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lokilickedme · 3 years ago

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The Way

I’m writing horror again. I guess it’s that time, you know, that time that has nothing to do with Halloween or the seasons or whatever, that time when it just hits me for some reason. And just like I always do, I’ll say I don’t know why.

Even though I know why, and you know I know why.

Because the truth is always so much weirder and worse and more disquieting than any excuse I could make up for it, and sometimes I just feel the need.

Today I felt the need, and I couldn’t make it go away.

And so I sat down, and words I didn’t want to write were written.

8592 words I would rate this Mature 18+ if it was a fic, strictly because of the subject matter.

Warnings: Death, mostly. Religious trauma, brief descriptions of abuse, mentions of mental illness, domestic violence, grief, familial dysfunction, religious abuse, emotional abuse, medical conditions, brief mentions of drug use/abuse, mild gore in reference to corpse decomposition, psychological unease and mild terror, child abuse (mental/emotional/psychological), brief allusion to physical child abuse, cult references, loss of faith, attempted murder, possible actual murder.

A Note: I love you guys, you’re always so quick and willing to be helpful and offer advice and suggestions and such, and I adore that about you. But on this piece of work I ask that nobody offer any theories about what happened to my brother - medical, criminal, or otherwise - and please no suggestions on things we could do to pursue investigation, that ship has long sailed. It’s been 23 years and he’s a cold case. We spent years trying to sort it out but in the end it’s just something that happened, and we moved on because we had to. There are a lot of open ends, a lot of question marks, a lot of suspicious details that never connected to anything - and we tried, we truly did. If anyone out there knows the truth, they’ve never shown themselves to us. We do have our theories, but my brother was a secretive person living a life none of us knew about, and the people he knew weren’t people we knew. Everyone involved is either dead or moved on or got away with whatever it was they did, and there are only three of us who still care. It’s over.

Until today, I’ve never put these events into words.

It was something I needed to do, finally.

This is PART ONE. There may not be a part two, unless doing this ends up making me feel better.

Please feel free to comment if you wish. As you can see, pretty much nothing triggers me. I just ask that you please refrain from the type of comments noted above.

And thank you.

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This is, regrettably, a true story. Nothing has been changed but the names, because the dead don’t like being talked about, and James was just enough of a shit to haunt me for it.

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They made up their minds And they started packing They left before the sun came up that day An exit to eternal summer slacking But where were they going without ever knowing the way

They drank up the wine And they got to talking They now had more important things to say And when the car broke down They started walking Where were they going without ever knowing the way

Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold And it's always summer They'll never get cold They'll never get hungry They'll never get old and gray You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere They won't make it home But they really don't care They wanted the highway They're happier there today, today

Their children woke up And they couldn't find them They left before the sun came up that day They just drove off and left it all behind them But where were they going without ever knowing the way?

You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere They won't make it home But they really don't care They wanted the highway They're happier there today, today

- The Way, Fastball, 1998

That was the year James died in his sleep.

Or that’s what they say, anyway. Asthma, the likely cause based on his medical history, our first and least disturbing assumption. Undetermined, the official determination based on the hastily scraped-together autopsy, the best that could be done under the circumstances. We tell people he had breathing problems, and they nod their heads and agree because they knew he did, and now he’s been gone so long that nobody asks. Most of the people who ever met him have long moved on or disappeared or died themselves, or just remember him as the enigmatic middle son from the Keithley family that nobody really knew very well. You know, the odd one, the one that showed up at meetings maybe once a year and smiled nervously but didn’t really talk to anyone and always seemed anxious to leave? The one who died under mysterious circumstances? That one.

He left the way he always came in. Quietly, unexpected, without anyone being aware of either his entrance or his exit.

But me and mom know some things, and she’s not talking. She probably never will.

So maybe it’s time I did.

December 1998. I’d gotten married two years previous and moved back to the family land with my new husband. He hated it there, but we had an affordable place to live. It wasn’t bad. He’d tell you otherwise. The land never sat right with him, but I’d lived there too many years to see it. I’d been fifteen when my father uprooted his large family from the city and hauled us out to the great back door to nowhere, and even though I’d left several times to wander elsewhere, I always came back.

I didn’t realize why at the time, at any of the multiple times. But now I know. That place gets you, and it holds you, and unless you’re goddamned devoted to staying gone you will always be pulled back. It took me till I was 49 to funnel the necessary amount of devotion away from the religious dedication I’d had jackbooted into me and turn it toward getting out, but against a great number of overwhelming odds I finally did it.

But this isn’t about that, not yet anyway. This is about my brother James, and how he went to sleep one night and found his own way out.

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It was snowing, had been for days, a bit unusual but not unheard of. The part of the state we lived in was notorious for extended ice storms and we knew a bad one was coming, but until it hit we played in the snow like it was a gift and we were deprived children who knew it was all going to be taken away soon. My brothers and I were adults but you wouldn’t know it, watching us sneak around in the woods staging elaborate commando attacks on each other. James was the best of us, a stealth king who could stand in the middle of a room for an hour without a single soul seeing him. Perception bias, he said. Your brain ignores me because I obviously don’t belong, like those puzzles where you circle what’s wrong but it takes you forever to find them.

He crept around in the forest scaring the shit out of people, dropping his long tall self out of trees, appearing from nowhere to administer a well aimed snowball to the face of whoever happened to cross his path and then disappearing just as quickly. We called him a wraith and it wasn’t a good natured jibe. We meant it. He made people nervous. He was the stealthy kind of quiet you associate with danger, and he knew how to do things an average person doesn’t ever have any need to know. It was a quiet cool that we admired him for, because none of the rest of us had it.

The religion we were raised in kept a tight lid on us, but me and James, we never really let it get into our bones. We were the smart ones, in retrospect. I went through the motions by force of habit and a sense of self preservation, doing what was expected and demanded of me, following the rules and making myself a perfect example of a young member of the church so I wouldn’t bring shame on the congregation and my family. But mostly the congregation. It was always more important than anything else. And I had behaving down to an art form, but mostly when people were looking. Usually also when they weren’t.

But sometimes, not quite.

And then I prayed for forgiveness about it later because God was supposed to forgive you if you asked him to, right? The tenet of willful sin being unforgivable never took root with me even though that was what the church conditioned into us through fear and constant repetition. They said it from the stage two nights a week and again on Sunday to hammer it home. Two nights a week and again on Sunday my head silently disagreed. God’s not like that. And then I did the praying for forgiveness thing even though I knew I was right, because I was disagreeing with the church, and the church was God’s channel here on Earth, wasn’t it? I committed a mortal sin at least three times a week on that subject alone, and though the dread of divine punishment was hardwired into me, I never could reconcile the concept of a loving and forgiving God destroying me simply for knowing better.

I’m not sure the comprehension of an overwatching deity ever actually established itself in James’ brain. A moral code, yes. But isn’t that what God is, really? Maybe he understood more about God and forgiveness than the rest of us. But he was considered an unapproved fringe member of the church because he couldn’t suffer people and noise and being looked at and he refused to preach, and he was soft-shunned as a result. Because if you weren’t all in to the point of being willing to die at any moment for your faith, you were as good as faithless.

And faithless meant condemned. And the congregation couldn’t be bothered with condemned people, regardless of their reasons for not having both feet in the water. The first and only option on their list was to put the person out and let them find their own way back once they realized they had nobody left in the world who cared about them.

James escaped that somehow. He was supposed to be shunned whole scale, but he wasn’t trying to convince anyone to leave the faith and he presented no threat to anyone’s strength of belief, and so far as anyone knew he’d committed no grave sins other than disinterest. So the rule that dictated we cast him out was bent enough to allow him to remain living on the family land, though at one point during a fit of overzealous righteousness my mother had tried to have a family meeting to vote on whether or not we were going to let him stay. I refused to vote and when I walked out of the house the meeting fell apart.

I’ve never forgiven her for that. Her son’s life being put to a vote with her presiding over the proceedings, vengeful and unfeeling and devoid of compassion on behalf of God himself. It takes my breath away, the anger, still to this day. The only thing I ever truly learned from my mother about parenting was a long and intensely detailed list of what not to do to my own children, and I suppose I should be grateful for that. It’s a bitter thank-you to have to give, but it’s something.

We knew James as much as he would allow us to, and not an inch further. Which meant the extent of our knowledge of him pretty much stretched to include the singular fact that he was different. What that meant, I still don’t really know - but it was there from the day he was born, that slight off-ness, the oddly off center calibration that you can’t really see so much as sense in a person. I know now he was likely on the autism spectrum and he walked through life seeing and reacting to everything differently than most of us, but that wasn’t a thing back then. You were just weird, or you weren’t. And I’m not convinced that was a bad thing for him, strictly speaking. But in the confines of our religion and our family’s devout and sometimes violent dedication to it, it took its toll almost daily.

He stood out, and he was very much a person who didn’t want to. He wanted to fade into the background, to not be seen, to not be known. And our religion didn’t tolerate that kind of nonsense, because we were commanded to be bold bearers of The Word Of God, and no exceptions were made.

None.

I’m going to stop calling it a religion now. I beg your indulgence as I shift to calling it what it is, because calling it a religion is an insult to actual religions that don’t destroy peoples’ lives with callous indifference and murderous glee.

We were raised in a doomsday death cult. There’s no other name that fits.

And we were trapped in it and its ugly cycle of neverending mental and emotional manipulation and abuse until we were adults, and some of us are still bound to it. My oldest brother worked his way up to the upper levels of oversight in the local congregation and was solidly entrenched in it until his death, which is a story for later. My youngest brother, the last remaining living blood sibling I have, is still deeply in it to this day and will likely never leave it.

I took the hard way out, three years ago, by walking away.

James, though. He took the easy way. He simply closed his eyes, and he was free.

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December 22, 1998. Three days before Christmas, though that meant nothing to us. The cult told us Christmas was a filthy demonic pagan ritual that was condemned by God, so to us the season was just a nice chilly time of year with lots of time off from work. We’d had an unusual amount of snow, the most we’d had in years. The roads were impassable and everyone was home except my husband, who worked close enough that his boss at the glass shop came and picked him up that morning with chains on his tires. Lots of windshields had shattered from the sudden violent cold that had struck the previous night and Scott had the only glass shop for sixty miles.

I think it must have been around noon, and likely my mother had sent my dad up the hill to see if James wanted to come down for the lunch she was making. He and his wife had split up against the strict rules of the church after a few years of suffering through an ill advised marriage, an important detail to this story that will come into the tale later, and he was alone up there at the top of the hill a lot. Sometimes he forgot to eat, or he got so busy that he just didn’t bother, so our mother always made something for him because even though he was in his 20′s he was still a kid who needed looking after and her zealous fervor against him had died down with time. I think he let her believe he was helpless because it worked in his favor and there was always lunch waiting for him in her kitchen as a result.

He was different, he wasn’t dumb.

We all lived on the hill back then with the exception of our youngest brother. He’d moved to the city with his new wife not long prior. The locals jokingly called the place a commune, and I guess they weren’t completely wrong. Thirty-eight acres of wooded land far beyond the city limits that we’d painstakingly spent years carving a livable space into, with five houses, all built from the ground up and inhabited by an extended family of well known culties from a well known cult. It’s almost comical, looking back on it, knowing now how they kept an eye on us for years to make sure we weren’t doing anything weird up there.

They should have run us off with pitchforks and burning stakes at the very beginning.

Things might have ended differently for us if they had.

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My grandparents lived at one end of the property, an old couple as simple and solid as salted soup, devoutly religious and devoted to the cult and very much cut from the can survive anything and probably will cloth like so many old country folks of their generation. They were waiting out the end of days up there in their little wooden house, expecting the final hour of this old system to come long before their own demise. I liked my grandmother, she had a sweet smile and fell asleep every time granddad started talking about the Bible and she paid me five dollars every Wednesday to drive her into town to get groceries, and years later, when she was dying, she told me she’d had a dream where she met my unborn son. I was four months pregnant and didn’t know yet that I was having a boy. She died before he was born, but to this day, fifteen years later, he tells me he’s sure he met her, he just can’t remember when.

I was scared of my grandfather. Not terrified, but there was nothing grandfatherly to him and I always suspected he never actually liked kids much. He’d once told us a story about the great Fort Worth flood that wiped out most of the city when my mom was a baby, and how he had told my grandmother to let go of my 2-year-old mother while he was struggling to get them across a rushing flooded creek in water up to their shoulders. My grandmother couldn’t swim. We could make another Ruthie, he said. But I couldn’t get another ‘Nita.

He said it proudly, like he was to be admired for his choice. I was young when he told that story, but it settled into me that this was evil.

Even when he was old as dirt and dying of a brain tumor in hospice care, he made me uneasy. I was never close to him. But for some reason, in his final days, he forgot who everyone was except me. I had been living in another state for years and he hadn’t seen me since before the tumor started taking his life. But when I walked into the room he turned his head and looked at me, and he mouthed my name.

He couldn’t speak. I don’t know what he was trying to say, struggling with words that nobody could hear. And I felt bad. I didn’t want to be the last person he recognized. My cousins adored him and had spent the last few years constantly at his side, and they were angry, maybe justifiably, that I was the one he reached for.

I didn’t want that at all.

I don’t believe he was a bad man, but he never spoke of anything except the cult’s interpretation of the Bible, and it was as tiresome as it was terrifying. Granddads are supposed to be fun. Ours quoted doctrine at us in a deep loud commanding voice that you couldn’t interrupt and you couldn’t tune out, and once he got going you had to just settle in and wait for him to run out of zealous steam. And then he would suddenly stop and command grandmother to turn on a John Wayne movie and bring him some ice cream, and it was over until the next time.

I know my mother resented him. She knew grandmother was the one that had refused to let her go, the one that had held onto her even though she almost drowned by the simple act of holding on. She knew her father had been willing to let her wash away and drown. That he thought she was interchangeable with whatever baby they would have next. How she could spend her entire life with that knowledge and not be deeply affected by it was something that never made sense to me, but now, when she’s in her 70′s and I’m in my 50′s, I finally understand. It affected her. She’ll just be damned if she’ll let anyone see it. And she had stood there in that hospice room watching him mouth my name with resentment burning in her eyes, though she would have rather died than let anyone know what it was for. He’d forgotten her weeks ago.

The house in the center of the hill was mom and dad. The homestead. The house we’d all lived in together, that we’d built with our own hands, the first thing that marked that wild overgrown hill as a place where people actually lived. A long path through the woods connected it to the grandparents’ house, and it was the epicenter of everything in our lives. James and I had lived in the upstairs rooms of that house until we both moved out and married our respective mates years later, a reprehensible act on our part that was never okay with my mother and that she never forgave either of us for. She’d wanted us all to stay. We can all live here together until the New System comes, she always said. That’s how the Bible says it’s supposed to be. We can all keep each other safe and on the right path until the end comes, and then we’ll all be here together forever.

A decade later when I sat up on the hill watching that house burn to the ground, there was as much relief as grief billowing into the sky with the black smoke. It was the end of an era, and it was far beyond time for it.

Nobody saw it but me. James was dead, had been for years. Robbie was dead now too. Dad was gone, so was granddad. Me and my youngest brother David were the last two left of the kids, but he had moved to a neighboring city when he got married and he has never seen things the way I see them. We were of different generations, we weren’t raised the same way, and he’d never experienced the abuse I lived with for the first half of my life. And he had dedicated his own life to the cult with all the honesty and lack of guile that I didn’t have when I’d made my own dedication vows at the too-young age of sixteen.

It was the end of an era, but apparently only for me.

James’ house was up the hill, past a clearing where my dad used to keep old cars that he cannibalized for parts. Our oldest brother Robbie, long married with kids of his own, lived at the bottom on the farthest corner of the land. And my house was on the slope to the west, built on the spot where we’d cleared off an old half-fallen homestead from the late 1800′s, dutifully paying no mind to the fact that a grave was nestled into the slope, right where the yellow daffodils grew. The cult told us superstition was tied up with the demons and false religion, so we didn’t have the built-in human instinct that tells most people to stay the hell away from certain things.

We just pretended it wasn’t there, and put no importance on it. It was just an old grave. The soil was good and the garden I planted next to it did well, though those strange daffodils always wound themselves through everything I put in the ground. My husband said something wasn’t right about it, but I didn’t pay any attention to him. He hadn’t been raised as devout as me.

My dad knocked on my door around lunchtime and I opened it. He backed up, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, the fancy leather coat the dealership had awarded him when he was designated a five-star Chrysler technician and given the state’s first and only license to work on the new Vipers that had recently rolled off the prototype line. It was a cool jacket. Made him look like the old pictures my other grandmother had shown me of him from the early 1960′s, when he was young and very much a product of a fancier era. He’d never stopped greasing his hair back and was still so thin that he and I wore the same size jeans.

I’ve never understood the look on his face when I opened the door. To this day I can’t sort it. It wasn’t a blankness like so many people who’ve seen death wear without awareness. It wasn’t grief. It wasn’t even shock.

He was sorry.

Those were the first words out of his mouth.

I’m sorry.

I stood there, not knowing what he was sorry for. It was cold. I couldn’t push the screen door open very far because of the snow blocking it. And my father was standing at the bottom of the steps James had helped my husband build, his hands shoved down far into his pockets like a penitent child about to get in trouble, telling me he was sorry.

James is dead, he finally said. He’s in his house. I went up there and he’s dead.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I do now - just now, this very moment in fact, I know that I was the first person he told. He came straight from James’ house to mine and told me my brother was dead.

I don’t know what I said back to him, I just remember sitting down on the top step and feeling the cold bite of the snow through my pajama pants. There’s a vague recollection of putting my face in my hands, and the embarrassing knowledge that I did that simply because I didn’t know what else to do. And dad just stood there, nervously stepping from foot to foot in the snow, because he didn’t know what else to do either.

I think I asked How at some point. He said he didn’t know. He had something in his pocket but to this day I don’t know what it was.

I don’t know if it was important. Something tells me it was. Or maybe it was just the eternally present handkerchief he always kept on him.

I’m sorry, he said again. He seemed to feel like it was his fault somehow. I’m sorry.

What do we do? I asked him. I’ve never felt more blank. What are we supposed to do?

I don’t remember what he said, other than he was going to get my older brother. I remember thinking that was a good idea. Robbie would know what to do. He always did. Brash and blustery and bigmouthed, he got things done while other people stood around debating how to do them. He would get on it, whatever needed doing. He would figure it out.

I went back in the house and dad walked away, headed down the path through the woods that connected my house to Robbie’s, hands still shoved deep in his pockets, the big retro vintage Chrysler emblem on the back of his jacket the last thing I saw before I pulled the screen door shut. I stared down for a minute at the mound of snow it had scooped into my livingroom, still with no clue what I was supposed to do.

No clue at all.

I kicked the snow back outside and shut the door.

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It’s an odd thing, watching the coroner’s van drive away with someone you know inside it. Someone you saw just yesterday. Someone who was alive. Someone who should still be alive but isn’t, somehow. And since there’s really no way to earn a ride in a coroner’s van without dying, there’s an awful unsettling sensation to it that you can’t get away from. The last time I saw James he was laughing that devious little laugh of his, his eyes red and bloodshot from the ever present asthma he’d suffered with his entire life. I don’t count the sight of the coroner’s van leaving the hill via our long steep driveway with his cold corpse tucked into a black zippered bag, because I didn’t see him. I never saw him. I didn’t see him dead in his house and I didn’t see them carry him out, I didn’t see them put him in the van. I didn’t see him later, when it was all over with. And if I try hard enough I can imagine that van empty, with that long black bag tossed crumpled in the back without a body in it, and James somewhere else living his life however the hell he pleases.

I hold onto that. Some days it helps. And some days I think I see him, walking by the side of the road or getting out of a car in the post office parking lot, and it makes me happy thinking he escaped. I see him in every hitchhiker, in every wandering traveler making his way down the interstate, in every tall thin man I glimpse from the corner of my eye as I go about my business in town.

He’s out there.

I hope he’s happy.

The ice storm hit the next day.

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For the next two weeks we were stuck on our hill. Power out, no electricity, no heat, no lights, roads iced over and impassable. We all piled up in mom and dad’s house, quietly grieving James, trying to stay warm. Most of the state lost power for days, including the city 150 miles away where his body had been taken to the state coroner’s office. There was no apparent cause of death, so the state ordered an autopsy.

His body had just been placed into cold storage to wait its turn when the power grid went down. And then, by some unholy stroke of nightmarish luck, the facility’s generators failed.

Nobody could make it in to work because of the ice. By the time someone finally got into the morgue the cold storage had been down for four days.

Six bodies melted, including James.

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No viable autopsy could be done, though they tried their best I suppose. The end report was obtained two months later. It was mostly inconclusive due to the long delay and resultant decomposition of tissue. There was apparent scarring on James’ heart, but it was old scarring and had nothing to do with his death. His lungs were scarred as well, but that was no surprise, he’d had severe asthma his entire life. There was no determinable cause of death, no inflicted trauma, no presence of illicit drugs as far as they could tell from the limited toxicology report they managed with what they had to work with.

No reason.

He’d simply died.

It seemed fitting, to me at least, that the end of him be enshrouded in an unsolvable mystery. He was a secretive person, intensely private. He would have loved knowing nobody had a clue what happened to him.

And so we drew our own conclusion as a family. He’d had an asthma attack in his sleep. There had been an inhaler next to his bed, but it was new and still in the box. He simply hadn’t woken up to use it. Dad didn’t participate in the drawing of this conclusion, his input kept stoically to himself, like he knew something the rest of us didn’t.

We pretended not to see it.

He and mom braved the last of the ice a few days later to make the 150 mile drive to see James one last time.

They came back different.

You couldn’t tell it was him, my mother said. He was melted, literally. It was like one of those science fiction movies where they melt you with a laser beam and you turn to goo.

Dad had nothing to say. He went to bed and stayed there until the next day.

You can go see him, mom told me. I’ll go with you if you want to go. But I don’t recommend it.

I decided not to go.

And so I never saw my brother dead. I never saw any proof that he was gone. He just wasn’t there anymore. There was no funeral, he was cremated and his ashes were sent home weeks later, and I went on with my life with the image in my head of James, alive, somewhere else.

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Dad was different from that day on. He’d always been stoic, terse, strict. My childhood had been spent in fear of him, an eternal dread of making him mad and feeling his temper erupt keeping me from showing any hint of a personality during my formative years. The cult had forced him to abide by the violent tenet of Spare the rod, spoil the child and there was never any risk of me being spoiled.

James being gone flipped a switch in him. He was nicer suddenly. Mellow. Kind. After the trauma wore off his humor discovered itself and he was funny. The dour angry demeanor fell off and revealed a man that I was sad never to have known before. He and I became friends. I could sense in his new attitude toward me that he regretted how he’d raised me and respected the way I’d always stood up and been my own person despite it. But my mother was falling off the deep end and for all the newfound easygoingness of my father, she counterbalanced it with an extremism born of the religious fervor of a mother determined to gain enough favor with God to see her dead child again. And she was going to make sure the rest of us did too.

We all had to get good and straight on the path, get completely right and stay that way, or we’d never see James again. He’d be in the New World and we wouldn’t, and how would she explain that to him? She and I worked together in a law office at the time and as she became more unhinged and unpleasant, I reacted by becoming more outgoing and accomplished. Our boss changed my work designation from receptionist to Executive Assistant and started teaching me how to do everything from filing papers at the courthouse to photographing accident scenes. I no longer answered to my mother, the office manager. I answered directly to the boss.

That didn’t go over well. She was a control freak with heavy untreated trauma, and the one person in the world she felt the most obsessive need to control was suddenly no longer under her thumb in a workspace where she considered herself the supreme authority. She countermanded every order the boss gave me and tried to load me up with general office chores that left me no time to do the important assignments he’d given me. I had no choice but to tell her she wasn’t my superior anymore.

She chose that day to have her nervous breakdown over James, jumping out of my car at a red light on the way home and storming angrily through a shopping mall with me trailing frantically along behind her, yelling for security to arrest me while I tried to get her to calm down. I ended up telling her she wasn’t the only person who lost James but that none of the rest of us were allowed to experience our own grief because we were too busy catering to hers.

She sat down on a bench outside the sporting goods store and glared at me with a cold hatred I’ve seen on very few other faces, ever.

I knew it would be you, she hissed at me.

That moment changed our relationship forever. It changed me forever. That was the day I decided my life was my own, that she not only didn’t have authority over me at work, she didn’t have authority over me anywhere else either. She could no longer dictate my actions, my behavior, my thoughts and feelings.

For this she disowned me. It was the first of several disownings over the next few years. I got used to it. We went to work the next day like nothing had happened, and I didn’t do a single thing on the task list she slapped down on my desk. It was a metaphor for the rest of my life, but I didn’t know it yet.

My husband and I moved out of state a couple of months later, away from that hill, away from her increasingly controlling paranoia and bitterness, the first of many small steps toward freedom.

As we were driving away with our trailer full of personal belongings behind us, he said one thing that I tried to argue against, but that somewhere deep inside I knew was probably right.

That land is cursed, he said.

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A few weeks before we moved my youngest brother came to town and we went into James’ house together. It was exactly like it had been the day my dad found him. The only thing that stood out as different was the bare mattress on the bed - the men from the coroner had wrapped him up in the sheet he’d been laying on and took it with them, leaving just the naked springform mattress James had bought for Jessica right before her final breakdown and their subsequent separation.

It took me a while to go in the bedroom, but I knew from the moment I walked into the house that I was going to end up there. I needed to see it, the place where James had closed his eyes and left us.

There was a small puddle of dried blood near the foot of the bed, brown and stained into the fabric. James always slept backwards, with his head at the wrong end. The blood had come from his nose.

I touched it. I don’t know why. It was dry.

He was gone.

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David and I laughed a lot that day. James had been funny in a way that was distinctly him, quiet and of few words, but those words had always counted. And as we sorted through his things and talked about him and moved some of his stuff into boxes to be stored away, I felt as much awed respect as befuddlement at what was around me. He’d never been a conformist, which I knew was why the cult had never gotten a firm grasp on him. He was unknowable and therefore unbindable. But his house was proof that he didn’t conform to any human expectations either, and nothing in it made sense unless you’d spent time around him.

There was an engine in the bathtub. I’m not sure what it went to. Another engine, in the beginning stages of disassemblage, rested on a blue tarp in the center of the livingroom floor, obviously the last project he’d been working on. There wasn’t much furniture - his wife had taken most of it when she left and it would have never entered his mind to replace any of it. Jessica’s cookware was in the kitchen cabinets, unused, some of it still in the original boxes, some not even fully unwrapped from their wedding shower years before. Jessica didn’t cook, she microwaved. David asked me if I thought it would be okay for him to take a glass Pyrex measuring cup because he’d broken his. I told him to take it. It had never been used.

I didn’t want anything, but knew I needed to take something. One of my husband’s solo CDs was sitting on the entertainment center and the cover, the cover I’d designed, caught my eye and brought me to the CD player to pop the tray open.

Inside was a CD single of The Way.

It was the only thing I took.

----------

My husband told me some time later that my dad and older brother had altered the scene before the police arrived. After the phonecall from me his boss had rushed him home and he’d gone up to James’ house without my knowledge. He’d thought it strange that he’d had to step around at least a dozen empty compressed air cans scattered haphazardly around the place as he entered, like they’d been used and tossed aside one after another. There had been several more on the floor around the bed. My father had told him to go back down and see how mom and I were doing, and when he returned to James’ house after the coroner’s departure, the cans were gone. Other than that he said things seemed different, but he couldn’t say quite how. Just not the same.

He told me my dad didn’t call the police until after he and Robbie had been in there at least an hour, alone with the body.

It’s not something we’ve talked about often, because there’s no satisfactory explanation for it that either of us can come up with. My mother says they probably didn’t want the police to assume the cans meant he was huffing compression fluid and accidentally killed himself, because Look at the shame and reproach that would bring on the congregation if anyone thought such a thing! We all knew he used the compressed air to clear the valves on the engines he was working on, all mechanics do, it’s common. Wouldn’t the police have accepted that explanation? Dad was the only one that spoke to them. They wrote down whatever he said, and then they left, and then the coroner came and took James away and that was that. My father, the most upright straight-and-narrow devoutly dedicated man I’ve ever known in my life, misled the police for a reason that he took with him to his own grave.

The only other person in the world who knew the truth about it took it to his grave too.

At the same time.

In the same car.

Four years later, on October 18, 2002.

----------

The big garbage bag of empty air cans and whatever else that was removed from James’ house that morning had been stashed in my dad’s garage and stayed there until a few weeks after he and Robbie’s joint funeral, when my mother asked my husband’s old boss to come and dispose of it. Scott was a man who knew people who could do things.

The evidence, whatever it was evidence of, vanished.

----------

The mystery around James never dissolved and eventually no one talked about it anymore, I guess because there was no way we could ever truly find out what happened without him here to tell us. There were a lot of details that we could never find a way to weave together into anything that made sense and a lot of it was probably inconsequential anyway. There was a girlfriend that he’d tried to keep hidden from us, a woman that was quite a bit older than him who wasn’t a member of the cult and therefore needed to be kept a secret. In the end she had convinced him to stop hiding their relationship and he’d bought her a ring. We met her all of twice before he died, and within days of his passing she left town with her brother and never came back, taking whatever she might have known with her.

James’ ex Jessica had sneaked onto the hill and broken into his house to put a dead raccoon in his kitchen sink a few days prior to his death. We were shocked when he told us she trespassed on the land often without anyone knowing, and my mother made my father fix the electric gate down at the road so that it wouldn’t open without one of three clickers in the possession of herself, my father, and me. James would have to come to her house and get hers any time he needed to leave the hill, an arrangement he agreed to because Jessica stole things from his house all the time, she would absolutely take a gate opener if she saw it.

He told us the gate wouldn’t keep her out though, and that she didn’t come in that way anyway. The only way to protect ourselves from her was to lock her up and he doubted even that would do it.

He died less than a week later, and twenty three years later we still don’t know how or why.

----------

We never felt safe on the hill again. Jessica was deranged in the worst possible way, we’d known it for a while, and James was her obsession. She’d threatened to kill him multiple times and had tried twice. We hadn’t known this, because James, big strong stoic Clint Eastwood type that he was, wasn’t about to tell anyone he was violently abused for years by a skinny little woman that everyone believed was not much more than a meek dormouse with shyness issues and a case of painful awkwardness. But we knew she was evil. We just didn’t have any proof.

The first thing my mother said after the initial emotional breakdown of finding her son dead was Jessica did this, I don’t know how but I know she did it.

I believe she was probably right. But if Jessica was anything she was wily and devious with a strong survival instinct and an uncanny ability to lie convincingly and draw sympathy onto herself. She’d convinced us for years that she was the perfect combination of sweetly harmless and endearingly clueless, but that only lasted until the day she called 911 screaming that James was beating her and then threw herself face first into a tree in their front yard and sat, calmly singing and coloring in a coloring book on the porch with blood running down her forehead, waiting for the police to arrive. The act she put on when they got there was one for the Academy, but the officers didn’t buy it.

James calmly rolled up his sleeves and showed them his scars where she’d burned him and slashed him with a kitchen knife. He pulled up his shirt and pointed out the marks she’d left on him with her teeth and nails. He hooked a finger into his mouth and showed them the empty hole where she’d knocked one of his teeth out with a baseball bat. One of the officers asked him why he hadn’t killed her and buried her somewhere on the land already.

She left in the back of the squad car, and my mother took James to the courthouse to get divorce papers started two days later.

Jessica came to his memorial service when we finally had it, several weeks after his death. She wasn’t invited but we couldn’t keep her from coming. She wore black like a widow and created a dramatic disruption complete with loud wailing and declarations of undying love, and afterward she stood to one side of the room, smirking at us with the kind of icy malice that you only see on the dangerously deranged, and then usually only in the movies. Several people commented in hushed voices, asking why she’d been allowed to come. At one point she started wailing They killed him!!, but everyone with the exception of her mother ignored her.

Her mother, who was still in our congregation, flitted around the room chatting with everyone, sobbing her heart out like it was her own son we’d just memorialized. She was an ER nurse and had been famously fired from her job at the hospital for taking locked-cabinet medications home by the purse load. She claimed she put them in her pocket to use on her shift and forgot to return them to the cabinet before leaving.

Jessica had been staying with her for a while.

----------

We fed the crowd at mom’s later that afternoon with my husband and his boss guarding the gate, making sure she didn’t try to come into my mother’s house. The police were called preemptively, and because this was a town of 300 with not much of anything else to do, a squad car was dispatched and stationed near the inlet to the main drive.

Jessica showed up not much later, like we knew she would. She drove past the police and parked a few yards down from them in plain sight, just sitting there by the side of the road, far enough away from our property that we couldn’t legally do anything about it. The officers got out and talked to her, warned her not to cause us any problems, and she fed them a woeful tale about being banned from her beloved husband’s memorial service and denied the right to say goodbye to him.

The officers knew there was no body at that service to say goodbye to. They also knew her.

My husband came up the hill and told us she was down at the road and that Scott was blocking the driveway with his truck to keep her out. I told my mother it was time to file a restraining order against her. She was living in fear and Jessica was known to be trespassing on our property frequently. No, she told me with tears in her eyes but not a sign of distress on her face. It was a look I knew, because my mother rarely showed emotion unless she was angry and the rest of the time it was this cold detachment. That would bring reproach on the congregation because everyone knows what we are. I can’t do that. I won’t let her win that way. I won’t let her cause us to bring shame on God’s name.

God’s name. I took it in vain that day.

More than once.

I was leaving in a few weeks, moving a thousand miles away. My husband and I weren’t going to be there to help her keep an eye out, and thirty eight acres of heavily wooded land is impossible to protect and easy to sneak onto from a hundred different directions, James had shown us proof of that.

God will protect us as long as we do the right thing and leave it to him, she said. He knows what she is.

I think it was just a coincidence that nothing terrible happened in the following weeks, because my faith was getting tenuous and a lot of prayers were going unanswered. But Jessica quietly disappeared back to her own world after a couple of infuriating weeks of putting herself in our paths every chance she got, and not long after that my husband and I moved away, and as we left the driveway for what we thought would be the last time he sighed and shook his head with the exasperation of a man about to say I told you so.

“That land is cursed,” he said.

I tried to disagree, though I don’t know why.

----------

Less than a mile up the road we passed a man walking. He was tall and thin and covered in the dust of a long journey with a ratty backpack strapped to his back, and as we passed him I caught his reflection in the side mirror.

It was James, I knew it in my heart every bit as strongly as I knew it couldn’t be.

He was walking away from the hill, toward the west. The way we were going. And I swear on whatever holy relic you wish to place under my hand that he raised his head and met eyes with me in the mirror, and he smiled.

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epic-sorcerer · 4 years ago

Text

Merlin would have been so much more gay if the writers stayed true to Celtic paganism(the historicaly accurate “old religion”)

Trigger warnings:

Main triggers: talk of sex, homophobia, religion, Catholics, colonization, anti Celtic, murder

Mention triggers: rape and sexual assault, creepy men, gore, insest, toxic masculinity

I will mark the sections with quick triggers with 2 red lines. Below the second one is when the trigger is gone.

_____________

I am posting this on December 21st, as today is the Winter Solstice, a Celtic Pagan holiday. It will be posted at 3:33 PM, as 3 is a sacred number among the celts. Because of the special occasion, I will be speaking on a subject that was important to many of them—homosexuality.

Some stuff first for introductions. Yes, yes, I know this may be boring but it helps with context. This religion didn’t have a name other than Celtic pagan or Celtic religion bc it seams everyone there believed it. This was until the Roman Empire concurred what is now the UK. Since Rome had adopted Christianity—more specifically, Roman Catholocism—they only allowed that religion to be practiced.

———(genocide)——

Once England was concurred in 43 A.D, the pagans were killed and their religion was surpressed. Not much is known about the pagans for this reason. However, we do know somethings from what the Romans have written down. Although, it is biased, as they believed the celts to be barbaric and also didn’t wright much about women.

——gore ——

First, we know they preformed human sacrifice on kings when the kingdom suffered along with some other groups.This could be from bad ruling to really bad weather. These kings died horribly, as they seamed to be stabbed multiple times, had thier nipples cut off, and left to die in a bog.

They had thier nipples cut off because the subjects would suck on the kings’ nipples to demonstrate submission, so cutting them off would fully dethrone the king.

—————

Now, background over. Here’s where it gets good.

Nipple sucking between too lovers or ‘special friends’ was seen as a preclemation of love, physical intimacy, and sexual expression. This, like other types of sex, was seen as something beutiful and sacred. Often, male soldiers would have these ‘special friend’ relationships with many fellow soldiers in groups. The Romans even observed that Celtic men seamed to prefer other males for love/sexual interest over women.

Nipple sucking was mostly described was between two men. Although, we must recognize that women may have been left out of written history. I would also like to point out, this may prove that aromantic people existed in that time, as these ‘special friends’ had sex and were not mentioned to be romantically involved.

The celts were known for their sex positivity and even eroticism because they loved it so much.This is one of the reasons why the pagans and the Chatholics clashed so badly.

Before the Romans really took over, Saint Patrick—yes, the Saint Patrick—started to try to convert the celts into Roman catholosim. He was appalled at the wide acceptance of polyamory(women were aloud to marry however many people they wanted) and homosexual relationships/marriages. Not to mention the celts could have sex with any one at any time as long as it is consensual.

——(Tw creepy men)——

That means no waiting til marriage, unless a Celtic chose to do so. Although we should take into consideration a statement made by Diodorus Siculus, an antient Greek historian, that “the young men will offer themselves to strangers and are insulted if the offer is refused.” In his series Bibliotheca historica. This could mean that either creepy men were comman place, or that homosexuality was so comman and done with everyone, it was wierd to be rejected.

————

Getting back to the Roman Catholics, the book Sextus Empiricus is published in the early 3th century and states,

“...amongst the Persians it is the habit to indulge in intercourse with males, but amongst the Romans it is forbidden by law to do so...”

It also goes on to say,

“...amongst us sodomy is regarded as shameful or rather illegal, but by the Germanic they say, it is not looked on as shameful but as a customary thing.”

For clarification, Germany is apart of Celtic society. So what we can infer is a very serious culture shock in terms of Rome and other places. During Emporor Serverus Alexander’s reign, openly homosexuals were deported.

In early 4th century, Emporor Constaine—the first Christian Roman Emperor—destroyed an Egyptian temple populated exclusively by femme, gay, pagan, priests. The Emproror then went on to eradicate all of them. However in 337 A.D., 3 emperors ruled, including Constantius II and Constans I, who where both in mlm relationships.

An odd thing these emporors went on to do was criminalize male bottoming during mlw sex 342 A.D.. 8 years later, Emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius I, and Arcadius ferther punished this act by killing these men by Public burning at the stake.

———(Tw toxic masculinity)———

I believe this was because masculinity was very important and a man acting in a more feminine role was seen as emasculating and humiliating. For the average man, he had to fight and defend his masculinity. Not doing so was seen as a personal failure.

——————

The last ever known peice of European literature containing a positive representation of homosexuality for 1,000 years was a large epic poem by Nonnus of Panopolis. It was titled Dionysiaca and the first part was published in 390 A.D., the last in 405 A.D..

So yeah, The catholics were very selective in terms of sex. One can only imagine how badly the celts and Catholics clashed. Back to 435 A. D., Saint Patrick began to preach Catholism and around that time wrote in his Confessio. He recounted that he found a boat to get out of Ireland and refused to suck on the nipples of those aboard.

“And on the same day that I arrived, the ship was setting out from the place, and I said that I had the wherewithal to sail with them; and the steersman was displeased and replied in anger, sharply: ‘By no means attempt to go with us.’ Hearing this I left them to go to the hut where I was staying, and on the way I began to pray, and before the prayer was finished I heard one of them shouting loudly after me: ‘Come quickly because the men are calling you.’ And immediately I went back to them and they started to say to me: ‘Come, because we are admitting you out of good faith; make friendship with us in any way you wish.’ (And so, on that day, I refused to suck the breasts of these men from fear of God, but nevertheless I had hopes that they would come to faith in Jesus Christ, because they were barbarians.) And for this I continued with them, and forthwith we put to sea.”

—(Tw very mild rape/sex assault mention—

So, as you can see, Celtic and Catholic ways clashed horribly. Something seen as good and sacred to the indigenous tribes was seen as barbaric and sinful to Saint Patrick. Also, don’t worry, the celts did not press the issue ferther, or else this would be a very different story.

—————

This only snowballed into a much bigger issue much later in medival English sexuality. They were VERY picky on what sex was aloud. Missionary was the only aloud position and it has to be the least pleasurable as possible. Making out and masturbation wasn’t aloud either, as that was also seen as a sin. Here’s a low Rez chart to help figure out when sex was okay.

While we are discussing such a queer topic, I would like to bring up the topic of Anam Cara, or Soul Friends in Antient Celtic culture. A Soul Friend was a word used to describe a Philosophy in which one is not completely whole without thier “other half.” This person can be in a platonic, romantic, or familiar kind of love. Really, all it boils down to is that 2 poeple were made to be together since the beginning of time and will be at thier strongest when they become companions.

There is a Celtic legend that seams to depict a mlm Anam Cara relationship. It tells the story of Cuchulainn and Ferdiad, two male worriors who have known and loved each other a long time. But they must kill each other in a duel. Both are vary reluctant, as at least one of them will have to die.

————(Tw insest)———

Before I go on, it is important to mention there is a lot of debate on wether or not this is homosexual. Mainly because they were foster brothers, but since insest wasn’t as much of a taboo, I do not think this would be as much of a set back as it is today.

—————

They had tried to kill each other each day for 3 days, but they ended up hugging each other and kissing 3 times. On the fourth day, however, Cuchulainn killed Ferdiad. The man then holds Ferdiad in his arms and sings peoms for a long time. Here are some:

“We were heart-companions once,

We were comrades in the woods,

We were men that shared a bed

When we slept the heavy sleep

After hard and weary fights.

Into many lands, so strange,

And side by side we sallied forth

And we ranged the woodlands through,When with Scathach we learned arms!”

Heart companions seams to be similar or the same as soul freind, because of how it’s used. Although sleeping in the same bed isn’t inherently sexual, Cuchulainn then goes on to complement Ferdiad’s physical features.

“Dear to me thy noble blush,

Dear thy comely, perfect form;

Dear thine eye, blue-grey and clear,

Dear thy wisdom and thy speech”

Although this is deeply sweet I would also like to caution that Chuhulainn may have simply been commenting on his healthiness, but blush is an odd word considering he is now dead.

Two male lovers, one dead in the other’s arms. Soul friends, maybe. Reminds me of a certain show..I don’t know I just can’t put my finger on it...

I would also like to point out that because Celtics did not pressure others to have sex, and that a soul friend can be any type of love, I do think that an asexual or someone on that spectrum could live without judgment.Unfortunately, I could not find much about intersex, androgynous, or trans people. Perhaps if I find anything in the future and will make a new post.

In conclusion, if Merlin were more historicaly accurate, he definitely would have been queer. Especially because he is said to be magic itself, it would make sense for him to be the personification of Celtic values. That may include homosexuality, because as previously stated, Celtic men really liked other men.

I’m excited to see what will come of this post, seeing as not a lot of people in the fandom seem to know this. More fanfiction? More fanart? It would probably inspire a lot of creators. So, if you do make something because of this post, please notify me in the notes, an ask, an @ or something. Basically anything but a PM. I would be happy to see/read the creation.

Sources:

Sexuality and love in Celtic society:

Same Sex Celts

Druid Thoughts: of Sex and Druids

Anam Cara, what’s a soul mate?

Sexuality in Ancient Ireland

The Celts, Women, and Sex

LGBT history

Sexuality and love in Medival Society:

Getting down and medival: the sex lives of the Middle Ages

Sex in the Middle Ages

Here’s What Sex Was Like In Medieval Times. It’ll Make You Feel Glad You Weren’t Born Back Then!

General Celtic Society:

Who Were the Celts

Celtic Religion and Belieifs

Saint Patrick

17 Things You Probably Didnt know about Saint Patrick

Confession of Saint Patrick

Cuchulainn and Ferdiad

Cuchulainn and Ferdiad, Gay Lovers?

The Combat of Ferdiad and Cuchulain

Insest in Antient Celtic Society

Ancient Irish elite practiced incest, new genetic data from Neolithic tomb shows

Homosexuality in the Roman Empire

Timeline of LGBT history

Timeline of LGBT history in the United Kingdom

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aalapdavjekar · 3 years ago

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8 Lessons from Vipassana

2010 was a peculiar year. It was the year in which I found the great fortune of stumbling upon a book about the bizarre incidents and experiences of an Australian girl voyaging through the Indian subcontinent. The book — a 21st century rewrite of the lore of the hippie trail, offered little towards cerebral surprises, but made for a curious viewing of the life of someone who was brave (or foolish) enough to have gone through all the trouble that she did for the experiences she sought.

The author chronicled days spent discovering religion and spiritual heaven while avoiding hell — nosy neighbours, opportunistic rickshaw-wallas, and the odd would-be rapist. She portrays an all too familiar India — the world’s spiritual shopping mall serving food-poisoning on Tuesdays, vehicular accidents every Friday, and frightening latrines as a daily course. Not all of her pages carried so much drama, but they laid out a rough sketch of the trials and tribulations of the average foreigner in attempting to make sense of the country.

The smallest chapter in the book spoke to me the most. There was a tiny passage that depicted the joy and punishing solitude of the type rarely considered as thrill — monastic rituals, austere and rigorous routines, distress and hardship — it seemed a bit too much for anyone, let alone a solo adventurer. And yet, it seemed like just about the only thing she really enjoyed during her trip.

That was my introduction to Vipassana. That first memory is still fresh: the desire to confront this awkward specimen of a situation for myself, only because, at the time, it seemed so bizarre. To my ignorant mind, I could not have comprehended the result of ten long days (and nights), sitting around without the utterance of a single syllable. If nothing else, it would just be yet another substance: to taste, chew on, spit out, and rave about having conquered yet another mountain of sensory input; spin it all into a tall tale of profundity and wisdom.

Thankfully, the taste was sweet. To me, this became pretty important. It felt like a gigantic discovery and I often found myself proselytizing like a broken record for days after the first course. I eventually stopped for being seen as a bit of a nuisance, however, my fascination with the practice only grew with time. In those ten short days, I had experienced a deep, resounding change from within. As difficult as the journey had been, I only knew I had to keep going.

That was all ten years ago. 2010 was peculiar, but a dozen Vipassana courses later, life only became weirder.

It’s the stark contrast that gets you; the juxtaposition of life inside a course, and then witnessing the world outside. It is hard to illustrate and is not really the point of this post, but I mention it only because I’d like to warn you that many of the lessons I’ve learnt are all experiential truths. Simply engaging the intellect is not enough. You can’t describe the taste of salt to someone who has never experienced it before, and you can’t learn to swim simply by reading about it.

With that said, understand that even though I have been practicing for a while, it does not mean I have achieved any form of mastery over my practice. I still consider this as the just the first step in a very long path. I share these insights, all of which have broadened and enriched my understanding of not only myself, but of all-encompassing experience existence in itself. My only hope is to encourage you to sit down and focus on your breath.

1. Relaxing meditation is more like aggressive deconditioning…

The mind is a big ball of accumulated, tightly-knotted habits. Habits are not merely mundane proclivities like picking your nose, or a preference for K-pop. Habits are the set of all unconscious tendencies, picked up over the course of one’s life and through generations past, resulting in present thought, action, or both. Natural instincts such as the struggle to survive and the urge for sexual gratification are among the densest of elements residing within the mental landscape.

Mental forces are easiest to imagine when you think of them as analogous to Newton’s Third Law: each action has an equal and opposite reaction. As the mind sees, the mind does. Cause and effect. Through millions of years of evolution, the mind has been shaped to recognize and react to patterns. Certain emotions may result in specific thoughts. Certain thoughts may result in specific behaviours.

When you sit down to practice Vipassana, you essentially train yourself to observe the mind without reacting. The process may not seem like much but, with time, the simple act of observation decreases the rigidity and impulsiveness of the mind. Gradually, the simple act of watching it unravel before you, unveiling its knots until they loosen and eventually fade away, brings about a significant change. This does not mean that after ten days of meditation you will deprogram your mind and achieve liberation. It is a very gradual process. Believe me. Even after all these years, I’ve only scratched the surface and, so far, I’ve managed to adopt a slightly better diet. But I have better focus, more clarity of thought, less anxiety, and things that used to drive me crazy don’t annoy me as much anymore.

Meditation will change your brain. Thoughts included.

2. You are your mind’s weak, pathetic slave.

At any given time, you have very little conscious ability to overrule your genetic programming, emotional state, and natural surroundings (many have even argued that there is no such thing as conscious control and free will is an illusion, but that is a discussion for another time). The goal of meditation is to break free from the mind’s thrall: it’s patterns of thought. That’s the liberation that meditators keep referring to time and again.

If you find it hard to believe how little control you have over your mind, try to focus continuously on the breath just for a few minutes and notice the amount of thoughts that manage to pop up. You’ll quickly see how easily the mind is carried away. It’ll drift away, either to the future, or to the past. Bringing it back and keeping it in the present is a constant, seemingly endless struggle.

Our toxic addiction to our own thoughts creates the biggest hurdle. Over the course of our lives, we have been conditioned by our parents, school, society, even language, to think a certain way. Like the words we associate with objects to learn the alphabet in kindergarten, we continuously associate abstractions — words — to ideas; to the way things work. Our names for objects, people, places, feelings, situations, etc. are just names. They are concepts that are formed in the mind. In other words, our brain holds maps to reality which are drawn and redrawn over the course of our lives. But the map is not the territory, yet we are constantly under the delusion that the map is real.

Our fascination and attachment to our artificial concepts of what is real, important, and urgent is what hinders progress— the practice is essentially training the mind not to identify with one’s thoughts. In other words, to heal trauma, you need to learn to dissociate with the feeling which triggers the trauma. Trauma comes in many shapes. It may take the form of the stories that we forge for ourselves to make sense of who we are. The story we tell ourselves turns into the very bondage that keeps us in indefinite servitude to the mind.

The mind is a slippery serpent, as dangerous when untamed as it is powerful when mastered. Most beginners often find it frustrating how difficult it is to ‘control’ their minds. But therein lies the effort. It is a skill to be cultivated like any other. Exasperation and the desire to stop is a natural byproduct of the conditioning described earlier. There is an inertia to progress that needs to be continuously overcome. With time, it gets easier.

Meditation is simply a tool to harness and rein in the unruly mind.

3. Everything is connected. Every action has a consequence, and it matters.

This can be argued as a simple scientific principle. Richard Feynman in his lecture, “The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences,” describes the artificial divisions we create, forming a myriad of distinct models of understanding to comprehend and explain to ourselves aspects of the same reality. Brian Cox takes it even further.

My understanding leans towards the philosophical side, but bear with me. Most religions and spiritual traditions preach purity of mind, speech, and deed. Whether through scripture or ritual, they teach compassion, loving kindness, mercy and wisdom. I’ve realized that there’s more to this than mere morality.

To greatly simplify this, let’s imagine the world as a closed, finite system — something like a small swimming pool. Any kind of movement results in ripples that gradually extend across the body of water, affecting everything in their path. Eventually, given enough time, those ripples will bounce right back to whence they came. Sooner or later, your actions will meet their maker. But don’t mistake this as a need to be nice out of selfish necessity. The picture is bigger than this.

The world, much like our hypothetical swimming pool, is a melting pot of events resulting from simultaneous interactions causing countless, spontaneous consequences. It’s a chain reaction and an ocean of chaos, with the ebb and flow of individual currents that mingle, coalesce and form waves, crashing into one another to give us the great churning of the wheel that Buddhists speak of, and the agitation that we are almost too familiar with.

The turbulence, in essence, is the mind being washed away with the tide, engulfed and drowned in the vicissitudes of a constantly changing life. To remain steadfast and solid in such stormy waters would require nothing short of supreme mastery in the art of mindfulness. A cornerstone of such an endeavour requires the cultivation of a conscious effort to sustain complete awareness and acceptance for the present moment.

When one remains vigilant of thought, speech, and deed, and acquires a resolute and unwavering focus, then all the torment the ocean can muster will be but powerless against this tranquil state of mind. But even beyond that, tranquility will give way to reflection, understanding, and empathy. In other words, when you respond to anger with love, you cast water over the fire.

With practice, each action undertaken will arrive with more effort, more purpose and consideration. That is the delicate insight to be gained — that every action, every moment, every breath is sacred. Every bit of conscious presence is a gift to be treasured.

4. Nothing matters as much as you think it does…

Vipassana meditation is an exercise in cultivating insight through self-observation. You watch your breath and the sensations across your body as they arise and pass away, each time acknowledging their transient and impermanent nature. That, you come to realize, is the truth of all reality.

You realize that suffering is a form of mental attachment, not to any external object, but to the sensation that object has on your mind. This attachment is sometimes so subtle and imperceptible that it is impossible to witness it without a mind that is steady and calm. These attachments are what cause dukkha or suffering. Attachments are not limited to sensations that feel good. Any sensation that makes you feel like had more of it or less of it — desire and aversion — is attachment. The mind runs after pleasure, runs from fear and pain. These are attachments and they are a hindrance to the practice.

As you grow into your practice, you will gradually slip out of your old patterns of thought, replacing them with a more open, willing, and fluid presence of mind. What once bothered you may gradually dissolve into nothingness. What once seemed as part of you, possessed you, caused emotional havoc when you didn’t get what you wanted, might simply vanish from existence. No, you won’t turn into an emotionless robot. No it won’t make you give up everything in life, turn into a vagrant and move to the beach, unless you already desired those things. Meditation will only help sort out what you really want.

Practice will help you detach yourself from your thoughts until you realize that your thoughts are not you. Feelings come, feelings go. They are impermanent, and they don’t matter. All it requires is time and the simple act of observation.

5. You are not an experiential bubble.

For many beginners trying to embrace the many forms of mindfulness, one of the toughest obstacles to overcome is doubt. It may be doubt in oneself, doubt in the practice, doubt in one’s teacher, and so on. But it’s a natural response to something new, especially to those completely unfamiliar with these types of practices. Imparting trust is a transactional habit. Unless one is certain of attainable benefits and can measure their worth, they may find an unwillingness to take even the first step.

Couple a doubtful mind with the myriad of mental encounters one may face during meditation and the result might just kill the desire for practice. People have reported everything from swirling lights, out-of-body experiences, synesthesia, to demons. This is not unusual. Meditation is a gateway into the unconscious — a surgical procedure as S.N. Goenka, the person who brought the teaching of Vipassana back to India, describes. Through the process of Sankharupekkha (observing mental formations with equanimity), the practitioner encounters dormant impurities in the unconscious that rise to the surface of the mind, and manifest themselves as physical phenomenon.

Juxtaposed with modern-day culture, the meditative experience stands out like a sore thumb, often causing its students great confusion and mistrust in the very quality of what they are learning. It doesn’t help that the ideas and general philosophy presented by spiritual traditions are outright antithetical to “western” schools of thought.

Concepts such as avidya, anicca, dukkha, shunyata, samsara and nirvana are like salt. These are concepts that are almost impossible to understand through mere language—one must personally taste them. They are often horribly misconstrued and usually thrown out, replaced by a far shallower understanding that barely skims the surface of the teaching, conflating meditation with stress reduction and labour productivity. After all, these are the values our industrial societies can easily relate to.

We often make it harder on ourselves by letting our experiences fester. Remember to talk about them, discuss them, debate their true essence, and let them be out in the open. Let these ideas, however alien, achieve coherence and solidity. Give them a better chance to struggle and survive. There are many people out there experiencing the same reality, watching the same movie, feeling the same thing. The emotional outlet, especially when you are starting out in this practice is immensely valuable. It’s a small thing but it matters.

After my first ten-day Vipassana course came to a close, as the new students could finally open their mouths and start speaking with each other about their ten days spent in silence, we could all see the benefits this strange new thing had given us. I was in a room full of fifty-odd people that seemed to have had a similar experience in the course as I did. They all seemed calmer than on the first day, happier for having made it through; in the process, they had visibly changed. That’s what brought forth trust in the system; not only because it seemed to work across a diverse set of people, but because it made me realize that we are all in the same boat.

6. Compassion takes practice.

There is no absolute right or wrong. Understanding which is which requires not only context but patience. An impulsive and ignorant mind does not have the capacity to form correct judgement. An angry and intolerant person cannot be trusted to make rational and thoughtful decisions. Why do you need to develop proper judgement? The simplest possible answer: to progress in your practice. Hence, while Vipassana may bring insight, on the last day of each course, students are taught a slightly different type of meditation.

Metta, meaning ‘loving-kindness’, is a type of meditation that involves concentrating on directing love towards ourselves and others, even those (especially those) who may have hurt us. A daily practice of metta has its benefits, but most significant of all, is the way it complements insight meditation and brings out lasting, positive changes in mind and body.

The feeling is hard to describe, but all I can say is that (at the risk of sounding cliched), through the course of one’s life, pain is an inevitability, but suffering through the pain is a choice. With regular practice in metta, instead of being swept away by one’s emotions, one learns to consciously bring awareness to the suffering being experienced and replace it with compassionate and loving thoughts. Suffering is simply a negative reaction of the mind to any form of pain. With practice, mental aversion to pain gradually fades. Like mental ointment, compassion can heal the deepest of wounds.

But compassion takes practice. Think of it as learning a new language. Even if you have no prior experience reading the script or pronouncing the words, with time, you might just achieve fluency.

Compassion towards all beings, regardless of the situation, is an important goal for anyone serious about walking the path. When you emanate a constant stream of loving thoughts without ever missing a beat, then you might definitely consider yourself having changed for the better.

7. It’s all just glorified play.

By the time children reach the age of 3 or 4, their ego begins to form a cohesive identity — a map of themselves: I am this, I like that, I want to be so and so. Whether through nature or nurture, the child learns to take on a role for themselves depending on what the situation may bring: during interactions with their parents, with other children, and with society in general.

From an early age, children are engaged in play. Their games may be diverse, but are usually a form of role-playing: tea parties, dollhouses, make-believe — simulations of the adult world, to test its boundaries and see how things react. Fueled by curiosity and the joy of discovery, they rehearse and solidify their understanding of their surroundings, finding their place in the greater familial and societal picture, and simultaneously strengthen their masks of identity.

The masks we carry, birthed from the ego, may be necessary for our survival, but they are simply roles — the games we continue to play even as adults, with ourselves and with others. When the student of Vipassana comes to notice their own desires and attachments to the world, the identity of the self is often seen as the greatest attachment. It is the great epic; the story of ourselves that we’re so engrossed in writing and reciting— and madly in love with.

This story never ends. It lies permanently in the state of becoming: I am like this, I like that, I want to be so and so. The attachment to a false idea of oneself is the most difficult thing to witness and understand. It is the biggest delusion of the mind, and the greatest hindrance to one’s liberation from samsara — the endless cycle of birth and death. Whether you choose to believe that is unimportant, but recognising one’s tendencies to cling to one’s beliefs, one’s masks and identity, is a crucial process towards self-discovery and insight.

Recognising the mind for what it is — a constant stream of consciousness always in flux — will bring you a step closer to deciphering it.

8. You Know Nothing.

I know nothing. For knowing involves being certain, but if everything is impermanent and things are constantly in flux, then nothing can be certain.

To understand how truly inept we are at comprehending reality, consider the incredibly narrow spectrum of perception our brains provide. Our sensory organs: the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin offer only a slice of all the information that they come into contact with.

The eyes, for example, see only a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, which we call visible light. Similarly, our hearing is restricted to frequencies of sound that fall between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. In the same way, we carry only a limited cognitive capability and intelligence.

It’s a humbling thought. At the very least, reminding oneself of the fragility of one’s understanding is a way to minimize cognitive bias. Further, since no one knows anything, knowing you know nothing will actually put you a step ahead of most people.

“I am wiser than this human being. For probably neither of us knows anything noble and good, but he supposes he knows something when he does not know, while I, just as I do not know, do not even suppose that I do. I am likely to be a little bit wiser than he in this very thing: that whatever I do not know, I do not even suppose I know.” — Plato’s Apology of Socrates

Similarly, from the Dhammapada:

“A fool who knows his foolishness is wise at least to that extent, but a fool who thinks himself wise is a fool indeed.”

Lastly, Shunryu Suzuki, a Japanese Zen Master calls the state of knowing nothing the “beginner’s mind,” the constant prerequisite for progressing in one’s practice:

“The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” — from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

May all beings be happy.

#meditation #vipassana #insight #zen #buddhism #philosophy #wisdom

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clonewarslover55 · 4 years ago

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I'm back again! I was hoping we could see some soft Rose talking to Vau about his past and comforting him, please? ❤

Of course!!

Verda Tal Rose comforting Walon Vau about his past

Notes: Read Walon Vau’s early life story, and the thing I did on his homeworld before reading this. Both are on my AO3 and Masterlist

Also! If you have no clue what Memories is check out my AO3 and Masterlist!

Warnings: Angst, slight fluff, Mird helps, Nightmares, mentions of a bad past, past abuse, abuse scars, mentions of past suicide attempts, Walon’s father is a fucking pyshcopath, oh no Walon Vau has F E E L I N G S

“Your father will not be happy about this Walon!” The teacher yelled, dragging the young boy down the hallway. His hand was wrapped around his arm in a tight fist, it would leave a nasty bruise that would last for weeks.

Walon could do nothing but follow. He hated when the teachers brought him directly to his father for punishment instead of doing it themselves.

He stopped at his father, who was leaving some meeting room. The teacher huffed, dropping the boy's arm. Walon looked up at the tall man, his soulless grey blue eyes staring into Walon’s golden ones.

“Did he fail again?” The teacher only nodded, Pa Vau’s face curling into a sneer.

“Father, it was only by one question! I-” He was cut off by a harsh slap, “Did I give you permission to speak boy?!” His father roared, slapping him again.

Walon shot awake, sitting up quickly and panting like Mird after a hunt. He buried his face in his hands, his body shaking. He hated how he dreamed about his father almost every night, the old scars on his body and soul burning with each dream.

Rose sat up quickly, looking at her lover. He scared her and Mird both awake. She looked at his naked form, his body shaking harshly. She knew it wasn’t the cold sweat that was making him shake. Rose reached a hand out, softly putting it on his shoulder. He flinched aggressively from her touch before allowing it.

Rose didn’t know much about his past, but she’s seen his scars. She also knew he came from a royal background and money, but that was really it. Rose frowned, rubbing his back to help him relax.

She looked at his naked back, the pale scars running along his back like rivers. Whip scars. Lots of them.

He was covered in scars of all kinds, the worse on his back and his chest. No old scars were on his face, neck, or arms, at least not below his elbows. “Walon.” Rose spoke softly, gently grasping his chin and turning his face towards her.

His golden eyes were bright, the whites of his eyes red from tears and a restless sleep. She could see the anger and pain in his eyes, burning behind them like a huge fire. He was breathing heavily, his body quivering. He was always rigid with his posture, and just a tense man in general. But she had never seen his muscles so tight, it was like he was a wild animal.

She gently wiped some sweat from his brow, and Vau's muscles relaxed slightly. “Was it about your old home?” He nodded, his eyes flicking away from hers. He hated when she looked at him with pity, it made him feel weaker than he already did around her.

Mird whined, laying its head in Walon’s lap. He stroked its head, looking at it instead of Rose. She sighed and traced a scar that raised the skin on his collar bone. It seemed like a blade caught him there, as a warning perhaps.

They had only been staying the night with one another for a short while now. They used to part ways after sex, but things seemed to be getting more and more intimate lately. Every night he slept in the same bed as her, and he’d have nightmares like he always did. Some so bad that he’d wake her up by accident. Sometimes he didn’t and she’d wake up to find him pacing or exercising. She could always tell when he didn’t sleep, something in his past keeping him awake night after night. Leaving him restless.

Once he had stopped shaking she spoke up, “We need to talk about your past. I want to help you, darling, but I can’t when you won’t talk to me.” Vau sighed loudly, looking at Rose, his eyes now dull and sad.

He was silent for a moment, Rose’s warm and calloused fingers tracing the lines along his back.

Walon snorted, suddenly trying to act cold and detached, “Jango never told you where I came from? I-” Rose cut him off with a glare. “He told me you used to be a rich aristocratic bastard. Now don’t try to act all heartless, you know it only will make you hurt more.” Vau closed his eyes and sighed at that, Mird licking his fingers encouragingly.

“Well….The planet I come from is some oceanic shit hole.” He spat out the words like they were poison. “Old fashioned and run by religious leaders who controlled the nobles and military like puppets.” Rose continued to stroke his back, letting him rant. She had never seen him so emotionally exposed.

“My father was like….a lead puppet you know? He’s the Count of Gesl, and a religious fanatic. A man with far too much power.” How he spoke his voice had this harshness to it, sadness underlining every word. “That title was to be mine, since I was his only child, his only son. So from day one he taught me how to take his place.”

Walon still wouldn’t make eye contact with Rose, “Every day I had multiple lessons. The teachers were cruel, I was not allowed to mess up. I had to be perfect with everything, writing, talking, dancing, sailing, riding, fighting, and so much more.” He sucked in a breath, Rose frowning even more.

“My education was stupidly expensive, but still…...Every time I messed up I was beaten.” He snapped, Rose nearly flinching at his tone. “I was beaten over nothing sometimes. Whenever I was not my fathers version of perfect I was beaten.” Vau clenched his jaw tightly, tears causing his golden eyes to shine. He was a man that rarely showed emotion, especially ones as raw as anger and sadness.

“My father said I was not supposed to show emotion, ever. I was supposed to be a leader, and leaders don’t show weakness. They are harsh and ruthless.” He shook his head, snorting at his own words. He was using dramatic finger quotes as he repeated his fathers words.

“To prove this, to everyone, my family killed servants who messed up. It was some fucked up tradition. So He made me kill servants that made minor mistakes. I slaughtered my first servant at twelve.” Rose put a hand to her mouth.

“I still remember the poor woman…...A mother. I remember he cries and pleads. I….I didn’t want to kill her….I-” Rose shook her head and stroked his knuckles, letting him know he didn’t have to continue.

Walon was silent for a moment, his breathing heavy from the terrible memories. He changed the subject to his mother quickly.

“I never saw my mother besides at night when she’d clean my wounds. My mother made me emotional, I suppose, so father rarely let me see her. She was just as crazy, but she didn’t hit me nearly as hard as him. Father even beat her as well, so she was even worse about the religion they follow. Being a religious fanatic kept her alive in her book I suppose. It made her…….odd and paranoid.”

He let out a sad and dry chuckle, “She would only talk about the bible. Nothing else. I don’t think she was allowed to talk to me about anything else anyways.” Rose sighed, resting her head on his shoulder.

Rose spoke up while he caught his breath, his chest heaving with emotion. “So your scars aren’t-” Vau cut her off, “I was never hit anywhere people could see. I had to keep up my reputation of being attractive and a member of a ‘peaceful’ family. Along with some other osik.” Rose frowned, holding his hand in hers.

“I was never perfect enough for him. I wasn’t him, and he hated it. I wasn’t fully emotionless and psychopathic.” He sucked in a breath, Mird whining low in its throat. “He was a great military leader as well, one of the head leaders of my planet's Navy.”

He shifted, “He didn’t even let me join the Navy. Not even as a cutthroat. Not even after training for it or my whole entire life.” Vau shook his head, aggressively wiping the tears from his eyes. Rose shifted so she could look at his face again, wiping his tears.

“I was never good enough for anything. Ever.” He looked at Rose, a frown on her beautiful face. “I tried so hard to be perfect. When I succeeded I never even got praise. I think he just enjoyed beating me, seeing how much skin he could rip away from my back before I passed out.”

Rose shifted so she was almost in his lap, “Oh Walon.” She cupped his cheeks, staring into his golden eyes. “I’m so sorry.” He shook his head, looking away from her eyes. She pressed a soft kiss to the scar she gave him across his nose so long ago, his lips twitching a bit at the soft kiss.

“He’s turned me into a monster. I-” Rose cut him off quickly, “No no no…..Walon you’re not a good man, at all….” He blinked quickly in surprise at that, “But you are no monster. You can feel emotion and pain no matter how hard you fucking try.”

Vau made eye contact with her once again, quickly changing the subject again. “I tried to kill myself mutiple times…. The first time was after I wasn’t allowed into the Navy.” Vau shifted from under the sheets, motioning at the nasty jagged scar on his thigh. “I tried to cut the artery, and I did. I was so close to death.”

He shook his head, “I was found almost immediately, blade still cutting my skin, and somehow didn’t die. It was the cruelest punishment yet, my father not letting me die.” He sucked in a breath, Rose wiping his eyes. “He told me that I couldn’t even kill myself correctly.”

Vau harshly chuckled, but it sounded more like a desperate and sad gasp. “I was fourteen.” Rose frowned and kissed away his tears, “Well I’m glad you couldn’t kill yourself correctly.” She laughed a little, tears in her eyes as well.

He laughed a little too, pulling her into his arms. Walon buried his face into her neck, sighing. He felt better now, like a weight had been lifted.

Many weights and chains still held his soul down, but having one less was a huge relief.

“Thank you…” He muttered. Rose could only nod, gently running her fingers through his black hair. Mird sat up, licking both of their faces as it whined. Mird always made them feel better, no matter what.

She’d ask about his exile some other time.

Walon Vau’s past would haunt him forever, his fathers stern lessons never leaving his brain. He’d remain ice cold, calm, and utterly detached. Afraid of emotion and afraid of failure.

He’d always remain a man with a shattered soul.

Tags: @valkyrieofthehighfae @leias-left-hair-bun @colorfulloverbatturkey @ahsokatano-thetogruta @peacefulwizardfox @hounding-around @julyzaa @feathersforclones @chr0nicbackpain @fyrepen33 @ct7567329 @mistflyer1102 @darmanfi @just-some-girl-92 @majorshiraharu @ravenpuff01@lightning-wolffe

#walon vau #walon vau x original characters #verda tal rose #walon vau x verda tal rose #lord mirdalan #Mird #mird'ika #Walon Vau and Mird #republic commando novels #Republic Commando

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rjhpandapaws · 3 years ago

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I Will Always be with You

Ch 1: There are Some Answers that Not Even Fate May Know

Names/Translations:

Daniel: Daniel

Sixty: Balance, Silas

Tw: Death, Description of death that is a little graphic, and religion

Balance hated his purpose, there was really no other way to put it. Not even its importance could change that; ore rather, he hated it so much because of the weight of it. He did good things, often it seemed; but the bad things out weighed them in his opinion. He didn’t have the luxury of impulse like his brothers did, not in the same sense if at all. Given what he was meant to do, he could see every possible outcome the moment he or anyone else made a choice. The “dark age” Wisdom’s grief fueled library destruction had caused; the fact that he would have to lure Hennek to his death once Curiosity had saved his life; and, the Ntaniel would die the moment Balance had decided to get to know him. He was simultaneously the most powerful being of Fate, and utterly powerless when he needed it the most. While he was able to see and know every possible outcome of almost any given decision, and even influence them to some degree; he could not prevent the making of a choice, and he could not prevent death. Only bargain with her. As fluid as the course of humanity was, Balance couldn’t help but believe that all of it was little more than an act. There were an infinite number of paths yes, but every moment of them was predetermined to some degree.

The reason he hated his purpose the most though, was all of the unanswered questions. He got asked so many questions. Most of them he wasn’t allowed to answer, and others he simply didn’t have the answers to. The Beginning never answered the questions that he asked her, she always said that it wasn’t his place to be curious and to leave it alone. There had to be answers though, after the absolute tongue lashing Curiosity had given him after Sealgair had died; there had to be a reason for all of this. Why was The Beginning letting them remember their past lives and their deaths? If Ntaniel came back, would he remember Balance at all? What about his death? That had been a violent and traumatic event, so Balance sincerely hoped not. Was it all humans; or did all of them have some sort of memory of their past lives? Why didn’t The Beginning stop he and his brothers from going back? From having gone at all? What was the worth of being a power of the universe if you couldn’t save the life of the human you loved? If you weren’t allowed to? How many times were they going to fall in love only to fall victim to the fragility of humanity?

He wouldn’t be getting answers to any of his questions, he knew that. He couldn’t answer Curiosity because he didn’t know why he had done that; he just felt like he had to, like he didn’t have a choice. As The Beginning had aptly put it; he was not meant to be curious. He knew when Ntaniel was coming back. It would be in the age of Catholics, Kings, and Cathedrals. He would be raised in a monastery and not come to love Balance, well, not any more than his faith. Balance was determined to be loved, and love Ntaniel. Challenge his Fate as it were. For all of the things he could see, Balance couldn’t see details; at least, not when it came to Ntaniel. While he knew the overview of his life, even down to how he would die; a fire this time; he was not permitted to know the choices Ntaniel would make. Probably because The Beginning was aware that he would try and save Ntaniel’s life; as one was known to do when in love. The knowledge of the way Ntaniel was going to die wasn’t enough to stop him from going down to him once Ntaniel was back. He planned to wait until Ntaniel was a teenager, he had no intention to keep his distance in the way that his brothers had. A poor decision looking back; his sight was always blocked when it came to decisions involving Ntaniel.

The sheer number of things he would change, undo even, if only he had known. The irony was not lost on him in all of this. Had he only known he would have stayed away, only observed Ntaniel in this life, despite the fact that he had promised to always be with him. Being with him seemed to be the start of everything going wrong. Balance didn’t know what life at a Catholic monastery would be like, but he hadn’t expected it to be so empty; for lack of a better word. Ntaniel was called Daniel in this life and he was usually Balance’s only company. Balance had no way of disguising his name, so he chose to call himself Silas. He and Daniel were close friends, more like brothers honestly. It wasn’t the sort of love that Balance had wanted, but it was the love that he was going to get so he wasn’t about to complain. He was, after all, with Daniel, and that had been all he had ever wanted when Daniel had been gone. Daniel was the best thing about the monastery. Balance wasn’t one for faith as it was, but this odd, complex thing that the humans had built for themselves was nothing more than a mess. The falseness of it not withstanding of course, but he still practiced. If only just to appease Daniel.

Then came the war. It was not Wisdom’s doing this time. From Balance’s understanding it was an act of the Church. Which was why he was so confused when the monastery went up in flames. The one thing he did know was that he needed to get to Daniel. He was going to do everything in his power to save Daniel. Make a deal with Death if he must, they were somewhat close, though he wouldn’t go as far as to call them friends. He got to Daniel shortly before she did and he stopped her at the door. “Not like this, please.” He begged. Her hollow blue eyes stared back at him. He blonde hair was over her shoulder hanging out from the hood. “It will cost you something.” She said with the usual lack of emotion in her voice, “What are you willing to give me? Who’s life will it be this time?” Balance hesitated for a long moment. Right, sparing a life always cost something. “There is an army to the north of here. I will give you all of them, just please don’t take Daniel.” He watched Death think about it. Her tilted just so, and then she smiled. That fake overly pleasant thing that Balance hated. “He will get one year for every soul I get, but his death starts on this day and you will be punished when its over. The Beginning is not happy with this.” Then she was gone.

He got Daniel out of there, and despite the state of the monastery, the flames did not touch them. Daniel lived a great many years after that, longer than most humans of that time, and Balance tried to ignore what that meant. The thing was that Death came back every single one of those years on the anniversary of the fire, and Daniel could see her. Daniel didn’t ever come to tell him, but he didn’t need to. His reaction whenever she came around was enough. They moved around a lot. It was Daniel’s way of attempting to out run her. It was futile of course, no matter where they went she always found it, and no one ever outran Death. As frightening as it was, the hardest thing for Balance was seeing how much it shook Daniel’s faith. As false as it was, Daniel’s faith was important to him. He had built his life around it, facing something like this was not something he had been equipped to deal with. Balance helped as best he could. Daniel became somewhat of a legend for having so many close calls but such good luck. To humans it must have been strange. Daniel’s mind was leaving him, it was a means of coping with all of this. As promised, small parts of Daniel died as time passed. Gradually he became someone that Balance didn’t know.

By the later years Daniel was closed off and distant to the point where they didn’t do much more than exist separately in the same space. Balance hated every moment of it. This was not what he had wanted when he had begged for Daniel’s life. He had wanted Daniel to be able to have a life, that had been the whole point. He had been cheated, they both had, and it was his fault. Daniel’s last day would be one that Balance would always regret. He and Daniel had gotten into a particularly nasty fight and Balance had needed to clear his head. He was so used to being in a human form at this point that he stormed out instead of just changing forms. For the first time in a little over a century, he had left an opening for Death, and she had taken it. When he came back in the evening ready to apologize and make amends he found their small house to be fully ablaze. He could hear Daniel still inside; he was laughing and it was near hysterical from the sound. Balance ran for the house, but Death stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “I gave you your time.” She said with that same lack of emotion to her voice, but there was something almost like pity in her eyes, “He belongs to the flames now.”

Balance screamed, or cried, or both; honestly he couldn’t remember at this point. He watched as the house burned to nothing. He could have left and saved himself the hurt, but he didn’t want to leave Daniel alone. He had promised to be with him after all, and that meant to the very end. When he was pulled away it was not by his own volition. It was time to give The Beginning what she was owed. Changing Fate was always met with punishment, that was the whole reason for his existence. To punish those who dare challenge their Fate. He was left to wonder what would happen since this time he had been the challenger. It couldn’t be any worse than having to watch Daniel burn. There would be nothing worse than that.

#In All Your Forms AU #IYAF #I Will Always Be With You #IWABWY #daniel60 #dbh daniel #dbh sixty #dbh fic #dbh #tw death #tw religious mention

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meta-squash · 4 years ago

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Brick Club 2.5.9 “The Man With The Bell”

The clock is ticking. Cosette has less than 15 minutes before she might die if she doesn’t get warm. This is a reverse of Fauchelevent’s rescue from under the cart: then, the clock was ticking as the cart sank in the mud, and it was Valjean’s quick action that saved him. This time, it is Fauchelevent’s presence that saves Cosette.

The weird surprise of being Known is something Valjean suddenly has to contend with here, in a very different way than he did a couple chapters ago. This is the first time that someone recognizes him in a place where he does not wish to be recognized, and who reacts positively. I can imagine how weird this would be, since a) Valjean’s other experiences of being recognized have all been negative and b) he really, really does not want to be Known, at all ever.

I often forget just how much of this novel is narration, until we get to a block of dialogue and it’s like taking a little break. I wonder what the percentage is of narrative/expository writing vs dialogue in the Brick.

Valjean has two main reactions to any problem that he sees: run from it, or throw money at it. The exception to this rule was the Champmathieu affair, which forced him to face Everything head on. But after escaping the Orion, his instincts are run or, if he has to face it, attempt payment. It’s an interesting commentary on how fucked up capitalism is and how it has fucked over our main characters. Valjean knows that most people aren’t going to do unusual or sacrificial things from the goodness of their hearts, but he does know that money talks and is a very persuasive tool. If he can’t appeal to someone’s better nature, he can appeal to their greed and/or need.

"Did you fall from heaven? There’s no doubt, if you ever fall, that’s where you’ll fall from.” Fauchelevent is such an odd person, and I know that “fell from heaven” is a common phrase, but I also can’t help but think of Lucifer. It’s uhhh not a very Catholic perspective, I don’t think, but my best friend is a religion major and recently wrote a paper for grad school which, long story short, had a section talking about Lucifer’s fall being the first zone of exception and his suffering being the predicate for human suffering. I don’t think Valjean is a First exactly, but he is a Symbol of human suffering and the things that excessive and unjust punishment or exile from society can do to a person. Valjean didn’t fall from heaven in the same way as Lucifer did (as in, willingly or knowingly) but he did suffer from the same sort of exile; the exile from society, being forced into a state of exception where his life and rights are controlled, diminished, and ultimately rejected by the state. Fauchelevent is saying that Valjean is an angel on earth, something good and sacred. But it also fits that he is a fallen being whose Fall and suffering are both created by and maintained by the state, a State which proclaims to be following the values and wills of god and religion.

Okay I’ve just realized that Fauchelevent isn’t actually that weird. He’s “weird” because his friendly peasant way of speaking is so damn normal in this unfamiliar and strange place that he seems like the weird one.

“Ah,” said Jean Valjean. “You. Yes, I remember you.” This cracks me up because I have absolutely had interactions like this where I don’t remember someone until they either do something familiar or are like “Yeah we met at xyz thing!” but then I still totally don’t remember their name so I just have to be like yep I definitely remember you uhhh you person yes I do. It’s been quite a few traumatizing years, I’m not surprised Valjean doesn’t remember Fauchelevent’s name, but it’s still funny.

But at the same time it’s also indicative of how Valjean functions when doing his good deeds (which Fauchelevent will call him out on at the end of the chapter). He sacrifices himself or is selfless or charitable because he feels it is his duty, but he doesn’t stop to get to know the people he saves. He crawled under the cart and saved Fauchelevent at the risk of both being crushed himself and being exposed to Javert, but he didn’t speak to Fauchelevent in person after. He broke in and left money for struggling people in M-sur-M but he didn’t really talk or get to know them (smiled to avoid speaking, gave to avoid smiling, and all that). He’s “the beggar who gives alms” at Gorbeau House, but he only does so at night when his countenance is shadowed and to beggars who, I assume, are not necessarily inclined to want to get to know their benefactors. He will do the same thing later when Cosette is grown up, giving donations of money or clothes or food to the poor and even going to their homes to give, but never actually getting to know them.

Part of this is definitely because of his fear of being Known and the danger that brings to him, but part of it I think is also a fear of falling back into that poverty.

Side note: are the melons symbolic in any way? I don’t know anything about plant symbolism. (Also I love the hilariously simple, “Oh, I’m covering my melons.”)

“I know that you cannot do anything dishonest, and that you have always been a man of God.” Fauchelevent puts so much faith and trust in Valjean and, aside from Cosette, he seems to be the only one who does. The barricade doesn’t necessarily distrust him when he arrives, but they definitely find his not-shooting-anybody style of combat odd, at least until he offers his clothes. But Fauchelevent is immediately trusting. Part of it, also, is Valjean’s liminal existence within this liminal space. What I mean is, the whole convent is a weird place, where Fauchelevent is not allowed to know things or see people, where he is given instructions or commands and can’t question them. So Valjean requesting that he help without asking questions doesn’t faze him because why would it? He’s spent the past however many years doing exactly that for the convent nuns, and I’m sure he feels more indebted to Valjean than the nuns themselves too.

@everyonewasabird has already written a couple posts on “ingrate” and on Fauchelevent calling Valjean ungrateful, so I don’t really have anything more to say about it that they didn’t already cover. (Although I do have one thought about Champmathieu but I think I will reblog their post and put it on there.)

#les miserables #les miserables meta #brickclub #lm 2.5.9 #les mis #les mis meta

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tobacconist · 3 years ago

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ill put it here since its hard to have a proper discussion through replies

@solomonjones

God’s will is mysterious, and we as humans cannot know it. i dont pretend to, but i can aspire to atleast attempt to understand it. regardless of your religion; either you believe: God ordains all events throughout history as part of his greater unknowable plan, and that it is He who causes the rise and fall of nations, peoples, ideologies, etc or, you believe: when good things happen to you God is blessing you but when good things happen to your enemies it is satan who blesses them. if that is the case, you do not worship the One True God. you worship an imposter deity who presumes to call itself “θεός”, or “Бог” or “ الله ”; who is caught in deep rivalry with all the other pretenders to the throne of God Almighty.

this is what the story of the old testament is fundamentally about. even though the israelites were God’s chosen people, they were continually overtaken and oppressed by pagans. as it is written, the LORD hardened the pharaohs heart. in my opinion, it is impossible to understand the wider context of the bible (old and new testament) without understanding it in relation to pagan history and mythology (and in relation to the modern world) they didnt include, say, the odyssy in the holy canon of course because the pagan peoples being converted already knew these stories intimately. they did include the scriptures of the jews however (even though they were in many ways just as spiritually flawed as the pagans) because people were less familiar with them and the scriptures of the jews are very important to understanding the significance of the life of Jesus Christ (as he fulfilled prophecies of both the pagans and the jews)

when i say i have deep respect for the orthodox churches, please understand that i am being completely earnest. but i see it for what it is, an imperial religion of temporal power, like any other. this is going to sound quite harsh, and im writing this from an antagonistic perpective because, i presume, as someone who is quite devout; you do not need to be convinced of the deep need for religion in the world (now more than ever) that said... throughout history, kings and theologians have torn the Body of Christ, the church herself, into pieces. like DOGS they have torn the body of christ to pieces! like some horribly blasphemous tug of war. catholics pulling the head and protestants pulling the legs. baptists pulling out the intestines, the orthodox snarling and territorially guarding the heart, and the gnostics scooping up the spilled brains. and yet they are all convinced they know best, that they are the ones with grace, that they are the only true pure and correct church. this is what i mean about spiritual pride, and everyone knows it. especially when their actions and morals are in so many ways clearly at odds with what Christ actually taught. the only reason atheism exists is because of centuries of corrupt religious leaders; you can blame no one else for this godless world.

you claim the tsar held grace by his ceremonial anointment; but God hears the cry of the oppressed. thousands dead for your cause seems very reasonable compared to thousands dead for your enemies cause. but God gave people a rational mind, and although we are all misguided, he gave us wisdom enough to (eventually) see through deceit - whos author is the devil. it took centuries, but he taught us the ignorance of idolatry. the foolishness of worshipping kings. many more centuries it took until we abolished slavery. when the LORD let loose his hand and upturned the entire order of civilisation; throwing the chess pieces everywhere. fortuna’s wheel made such a global revolution; scarcely ever seen before. the nobility of the world, once so proud, learned through the bitterest chastisement the desserts of one who believes he can do no wrong. i cannot question the judgement of the LORD, but i do wish history had been different. less bloodshed, less mess; but God knows best.

on the topic of miracles, you can believe whatever you like, my friend. jesus said blessed are those who believe what they cannot see; but in my opinion you are as naive as one who believes hindu swamis can manifest gold rings out of thin air. all religions are guilty of this chicanery, but the spell only holds as long as people still want to believe. God gave us the power of reason, and His essence is truth. a great spiritual mystery; that (atleast for the past hundred years) Gods chosen people have been the atheists who knew him not! contemplate it! deny it if you want! there is great wisdom to be found there. not that they are blameless. the very opposite. i do not deny the horrors of communism which i assume you as an orthodox christian will know intimately well; but communist movements (and growing secularisation in general) cannot be thought surprising when one considers history. but has not the LORD advanced their science? has He not given them the power to perform many miraculous (and diabolic) deeds? babylon, rome, and america all play their part in His great plan. Blessed are the Naive, for they will not be punished as severely as those who should have known better. you can bring up some (rather weak) scientific validation of miraculous events to prove that God is on your side, but every single religion does this. and if you look at who is actually out there curing the blind, deaf and lame, who is it?

do you feel a deep spiritual calling in your heart which demands your soul to cleave unto the orthodox church? good. listen to it. that is God talking to you. that is God telling you what role you must play here in your lifetime. in some peoples hearts, that voice tells them to cleave to islam, or to buddhism, or to fucking wicca some people it tells them to ardently support nothing but science and secularism and to reject any fairytale from the past that they cannot prove. to some it tells them not to worry about any complicated theological or scientific shit that they would never understand anyway; and instead to simply follow what they know and try to be a good person by whatever ethical system they follow.

to some of us, it says we must always, always strive to be wise. that it is our sacred duty to solve every great paradox and to unveil every mystery that while the rest of the world argues in the dark, we must take our small spark of light and study deeply what we see within its radiance; and combine our little lights whenever we can. that we will be punished for our failings, as we will never be truly wise. no man can be omniscient. we will be punished for everything that we know, and for everything that we dont know, and that we must accept this. for being lukewarm and middling, for being passionate and taking a side. but we must do it anyway. that it is our duty. because ignorance is a condition which feels disgusting. that voice, it tells me that this is the task, the monumental task that all mankind undertook when we chose to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, when we had been warned not to; to become like gods. and God himself, the LORD almighty said to us: okay. but you will die. you will die thousands of times. thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of times. and each time, you will become just a little bit wiser until maybe, just maybe, you will become like i. my “only begotten son” who will reign with me in paradise when you finally realise what a profound responsibility it is to be God.

#pardon this is rather long and rambling #but this is my thoughts as best as i can convey them #fuck i spent like 3 hours writing this; i hope you actually read it lol #earnestly; i await your response

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lokidokiliteratureclub · 5 years ago

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Healer

Kylo Ren x Reader (One-Shot for now)

Plot: Your planet has been destroyed, and as you are attempting to flee you are taken in by the New Order for your supposed healing abilities. With all the other nurses compromised, you are called upon to treat a very special, insufferable patient.

I am pretty sure this classifies as angst. It's less a romance and more an interaction.

Note: Sorry for those who are waiting for me to update the other story. I just needed to put something out to prove to myself that I'm not dead. Updates to Frostbitten coming! I'm doing my best :')

You should have never told these people you had any value. You should have pretended not to understand them. Look where honesty has brought you.

You are at the feet of the first order, a prisoner. A spare. A disposable remnant of the planet they destroyed in your wake. You are the only thing that remains of your people, and you are being dragged around in a lousy pair of handcuffs.

Figures approach as you and your guards turn through a hallway. You don't look up to see them, instead electing to listen to their voices.

"Is this the nurse?" A man in white asks the men in white behind you as you shift your hands around in their cuffs. "Assistance is needed urgently. Lord Ren is unaccompanied and mortally wounded."

That sounds bad, but you don't care enough to react. No one with the title 'Lord' has ever done anything good for you.

"Are there no others that can treat him? We have yet to test for experience. There is no way we can guarantee-"

"The nurses aboard our ships are either wounded or in shock. We need somebody now. These are our orders."

"What if this, this child kills him?"

Oh, please.

"I'm hardly a child," you speak up, looking up from the ground. There are no eyes for you to stare into, so you stare into the pits of the Trooper's mask. "And I know enough about you all to decide that murder is unwise. I'm sure a fate worse than murder would await me as a punishment for betrayal. I will treat whoever you wish."

At first, it seems they're going to take you seriously. Then, a short laugh.

"Do not be fooled into thinking you have a choice."

You are taken to a small quarters. The room is dark- not ideal for your work, but manageable. There is a man in black lying across a rectangular table in the center, and it is clear from the shade of his skin that he has lost plenty a lot of blood. With the urgency that you were rushed in with, it is clear that this patient is a patient of great value. You should be quick.

"All the tools you need should be here," a Trooper states. The handcuffs click quietly off your wrists. "Should you fail to save him-"

"I won't," you cut in. "But please, allow me the luxury of privacy. I cannot focus when I am being intruded upon."

The Troopers look at eachother, and then at the man on the table, and then, regretfully, step out of the room. Now you can begin working.

You strip the layers of bloodied clothing off of his skin, laying them at his sides and adjusting his body to reveal the worst of the wounds. Then, you glance quickly at the door to be sure you're alone, and close your eyes.

The energy begins to flow.

It flows out of you like a second language, striking home as soon as your fingertips touch his skin. The energy races to where he needs it most. His body begins to heal.

But then something odd occurs.

He pushes back.

Within his subconscious, the man on the table fights against your energy. His will rises to meet your own. It's as if to say 'I don't need you' even though he clearly does. You try to ignore it, but the longer you push the stronger the retaliation. You flatten your palms against his skin and focus more energy toward him. There is a slightly higher success rate, and then all his resistance falls back. You ease away from him, now physically drained from fighting, and you open your eyes. The worst of his wounds have sealed off. The only problems you have left are the wound on his face and the noticable blood loss. You decide to tackle the small problem first, and look toward his face.

He's looking right back at you.

An instinctive screech rises within you, but you push it down. You stare longer, silent. He's waiting for you to react. You don't. You take a deep, shaking breath inward, and straighten your spine, awaiting his words.

"Who are you?" He finally asks, faintly. His strength is still faltering, and you can hear it in his voice. He's lightheaded. He's weak. "What did you do to me?"

"I'm a healer," you state. "I healed you. It's kind of what I do."

"You used the force," he speaks, and he says it like a curse. "I felt it. I wanted to fight it- but you weren't trying to harm, were you?" He furrows his eyebrows. "Why can you do that? Who are-"

"I'm a healer," you repeat. You sense it makes him a bit angry. "I healed you."

"And what technique did you use to do so?"

"Unless you're a healer as well, not one that I'd expect you to understand. May I finish my work?"

The anger rises again, like a glowing ember. "I'll ask again. Are you capable of using the force?"

Still unfazed, you shrug. "The force is a part of the Jedi religion. The Jedi are dead. I heal people. I am not a Jedi."

The ember ignites. The man's hand jolts outward, and suddenly your airways are void of air. Your hands shoot to your neck, and you let out an unpleasant choke. "Yes or no," he repeats. His eyes are strong, demanding, but his grip is weak. He is still weak. "I'm not asking for much."

Your eyes trace his hand in the air. It has been far too long since you've seen another person exhibit your same power. Is this why the prisoner was held to such importance?

You stare him in the eye, face going red with lack of air supply. "You're not strong enough to hold this yet. I'd let go."

The grip tightens. There's pain on his face. He's still weak. "Yes. Or. No."

You shake your head, pushing a bit of what remains of your own energy outward into his. He falters, and then his hand drops, limp. "You're still healing. Give yourself time to rest." You reach a hand toward the wound on his face. "Let me finish."

He grabs your wrist. Not with any magical force this time, but with his hand. "You're not part of the Order."

You shrug. "I certainly don't support them. They blew up my home world, kidnapped me, and they are now forcing me to treat this asshole who thinks I owe him something." You shift your eyes back to him, and say with certain certainty: "I don't."

There's a pause, and you worry you pushed the wrong button, but he drops your wrist and closes his eyes, relaxing into the table.

Good. A moment of peace.

"Fascinating. You don't know why I am," he says, and he seems to believe it. "You'll regret saying all of that once you do."

You roll your eyes, placing your fingertips on either side of the man's head, near his temples. The energy begins to flow again. "No one can hurt me anymore. I either live or I don't. All I have left is to work. I left behind everything I had, so now I don't have-" you cut off, and as you stop speaking the energy stops leaving your fingers.

The man sees this weakness before you can recover.

"Anything left to lose?" He guesses. Suddenly, he has the high ground. All because of a falter. "You left? You abandoned?" He laughs. The entire table shakes slightly. "I don't see why they took you. We must be low on nurses."

You flinch. "I'm a healer."

"You're an asset." He raises both eyebrows, looking disgustingly smug. "There weren't many intelligent inhabitants on that planet. I'm sure you were very close to them."

Your hands tense. You feel your own ember begin to form, anger spinning a web. "That doesn't matter."

"Not anymore, I suppose." He opens his eyes, and you don't flinch when he looks into yours. "So, why are you here? Too much of a coward to die with them?"

The ember threatens to ignite. It begs to. You realize this, and take a step back, and close your eyes. And then you place your fingers back over the wound and continue healing.

"It takes one to know one," you say. "And that puts us in the same boat, doesn't it? From the looks of your wounds, you suffered quite a loss in battle. Why didn't you remain among the other men?"

"You don't know anything about me," he states in grim retaliation. "I'm not just some solider."

You laugh. "Clearly not. If you were a soldier you'd be wearing white armor and not a glorified bathrobe." Your hands rise from his skin, and the work is complete. "I'm done. I wouldn't move for a couple of days, as you lost quite a lot of blood." You turn, now eager to escape this tiny prison.

"Y/N," is all he says. You freeze on the way to the exit. "You're very difficult, Y/N."

You turn back around, limbs stiff. "How do you-?"

"I know the force. I can use it in ways beyond your imagination." He exhales deeply, frowning. "Your father taught you the ways of the force, didn't he? Who was your father?"

Your eyes start to sting, and you blink to keep tears from forming. "My father is dead. That's all you need to know on the matter."

"And whose fault might that be?"

That breaks you.

Your hand shoots out in front of you, and when it does the man goes flying off the table and into the wall, before landing on the floor with a dull thud. He laughs. "Good! You are powerful. In need of guidance-" He braces himself on the wall, standing up, clearly unstable. "I know a teacher who can help you use that power-"

You clench your outstretched hand. The man shoots across the room toward you, freezing in the air just a couple feet away. Despite the fact that you're in control, he looks very satisfied with himself. "The force is not a power. The force is a balance. As evil rises, an equal force of good rises with it." You open your fist, leading him back over the table and dropping him on top of it. "My father was not a teacher. He was a force that threatened the safety of others, and I rose up against him. That is all you need to know on the matter. Get some rest- whoever you are."

You're just about at the door when, as you expected, he speaks again. "My name is Kylo Ren," he says simply. From the silence that follows it is clear he expects a reaction. You look over your shoulder.

"No, it's not."

You leave before you hear his response.

#kylo x reader #kylo ren #kylo ren x you #kylo ren x reader #star wars #kylo ren x reader angst

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kyloren · 5 years ago

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Why Reylos Are A Bright Spot In The STAR WARS Fandom

It’s impossible to parse all of this out or to really say who’s “right” or “wrong” or what “right” and “wrong” even mean in fandom spaces. From my vantage point, the Reylo community is one of the more forgiving and accepting out there. It’s comprised of not only women, but plenty of men and non-binary Star Wars fans, from different races and orientations and experiences. And that’s true of any shipping community. In a fandom as large as Star Wars, there should be room for all of us to express joy or grief or surprise or disinterest in our cultivated spaces. It’s how we all choose to cross-pollinate that could use some work.

But Reylos aren’t deserving of the intense condemnation that comes from larger voices in the fandom. The ridicule feels specific and exclusionary, and rooted in gatekeeping sexism. Comparing them to the Fandom Menace is ridiculous. That group created blogs dedicated to roasting journalists, creators, and fans. Meanwhile, the Reylo community (along with Ben Solo fans) poured much of their frustration and sadness over The Rise of Skywalker into an act of good, by raising money for Adam Driver’s charity, Arts in the Armed Forces. How much money? As of this writing, over $76,000, more than double the charity’s fundraising goal for an entire fiscal year.

full article below the cut:

Why is romantic love such a controversial thing in fandom? It’s something I ask myself a lot, as a person who writes about shipping and who desires the kind of love that stories tell me might exist. I’ve spent most of my life in fandom spaces—participating in conversations or observing and examining them—and have witnessed firsthand how objectionable fictional romance can be, especially in fandoms that appeal to and target men. Why is this the case, and why is romance a thing we use to punish women looking for escapism in genre stories?

It’s hard to say, but it remains an endemic and undeniable strain. Shipping, which is fandom code for wanting two characters to be together, is often snickered at or seen as some frivolous element of appreciation. It can lead to shaming that feels personal and accusatory, as if your interest in a fictional relationship is a roadmap to your own intentions and experience. This attitude towards shippers is especially present in the Star Wars fandom, where the relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren is steeped in a seemingly never-ending controversy. There are fervent supporters of the romance between these characters, a plentiful contingent of opposers, and those who don’t really care one way or another but still seem fit to criticize.

Why has the “Reylo” ship created such a stir? Let’s dig into this subset of the Star Wars fandom: where it started, why it’s accumulated so much negativity, and why the Reylos don’t deserve the bad reputation they’ve acquired, especially in the wake of The Rise of Skywalker.

THE ORIGINS OF REYLO

The release of The Last Jedi was a rough time for a lot Star Wars fans. The film—the eighth in the Skywalker saga and the second in the Disney-era sequel trilogy—made a lot of bold storytelling choices, which divided the fandom into camps. Those who loved the meditations on the Force, Luke Skywalker’s troubled hero’s journey, the complicated characterization of Poe Dameron, Finn and Rose’s failed mission, and the strange developing bond between Rey and Kylo felt at odds with anyone who saw otherwise. Many disliked Luke’s arc, or the apparent sidelining of Poe and Finn, or the democratization of the Force. The disagreements spiraled into something bordering collective mania. It’s a debate that still rages today, and that seeped into the conversations we’re currently having about The Rise of Skywalker.

I loved the movie, but found the discourse numbing. Positive Twitter conversations were instantly marred by detractors, and every passionate argument was upended by accusatory nitpicks. I felt discouraged from participating in any of it, and I felt bitter towards the Star Wars community in general. Until I found the Reylos.

After stumbling on podcasts like What The Force?, Skytalkers, and Scavenger’s Hoard—all female-hosted programs—I realized there were plenty of encouraging conversations about The Last Jedi happening in fandom. I also realized most of them were Reylo-oriented. Suddenly, I was exposed to the exact conversations I always wanted to have about Star Wars: deep dives into mythology, redemption arcs, symbolism and dualism, religion, poetry. And all of that was encompassed in Reylo. All of these larger stories, focused through these characters joined by fate and purpose, who represented opposing ideologies of the Force.

There was so much to dig into. Rey and Kylo have a classic enemies-to-lovers storyline, a romantic trope seen in fairytales like Beauty and the Beast, classic literature like Pride and Prejudice, mythological stories like that of Hades and Persephone, even modern genre television like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s typically used in women-oriented storytelling, as it affords duality and compassion to both parties; a distribution of power that makes the women as complicated, compromised, and interesting as their male counterparts. Rey’s interest in Kylo adds a layered intrigue to a character otherwise patently “good” and “pure,” words commonly associated with women, forcing them into palatable, antiquated gender roles.

Their relationship feeds a part of the fanbase who craves that kind of female protagonist. One who represents their own burgeoning lust, complicated compassion for the men they chose to care about, and temptation towards things we’re told to fear. Through the Reylo relationship, Rey took on another angle, one that finally made Star Wars feel like a story for me.

THE BACKLASH

I also learned right away what it meant to be a Reylo in the Star Wars fandom. The relationship between the light-sided Rey and dark-sided Kylo was riddled in turmoil. In The Force Awakens, a scene where he straps her down and interrogates her is considered by many to be abusive. The language Kylo uses to seduce Rey to his side in The Last Jedi is also seen as manipulative and problematic. He tells her that no one knows her like he does. In their opinion, he’s attempting to groom her to his standards, to turn her into what he wants against her own will. Those against the relationship will tell you that it’s a dangerous and negative message to send to young girls.

And here’s where I’ll say something potentially controversial amongst my fellow Reylos: I don’t think these people are “wrong.” Because everyone’s experience and perspective is their own thing to interrogate, and it’s not up to me to tell people how to feel about something–even if I disagree entirely. What I do take issue with, however, is the need to interrogate someone else’s preferences or fantasies. There is an infantilizing element to the backlash, as if those opposed think that Reylos haven’t reconciled with the themes presented to them, and are merely choosing to ignore them because they think Adam Driver is hot.

The way I see it, relationships like Reylo—power fantasies oriented on the feminine psyche, with an antagonistic male—fulfill two things I love in storytelling. They are pure escapism; the happy ending those of us drawn to the incurable are never afforded. And they are instructive, as they exemplify the patriarchal schism between men and women: that we are not equal, but that women love men anyway because of the compassion that comes naturally to balance that division. It shows how we can mend those gaps through patience and understanding. It’s archetypical and fantastical, sure, but that’s what Star Wars is: a fairy tale that wrestles with society and humanity in broad strokes.

That said, there are other reasons for dissent. Some fans ship Rey and Finn, and see their romance as a better avenue for a healthy relationship. Some have experienced personal trauma and can’t abide a romance that mimics and negates their pain. Others just don’t see the Reylo thing at all. Absolutely all of that is valid. Shipping should never be a competition or an authoritative moral stance on any side. Rey/Finn shippers are just as valid as Reylos because it speaks to what someone personally craves and desires. The shaming shouldn’t exist on any side—but because it does, the passionate defense comes in.

REYLOS DON’T DESERVE THE HATE

That knee-jerk self defense has drawn a lot of ire to the Reylo community in the aftermath of The Rise of Skywalker, the final film in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. On paper, the Reylos were given a lot of what they desire: Kylo Ren is redeemed and turns back into Ben Solo. Rey and Ben fight side by side and even share a kiss. But then Ben dies and Rey ends the movie alone, something that irked the shippers. They saw the ending as a grim conclusion for Ben and a way of punishing Rey for expressing her desires. To many, the ending feels hopeless and feeds into this stereotypical notion that for a woman to be strong, she must be single — as if romantic love weakens us.

There are other ways to read the ending, and many fans found power in it. That’s the beauty of film: that it’s entirely subjective. But in their profession of disappointment, the Reylos once again became a punching bag for the fandom at large. A recent BuzzFeed article compared the way Reylos reacted to The Rise of Skywalker to the way the Fandom Menace—a trolling, abusive, anti-Disney hate group—reacted to The Last Jedi. (Never mind that their “source” for this reaction was a tweet from a prominent member of the Fandom Menace, and that many of the complaints in question were either fabricated or from non-Reylo accounts.)

I also know that the Reylos helped me find my way back to loving Star Wars, gave me endless professional and creative inspiration for the last two years, and deepened my interest and love of storytelling and mythology. I know I’m not alone, and I know that the Reylo shipping community has made Star Wars finally feel like a fandom they were allowed to love. That’s something I hope fans with different access points to the world of Star Wars might think about before they wag a finger or call Reylos fake fans or mock their interests and experience. Star Wars can and should be for everyone, and how we find our way into the galaxy far, far away is a unique, personal, and beautiful thing. Love is what it’s all about at the end of the day. Even romantic love.

by Lindsey Romain for Nerdist [find article HERE]

#reylo #kylo ren #ben solo #rey #star wars #*

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naesoonghonors · 5 years ago

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Belladonna of Sadness, a woman's power

Belladonna of sadness

Belladonna of sadness was not my best idea for movies to watch with my mother. At some point in the seemingly eternal satanic orgy scene she asked me to skip because it was ‘killing her’. Even despite that Belladonna is a movie me and my mother will never forget, even if we wanted to. It is the animated Japanese telling of a French story of our beloved main character Jeanne. She is simply stated as a -beautiful- women having just gotten married to a -kind- man, Jean. As 1800’s peasants are ought to do, they ask the local lord permission to officially marry. Unfortunately, their offer is simply not enough to satiate the lord. Instead the lord decides his tribute will instead be the "Droit du Seigneur" or the "Right of the First Night". First the lord asks if Jeanne is still pure. Skipping over any reply she could make her husband quickly jumps in to assure the lord she is pure. Jeanne’s body will come replace the several fattened animals usually requested by the lord in exchange for a lawful marriage. Jean is removed from the castle while Jeanne faces the worst. For the sake context this is happening in prerevolutionary France. Women held no power in the home or politics. Jeanne is what would be considered a passive citizen. Like a child she is expected to rely on a man to make choices on her behalf. But the system fails Jeanne, it fails spectacularly. As a farming class citizen even her husband is powerless. The feudal lord and church both fail her on her wedding night.

Jeanne is freed from the confines of the castle and she runs home to her beloved. She is violated, powerless and needs someone to support her. She is cast out naked back to the village. So she goes to her new husband. He however seems completely uninterested in her needs. He is crying. From my interpretation and his actions it seems to be that his pride is wounded. He is ashamed of what happened to his wife and remains emotionally unavailable to her. Because he sees his troubles as more important than hers. A complete product of the time. He tells her to move on and forget it. That she should move on from this trauma that she had to face alone. He is so overcome by this shame that he attempts to choke Jeanne, only to soon give up and sob in the field. Jeanne spends her daylight hours being a supportive wife and trying to emotionally comfort her husband. Despite getting nothing in return from Jean. Jeanne wants power, she needs it in fact, in order to ‘save’ her husband.

Once it is night and her husband sleeps, she finally feels she is allowed to express herself. She attempts to remain quiet of course, she would not want to wake her ‘ailing’ husband. Jeanne passively cries into the night about how she wants power, if only someone would save her. This became a big theme for me throughout the movie. Did Jeanne wish to have power for herself or to get help. This next scene imagery is smattered with phallic imagery as a small demon appears from Jeanne. She asks if this small imp is the devil, he responds that he is her. This is an odd dynamic with witches. They are viewed a heathens and scary independent women but also are implied to get their powers from the devil. Which is it? Are they crones who toil with their own power to ruin the lives of mortal men or are they ultimately controlled by a devil? I believe people make their own demons. Jeanne’s want for power manifested inside of her so strongly she either created a demon or she uses it as a device to explain her newfound abilities. The demon does comment that “It’s your fault I’m small”. Perhaps Jeanne had just found it within herself to begin questioning and fighting in a small way, so he manifested from that feeling.

But even so their interactions continue to blur any sureness within me. The demon asks for her soul. She refuses instead of her soul she offers the demon her body. It seems the only power women have in this time is to sleep with men. She is only able to get married under the authority of the lord and only able to make money to support her husband under the authority of this demon. . Jeanne oddly gets power from sex forced upon her, or with coerced consent. Jeanne as of yet in the movie seems a very passive player in her own story. This comes in contrast to the later liberated witch Jeanne but falls apart at the end. Jeanne begins making beautiful clothes And the narrator states through HER work HE is able to pay taxes. As war approaches Jeanne once more uses her body in order to become a money lender and financially support her Lord.

As her Lord is off to war the Queen takes over temporarily as the authority. The Queen is extremely mad that Jeanne gets more respect than her. Jeanne is shown to be willing to work with the peasants and to sort out taxes. But the Queen just continues to hate her from up high in the castle. Jeanne is respected and loved amongst the towns people, even when Jean as smoothly transitioned to be a drunken slob. Jeanne seems to be thriving until one day the king returns and sees Jeanne being admired and has an assassin go and rip her clothes with a dagger. Instantly everyone turns on her. Women call her names and the men immediately charge at her to have their way with her. Despite her unending charity and other virtues they would turn on a woman in a second. Just the men and women having a glimpse of her body reverts them back to a mob. Her punishment is to be ‘Shame until god enters heart’, that task is left t the women of the village. Women cannot be competent leaders, The queen did not even how-to ability, or perhaps felt she had the power to get Jeanne killed until her husband returned. She was the acting Lord, but even so acted inferior to her counterpart.

And Jeanne runs, once more betrayed by her husband selling out her location to the local authorities. But Satan takes her and hides her among the sharp brush, of course making sure it also rips her clothes of completely. Jeanne finally begins to see the scope of the injustice done upon her as a woman. All women must pay for the sins of Eve. Jeanne no longer care for the society that has wronged her and failed her so many times. She simply wants to do bad. She offers the devil both her womb and her soul. She wants to become a horrifying woman. He beautiful body has only caused her trouble. But Satan only makes her more attractive. Jeanne was attempting to leave behind her trauma by leaving behind the beautiful maiden she was. She sees this feminine trait as only a negative for herself. The devil doesn’t, however. As the counterpoint to the masculine God, Satan has a tendency to embraced feminine features in classic literature and folk lore. Jeanne is still being viewed as a piece of meat by her latest male companion. But instead of it making her subservient it is being propped up as her person power. Satan even sees her as an equal of sorts. He refers to her as his wife. Jeanne is consumed by her hatred and rage and comes out a beautiful powerful witch.

There are some things even the Church cannot hope to control. That is right, it is plague time. The church collapses nearly completely under the ‘satanic’ power of nature/ the plague. With the power of a so called ‘poisonous’ plant Jeanne is able to cure the plague. And soon the village folks gather witch festivals/ giant orgies. Everyone is having a great time thanks to the innovation of women and their freedom from the oppression of their feudal lord. Jeanne is the best ruler these people have ever had. But that cannot be. The king simply must have her under his thumb. So the worst happens, Jean, the terrible bastard loser husband comes back on the scene to cry and beg for her to come back and submit to the Lord. AND SHE DOES! She forgives him. And the Lord invites her to live back on the lord’s land in exchange for all of her knowledge. Jeanne says she does not want a simple plot of land or a title. She wants the world just as the Lord did. But because she is a witch and a woman the Lord wants to have her killed. Their feudal lord who does not cure the plague, has high taxes, and has yet to hold a state sponsored orgy convinces everyone to once again turn on her. The king has not been portrayed as doing a simple thing right this entire movie. But nepotism runs rampant and religion is utilized as a tool to control the masses. So ultimately, she is burned at the stake. Another hasty decision by men in power with no idea. The Lord had never actually been able to shame the Lord into her heart. So as the crowd watches her burn her spirit splits off into the entire watching crowd. Freeing them from their mental chains and sparking a seed of rebellion in all of their spirits. They no longer feel the need to live under a man happy to watch them starve and die. Jeanne is ultimately a Christ figure freeing the villagers mind and giving back their free will. That is to say the real evil is corrupt authority and not the moral folly of women.

#belladonna of sadness #review #honors #honors project

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lephilodi · 4 years ago

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Lephilodi Bio

Appearance:

Lephilodi is an 8ft tall lavender-skinned ulitharid. Her eyes shift between pearly white and silver, and they do have a white eye shine in the dark. Lephi has two rounded ear fins on the side of her head. Her tentacles are around six to eight inches long after being cut off, and aren't able to wholly hide her lamprey mouth. Because of that, Lephi frequently wears a veil-like mask on the lower part of her face. She prefers to wear thick white robes that hide her thin form, and her hood has a pretty deep cowl. Lephilodi also wears a small resonance stone around her neck that exudes calm emotions. Her skin doesn't secrete the normal mucus that most illithids have as she mostly consumes chocolate, at least for the necessary enzymes. She does still need brains every once in a while to keep up her psionics. But because of this, she has to find other ways to stay hydrated. Lephi's telepathic voice comes across as more feminine than most of her kin. It is for the most part gentle, but still holds some of the air of authority she had back when she lived at her colony.

Backstory:

Lephilodi was born in Zar’derol, a mid-sized illithid colony in the Faerunian Underdark. Her being born an ulitharid was a huge boon to her colony considering how rare they are in Underdark. During that time, Lephi took on a lot of different roles, depending on what was expected of her, and became quite adept at handling almost any aspect of the colony. This both pleased and annoyed the resident Elder Brain, as it tended to be more authoritarian and controlling in nature. Outside of her responsibilities, Lephilodi was the foremost researcher on anything to do with nautiloids and spacefaring. She was frequently assisted by a much younger illithid artificer by the name of Dansskar. Lephi also joined inquisitions on more than one occasion.

It was during one of these inquisitions that Lephilodi and her kin were attacked by a group of powerful adventurers. While her kin were slaughtered, Lephi managed to escape to a nearby cave system, but quickly fell unconscious thanks to her deep wounds and blood loss. Surprisingly, she did awake again, to a human of all creatures kneeling next to her. Only after a moment of pure fear did she realize the human was finishing pouring a healing potion down her throat, making some of her wounds close, but it was not nearly enough to get her back on her feet. So Lephilodi silently regarded this odd human for days as he helped her heal. But during this time, the human introduced himself as a minister of Ao, the overgod. He explained many things during this time, with no prompting at all. From his religion, to humanity, to emotions. He even tried to teach Lephi about empathy, but it really didn’t stick.

Lephilodi left that cave once she was healed, pondering the encounter with the minister while she searched for a meal. She came across a burning human settlement, and a lone man on his knees at the center of it, who did not flee at her presence. The man offered no resistance as he was consumed, Lephi receiving an onslaught of his recent memories. This man had lost everything: his family killed by Gnolls, village razed by a dragon, and neighbors enslaved by the Drow. It was then when Lephi finally started to understand what the minister was talking about: empathy.

Lephilodi finally returned to Zar'derol, but very slowly found it harder and harder to stomach the atrocities that the colony's thralls were put through on a daily basis. Lephi stopped her own experiments with thralls and slowly, over several years, started to adopt the mindset that cooperation with other races could be the key to the colonies' prosperity. However, as this came to the attention of the Elder Brain, it became enraged at the concept, demanding Lephilodi abandon this way of thinking immediately.

Lephilodi refused and fought back for her ideals. Thus, the resident Elder Brain decided she would be punished in a singular act of cruelty. After Lephi was weakened and restrained, Erebossk, another illithid of high rank in the colony and a nasty piece of work, took great delight in removing his rival's facial tentacles with a hot blade. With that done, Lephi was exiled from the colony with the intention that she would slowly, painfully starve to death.

However, Lephilodi did not leave without taking her revenge. She stole every piece of literature regarding nautiloids, including schematics and star maps. The only thing she couldn't take with her were Dansskar's projects. Now she was on the run, and Lephilodi spent some time in Mantol Derith with the Society of Brilliance, working with Grazil'axx for a while. This is when she discovered chocolate provides the same nutritional value as grey matter, aside from the lack of psionic energy. But it was only a matter of time before attempts were made on her life by more than one inquisition from her old colony. Thankfully, with help from her allies, or her own psionic might, she was able to defeat them, but it became more and more difficult.

Lephilodi knew she couldn't stay in the Underdark for much longer, so she made her way to the surface, where the winds of fate had kicked up a strange vortex of coincidence. As she made her way out of the deep cave system, she once again came upon the minister of Ao that had once cared for her. He gifted her with a set of cleric robes, and Lephilodi began her journey on the surface, not staying in any one place for too long. She used this time to study humanoid sociology and psychology, using that knowledge to keep herself alive and out of harm's way. After settling in the haunted dwarven fortress of Axeholm, she was one day awoken by an adventuring party, who offered her a place with them.

Lephilodi initially refused their offer, but can't help but be intrigued by the youngsters. They might make good meat shields against the next inquisition. What happens next is anyone's guess.

Relationships:

Party: Meat shields/food source???

Dansskar: Pretends not to miss him, actually misses him a lot. Son/younger brother dynamic.

Erebossk: *Two middle fingers* <Piece of sh**!!>

Colony: Sour

#lephilodi #ulitharid #d&d #dungeons and dragons #illithid #dnd #mind flayer #oc #backstory #bio

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politicaltheatre · 4 years ago

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Dissent

We’ll know soon enough what kind of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett will be. Senate Democrats will stall the proceedings as much as they can and try to drag things out so a confirmation vote can’t be taken until after the election, but we must accept that the odds and senate protocols are against them.

Publicly, Democrats up and down the ticket are claiming that their fear is that a Barrett confirmation will kill the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the middle of a pandemic, and they very well may be right. That, however, isn’t their true fear.

The one they’ll voice when Barrett gets in front of them and the TV cameras is that she would support her benefactor Donald Trump in any lawsuit his people file in their attempts to decide the election through the courts, which they most certainly will do.

Trump’s already said as much. It’s part of his campaign pitch. He’s boasting about it at rallies. He’s counting on it.

As stupid as he often appears, and as stupid as he is about so many things, Trump understands corruption. He lives it and breathes it. He is a bona fide expert in it, so we should listen.

What he, Mitch McConnell, and others who embrace corruption understand is what far too many of us refuse to admit, which is that there is no such thing as an independent judiciary, that there is no such thing as an impartial judge.

This is not to suggest that Judge Barrett is corrupt. The awful truth of it is that she doesn’t have to be. She is reliably right wing, which is more than enough.

Barrett clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia. Like her mentor, she believes that the law does not exist to protect the weak from the strong. It does not exist, in their world, to reduce or correct imbalances of power. It is, instead, an instrument and only that, one by which the capable may exercise their will over others.

As brilliant as he was and as brilliant as she may be, theirs is the law of the school debate team. To them, winning isn’t about being right, it’s about domination. You can be wrong, morally and reprehensibly, but know the law and know how to wield it as a weapon and you will dominate your opponent time and again.

It is the triumph of short term thinking. To those embracing this view, there is nothing beyond that victory, no consequence beyond it, and no effect on the world beyond it.

If you think they’re wrong, prove it. Challenge them. Bend precedent to your will. Apply the logic of allowable facts. Prepare better. Go for the jugular. Destroy your enemy or meekly and silently accept your defeat.

Theirs is a faithless law, even more so because it divorces the law from the humans its verdicts, opinions, and decisions affect.

It is strange, then, but not surprising that Republicans and their surrogates have preemptively sought to place resistance to Barrett’s nomination on her religion. Their hope is to obscure the beliefs that truly make her dangerous, the irony being that Catholicism is not truly at the root of it.

Yes, there are strains and sects of Catholicism that preach the virtues of authority and hierarchy. These are the ones that sided with the fascists in their rise to power in Europe and protected sexually abusive clergy for so very, very long.

There are, however, also dissenting branches, including the one currently led by Pope Francis, that preach compassion and the virtues of equality. It was the former that led to those centuries of abuse and institutional corruption; it is the latter, we should all hope Catholics and non-Catholics alike, that will redeem the Church of both.

So, while Barrett’s affinity for a brand of Catholicism that embraces authority and power as chief virtues may inform her legal opinions, it is not what motivates them. That motivation, again, would be an honest, sincere belief that the right to demand accountability resides exclusively with those who have the power to demand it and the resources to dominate those in their way.

Trump may not have thought this through as thoroughly as that. McConnell may not have either, for that matter. All McConnell cares about is having judges in place who will protect him and corrupt people in power just like him. All Trump cares about is having judges who will protect him and him alone.

Oh, and that this pick is big “fuck you” to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and everyone who adores her still. Trump loves that, too.

What Ginsberg represented, more than simply being a woman with the gumption to tell men like Trump and McConnell that they were wrong, was the power of dissent.

Dissent is more than just an exercise in freedom of speech, it is an act of empowerment, both for those voicing their disagreement and for the institutions in which they voice them. The purpose of dissent is to improve the institution, to save it from the corruption that would bring it down.

Ginsberg believed that whatever was wrong in the United States, it could and should be saved. To suggest that something could and should be improved is not disloyal but courageous. To criticize an institution is not pessimistic but the opposite, because to criticize it you must believe than it has the ability to improve.

That wish for the institution to be saved and to succeed is essential to dissent. It cannot be dissent without it.

By that measure, a lot of kinds of protest are dissent, and a lot of others very much are not. Refusing to wear a mask in a store, for example, is not dissent. Driving your car through a protest is not dissent. Silencing a reporter is not dissent. Cheating on your taxes is not dissent (Actually, cheating on anything is not dissent. Breaking the rules just because you want to win is despicable).

All of these examples undermine the communities in which we live. They pit us against each other and as a result weaken the bonds we need as a society in order to survive.

So, dissent is essential, it is part of our immune system, and in a democracy it is everything.

The legal right to dissent is relatively new to the human experience. Just a few centuries ago, speaking out against an authority’s decision was almost (and literally) unheard of. The opinions and decisions of powerful men and women from monarchs and clerics down to local landowners were absolute. To challenge them was treason and heresy. The penalty for either was the same: a painful, public death.

Around the world today we see example after example of authoritarian regimes denying the right to dissent and punishing it. Whether they are nominally Capitalist, such as Russia or Turkey, or nominally Communist, such as China, suppression of dissent is what truly determines what kind of life those they rule must lead.

To be left wing - truly and properly left wing - is to hold oneself accountable to others because we want them to be accountable to us. The ability to voice and listen to dissent is what makes that work.

With every non-unanimous Supreme Court decision, there is a majority opinion and a minority, “dissenting” one. There may also be concurring opinions to either. They are published together. It is the majority opinion that rules, but the reason for the inclusion of the others is that they may persuade those reading them to change their minds. In this way, each voice on the Court matters, each mind, and each opportunity to influence the voices and minds of those the Court serves.

The Supreme Court is the last federal institution where majority rule still holds true. The Electoral College and Senate disproportionately favor rural, right wing voters and have increasingly done so for decades. That makes this appointment the natural result, and with it will come things the Left correctly fears.

Barrett may very well support overturning decisions on the ACA and Roe v Wade, but, perhaps more disturbingly, she may support overturning the decisions that equalized LGBT rights and banned forced prayer in schools.

Again, this will not be because she is Catholic but because she believes that those in power, be they school boards or business owners, have the right to decide who has rights within their schools and businesses and who does not. If you don’t like that, you’ll just have to gain power yourself, or find a new school, or a new job, or a new bakery.

It will likely be a long time before Justice Barrett has to write a dissenting opinion. It will take the retirement or death of at least one of the right wing justices, and that may not happen for a decade or more.

There has been talk of Democrats stacking the Court with left wing justices. This would be a tragic mistake. Even talking about it is a mistake. If the Democrats did it next year, the Republicans could do it when they took power, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Meanwhile, it would corrupt and erode any confidence in any legal opinion issued by the Supreme Court or any of the lower courts, and with that whatever last shred of trust Americans had in government would be gone.

The better solution, one long overdue, would be to fix the imbalance of power in the Electoral College and the Senate. This would be done by admitting the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states and by splitting California into two or three states.

Doing so would add eight or ten senators and at least two voting representatives. This would not only repair some of the imbalance between right wing and left wing voters in this country, it would make it easier to pass new amendments to the Constitution, such as preserving the right to abortion, mandating health care as a right, setting term limits for all federal judges, and eliminating the Electoral College once and for all.

There would be resistance to this, of course. There would be dissent. And those offering genuine dissent should always be listened to. We fail to do so at our own expense.

Dissent is one of the prices we pay for democracy. It is sloppy. It is chaotic. It takes work and it takes time. However, much like our own immune systems, it must be flexible and robust to withstand change and adapt to new conditions.

That is the world Ruth Bader Ginsberg fought for. That is the world we should fight for, too.

- Daniel Ward

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atheistforhumanity · 5 years ago

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Hiya! Have you heard Slavoj Žižek explaining his odd stance that atheism was impossible until Christianity? Žižek said that the death of God on the cross enables atheist belief (!) Sounds juvenile until he explains that omnipotent God dies with Jesus as a new God takes up residence alongside us. Taking this stance Žižek seems to be saying that the only angels extant now watch us through each other’s eyes. His insight put me back on my heels for a moment—and you? :-)

Hello again Frogs, and thank you for bringing another interesting question. Žižek’s ideas can be very complicated, but I think I can explain this in plain language without using a lot of big words.

Let me tell you what I understand Žižek’s position to be. Žižek does identify as an atheist, and has stated many times that he does not believe in Christianity literally at all. However, Žižek is quite obsessed with Christology and has a unique way of interpreting their theology. I have not heard him say that atheism was not possible until the death of Christ, but rather that gospel of Christ is atheistic in reality. He claims that it was not the physical manifestation of Christ that died on the cross, but rather it was the very essence of God himself. He notes Christ’s feeling of abandonment from God, and says that this is one way in which Christians now relate to Christ, because God is no more after the cross. God gives the greatest gift possible to humanity and that is very essence, which is maintained in the holy spirit. Žižek mentions a verse in the Bible that describes the holy spirit as the connection of love between any two people. So the holy spirit is inherent in us, and both that spirit and our future self-reliance are the greatest gift that God can give. And yes, he does mention this idea that angels watch us through our own eyes. He also believes that there is no second coming, because God has already given everything he has.

Žižek wants to reinterpret Christianity as a known illusion. He uses the example of Santa Clause. Every parent obviously knows that they are Santa Clause, yet we all put on a massive illusion for the children in our culture. Inevitably there comes a time when the children also know it is an illusion and both parties play along to maintain the tradition itself, but without literal belief. Žižek says that only an atheist can be a true Christian. That sounds preposterous, but if we use his Christmas example, we see he means that only by not taking Christianity literally can modern people keep up the precepts of Christian culture and tradition. He sees literal belief in Christianity as a hindrance of real Christendom. My understanding is that he believes that fundamentalism interferes with what Christianity has become, and maybe even ruins what it was always meant to be.

What Žižek seems to seek is create a middle ground that endorses neither “new atheists” or religious fundamentalism. He references the way Judaism has reached a point where literal belief is less common, but Judaism is alive and well. This likely all comes from the fact that Žižek sees Christianity as too important to the hearts and minds of Europe to let it be eroded away by “new atheists.” He seeks to maintain the illusion of Christianity without the literal belief for the structure it creates.

Now, what is my opinion on Žižek’s philosophy?

While I respect Žižek for many insights, we don’t have a lot of middle ground. I’ll start with what little middle ground we do have. Žižek talks about the illusion working despite the lack of real belief. This is an idea that definitely has merit. One of my personal opinions that may not be shared by other atheists, is that I doubt the number of people who actually believe in their religion. This is a bold statement of course, I don’t make a habit of walking around telling others what they do or do not believe in. However, what I observe in life is quite contradictory to the idea that everyone truly believes in their religion. Many polls by Gallup and Pew show that fewer and fewer people believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. A small growing number of Christians and Jews believe it is the work of men. This is actually a significant contradiction considering the dogma of these religions is based in that book which states it is the word of God.

More than anything it is people’s behaviors that tell me they do not believe. If you’re not a full fundamentalist and you live in this world of flexible interpretation, where you pick your Bible passages on what is convenient for modern life, rather than basing your life on passages, then I have a hard time accepting that you truly believe. Here’s an example: terrorists truly believe in their scripture. How do I know? Because the Quran says two things. 1-That this life is so tiny compared the afterlife that it is insignificant. 2-The death is merely entrance into the afterlife and therefore there is no reason to mourn death. Add on 3. The threat of hell is very, very real. These people act certifiably insane because they REALLY believe in the text. Think of how all non-fundamentalists respond to killing, death, and all the morally controversial verses in all scripture. People say they believe in heaven, but we are devastated by death as if it’s definitely permanent. People say they believe the book is the word of God, but they refuse to wage war on non-believers, they befriend their prescribed enemies, they drink alcohol, eat pork, work on the sabbath, have premarital sex, etc. These are not the actions of people who literally believe that Hell is a real punishment. Not at all. So I agree with Žižek on this concept of entertaining the illusion without real belief, and think this is happening for many people right now.

Everything else Žižek talks about does not make sense to me. Unfortunately, I watched a lecture on of his on this topic and he didn’t give any clear justification for how he comes to these specific ideas about the death of Christ, God, and the holy ghost. I think what Žižek is trying to imply is that after the death of god, as Hegel put it, then people were free to live the illusion without literal belief. There are many things here I do not agree with here.

First, I see no dogmatic evidence to suggest that Christ’s death was the end of god. You can make an argument that they were the same person, but what is missing is anything pointing to God’s ability to fully die or even a desire to do so. This is obviously antithetical to Christian philosophy that the Father is eternal and waiting in heaven, and that Christ’s death was a transactional blood sacrifice, which could not even actually kill Christ the son.

I have to mention at this point, that the way Žižek emphatically speaks of the death of God makes me question whether he thought one may have existed in the past. I honestly have not gotten a statement that clarifies that question for me.

So I’ve stated that I do not believe that the death of Christ was atheistic even within the Dogma of Christianity, and therefore this means that it was in no way enabling of atheism. If he has ever said that atheism required the death of Christ, I reject this notion categorically. One thing that frustrates me with Žižek’s philosophical attempt to weave atheism and Christianity together is that in this process I feel like he is transcending the meaning of both of these terms and seeking to recreate them to fit his oddly specific opinions on Christianity. We must remember what atheism truly is, and that is simply a label for those who unconvinced. Atheism is not meant to be intertwined with the debate between the immanent and transcendental, and it is certainly not a middle ground. Atheism is not a philosophy that can be used to alter or create a new theodicy. Most of all, atheism is not dependent the status of any particular god or the zeitgeist of any given generation. The reason why Žižek does not fall in with the new atheists is because he sees the essence of Christianity very different than others who look through a colder glass of empiricism.

I also fully reject the idea that Christianity is too vital to the West to be allow the illusion to be abandoned. Maybe I’ll expand on that later, because it could turn into a lengthy rant. Suffice to say that what Žižek perceives as the essence of Christianity that must be maintained is not the essence of humanity, and it cannot be objectively said that what we will lose will actual hinder us, rather than free us.

Thank you again for asking this question, I hope this makes sense to everyone. Feel free to ask follow up questions.

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maraleestuff · 5 years ago

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Another Merlin fic?

This probably won't be as detailed as my last fic idea, but we'll see. So, since the idea wont leave me alone, here it is:

A body switch.

I've read a similar fic on archive, where Merlin and Arthur switch bodies, and it's revealed that Merlin has magic (but Arthur thinks it's because of the switch) if I'm remembering it correctly. (Don't remember the title of it at the moment, unfortunately.)

But instead of Merlin and Arthur switching bodies, it's Arthur and someone else. It's caused by the usual new visitor to Camelot, probably someone who wants the kingdom in their grip -- to bring magic back, or do some twisted revenge to Uther (if it takes place before Arthur becomes King). Anyways Arthur is the perfect person to switch with, especially since hardly anyone has the authority to question him, as far as they can tell. (And Arthur is gorgeous, so that's a plus 😎).

Of course, their plan is flawed. The switch goes both ways; either they are too inexperienced with magic to realize this, or Arthur is placed into a role where no one will listen to them. (Maybe the doer is a noble and their very loyal servant. Their servant is the one placed in Arthur's body, and after the switch takes place, the 'servant' is cast aside and discredited -- maybe accused of magic. Something that ensure that Arthur will not mess with their plans.)

What they don't count on: Merlin. He's a bumbling, clumsy servant, but effective enough that they can't just do away with him. (Maybe they were in Camelot long enough to realize that Arthur wouldn't just fire Merlin without raising suspicions, or perhaps word has spread of his fondness for his manservant.) A minor inconvenience, but managed by pinning tons and tons of chores and other ridiculous things to keep the boy from noticing anything off.

Naturally, Merlin does notice that 'Arthur' is acting stranger than usual: more rude and demanding, and none of their usual banter. But what set him on edge was how Arthur reacted when Merlin called him a cabbage head: he sends Merlin to the stocks, or even a night in the dungeons. Merlin shares his concerns with Gaius, but neither know enough to do anything, so Gaius cautions Merlin to just do his chores and lay low.

It was Merlin's plan. Truly. But then one of the servants come up to him, one with the nobles visiting Camelot. He's rather unassuming, perhaps ordinary looking, and Merlin might have been more willing to be amicable, but Arthur had piled more chores since the cabbage-head incident and he was busy.

The servant claims he needs to speak to Merlin, urgently. There's a slight wild-eyed look to him. It's almost familiar how he speaks to Merlin.

Arthur, in his new form, had been all around the castle, trying to get someone to listen to him, the Knights laughed -- and the imposter appeared before Arthur could say anything else, Gaius was far too busy with his duties, and speaking to his father was out of the question. Not without solid, undeniable proof. That left only Merlin, who always seemed to be onto something when trouble hits Camelot. He's not sure how, but Merlin ends up usually playing some part in stopping them.

At the very least, Merlin was determined and relentless in sniffing out trouble, and didn't always obey Arthur's orders. Which was exactly what Arthur needed right now.

The challenge of it was trying to get Merlin to actually listen to him. Merlin usually listened to Arthur in his own body, even if he didn't do what he said; but Arthur knew he was not as himself right now, and Merlin seemed too busy to pay Arthur the servant any real mind.

Merlin definitely wouldn't believe him if he just blurted out the truth. And as much as Arthur called Merlin an idiot, his servant was actually quite clever when he wanted to be -- but still stupid when he threw himself headlong into danger, usually in an attempt to save Arthur, true. But still stupid.

Arthur told him that the Prince was in danger. (A bit strange to refer to himself like that.) But it worked well enough; his manservant all but froze, and gave Arthur a suspicious and calculating look. It wasn't a side of him that Arthur usually saw, and it threw him for a second -- mostly because he was on the end of it.

It was also then that he realized that he didn't know what to say next.

After a few moments of stretching silence, he hurriedly told Merlin that it wasn't safe for them to speak there, that they should meet later. Arthur scrambled for a place that they could meet and finally decided in the forest outside Camelot, around Midnight.

Merlin, to his credit, seemed skeptical, and Arthur wasn't sure if it would be enough; but then the imposter was calling for Merlin's attention with his voice. It couldn't be right, because he sounded far too impatient, too irritated--

But Merlin didn't seem surprised. Merlin didn't return to the imposter right away, and Arthur mightve been irritated that his servant was so balantly ignoring his order if the situation was different; Merlin was trying to get more information, but the imposters voice was growing closer.

They shared a surprisingly familiar look, knowing their conversation couldn't continue. But whether or not Merlin was aware, Arthur the servant couldn't be seen here, not by the imposter.

"Don't tell anyone," Arthur whispered urgently. "Not even the Prince. I don't know who to trust. Meet me alone."

He paced away, turning the corner just before the imposter came in, demanding to know why Merlin was taking so long. The imposter called Merlin an incompetent, useless idiot; Arthur lingered, doing his best to stay out of sight, and bristled.

He just spent at least an hour shadowing Merlin, mostly since Arthur wanted to have this conversation without any eavesdropping servants and it took some time for his manservant to be alone. He watched Merlin scrub mud off his boots, polish his armor, scoop out the stables, and do his laundry -- the latter of two which smelt so horrible that Arthur gained some respect for Merlin. He also had the feeling that Merlin had more to do, and winced in sympathy as the imposter piled on even more ridiculous chores.

Most were outside Merlin's duties as his manservant, but Merlin didn't seem to have it in him to argue. Odd since Merlin usually protested when Arthur did this (Arthur twisted his expression, and decided not to assign so many chores). The imposter clearly did something to Merlin's spirit as his manservant sighed, almost resigned, and said, "Yes, sire."

Arthur looked around the corner as the imposter swaggered out. Merlin was watching after him, but Arthur couldn't see his expression since his back was to him.

After Merlin left, Arthur thought about their meeting later. It was possible that Merlin might be too exhausted to come, but Arthur brushed that thought away. He had to convince Merlin of the truth, and for that he needed proof.

Arthur sneaks into the rooms where the noble is staying, and starts searching for anything that could prove magic was involved. He manages to find a talisman or something that could be magic.

Later, as he waits for Merlin to meet him, Arthur comes up with an explanation that's mostly true: the noble, his former master, is using magic to try switch his soul with Arthur's. The servant isn't sure how, but the talisman or something is involved. But he isn't sure if the switch has been done yet.

It seems to be enough for Merlin, and the following morning, the both of them are in Gaius' chambers, explaining it to the Physician and trying to figure out what type of magic is being used. Eventually Merlin has to return to the imposter so he doesn't know anything is wrong.

As Gaius and Arthur continue their research, Gaius starts to suspect Arthur the servant. But they manage to find out that the talisman is the Mark of an old religion ritual, which switches the consciousness of two individuals. It's an older, darker magic that most followers of the old religion didn't use -- since those who practiced it usually utilized it for similar reasons.

The talisman needs the blood of both, enchanted, and then a corresponding mark, a magical tattoo of sorts, is embedded in the pairs skin. Gaius finds this bit of information on his own, and notices the mark on the servants inner wrist. It doesn't take him long to figure out that the ritual has been done, and that it was Arthur with them all along.

Arthur panics, but Gaius calms him down and they both search for a way to reverse it. Eventually Merlin returns, and Merlin and Arthur sneak back into the noble's room.

Only this time, the noble knows the talisman is missing, and is waiting for the pair in their chambers. A fight ensues; the noble uses magic, and it seems like they've all but lost in trying to get what they need to reverse the spell -- but then Merlin uses his magic to fight the noble.

After, Arthur confronts Merlin about his magic. To his shock, though, Merlin explains that he uses his magic, putting himself at risk, to help Arthur in threats against Camelot. Usually magical threats.

Arthur is touched, slightly, a little hurt that Merlin hasn't told him. But he unleashes a ton of curses, calling Merlin an idiot, and a number of other insults, for using magic in the middle of a kingdom that executes those who are even suspected of magic--

And Merlin just. Stares at him. After a few moments, he asks, "Arthur?"

They manage to return Arthur and the servant to their respective bodies, and the noble and their servant get due punishment. To Merlin's and Gaius' pleasant surprise, Arthur doesn't mention that Merlin used magic, and their return is chalked up to the nobles inexperience.

Merlin later explains his part in fighting against their weekly enemies. In private, Arthur allows Merlin to practice his magic. Nothing major, but he tests Merlin's reflexes, which has mixed results, since his manservant has learned to (mostly) ignore those instincts. Merlin assumes Arthur is doing it for entertainment, but Arthur is trying to make sure that, if the moment comes and Merlin needs to fight for his life, even against the Knights or his father, he'll be ready. He also makes sure Merlin has basic sword skills, but Merlin prefers to fight with a staff.

Merlin becomes the secret advisor for magic while Uther is still King, and is allowed the time he needs to help with any research. Arthur helps when he can, but with his own influence as crown Prince.

When Arthur becomes King, the law against magic is lifted and Merlin is announced as the Court Sorcerer, who helps Arthur and co. come up with rules for magical practices, to stop something like the Great Purge from happening again.

I'm not sure how Arthur dies in legend, but for this, he lives a long happy life; Merlin sees the prosperous land of Albion, as promised; and Queen Guineviure (I dont know how to spell her full name, ugh) rules over the kingdom for the rest of her days.

And even after centuries pass, after magic and dragons are thought as myths, the hearts and minds of men never quite forget the legend of Camelot.

#this ended up longer than i expected #fic idea #mini fic #bbc merlin #merlin bbc #merlin emrys #merlin #emrys #arthur #arthur pendragon #camelot

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