very interested in people themselves.

-Since (unlike Tymiko) he doesn't have much of an imagination, as an artist he mostly just draws what he sees and has become fairly good at it.

-Kit's favorite color is bright blue (specifically, hex code #0033ff) and he wears so much of it because it's Tymiko's favorite color. Ty claims it's her favorite color because, in her opinion, it's such a bright, intense, and highly-saturated blue that it defies the common association of the color blue with the emotion of sadness. As a result, the mere sight of it makes her happy and to her represents happiness itself. It also doesn't hurt that blue is the color most often associated with water.

-Being a character originating from the Kingdom Hearts multiverse/universe which in itself includes various worlds, Kit is also a multiverse character. Tymiko is the same, though her 'main world' is Neverland (despite also originating from the Pirates of the Carribean fandom which is where her title of 'pirate girl' comes from).

-Kit and Ty are both half Asian Indian, half Filipino in ethnicity.

-As beings of change and water respectively, Kit and Ty are both gender-fluid, but Kit most commonly associates with being male and Ty most commonly associates with being female.

-Because he can't feel emotionally without Tymiko around, Kit values what he can feel physically instead in order to make up for it. This is why he appreciates pain as much as pleasure - because both physical sensations remind him he his alive and living in the moment. And being a Nobody - a being who shouldn't exist but exists anyway - makes him value his existence that much more.

-As Nobodies are born when their hearts fall prey to darkness and despair, turning the corrupted hearts into Heartless and separating them from their bodies, Kitomyx (as a being made of a body and soul) was born when Tymiko (as his heart) succumbed to darkness due to her strong aversion to and denial of growing up, separating from Kit and becoming her own person. Since, as Kit's personified heart, Ty's newly-manifested body wasn't bound by the laws of reality that his was, she could stay a child, which suited her just fine. As Ty's actual body animated by the soul of the person she was, however, Kit continues to grow and change.

-One day, Kit would like to rejoin with Ty to become the former, complete person they once were yet again, but that would require Kit to be able to embrace, accept, and deal with the emotions Ty harbors while Ty would have to embrace, accept, and deal with the fact that Kit, as her body and soul, is an adult and doesn't deserve destruction just because of that simple fact.

-Just as Kit appreciates enjoying the present, living in the moment, and embracing the future, Ty prefers to reminisce on the past and her childhood and fears the future, change, and growth because she fears it will corrupt her as a person, further causing her to lose whatever innocence she has left as a child. As a result, she believes she is better off perishing in a fight against the reality that would force her to grow up than to actually do so and thus betray herself and her values of staying a child. Kit seeks to get her to see the merits of living a life past childhood, but it's difficult when Ty doesn't trust him because she believes him to already be corrupted by adulthood.

GENERAL INFORMATION

NAME:

NICKNAMES/TITLES:

SPECIES:

AGE:

HEIGHT:

PRONOUNS:

DATE OF BIRTH:

NOTE-WORTHY ABILITIES:

CURRENT RESIDENCE:

OCCUPATION:

AFFILIATIONS:

SPOKEN LANGUAGES:

PERSONALITY

ALIGNMENT:

ASSETS:

FLAWS:

LIKES:

DISLIKES:

FEARS/PHOBIAS:

CONNECTIONS

FAMILY:

FRIENDS:

ROMANTIC INTEREST:

ENEMIES:

OTHERS:

FACTS AND TRIVIA

#General information #((Blank under the cut!))#((Got this from codenamejudas but added 'height' to it))#OOC

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merrysithmas · 3 years ago

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*putting on my anakin apologist hat*

no one can ever fully understand or judge what Anakin/Vader went through because he is a literal demi-god made by the Force itself. THE FORCE. the intangible, all-powerful force. yes, his choices are his own but his path is out of his control as per his Force-determined destiny. this is canon, my dudes.

only those he encounters who have compassion (luke- his son, obiwan-forcebond dyad, padme -marriage) can even come close to understanding the suffering & confusion of his inner life. everyone else just uses him or sees him as evil (palpatine, the Sith, the Senate, even the Council to a small degree, - the Jedi are good but they still canonically used him as a tool to fulfill the prophecy).

anakin and vader can't be technically 100% beholden to human morality bc he is the ✨Force✨ itself. and at all times his destiny is directed by the Force's will in response to the behaviors of those around him. in an ideal world, he could have just killed sidious and helped retrofit the Order, but he couldn't pull that out of thin air because destiny is complex and involves the wills, actions, and desires of many other people coinciding.

he fights becoming evil with all that's in him- until he finally falls when faced with a choice... not for the gain of power or to express hate because that is not Anakin! destiny instead uses his love for his child and Padme against him.

palpatine manipulates him with love because Anakin is full of love at his heart!!

even as Vader reigns supreme Anakin surfaces to free Obi-wan of guilt in OWK.

he has two halves, anakin and vader, just like the FORCE because he IS the force. anakin is goodness. vader is evil incarnate. he is both. he is a god of Balance.

he was literally born to fall and create balance, one way or the other. yet he fought it, with his human soul, every step of the way.

he is a tragic hero who fulfills his destiny and then !!!! returns to the good prime ego Anakin, to be a Jedi (his life long wish), with all the wisdom and knowledge of suffering borne from his time as Vader, accepting both as his identity, as the personification of what we all (and The Galaxy) must learn....

stop fighting with ourselves & each other. take responsibility for our choices even if we couldn't help it.

he realizes something few else realized (not the Sith or Jedi): he like us all, are Both!!

therefore, he becomes a true Master and is allowed to live an eternal life at one and at peace, with Obi-wan.

mic drop

#anakin skywalker #i shant stand for the slander of my daughter anakin #he wasnt born evil!!! he makes bad choices but he also has a destiny which he fought v e r y hard #and he is and isnt vader #he has two halves just like the FORCE itself #lol i have to make a post like this every day to live #obi wan kenobi #vader and anakin are both awesome theyre not human tho #obi wan is a true master in the force as a ghost bc he realizes forgiveness is key to change not JUST goodness!#forgiveness compassion and goodness #forgiveness for himself and others esp Anakin

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meta-squash · 4 years ago

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Brick Club 1.8.4 “Authority Gains Its Power”

“Fantine had not seen Javert since the day the mayor had saved her from him. Her sick brain could not grasp anything except that she was sure he had come for her.” This makes me wonder about Fantine’s grasp on time while she’s been ill. It’s been two months since she first fell ill, but it seems like she thinks it’s been almost no time.

“Javert did not say “Hurry up!” he said, “Hur-up!” No spelling could express the tone in which this was said it was no longer human speech; it was a howl.” FMA really doubling down on the wolf imagery here translating “rugissement” as howl instead of roar. I love it.

“To him Jean Valjean was a sort of mysterious and intangible antagonist, a shadowy wrestler with whom he had been struggling for five years, without being able to throw him. This arrest was not a beginning, but an end.” This line and the one from the beginning of the chapter about Fantine thinking Javert has come for her secures him once again as a sort of Angel Of Death for both of them. This arrest is the literal end for Fantine and the symbolic end for Madeleine-Valjean.

Also this line establishes just how much Madeleine’s real identity has consumed Javert’s thoughts in the past 5 years that he’s been a major community leader. It hasn’t just been a passing “huh, this guy really reminds me of that convict Valjean from Toulon” type thing for Javert. It’s been a sort of conflict and, probably since the cart incident at least, an obsession. It’s also interesting because it seems to establish Javert as believing that Valjean was his responsibility, and coming to that belief as soon as he learned about Valjean’s theft of Petit Gervais’ coin. Like, Valjean is not an antagonist he’s struggled with only since Madeleine became mayor and this person Javert maybe suspected suddenly became more high-profile, it’s an internal conflict he’s had since the robbery was reported, which probably wasn’t more than 6 months after its occurrence (I would assume). Javert’s wasn’t just obsessing over Madeleine possibly being Valjean because maybe finding a wanted convict would be good for his name or whatever, he was obsessing over it because he fully felt it was his responsibility to find this wanted man.

Jean Valjean is no longer Madeleine to the reader. Hugo’s narration only calls him Jean Valjean, the full name, this entire chapter. His old identity has been pulled away and he can no longer wrap M Madeleine around himself. And he’s only going to be Jean Valjean or Madeleine for another chapter; the next time we see him after that, he’ll be Prisoner Number 9430. For a long time in the narration he was Madeleine, then he was just “the man” and variations thereupon, then he was both “Madeleine” and “Valjean” and now he is only Valjean.

The weirdest thing in this chapter is that Hugo blatantly states that Sister Simplice is in the room with them this entire time. She is here and she does absolutely nothing. I mean, this is understandable. Not only is she a woman, but she also doesn’t have any sort of leverage over either of them in any other way. She’s just a nun, just a woman of the church (and not even a woman, according to Hugo, she’s something else entirely), and she can’t really do anything to stop Valjean’s arrest or appeal to Javert or anything. But in the next chapter Javert is literally stopped from entering by Simplice’s Authority of Religiosity. So why isn’t he stopped by her religiosity here? Because this is a mirror of Fantine in 1.5.13, begging Javert for mercy and Javert telling her that “The Eternal Father in person couldn’t help you now.” Again, the law is above god here, and again he will not be moved to mercy, even by god.

“She saw the spy Javert seize the mayor by the collar: she saw the mayor bow his head. The world seemed to vanish before her eyes. Javert, in fact, had taken Jean Valjean by the collar.”

This is pretty obvious, but Madeleine is literally turning into Valjean before Fantine’s eyes. I love the way that Hugo says it though. I get the sense that it’s not just that Javert is seeing Valjean as Valjean now, but that Madeleine’s entire demeanor has changed. So he’s literally not taking Madeleine by the collar, because his demeanor would have been Madeleine’s; he’s taking Valjean by the collar, because he’s dropped the Madeleine act (at least at this very moment).

“Aloud, speak aloud. People speak out loud to me.” Ugh god this line is just so self-serving and shitty. This isn’t Javert being morally righteous via the law or acting as society personified. This is just Javert being petty and shitty because he was humiliated by Madeleine before, and now he wants that personal power reversed.

“Javert stamped his foot.” Is this meant to be as childish as it sounds? This is a really intense moment, but Javert is weirdly powerless as both Valjean and Fantine start talking back in their own ways, refusing to go quietly.

“Miserable town, where convicts are magistrates and prostitutes are nursed like countesses! Ha, but all that will be changed, high time!” It’s so interesting that Javert says this now, because it’s revealed later that after Madeleine left, Montreuil-sur-Mer’s prosperity crumbled. Which means that the town will go back to being like any other poor, garrisoned town, with a prostitution trade and plenty of depths of depravity. And I think we’re supposed to think that without Madeleine there to run a system that helps to uphold the morals and productivity and prosperity of the town, it’ll just fall back into corruption. Except that all of that depravity already existed under Madeleine’s leadership, it was just hidden better than maybe it would be if the whole town was failing. So once he leaves, yes, probably the prostitutes and criminals etc will be treated the way Javert wants them to be treated, rather than with any sort of sympathy or willingness to listen and mediate that Madeleine maybe offered to some but not all.

Fantine’s death is, I think, the only death in the book that gets such a visceral description. M. Pontmercy is already dead when we see him, Eponine just puts her head on Marius’ knee, Gavroche’s death is fairly poetic, all of Les Amis get their deaths described but they’re all so quick it’s like a montage, Javert’s actual death isn’t described. Mabeuf’s death might be the closest in terms of intense description, but Fantine’s definitely is the most detailed. Also, we get more drowning imagery. If Javert is the personification of the Law and the justice system, he is part of what tosses the unfortunate into the night-sea of prison and the mud of poverty. She is drowning because what killed her is also what drowns the poor. And I think it’s interesting that she looks to each of them, trying to speak, but she can’t reach anyone. She can’t speak to Jean Valjean (note that he’s not Madeleine here) because she doesn’t know Jean Valjean, and he’s no longer her savior, she can’t speak to Javert because he will not bend and has no mercy, and she can’t speak to the nun because currently authority will not bow to religion and she knows that because it didn’t bow to religion the last time. Now that Valjean has no power to free her, she can’t go to him. Also, I want to know the significance of her head hitting the headboard. Hugo doesn’t have her just fall back onto the pillow; she bangs her head first, like a strange sort of last injustice.

I also feel like the actual actions of Fantine’s death as well as Valjean whispering in her ear afterward have some sort of religious parallel that I’m not catching because I don’t know enough?

Also just ugh. Fantine dies knowing that Cosette is not out there, that Cosette is not anywhere near here, and that she will not see Cosette. It’s just such a horrible, blunt betrayal after she was so full of hope. I wonder if that’s why (later) Valjean can’t talk to Cosette about her? He doesn’t know how to confront the fact that, intentional or not, he had a hand in this betrayal? It makes sense that it is at this moment that she dies. She has been holding on for Cosette, the hope of seeing Cosette has been keeping her alive. Now, she has the realization that Cosette is not in M-sur-M, and then almost immediately after has the realization that Madeleine is not going to be able to go and retrieve Cosette.

“Jean Valjean put his hand on that of Javert, which was holding him, and opened it as he would have opened the hand of a child; then he said, “You have killed this woman.”

There’s so much child-behavior in Javert in this chapter, and I’m not sure what to make of it. The stamping of the foot, the sort of loud, frustrated insistence of respect, this opening of his hand, the way he yells at Valjean to listen to him or it’s the handcuffs and Valjean just ignores him. Javert is so impatient here and Valjean is so grave and calm. But that’s how it seems to be from now on. @everyonewasabird talked in his last post about how this is actually where Javert’s fall is, or at least where it begins. I totally agree with that, because it’s also where his grave, stable behavior starts to falter. In the last chapter, he was gleeful. In this chapter, he’s impatient. In Paris, we won’t see him display behavior this extreme until he’s at the barricade, but his behavior still seems different from the Javert we originally met. Much as I adore the “Would you like my hat?” line, it’s so dramatic and, I don’t know, sort of smug? Which I could see this current Javert doing, but not Javert from 1.6.2 or earlier. This whole episode has caused, as Hugo said, an inner earthquake for Javert, and I think it literally changes his entire personality. Not drastically, nothing crazy, but it does what an earthquake might do: it shifts some things around, changes his inner terrain just enough that it looks totally familiar but the ground he’s walking on is just a little rougher than before.

I’m so glad my post from a couple chapters ago included that comment about Javert and Valjean’s back-and-forth conflict because! This shift in power! Now it’s Valjean who is righteous and Valjean that is terrifying and Valjean that has the control! This chapter is just a fencing match between the two of them. Valjean starts off mildly more powerful: Javert doesn’t touch him while Fantine’s eyes are closed; it’s only when she opens them again that he again has the power over her and over Valljean. He takes Valjean by the collar and Valjean doesn’t attempt to struggle or get free. Once Fantine is dead, Valjean again assumes control and opens Javert’s hand like it’s nothing. I sort of feel like he still kind of retains the upper hand (at least morally) even at the very end when he gives himself up to Javert’s disposal. (Also, it’s interesting that Valjean has the control when Fantine isn’t looking, but Javert has control when she is. Not sure what to make of that.)

Javert’s retreat to the door is so odd. It feels so calm and detached. He doesn’t actually seem frightened or threatened by Valjean’s diy truncheon. I wonder if this is Javert’s version of the way that Valjean does things on autopilot when he’s in shock. Everything that’s happening is just so stunning that when Valjean moves away from him, Javert just automatically moves to the door. And his decision not to call the guard feels like he’s making excuses? It’s pretty obvious at this point that Valjean isn’t going to move from Fantine’s bedside until he’s ready. Except that at this point, Valjean is the one with the control, and the conflict is between him and Javert. Calling the guard adds another element and upsets the balance.

“His iron bar in hand, Jean Valjean walked slowly toward Fantine’s bed. On reaching it, he turned and said to Javert in a voice that could scarcely be heard, “I advise you not to disturb me now.” Nothing is more certain than the fact that Javert shuddered.” My first thought is: I don’t know what to make of this? Is Javert scared? Overwhelmed? Confused? Feeling Valjean’s authority? My second thought is: this is the start of Javert’s eventual change at the end of the novel. He cannot admit it to himself here, but he’s seeing Valjean act with the same selflessness and mercy that he’ll see with himself at the barricades and Marius at the sewers. His inner change can’t happen until then, but I wonder if this affects his later ability to change how he sees Valjean.

Fantine does get, like, the closest thing to a happy ending that any of the dead people in this book can get. Whatever Valjean tells or promises her, her spirit seems to hear and smiles. She suffers so much at the hands of society, at the hands of everyone, and she dies in betrayal and misery. It’s like the least Hugo could do was give her soul some sort of happiness after the fact.

#les miserables #les miserables meta #brickclub #lm 1.8.4 #les mis #les mis meta #i'm sorry if some of this is weird or only kind of comprehensible i am in a MOOD tonight #also Valvert shippers I'm truly starting to understand you

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dyonisia96 · 5 years ago

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Jane Eyre’s ghosts

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte’s most famous work, has been influenced by the “female gothic” genre, which focuses on heroines faced with dangerous situations.

The source of danger in Jane Eyre is ambiguous: even if some happenings are presented as supernatural or unexplainable, most of the time they are an expression of the subconscious or a way through which horrible deeds committed by flawed human beings are illustrated.

The gothic tones present in the novel underline how under the facade of everyday life, women’s lives at the time were characterized by anxiety and fear for their fates, together with anger for their limited condition.

Jane’s ghosts, the traumas that will torment her for her whole life, are born in the Red Room, where she is unjustly locked in by her aunt. This room represents all the injustices, cruelties and social isolation she was and will be subjected to further in the novel. And here, for the first time, she experiences an unexplainable event:

“I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world.”

Ghosts in the novel can be seen as “personifications of unconscious processes and of vital energies undergoing change, conflict or integration”. They are not ghosts in a literal sense, but residues of the past, of unsolved problems that keep resurfacing in Jane’s life, getting stronger and more concrete every time she suppresses her inner traumas and anger.

The apex of her ghostly experiences is the encounters with Bertha Mason in Thornfield Hall.

“Most important, her confrontation, not with Rochester but with Rochester’s mad wife Bertha, is the book’s central confrontation, an encounter […] not with her own sexuality but with her own imprisoned “hunger, rebellion, and rage,” a secret dialogue of self and soul on whose outcome, as we shall see, the novel’s plot, Rochester’s fate, and Jane’s coming-of-age all depend.”

Bertha is not a ghost by the literal definition of the term, however she is a ghost of the woman she used to be: Rochester’s first wife, gone mad after leaving her land and marrying someone she did not love. She lives confined in the attic - in literature often a symbol of the mind -, and she behaves like a ghost, lurking around whenever she is able to escape Grace Poole’s watch and haunting Thornfield Hall.

Jane often hears Bertha’s laughter and noises coming from the other rooms, and she initially cannot explain these occurrences, attributing them to Grace Poole. However, according to Gilbert and Gubar’s “Madwoman in the Attic”, “Bertha […] is Jane’s truest and darkest double: she is the angry aspect of the orphan child, the ferocious secret self Jane has been trying to repress ever since her days at Gateshead.”

And it is curious to observe how every time Bertha acts in a violent manner or makes her presence known - by either laughing or screaming, or even when she tries to set fire to Rochester’s bed -, this is always linked to an episode of Jane trying to repress her anger towards an event that has hurt her.

This will all culminate in the destruction of Thornfield Hall, “the symbol of Rochester’s mastery and of her own servitude”, and in the destruction of Bertha herself, who will finally purify Jane from her anger and her darkest side, allowing her to live with Rochester.

“To free Jane, the demon-woman must die, which happens after Jane has left Thornfield and found her good relatives and sense of stability and belonging and identity she long have wished and searched for.”

However, Jane is not the only one Bertha Mason haunts: Rochester is the man to hold responsible for the very creation of this restless ghost, and, unlike Jane, he does not come to terms with his wife until she becomes so destructive she almost kills him and destroys the house.

Rochester at the end is saved - at the price of his eyes and a hand - only because he tried to save Bertha from the fire, having mercy on the ghost who haunted him and facing his guilt and responsibility linked to marrying someone not for love, but in order to have their money, social status and wealth.

Even though he is mutilated, he appears to be stronger, “for now, like Jane, he draws his powers from within himself, rather than from inequity, disguise, deception”. In fact, in the course of the novel, Rochester often disguises himself - an example is the moment when he dresses like a gypsy and pretends to tell Jane’s future, in the hope of taking a love confession out of her.

Only after surviving the horrors of the past and coming to terms with their own, respective ghosts, Jane and Rochester can finally be together as equals: the first after learning to value herself and not follow in Bertha Mason’s steps, becoming a ghost of herself and of a woman, and the second after reconciling with his past, deceiving self, who married for convenience instead of love and respect.

Bibliography:

- AA.VV., Il Libro dei Simboli, Riflessioni sulle Immagini Archetipiche, Taschen, 2011.

- Andersson, A., Identity and Independence in Jane Eyre, Mid Sweden University, 2011.

- Bronte, C., Jane Eyre, Project Gutenberg, 2007, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1260/1260-h/1260-h.htm.

- Gilbert S.M., Gubar S., The Madwoman in the Attic - The woman writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary imagination, Second Edition, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1979, 1984.

#dyonisia writes #essay #jane eyre #english literature #academic writing

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pamphletstoinspire · 6 years ago

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A LANDSCAPE WITH DRAGONS - The Battle for Your Child’s Mind - Part 2

A story written by: Michael D. O’Brien

________

Chapter II

The Shape of Reality — Seeing the True Form

Just a Fairy Story?

Shortly after our children’s exposure to dinosaurs, I began to read fairy tales aloud to them. As they listened over the years, they each heard the story on different levels. Interestingly, sometimes a five-year-old could grasp a subtle point an older sibling had missed, yet it was clear that they were all tapping into the mysterious power of Story. I rummaged through attics, library sales, and used-book stores in search of as much old literature as I could find. I even began to plunder the attics and box-rooms of my own imagination, inventing bedtime stories for them. This strained my imagination somewhat, and some of the stories were better than others, but a little goes a long way in a family. The children began to compose their own as well, and there were nights when bedtime became rather an elaborate affair. Telling “pretend” stories naturally stimulated a flow of accounts of real happenings. The children began to regard the day-to-day events of their fives as the material of their stories. Conversation grew; communication expanded. As we developed into a full-blown storytelling family, I noticed something interesting happening in our children’s play. First of all, they began to find playing more exciting. Also, they acted out the fundamental dramas of the cosmic struggle between good and evil, embellishing and revising them with startling ingenuity. I gradually came to understand the universal love among all peoples for “fairy stories”.

In his masterful essay “On Fairy Stories”,1 J. R. R. Tolkien describes the vital role played by these tales in the cultures of the world. They contain rich spiritual knowledge. The sun may be green and the fish may fly through the air, but however fantastical the imagined world, there is retained in it a faithfulness to the moral order of the actual universe. The metaphors found in the literary characters are not so much random chimeras as they are reflections of our own invisible world, the supernatural. Whether in dreams or conscious imagination, the powers of the mind (and one must see here the powers of the human spirit) are engaged in what Tolkien calls “sub-creation”. By this he means that man, reflecting his divine Creator, is endowed with gifts to incarnate invisible realities in forms that make them understandable.

For example, magic has been used traditionally in fairy stories to give a visible form to the invisible spiritual powers. But a crucial distinction must be made between the use of “good magic” and “bad magic” as they appear in fairy stories, because for us in the real world, there is no such thing as good magic, only prayer, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and abandonment to divine providence. “Good magic” in traditional fairy stories represents these very realities, symbolizing the intervention of God in the lives of good men put to the test. It is actually a metaphor for grace and miracle, the suspension of natural law through an act of spiritual authority, culminating in a reinforced moral order.

Bad magic in traditional stories represents the evil power that the wicked use in order to grasp at what does not rightly belong to hem — whether worldly power, wealth, or even love. It is also a metaphor for the intervention of the enemies of God, the evil spirits, in the lives of wicked men. As Saint Paul says, “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual host of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

Good magic and bad magic in truthful stories correspond to true religion and false religion in our real world. True religion is the search of the soul for God in order to surrender itself to him, the search for his will in order to fulfill it, the search for truth in order to conform to it. False religion is the inverse. It makes a god out of oneself; it makes one’s own will supreme; it attempts to reshape reality to fit one’s own desires. True religion is about surrender, while false religion is about control. Most of us do not learn about the nature of reality through theology, philosophy, or higher mathematics. But all of us readily grasp the language of a parable drawn from the universal human story. The forms may be dressed in elaborate costumes and enact impossible dramas, but they enable the lover of tales to step outside of himself for a brief time to gaze upon his own disguised world. What is the value of this temporary detachment? It is an imaginative withdrawal from the tyranny of the immediate, the flood of words and sensory images that often overwhelm (and just as often limit) our understanding of the real world. A rare objectivity and insight can be imparted regarding this world’s struggle for spiritual integrity. In the land of Faerie, the reader may see his small battles writ large in the wars of titans or elves and understand for the first time his own worth. He is involved, not in a false or spurious world, but in the sub-creation of a more real world (though obviously not a literal one). I say more real because a good author clears away the rampant undergrowth of details that make up the texture of everyday life, that crowd our minds and blur our vision. He artfully selects and focuses so that we see clearly the hidden shape of reality.

Dragons in Myth, Legend, and Faerie

The term “fairy tale” is used rather loosely, for many of these stories are not about fairies as such but deal with a variety of supernatural beings and imaginative happenings. Ancient hero tales, nursery stories, riddle-songs, legends, myths — all have their place in what is really a very broad field of literature. There are countless tales from hundreds of races and language groups, many dating back thousands of years. With very few exceptions, they display a surprising uniformity in their depiction of good and evil: good is good, and evil is evil.

A rich treasure trove of such fiction grew with the passing of centuries. A pattern of symbols emerged that signified real presences in the invisible world. Beautiful winged persons represented unseen guardians and messenger spirits. At the opposite end of the spectrum, dragons (and a host of other monsters) represented the fiendishly clever spirits that sought mans destruction. These symbols were common to so many races and cultures that they were practically universal. But they were also well suited to the spiritual insights of Christian civilization. The shape of these symbols told the reader in a flash some essential information regarding the invisible realm — a realm that long predated Judeo-Christian civilization and was, even then, a spiritual battleground.

Dragons, for example, appear spontaneously in much of the literature of the ancient world, long before paleontology gave us knowledge of the dinosaurs. Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Roman, Aztec, and some Oriental mythologies are full of gargantuan reptiles, and their nature is almost always depicted as malicious and sly. They are frequently associated with “the gods”. In the Egyptian religion, Apophis was the great serpent of the realm of darkness, vanquished by the sun god Ra. In Chaldea the goddess Tiamat, symbol of primeval chaos, took the form of a dragon. A close relation exists especially between dragon myths and the mother goddess cults, which explains in part the persistence of human sacrifice in such religions. The dragon god devours human blood and is placated, which is a diabolical reverse image of Christ’s sacrifice.

The symbol is not perfectly universal: In some Asian cultures dragons are considered good luck, or at worst a mixture of good and evil. Even Greek and Roman mythology, though it bequeathed ample warnings about the terrifying brood of Medusa, the Gorgons, Hydra, Chimaera, and so forth, did at times regard the dragon serpent as a clever dweller of the inner earth, a knower of secrets, an oracle. This ambiguity is due to the blurred distinctions between good and evil in dualistic Eastern religions and in those early Western cultures influenced to a degree by the East. But in Western civilization, founded on the clearer vision of Judaism and flowering in the fuller revelation of the New Testament, the symbol of the dragon sharpened into focus, assuming its definitive identity. Thus, in the literature of the West dragons Have been regarded as powerful agents of evil, guardians of stolen treasure hoards, destroyers of the good and the weak (children, maidens, small idyllic kingdoms), and, on the spiritual level, a personification of Satan prowling through the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Some modern mythologists lamely attempt to explain dragons as an inheritance from the age of dinosaurs, a kind of fossil-memory lingering on in the subconscious. But this theory does not explain why the image of the dragon is so universal when, say, that of the mastodon is not—surely, the prehistoric mammoth would just as deeply impress itself on the mind of primitive man. Neither does the theory explain why there exists alongside the mytho-poetic legends another body of writings that discuss dragon encounters in the factual language of a news report. There are, for example, some forty medieval accounts of encounters with dragons in England. Several of them describe Catholic bishops and missionaries overcoming the dragons by spiritual authority. More frequently the sword is used.

With the rise of Christendom, the slaying of dragons became the crowning achievement of heroes such as Siegmund, Beowulf, Arthur and even Lancelot, the great ideal of medieval chivalry. Beowulf was the earliest English epic poem written in the Anglo-Saxon tongue, sometime between the ninth and tenth centuries. It offers a stirring depiction of the battleground and can be read to children once they develop a taste for the heroic style. Through such tales, universal truths entered the world of literary culture and were passed down. If they functioned in some respects like ancient mythology, they were myths with a crucial difference. Actual dragons may or may not have existed, but that is not our main concern here. What is important is that the Christian “myth” of the dragon refers to a being who actually exists and who becomes very much more dangerous to us the less we believe he exists.

Perhaps the worst of the demythologizing in recent literature is the message that the basic stories of the Christian faith, especially the Paschal Mystery, are merely our variation on universal myths. It is suggested that many cultures have tales about a hero who is killed and then returns to life. G. K. Chesterton pointed out, however, that the demythologizer’s position really adds up to this: Since a truth has impressed itself deeply in the imagination of a vast number of people of varying times and cultures, therefore it simply cannot be true. The demythologizer does not consider the possibility that people of all times and places may have been informed at a deep, intuitive level of an actual event that would one day take place in history, that would be, in fact, the most important event ever to occur.

The dragon has a vested interest in having us dismiss the account of the battle as make-believe. It is not to his benefit that we imitating our Lord the King, should take up arms against him. He thinks it better that we do not consider him dangerous. Of course, the well-nourished imagination knows that dragons are not frightening because of fangs, scales, and smoke pouring from nostrils. The imagination fed on truth knows that the serpent is a symbol of hatred and deceit, of evil knowledge and power without conscience. If dragons do exist, it is not in the form of green steam engines or painted Chinese masks or overgrown lizards. The dragon that takes no form is the worst kind, and I would rather it not prowl around the neighborhood I call home. Most of all I do not want it infesting my children’s minds. I do not want them befriending it, either, nor do I want it calming their instinctive good fears and perhaps in the process taking possession of their very selves.

At this point I may sound somewhat contradictory. It seems that I do not want dragons in my children’s minds, I say, and yet at the same time I want them to read plenty of stories in which there are dragons that act like dragons and meet a dragon’s end. In fact there is no contradiction here. It is the real dragon against which I want my children armed. Their interior life has need of the tales that inform them of their danger and instruct them at deep levels about the tactics of their enemy. It is good that our children fear dragons, for in the fearing, they can learn to overcome fear with courage. Dragons cannot be tamed, and it is fatal to enter into dialogue with them. The old stories have taught our children this. There have actually been suicides brought about through the “Dungeons and Dragons” cult among adolescents. But it is very important to note that this tragedy is not the result of overheating the young imagination with too much make-believe. On the contrary, it is the result of not believing in dragons until it is too late, of thinking it “just a game”. It is the logical consequence of our ignorance of this principle: The imagination must be fed good food, or it will become the haunt of monsters.

I do not want our children to grow up believing in the actual presence of dragons. But the child who learns fairy stories knows that flying horses and fire-breathing serpents are not to be confused with the cows in our neighbor’s field. Some writers suggest that children do not grasp the meanings in symbol and allegory. This is simply untrue. They may not be able to articulate it in adult terminology, but the young, even the very young, are able to reach across the gap between the real and the sub-created world and find the truths within the mysterious events that are the cosmic drama. They have a natural sense that something mysterious, wonderful, and useful is hidden within the tale, not so much like those trick pictures in which they must find how many bunnies are hidden in the bushes. More like stepping into a marvelous new kingdom where they stand in awe before the fact that angels and dragons are there. The child then asks himself, “Why are they there? And why is it like that?”

Answering the Critics of Fairy Stories

Modern critics of the fairy story have sometimes objected that the world it presents is too simplistic. They maintain that beautiful heroes and heroines are too much aligned with good, and the physically ugly characters are used too much to represent evil. Such an argument is obviously the result of too cursory a glance at fairy tales. There are many stories in which bad characters have, a beautiful appearance. There are some in which ugly creatures have noble princes and princesses hidden inside of them. Generally, however, it is true that the exterior forms that many traditional authors give to the morally or spiritually ugly character tend to be ugly forms. Likewise, beautiful forms tend to express a beautiful interior life. This is a literary device that works well to reinforce the child’s budding awareness of interior ugliness and beauty. Children are not so colossally naive as to think nice-looking people are always nice or that unattractive-looking people are bad. My children know from infancy onward that their grandmother (bad teeth, liverspots, and a big tummy) is the most beautiful person in their life. She loves. She is kind. She listens to them. Also, in their short lives they have met more than one beautiful-looking person who is manipulative, sarcastic, and abuser, of others. They instinctively dislike such people, for their image is not consistent with their substance. Children know this is how the real world works.

We seem to have lost sight of a keystone that was firmly in place in the culture of classical civilization, one that has been crumbling in the West for a long time and at an accelerated rate since the industrial and the technological revolutions. We have lost our sense of the holiness of beauty, our intuition that at some level it reflects back to him who is perfect Beauty. If a bad character betrays that beauty by sin, this in no way negates the authenticity of beauty. By the same token, when exterior beauty is in harmony with a character��s interior beauty, then the sign value of the tale or the character is greatly enhanced. Similarly, when worship of God is done poorly, it is not necessarily invalid if the intention of the worshiper is sincere. But when it is done well, it is a greater sign of the coming glory when all things will be restored in Christ. Clearly God is better glorified by a humble hunchback mumbling badly phrased prayers in a ditch than by a proud aesthete singing hymns perfectly, solely as an art form. Yes, give us that poor, godly hunchback over the vain successful man, rich in his religiosity! But what if the beautiful heart of that hunchback were to dwell in the developed art of the aesthete? Would not a greater glory be rendered to God by the restoration to harmony of both substance and form? In literature we have a medium in which it is possible to express this and, more than that, in which it is possible to show our children that it is possible to live this.

Some modern critics have accused the traditional fairy story of being too fixated on punishment of evil characters. They maintain that children are being conditioned to want revenge, that violent instincts are being incorporated into their personalities, and that they will grow up lacking compassion. Such anxieties stem from the modern preoccupation with peace at all costs, from exaggerated fears about conflict, and from the mistaken belief that sin can be educated out of fallen human nature. Such people believe that children (especially male children) will grow up to be happy nonviolent adults if they are prevented from playing with toy weapons. This is naive. Little boys deprived of toy swords and guns will simply make their own out of anything that comes to hand (such as Lego, sticks, and even pieces of toast). I draw the line at buying plastic machine guns or bazookas for my children, but I do not consider it unhealthy to spend an hour in the woods with my son finding just the right willow sapling to bend into a bow for him. The principle at stake in this issue is not so much our laudable desires to raise compassionate children. The real question is: What approach will best raise compassionate and courageous children? Normal childhood play, riddled with joys and conflicts as it always has been, “educates” at a profound level. The secret is not to deprive a child of his sword but to make the sword with him and teach him a code of honor. In other words, chivalry. Responsibility. Character. Justice. It is a distinctly modern prejudice that holds that a boy with a sword will probably run it through his little sister. The truth of the matter is, most boys, unless they are mentally disturbed, quickly learn that it is far more heroic, exciting, and rewarding to protect a little sister with that very sword by chasing off dragons and bullies.

Unlike the sword or bow and arrow, the mystique of the gun is something of a different problem in the modern era, because it means different things to different people. The word stimulates immediate emotional response in everyone. For those who live in rural areas, where a gun is used for protecting livestock from predators or providing food for one’s family, it is like any other useful but dangerous tool. Is it reasonable to propose that we can create a safer world by eliminating references to guns? Can we clean up humanity by sanitizing literature? If so, should we also drop all references to cooking because sometimes an irate housewife will throw a rolling pin at her husband, or banish references to chain saws because sometimes people have accidents with them when cutting firewood, weed out every reference to automobiles because many people use them badly and even kill others with them? After all, a far greater number of people die violently as victims of car crashes than die at the wrong end of a gun, or a sword, or a bow and arrow. For the urbanite, however, guns conjure up images of Belfast, Bosnia, gang wars, and high school murders. But this, I believe, has more to do with the power of television than the influence of fairy stories—I suspect that terrorists and drug lords have read very few.

It has been suggested that fairy stories would be much improved if they were rewritten without references to weapons, violence, and punishment. Perhaps a few of the Grimm brothers’ tales would benefit a little from this, but to apply such “cultural cleansing” to the entire field of children’s literature is really a symptom of naïveté about human nature and about the role of literature. The point we must keep in mind is that the fairy story is a literary heritage, containing the imperfections that fallen human creators bring to their art. If we were to try to cleanse every work of traces of original sin, we would have to burn a great deal of the literature of the world, and a fair portion of the Bible as well. In the Gospels, for example, Judas does not end well. Neither does Herod, nor a host of odious characters in the Old Testament. “Where is compassion in those texts?” we might ask ourselves, “Where is mercy?” I think the answer, at least in literature, is that stories teach us, and this passing on of the truth is their chief act of mercy. Part of their task is to warn us, to posit the possibility of damnation. Furthermore, a literary figure is not in fact a suffering person but an image in the mind. And the dire image of a witch’s death may suggest in the mind of a child that witchcraft is so absolutely a violation of their souls, of their personhood, that a dire punishment is warranted. Even very young children realize that no one is going to make a witch dance herself to death in red-hot shoes (a cruel and unusual punishment if there ever was one). No, the modern witch will be left very much to do as she pleases—perhaps have an interview on a morning talk show, write a best-selling book, or gather a group of devotees about herself. At worst, she may have to suffer some insensitive comments from her critics.

The fairy story is not an incitement to violence; it is an incitement to reflection on the truth. It does not really propose violence against the sinner (the witch); it reminds us to do violence against the sin (in this case, witchcraft), but more importantly against our own sins, just as the Scriptures command us to do—“If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out!” The merit of a bad end to a bad fictional character is that it imparts a warning about the act. There are worse things than turning into a donkey or dancing to death in red-hot shoes, eternal damnation and diabolical possession being two of them.

The concept of justice is not always easy to grasp, especially in a culture that has been conditioned to exalt rights at the expense of responsibilities, that suffers from the impression that punishment is always a cruel thing. One of law’s important functions is to instruct and to deter on an objective level those whose inhumanity (and they will always be with us) impels them toward the ruthless use of other human beings. There is great need for a return to objective warning signs strong enough to prevail over the massive subjectivization of the modern mind — a mind, by the way, that has abandoned the stern messages of right and wrong that one finds in traditional fairy stories; a mind that is instead pumped full of images that glamorize the diabolical. Without dear deterrents, the imagination will soon be influenced by, and eventually infested by, many demons. If that process is not reversed, the malformed mind, pacified by neutered concepts of justice and mercy will find itself without defenses; it may even in the end come to believe that evil is good, and good is evil.

The purpose of dragons in literature, and of the fascination children have for them, is to arm the soul with an ever-developing, discernment of spirits. The purpose of the fairy tale is not to breed superstition but rather to defend the mind against superstition. As I write this I am gazing out the window at an epic being enacted on our hillside. The children are galloping over a yellow carpet of birch leaves on this sunny afternoon, running through the woods with swords they have cut from branches and silver shields they have borrowed from the tops of our trash cans. They are stalking the shadows lurking in the forests and caves. They are armed with homemade bows and arrows, willow rods bent to the breaking point by twine, and wobbly shafts outfitted with chicken feathers and armed with arrowheads they have chipped from stone. Are we training them to be aggressive little militarists? Not at all. They seem rather kind and gentle children, until roused by a real enemy — dragons, for instance.

They do seem to be developing a great deal of character, and it might be important to note here that violent people, on the whole, tend to be lacking in character. The children’s play is filled with an implicit moral consciousness of natural and supernatural law, even when, on occasion, they break that law. The point is, they know the law — and the spirit of it.

It is encouraging for us to see how their friends are drawn magnetically to the fantasy life of our young tale-bearers. A community of questers is born on an ordinary Saturday afternoon. For a brief, burning moment they know that nothing is ordinary, least of all themselves. When the moral order of the universe is reinforced, as it is for these children, man begins to know who he is, where he is, and what he is for. When the moral order of the universe is corrupted, his perception of reality itself collapses. The collapse may be slow or rapid, but the end result is a mass submersion into a swamp, in which creation is radically devalued, life becomes meaningless, and man, no longer able to know himself, is driven to desperate escape measures.

________

1 The essay can be found in J. R. R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1988).

#a landscape with dragons

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the-signs-of-two · 7 years ago

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The East Wind: Understanding Eurus (3 of 3)

In the third and final part of this meta series, we will be looking at the events of TFP through the interpretational lens introduced previously, that is in the first and second part of this meta which can be found here and here. In those metas, I argued that the main conflict of the entirety of BBC Sherlock is the conflict within Sherlock to choose to be either a good man with John or a bad man with Jim. I also argued that Sherlock is well on his way to choosing the good man and John by the time of series 3 and that the ending of TAB shows him taking the final step in this process, metaphorically hurling Jim (and the side of Sherlock that Jim brings to the surface) down into the abyss. Finally, I argued that when Sherlock, rather than staying on the precipice with John, follows Jim into the abyss, he is literally following Jim into the deepest, darkest corner of his own mind to confront that bad man, that side of himself that Jim brings to the surface and in a way represents. And that side of Sherlock is personified by Eurus.

For simplicity reasons, I won’t go into minute details with every scene of the episode, but will merely be discussing the most important scenes as well as the overall interpretation and significance of TFP. Then maybe later I’ll return with more specific analyses of particular scenes or plot points.

The first scene I’ll be discussing is this scene, in which Mycroft gives some crucial information about Sherlock and Eurus. Mycroft has always represented pure logic in Sherlock’s mind palace and that is how he appears in this scene as well. Sherlock has buried his capacity to become a bad man so deep within himself that he has ceased to remember that it is even there on a conscious level. That’s a very emotional response. On a subconscious level, though, Sherlock has never allowed himself to forget what he is capable of and has thus kept a close eye on how well suppressed that side of himself has been.

Sherlock: So there were three of us. I know that now. You (logic), me (the good man), and... Eurus (the bad man). A sister I can’t remember. Interesting name, Eurus. It’s Greek, isn’t it?

John: Mm. Yeah, literally the god of the East Wind.

Mycroft: Yes.

Sherlock: “The East Wind is coming, Sherlock.” You used that to scare me.

Mycroft: No.

Sherlock: You turned my sister into a ghost story.

Mycroft: Of course I didn’t. I monitored you.

John: You what?

Mycroft: Memories can resurface. Wounds can re-open. The roads we walk have demons beneath... and yours have been waiting for a very long time. I never bullied you. I used, at discrete intervals, potential trigger words to update myself as to your mental condition. I was looking after you.

We also gain an insight into how Sherlock’s mind works and how it could have worked.

Mycroft: You realise I’m the smart one? (Mycroft = Sherlock’s logic/intelligence)

Sherlock: As you never cease to announce.

Mycroft: ... but Eurus, she was incandescent even then. Our abilities were professionally assessed more than once. I was remarkable, but Eurus was described as an era-defining genius, beyond Newton.

Notice how Mycroft seamlessly leaves out saying a word about how Sherlock’s abilities were assessed. That’s because the whole being that is Sherlock is split into three people in this episode and the side of Sherlock represented by Sherlock himself (the good man) isn’t a genius. The good man is the man who sacrificed logic for emotion. Sherlock as the good man is emotional (Sherlock) and his intelligence is “remarkable” (Mycroft). But if he had chosen differently, if he had sacrificed emotion for logic rather than logic for emotion, if he had chosen to become the bad man rather than the good man, he could have been “an era-defining genius, beyond Newton” (Eurus).

I’d like to clarify that I don’t think intelligence like the one we see Eurus possess is actually possible. I don’t think Sherlock would have been able to predict the next terrorist attack after an hour on twitter. But the important part is that Sherlock believes so. He believes that he can achieve a much higher level of intelligence without his emotions. And as we see throughout the entire series, especially in the beginning, that prospect has always held an enormous appeal for Sherlock.

Mycroft: You do remember her, in a way. Every choice you ever made, every path you’ve ever taken, the man you are today... is your memory of Eurus.

We are told that Eurus took Sherlock’s dog, locked it up somewhere and refused to tell where it was. We’re later told that this wasn’t actually a dog, but Sherlock’s only friend, Victor. And after a while, she started calling him Drowned Redbeard because she chained him to a bottom of a well and let him drown as the water rose. This had a dramatic effect on Sherlock.

Mycroft: Sherlock was traumatised. Natural, I suppose. He was, in the early days, an emotional child. But after that he was different, so changed. Never spoke of it again. In time, he seemed to forget that Eurus had ever even existed.

Afterwards, Eurus burned down the house and we get a glimpse of the many images she has drawn right before she lights the match. In every image that Eurus draws, we see Sherlock somehow dead or dying beside other, unharmed members of the family. The obvious conclusion is that Eurus murders Redbeard and sets the house on fire not because she’s simply psychotic and has a desire to kill and destroy in general, but because she hates Sherlock in particular and wants to destroy him in every way she can. Mycroft and their parents escape, both on the pictures and in “the real world” (or as real as you get when you’re in the middle of a flashback within a mind palace within a mind palace with people who are personifications rather than actual people), unhurt.

Let’s translate. As I just said, logic and emotion are opposing forces in Sherlock. What we hear himself and others say time and again throughout the first couple of series is true - emotion stands in the way of logic, at least where Sherlock is concerned. Being an emotional man reduces Sherlock’s intelligence to “remarkable” when he could have been “an era-defining genius, beyond Newton”. That’s why Sherlock can’t be both a great man and a good man: being a great man equals being an unemotional man and therefore being a great man is only a small step away from being a bad man.

When Sherlock was a child, he was quite emotional and even had a friend, Victor Trevor. (Notice that Victor Trevor was a fellow student that Sherlock befriended during university in ACD canon, so the “friendship” with Victor definitely also have some romantic connotations.) This emotion, though, stood in the way of his logic and the side of him that wanted to be a great man thus wanted to rid himself of that emotion. Eurus killing Victor is a symbolic representation of Sherlock’s desire to get rid of his emotions. And he did so by shutting himself off from it and ending his friendship with Victor Trevor. I’m not saying that he killed the person Victor Trevor, I’m saying that he killed what he represented, that is, emotion and the capacity for friendship and love. And he destroyed the areas in his mind palace that contained his happy, innocent childhood (the ancestral home, where there was always honey for tea).

That is how Sherlock was at the beginning of the series in ASiP. A man shutting off his own emotions in an attempt to enhance his intelligence. The great man, equally likely to become the bad man as the good man.

Mycroft: Every choice you ever made, every path you’ve ever taken, the man you are today... is your memory of Eurus.

But not anymore. Sherlock has changed over the series and in TAB he’s finally accepted his own emotions. The person responsible for that change within Sherlock is and has always been John. So in TFP, Mycroft represents Sherlock’s logic and John represents Sherlock’s emotion.

And it’s time to face Sherlock’s inner demons. They’ve been waiting for a very long time.

Mycroft: There’s a place called Sherrinford, an island. It’s a secure and very secretive installation whose sole purpose is to contain what we call “the uncontainables.” The demons beneath the road - this is where we trap them. Sherrinford is more than a prison or an asylum. It is a fortress built to keep the rest of the world safe from what is inside it.

Sherrinford is an area of Sherlock’s mind palace designed to keep all his inner demons that he can’t stand to be confronted by away from his conscious mind. In there, he has locked the most unpleasant, self-destructive parts of himself away and thrown away the key.

I mean, look at it. Sherrinford looks ridiculous for a real life location, both inside and outside, but it makes perfect sense for the deepest, darkest corner of Sherlock’s mind palace to look like this. Sherrinford is just the bigger version of this room.

The name Sherrinford, a name that Doyle considered before settling on Sherlock, also points to Sherrinford being a part of Sherlock rather than a real life place.

Sherlock goes to Sherrinford along with John and Mycroft. At this point, in order to avoid confusion, let’s briefly examine what each of these people represent. Sherlock is Sherlock as a good man, but by this point in time, after TAB, Sherlock and the good man are one and the same and thus Sherlock is simply Sherlock - “remarkably” intelligent and emotional. Mycroft is Sherlock’s logic/intelligence (which is “remarkable” but not “incandescent” as it could have been). John is Sherlock’s emotion. The balance between John and Mycroft’s influence on Sherlock’s decisions in the following scenes thus represent the healthy balance between logic and emotion that Sherlock has achieved by this point in time.

Sherrinford’s governor, David, is, in my opinion, a Sherlock mirror. I was asked to explain why I understand him as such in my last meta, so here is a quick summary. Firstly, David is in charge of Sherrinford, which I understand to be an area of Sherlock’s mind palace in which he locks away “the uncontainables” of his own mind. It makes sense that the one charged with the security there would be himself. Secondly, the security of Sherrinford is compromised because Eurus was able to talk to David and get inside his head. Now she is running Sherrinford and is able to leave any time. It’s very over the top if taken literally, but on a symbolic level, it makes perfect sense if David is a Sherlock mirror. Sherlock has created Sherrinford as a place to store Eurus/bad multigenius Sherlock in his mind palace and he thinks he has it under control. But Eurus is an enticing prospect for Sherlock. He’s a good man, but he could become an era-defining genius if he just shut off his emotions and that has always been a difficult desire for him to master. Just listen to how David describes Eurus’ ability to manipulate people.

David: Everyone we sent in there, it’s... it’s hard to describe. It’s ... it’s like she...

Mycroft: ... recruited them.

David: Enslaved them.

David: She kept suggesting to Doctor Taylor that he should kill his family.

Mycroft: And?

David: He said it was like an earworm. Couldn’t get her out of his head.

David has been enslaved by Eurus as well. With David as a Sherlock mirror, the situation makes sense: David/Sherlock was meant to keep Eurus in check, but he was so fascinated by her (David: She’s clinically unique. We had to try.) that he couldn’t help listening to her and now she has control over him. Sherlock can’t listen to her without being “compromised” because he can’t listen to her without being tempted to shut off his emotions in order to further his intelligence.

While David, John and Mycroft discuss her ability to manipulate people, Sherlock finally comes face to face with Eurus. Sherlock wants to know how Eurus escaped in order to prevent it from happening again because she symbolically tried to kill Sherlock’s emotions (shot John) when she was not locked away deep inside Sherlock’s mind (Sherrinford). But notice how Eurus immediately begins enticing him. In fact, during the entirety of their conversation here, every single thing she says illustrates and is meant to illustrate that Eurus/the bad man is a thousand times brighter than Sherlock/the good man. Here are some of the most obvious examples.

Sherlock: How did you manage to get out of this place? How did you do that?

Eurus: Easy. Look at me.

Sherlock: I am looking at you.

Eurus: You can’t see it, can you? You try and try but you just can’t see. You can’t look.

Sherlock: See what?

Eurus is using the exact same degrading words that Sherlock usually uses when talking to people less observant than himself.

Eurus: What do you think?

Sherlock: Beautiful.

Eurus: You’re not looking at it.

Sherlock: I meant your playing.

Eurus: Oh, the music. I never know if it’s beautiful or not, only if i’s right.

Sherlock: Often they’re the same thing.

Eurus: If they’re not always the same thing, what’s the point in beauty?

Sherlock is emotional, he considers the music beautiful. Eurus is purely logical, the only thing she pays attention to is whether it’s right or not. And she berates him for paying attention to beauty rather than objective correctness.

By the time John realises that Eurus is capable of manipulating people Sherlock and tries to warn him, Sherlock is already too enticed to pay attention to John his emotions.

Sherlock: So clearly you remember me.

Eurus: I remember everything, every single thing. You just need a big enough hard drive.

John: Sherlock.

Sherlock: Not now.

John: Vatican Cameos.

Sherlock: In a minute. (breaks off the connection)

Eurus: Let’s continue. Did they tell you to keep three feet from the glass?

Sherlock: Yes.

Eurus: Be naughty. Step closer.

Sherlock: Why?

Eurus: Do it. Step closer.

Then Eurus gives some more information about Sherlock’s inner workings.

Sherlock: Tell me what you remember.

Eurus: You, me and Mycroft. Mycroft was quite clever. He could understand things if you went a bit slow, but you... you were my favourite.

Sherlock: Why was I your favourite?

Eurus: ‘Cause I could make you laugh. I loved it when you laughed. Once I made you laugh all night. I thought you were going to burst. Then Mummy and Daddy had to stop me of course.

Sherlock: Why?

Eurus: Well, turns out I got it wrong. Apparently, you were screaming.

Sherlock: Why was I screaming? (Pause) Redbeard. I remember Redbeard.

It is all too easy for me to imagine this mechanic in Sherlock’s mind. That Sherlock had a friend that he gave up so he wouldn’t care so much because he thought being clever would make him happy (Once I made you laugh all night), but really it only made him horribly lonely (Well, turns out I got it wrong. Apparently, you were screaming.).

And then Eurus and Sherlock are finally conjoined again.

Eurus: You think it’s a trick. You look so... unsure. You’re not used to being unsure, are you?

Sherlock: It’s more common than you’d think.

Eurus: Look at you. The man who sees through everything... is exactly the man who doesn’t notice... when there’s nothing to see through.

Eurus and Sherlock are both Sherlock. They are two halves of the same whole, the Sherlock that could have been and the Sherlock that ended up being.

Now compare that to the image we get when Eurus meets Jim.

Eurus is Sherlock, but Eurus is also a reflection of Jim. Eurus/the bad man is the part of Sherlock that Jim loves, just as Sherlock/the good man is the part of Sherlock that John loves. Just look at Jim and Eurus. Their faces are reflected in one another’s and they’re practically making love through the glass. And, as I’ve argued before, just as John has brought the good man to the surface, Jim brings Eurus/that bad side of Sherlock to the surface.

David: It’s obvious when it all started. Well, she was never the same after that Christmas. It’s as if you woke her up.

Eurus has been that dark little voice in Sherlock’s head all his life, but Sherlock was the great man, somewhere between the bad man and the good man, until he met John and Jim. John pulled him in the direction of the good man, but Jim also awakened certain sides inside of him. It’s those sides that he has to confront now and put back to rest.

But things don’t go according to plan. As always, Sherlock can’t quite control those dark little voices in his head and now Eurus flips the tables on Sherlock. So what we see is actually Sherlock fighting a war within himself because the two sides of him want different things. As they always have.

Sherlock wants to lock Eurus away so she can never get out again (he also wants to save the little girl on the plane, but we’ll get to that). Eurus wants Sherlock to give up his emotions and become her. It’s actually a perfect parallel to the actual plot. He wants to keep her locked up, she wants to get out. And the way to get out is to turn Sherlock into her by making him give up his emotions.

It’s difficult, but try not to think of her as a person. Try to think of her as that dark voice in Sherlock’s head, telling him that love is a chemical defect found in the losing side and that there’s no point in beauty if it isn’t right.

The first part of her plan is to make Sherlock choose between vilifying his emotions or his logic.

Eurus: You want to save the governor’s wife? Choose either Doctor Watson or Mycroft to kill the governor. You can’t do it, Sherlock. If you do it, it won’t count. I’ll kill her anyway. It has to be your brother or your friend.

Notice that if David is a Sherlock mirror, this first part of Eurus’ plan is actually a mirroring on a less significant scale of her overall plan. She is threatening to kill the governor’s wife, which if Sherlock is David then John must be his wife, and the only way to save her him (or more exactly Sherlock’s relationship with him) is for Sherlock to kill himself using either his emotions or his logic. And notice that David never hesitates for a second. He just accepts that he is going to die to save his beloved.

While they discuss what to do, Eurus states quite explicit what it is she’s putting Sherlock through.

Eurus: Withholding the precise deadline will apply the emotional pressure more evenly. Where possible, please give me an explicit verbal indication of your anxiety levels.

Eurus: I’m particularly focused on internal conflicts, where strategising around a largely intuitive moral code appears to create a counter-intuitive result.

Sherlock first chooses Mycroft (logic), but Sherlock is unwilling to use his logic to do bad.

Mycroft: I will not kill. I will not have blood on my hands.

This, we also see throughout the series. Yes, Mycroft might seem out of character, but Sherlock’s logic is perfectly in character. He’s always wanted to use his intelligence to solve crimes, not make them.

Instead, Sherlock turns to John (emotion). John is horrified, but as Sherlock’s emotions, he actually represents the part of Sherlock that loves John and therefore he tries to go through with it. Additionally, he tries to comfort David Sherlock and tell him that it’s the right choice.

John: You are a good man, and you are doing a good thing.

John: I know that you’re scared, but you should also be very proud.

In the end, though:

John: I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t do it.

Sherlock: I know. It’s all right.

David Sherlock, though, isn’t prepared to live without his wife John and commits suicide entirely by his own hand in an attempt to save her him.

It doesn’t help, though, because now comes the whole point.

Eurus: Dead or alive... he really wasn’t very interesting, but you three... you three were wonderful. Thank you. You see, what you did, Doctor Watson (emotion), specifically because of your moral code... because you don’t want blood on your hands, two people are dead instead of one.

Eurus: What advantage did your moral code grant you? Is it not, in the end, selfish to keep one’s hands clean at the expense of another’s life?

What Eurus is doing is essentially turning the argument on its head to show Sherlock how illogical, vulnerable and, actually, how cruel he is because of his emotions.

Eurus: Enough for now. Time to play a new game.

The second part of Eurus’ plan is designed to do two things. First, Sherlock has to solve a case with the aid of both his logic and his emotion and see what actually proves useful to him. Second, Sherlock has to not just solve a case, but actually condemn the person responsible to death. He has to do it consciously and willingly. And here as well, Eurus have some points to make.

First:

Eurus: Please, make use of your friends, Sherlock. I want to see you interact with people that you’re close to. Also, you may have to choose which one to keep.

Sherlock: What do you make of it?

Mycroft: Am I being asked to prove my usefulness?

Sherlock: Yes, I should think you are.

Mycroft: I will not be manipulated like this.

Sherlock: Fine. John? John?

John: Yeah, I think I’ve seen one of these. It’s a buffalo gun. I’d say nineteen forties, old-fashioned sight, no crosshairs.

Mycroft: Well done, Doctor Watson. How useful you are. Do you have a suspicion we’re being made to compete?

Second:

Eurus: Now, as I understand it, Sherlock, you try to repress your emotions to refine your reasoning. Iâ€™d like to see how that works, so, if you donâ€™t mind, Iâ€™m going to apply some context to your deductions.

Eurus: Once you bring in your verdict, let me know and justice will be done.

Sherlock: Justice?

John: What will you do with them?

Eurus: Early release.

Sherlock: You’ll drop them into the sea.

Eurus: Sink, or swim.

John: They’re tied up!

Eurus: Exactly! Now there is context. Please, continue with your deductions. I’m now focusing on the difference to your mental capacity a specified consequence can make.

Sherlock: Alex.

Eurus: Say it. Condemn him. Condemn him in the knowledge of what will happen to the man you name.

Sherlock: ... I condemn Alex Garrideb.

And Eurus has a last point:

Eurus: Does it really make a difference, killing the innocent instead of the guilty? Let’s see. *drops Alex into the sea* No. That felt pretty much the same.

Into the third and worst part so far.

Sherlock has to convince Molly to tell him that she loves him before the time runs out or her flat will explode.

Sherlock: Molly, please, without asking why, just say these words.

Molly: What words?

Sherlock: I love you.

Molly: Leave me alone.

Sherlock: Molly, no, please, no, don’t hang up! Do not hang up!

Eurus: Calmly, Sherlock, or I will finish her right now.

Molly: Why are you doing this to me? Why are you making fun of me?

Sherlock: Please, I swear, you just have to listen to me.

Eurus: Softer, Sherlock!

Sherlock: Molly, this is for a case. It’s... it’s a sort of experiment.

Molly: I’m not an experiment, Sherlock.

Sherlock: No, I know you’re not an experiment. You’re my friend. We’re friends. But... please. Just... say those words for me.

Molly: Please don’t do this. Just... just... don’t do it.

Sherlock: It’s very important. I can’t say why, but I promise you it is.

Molly: I can’t say that. I can’t... I can’t say that to you.

Sherlock: Of course you can. Why can’t you?

Molly: You know why.

Sherlock: No, I don’t know why.

Molly: Of course you do.

Sherlock: Please, just say it.

Molly: I can’t. Not to you.

Sherlock: Why?

Molly: Because... because it’s true. Because... it’s... true, Sherlock. It’s always been true.

Sherlock: ... Well, if it’s true, just say it anyway.

Molly: You bastard.

Sherlock: Say it anyway.

Molly: You say it. Go on. You say it first.

Sherlock: What?

Molly: Say it. Say it like you mean it.

Eurus: Final thirty seconds.

Sherlock: I-I... I love you. I love you... Molly? Molly, please.

Molly: ... I love you.

But Eurus always has a point to make.

Sherlock: Eurus, I won. I won. Come on, play fair. The girl on the plane: I need to talk to her. I won. I saved Molly Hooper.

Eurus: Saved her? From what? Oh, do be sensible. There were no explosives in her little house. Why would I be so clumsy? You didn’t win. You lost. Look what you did to her. Look what you did to yourself. All those complicated little emotions. I lost count. Emotional context, Sherlock. It destroys you every time.

And this is when Sherlock breaks.

I don’t really need to explain this part, do I? This is just too painful.

And now we’ve arrived at the final part of Eurus’ plan.

Eurus: You’ve still got the gun, haven’t you? I told you you’d need it, because only two can play the next game. Just two of you go on from here. Your choice. It’s make-your-mind-up time. Whose help do you need the most? John or Mycroft? It’s an elimination round. You choose one and kill the other. You have to choose family or friend. Mycroft or John Watson?

And just so there can be no doubt what it is Eurus is asking Sherlock to do:

Mycroft: There’s no question who has to continue from here. It’s us, you and me. Whatever lies ahead requires brainpower, Sherlock, not sentiment. Don’t prolong his agony, shoot him.

Eurus is asking Sherlock to choose between his logic and his emotions. This is the moment when Sherlock could become Eurus. But that’s not what he chooses. He can’t live without his emotions now.

Eurus: Jim Moriarty thought you’d make this choice. He was so excited.

Jim: And here we are, at the end of the line. Holmes killing Holmes.

People assume that Moriarty means Sherlock killing Mycroft. But his wording is made deliberately ambiguous and I believe the correct understanding is actually Sherlock killing Sherlock.

And it would be. While it’s obvious that Sherlock killing his emotions and becoming Eurus would be horrible, Sherlock also needs his logic. No matter what he chooses, he will live as an amputated human being. Both his logic and his emotions are such huge parts of him by now that he can’t live without either. Which is why he chooses to do what David as a mirror foretold. He chooses to shoot himself.

And Eurus panics. Because she is Sherlock. And if Sherlock shoots himself, it’s all over. That includes her. She can’t allow that.

Sherlock: Ten...

Eurus: No, no, Sherlock.

Sherlock: Nine... Eight...

Eurus: You can’t!

Sherlock: Seven...

Eurus: You don’t know about Redbeard yet.

Sherlock: Six...

Eurus: Sherlock!

Sherlock: Five...

Eurus: Sherlock, stop that at once!

Sherlock: Four... Three... Two...

And we’ve finally arrived at Musgrave Hall. Whether this was actually Sherlock’s childhood home, I couldn’t say, but at least it is the area of his mind palace he associates with his childhood and thus also where he stores his childhood memories. This is where he can find the truth about Eurus and himself.

This part will not be as chronological as the rest of this meta because everything is happening at once and it just makes it a lot easier if we go through this topic by topic. So I’ve separated the four main things happening in this scene and I’ll go through them one by one.

First plot point, Sherlock’s childhood and Victor Trevor. As I’ve said before, no, I don’t think Sherlock killed his best friend when he was a child. But what we see Eurus do is a symbolic representation of what Sherlock actually did. Victor was Sherlock’s friend and he drew out Sherlock’s emotions. But that’s not who Sherlock wanted to be.

Eurus: You were inseparable. But I wanted to play too.

It’s never directly stated in the episode, but I believe that even though Sherlock and Victor were “inseparable”, they were not as close as Sherlock would have liked. There are two reasons why I think that this is a possible interpretation. First, Eurus says that she wanted to play too, but wasn’t welcome. Second, the relationship between Victor and Sherlock is set up as an almost perfect parallel to the relationship between Sherlock and John - they are inseparable as friends, but Sherlock (and John, but that’s irrelevant here) wants it to be something more. And one of the main reasons why it hasn’t happened (yet) is because John didn’t see Sherloc’s emotions clearly.

Maybe Victor had other friends, paralleling that John has other romantic relationships. Maybe Victor never truly understood who Sherlock is and just wanted to play, paralleling that John only too late has realised that Sherlock is also an emotional being and started off only wanting to be friends and solve crimes. In any case, Victor and Sherlock were inseparable, but not enough so that some part of Sherlock didn’t feel alone.

Sherlock: You killed my best friend.

Eurus: I never had a best friend. I had no one.

So what do I believe happened when Sherlock was a child? I believe Sherlock ended the friendship with Victor because he couldn’t stand having his emotions laid bare and because he wanted to be more intelligent. But without that friendship, he was just incredibly lonely. So I believe that what Sherlock killed was that childhood emotion.

Mycroft: He was, in the early days, an emotional child. But after that he was different, so changed.

And I believe that what he burned down was the area in his mind palace where he kept the memories of that friendship and of that period of careless emotion in his life.

Second plot point, John in the well. In the move from Sherrinford to Musgrave Hall, Mycroft is no longer present. That’s because everything is now boiled down to what it’s really all about: Sherlock’s emotions (John). Just as Victor is simultaneously Sherlock’s childhood emotion and a real person who was Sherlock’s first friend/love, John is simultaneously Sherlock’s current emotion and simply John, a real person who is Sherlock’s second friend/love. This means that what is at stake is both Sherlock’s relationship with John and Sherlock’s ability to feel his own emotions.

John is in the same well as the one Victor drowned in because there’s only two ways to go from here. Either Sherlock solves the Musgrave Ritual and saves John/his emotions, becoming the good man, or Eurus will drown John/his emotions and Sherlock will become the bad man/Eurus.

Eurus: I’m letting the water in now. You don’t want me to drown another one of your pets, do you? At long last, Sherlock Holmes, it’s time to solve the Musgrave Ritual.

Eurus: Deep waters, Sherlock, all your life. In all your dreams. Deep waters. (cue water=emotion subtext)

Third plot point, the girl on the plane. I’ve so far clumsily side-stepped the girl on the plane but now it’s all coming full circle and it’s finally time to discuss what this episode’s resolution actually is.

As I said before, Sherlock has two objectives throughout the episode. One is to recapture Eurus and make sure that she can’t escape again. Another is to save the girl on the plane. But Eurus is that girl on the plane. And that’s because, all along, Sherlock’s subconscious has been aware that just locking Eurus away again in the deepest level of his mind palace isn’t enough. She can’t be contained, she’s too intelligent and Sherlock is too receptive to the promises she presents. He can’t deal with his own darker nature by just shutting it away as he always has. He has to face himself. He has to save himself.

Sherlock: Does the river look like it’s getting closer?

Eurus as the girl on the plane: A-a little bit.

Sherlock: All right, then. That means you’re nearly home. (cue water=emotion subtext)

I am lost. Help me brother. Save my life. Before my doom.

I am lost. Without your love. Save my soul. Seek my room.

Because deep down, at the deepest level of the deepest level, deep down Sherlock isn’t two forces pulling in two different directions. Deep down, there’s just him. And he is a lonely little boy who was always too intelligent and too vulnerable and so he always wanted to be something he’s not: an emotionless thinking-machine free from pain, heartbreak, loss, death.

Eurus: You were upset. So you told yourself a better story.

And finally...

Sherlock: I’m here, Eurus.

Eurus: You’re playing with me, Sherlock. We’re playing the game.

Sherlock: The game, yes. I get it now. The song was never a set of directions.

Eurus: I’m in the plane and I’m going to crash. And you’re going to save me.

Sherlock: Look how brilliant you are. Your mind has created the perfect metaphor. You’re high above us, all alone in the sky, and you understand everything except how to land. Now, I’m just an idiot, but I’m on the ground. I can bring you home.

Eurus: No. No, no. It’s too late now.

Sherlock: No it’s not. It’s not too late.

Eurus: Every time I close my eyes, I’m on the plane. I’m lost, lost in the sky and... no one can hear me.

Sherlock: Open your eyes. I’m here. You’re not lost any more.

Look how brilliant Sherlock is. His mind has created the perfect metaphor. He’s high in the sky, too intelligent for his own good. He’s surrounded by people, all day every day, but he is unable to interact with them, get a response from them, get any of them to just look at him. He understands everything except how to free himself from being so very alone above everyone else. That’s who he really is deep down.

But now that he knows that, now that he is reunited with Eurus and is one whole person, he does know how to land. He does know who and what he needs.

Sherlock: Now, you... you just... you just went the wrong way last time, that’s all. This time, get it right. Tell me how to save my friend. Eurus... Help me save John Watson.

Sherlock being one whole being and choosing with his whole being to save his emotions and let them be a part of him is the Sherlock who is a good man. He is a complicated man, but now he has the emotional context he needs to be who he really is.

John: Well, you gave her what she was looking for: context.

Sherlock: Is that good?

John: It’s not good, it’s not bad. It’s... It is what it is.

Fourth plot point, what happens to Eurus. Now, I could actually end it here, because that the whole point and meaning of this episode and meta series. But I thought it best to address what happens to Eurus afterwards, because it really brings it all full circle.

Eurus doesn’t go home. Because, sadly, that part of Sherlock is just not compatible with who he wants to be.

Mr. Holmes: Where is she?

Mycroft: Back in Sherrinford. Secure this time. People have died. Without doubt she will kill again if she has the opportunity. There’s no possibility she’ll ever be able to leave.

But something has changed.

Mycroft: She won’t talk. She won’t communicate with anyone in any way. She has passed beyond our view. There are no words that can reach her now.

Eurus was always dangerous because she talked. Yes, in the episode we also see her kill people, but in the context of Eurus as that suppressed, dark part of Sherlock, the reason she is dangerous is because she could manipulate him by talking to him and lure him in with promises of an incandescent intellect. Now she doesn’t talk anymore. Thus, she isn’t dangerous anymore.

And slowly, Sherlock gets her to respond to him through another medium. The violin. Slowly, these two parts of Sherlock, who have always been opposites, who have always been the good man and the bad man, who have always been an emotional man and an intelligent man, who have always been the Sherlock John loves and the Sherlock Jim loves, learn to play the same tune together. A tune that is both beautiful (emotion) and right (logic).

Because that is who Sherlock is. He will always live with the traumas from his young years, the traumas that created Eurus. They will always be a part of him. He is not all good or bad, all emotional or logical, he is who he is. But if he can live with his traumas without those traumas overtaking him and preventing him from being with other people, he can be one whole human being. And if he can be with John, who understands and appreciates everything that Sherlock is, he can also find happiness.

Thank you so much for reading this meta series.

#Sherlock #BBC Sherlock #Sherlock Meta #Series 4 #The Final Problem #TFP #Johnlock #TJLC #my meta

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redantsunderneath · 8 years ago

Text

[Twin Peaks spoilers] The Third Man – Dale Cooper and America’s (current) midlife crisis

I have two understandings about the original show that could shed some light on the nature of the third manifestation of Dale Cooper (I’ll call them doppelCoop who is the dirty murderous one, OGCoop who escapes from the red room, and doucheCoop who is married to Janey-E).

One is that a major theme of the original show is the baby boomer mid-life crisis as a crisis in America. Specifically, the conflict created by the identity rift between the hippie ideal and the reality of becoming “the man.” This plays out largely in relation to Ben Horne (Richard Beymer), shady business man who has an actual crisis where he tries to flip the outcome of a major historical event to (up is down, down is up) create the timeline where he wound up the “good” version of the 60s vision.

He is aided/abetted in this quest by several foils – his brother Jerry who gives personification to the hedonistic tendencies that led him astray; Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn), the road not taken of the spiritual seeker aspect of the generation who is currently a little worse for wear (as is what was left of that spirit); and two younger reflections in Bobby, who is trying to emulate him, and Audrey who is rejecting the very basis for his current life. Jacoby is especially interesting due to casting – the two were male leads in West Side Story, where Beymer played the leader and Tamblyn the heart of the gang. Later, Beymer dated Sharon Tate and Tamblyn gave a ride to Charles Manson. That they wind up in this position on the show fits the paths of the dual sides of the male 60s psyche. Do you throw responsibility away and Easy Ride it or stay bathed in the world you were sucked into then made, having to face what you’ve become.

It is evident that this is not just an inner war in men of Frost’s age but a struggle for the soul of the culture. The Regan years had the boomers struggling frantically to both live in the hyper material world and convince themselves they had not sold out. The vestiges of closer community, living less compromised lives, and a deeper seeking of understanding were relegated to crackpot behavior, as Jacoby illustrates. Jerry plays the smirking unbridaled id of the generation. Meanwhile, Bobby and Audrey are straight out of Family Ties – Alex trying to emulate the capitalist and Mallory criticizing the materialism (while depending on it). This is a nice assemblage of mirror relationships with Ben at the center.

The second thing is the nature of Cooper himself. His white knight nature tends to obscure the darker facets hinted at in the character. He is a guy with an obsession with women who have desires and are destroyed when they afoul of bad men, or rather when the existence is crushed by a system of dominant male will. He wants to protect them, these women who try to become people and explore who they are in a world of a reinforcing cycle of predatory maleness, but he is completely entangled in the system that causes it. He must save the Judys, the May Queens. But he places himself into a position where it is too late. Coop’s obsession is also a national/worldwide thing – the need for upstanding men to revere and witness the defilement of women, to venerate and annihilate them for standing up. It also kind of cheats as an extension of the Boomer story - he exemplifies all the positive attributes of the culture the 60s reacted against, a firm belief in the goodness of this without seeing how those aspects are entangled with the bad beyond his ability through personal force of will to only allow the good to out.

Coop joins the FBI for this reason. He is attracted to this idea of women, as an opportunity for acting good in a world characterized by the bad side he rejects (but must watch as it consumes so many). This is not healthy or good. However he only uses violence when he has to and he is trying to “fix his heart.” Earle screws this up good. What I believe happens in the real world that corresponds to the events in the Black Lodge is that Coop enters the cycle of male violence and domination by killing Earle in anger as, in the striking down of Annie, he loses hope that he can ever forge a relationship that allows him to see women as people.

This is the Coop that we see at the beginning of the new season. Metaphorically, the good angels of Coop’s nature are “locked up” in his mind while the version made of his suppressed darkness runs free. Meanwhile he has manufactured an identity of a middle aged schlubb who is faithless and without a real compass. There are three Coops… if we take this as a metaphorical story, what does this mean?

DoucheCoop is the Coop the world sees – a given up, going through the motions tool. His wife means little to him and he seeks cowardsy thrills, shirking responsibility, living in the capital city of self-indulgence. DoppleCoop is how he has chosen to see himself – the rogue, sexy adventurer to whom life and sex are cheap. But he is in a moment of crisis. The better angels of his nature seek to reassert themselves. He pushes his manufactured self aside, but his wife and child have begun to see this better side, unfamiliar with the world, start to hesitantly come out. His self-image wants this OGCoop, good Coop, dead, but attempts to make this happen all seem to fail (wonder why...).

The slipping of the manufactured identity shows up visually as a literal war between the small gold core left in him and the toxic oozing cratered planet of disgust that is how he esteems himself. The kernel of good seems to win. We need to see how this plays out precisely, but I think the Coops need to merge – the good Coop needs the dark Coop to be whole but control needs to be reasserted by the light side. Good riddance to the “face he showed the world.” Again, this appears to be political commentary as well as psychodrama. The country is allegorically presented as at war between a mean, violent conspiracy of self interest and the nation’s good impulses which have been dormant and now are kind of fumbling around. This is all with the public image of a tasteless, rudderless, hedonistic nihilistic populous with money problems. I think this is just another presentation of the mid-life crisis of rapacious materialism vs. soul 25 years later... a bit more up to date. Does the western world give into its impulse to cruise around in a cool car with long hair bangin’ chicks like it has been or does it rediscover some fundamental reason to live. That’s for episodes 5-18 to tell. (spoilers… it chooses the later)

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greed-the-dorkalicious · 8 years ago

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I'm the anon asking about fma theories. Thanks for the reply. It can be anything really, old theories from when the manga wasn't finished is pretty cool too :)

Hmm... I don’t have the best memory, but I do know there were actually a fair amount of people who genuinely thought that the series would end with Ed sacrificing himself to get Al’s body back.

Also, before Pride was revealed, there was a lot of mystery surrounding him. Some people thought that Ed would become Pride a la Bluebird’s Illusion, but most notably there was a crack theory that Selim Bradley was Pride. You can imagine the shock when that turned out to be true!

I also had a half-crack, half-serious theory back in the day that Yuriy Rockbell (Winry’s dad) was the son of Pinako and Van Hohenheim, making Winry Hohenheim’s granddaughter and thus, technically, Ed and Al’s niece. ...Yeah.

As for plain old meta, have you heard the one about the homunculi and their “counterpart” heroes? If not, it basically goes like this:

Ed is, frankly, a prideful person. He’s a little vain, hates being treated like a child, and especially hates comments on his height. In the end, he was the one to defeat Pride, his own vice. Pride bore the guise of a child, and was even shorter than Ed. Ed was able to defeat him by bringing himself to his level, and even partly because- in his own words- he knew how short people fight. Ed defeated Pride, the personification of his own big flaw, by letting go of his own pride. It’s also worth noting that Pride was the first homunculus, created in Father’s own image, while Ed is the eldest son of Hohenheim and very much like him- something he doesn’t like to admit.

There’s also Scar and Wrath, who directly acknowledged their own similarities (”two nameless men fighting to the death” or whatever the quote was). For so long Scar’s character was defined by wrath. All he wanted was senseless violence, to kill all state alchemists, regardless of whether or not they were involved in the Ishval genocide or not. All he did was destroy, both literally with his destructive alchemy, or in a metaphorical sense- as his master mentioned, his actions did no good, only provoking further violence.

By reflecting on his actions and making the decision to do good and work together with the protagonists, Scar was finally able to defeat the man responsible for the Ishvalan genocide. Additionally, he wouldn’t have done this if he hadn’t gotten over his alchemy stigma and completed his brother’s work, getting a new tattoo that allows him to create instead of just destroy. Scar achieved his goals, bettered himself as a person, defeated Wrath, and helped save the world because he was able to defeat his own inner wrath.

There are other comparisons to be made, but those are the most obvious ones and I don’t want this to get super long, so I’ll leave it at that.

#Anonymous #Inbox stuff

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durararaismylife · 5 years ago

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Lustful Swaying Chapter 2

Hello everyone~ I am back with another chapter of Lustful Swaying. For future reference, each chapter will be different in length. This means that some chapters will be a few paragraphs, while others will be on Harry Potter status in length. Without further ado, ENJOY, CHAPTER IS UNDER THE CUT.

The girl walks peacefully to school, alone.

Usually, her friends would have caught up to her by now.

Masaomi, with his jovial sing-song voice would always call out to the girl from behind. The literal personification of the fool in the classic team.

Mikado would always be one step behind him, sheepishly carrying his school case with both arms gripping the handle for dear life. The girl noticed that this demeanor of his was not fluent with every social setting, however. With the fool he was timid, meek, incomprehensibly soft-spoken, weak. Around others, he was somewhat intelligent, tactful, a leader.

She was the true sheep of the pact. No matter the person, place, or thing, she was the same.....fragile.

She sometimes thanks Saika for becoming one with her, as Saika pushes her towards a purpose.

The purpose to love.

``````````

The two never seemed to surface on her path to school, so the girl decided to take the train the rest of the way.

It’s been a few months since the last time she took the train. It wasn’t for any special reason, it was just because the leader and the fool always caught her before she had reached it so she’d rather spend all the time she could spend with them and walk.

Waiting alongside other patrons in the subway, the girl was swaying.

She swayed unconsciously.

``````````

When the girl boarded the train, she retrieved the English textbook from her school case and opened it to the latest chapter.

She memorized the spaciousness and lazy air of the other boarders. Students and nine-to-five workers alike were half awake and paying attention to their phones.

The patrons all appeared to sit on one half of the car, leaving a significant amount of room between them and the girl. She felt as if this was a visual representation of her life.

The girl craned her head toward the other side of the train car, and locked eyes with a befouled man, hunger paining his eyes.

He was the only man in the car on that side, the girl was paces away yet the closest guest to him.

The bum sat in the seat closest to the wall, so there was a cast of darkness over him from the sun’s shadow.

The girl felt troubled by his presence. The disheveled hair, the holes in his clothes and shoes, and the overall wash of dirt and poverty engulfing him. It was menacing.

No. It was not the poverty that was menacing, it was the demeanor. His Cheshire grin ran from ear to ear, and it was topped with cracked blackish brown teeth. The red eyes he wore were glazed, almost as though it was in a euphoric state.

She noticed that his hand was shaking in his lap, vigorously.

She unwisely took a closer look at his bobbing hand, and realized that it was not shaking, but it was stroking.

It stunned the poor girl and made her forget the option of looking away.

His member looked just as diseased as he did. Slimy. Pulsating. Oozing with his juices. He gripped the seat and adjusted his head back without losing the gaze of the girl. The bum’s eyes then trailed her shapely body in a devilish way. The raw desire for her insides was broadcast on his face.

The victim registered the visual molestation and instinctively covered her chest with the English book. Then she closed her legs tightly, or as much as she could do with the naturally revealing uniform. Her face was crimson red.

The embarrassment made the bum’s lust rage harder, and he started to stroke faster. He obviously did not care of the other pedestrians.

The girl feverishly looked around the car for anyone else to notice her troubles, but they didn’t. She had sat too far away from the closest person for them to know.

Mother. Mother. Please. Cut. Please love him. Slice. Kill. Love. Kill. Mother-

Saika was progressively getting louder. The girl’s eyes beamed red with the soul of the demon.

It was becoming too much. Saika. The bum. Two tormentors were too much for her this early in the day.

She tried to call out to the closest person to her. She was still a timid creature, and her voice was horse and small.

The male closest to her was engulfed in his phone, and his ears were plugged with rowdy music.

She made small cries to others, but it was the same. It was useless.

Mother. Slice. Kill. Cut. Let us love him. Let us love them. Please.

The girl decided to take matters into her own hands and unleashed a small piece of Saika from her wrist.

The sheer hope of striking fear in the stranger across from her gave the girl the will to unleash her inner demons.

Yes. Yes. Thank you Mother. Love him.

The bum finished on himself. His white liquid smeared streaks on his nasty clothing.

He saw the sword cutting through her flesh. His lust-driven smile fell gradually, and his eyes widened with surprise. However, instead of fear, he laughed. Loudly. It was enough for a woman to notice and as soon as she looked up, the girl retracted her sword.

The bum mocked her. The soft and flimsy member was still visible and proud. His eyes were piercing now, filled with a sobering reality.

“You think that thing of your’s is somethin’ spooky, girly? Sorry to tell ya but it’s not. I’ve seen and done way worse than shits like you. Rape, murder, child trafficking. Now those are the scariest bitches out there in the world.”

With his monologue more and more people redirected their attention.

“Honestly, what are you supposed to be anyway? Some cum dump slut dressed in a sexy school uniform? How ‘bout you give me a charge-free taste. I’m poor y’see. Give me a fucking break.”

Despite his slurs, no one stepped to her rescue. She now knew that even if she successfully got someone’s attention, she’d be in the same position.

“I’ll tell you something. I’ve always believed in the unknown, since I was a kid. I loved it, was fascinated with it. Even if I don’t what the hell kinda monster you are, I still ain’t scared of you. You are the weakest piece of shit I’ve ever met.”

The girl could feel the all of the patron’s confusion, and hear their judgmental whispers.

She felt helpless, and afraid.

Soon enough, a bell from the train rang and the door slid open. No one realized that the train had even stopped.

The girl quickly clutched her belongings and was the first to speed out of the subway.

“Have a nice day, slut.”

As she fled, she could hear the bum cackle maniacally.

`````````

As the girl exited the subway, she could see her academy in the distance.

She walked leisurely and recouped her nerves on the prior event.

She did not want to think about the stranger, his words were too true on how she felt about herself. She did not know the faces of the people, but the people will forever remember hers.

This life felt as if it were one big comedy, and she was the idiot everyone laughed at.

Knowing this sent the girl into a deeper depression, one that even Saika could not penetrate with its mantras.

The sun was now in full effect in this time of the day, yet nothing could cover the darkness in the poor girl’s heart.

#lustful swaying

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