#the one benefit of being immersed in catholic european history for a while

[notbecauseofvictories]

I'm in liquified disoriented tatters since the finale, but something I was meaning to say before this episode: I think Carpenter is like. 35, maybe 40, with a dash of "you look like shit" making people assume she's a bit older. the hunter siblings are absolutely teenagers as well.

also, a thought from the middle of the episode, before I was fully liquified:

At a certain point, Mercer wasn't much of a hunter anymore. She was just rabid.

[con't] Faulkner do you want to explain that thing you said to Mason. could you please. I don't. think I follow. faulkner

Incorrect! Carpenter is 45 at the bare minimum. I agree that at first (or second, or fifth) glance she looks older, but honestly she feels even older than that based on the fact that she has been keeping company with twenty somethings for the last two years. (Faulkner being max 22 and Paige being 28 at the outside.) Hayward is the only person in the whole cast who we might consider 'of an age' with Carpenter, and mostly because he's in his late thirties/early forties and prematurely aged by a steady diet of stress-smoked cigarettes, lies, deserved guilt, and paranoia.

"Mercer is rabid" fuck you that's a good line.

I do actually have reasoning for this! There's a great post in the silt verses tag calling out how nonsense it seems for Faulkner to snap at his faith no longer being illegal. Surely that's a good thing! Religious persecution is the reason Nana Glass is dead and Em drowned; the reason for Carpenter's parents being absent and Mason running his a private cult. Real religions have fought tooth and nail to be recognized by the state as legitimate; most modern people understand a lack of religious tolerance as bad and wrong. There's no reason to believe that this wouldn't color our readings of a podcast about fictional religions. What I think perspective ignores, is that---when it comes to TSV a religion's choice is not between "criminalization/persecution" and "recognition by the state/freedom." Instead, the existential question before every faith of the Peninsula and the Linger Straits is "criminalization" or "co-option". Your choices are either to be an enemy of the state, and operate under your own wild rules, however corrupt---or to throw your lot in with the government, and become yet another arm of the state trying to kill you. After all, it's the legitimate government tying sacrifices to trains, courting gods via test audience, letting dispassionate scientists discover your saints by scientific method with a body count. Stripping faith and narrative from your religion for the sake of power---like copper wire from the walls---is what the government does. And that's what I think Faulkner objects to. For good or ill, he is the most sincere believer in the Trawler-man that we know---his investment isn't in the Parish and its earthly power, the way Mason's is; he doesn't particularly care about its people, as Carpenter does. He believes in the absolutism of its god and his role as that god's prophet. No more, no less. Is this unreasonable, unhinged? Yes. But it does mean that Mason willing to sell out that divine absolutism for a seat at the Peninsulan table is an existential threat to Faulkner and everything he is. Hence: Murder.

[allbeendonebefore]

beedok replied to your post: “@ask-aph-acadia, @lilcutiebear, I’m making a new thread to reply to...”:

I still don't see the Language divide as being an Eastern thing pushed on the West. Not only are there plenty of Francophones in the west of the country (especialy Métis) but there are loads of people of Italian, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Gaelic, Punjabi, etc. descent in Eastern Canada (I've got plenty of that Polish and Ukrainian myself) who were pressured into learning English the same as those out West. That's a nation wide thing.

See, that’s because you live in the east and you are aware of the nuances of the east and you know that it is not a monolithic Evil Block of Oppression. From a Western perspective, particularly a historical western perspective as I’m getting at here, people don’t care to make those distinctions. Often when we refer to “Easterners” in a derogatory way, we are specifically referring to the federal government which is located in the east. Your argument for the presence of people of French descent in the west and Slavic descent in the East is basically the same as me arguing for the presence of French learners in the West or Slavic learners in the East, it’s true, it’s more than possible, but it’s not addressing the particular history I’m getting at.

You also have to realize while French speaking people in the East were given concessions (I’m talking Confederation and the aftermath here) and protective laws in government, French speakers in the West were given those concessions with conditions. Because, as you mentioned, many if not the majority of western French speakers were Metis, racism and ethnocentrism was one of the strongest factors driving the Red River Resistance/Rebellion against the federal government, a federal government that was made up entirely of Eastern Canadians willing and able to make Western Canadians second class citizens and those with First Nations background into third class. While Quebec supported Manitoba and planned to send francophone immigrants (colonizers), Ontario had already flooded Manitoba with White Anglo Saxon Protestants to the point where Manitoba no longer required the laws protecting French culture they had fought for. The first founding father of Confederation from the west was arrested as soon as he and the rest of his government set foot into office. French speaking Metis, the founders of places such as Edmonton, no longer felt safe there and had to move further into the country into their own separate communities (ex. St. Albert). New immigrants were absorbed into a dominant English culture, a culture that may not have existed in the first place had Ontario not been so friggin paranoid of having French, non-white Catholic neighbours. When the gates were opened to “the scum of Europe” in the 1890s, they had no choice as to which culture to assimilate to. The pecking order was established, and English was at the top and French cast down for its associations with Metis/Aboriginal people/Liberals etc. The linguistic fight translated into an economic one, but the hurt, the perceptions, etc. were still there.

I’m not trying to say only certain things happen in the east or the west, I’m trying to explain that because of Western Canada’s treatment as property, as lesser, historically, that shapes our perspective, our politics, and our reactions to even little things such as the PM forgetting us on Canada Day, or big things such controlling our own resources. I’m not saying that our decisions are all right or justified or that we remember why we are so angry about them in the first place, but you have to understand our particular history and our particular associations in order to understand our perspective, even if it seems stubborn or unnecessary. The way history turned out, the way language was established, etc, leaves marks on our view of it.

In modern terms, there’s also the education/access issue: Eastern Canada has a lot of access to native French speakers due to the close proximity to Quebec or New Brunswick. I grew up in a rural middle of nowhere school that was technically a satellite town around a large city and I was very privileged to have access to French programs that people in smaller towns may not have had. I did not however have access to native French speakers in my backwater town, and living on an acreage and being unable to drive severely limits your options in rural parts of the province. The French taught was international French, the school trips when they were affordable were typically to Europe and not to Quebec because European French was “easier” and “accessible”, etc. Not everyone has the access to those programs, and even the people who did have access to them saw them as pointless or forced, which is part of the reason places like Calgary have dropped the mandatory part of French altogether. It was impossible to get any work out of some of my classmates while I was trying to practice the language because they simply don’t care, rural kids don’t see the point of learning a language they are never going to use, either because of lack of interest or because they literally have not been able to leave their small town. Furthermore, governments in the past have generally seen French programs and language programs in general as superfluous and among the first to receive cuts. French is not considered a priority or a necessity by either the people living here or the people in charge, it is a luxury or a privilege. Like you don’t have to convince me of the benefits of learning a second language and you don’t have to convince me of the benefits of French, it’s convincing little Timmy or whoever that learning this language is important when all he cares about is getting the cows in and chewing tobacco. Because the prairies are so intensely rural and so intensely isolated, we have all those problems (plus outdated textbooks, non-native-speaker teachers, inadequate immersion programs etc etc).