#the both of them denied personhood as a means to an end

[impossible-rat-babies]

OUGH I have got to do shadowheart’s personal quest

[soulsmusings]

Maiden Astraea and the Grief of Lost Faith

Many Souls fans liken the Maiden Astraea fight in Demon's Souls to Great Grey Wolf Sif in Dark Souls, describing both as tearjerkers that made them "feel like the bad guy."

The comparison always rubbed me the wrong way—not because it was misplaced or dishonest, but because it was shallow.

It centers how the player feels, and only that. To be fair, this is an understandable response, and definitely an overt part of the text. Against both Astraea and Sif, the player's success in combat, which has thus far been their primary means of progress, is now being scrutinized in a way that casts them unfavorably. They're being forced to reckon with the personhood of the enemy, with their enemy's good intentions and noble virtues.

Suddenly the assumption underpinning most video games—that your actions are good because they're yours—is overturned, and the mechanical rewards for combat are now complicated by emotional punishment. You're fighting a good person, and so you, the player, might just be a bad person.

This is very much in tune with the video gaming zeitgeist of the early 2010s. Dark Souls released just a year before Spec Ops: The Line, which does this same trick on an enormous scale, to well-deserved critical success. Players are placed in the mind of a paranoid American soldier in the Middle-East, and slowly slip into moral depravity as they go from "fighting terrorists" to "suppressing insurgents" to dropping white phosphorous on a refugee camp.

"Are we the baddies?" was really quite a novel idea at the time. It was novel enough that it could be the driving thesis of an entire game.

Perhaps this is why it still stands as the prevailing sentiment around Maiden Astraea—especially when Great Grey Wolf Sif, whose boss fight falls pretty squarely in line with the trend, is such an immediate point of comparison.

But the fight with Maiden Astraea and Garl Vinland is saying something more than that, I feel. The comparison to Sif is what crystallized this vague feeling into a clear, certain thesis for me. It's not just that the player is set against someone "good" or "noble" in Astraea, in the way that Sif is a good dog.

Astraea sets the player against someone human, who is experiencing the height of human loss: the loss of faith.

On some level, all of Demon's Souls is about our human yearning for the sublime, be it supernal or infernal, and the horrible failure that comes when we reach too far.

King Allant reaches for sublime power. In so doing, he achieves a new perspective that shatters his previous understanding of the world—including the values of feudalism and nationalism that drove him to seek power in the first place.

Sage Freke reaches for sublime truth. He believes that with knowledge that is normally forbidden to mortals, he can achieve the just and equitable world that is normally denied to mortals. In the end, however, he fails to consider his own mortal limitations, and he succumbs to the influence of the demon souls.

So on and so forth. The pattern is a familiar one. As Arthur Machen says in his supernatural horror story, "The White People," true sin comes in the "attempt to penetrate into another and higher sphere in a forbidden manner." This plays out with many key characters of Demon's Souls, each one exploring this cardinal sin from a new angle.

Saint Astraea does this too, yet she does it from an angle that I, as a former Catholic, find uniquely sympathetic. It begins when she reaches out for God, and catches only empty air.

"Dear Lord, you are too cruel... You have abandoned us. Is that not punishment enough?"

It's never stated what exactly causes this realization in Astraea—that the God of her world is a distant watchmaker at best, a cruel absent parent at worst. It could have been a direct revelation, such as King Allant received from the Old One, but this doesn't seem likely.

From what the text offers us, I think that Astraea's faith was broken by the Valley of the Defilement itself.

We hear from Biorr that King Allant "fought vigilantly against the vile and depraved," and we see through Yuria's torture that these labels were used for people on the fringes of society, to justify their persecution. Surely this extends also to the "lost and ill-fortuned souls" who were driven to the Valley of Defilement. The land was presumably called the "Valley of Defilement" well before the demon scourge broke out, and so it's the inhabitants themselves—the poor, the diseased, the unwanted—who are the "defilement." Them, and the rubbish and waste that are disposed of there.

The fact that we see aborted fetuses at various points throughout the Valley, mingled with the muck and the refuse and the remains of animals, speaks to the dire state of living there. As the filthy beggar woman says, it's "all the rot of the world, living or not," and it leaves no room for sanity or dignity.

Whatever can be said of the exact circumstances that produced this, or of the land itself, the fact remains that the misery of the Valley's inhabitants is of decidedly human origin.

Bear this in mind when you consider that the Church of Demon's Souls sends missionaries there—as if the Valley folk were suffering from some natural calamity, and not from the malice of the ruling class.

Perhaps that's all the Church could do. After all, the real-life Catholic Church has always been a powerful political entity, but never have they been able to erase poverty or prejudice, or directly stop a monarch from doing something. The same must apply to the definitely-not-Catholic Church of this fictional world, which is pretty committed to realism in that regard.

But even so, it should come as no surprise that every missionary who entered the Valley of Defilement was killed, either by the people or by the land itself.

These missionaries come from the very society that drove the Valley's inhabitants to such inhumane lows. How would they, who live in relative comfort, know how to navigate this treacherous hellhole? And why would anyone accept charity from the hand that beats them down?

So when Saint Astraea enters the Valley of Defilement, full of genuine compassion and goodwill, what does she see?

She sees the sheer magnitude of human suffering, the depth of the squalor, the inhumanity that it represents... and no relief from anywhere. Not from the Church she serves, and not from God on high. Not even in this end-of-days scenario, when demons walk the earth and miracles are witnessed again, does God's supposed mercy reach the Valley.

Saint Urbain might be a deluded, bigoted fool, but he might not be entirely wrong when he calls the people of the Valley "those left behind by God." Perhaps all of mankind has been left behind, and only in the Valley of Defilement is that truth laid bare.

What can anyone do in the face of such a horrible truth?

If you don't run away from them, how do you answer people who are suffering and dying on this scale? If they need miracles, and God does not provide, what do you do?

These questions don't pertain solely to the fiction of Demon's Souls. These are questions that have echoed across human history, philosophy, theology, and myth. Reckoning with the impossible scale of human suffering—the inevitability of it, the ubiquity of it, the horrible depths of it—has been the preoccupation of our greatest thinkers for, well, pretty much all of our time on this planet.

Even when some of us arrive at an answer, it's never a wholly satisfactory answer, and it's usually contingent upon an existing framework of values and beliefs. The Pope says one thing, the Dalai Lama says another, so on and so forth, and the greater share of humanity continues to suffer all the while.

As for Astraea's answer, I'll once again quote the prologue to Machen's "The White People":

"[H]oliness works on lines that were natural once; it is an effort to recover the ecstasy that was before the Fall. But sin is an effort to gain the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain alone to angels, and in making this effort man becomes a demon."

She does this quite literally. She cannot access the power of God, so she accepts a demon's soul, and uses its power to bring relief to the Valley of Defilement.

Because this power is infernal, not supernal, she cannot purify the foul stagnant waters of the swamp, nor can she cure the diseases of the poor. Rather, she gives the Valley's inhabitants an affinity for filth and disease; it becomes their sustenance rather than their bane, their strength rather than their weakness. The natural order is inverted completely.

This is why Astraea is "the most impure demon of all." Her demonic power imitates the divine mercy that she longs for, yet the results couldn't be more different—perhaps, also, because she extends her mercy to those deemed impure themselves. The description of the spell Death Cloud, made from Astraea's demon soul, says as much.

And in a cruel twist of irony, Astraea's damnation does not ease the pain and misery of the Valley's inhabitants. The Archstone before Astraea's boss room reads, "The poor journey to this rotten place to offer their souls [to Astraea] so that they might be freed from their suffering." They might be sustained by the Valley's filth now, but they are still suffering from it.

They find lasting relief only in giving up their souls to feed Astraea's power, thus perpetuating the whole horrible system.

Astraea's wounds bleed perpetually, never closing, never healing. Her blood fills the grotto where she sits as an object of adoration, still performing the functions of a religion that failed her. All she can say, over and over, is that God has abandoned her, abandoned the world—she has no fewer than three separate voice lines saying this.

Notably, though others might call her a witch, she never turns to "witchcraft" in the archetypal sense. Her grief never turns to anger; she never rails against God. She never discards her clerical robes, she never dons a pointed hat, and she never casts curses or spells. She is stuck as Maiden Astraea, Saint Astraea, frozen in a state of loss.

The moment of her trauma, of her loss of faith, is extended into perpetuity. Even the boss music reflects this:

The melody loops and loops and loops, and any resolution feeds immediately into another loop. It's a textural piece more than anything, but you can't help getting lost in the endless repetition of that simple, incomplete melody.

Astraea's knightly bodyguard, Garl Vinland, also seems to be lost in unending grief. He rests in a pile of corpses, never removing the armor that is the sign of his holy vow. If you kill Astraea before him, he simply stands in shock, unable to move or speak or act. Unable to move on.

Anyway, uhh...

All of this? A wound that never heals, a grief that never ends?

Yeah, that's... that's how it feels to have lost your faith.

That's how I feel, anyway.

As you probably gathered already, this reading of Astraea is informed by my perspective as an ex-Catholic, now agnostic. My own loss of faith was very painful. It spanned the entire length of my adolescence, into young adulthood—as my rational mind was growing, my queerness was rising to the level of conscious feeling, and nearly every support system in my life was failing me.

My parish community was run by hypocritical bullies, and harbored an actual, real, pedophile priest, but still I reached out to God for answers. I looked to theology instead of community, to study and meditation and prayer. I looked for answers to my own suffering, and to the world's suffering. I looked for resolutions to all the insane contradictions. I looked for something to sustain the faith that was being asked of me. Surely God wouldn't abandon me, even if my parents and teachers and peers were all against me.

In the end, it all fell out from under me. I found plenty to admire, but even more to doubt and disdain.

I couldn't stop loving God or Jesus, but now it felt like they were dead at my feet, and that rot and maggots were visibly eating the corpses—and that everyone around me was politely pretending that they weren't.

I remember crying to my mother when my dog died around this time, and she tried to comfort me with talk of heaven, and I was just inconsolable. All I could say, as I cried for this sweet little animal who had loved me, was that I was "scared for the world." That nothing could ever possibly be right, nothing in the whole wide world, if God weren't there. I could no longer imagine a good, just end to any human life or endeavor, because the only end was death.

I've since recovered from that very low point in my life, and grown into a much happier adult. The grief never left me entirely, though.

The loss of my faith is likely the single most impactful event in my life. Because I'm no longer Catholic, I was able to transition, and I was able to find friends and partners who mean everything to me...

...but because I was Catholic, and still feel that small aching hole inside, I've spent the greater part of my life immersed in art, literature, and philosophy that explores the space where God once lived in my heart. I've spent years studying apocalyptic religions and their various underpinnings—political, social, theological, and narratological. I've become a literary critic, and a scholar of Victorian religion. My first published article is about how Elizabeth Gaskell positions the Victorian working class as an "apocalyptic demographic."

My favorite musical is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. My favorite author is Arthur Machen. My favorite video game is Demon's Souls. The grief that I feel for my lost faith is hardly all of me, but it has touched every part of me.

So when people who have never experienced such grief compare Maiden Astraea to the big sad wolf from Dark Souls, I feel a little frustrated. As a character and a symbol, she's so much more than that.

I could go on, and resolve this rambling, messy, emotional essay in some kind of critical statement about Demon's Souls... but I think I'll just leave it at that. I suppose I just wanted other people to understand what I feel, to see what I see, and to know why this video game is special to me.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Umbasa.

[catboygirljoker]

What do Lamia and Xigbar see in each other, personably speaking? Adding this second bit as a clarifier since I'm concerned that just the question alone may come off as snarky no-fun-allowed-ness when I'm genuinely interested. Love learning abt them btw it's like expanded universe lore to me

:3 !!!!!!!!!

"it's like expanded universe lore to me" is such high praise—thats really how i imagine lamias story! like the eventual fic is gonna be as canon-compliant as possible, at least until the end of the story in 3/ReMind—"this is what was happening just off camera left during the Kingdom Hearts™ series" sorta vibes. also similar in that the fic is definitely darker and more mature than the main KH games, but—hopefully—still feels like it could plausibly take place in the KH universe. anyway!

for Lamia, Xigbar is one of the few people he can safely unmask around. Lamia is autistic and has to put a concerted effort into not coming across as rude or mean to most people, but if he fucks up around Xigbar, Xigbar's just like "lmao tell me how you really feel" and doesnt take it personally. Xigbar is a confrontational asshole who breaks social rules on purpose, and Lamia finds him refreshing and easier to deal with than most people, even in the early stages of them knowing each other when their dynamic is still pretty adversarial.

as they get closer, Lamia finds that Xigbar is one of the few people who don't treat him with either revulsion or pity. like, Lamia's kind of off-putting to most people—partly because of the autism rudeness and general awkwardness, and partly because many people can sense the darkness in his heart and are unsettled by it, whether or not they know it's because of a curse and outside his control. even his own friends kinda treat him like a sick stray cat that they need to take care of or a project person they need to Fix. but Xigbar treats Lamia like a whole person, and doesn't coddle or belittle him. Lamia can trust Xigbar to not to try to override his agency or boundaries to help him—not something he can say about everyone!

and Xigbar sees Lamia as...a vision of goodness he can actually respect and understand. Xigbar recognizes that he and Lamia are very similar—they're both pragmatic, cynical, even at times ruthless; theyre not bright-eyed idealists, theyre not bleeding heart altruists. they're also both very traumatized lmao. Xigbar has been so worn down by his grand role that his personhood is down to emergency power, life support systems only—he cannot imagine living long after his mission is done, and fuck everything else besides. he kind of expects Lamia to be the same way, after all the shit they've been through. but somehow, Lamia still clings to some hope for the future in a shaking, white-knuckled fist. they have an understandable misanthropic streak, but they still try their best to treat people well, and still feel a basic moral imperative to care for and protect people.

Xigbar knows he cant write it off as just a cope or naivete. he has to recognize it as strength. it's a kind of strength he had, once—or at least a kind of strength he once tried to attain.

also like they each think the other is a smokeshow lmao. theyre really attracted to each other on a physical and personal level. the life affirming power of He Get My Penits Hord cannot be denied

[specialagentartemis]

made up fic title ask game: “an end to freedom”

Oooh, angsty.

This is a title that could go well with an idea that I think is compelling, that I like returning to: see, for nearly every piece of technology we make in the real world, its lifespan is way, way shorter than a human's. IRL this includes spacecraft.

I'm imagining a fic set 10-12 years in the future of The Murderbot Diaries. Murderbot itself is a lot more relaxed, a lot more emotionally stable and fulfilled, a full citizen of Preservation cause they have gotten new laws regarding construct rights and citizenship in place, several of its humans are moving towards retirement or at least more sedentary career shifts, it's doing pretty great, actually.

However, it returns from a rotation aboard ART to the news that the Pansystem University has decided to retire the Perihelion. The arguments are the same as for any other craft: it's old, it's out-of-date by now, its upkeep isn't worth the expense that could be put towards making newer and better ships, the OS that the bot pilot runs on is several releases out of date and not supported on the more current ones. It's just old. It's just the lifecycle of spacecraft and computers. You can't expect us to be shackled to running our ships on Space Windows 223 forever.

Because here's the thing: while Mihira and New Tideland have also made moves to support AI rights, ART has never been recognized as a person or a citizen. What it does is much easier to do and actually allows it a lot more freedom and flexibility as a legal non-person than it would be if it was a legal citizen bound by things like laws. This has driven Pin-Lee crazy for years - she is a strong proponent of "If it's not in the contract, it doesn't exist," and has warned both ART and MB that ART's preference for being legally unrecognized because that grants it more freedom and fewer consequences is going to bite it in the ass someday and it will make things so much harder down the road.

ART was too confident in its captain, in Iris, and in its place in the university. But now Martyn is emeritus at the AI lab and the department is hinting that it's really time Seth should retire and the university has denied Iris's application to be the new captain of the Perihelion, because the university doesn't really want to keep upkeeping it. Sure, its computing kernel can be moved back into the university's AI lab and put into storage there, they won't destroy it, they're not monsters... but its ship body materials really could be recycled into other things. (With the rising galactic attention to AI rights, they may also want to quietly end the pre-existing sapient-ship program so that they can make a show of launching the next generation of sapient AI ships properly.)

Legally, ART is still a vehicle. A computer. University property. And it is abruptly going from having free rein to do basically whatever it wants because no one can stop it to being put in an impossible legal bind. I'm interested in the turnabout: Murderbot's legal personhood as a citizen of Preservation and an employee of the University is ironclad, while ART is really grappling with what it means to be legally property.

I never wrote it because I wasn't really sure where to take it. Fleeing to Preservation to claim asylum there is constantly hovering over them as an option, but it would hugely embarrass the University as well as the whole polity of M&NT and as one of Preservation's closest interstellar allies at this point, it would cause a goddamn incident and possibly ruin that political relationship, which is so much bigger than either of them. Just straight up running away - Murderbot "stealing" the Perihelion and running - is another option. I think they try that, first. I think they think it'll be okay, just the two of them together in the outer fringes of non-corporate space where they won't get caught, for ten years till the statute of limitations expires. I think they both realize pretty quick that neither of them is particularly happy with this prospect.

The thing about being interested in painful binds and impossible choices is that I gotta figure out where to go with them!

[aquaquadrant]

So I just finished part VII of From Eden and Bravo’s chapters always hurt so much to read for so many different reasons, it’s painful to read about how Atlas gets into his head, how he blatantly lies about Tango and Bravo believes him. But it also hurts because I feel like the Bravo we met at the start, the one that first entered Hels, was on the fence about a lot of things. That Bravo was in a position where he could be equally swayed either way to being a better or worse person, more specifically, on his opinion of hybrids, he definitely had prejudices against them from the start but it wasn’t nearly as bad as what we see in the latest chapter, straight up denying Tango’s personhood because he’s a hybrid.

It’s tragic because if that portal had actually led to Hermitcraft, or just hadn’t been there at all, I feel like Bravo could have been a very different person. I mean, if Hermitcraft was a positive influence on Tango, someone who’d grown up in Hels and was prone to lash out both from his trauma and because of the general environment he came from, I genuinely think that it could have been a really good influence on Bravo as well. I mean, he definitely would have had to get over that prejudice if he wanted to stay in Hermitcraft, considering how many non-humans live there.

I still have some hope for Bravo, despite everything. There’s definitely some issues he has to work through and things he needs to reevaluate once he’s safe and out of Hels, but I don’t think that Bravo is a bad person. He’s never came across to me as acting out of malice, the closest he’s come is when his actions are driven by anger, but even then, it’s usually short lived.

I mean, a lot of the things Bravo’s assumed about Tango can be disproven by just talking to the guy. He’s working off the assumption that Tango knew about the doppelgänger thing and that he opened the portal on purpose but if he can prove that he didn’t, Atlas’s entire argument for why Bravo should help him recapture Tango falls apart. And between the fact that he’s not trapped in Hels anymore, and that Atlas’s and Al’s people are gonna be too busy fighting for their lives against the Lifers, I can totally see Bravo, if not switching sides, then at least just leaving and deciding to not help Atlas.

I keep asking myself, why did that portal lead to Hels? I understand Tango ending up in Hermitcraft, that makes sense. But why did Bravo get sent to Hels? Why did the Universe do that? Were they both meant to go to Hermitcraft and something went wrong? What happened there?

[nalyra-dreaming]

That Claudia diary entry kinda blew my mind with that bit about her wanting to make one them her *slave* as retribution for what was done to her. Feels too much of a coincidence with how in the show she insisted Louis agree that they were indeed lestat’s slaves and that she believed Magnus had made lestat a slave. I know Rolin said books 1-6 are the ones informing the show the most but were Claudia’s diaries ever made that big of a deal before book 7? The inclusion suggests so much. It would be a bit of a let down if they don’t fully delve into all that.

Claudia wanting to punish them both, blaming Louis more (which makes even MORE sense in the show since Louis is more responsible for her vampirism) and seeing it as even greater painful revenge on the one that lives on without the other

“so that his soul, if not his body, is the same size at last as my own."

Anne put crack in that line

Lots of fans love the loving aspect of the father-daughter relationship between Louis and Claudia, it’s heartbreaking, but it’s not JUST love, we already got a hint of Claudia expressing hatred for Louis at the start of ep 5 because she blames him for her creation, and then the neck slam we see Louis do to her at the end of ep 7, for that to just go nowhere would be a let down to her character. Louis edits her and therefor denies her full personhood as he gives the interview in season 1, to further sanitise her motivations the show would literally be doing the same to her, right?

Daniel seems to be really fighting to hear her voice, season 2 opening up all the characters even more…maybe we won’t have full ‘puppet-master Claudia’ revealed but it wouldn’t make sense to not anticipate something along those lines maybe. She can still love Louis and have manipulated him, she can still despite her hatred feel some love for lestat while wanting him dead, she’s as complex as any of the other characters so I hope she’s not diminished.

Her diary being presented as ‘evidence’ at the trial is an insane suggestion (I love it), and if armand is the only one who knew about it and maybe stealing it for that purpose and Louis denying that fact to himself maybe 🤔 the writers are going to make the trial as emotional devastating as possible, the diary idea is genius

You think Louis will be pushed to suicide with all the revelations in season 2, but do you think the diaries coming into his possession the first time is what provoked him to maybe ask armand to help redress his memories prior to the interview, if he had read things that upset him and then armand changed?

(Sorry for long anon!)

(All good^^)

I also think that there are too many... "hooks" in that diary entry to not mean something in the context of this show, which is where this speculation comes from of course.

Though books 1-6 have been mentioned as the "main" basis for the show (and I believe they said so as to not give the game away immediately), Fareed is already there, the silver cord has been mentioned - both are only much later in the books... I shared a quote from Sam the other day where he mentioned that they are looking at all the books, and so I cannot really believe that they will not use this.

Or, I've said it before, I sure hope they will not let the impact of it fall flat. But I really cannot imagine this, since it is such a catastrophic event for Louis.

And as per the trial... well, as said in the posts, one of her diaries was in Paris, a big change from the books (where there is only one diary anyways, and not in Paris), and in this show... that cannot be a coincidence. It's also mentioned that Louis didn't present them at the last interview, so I could easily see Armand having them in possession and only granting access (as he does for Daniel).

Personally I think Louis probably read them the first time and had a breakdown, and Armand... tried to help. In his own way. That would fit for me.

But we'll see.

I do believe that the trial (the whole season actually) will be maximum emotional carnage (again thx to the nonny who coined that phrase a while ago *laughs*), it will be harsh, brutal even. For me, using it would simply be in line with what they've already set up... especially with the condemning content in it.

Not that Armand would really need the "evidence" - but then that trial is about/for Louis, too, and (crazy as that may be) for/against Lestat in a way.

[theawkwardvirgin]

Read a great post talking about how, no matter how terrible a person is/what they’ve done, you can never start thinking of them as “not a person”. Because the second you do, the second you set conditions on human dignity, you open the possibility to expand those conditions. You become the boot of power crushing specific groups you dislike (no matter how valid the reason).

It was a great post, a secular representation of one of the foundational aspects of Catholicism: that every person is made in the image and likeness of God, and has human dignity that should be respected.

Which is why it was so infuriatingly hypocritical that they ended their post by saying, ‘forgetting to respect each person’s humanity is how we end up losing our rights, like reproductive rights’. After spending several paragraphs beautifully expounding the importance of respecting the inherent dignity and rights of each and every human person, they use the example of having the right to abort any pregnancy, for any reason, a position that continually denies the human dignity and rights of fetuses, often until the very point of birth, when they’re fully able to live outside the womb and the only difference between them and the pro-choice crowd’s definition of a person with human rights and dignity is location.

Rejecting the human rights and dignity of fetuses is, in fact, WORSE than rejecting that of war criminals and Nazis, because their only crime is being inconvenient. That’s what human dignity and rights so often rests on now: How convenient that person’s existence is. This is backed up by the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which asserts that fetuses have legal personhood and protections…as long as their mother wants them. As soon as she approves an abortion, those rights are stripped away.

Can’t people see how terrifying that is? Can’t they see how that leads to ageism, racism, classism? To ableism on a fucking horrifying scale? Iceland claims they’ve “cured” Down Syndrome. What that really means is they abort every fetus that shows signs of it. (The doctor who discovered how to detect Down Syndrome before birth, Jérôme Lejeune, was Catholic. He strongly opposed the use of his research in selective abortions, but was ignored.)

You can��t advocate for the respect of human rights and dignity and then exclude one group. That’s the very problem they were arguing against in the first place.

(Mandatory note that respecting the human rights and dignity of fetuses does not mean disrespecting the human rights and dignity of their mothers. The Catholic Church advocates for and actively supports the care of mothers both during and after pregnancy. There are many Catholic charities devoted to providing for mothers and supporting families. The Catholic Church does not support people who harass mothers at abortion clinics. They do have prayer and outreach programs that offer financial and medical support to these mothers, in case they don’t actually want an abortion but feel it’s their only option. I have also personally met people who’ve adopted several children from mothers at abortion clinics—they support the mother throughout her pregnancy, and then adopt the child after they’re born.)

[perfectlyvalid49]

I think it’s also really important not to dehumanize people who do terrible things because it drastically reduces the likelihood that you’ll reflect on your own behavior. Like, if the people who do the bad things aren’t really people, and you’re a person, then clearly, you’re not doing the bad things.

To make this directly relate to the discourse that’s been all over my dash recently – lets look at how this thinking can interact with antisemitism as an example.

We’ll start with “Nazis aren’t people.” We also know that Nazis are antisemitic, so that means that some antisemites aren’t people. Note that from a strictly logical standpoint, we can’t say from the above that ALL antisemites aren’t people, but emotionally that’s an easy jump to make.

So what happens when you point out that someone who holds the above beliefs is being antisemitic? Well, first, they’re going to deny it, because they know that they’re a person, and Nazis/antisemites aren’t people, so they can’t have been antisemitic. Second, they’re going to get mad, because you just called them not a person, which is both mean and untrue.

The end result of this thinking is that instead of being able to point out a behavior that needs to be examined, and a person saying, “hey, I can see where I messed up, I’ll work on doing better/unlearning my biases/whatever other self-improvement is needed,” you get people who get immediately defensive because they feel like you’re bringing their personhood into question. And this means that they can’t learn to be better because they’re too busy being defensive, and that they don’t feel the need to because clearly your accusation was false anyway.

OP posted that we need to remember that people who do bad things are still people, and still have whatever value we assign to personhood. I guess what I'm trying to add is that if you're the sort of person who needs that reminder, then you should also remember that the people that you want to class as actual people are still capable of doing bad things.

i wish ppl on this website, and within leftist circles in general, were a little less gung ho about making jokes or statements like "billionaires arent people" "nazis arent people" "police arent people"

there is no level of evil where a human stops being a human. if you decide to kill them for their crimes, then you are killing a human. and sometimes that is justified! oil execs and war profiteers have destroyed countless lives in service of their own sick greed, and given the chance to enact that same violence on them, id probably pop their heads like a pimple.

but it is important that we do not shy away from the reality of that choice. it is a human life that is being ended. a person with interiority, feelings, family.

if we stop considering any group as people, even a group defined by their own evil actions, then we are drawing a line to divide society into persons and non-persons, and stating that those non-persons do not deserve to live.

i hope i dont need to explain why that is a dangerous position to take.

these people and all of their evil, their greed, their hatred, are just as much a part of humanity as art, culture, language, food. they are a part of us that has grown malignant and cancerous, and like a cancer, they must be excised for the sake of the whole--but they are still a part of us, made of the same stuff as us, down to their cores.

evil humans are still humans.

[fadedapparition]

i am thinking… about how a high approval lavellan really easily ends up relating to solas the way briala related to felassan. and how i actually like this much more than the romance route because it’s just as interesting and possibly even sadder.

lavellan doesn’t HAVE to see him this way, but they're given room to decide that solas is their mentor in an environment where they’ve otherwise been completely cut off from their culture-group. you have the opportunity to ask him for advice on just about anything, and the transmission of knowledge/history forms the bedrock of any positive relationship between himself and the player character. the dalish have limited written records, so most lore is passed down orally from keepers and hahrens to younger members of a clan. when solas starts rambling about the fade, it’s not just some guy telling stories, but an older elf sharing knowledge with his protege that would otherwise be lost with his death. he is fulfilling the responsibilities of a hahren in the same way felassan fulfilled them for briala, and he’s doing so while secretly the most literal hahren you could find. solas can occupy the role of an elder, but he is also among the oldest elves in the setting: not only a hahren, but the most hahren.

and in being granted the honor of a position as their elder, solas must confront the fact that lavellan is his legacy. they are the product of the world he’s created, the mortal race that owes its existence entirely to the catastrophic changes he made that he’s since come to regret. they purposefully incorporate him into their cultural lineage, and by doing that, they compel him to acknowledge the ties that bind him to present-day elves. he’s meeting his descendants in the post-apocalypse, and he’s grappling with the reality that for as bad as the world might be, it remains populated by people who recognize themselves in him.

for felassan, briala was the catalyst for an identical realization, and he was willing to die at solas’ hands to affirm her personhood (and, by extension, everyone else's). solas finds himself in precisely the same situation, except he’s been murdering his dearest friends to deny this possibility since before the story began. when he meets felassan’s own version of lavellan, when he actually encounters briala herself, he describes her in glowing terms because he realizes how closely they resemble each other. maybe this is why felassan bonded with her so strongly. the person she reminded him of could easily be solas.

i don't agree with the (prevailing?) interpretation that solas tries to separate himself from present-day elvendom because he doesn’t see other elves as people. i think he’s doing it because he wants to escape the truth that destroying the world means destroying his heirs, people who are as much like him as they could be while still surviving the terrible world he bequeathed to them. if you help elves, choose dialogues that reference elven lore, or even just point out to people that you are an elf, solas throws approval at you, but if you tell him directly that you are both elves and therefore similar, he gets scared. he knows lavellan is his people, but doesn't want to internalize that because that would turn him into a second felassan - and make his murder of the actual felassan completely meaningless.

the solas romance is about this immortal promethean god-figure recognizing an equal in the present and falling in love, but i personally like this version of the story more because it places greater emphasis on the seniority and power he holds. he's one of very few lines of defense between lavellan and a chantry that has a long, storied history of elf-killing. he has access to complete, firsthand accounts of their history, and can permit or deny them that knowledge at will. they're granting him their trust and their admiration, and it's on him to decide if he's worthy of it. they are his symbolic child, and he is the only person with the capacity to prevent them from becoming a sort of isaac to his abraham.

but instead, in true deadbeat fashion, he skips town, changes his number, and stops responding to your emails. and that’s why the new game is called dragon age dad

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

Complications and Solutions: Chapter 3

Summary: Layla starts to panic about the relationship. Steven tries to answer questions. Who said dating anyone would be easy?

Pairings: Marc x Layla. Steven x Layla. Jake x Layla.

Warnings: Minor hints at sexual language.

Word Count: 2702

Previous chapter: HERE

--

She waited for them. 

Layla didn’t think she would be able to sleep as she sat on the couch. Her thoughts were racing as she struggled with imaginary arguments and scenarios. 

Normally so good at hiding her emotions, she had several moments of simply sitting and trying to not break down. 

She oscillated from feeling sorry for herself to being angry at herself for feeling and reacting the way she did. She went from angry at Marc to wanting him there with her so she could hold him close. 

Irrational thoughts started to weigh her down. What if Marc left? What if Steven hated her now? What if Jake decided she wasn’t worth it and took them away from her? 

She got angry and wasn’t going to wait. She was going to walk home and wait for them to call her. But what if they thought she was the one that had abandoned them? Was she being fair?

In the end, she passed out on the couch, only waking up much later as the sun came in through the window and landed on her face. 

Squinting and making a distressed sound, Layla slowly sat up and looked around. There was no sign of either of the boys having returned yet. She glanced down at her watch. It was just past ten. 

“Probably just running late. Doesn’t mean anything.” Layla got up and went to the bathroom, washed her face, and fixed her hair. 

She checked her phone and found no new messages. Her anxiety started to creep up. 

“Fine… It’s fine.” She glanced out the window, not really sure what she was hoping to see there. Perhaps some sort of giant banner that told her things were fine. 

When her stomach growled at her, she went to the kitchen and started to dig through the fridge. It was the biggest sign of more than one person living there. Clothes and personal items could be tucked away, but a shelf of different types of tofu and fake meat, a shelf of steaks, and a shelf of vegetables was pretty telling. 

She was about to check an old takeout box to see if it was anything still edible when the front door opened. 

She spun around, nervously waiting to see who would walk in. 

Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered who she was hoping to see. Was she supposed to play favorites? Was she supposed to want one over the other? Would they somehow know? Would it be wrong of her to declare them equally loved which might deny them their own personhood? 

More complications. 

Steven looked up at her, looking vaguely confused as he glanced around then looked back at her. “Heya, love.” He waved then looked down at the bag in his hands. “Uh… I’m going to level with you, I have no idea what time it is. We just spent the last who knows how long out in a car arguing. Jake has a car apparently. I think it has to do with his job. There’s…” 

He stopped and gave an annoyed look to the side. “Jake doesn’t want me to talk about his car.” 

“Oh.” Layla had no idea what to say to any of that. “You were arguing again?” She had a sinking feeling she knew what it was about. 

“Yeah.” Steven set the bag down and moved to feed the fish. “All three of us, actually. Usually it’s just Marc and Jake but I was tired and not feeling like having any of it.” 

“Did you guys resolve it?” She hated feeling like this. Like they had just started to get their lives together and she had come in and turned it all upside down again. 

“Well, no. Not really.” Steven shot another annoyed look to the side. His eyes flicked down and then back up. “They are actually still going at it. It’s really annoying. Kind of hard to focus. Them yammering on like this. Marc doesn’t want me to talk about it. I’ve been trying to block them out but Marc wants front and… Wow, that was rude. Well now I’m not giving you anything. You can both just sit there and have at it. I don’t care! I’ll hold front all day!” 

“I’m sorry.” Layla looked down, self consciously hugging herself. “I didn’t mean to upset everyone. And for last night. I’m so sorry, Steven.” 

Steven looked at her for a moment, confusion making his brows furrow. “Oh. No, Layla. You have nothing to be sorry about! I mean, I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t think about how this must be for you. I just… Well I assumed things and it was all before I even understood what was going on. What Marc and I were. I just thought that… Well it’s silly and doesn’t matter what I thought. I should have talked it over with you before I just jumped in and thought it would be easy.” 

Layla looked up at him. Of course he would assume he was in the wrong. He was too kind to think anything else. Too kind to see when he was wronged. 

“Steven, when I met you I thought you were Marc. Marc playing some kind of game to make me leave. Maybe Marc with amnesia or something. Something that was easier to explain than the truth.” She looked down. “Of course I don’t now. I know you aren’t Marc. You are Steven Grant and you are…” 

Her mind rushed over everything Steven was. Perfect, sunshine, adorable, a hero, kind, honest, handsome, smart, patient…. 

“You are you.” She smiled slightly. “But I worry that when I tell you that I love you, that… How is it different from Marc? I don’t love you more or less but how can I love you both the same and still say you have your own parts?” 

Steven nodded. “Is that why you are so standoffish?” 

“It’s weird to love two people. To be allowed to love two people. To care so much for two people and worry that I’m being unfair.” She sighed. “I don’t want to be unfair. I don’t want to always wonder if I’m telling Marc how much I adore and love him that you’re feeling left out. That if I’m telling you how wonderful you are that Marc isn’t in there thinking he isn’t worthy of my love.” 

Steven opened his mouth then glanced to the side and frowned. “No, she has a point, Marc. You aren’t exactly known for your self confidence.” 

Layla frowned. “If we are going to be open and do this, I don’t want Marc to feel like any less. I don’t want him to get any funny ideas about disappearing again and leaving me with just Steven.” 

Steven nodded. “Marc is going to work on it. I promise never to get jealous of Marc. If either of us is starting to feel hurt, we’re going to talk it over. Even if I have to drag Marc out and fight it out of him.” 

Layla smiled at that. If anyone was going to force Marc to face his feelings, it was Steven. “Thank you.” She ran over and hugged him tightly. “This is just relationship stuff. There are other things we need to talk about.” 

Steven blushed deeply. “Like…being closer?” 

“Very close.” She nuzzled his neck and laughed. “Sorry.” 

He looked at her with bright red cheeks and a hopeful smile. “Do you think that maybe… I could be close to you?” 

She thought about it, looking down at his hands in hers. Could she be with Steven and not constantly compare how he did things to how Marc did it? Could she look past the body and see the mind behind it? 

“I think we need to set some more ground rules first… I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable or have any hurt feelings… And I especially don’t want to do anything that I do with Marc and find out that you hate it… And then… There’s Jake.” She looked away. 

Steven thought about it for a moment, his fingers slowly curling around hers and stroking up and down along the knuckles like he would do with his sleeves. She loved the feel of it. Of feeling him fidget and release his anxiety through her as if she could take it away for him. 

At last he nodded and moved to sit down. “I don’t know what I like. I’m an open book. Blank slate. I’m pretty sure that anything you do I’ll love, though.” 

She blushed and sat next to him. “Don’t say that. I’m sure I could do things that you would hate.” She thought back to the first week she had spent with Marc after they had been married. “And some things that maybe I don’t feel comfortable doing with you…” 

Steven gave her a curious look. “Marc says… You were pretty wild. He won’t elaborate but he says that if you ever offer to try yoga in bed again that I’m supposed to tell you no.” 

It was her turn to feel her cheeks heat up. “Yeah… I had some not great ideas when I was younger. We…We won't be trying those again.” 

As confused as Steven looked, he simply nodded in agreement. “Marc and I seem to be on the same page. And we all promise to not spy. If you are with him then I will give you as much space as I can.” 

“I don’t know how much control you have with switching…” She hesitated, feeling foolish for asking. “What if… What if I want time with Marc and…” 

“Yeah.” Steven winced. “We’re… Marc, Jake, and I, that is… We’re going to have to talk about this. I think the biggest thing is being incredibly honest. If one of us pops out and it’s not an appropriate time we need to just… Stop.” 

She nodded. “I agree. No switching without telling me. I don’t want to… I want to know who I’m with at all times when it comes to that. If I’m ever not sure, I want to be able to ask without hurting feelings. I’m going to be… I’m going to be super unsure of things for a while. I might need reassurances until things are more solid.” 

Steven nodded and took her hands again, holding them tightly. “Of course! I know this is really weird. We’ll figure it out as we go. Slowly.” 

“Not too slowly, I hope.” She kissed his knuckles gently. “Is Jake okay with this?” 

Steven frowned and looked away. His frown deepened. There was a moment when his face pulled and someone else slipped in for a second then Steven was back. 

“He says that he will let you know if he is ever present. I’m paraphrasing here. Especially he will let you know if…Marc or I are…Making love to you and he happens to be nearby. He will let it be known. Yeah. He’s fine.” Steven winced. 

“He doesn’t like me, does he?” She tried not to look and feel as hurt as she was. “It’s his right not to like me. Just because you two do doesn’t mean he has to. It's as simple as that.” 

Steven sighed. “He… He’s complicated. I think he needs more time.” 

She nodded. “I can give him that. He’s kind of stuck having to be around me. I feel a little bad for him. He can’t just leave if I upset him.” 

“He can.” Steven frowned. “Actually. It’s part of what we were arguing about out there. He’s taking his job very seriously.” 

“His job?” She gave him a curious look. 

“His role in the system.” Steven stroked her hand lightly. “As protector. He can sort of push us out of the way any time he wants. If we fight, it just makes things harder and he still wins. If he’s that upset, he can just get up and walk us out of here.” 

That sent an unpleasant jolt through her system. “I didn’t know that… Does he really have that much say in things?” 

“We’re trying to figure that one out. He and Marc keep getting into arguments. Marc doesn’t like to be told what to do and Jake… Jake doesn’t like being ignored.” Steven shrugged. “They both mean well.” 

A thought crossed her mind and she didn’t much care for it. “How long can either of you hold the driver’s seat?” She thought back to all the times she had seen them switch so smoothly. Then she thought about how Marc had been in control for most of the years she had known him. 

A stab of fear went through her. What if Jake decided he really didn’t like her? What if he took front and held it every time she was there? What if he didn’t give it back for years? How much control did Jake have? 

Steven shrugged. “Well, we’re all aware of each other now. The barrier is a bit down now. Least between Marc and I, there’s no wall usually. Marc and Jake have a bit of a wall. I can kind of see what Jake’s doing now. I don’t think he really likes that, but I’m not just here for Marc. He’s got to accept that I’m here for us all.” 

Steven gave a sneaky grin. “I think I can kick Jake out of place if I practice enough. He gets stressed out too.” He blinked and looked up. “Yeah, he doesn’t like that. He really wants me to stop talking to you about this.” 

She relaxed. Steven would stop it. Steven would make sure that things evened out. She had to trust in him to take care of things. 

“Okay. Maybe enough of me being nosy for today. I don’t want to start another fight.” She kissed his cheek. 

Steven beamed at her. “I’m kinda glad we’re talking. I feel like I’m starting to understand how things work better explaining it to you. Gets kind of weird when it’s all up in my head. Talking in there is odd.” 

“You can talk to me about anything. I like that you are helping me to understand. I don’t want to sit here in my own head either, you know.” Layla moved to lean into him. 

He blushed and pulled her close. “I still don’t know what time it is, but I’m really glad you’re here. Let’s have some breakfast and go out. I’d love a cup of coffee and Marc wants to take you to this place down the street that he says you’ll like.” 

How easy it was to slip into wife and girlfriend mode. How domestic it was and so normal to have breakfast with her husband and walk down the street hand in hand with her boyfriend. It was easy enough to forget that no one else knew that they were different people. 

Easy enough to forget the other that sat in the backseat, alone and silent. 

When the day was over, she kissed her husband goodnight and returned to her own place. Laying back, she wondered when she’d feel comfortable sleeping in bed next to him again. When she’d feel comfortable enough to at last pull Steven close and let him figure out just what it meant to him to be ‘closer’. 

She stared out the window, wondering if Jake was out there doing his mysterious work at night. 

She sighed and picked up her phone. Hesitating only for a moment, she sent a text. 

“I hope you are keeping warm out there. It’s getting pretty cold.”

She waited. After ten minutes she felt silly and supposed that maybe they really were in bed resting for a change. 

She was about to roll over and get some sleep herself when the buzz of her phone startled her. 

“I have a jacket.” 

Layla stared at the message. She gave it a minute to respond. She didn’t want to look as desperate as she felt. 

“Please remember to get some sleep. You can’t live off of coffee alone.”

This time the phone buzzed after only a few seconds. 

“I will sleep soon. Goodnight, Hermosa.” 

She smiled. “Goodnight, Jake.”  

[thepro-lifemovement]

Okay, I am reading it and since this is old, I have seen counter arguments to a lot of this already. This will probably be long so I will put it under the cut.

I don’t like the discussion of personhood because when we decide who is a “person” and who isn’t, we dehumanize and deny the most basic rights of life and liberty to “undesirables.” A civilized society doesn’t assign “personhood” on the basis of size or capability. Humanity itself imparts personhood. The only thing required to be a “person” is to be a member of our species. 

I don’t like the acorn argument because  an acorn is a thing. An embryo or fetus is a human being. Unlike everything else, human beings have inherent dignity and immense intrinsic value, irrespective of their capacities. If you want to compare the two, an acorn is not a tree, but it is oak by nature. An embryo is not an adult, but it is human by nature. I think both sides use slippery slope arguments and I think it’s unfair for her to say only the anti-abortion side uses them. 

Ah, the violinist argument. An impossible scenario. I would urge you to watch the video linked above. Everything I would say in regards to this argument would come from that video. But if you don’t want to take the time to watch it, let me know and I will condense what she says for you. 

While I don’t think abortion is necessary to save the mother’s life, I think it’s important to have a medical emergency section in the abortion bans. No woman should die a preventable death. I think any medical care to save a pregnant mother’s life is considered life saving care. We believe abortion is the intentional killing of the unborn. Doctors have a duty to save both mother and child, and if he can’t save the mama, save the baby, if he can’t save the baby, save the mama. But he should be trying to save both if he can. Example, if a mother needs cancer treatment but that treatment will result in her unborn child’s death, the intention of the treatment is to save her life and kill the cancer cells. The intention is not to kill her child. Her child’s death is an unintentional result of the treatment. We may prioritize the life of the born over the unborn, but both have value. If we can prevent a death, the death needs to be prevented. That’s what it means to be pro-life: all life has value, no one deserves to die. 

Whoever translated this from hardcopy to the internet needed to proofread; “Suppose you filed yourself trapped.” I agree, the woman needs to be considered and recognized as a priority. She is important; it’s not only about her unborn child. Many pro-life orgs and crisis pregnancy centers I have talked with truly do care about mothers in need. Like I said, no mother needs to die for her child. You can use any allegory or situation like that where you have to choose between one life or another, but just because you prioritize one over the other does not mean the other has no value. Both have value, just sometimes you can’t save both, and it’s tragic when you can’t. 

I’m not going to go into the whole “it may not be performed by a third party, but only by the mother herself” because no one will ever say that and that’s super dangerous. Ladies, never force a miscarriage or perform an abortion on yourself, or even take abortion pills without instruction from a medical professional. This is how women die. After Roe was overturned, I saw a lot of posts floating around instructing women on how to do those things. That’s how women die. Never advise them to do this.  

For the right to life, it means “that nobody, including the Government, can try to end your life. It also means the Government should take appropriate measures to safeguard life by making laws to protect you and, in some circumstances, by taking steps to protect you if your life is at risk.” On this viewpoint, it just gets into the violinist scenario, which I don’t feel the need to refute since it’s been discussed.

Oh my gosh the violinist returns again! She is so hellbent on bringing this into every scenario lol. 

In cases of rape, she is treating the unborn like they committed the horrible act and not the rapist. She is treating the unborn like they are responsible for the crime, which makes no sense. The rapist is the one responsible. 

These analogies get very strange. Like the person-plant one is so odd and quite silly. I don’t even know how to respond to it because it’s just so bizarre. I think Thomson ignores the rapist in her discussion here and just puts the blame on the unborn child, which isn’t fair. Rape that results in pregnancy has two victims: the woman and the unborn child. The unborn child is not the crimes of their father. They are an innocent party in this, too. 

She also assumes abortion is just “detaching a person from your body,” which is not what abortion is. Abortion pills starve and poison the unborn. Abortion procedures dismember and rip them apart with forceps. Abortion directly kills the unborn in such horrible ways. If you’re ever curious, you can see how abortions are performed here.

With allowing a person to use your body, you do not have a duty to them like you would with your unborn child. This is explained better in the video I attached that refutes the violinist argument. You do not have an obligation to a stranger or friend like you would to your own offspring as their mother. Yeah, refusing to give someone your organ when you’re the only one that can give it would not reflect well on you, but you’re not obligated to. But when it’s your unborn child, they are your obligation, whether you like it or not. It may seem really unfair, but it’s incredibly unfair to kill them, too. I think a big issue is we have turned sex from this loving, procreative act into something just for pleasure. People think condoms and birth control will eliminate the chance for pregnancy, but it doesn’t. Our society has forgotten the procreative part of sex and we don’t think about that when we have sex. I think people would make more wise decisions regarding sex if we had sex knowing there was a chance of pregnancy and accepting that fact. All the fear mongering going on in regards to sex and child birth has made many women see abortion as the more desirable option. Sorry for the tangent. 

It’s really hard to comment on this when she keeps going back to the violinist scenario. I agree you can’t force someone to act in good faith or do good deeds, but I think we should force people to not do evil acts like abuse or murder. “Henry Fonda does not have that special kind of responsibility for me.” He does not, but a mother has a special kind of responsibility for her child. That’s the difference between all of these scenarios. When I get pregnant, I will have the responsibility to care for and nurture my child. All mothers have this responsibility until someone else can be responsible for them. And I don’t think mothers should ever do this alone. I think the father should be financially responsible and pay for any hospital bills. He should also be morally and emotionally supportive. If it takes two to create a human being, both should take on the responsibilities, at least until someone else can.  

I don’t think anyone should ever be insensitive to any woman who chooses abortion. They felt it was the best decision at the time and some mourn the loss of their baby. We just feel its our job to inform them that there are other options and they’re not alone in this. There are resources to help them. We want abortion to be unthinkable. 

From Twitter.

[jennycalendar]

i dont wanna DENY the genuine romantic connection btwn buffy and angel bc it was there but imo their relationship was much more abt the way both of them (buffy esp) are running from destinies they never chose that have and will continue to harm them and the general futility of that but jenny and Giles are like. theyve done that, they've BEEN there already theyve given up that fight and have told themselves they're at peace with it and THEN they meet this other person that is so fundamentally different but also Understands and theres this meta layer of tragedy in that the show never cares about Any Of This and it's just haha funny grownup romance and not like. a mirror of one of buffy's primary conflicts early in the show

anon you fucking get it. exactly. the thing that always Gets Me about jenny and giles and in my mind makes them even MORE tragically romantic is that they are in a story that does not give a shit about them as people. they are given responsibilities that remove personhood AND their place in the ACTUAL NARRATIVE does not present them as a romance worth examination or consideration. so not only are they these pointless side characters in their own lives, they are a pointless b-plot romance IN THE ACTUAL SHOW THAT THEY ARE IN. and yet giles will burn down the world for jenny -- does it twice, in canon! -- and jenny will go against everything she has been taught to believe in order to redeem herself to giles. they are so fundamentally changed by each other and this is not what we are supposed to look at or care about for anything more than a handful of seconds.

how can one NOT go crazy about that? like, even the existing narrative is saying "giles and jenny are nothing" and every second that giles and jenny spend together is clearly the happiest that the both of them ever are. EVER. giles spends the literal rest of the show miserable and adrift, and the closest thing he has to a personal/romantic relationship (outside of an accidentally magical induced romantic encounter) is a pre-existing connection with someone who knew him before sunnydale & who leaves him at the exact same crossroads that jenny chose to stay with him. (more on this -- i feel like olivia's experience in hush directly parallels jenny's experience in the dark age, and as such olivia choosing to leave when jenny eventually changes her mind -- AND giles's reaction to both of these women leaving him, at least initially on jenny's part -- says something really clear about how deep the relationship ran for both of them.)

but i absolutely agree with you that -- i have always kind of seen jenny and giles as a sort of grown-up version of buffy and angel's relationship, where the two of them have had a lot more time to be lonely and to reconcile themselves to the fact that they may end up being lonely forever, and as such there is just this giddy, incandescent joy in jenny and giles's relationship that doesn't really exist with buffy and angel. not that buffy and angel aren't joyful! just that the context is so fucking different: jenny and giles GAVE UP. they were NOT EXPECTING THIS. they had spent their entire lives resigned to never being seen or understood, and then there is this person who absolutely adores that they are mean and bitter and fighty and doesn't flinch away from the scary parts of the supernatural. this absolutely impossible person who understands them without them having to unveil themselves, which at this point in both of their lives has genuinely become impossible. giles and jenny do not know how to be vulnerable with each other, but because they are both in such similar positions, they don't actually need to unpack all of their baggage in order to know how to treat each other. it's insane.

[gliklofhameln]

The key to the story of the first humans lies in a sequence of three sentences at the end, whose juxtaposition seems to make no sense at all. They begin with Adam’s curse for having eaten the forbidden fruit:

‘By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.’

The man named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

(Genesis 3:19-21)

What is the connection between mortality (’to dust you will return’) and the man giving a new name to his wife? And what is the connection between that and God making the couple garments of skin, as if he were giving them a gift as they left the garden?

To understand the passage we have first to realise that it is not a myth but a philosophical parable about language and relationships, the difference between species and individuals, nouns and names, and about what lifts the relationship between husband and wife from the biological to the anthropological, from animal reproduction to human relationship and love.

The story of the first humans in Genesis 2 begins with God giving Adam the ability to use language to classify things. He names the animal: ‘Whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.’ He sorts and labels them as species. But human beings do not function at the level of species. They are conscious of themselves as unique individuals. They are not merely alone, a physical state. They can also feel lonely, a psychological state. So, ‘for the man no suitable helper was found’. He is not alone, but he is lonely. Animals form species; humans are individuals.

God then creates a partner for man. But if we listen carefully to the poem he speaks on seeing her for the first time, we note something odd: ‘She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.’ He names the woman as he named the animals. He uses a generic noun. She is ‘woman’, not a person but a type. She is ‘taken out of man’, ‘helper to man’, but not an individual with her own fears and feelings. Adam does not understand her otherness. She is, for him, merely his mirror image: ‘bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh’.

Eve rebels against this by striking out on her own. The conversation she has with the serpent is the first conversation she has. Adam has spoken about her but not to her. She eats the forbidden fruit. She gives some to her husband, who also eats. She has become the prime mover in the relationship, but still they have not spoken.

Then comes the discovery of their sin. God confronts them both. Each responds by denying responsibility. Adam blames the woman. The woman blames the serpent. Still they are talking about self and other as if they are not free and choosing individuals, but mere things caught up in the forces that operate on things.

Then Adam suddenly hears that he is mortal. Dust he is, and to dust he will return. Suddenly Adam understands the difference between individual and species. Species live on; individuals die. There was a world before we were born, there will be a world after we die, but we will not be here to see it. In the knowledge of our mortality we discover our individuality.

But if Adam is an individual, so is the woman. And God has said to the woman, ‘With pain you will birth to children.’ Within the curse is a blessing. Humans may be mortal, but something of them survives their death, namely children. But children are born only when man and woman are joined in a bond of love. That is when Adam gives his wife the name Chavah, Eve, meaning ‘mother of all life’. The point is not which name, but the fact that it is a name, not a noun. Species have nouns, individuals have names. The woman is now, for the man, not ‘woman’, but Eve. Adam has discovered personhood, uniqueness, individuality, and thus the difference between biology and anthropology. Animals form species, humans are individuals. Animals mate, humans relate. Animals reproduce, humans beget. Animals have sex, humans have love.

The rabbis said that Adam became the first penitent and was forgiven. God then shows kindness to the couple by making them garments of skin. The rabbis said that they were made of snakeskin, as if to say: The very thing that led you to sin (the serpent) will now protect you. Your physicality, which first caused you embarrassment, can be made holy when transmuted into love and sanctified by a bond of trust. Far from ending on a note of condemnation, it ends on a note of divine grace.

The story teaches us about language and love, and about the difference between biological reproduction — a property of the species — and the human family, which is always made up of individuals who are more and other than their similarities. Even clothing, which God endorses with his gift, signals that we are not naked and transparent to one another. There is a part of each of us that always remain hidden. In Hebrew the word chavah, Eve, also has the meaning of ‘hidden’.

There are two subtle hints in the narrative that this is what the story is about. The first, often confused in translation, is that the text speaks throughout of ha-adam, ‘the man’, not adam, ‘Adam’, which is, like Eve, a proper name. ‘The man’ becomes Adam only when ‘the woman’ becomes Eve.

The second is that the name of God changes too. In Genesis I, God is called Elohim, a noun meaning roughly ‘the totality of forces operative in the universe’. In Genesis 2 — 3, he is called Hashem-Elokim, and in Genesis 4, immediately after the Adam-Eve story, he is called Hashem alone. Hashem is God’s proper name, just as Adam is Adam’s and Eve, Eve’s. Our experience of God mirrors our experience of other people. When we relate to other people as persons, we relate to God as a person. Or, to put it differently, God as Hashem is the transcendental reality of interpersonal relations. We love God through loving other people. That is the only way.

The story of the forbidden fruit and the Garden of Eden is less a story about sin, guilt and punishment and more about the essential connection between mortality, individuality and personhood. In one sense it is a pre-emptive refutation of the neo-Darwinism argument that we are all just animals, selfish replicators. We are precisely not animals, not because we are biologically unique — they and we are mere dust of the earth; nor because we have immortal souls — we may, but they are wholly absent from the narrative. We are not animals because we are self-conscious, because we are aware of each other as individuals, and because we are capable of forming relationships of trust. We have culture, not just nature; anthropology, not just biology.

It is also a parable about otherness. Adam’s poem about ‘bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh’ sounds beautiful, but it leads to moral failure because it fails to acknowledge the otherness of the other. Until Eve is Eve, not merely ‘woman’, the man does not know who she is.

The biblical word da’at, ‘knowledge’, does not mean in Hebrew what it is normally taken to mean in the West, namely knowledge of facts, theories, systems and truths. It means interpersonal knowledge, intimacy, empathy. The ‘tree of knowledge’ is about this kind of knowledge. True knowledge that the other is not a mirror image of me, that he or she has wants and needs of her own that may clash with mine, is the source of all love and all pain. To know that I am known makes me want to hide: that is the couple’s first response after eating the fruit. The turning point comes when the man gives Eve a proper name. Love is born when we recognise the integrity of otherness. That is the meaning of love between people. It is the meaning of love between us and God. Only when we make space for the human other do we make space for the divine Other.

God created the world to make space for the otherness that is us.

     — Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt”l, in The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning

[theseerasures]

a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride

honestly there is just like. no point as of Witch (if not earlier) in thinking about Marrow and Winter as following along the same defection path, and downright facile to compare the two in terms of who is “closer” to defecting and therefore “less problematic” (even setting aside that making value judgments along those lines in fiction is...never that straightforward), when the narrative has emphasized REPEATEDLY how they are on entirely separate tracks in terms of character and role in the Atlas military.

seriously, it’s like saying “this orange is bad because you can’t eat the peel like you can eat an apple skin”

so like, yes, Marrow is the one who has verbally expressed his misgivings, and has clearly articulated scruples (as opposed to just the dial-up noise) and will blurt them out any second now as soon as he gets a word in edgewise. but also: Marrow HASN’T gotten a word in edgewise (except with Winter, fancy that), and has done approximately fuck all to actually subvert the system that he is growing to hate. both his theory and lack of praxis are tied into Marrow’s relatively low, overlooked position in the Atlas system, and feed into the fact that for Marrow the project of Atlas is not personal.

Marrow joined the military on ideological grounds. he clearly does want personal connection, but that has been denied him at every turn, largely by his teammates, largely by his partner, all of whom use him to enforce their own struggles with the clash between political duty and personal grief. he has been alienated by the system he upholds, which started even before we meet him. this makes it much harder for him to rebel in deed, because he doesn’t have a lot of power to begin with and he knows the system will not protect him if he does; at the same time, that relative powerlessness and isolation keeps his investment in Atlas abstract, uncomplicated, and much easier to dispel. Marrow is still with Atlas because he has a job to do, because it’s his duty, because he is still clinging to the Atlas military’s illusory altruism. he wants Penny to come with them so she can save Atlas. his protestations at seeing Team FNKI, that they are “just kids,” comes from the belief that it is categorically wrong to send children into battle. what is keeping Marrow from defecting is belief, and once the belief is shattered--like, say, when his boss’ new ingenious plan is to Nuke the Poors--there is nothing keeping him around.

and once his path is set he will not waver, because Atlas, by design, has no hold on him materially or personally (outside of his own life, which he was already happy to dedicate to a cause). Marrow then, is the limit case of Atlas being hoist with its own petard: an exemplar for how it gives its people nothing while demanding everything, but also an exemplar for how quickly the entire system folds in on itself when the veil is lifted. when Marrow defects (and it IS when) it will represent Atlas as a whole defecting from itself, even if we don’t see it visually--from the civilians, to the enlisted soldiers, to perhaps even members of Marrow’s own team.

NONE of the things i just mentioned really apply to Winter, because there is nothing about Atlas that is not personal for Winter.

i have no doubt that Winter is in some ways invested in same abstract principles that swayed Marrow, but that is constantly overridden by the fact that Winter has family at all sides of this, even before everything fell to shit, and the narrative will not stop reminding her.

“what about your sister?” “would you say the same thing if it was your sister inside?” her father was gunning for a seat on the Council. the man who took her in is essentially Head of State. Penny has made herself Public Enemy Number One, and Weiss is actively abetting her. even Whitley has now thrown himself into the fray, unbeknownst to her. and another person might be better at compartmentalizing all this the way Winter clearly wants to, and stick to the party line, but Winter cannot, because the more i watch her the more i’m convinced that the current crisis in Atlas is just a microcosm of the real issue, which is to say: everything is personal in Atlas for Winter, because everything is personal for Winter.

at a moment-to-moment level, and especially when backed into a corner, Winter defaults not to ideology but her tightly coiled lattice of personal relationships. and this makes perfect sense, because Winter grew up in a household where she had to perpetually crisis respond, and then she never stopped. Marrow does what he does because he believes in the dream, in making the world a better place, and therefore it is more difficult in some respects for him to defect, because it involves taking a long hard look at and then rejecting the structures he bought into and made himself complicit in. once lines are crossed and he DOES do that, though, he’s home free. for Winter, there are no lines to cross, because all Winter wants in the end is to throw her arms around everyone she cares about and drag them to safety. to keep them there, closely held, where she can see them and make sure that they stay safe.

but what’s tricky about Winter--what’s fascinating to me, what Jacques tried to beat out of her, what James alternately capitalizes on and tries to quash, what she resents about herself--is that in times of crisis (which for Winter is again ALL THE TIME), “everyone she cares about” becomes everyone, so that suddenly she takes a shine to the General’s war machine, so that she’s risking her life to give Penny and Fria a few more seconds of time, so that she’s stepping in front of Elm’s incoming fist, so that she’s letting JYR go rescue Oscar. Marrow has ideals he values, but at her core Winter has nothing but the people, who are real the moment she sees and feels them--real enough to defend, or defend against.

Winter jealously protects her web of people, but that web will also spiral out to infinity if she lets it--so she doesn’t. she has adamantly refused to move out of the mode where she lives present-by-present, only reacting to what is right in front of her, what she has been told, weighing her own life against the people who are closest, and no more. this is unquestionably a trauma response, but it’s also reinforced by 1) her choice to become a career soldier, and 2) the fact that Winter actually HAS quite a bit of power, and she knows that. but she has never trusted herself with any of it, largely because her hypervigilant response to situations has only ever been chastised instead of rehabilitated. Winter knows the weight of her name and her position, but she constantly tries to ignore it, or run away from it, so that she is only ever the heiress, the second-in-command, and never the Queen. she cannot be a leader until she is Good (that is to say, perfect and rational), so she tries to obliterate her power the same time she obliterates that pesky personhood: remaining still for as long as possible, avoiding situations that she knows will prompt action and choice, and when absolutely pushed to think through her power, moving the pieces around with extreme caution, hoping that the world won’t be burnt black by it.

Marrow and Winter are fundamentally at opposing ends of the personal-political bleed, and the story could NOT telegraph it any more clearly than their conversation in Witch, where Marrow makes a personal plea to Winter so that she can make a call far beyond just that, and she refutes him, by reminding him of his obligation to Atlas in the form of impersonal duty.

i’ll conclude by pointing out that there is something very interesting happening with Winter right now, that exceeds her power in-universe. because even as a Schnee, as Ironwood’s protege, what Winter can do is limited (partly because she limits herself), except for how the story has resolutely centered her actions and MADE them significant. in the course of this war Winter has let herself make exactly two choices--both of them noninterventionist, easily justifiable, and not meant to take any ideological stand--and they ended up altering the entire fabric of the war with Salem. all because she loved her sisters more than her duty. all because she was shown a slim chance to save the kingdom and a fourteen-year-old boy, and she thought just for an instant, what’s the harm

(and James Ironwood will never know. that even with his plan, his bomb, all his ships, all his soldiers...he was no match for her. his loyal lieutenant. the only child he will ever have, who has only ever called him “sir.”)

it is not about what Winter COULD have chosen in those moments, if she had the ability to stop Penny and Weiss from leaving, if JYR were even Oscar’s rescuers, in the conventional sense. it is about the fact that she DID make those choices, and the story has made them reverberate, in spite of the fact that she did not mean for them to. Marrow’s story is about being neglected and overlooked by the system, the moment of recognition that it needs you more than you need it, that there are so many more of you, and together you can stop chasing the dream and make your own. Winter’s story cleaves to the heart of not just Atlas, but the RWBY monomyth, which goes something like: stars are like us. the world was created because two brothers could not get along, and sundered because a woman could not cope with her grief. just because you move closer to the elite, to the center, to the top, to the sublime, it does not mean that you move farther from the fallible. we are all, at our deepest layer, people.

but the world does not tremble any less for it.

[terrence-silver]

Some Yandere!Terry Silver headcanons, please?🐍🖤

giffie provided by the beautiful @atmostories

- When Terry hates, he hates all the way. No middle grounds. Without limits, reservations or boundaries. Same goes for when he loves someone, as rare as that may be. He relinquishes all sense, all reason and absolutely embraces bias and favouritism without even hiding that he does. As I keep reiterating, his person is simply the best, the greatest, the loveliest, the most correct person that ever was, purely by virtue of them being his person. There might be a great trace of narcissism to such a stance too seeing as how Terry can't comprehend a world where anyone associated with him isn't purely the most admirable individual because why on earth would he of all people associated with anything less in the first place? Sure, objectively, you might be the most commonly mundane person, but not to Terry. No. To Terry you're extraordinary and he'll demand everyone else to hold such an opinion under duress if need be, and he tends to turn real antagonistic and standoffish real quick if he finds someone isn't fawning over his person the way they ought to. But, if they fawn too much, well -- that doesn't please him either and might just inspire jealousy. No winning with him. He loves that he's so hard to appease.

- He is also one for control. He is a control freak to excess. So, a Yandere!Terry might hold a certain resentment if he falls in love. Because one can't control who and when they fall for someone. It is usually entirely spontaneous and unpredictable and Terry doesn't like surprises, especially not of the emotional kind because he might feel it leaves him exposed and vulnerable. Endows him with another weakness he didn't previously have - so, in light of that, for a while, he might be out to hurt you. Toy with you. Test your resolve. Prod and poke at you, like a voodoo doll - sadist that he is. He might even take you and tuck you away somewhere within some dark corner of his mansion and not let out out until he figures out just what to do next, strategically. Or he might observe you. Stalk you. Research you from afar. Collect some of your things, or steal them rather. Outright manipulate and induce mental anguish in a roundabout way - he doesn't quite enjoy the emotions you've inspired in him, due to his own issues of just needing to have ever miniscule thing in order, at all times, even the things connected to his own heart. Especially those things. So, once you do, for the longest time, you're Terry's enemy and you've officially declared war. The devil works hard, but Terry Silver works harder.

- He gives obsession by definition a whole new meaning, because in spite of his partial resentment and adoration towards you, he'll also want all of you. All. Literally all. The good. The bad. The very worst. The very best. Everything in between. There's honestly just no telling how far it goes when he starts adopting actual tid-bits of your behaviour or mannerism into his own because that's how he shows his love. His attachment. Through imitation. Through...adopting some miniscule trace of your habits or your appearance, or maybe he just starts tapping his fingers to excess on the surface of a table in anticipation once he catches wind of you doing, or perhaps, he starts incorporating your favourite color into his attire, purely because it's your most preferred one. Not unlike a black hole, Terry has the tendency to consume. Consume fear. Consume power. Consume markers of hedonism. Consume identities, if need be. Either due to grief. Remembrance. Possession. Merely because he can. Because he wants to. Your body's his. And your heart is his. Your soul is his. Everything you own is his. Your very personhood might as well be his as well. He sees no reason why he shouldn't usurp everything his darling has to offer and then some. What he does with his new stake of ownership is another thing entirely - whether he loves or destroys or both is of little importance, because he sees, he likes, he claims and then proceeds doing whatever he pleases. End of discussion.

- People from your past might mysteriously start, uh, falling off. Disappearing. Distancing themselves from you. Surely, Terry had no part in it, except, well, now that he's here, he sees no reason why you should need anyone else? Isn't it a given he's the best? And as such, more then a worthy replacement for any amount of individuals serving as your support system prior to him arriving? Surely, he's a far superior choice. He outmatches anyone and everyone. You don't need those other pesky nobodies. Those distractions. He slips sweet poison into your ears and convinces you he's all you ever needed and craved, but you simply didn't even know. But, oh, he's the face of kindness and he came along in the nick of time to help you. What an angel. He's all favours. Good, well-meaning advice. Strategic encouragement. Protection. Being eerily there whenever you need him. And he'll make sure you need him all the time. He wants you to be unable to function without him, crippling all your defenses. He says the exact perfect thing you want to hear, at the exact, perfect calculated time, like someone capable of reading minds. He gives affection and then removes it. Gives it and removes it. Hot and cold. Hot and cold. He keeps repeating the process, both overstimulating you emotionally, only to suddenly deny you enough times where you're a simpering, stuttering pathetic, dependable little mess for him. Putty in his hands. He'll play you like a fiddle. And you'll dance to his tune eagerly because he'll make sure you adore him and want to appease him so much he'll land himself with a sweet little slave. No, no - he's not an egoistic narcissist, he's just looking after his investment and making sure nobody infringes upon it. And how could anyone possibly, if there's nobody beside you but him?

- Although, that being said, nothing's for free, right? Not even him caring for darling you. Don't you know how very exclusive that is? How rare? How unusual. Terry hasn't been significantly close to much of anyone but John Kreese, and that's a camaraderie forged in blood and war, two decades in the making, so for you to be deemed so very special, above all others, the least you can do is repay Terry's emotional courtesy, after he's allowed you into his inner circle like this. After he's allowed as much as your fingers to graze his skin. Don't you know he doesn't fancy being touched by much of anyone else, almost? Don't you know he isn't kind to just about anyone, but his people? Don't you figure you owe him something after he's provided you with every luxury and comfort known to man? Practically pampering and fussing you to trips and trinkets and indulgences? How lucky you are. How privileged. One in a million. And of course, being something of a petulant, unpredictable Yandere himself, what he expects in payment is your undying desire, devotion and discipline. He wants you yearning for him, always. He wants your undying, absolute loyalty. And he wants you attuned, focused and his. He expects to domineer every aspect of your life just due to the fact that he showed you the vague mercy of allowing you in. He's nitpicky and a perfectionist, so, if he singled you out as something or someone he wants, he expects the fact he put in actual time, effort, conditioning and proper seduction into you to a fruitful venture. Don't you know that for a billionaire with his own world-wide conglomerate, time's the most expensive capital in the world? So, if he gives you some of his, he expects it given back by the tenfold.

- For all his many shenanigans, cat and mouse games, tricks, ploys, schemes, obsessive outburst, denial, once Terry loves you, he loves you, and not in five, ten, fifteen, fifty years will that state of mind ever change for him and in spite of his best, most desperate borderline strategic methods to prevent being commanded by a feeling, he still ends up very much controlled by it and really, everything he does to you, ultimately, he does to himself too, invertedly, falling into a trap of his own making. If he strived to make you his slave, he becomes yours. If he tried to make you putty in his hands, he eventually became just that where you are concerned. If he wished to make you disciplined, devoted and full of desire for him, that's the stance he takes towards you. He becomes a mirror image of all his actions and they reflect back on him, and his dedication to you becomes a lifetime affair. You're his most prized person. His madness. And rock. And light. And everything. Where Terry's concerned, you're one. You're an Ouroboros. Snake biting a snake's tail. Infinity. Where he begins and you end is hard to gage, because in his plans to slowly consume you, you've consumed him as well, it's best not to test or try him where the question of just how far he'd go for your sake is in question, because Terry would go to any lengths, by any means, for any and no reason, and if he had to pollute and burn down and kill and manipulate the whole world for your sake, he would. His adoration, turns out, can be a very dark place to be.

[aratouialsedai]

A Bi Reading of Tuon Athaem Kore Paendrag

SO MANY SPOILERS for Wheel of Time. Just all of them. All the spoilers. Also content note for discussion of queerphobia.

*

I've been thinking about Tuon's character today and why I've always liked her so much even though she is, well, ah "nuanced" and "complicated." Why am I willing to forgive her so much, and be so patient?

In my mulling, I realized it's because I'm a bisexual woman who grew up in US Southern Christian fundamentalism, specifically Independent Fundamental Baptist. I knew-forgot-remembered-denied my queerness from the age of seven until I finally came out publicly to everyone when I was twenty-five because I had been taught my entire childhood and adolescence to despise queer people. It was absolutely hatred, but it was also just the conviction that queer people were less than. There was no room even for "love the sinner, hate the sin" in my religion. Anyone who was LGBT+ was not even really a person.

I'm seven, and slowly coming to the realization that, for most of my peers, "crushes" and childish romances happen heteronormatively. The fact that I think anyone is an option as a "crush" makes me different.

At 10, I realize that difference is bad, so I immediately disavow it. As I go through puberty and watch my friends talk about boys and crushes, I realize that I find every single boy I've encountered in our circles absolutely repulsive and I get scared. The idea I could be a "perverted homosexual" fills me with so much self-loathing I don't know what to do with it.

Mentally and emotionally, I escape into purity culture. The fact that I'm not tempted to lust after boys, find them attractive, or have crushes on them just means I'm a perfect little Christian girl. I am pure. I get all the gold stars for my purity. I am the bestest at Christian-ing. A der'sul'purity, if you will.

Enter Tuon, a sul'dam who finds out the only difference between marath'damane and sul'dam is that marath'damane have "the spark" and sul'dam can learn to channel.

And thus begins the cycle of knowing-forgetting-remembering-denying-justifying. She's not like one of those perverted homosexuals marath'damane; unlike them, she has a choice, and she will choose not to channel ... much like how a lot of self-loathing queerphobic bisexual people "choose to be straight." They could learn to channel, but they won't, and that makes them better than lesbians marath'damane. Her entire world doesn't have to come crashing down around her ears, she doesn't have to examine the truths she's been taught since the cradle, she doesn't have to come to terms with how the power of her position is based on a lie. Queerness is about difference; it's about the non-normative, the expansive, the encompassing, the strange, the profound, the both-and. It is liberating, but when you've been taught your entire life to hate it, and to see being it as stripping you of your very personhood, your right to humane, respectful treatment ... the urge to deny it as a part of you can be very strong. Instead, Tuon retreats into the power structure of her society: she's not just a sul'dam, she is incredibly good at being a sul'dam. That's the truth she clings to as her homeland crumbles and the world ends. I am hopeful that the show, which is being run by a gay man, can see this kind of potential in Tuon's story.