#they also parroted everything we said back to us which could be interpreted as an abuse symptom

[sweetiepotatofry]

My talking Tom and Angela was wild because they just let us hit them even though it's implied we're their adoptive parent.

[flightofaqrow]

bird hc masterlist

(some of this was from a prior version of that meme so it was an excuse for more compilations, yay)

tl;dr:

he’s not actually a specific type of corvid but the twins both being ravens is closest

he can talk (some), and he sounds like Hamlet the parrot from tiktok

his hair acts like feathers

he does some bird-like things as a human

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I was thinking this morning how rwby doesn’t actually specify much about Raven and Qrow’s shapeshifting, we just kind of assume.

What we’re actually told is that they’re birds. Weiss refers to Raven as a raven once, but otherwise, and according to script notes, they’re just birds.

“I gave them the ability to turn into birds.” “Raven…? Qrow…? They’re birds!”

And looking at their designs, they look similar in size, and if anything, Qrow’s is the more complicated one with extra feathers.

This is a long way of saying that I’m officially announcing a headcanon that qrow also turns into a raven. and that’s why he can talk. This is how he talks.

he doesn’t necessarily know this. he can be referred to as any corvid, and just kind of thinks of himself as a generic black bird.

based on your last headcanon do you think he would be a different kind of corvid? like a magpie with white in the wing feather or a blue jay? spies use different identities and clothes so it could tie into that. probably defeats the meaning of his name but i think it’s a pretty cool headcanon.

I don’t see why not!! I think it leaves interpretation pretty well open, and I like to throw in a lot of non-corvid bird references/puns into my writing just for fun (I often mention him parroting people, for example).

If you look at some of the reply discussion, you’ll see some good points too:

@huntsman-ash​ reminded me of the Huginn and Muninn allusions… which definitely points strongly towards both of the twins being Ravens, like their counterparts. And that’s what I work with and picture most strongly.

BUT

@reallifejedi​ replied: If we borrow from a series I really like, shapeshifters make their animal forms based on their own mental images and suppositions. So Qrow’s unique hybrid of multiple birds, and his weird lil cape, *and* their red eyes, can be entirely pulled from their own mental images, and the fact they ‘aren’t quite right’ could very well be because humans are very fallible.

Qrow especially, does not fit the typical feather anatomy of a crow OR raven. There’s no reason their own perceptions or needs can’t be tweaked a little bit each time they shift, if they want. It’s meant to be a disguise, after all, like you said!

We can presume Raven keeps her form relatively consistent, considering Yang was able to recognize her. And Qrow’s has some features which stay the same, but there is just so much room within canon and headcanons to play around with. ‘Hey, it’s ~magic~’ is a good argument for a lot lmao.

Also the meaning of his name is still there, a bit jumbled but still a bird reference, and still the tie-in to being a sign of bad luck and possibly (to some people) the ‘lesser desired’ Branwen.

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qrow’s hair

qrow’s hair when he started at beacon was slightly shaggier, and mostly unstyled.

Shortly before getting his crow form, he cut it to what it is now.

It never changed after that, even if he tried. He couldn’t grow it out further; he could cut it, but it would return to the same length either within a couple weeks, or as soon as he changed to crow form and changed back.

Because in time, it partially became feathers. Separate strands of hair still exist, but they part together in pieces like feathering, and form the shapes that makeup his hairstyle.

It grew naturally into the style it has, he does nothing to it to make it happen. It’s resistant to being changed with heat or product, and eventually he gave up, for what little he cared anyway.

Each ‘pieced’ collection of strands moves like a separate feather, and when he moves his head everything shifts around in a unit together, bounces off itself, etc. (This is literally how it’s animated. I’m pretty sure it works that way for everyone just because of the show’s style but whatever, I’m using it.)

Yes, it will fluff up and/or ruffle slightly if he’s suddenly excited or upset.

Canon feather hair floofage (it might be a stretch but let me have it)

Combing fingers through it still works like normal, it will separate, but return once the person stops. It can be mussed up, but likewise, will return to its original style quickly without any help.

It also secretes oil similar to feathers which gives it some water resistance. Rain will bead off of it to a certain extent before it starts to actually get wet, and it takes basically being completely saturated to lose its style. This is the part he gets most nervous about people possibly catching on to if they’re paying enough attention in a relevant situation. 

(If you squint, that oil gland specifically kind of gives him a faunus trait.)

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The bandit tribe used the common technique of communicating with each other using bird whistles and clicks while scouting/raiding. The twins have thus adapted this to their own language using corvid-specific noises for use while exploring, battling, and while in bird form.

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Meta on Birds?

this qrow doesn’t have as… strong opinions on other birds as some seem to, haha. some kinds can be annoying. most leave him alone. actual corvids seem to know something is off about him, and treat him with the same wariness as other people do. he doesn’t fit in anywhere.

some of them can be helpful.

between his time in the tribe - knowing nature as signs of danger or weather or the movement of other creatures - and his time in the air - personally learning some ins and outs of their instincts and communication - he has learned to read their behavior pretty well. what species live in what environments and what it means if they move beyond boundaries. how close to somewhere or something he is if he sees one. it’s one more bit of info he can use for his missions.

qrow has a particular affinity for bird faunus. his corvid side helps him understand them better too. he likes to surprise anyone with feathers at how he seems to have some innate sense of how to handle them properly, how it feels to have them, what it’s like to have some birdbrain yet still be mostly human.

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So question, a lot of people like to see how Qrow handled his bird form. What does your Qrow think of it? Are there any tics he has picked up from going back and forth between man and bird? ( like collecting trinkets or the like? )

To the first question,

He thinks of it, mostly, as a tool. Granted, a meaningful one - it’s special to him and Raven alone which is pretty cool; it’s a symbol of Ozpin’s trust; it’s also kind of a reward for being one of the best so he can take pride in that. It’s a secret which can feel like a powerful little ace up his sleeve, even if it’s not really relevant at the time; like a confidence booster if he’s intimidated by other “regular” humans.

As a man with a frequent need to escape his own mind, he loves the freedom his bird form offers, flying through the air unburdened, dipping and weaving in full control of himself, getting to see the whole world in all its beauty and darkness, learning secrets and being able to watch over people. but he respects the responsibility also tied to it, and thus rarely indulges or risks giving himself away without a purpose. Sometimes he can’t help it.

I guess you could say he considers it a blessing that evens out his curse, just a little bit.

To the second,

I do like the idea of picking up some tics! It becomes another self that you’re bound to pick some new habits up from just like if you started frequenting a new place or new people, after all. (I really really love the bird-like head twitching they gave Raven in vol 4, but haven’t seen any equivalents for Qrow really?)

Here’s a list of things so far:

an affinity for eating seeds as a snack. particularly sunflower seeds.

staring longingly out windows, missing the sky and all the information that comes with being out there. you’d be surprised what kind of secrets the changing winds and trees carry. also, he’s kinda always keeping an eye out for Raven.

he can whistle in birdsong. Yes, I know corvids only make ‘ugly’ sounds. No, I don’t care. It’s a general bird thing. Also magic. Also they can learn to imitate other sounds.

he’ll make clicking/rattle type noises sometimes when he’s thinking. Probably only if he’s by himself. Granted, it sounds a little different since in human form it’s with his tongue instead of his throat.

Shiny things do catch his eye, but he usually doesn’t do much about it. It might make him consider switching up his rings sometimes. What he will do is pick up and leave little trinkets for other people, he doesn’t ‘give gifts’ exactly, as he doesn’t present them to people. He’ll just discreetly drop them off on a counter, or windowsill, or their bed when they’re not around. The more he knows someone, the more complex gift they might get, including things he crafts together as a human with all the little bits he picked up as a bird.

The one exception to being discreet that he allows himself: If he’s so happy he doesn’t even know what to do with it, or so upset it’s practically a tantrum (both are rare, but) - he will turn crow and hop around like crazy to get the energy out. It’s his version of screaming into a pillow, I guess. This video is 100% to blame for that one.

he gets some of the really weird positions he puts his legs in, one from them being so long, but also from going back and forth from bow-legged bird legs.

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qrow can be, and has been, in bird form while drunk. crack shenanigans can ensue, especially for pestering Tai, but for main actual headcanon this is only true for flying over distances, not when he’s, say, in a town scoping things out. it’s erratic and hysterical. he has been confused for a really big bat.

on the opposite side, there have been missions that have required (or at least were easier for) him to stay in bird form for a few days straight. these would be spent sober! But not for long once he changes back.

he will also sleep in bird form on missions or sometimes just because.

still building off of the first - most of his ‘people based’ intel came from being able to poke around towns and buildings and watch people or listen in on conversations because he could simply be there, inconspicuous. this is slightly less so after Salem finds out about the birds (or at least, the way she talked about him being an eye blinded I assume she knows even before the show starts?). Her higher up agents knew to at least try to be in a small room or something.  

his crow has the crest feathers on his head unlike Ravens, and yes it does feel nice to be scritched under them.

the grimm leave him alone unless he instigates something, and once he did go after a small pack of ravagers just because he could. he picked two of them off with beak, claws, and tactics, but had to change to wipe the rest of them out because they swarmed.

bonus

yes he poops in bird form if it comes to that, no not on things or people. except maybe on some atlas droids. once. maybe. you can’t prove it.

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vagabonds-and-wanderlust:

You sympathize with crows. After all, you too are a collector of shiny baubles and useless castoffs. And you, too, occasionally give them away to people you’ve taken a liking to.

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crow-suggestions‌:

how to befriend a humble crow: a guide

give me food - peanuts are my favorite :^

stay six feet away at all times. i’ll go up to you if i trust you

hang out with me often so i don’t forget about you

be a nice person!

talk to me when we’re hanging out. tell me about what’s going on in your life.

know that i appreciate you as long as you are kind and generous.

[thegeminisage]

john abused both dean AND sam, just differently. in this essay i will

prove that the abuse manifested in different ways for each of them because that’s how abuse works in real life. this is based on the fact that john saw dean as mary’s surrogate but once he found out about the deal and sam having demon blood he blamed sam for her death. ok let’s fucking go

dean as mary’s surrogate

there are loads of parallels made between dean and mary in early season spn and late season spn. in season 12 dean directly calls himself sam’s mother, but even earlier than that we see him doing the cooking and child rearing. compare that to all the parallels made between sam and john (both of them losing their blonde woman significant others in a ceiling fire) and it’s clear that dean was meant to more resemble mary. it’s not a stretch to say that if we can see it as viewers this is how john saw it in his actual life. i do think john loves dean for being dean but he loves him more for being mary.

sam as the reason behind mary’s death

i think once john learned that sam had demon blood, some part of him must have always been waiting for the other shoe to drop with sam, not ever fully believing this kid was human, and maybe not even knowing if this kid was HIS. a popular theory back in the day was that YED fathered sam (something they had to actually address in season 4 to stop the speculation), and if WE speculated that hard, surely john must have too. i’m sure he loves sam as an extension of mary, and keeps and raises and protects him BECAUSE he’s mary’s, but similarly (or maybe inverse) to dean, i don’t know if he ever fully gave himself permission to love sam for being sam. in fact, i imagine john harbors a lot of self-loathing for failing to save mary. if we directly parallel john and sam, that means by some extent he would also hate sam.

john trusted dean with far too much, and sam with far too little

dean knew about monsters; sam didn’t. dean had memories of their mother and the night she died, and shared that trauma of watching her die with john; sam didn’t. dean knew when john was supposed to be home and who to call if he wasn’t; sam didn’t. dean was given the money and the guns and the CAR ITSELF; sam wasn’t. dean was taught to drive; SAM WASN’T. 

dean was expected to do everything john was supposed to have been doing in his absence - he was to be a mother and father to sam, he was supposed to protect sam from evil, he was supposed to see to sam’s meals and homework and getting to school on time. and he was put under an EXTRAORDINARY amount of pressure not to screw this up even a little bit, despite the fact that he was only a kid. sam on the other hand was kept on a strict need-to-know basis for his entire life, right up until season 1 when they reunite at last. john didn’t trust sam with ANYTHING, and sam knew it. this contributed to his lifelong anger issues because he didn’t DO anything to warrant that kind of mistrust and probably got gaslit about it a lot of times either by john himself or dean (unknowingly, by parroting/believing the things john said). even in the pilot sam says very casually of his mother “she’s gone,” because her memory doesn’t hold the same place of reverence for him - best guess is that john didn’t talk about her much to sam because he didn’t trust sam with emotional stuff either. in s14 we learn that dean was the one who told sam stories about mary, including her terrible casserole - and their attempt at recreating it infuriated john to the point of him throwing the entire concoction in the trash.

john relied on dean for everything, and refused to rely on sam for anything

canonically dean was the one who comforted john after a bad hunt, looked after and fed his brother when john wasn’t around. dean knew how to use a shotgun; sam didn’t. dean knew who to call in an emergency; sam didn’t. dean knew about monsters; sam didn’t. this was done under the guise of “protection for sammy” but turn it around and it’s also protection FROM sammy. think of how angry john gets when he learns sam has been having psychic visions. he’s not just angry that dean didn’t report it to him, he’s angry that the demon’s plans for sam are coming to pass, and that sam is becoming less human. again, he can’t TRUST sam if sam’s not human, and it proves to john that he was right all along to keep sam in the dark as much as possible.

john gave dean too much freedom, and sam no freedom at all

“watch out for sammy.” sam was under constant supervision by either dean or john; john made sure of it. again, it’s protection FOR sam but also protection FROM him, in case he did something inhuman or evil. dean on the other hand was left alone without any supervision at all for days or even weeks at a time - he resorts to stealing bread and peanut butter and (according to jackles) turning tricks for money. he had to make it work and got up to whatever the fuck he wanted when john wasn’t looking. sam had to LITERALLY run away from home before he got the simple pleasure of eating pizza and having a dog by himself, independently. dean was given too much independence and freedom but sam was kept on such a short leash he had none at all.

john made dean feel unworthy, and he made sam feel unclean

when dean fails to protect sam from the shtriga in the season 1 flashbacks, he says his dad looked at him differently after. he also implies that john physically beat him when sam ran away in flagstaff. whether he meant to or not, john made it abundantly clear that his love for dean was not unconditional; it depended very much on how well dean performed the multitude of tasks john assigned him. dean grew up believing that his only worth was in what he could do for other people. he demonstrates this an an adult over and over and over, from letting his possessed family members beat him up to refusing to take care of his own needs, emotional and otherwise, and snapping at people who try to talk to him about his own feelings.

on the other hand, sam talks in season 8 about how even at a very young age he felt impure and unclean, even before he knew that he had demon blood, even before he knew that there was any such thing as monsters. kids aren’t stupid, and sam picked up on the vibes john was putting off - that john didn’t trust him, might not have loved him, and might not have considered him human or even his own child. without even knowing why, he spent his entire life feeling unclean and inhuman, not worth of being loved by his own family. even dean, who we all know loves sam unconditionally, admits in season 14 that he often took dad’s side on arguments because he had “his own stuff,” further leading to the alienation that was sam’s constant companion growing up. 

AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY:

JOHN’S ABUSE PITTED SAM AND DEAN AGAINST EACH OTHER

john saved dean after their shared trauma of mary’s death. dean says in season 1 that the reason he stopped talking was that he was scared. iirc john’s journal implies he was mute for over a year, and dean in season 2 says that when he was 6 or 7 his dad took him shooting for the first time. if mary died just before dean’s fifth birthday, the timeline works out to dean talking again because john took him shooting. i believe that dean hero worships his father because after mary’s death, and dealing with the terror that something like that could come in and take his family away by killing them horribly at any time without any warning, john learning to fight back against the darkness - and teaching dean to do the same - is what gave dean his voice again. BOTH of them saw and carried the memory of mary burning on the ceiling for the rest of their lives. “watch out for sammy” and “get the thing that killed mom” were dean’s reasons to get up in the morning, because they were john’s reasons to get up in the morning. these things were LITERALLY his reasons for living. john gave dean a way to fight back against fear and gave him a cause to keep him going. abuse or not, dean never stopped being grateful for that, and he was the only other person in the whole world who understood the unique horror of what john went through that night. even all the way into season 10, he tells other people that john did right by him. it’s borderline brainwashing. part of dean’s self-worth will always be based on how good of a son he was to john.

on the other hand, knowingly or not, john did everything possible to alienate sam. he kept him on a short leash while also keeping him at arm’s distance. he didn’t trust sam with emotional things like the memory of mary, he didn’t trust sam with the truth about monsters and what they did for a living, he didn’t trust sam with his plans, he didn’t trust sam with the truth about demon blood. canon STRONGLY suggests john knew YED bled in sam’s mouth as a baby, but instead of telling sam or even dean about that, sam had to learn about it in a horrible flashback recreated by YED himself. when sam wanted to go to school, john told him no, and when he left anyway, john told him not to come back.

this is an equal but opposite kind of abuse. john totally fucked up BOTH his kids in complete inversions to each other.

which means that, no matter what john did, it caused sam and dean to fight. this isn’t an interpretation. this is straight up canon.

again, dean says in s14 that he frequently took dad’s side in arguments because he had his own stuff to deal with, and he was trying to keep the peace. dean, a victim of emotional (and implied sometimes physical) abuse himself, was not able to shield sam from all of john’s bullshit. he could stop sam from getting hit and having to see john during the worst of his drunken rages, but he couldn’t trick sam into thinking john loved him unconditionally, because john didn’t love either of his kids unconditionally.

when john acted in a way that was not befitting of a parent, sam rightfully took exception, which forced dean (who was ALSO BEING ABUSED, almost brainwashed) to jump to his defense. that led to john getting to do whatever the hell he wanted and sam and dean arguing about the effects. when sam ran away in flagstaff, DEAN was punished, leading dean to resenting sam for that incursion, even though sam was perfectly right to want to get away from an abusive household. when sam did a normal thing wanting to leave for college at age 18, he left, and dean resented him for that because that meant he was alone to bear the brunt of john’s anger. 

sam repeatedly made logical, emotionally healthy choices in attempting to break the family dynamic, but because of JOHN’S BEHAVIOR, not sam’s, those choices wound up causing dean harm. JOHN HIMSELF was the ultimate wedge between sam and dean growing up and beyond.

and let’s not forget the biggest sin - john spent 22 years impressing upon dean that taking care of sammy was EVERYTHING, and then without any explanation at all, he asked dean to kill him, and then he DIED, which meant dean had to carry that weight by himself (because again, he’s been trained not to trust sam with things). like of COURSE sam got angry when he found out - that’s fucking fucked up! once again sam is being treated like a ticking time bomb for absolutely no reason - he didn’t ask to have demon blood or psychic visions or a dead mom or an abusive father. nor did dean ask to be saddled with the upbringing of an entire human at four years old who he then might have to kill. because dean will always feel gratitude towards john, and sam will always feel resentment, and because based on john’s treatment of them BOTH OF THESE FEELINGS ARE JUSTIFIED, john continues to cause fights between sam and dean long after he’s dead and gone, and that will never change.

on a final note: i’d like to bring this around to season 13.

after cas, mary, kelly, and crowley all die (or are presumed dead in mary’s case) in the season 12 finale, season 13 opens with nobody but sam and dean and jack. dean directly blames jack for these deaths. he says so multiple times. he says where jack can hear him that he knows jack is evil and impure and cannot be saved and calls jack a freak. when jack tries repeatedly to kill himself dean says to jack’s face not to bother, because WHEN jack does go bad, dean will be the one to kill him. dean does NOT see jack as castiel’s child - he sees jack as someone who brainwashed cas and kelly both and got them killed. dean does not even see jack as a human person worthy of life. from the get-go, all he wants is to put jack down. jack is born into a world shaped by pain and grief and anger, where people hate him simply for what he is and who died to get him here. 

and again, sam identifies hard with jack. he justifiably protests dean’s treatment of him. jack is a kid and didn’t ask for any of this. jack is terrified of dean. sam reminds dean that john said all these things about sam that dean is saying about jack. john is still causing a rift between his sons over a decade after his death.

eventually, after jack uses his powers and brings back cas from the empty, dean pulls his head out of his ass and admits that he was wrong. he calls jack his kid more than once, and jack refers to dean as one of his dads. but the damage has already been done. jack struggles multiple times with his powers, accidentally hurting people and then wishing himself dead after. he also struggles without them; even when using his powers means using up pieces of his soul, he does it, because dean taught him that he’s only worthy of being loved and trusted if he’s “good.” even when he has NO SOUL, when jack does something bad he panics about it and seeks to undo it at any cost. that’s how deep the damage runs.

i see a lot of people remarking that in the arc of 13.01-13.05, dean became john, and i agree that he did. but dean didn’t do to jack what john did to him. dean did to jack what john did to SAM.

[spn masterpost]

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: Good Omens and Judaism

Recently, I watched Jill Bearup’s review of the Good Omens Amazon Prime adaptation – a video you can watch here, and even if you don’t, I highly recommend you watch any of her other videos, especially her newer stuff about fight choreography – and something she brought up set my brain rolling down a particularly interesting hill.

She compares the series (written by Neil Gaiman) to the book (written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman), and points out how one of the things the series does differently is that it shows the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Jesus doesn’t appear in the book Good Omens, though a major part of the story’s premise is that all the events described in the Bible actually literally happened. The book is centered on the birth of the Antichrist, but it doesn’t present us with the Christ that he is “anti” to.

Bearup comments that the story of Good Omens doesn’t really work so well if Jesus’s death (and subsequent rebirth) is one of the things that actually literally happened in the world. This is because the other major part of the story’s premise is that Heaven is, in many ways, just as bad as Hell. The angels are just as much a threat as the demons are to the world, to humankind, and to our protagonists. There is no inherent, definite separation between “good” and “bad” in Good Omens; humanity, and life on Earth, is the important thing worth fighting for.

But Jesus’s death indicates that there is an inherent “good” separate from “bad.” It also indicates that Heaven is the ultimate good place, and the ultimate goal, because Jesus’s death was for the purpose of redeeming the sins of humanity so that humans could in the end go to Heaven. If Heaven is just as bad as Hell, how can there also be this objectively good “dying for our sins” thing?

I find this view particularly interesting because none of this occurred to me while watching Good Omens. I didn’t think at all about the Jesus scene or what it implied. It didn’t linger with me; it didn’t affect my interpretation of the rest of the show.

And that’s really because Jesus doesn’t matter to me. At all.

I didn’t grow up with the Jesus story. My first exposure to any New Testament content was the time my dad was in a community theatre production of Jesus Christ Superstar. He played Caiaphas, and we have home video of my siblings and I – little Jews between the ages of 2 and 8 – singing about how much of a problem this Jesus guy is in our best imitation of a bass voice. Mom didn’t let us stay to watch the second act, so we missed out on all the betrayal and whipping and death parts, and once the run of the musical was complete, we never watched it again.

In middle school, it took me until the last chapter of The Last Battle to realize that Aslan had been Jesus all along. Yes, I did read all seven Narnia books; I just thought it was fun fantasy, until they all suddenly died and went to heaven. In hindsight, I get how heavy-handed the sacrifice and rebirth in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is, but at the time, I didn’t know that part of the Jesus story, let alone that it was something people cared about or believed.

Bearup is right – Good Omens doesn’t work with Jesus. The series worked for me because I didn’t think that the Jesus death scene had any impact on the rest of the story, because as a Jew, that scene doesn’t have any impact on my life philosophy.

And I think that’s the key thing here. Good Omens makes the most sense if you remember that it’s a Jewish man’s take on Christian theology. Neil Gaiman is Jewish. Of course Jesus doesn’t matter in Good Omens. He’s a detail that doesn’t fit with the story’s philosophy and is therefore easily deleted or relegated to a flashback that’s actually about Aziraphale and Crowley’s friendship.

Which brings me to something I did think about while watching Good Omens. Though it focuses on the Christian Bible, Good Omens is really fricking Jewish.

For Jews, the here and now matters so much more than whatever is after death! The mashiach hasn’t come yet; no one’s “saved” our souls. In fact, our souls don’t need “saving” – “Elohai neshama shenatata be t'horah he,” we say – “My G-d, the soul You have given me is pure.” We are already good, as we are now. We’re here on Earth doing the work of creation every single day, and that work is important. All that we create – all the stuff that Aziraphale and Crowley love about us in Good Omens – is important. The very idea of everything being destroyed so that we can all be shuttled off to Heaven or Hell is, well, icky.

The existence of the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley is also very Jewish. In the Torah, angels don’t really have personalities. They’re malachim – literally, messengers. If one shows up, it’s treated in the text like it’s just speaking G-d’s words. We have stories about them in the Talmud that give angels a little more color, but they’re not exactly painted in a very “good” light there. In one midrash, when the Red Sea closed over the Egyptians, allowing the Jews to escape slavery, the angels sang and danced in celebration. G-d then said to the angels, “Why are you celebrating? My children are drowning in the sea.” So the idea of an angel like Gabriel, who’s spent his whole time hanging out in heaven, being a jerk who doesn’t care about humanity fits well with the Jewish perspective. However, if an angel did stick around on Earth for thousands of years, getting to know us, instead of simply parroting G-d’s words… then he’d probably become a decent fellow who loved humans. That’s Aziraphale.

As for Crowley, well, Jews question everything. Arguing with G-d is our thing, all the way back to Abraham. We love G-d, sure – if we believe in G-d, and there are plenty of Jews who don’t. For every law that exists, for every story we tell or prayer we recite or tradition we take part in, there is a Jew who has said, “But why, though? Does it really have to be like that?” And isn’t that what got Crowley in trouble in the first place, and what motivates him throughout the series? “Does it really have to be like that?”

Good Omens talks a lot about “God’s ineffable plan,” and it leaves things ambiguous in the end about whether the events of the series actually were Herself’s plan. That’s very Jewish, too. The Jewish answer to “Does G-d have a plan?” is, basically, “Does it matter?” We’re here now. We’re living our lives now. We’re doing what good we can now. If there’s a Heaven or a Hell, if there’s even a literal G-d, if any of the stuff in the Bible actually literally happened… Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Tl;dr, if it feels like Jesus doesn’t make sense in Good Omens, that’s because he doesn’t. Jesus left Judaism behind, and Good Omens is a Jewish story. It’s Jewish fanfiction of the New Testament. Which itself is fanfiction of the Torah. Think about it.

[la-tia-panchita]

Letter to José

José when you receive this letter without reason, you'll know it was all over between us.

Fandom: The Three Caballeros

Relationship: José/Panchito

Notes: Hi everyone! I just wanna to tell that I have made my first Panjose fanfic! (Well it is a songifc :b) and although it's on ao3 I want to share it here too! Hope you like it!! ^^. The song with which I was based to make this songfic is called " Carta a Eufemia" and it is interpreted by Pedro Infante, I’ll leave you the song at the end!

Two years had already passed since the filming of the three caballeros and with it two years of courtship between the Brazilian parrot and the Mexican rooster, making family and friends more than happy for the couple; in Brazil because it is the couple with whom the green feathers lasted the longest (not counting the beautiful Rosinha Vaz, but that is another story because between the two there is a relationship that consists of breaking up and returning, well, rather it existed  until the mexican arrived) And in Mexico they were happy because the rooster had finally decided to choose a partner, only there was some disappointment, anger and even lawsuits with his father when he found out that the happy couple was a man and not a woman, but that is also another story. The point here is that although some did not want to admit it, they were all happy for the relationship that these two birds had.

If you ask Panchito how is his luck with women, he would say that it is very good since in his town there are several women who are interested in him, but if you ask him how is his luck in love, surely he would laugh and say that  love was not made for him because no one has ever stolen sighs and sleepless nights thinking of that special person, until he met José.

For Panchito, dealing with José was like a soccer match where you begin observing calmly and as the game progresses it comes the insults, fouls and yellow cards; so yes, when Panchito and José met they did not have a good relationship, but the second half arrived and with it an adrenaline, emotion and a feeling of not wanting to change the channel, until the first goal arrives, making that the team who scored the goal began to scream with euphoria and happiness while the opposing team begins to get frustrated and that's how Panchito's mind was when he first questioned what he was beginning to feel for the samba dancer. And suddenly more goals arrive making more visible who could be the winning team, until a penalty arrives a night before the premier of his film in which the entire stadium fell into deathly silence because that goal is the one that would mark the victory or the defeat, and there we see the player kick the ball and how it approaches to the goal, mocking the goalkeeper who had to jump to stop the ball but still being insufficient because the one who stopped that ball was the net, causing the entire stadium to rise up screaming with excitement and happiness as they finally saw the beaks of the two birds joined in a kiss, thus marking the end of the game and the start of a relationship.

After that night for Panchito it was like being drugged, he felt in the clouds every time he looked at his partner and when he surprisingly kissed him it was as if a gravitational force was dragging him strongly to the floor, and he loved that change of emotions that the brazilian provoked in him. What he did not love was the decision to have a long distance relationship, but he had to reluctantly accept because in Mexico his family needed him and in Brazil they needed José, so with the promise that the two would constantly send  letters, they said goodbye.

And now after almost a year of living in different countries we can see a well-dressed rooster as a charro signing the end of a paper "Done!" He exclaimed appreciating the final product "Here you have" he said handing the letter to his brother Miguel "Read the letter that I am going to send to the José of my life, to see if he answers it to me" Miguel took the letter between his hands and began to read it.

José, cuando recibas esta carta sin razón.

[José, when you recieve this letter without reason]

"You are sure about this?" Miguel ask looking at Panchito disbelief.

"Of course"

Ya sabrás que entre nosotros todo terminó

[You'll know it was all over between us]

"Won't he take it wrong? I mean, this is said to the face" Panchito gave a few laughs as he shook his head.

"Miguel, Why am I going to fly to Brazil to just tell him we're done?" Panchito ask.

"I don't know, maybe for dignity? Honor? Or even so that he doesn't TAKE IT WRONG!?" Remarking the last words, Miguel insisted as if it were the most obvious thing.

Y no la des en recibida por traición.

Te devuelvo tu palabra, te la devuelvo sin usarla y que conste que en esta carta que acabamos de un jalón.

[When you receive it, don't take it as betrayal

I send back your word, I send it back without using it, and I warn you, in this letter that we finish just like that]

Panchito leaned his back on the chair while crossing his arms and replaid "Dignity? Honor? That he doesn't take it wrong? Ay no inventes, better you keep reading the letter and I assure you that you will change your mind" his brother just rolled his eyes and kept reading.

No me escribiste, y mis cartas anteriores no se si las recibiste.

Tu me olvidaste y mataron mis amores el silencio que les diste.

[You didn't write me, and my previous letters I don't know if you received them.

You forgot me, and my love was killed by the silence that you gave me.]

"Don't you think you are exaggerating?" Miguel asked again taking a sip of his drink .

"Oh que la, si no es Chana es Juana" he claimed and running his hands over his crest he let out a frustrated sigh "look, everything that is in the letter is the truth and what I truly feel. Although I continue to have unconditional affection for José, this can no longer continue like this, he is there and I am here and thanks to the distance this relationship has become non-existent, I even forgot how to love him!" he explained.

¡A ver si a esta si le das contestación José!

Pues del amor ¿pa' que te escribo? y aquí queda como amigo

Tu afectísimo y atento y muy seguro servidor

[I'll see if to this letter you gives a reply José!

About love, what could I tell you? And here remains as a friend

Your most affectionate, attentive and very secure server]

"Pancito Pistoles" he read the signature aloud and left the letter on the table "Well there as you see, if you are sure then send it to him" He sighed pulling out his wallet and putting a few bills on the table.

"Pues ya está" Panchito got up from the table next to his brother "come with me to send it" he hugged his brother by the shoulders and the two of them left the restaurant.

-------

The afternoon was setting on the beautiful coasts of Rio de Janeiro reflecting the pink and orange tones of the sky in the sea.

"Zé, you have received a letter" said his friend Nestor entering to the balcony where the parrot was admiring the peaceful landscape while smoking one of his cigars.

José, cuando recibas esta carta sin razón

Ya sabrás que entre nosotros todo término

[José, when you receive this letter without reason

You'll know it was all over between us]

"Muito obrigado" he answered taking the letter in his hands and without waiting, he opened it, he already knew who it was and was eager to read what the mexican would tell him now. Would he tell him that he finally bought Mr. Martinez a new saddle? Or maybe he would tell him how he reluctantly pulled his brother out of a fight again?

When he unfolded the paper and read the first sentences, his brow began to furrow and a void seized him.

No la des en recibida por traición.

Te devulevo tu palabra, te la devuevo sin usarla y que conste en esta carta que acabamos de un jalón.

[When you receive it, don't take it as a betrayal.

I send back you word, I send it back without using it, and I warn you in this letter that we finish just like that]

He entered to his room in dismay and he dropped into the chair at the small desk he had.

No me escribiste, y mis cartas anteriores no se si las recibiste

[You didn't write me, andmy previous letters I don't know if you received them]

His gaze immediately traveled to his desk, which was littered with crumpled sheets of paper scattered everywhere, some on the floor, others in the trash can, and many others on top of the same desk, but there was a place where it wasn't littered with trash. and that was where he kept all the letters he received from Panchito, each one of them was ordered and well arranged by date.

Tu me olvidaste, y mataron mis amores el silencio que les diste

[You forgot me, and mt love was killed by the silence that you gave me]

The anxiety was consuming the poor brazilian who did not realize he was puffing on his cigar too fast until the ashes of the cigar fell into his sack. He put the letter aside and putting out ths cigar into ths ashtray he tried to clean the ashes from his sack, when he finally thought his sack was clean he rubbed his eyes and took the letter again.

¡A ver si a esta si le das contestación José!

[I'll see if to this letter you gives a reply José!]

José squeezed his beak, he knew that there would come a time when Panchito would get tired of not having any information about him, but he never imagined that those lines would cause much impact on him, because just seeing that that sentence was with an exclamation point and that his name was included he imagined as if the rooster was giving a cry of despair and help to know about him. And it is not that José did not want to respond and escape from that relationship, on the contrary, he loves Panchito with all his being and with each letter he received his love for him increased more, only that whenever he was about to write he could not find the words correct and more when everything around him started to go from bad to worse, Zico and Zeca arrived (his nephews whom he loves very much) but unfortunately his sister left, may he rest, the bar where he worked was closed and the money began to scarce and it was in those moments that the only thing that kept him standing were the letters he received from Panchito.

Sometimes it crossed to his mind that he could ask for help from the mexican, but immediately the shame consumed him, then he thought he could start sending letters and after sending some now he could ask for help, but he thought he would look very cheeky and better he didn't sent anything, and now that his life is stable again he does not know what to say, keeping only erasers scattered all over his desk and floor.

Del amor ¿Pa' que te escribo? y aquí queda como amigo

Tu afectísimo y atento y muy seguro servidor

[About love, what could I tell you? And here remainss as a friend

Your most affectionate, attentive, and very secure server]

"Signature Panchito Pistoles" he threw the letter on the table and leaned back in his chair "it's all over" he sighed heavily, although now he wanted to and tried to write him a letter to explain everything, to tell him to wait that he still loves him, that he had not forgotten him and that he was not going to let their relationship end in this way, he did not feel up to it and above all he felt defeated and tired.

He took out a cigar and lit it, letting himself be carried away by the smoke it gave off and his pain until someone entered to his room. "Zé, another letter just arrived." His friend Nestor's voice was heard, but he did not respond and did not even I turn to see, he just sat there smoking his cigar "I'll leave it in bed for you" answered the other walking around the room and when he left the letter he left, leaving José in complete silence immersed in his thoughts.

After several minutes he got up to go get the letter and turn on the light since the darkness of the night had already flooded the room.

Seeing where the happy letter came from, he threw it angrily "o que aquele pedaço de mariachi quer ?! Não é o suficiente para ele quebrar meu coração !? Agora ele precisa tirar sarro de mim, ou talvez..." letter on the floor with hopes and something in it begged that in that letter it would come out that it was all a joke in bad taste or even a warning for not keeping his promise.

With fear he picked up the letter and stopped looking at the details of the envelope, it was strange that the letter was different from the one already known but it could be clearly seen that the sender's address said Hacienda Quintero, he opened the envelope and slowly took out the paper that was inside.

Hi José,

I hope you are well and I hope you will forgive the informality of this letter.

I know what my brother wrote in his letter and I want you to know that I do not agree with the decision he made, well first of all I hope you have already read the letter, if not, everything that comes here will not make sense.

I want you to know that my brother still loves you well, but that does not remove the fact that he is hurt because he thinks you have forgotten him and now he has taken a very proud, very arrogant attitude and God! Not even a day has passed and I can't stand it anymore. So, Mr. Carioca, I kindly ask you if you don't want to send a letter, then at least come to fix my brother and even though I haven't seen you in a long time, I know that you still love my brother.

There I leave you a few Mexican bills (sorry I did this letter suddenly and I didn't have time to look for Brazilian reals) with which you can go to Mexico or you can keep them and do whatever you want with them, consider it as a gift and an apology for the letter from my silly brother.

I am saying goodbye because Panchito is here and he does not know that I have written this letter and I do not want him to find out that he exists.

Miguel Quintero.

He opened his eyes surprisingly, he did not know what impacted him more, the fact that Panchito's brother was playing the cupid, knowing that Panchito still loved him or that José received a second chance.

He checked the envelope again and, indeed, Miguel had given him several bills with which he could pay the last debts he had left or he could go to Mexico to try to win back the love of his life.

He sat slowly on the bed thinking what he would say to Panchito when he see him. Perhaps he would claim the fact that he cut him by letter and did not have the decency to tell him in front, because this things you need to said it to the face.

End Notes:

"Oh que la, si no es Chana es Juana"-- oh what the, if it's not Chana it's Juana. (In Mexico the phrase "if it's not Chana it's Juana" is a colloquial saying that express if it's not one thing it's the other)

"Pues ya está"-- Well that's it

"Muito obrigado"-- thanks a lot.

"o que aquele pedaço de mariachi quer ?! Não é o suficiente para ele quebrar meu coração !? Agora ele precisa tirar sarro de mim, ou talvez" --what those that piece of mariachi wants?! Isn't it enough for him to break my heart!? Now he need to make fun of me, or maybe...

undefined

[delphinidin4]

Somebody asked a question about valid readings of literature (I have a doctorate in literature and have taught it on the college level), and i had a migraine this morning, so i’m sorry if this comes out a little coherent, but i’mma post it anyway. here’s the thing i think people don’t always get about the study of literature:

1. there isn’t just one correct reading of anything in literature

2.the bar for something being a valid reading is significantly lower than you might think.

What constitutes a “valid reading” is ultimately a personal decision by the person reading the literary criticism: do you think the person do the criticism/analysis made their case? If so, their reading could be considered “valid”, even if you don’t personally agree with it. If not, their reading might not be considered “valid”, even if you think they have interesting points. The point in writing literary analysis/criticism is to make your case well enough that people have to concede that your argument is valid even if they don’t really believe it themselves.

For instance, there are elaborate analyses of books done in Freudian analysis: taking one of Freud’s psychological theories and applying it to the work of literature. You might think Freud’s psychological theories are bullshit, in which case you might hate/disbelieve those literary readings, but if they hold together well enough, they might be considered valid.

this is also where “death of the author” comes in. because you can never truly prove exactly what the author meant to do/say with their literature, even if they tell you so! Poe wrote an essay on his writing technique, in which he claimed that when writing The Raven he started out with the bird being a parrot and then decided a raven would be more metal and better in keeping with the tone of the poem. And a huge number of literary scholars (including myself) think Poe was probably talking out of his ass there, and just knew/learned that ravens could be taught to speak, and was like, “Hey, that gives me an idea for a HELLA gothic poem,” and went and wrote it. And then later folks were like, “prove to us that you’re a REAL writer? What’s your method?” and poe was like, “Oh yes, I think everything through very clearly and rationally” rather than tellign the truth and being like, “this sounded rad so i wrote it that way because of feels.”

Also, sometimes people will write something that, for instance, reveals their subconscious beliefs about race. They might not realize when they’re writing it that their writing does that, but other people can point it out later, and that can be a valid reading. Sometimes the author doesn’t recognize the ways in which their unconscious beliefs and prejudices manifest themselves in their work. And in those readings, it really doesn’t matter what the author meant: it just matters what the work SAYS. Or might be read to say.

There’s also the fact that we can never truly get inside the heads of the original audience of a work once enough time has passed. it’s great to learn something about, say, Elizabethan English culture and use that to make a reading of something Shakespeare said, and those can be totally valid (and very interesting!) readings. but at the same time, one of shakespeare’s plays is going to feel completely different to a modern audience than it did to an audience at the time. For instance, changing attitudes toward race and rape and sexual equality can really change the way we read a work that’s only a couple of decades old. A reading can explain the way the original audience might have read it, or the way we read it now, or both. All of those can be valid readings, as long as it takes things like changing audience into account (for instance, if there’s a concept that’s brand new in world thought, and you’re trying to apply it to a four-hundred-year-old piece of literature, you should probably mention somewhere in your analysis that people didn’t think this way at the time the work was written. Soemtimes you can get away with not saying these disclaimers directly; other times you need ot make them. No hard and fast rules.)

In order to make a valid reading, you should make sure that you have lots of evidence from a text to back up your reading. If possible, you can support your reading with outside sources (explanations of historical cultural beliefs, for instance). You can base your reading on a theoretical framework (eg Freudian literary theory, Marxist literary theory, feminist literary theory). If your argument holds together, doesn’t have huge holes in it, and satisfies your readers, they may declare it a valid reading.

an example:

on the surface, Romeo and Juliet can be read as a dramatic tragic piece, made to move the audience, who hopefully may be identifying with romeo and/or juliet. the story is sad, we’re sad for them, we enjoy having a good cry and the catharsis that comes with it. that’s a pretty basic interpretation.

i’ve seen another interpretation, from John Greene on Youtube, that argues that Shakespeare set the play in Italy because the English at the time considered Italians to be hot-headed and vengeful and they’d never believe a revenge plot of this kind if it were set in England. And also that Romeo and Juliet were made to be teenagers in the story because only teengers would do something this insane for love, because teenage emotions are extremely heightened, and that part of the reason this is a tragedy is because NONE of this had to happen if somebody who wasn’t a teenager (or apparently wasn’t Italian lol) had stepped in and managed to impart some reason to everybody.

Both of these reading are totally valid. Both of them can also co-exist: they can both be correct at once. I can be feeling bad for romeo and juliet and be sad for them, and at the same time, part of my brain can be like, “Holy Fuck, Friar Lawrence, what the fucking fuck made you think that was good advice??!! also, kids, stop what you’re doing for five seconds and remember that you’re fifteen and thirteen and the world isn’t ending i promise.” Not only are these both valid readings, they can both be valid at once. they are not mutually exclusive.

My post-migraine brain doesn’t know whether any of this made sense or not, and honestly, part of the problem is that there are no hard-and-fast rules about literary analysis. but i hope that helped? 

[miazeklos]

love what you said about the scripts and I think I may be with you on the not-hating-D&D train. on one hand, I appreciate their unapologetic support of JC and all the content we got out of it. on the other, I do think that they fundamentally misunderstood the characters and the overall story, and that made for some questionable creative choices throughout the years. even on the JC front, I’m conflicted. I love having a version of the story where my OTP doesn’t take the beating that they do in the original, but I also think that that beating is essential to their story. I won’t bore you with the intricacies of my interpretation of asoiaf but, suffice to say, I’m not a big fan of D&D’s interpretation. that said, I used to be much more critical of D&D’s writing until I started thinking about GoT like a big budget, canon divergent, lannicest-centric fanfic. which isn’t ideal, but it’s fine. no adaptation could have pleased every subgroup of a huge fanbase and tbh it’s pretty obvious at this point that most people are just parroting the critical talking points as a way to justify the hissy fit they threw over their ships not being endgame. the average audience member doesn’t actually have an ounce of media literacy and you can tell that simply by asking them WHY the things they didn’t like about season eight* fall under “bad writing” and not under “I personally didn’t enjoy this”.

*it’s also ironic how they only ever talk about the final season, despite the fact that GoT’s storytelling problems started around season 3. it’s almost like they don’t know what “bad writing” means and don’t care to find out.

so, that’s it lol. sorry about that long ass rant it’s just that you’re literally one of the first people I’ve seen being critical of the mindless GoT hate.

much love <3

Hello! Honestly, you make a great point about the 'good writing' and 'bad writing' thing being largely affected by whether people actually liked what was happening on screen. I recognise that my own point of view might be affected by that because, again, a good bit of the show was tailor-written for me in a way that the books, as much as I enjoy them, are not, so it only makes sense that I'd approve, and that goes for the people who were dissatisfied, too. To top liking the content, I enjoy their writing style, too, so that helped.

I'd love to hear your interpretation, to be honest! They definitely have a whole different view of the characters, separate from GRRM's vision, and it does occasionally feel heavy-handed in a way fanfic does - and I say that with a lot of love in my heart, because it's what I do when writing those characters, too, even if it's obviously on a much much smaller scale.

IMO the divide mostly stems from the fact that D&D want to present the Lannisters as fundamentally right in their choices and the rest of the narrative is spun around that*, which doesn't happen in the books because, as you said, their harsh/generally bad decisions have much worse consequences in the books and they get away with essentially everything (until the very very last minute) in the show. Tyrion actively gets away with everything, even, and the twins are remembered well, and the narrative shoves all those things in your face really smugly, which, again, I enjoy and was inordinately gleeful about, but I do realise that it's not for everyone.

*One thing that immediately comes to mind is how they said that Dany killing Viserys - who, while terrible, was her caretaker as a child - was one of the earlier signs of something being wrong while also explicitly showing Cersei - who has actively been antagonistic towards her brother for the majority of their lives - sparing Tyrion's life with no real gain from it twice because none of the three of them actually want each other dead. I think one of the Ds specifically said it in the commentary for 8x04, where the above happens, and the parallel shoved my third eye open with a crowbar. I don't even know if it was a conscious decision they made, but it was... telling about why the show's narrative is what it is.

'I used to be much more critical of D&D’s writing until I started thinking about GoT like a big budget, canon divergent, lannicest-centric fanfic' I love that, haha. With a generous sprinkling of Starks! Honestly, at their core, all adaptations are just that, and you really can't win 'em all. I do think that they could have probably been at least a bit more neutral about it, but then I bounce back once I look at even a fraction of the bitter, thinly-veiled misogynistic venom fans a-la r/freefolk spill to this day, and think that this is exactly what they deserve.

That being said, I agree that the characters are fundamentally different in the show from what they are in the books and, as you said, they diverge very early on - earlier than most people would admit, so what happens in the books would have never worked once the show went on its merry way and shaped its own canon, and while the bare skeleton of the ending is very likely the same, I'm sure a lot was lost in the process and was padded with their own bias and 'lessons' for the audience, which are definitely a whole other thing from what he clearly has in mind.

I don't know if that makes much sense, but the thing that D&D had that GRRM didn't when he was in the process of writing was all the material that he has, all at once, so they sidestepped several corners that he's definitely written himself into by just doing something completely different so that they'll have a finished product even if they're done before him - which they, in the end, were. And again, I love that product, but there's no way the rest of the books will follow even remotely the same storyline, other than a few bigger points, and that's fine, too. It's a rather unique situation to be done with the adaptation before the source material and, whatever the latter ends up being, I'm sure I'll enjoy it, even if the show will now always be the true canon in my heart - for no other reason than because I love what it did with the characters, which takes us back to your point about how for most people 'good' or 'bad' is less about the actual quality and more about their tastes.

You don't need to apologise! Especially not since I ranted in response. ;D Much love right back! ;3

[gunnerpalace]

The Hueco Mundo Arc was Bad and the Beginning of the End for Bleach

(I am here lumping the Arrancar and Fake Karakura arcs into Hueco Mundo because they all sort of form a set, whereas the Early Karakura and Soul Society arcs are just Soul Society.)

Since I have now completed one of my magnum opuses by explaining how seemingly nobody has really read the Hueco Mundo arc correctly for like... 10 years... I want to generalize some observations from it about how people also take away the wrong things about the characters too.

Chad is... a Chad. He is Ichigo's bro for life. but he’s also frankly kind of a bad friend and person as a whole. He'll go and die for Ichigo, but he doesn't believe in what he's dying for. He does it out of obligation because he doesn’t really believe in Ichigo either, as both the Xcution and TYBW arcs make very clear. He does this over and over again throughout the series and you’re left with the sense he’s really just kind of purposeless and nihilistic. He is almost looking for a cause to die for.

Renji is also a Chad. Also sort of a puppy. He basically does the same thing as Chad, except for Rukia. And much like Chad does nothing to really build Ichigo up or support him, Renji does nothing to really build up or support Rukia. He’s just there. And he’s driven by his guilt over Rukia and his own attendant sense of obligation. He’s self-loathing and also seems to basically be looking to die to atone for his sins against her.

Orihime is incredibly selfish. I previously linked it, but @hashtagartistlife​ has already done a great write-up on this. Orihime inserted herself into Ichigo’s affairs for selfish reasons (to get close to Ichigo), she went to Soul Society for selfish reasons (to “protect” Ichigo when he never asked for it), she allowed herself to be taken to Hueco Mundo for selfish reasons (same), and she goes on being selfish in later arcs. She does not learn. She does not advance. She does not improve. She ultimately does everything for her own sake.

Ichigo is also incredibly selfish. Sera also has done a write-up on Ichigo, but I will take a somewhat different (if related position). She characterizes Ichigo as self-centered rather than selfish, and I feel that is painting with too broad a brush. I would say that Ichigo becomes “merely” self-centered by later in the series. To begin with, he is also selfish. His desire to protect is for himself as much as it is for those he wants to protect. He is always trying to make up for the death of his mother and his inability to save her, but on his terms and his terms alone. At first, he wants to protect only when it is convenient to him (and tells Rukia as much). Later, he wants to protect even those he shouldn’t (who are trying to kill him). It is only much later, in the Xcution arc, where he will compromise his values and desires for others (by killing Ginjou). I would say that even rescuing Rukia was as much for himself as it was for her (and he admits as much, with his “I made a promise to my soul!” line that Renji parrots to Byakuya). It is only the events of the Hueco Mundo arc and fighting Aizen that cause him to grow up and behave maturely in the Xcution arc.

Rukia is selfless to a fault. She will blame herself for things that are not her fault (e.g., Kaien’s death, Ichigo’s suffering during the Soul Society arc) and give effusively charitable interpretations and leniency where it isn’t deserved (e.g., to Orihime for her role in her rescue). At the same time, she is also scarcely less prideful than Ichigo and will likewise make equally dumb decisions in the name of it, as Sera points out, if for different reasons.

Uryuu is the only one whose priorities are fairly well-adjusted. He tried to save Rukia from Renji and Byakuya because it was the right thing to do (despite his posturing about hating Shinigami). He went to Soul Society to save Rukia. He went to Hueco Mundo to save Orihime. He generally did his best in the Xcution arc. But he is also a loner self-sacrificing dumbass who tries to take on too much, as he demonstrated in both Xcution and TYBW, he too has his fair share of pride like Ichigo and Rukia, and his well-adjusted priorities are sometimes a poor fit for the crazy situations he winds up in (almost getting him killed by Full Hollow Ichigo Zangetsu for showing mercy when he shouldn’t, among other things).

They are, all of them, idiots.

And the whole point of the Hueco Mundo arc was to show you that, and to show you how their idiocy could go wrong. Their idiocy worked for them in Soul Society through luck (read: deliberate narrative construction) and then when faced with an eerily similar (read: deliberate parallel) situation in Hueco Mundo, everything went the other way (read: deliberately deconstructed).

Hueco Mundo was designed to tear our protagonists down through the exact same mechanisms by which Soul Society built them up. It was designed to undermine them. In some cases they grew from it as characters. (Ichigo, Rukia definitely did, Uryuu and Renji sort of did, and Chad and Orihime did not at all.) But this is why I characterize Hueco Mundo as a “dark mirror” of Soul Society. It was designed specifically to subvert everything Soul Society showed, by inverting the results. (Compare with “subverting expectations” for the sake of it, a la The Force Awakens vs. The Last Jedi, wherein things were not inverted but simply discarded, for good or ill. This is much more “stylistic” in comparison, and is designed to serve a point beyond itself.)

So... why?

I recently said this in response to another one of Sera’s meta posts:

I would argue that Bleach is only superficially more cohesive [than Naruto]. It starts with Ichigo as a nobody who tries to change things (to save Rukia) because nobody else will, and ends up with him being shoehorned into everything by everyone else as the chosen one while they all abdicate any real responsibility or role. It completely inverts itself in almost every capacity for no real meaning or reason.

Bleach really only makes cohesive sense to me as Kubo longform refuting the Monomyth in various ways; at first by splitting up his protagonist, then by inverting and mirroring the first effort, and then finally through this weird repudiation and assassination of his characters. “Fuck your hopes, beliefs, and dreams,” is one of the few arcs I can discern to the whole series.

Let me unpack that second statement.

The monomyth, or the hero’s journey, is a template of framework for understanding tales. The most commonly cited form was developed by Joseph Campbell in 1949 in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It has a structure sort of like this:

There are some variations (e.g., Campbell puts the Gift of the Goddess much earlier). Let’s use Campbell’s structure and see how it fits early Bleach:

The call to adventure: Rukia's arrival.

Refusal of the call: Ichigo refuses to do her Shinigami duties.

Supernatural aid: Rukia turns him into a Shinigami with her glove. He goes on to learn the basics with her at his side, using various supernatural tools.

Crossing the threshold: Rukia's abduction by Renji and Byakuya (the guardians of the threshold). (Yoruichi is the helper, Kisuke is the mentor.)

Belly of the whale: the dangai and the kotetsu, and the entry into Soul Society

The road of trials: Ichigo running around Soul Society, then fighting Ikkaku, Renji, and Kenpachi.

The meeting with the goddess: Literally Yoruichi, Flash Goddess, giving Ichigo the flying wing and later the cloak, and also later his tenshintai training.

Woman as temptress: again, also literally Yoruichi, in the nude and tempting him.

Atonement with the Father/Abyss: Literally Ichigo fighting with “Old Man” “Zangetsu” to learn bankai.

Apotheosis: Learning bankai.

The Ultimate Boon: Rescuing Rukia.

Refusal of the Return: Staying in Soul Society for a week, not really wanting to leave Rukia there.

The Magic Flight: Having to run back through the dangai.

Rescue from Without: Kisuke saving them from plummeting to earth.

The Crossing of the Return Threshold: Ichigo going back home.

Master of Two Worlds: Taking his body back.

Freedom to Live: Having summer break.

Well, would you look at that? It’s basically beat-for-beat a perfect match. (You could interpret 12-17 a bit differently but you would get essentially the same overall result.)

If it’s such a perfect match, then how do I claim this is a refutation of the monomyth? Because Ichigo is only one half of the protagonist. Rukia is the other half. This hero’s journey... is really the journey of two people, and it is really a quest to find self-worth. That alone makes it a subversion of the monomyth.

Then we have the Hueco Mundo arc, which subverts and undercuts all of this. Not only was the victory incomplete but the journey will be repeatedly darkly, “first as tragedy then as farce.” As I said, all the behaviors that worked in Soul Society fail in Hueco Mundo.

The point is to drive home that having 16-year-olds save the world is stupid. Relying on teenage child soldiers is stupid. They got lucky the first time. Because teenagers are idiots. (Rukia and Renji, despite being somewhere between about 70 and 150 years old, certainly don’t act their age, so they can be counted too.)

Now, lest you think I’m being ageist here, it is rather obvious that Bleach is unreserved in its criticism: adults are idiots too. (Real life certainly bears this out.) But it’s harder to see that in the Soul Society and Hueco Mundo arcs unless you actually pay attention and think about it.

The arc that makes that explicitly clear is the Xcution arc, where we are again relying on 17-year-olds (whom almost entirely fail) and a bunch of absentee adults who shirk their obligations and responsibilities only to be pretty stupid when they do finally engage and continue to refuse to accept responsibility. (Isshin is a fine example, but by no means the only one.)

Then we have more of the same with TYBW, and it ends with nobody getting any satisfaction and everyone doing what they hate, in direct contradiction to their stated desires and their characters in general. (I could find many more analyses of this by myself and others but I can’t be bothered at the moment.) Literally everyone’s character was assassinated, including Aizen’s, Isshin’s, and Ryuuken’s.

So, we have a subversion of the monomyth through splitting the protagonist, we have a dark inversion of the monomyth to undercut it, and then we have the thorough destruction of our protagonists and authority figures which ultimately ends with them all being absolutely and completely compromised.

Add this on to my constant observations (the most recent being in a post on Yoruichi) that no one is allowed to be friends in Bleach, that no romantic relationships are allowed to exist in Bleach without death, and that family structures are always strained and estranged within Bleach, and what do you get? A treatise on the absolute and total breakdown of all bonds and connections, and the forsaking of all ambitions and dreams. Bleach is not a heroic tale, but a cautionary warning to make your peace with your lot in life, as everyone in it does.

It is the anti-shounen. It is the anti-monomyth. It is The Big Downer Series. It is designed, very carefully and thoughtfully, to make you feel bad, mistrust authority, and give up hope. No one and nothing is reliable, not even yourself: the world will betray you until you betray yourself too.

That... is the only consistent and persistent theme of Bleach as it actually exists as a whole. It was Kubo spending 15 years telling you to go fuck yourself.

And it really started terminally on that trajectory with the Hueco Mundo arc. It didn’t have to be that way. The Soul Society arc’s clever subversion of the monomyth could’ve been just that: a clever subversion and nothing more. Hueco Mundo is when Bleach started to suck because it’s when Bleach became about beating its readers down and making them feel bad. Surprise, it’s also when the readership started to drop.

(Now you could still save Bleach after Aizen’s defeat, but it’s messy because you’ve got that much more baggage again to deal with. But it ends sufficiently abruptly that you can do it, which is the whole point of like, Demons of the Sun and Moon, even if my thinking at the time I started that was not so explicit and clear as it is now. The question is: why would you want to when you can just cut back to earlier?)

tl;dr Bleach from the end of Soul Society onward is just Kubo increasingly desperately jacking himself off onto the rest of us about how much the world sucks, and everything from Hueco Mundo onward is compromised shit designed to push that agenda ahead of everything else, including telling a good story.

[yaboylevi]

There are some things that caught my attention more than others at the SnK final manga exhibition, and I want to write down my thoughts about them, in the hopes of making sense of it all. I’ll begin with what I dubbed as the “Paths Room” and probably write something about the others, too, in the near future.

The Paths Room is the last room before the Final Sounds Room, which should chronologically (in the manga’s story) be the last one. See, the exhibit is structured in a sort of chronological order, starting from the beginning of Eren/Reiner’s life, leading to the main events of the manga, the characters, this Paths Room and the Final sounds.

At the entrance of this room, there’s one of Kruger’s lines written in white on a black wall (top, left corner):

“Anyone can become a God or a Devil. All it takes is for someone to claim it for it to be true.”

After that, the room is organized this way: the wall on the opposite side has the “paths world” spread out. The one on the visitors’ immediate right has some lines and moments lined up in a very specific way, as if they want to tell us something important.

It’s like a sort of journey through some pivotal points of Eren’s story. It feels like an omniscient being is guiding Eren - and the visitor - to a final dilemma, which is also what the story is at, at this point, imo (it’s been there for some time, to be honest). I had the feeling that the “omniscient being” could be the girl in the Paths, but enough of my speculations. Let’s get into the room!

From right to left (on the white wall): “By now you already know. That in this world there isn’t just one [Truth].”

On the black panel that leads to Eren’s conversation with Reiner, there are Eren’s words in chapter 100: “I’m the same as you. Inside the walls and on the other side of the ocean…we’re all the same”

(On the white wall again) “There’s only one sure thing, and that is that you were born here. That’s why, keep choosing your own truth. That’s why, keep advancing until the life you were given will have exhausted its flame.”

Then another black panel, before leading to Eren’s "if we don’t fight, we can’t win” scene in chapter 106: “Maybe, I’ve been like this since the day I was born. I will keep advancing, until my enemies are destroyed.”

(Again on a black panel) “And that’s because since the day we were born, we are free.” Eren’s defiant glare from chapter 117 is placed in the middle of it.

Then, moving along to the Paths wall, Carla’s page is accompanied by two white speech bubbles: “This child is already great. Because he was born into this world.”

And finally…at the end of the wall, there are two black speech bubbles, they are Eren’s words in chapter 115, the ones he parrots back at Zeke: “There’s no greater salvation/relief than never being born into this world.”

So, the black parts inside the room read like this:

“I’m the same as you. Inside the walls and on the other side of the ocean…we’re all the same. Maybe, I’ve been like this since the day I was born. I will keep advancing, until my enemies are destroyed. And that’s because since the day we were born, we are free.”

Then, the Paths/”dilemma” part:

“There’s no greater salvation/relief than never being born into this world.”

In white, which are the parts I feel are a message from a divine being (or a demon, the Devil of all Earth?):

“By now you already know. That in this world there isn’t just one [Truth]. There’s only one sure thing, and that is that you were born here. That’s why, keep choosing your own truth. That’s why, keep advancing until the life you were given will have exhausted its flame.”

Then, in the Paths:

“This child is already great. Because he was born into this world.”

My conclusion? The duality of Man. Eren (and everyone, really) has the potential to be a positive character, but he has also a darker side. Well, Isayama has shown it plenty of times - about everything, not only Eren.

And I’ve always felt that what Kruger said about Gods and Devils was fundamentally important and one of the focal points in his conversation with Grisha, because it really is true. More specifically, in regards to the story and Eren, because I thought (and still think) Eren would end up being seen as either a God or a Devil, depending on how his story is told. And I mean by the characters in the story, and the readers. At this point I don’t think Isayama wants to give us an answer about it, I think he really wants to represent this duality of the truth (this is something that came up throughout the exhibition, but I’ll make another post about it).

We have seen this “duality of the truth” a year and a half ago during Willy’s speech. As everyone already probably knows, Willy’s play was animated, voiced and projected onto a big wall, it felt like we were really there in Liberio.

I found the whole play laughable and distasteful when reading the manga, and while listening to it at the exhibit, while Willy was proclaiming it at the top of his lungs, it rekindled the anger I felt when reading the chapter. Now maybe even more so, because Isayama has been trying (a bit too) hard to paint Eren as evil, and some parts of the fandom even gobbled it all down, using the same manipulating speech Willy used - probably without even realizing. The whole point is that the Truth is easily manipulated. We have seen this during the Uprising. We have seen this again with Willy. And I see it in fandom. I see it in the current manga, everyone is following desperately their own interpretation of the truth. Everyone has their own reality. I think some philosopher talked about this very same issue, but I forgot who it is.

I also find it quite meaningful that Kruger’s line prefaced a whole room based on opposites: blacks and whites are the colours used, and the themes are pretty contrasting as well, as there is acceptance vs rejection of life, the need to kill for the right to live, the same entity as a God and a Devil. Reality is one, but the truths are many, because they are subject to interpretations, and choices.

And it ties in with Eren’s character, I think. The room is mainly about him, after all.

Eren has been wrestling with all of this, alone. He has seen and experienced so many perspectives in his mind and he needs to choose for himself. He probably already did.

The text on the white wall, as if it was a message from an inhabitant of the Paths (of life?), at the end of the day basically says: “The truth is fickle, it depends on who retells it. So keep choosing your own truth, stay true to yourself and go on, until the very end.”

Finally, from his body language during his conversation with Zeke in chapter 115, it seemed pretty obvious to me that Eren doesn’t really agree with Zeke’s stance on life. So I really do wonder what’s the deal with those final parting words at the end of the wall. They made me feel uneasy. Perhaps, those black bubbles were mainly visual and textual contrast with Carla’s words, a clash of ideas. It was pretty cool and it gave me the chills, so it was a success, afterall.

[fuanteinasekai]

Hello, all! I have a fun little bit of translation today. This is mostly a few things that were lost in translation in the recent “movie” special chapter. I don’t think this chapter is really the spoilery sort, but just in case anyone is really strict about spoilers, I’ve put it behind a cut.

If you haven’t read the summary, the story basically goes likes this: Nishimura, Kitamoto, Natsume, and Tanuma go to Natori’s new movie. It’s apparently the second in a series about a detective. I’m unclear on whether it's supposed to be a period piece or just ridiculously wealthy people in fancy clothes, but I’m pretty sure Midorikawa-Sensei had a lot of fun. The power goes out mid-movie, so the boys decide to talk about the mystery and try to figure it out before they watch the rest of the movie. In the movie, a wealthy young woman goes to a detective (Natori) because she’s concerned about her wealthy fiancé’s parrot, which says creepy things like “I could kill the next one too.” The detective discovers that her fiancé had been engaged to wealthy heiresses three times previously, but all died in accidents before they could get married. (Money money money). Nishimura, Kitamoto, and Tanuma give their theories in turn while Natsume tries to ignore yōkai, then the power comes back on and they go to finish the movie.

So there are basically two parts to this little meta. One is the Meaningful Names and the other is The Subtext.

First, as the scanlators mentioned, Natori’s character’s name basically translates to the Japanese equivalent of “Sparkle McSparkleson,” which I love. However, all the names in the movie are actually meaningful!

First, we have the fiancé’s name: 黄田稔 or “Kida Minoru." His family name “Kida” means “yellow [rice] field,” which could be a reference to his money since gold is the “yellow metal” 黄金. Aside from this obvious possibility, there are too many “yellow” associations to narrow down. His given name “Minoru” however is very clear: it means “to bear fruit” or “to ripen” and can be used metaphorically like “our efforts finally bore fruit.”

The parrot’s name エンジュ “Enju” refers to the “Japanese pagoda tree.” More importantly, however, it has a yōkai association! This is a rather local story, but it’s well-known enough to appear in Wikipedia’s list of yōkai:

槐の邪神

山梨県南巨摩郡身延町と早川町の境にある身延山の槐の大木の側に粗末な社があり、そこに邪神が棲みついており、日が暮れてからその前を通るときに金目のものをお供えしなければ、祟られると恐れられていたという。

“The Evil Enju Spirit”

“There is a great Enju tree on the Mount Minobu that divides the towns of Minobu and Hayakawa in Minamikoma District in Yamanashi Prefecture. There is a humble shrine on the side of that tree, and it’s said that an evil spirit resides there. If one passes in front of the shrine after the sun goes down and does not make an offering of valuables, it is feared that one will be cursed [with personal disaster].”

*Note: “valuables” specifically refers to things that are worth money, here, not things that are valuable for sentimental reasons.

So yeah. The parrot was named for a yōkai that wants to steal your money. Because of course it was.

Next! All the women were named for flowers. This is unlikely enough in Japanese that it is Definitely On Purpose.

The client is Benikawa Ranko. Benikawa means “Crimson River,” which conjures up… a bit of an impression in English. However, this is not the red that’s associated with blood in Japanese, though you could technically use it that way if you want. “Beni” is associated with feminine beauty, autumn, but especially with cosmetics. (This is the same “beni” as the yōkai with the butterfly on her face.) It’s the color of deep red lips and blush. It’s also associated with the ring finger! 

We don’t get family names for the other women, so I’ll just put all their given names together, in the order they were affianced:

Sumire = Violet

Tsubaki = Camellia

Botan (Tanuma’s suspect) = [Tree] Peony

Ranko (the client) = Orchid[ette]

Obviously this floral theme invites suspicion of hanakotoba, or “the language of flowers.” So I did look it up. But for the record, I find any sort of flower language interpretation extremely sketchy. In both English and Japanese, lists are inconsistent and frequently unsourced, and many flowers have multiple meanings even when they are sourced. Even if you knew which list someone was going off of, you wouldn’t know which meaning they were alluding to. The only real way to interpret flower language is super obvious context or Word of God. We don’t have either here, so I’m not going to attempt to put together a story based on these flowers. However, I’ll go ahead and list their meanings for those who want to play around:

Violet: honesty/faithfulness, small [true] happiness, small love, modest/humble joy, pastoral (i.e. rural) happiness, innocent romance  [this one hits on a sort of purity/innocence vibe a lot]

Camellia: ideal love, unassuming/modest love, unassuming/modest virtue [I think the “ideal love” is related to the rest in that it presumes nothing from its object]

Tree Peony: bashfulness, wealth, kingly personality [this one was all over the map, but “bashful” was the most common]

Orchid: unexpected happiness, unchanging love; white = purity, pink = love confession

These are taken from Japanese hanakotoba sites, with the most common/agreed upon meanings coming first. Note: the orchid was actually a pain, because it was split up by type and some sites didn’t orchids it at all. Have fun!

Next is the ~subtext~. Now, this is much more elusive than translating names, but it’s bothering me so I’m going to write about it.

First of all, I love this story. It’s such a perfect encapsulation of each boy’s individual personalities, I want to frame it and hang it up. If someone asked me for a story that illustrated the differences between Nishimura, Kitamoto, Tanuma, and Natsume as quickly as possible, I would give them this.

First we have poor Natsume, who’s so distracted by yōkai it’s his answer to everything, and he can’t concentrate on any of the evidence.

Then there’s Nishimura. He’s a Natori stan who’s intensely defensive, but he’s also a bit girl crazy, to the point he refuses to even consider that a “beautiful woman” like Ranko could be a killer. He assumes that since all of Minoru-san’s fiancees have died, Minoru-san must be their killer. 

Kitamoto calls Nishimura out for having such a shallow, simplistic theory, and points out that Minoru-san can’t be after their money if he kills them before he has legal access to their inheritance. 裏を読め！he orders. This phrase translates to “read the reverse side” and refers to understanding what is unsaid, especially what is being hidden. In other words, “read deeper!” 

This is a mystery movie, so of course Kitamoto has a point. But I can’t help but notice that Nishimura is being told to think a little harder about a story in a special that’s attached to that story. You know. That one. The one I wrote Meta #3 about. This doesn’t make me frustrated at all. *angrily crushes tea bag*

Kitamoto’s more thoughtful than Nishimura, but still gets hung up on the pretty women. Natori’s character is so heterosexual, Kitamoto can’t believe he wouldn’t chase after a pretty woman like Ranko, even if Ranko is engaged. Nishimura is highly offended by this slur on Natori’s character Natori’s character’s character.

Then we get Tanuma. Tanuma’s theory is the most complex and solid, and even has that twist of irony that mysteries love. Tanuma is also the least confident because he’s Tanuma. But what really gets me is that in order for Tanuma to figure out the twist, he had to be ignoring all the beautiful women. Ignoring them so hard, in fact, he’s looking at the background of their photographs instead of at the women themselves. To Tanuma, they’re not objects of lust, they’re just people.

It’s also Tanuma who hopes that Ranko-san and Minoru-san will be able to find happiness, now that “they don’t have to fear for each other” anymore. Using a fancy, literary word for “fear.” Because despite Nishimura’s fantasies about pretty girls, Tanuma is the true romantic.

And then, in the end, they all go to see the end of the movie and check their work. 

Because it’s not like I was already under the impression we were near(ish) the end or anything.

*twitch*

[ruminativerabbi]

Defending Dr. King’s Legacy

It’s hard to imagine anyone arguing with the notion that freedom of the press will always be among the most basic features of life in any democratic state. And, indeed, ever since December 15, 1791, when the first ten amendments to the Constitution were formally adopted, this has been true with respect to our American republic not merely philosophically but legally as well. That, surely, is as it should be. But, just as freedom of the press exists specifically to permit the publication of even the least popular ideas, so do citizens have the parallel right—perhaps even the obligation—to respond vigorously to published essays rooted in ignorance, fantasy, and a prejudicial worldview. And it is with that thought in mind that I wish to respond to a truly outrageous op-end piece about Israel—and, more precisely, American support for Israel—published in the New York Times last Sunday in which the author appears to have no understanding of ancient or modern history, no sympathy for any of Israel’s security needs, no ability critically to evaluate even the most baseless Palestinian claims about the history of the land, and no interest even in getting the facts straight.  

The author, Michelle Alexander, is formally employed as an opinion columnist at the Times. And her essay, published on Martin Luther King weekend, presented itself as the result of the author’s brave decision finally “to break the silence” regarding the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It’s hard to imagine what silence the author imagines she has boldly broken by daring to criticize Israel viciously and in print—just lately the number of opinion pieces hostile to Israel published by her own newspaper gives lie to that notion easily. Nor was there anything at all new or groundbreaking in her essay, which mostly just parroted the same propagandistic claptrap the enemies of Israel cite regularly to justify their anti-Israel stance. But most outrageous of all was the suggestion that she was somehow keeping faith with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy by finding the courage to speak out against Israel. That last point, then, is the first I will address.

I am personally too young to have been present in 1968 when, just a week before his horrific death, Dr. King came to the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, my own professional organization, and spoke these words:

Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity and the right to use whatever sea lanes it needs. I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.

Those were his final remarks about Israel, never revised or updated. How could he have? He was dead a week later! And, with his horrific end, his unqualified support for the right of Israel to defend itself against its enemies entered history as part of his formidable legacy, a legacy that touched on many areas of American domestic and foreign policy and not solely on the questions related to civil rights, non-violent protest, and race relations for which he is justifiably the most famous.

In her essay, Alexander broke no new ground. She seemed ignorant about Israel—about its history, its foreign policy, its long history of one-sided overtures to the Palestinians, its withdrawal from Gaza, and the restrained way it has responded not to dozens or hundreds but thousands of separate acts of terror aimed specifically at the civilian population over these last years alone—and neither did she seem to know, or care, how it was that Israel came to control the West Bank in the first place. But when boiled down to its basics, she seemed unable to move past her sense that the Jews who founded the State of Israel were colonialist interlopers from Europe who were intent on doing to the indigenous Arab population what the Belgians in that same era were attempting to do to the Congolese, the British to the Indians, and the French to the Algerians: seize other people’s land and then ignore the presence of those people other than when it came to subduing them and forcing them to serve their new masters. As I read it, that was the core of her argument.

The fact that the Palestinians have refused offer after offer to negotiate a fair, just peace seems to be unknown to her. Perhaps more to the point, the fact that there is nothing at all preventing the Palestinian leadership from doing what they should have done in 1947 and finally declaring a Palestinian State, then negotiating its borders with the neighbors and getting down to the business of nation building—this too seems not to have occurred to Alexander, who finds it courageous to support the notion of boycotting Israel (and who is paradoxically appalled by the publication of the names of individuals who support the BDS movement, although you would think she would be proud for their names—and her own name—to be known widely in that context). And she certainly has no interest in responding thoughtfully (or at all) to the inconvenient fact that the Arabs, hardly the indigenes, came to the Land of Israel in a series of invasions in the seventh century CE in the course of which they successfully wrested control of the land from its then Byzantine masters. (Nor was the Land of Israel the sole target of the Caliph Umar and his hordes back in the day: the Arab armies, true colonialists precisely in the style of the age of imperialism, also overran modern-day Turkey, Cyprus, Armenia, and most of Northern Africa.) On the other hand, there is every imaginable kind of evidence—literary, archeological, genetic, epigraphical, and numismatic—to support the argument that the ancestors of today’s Jewish people were present in the land in hoariest antiquity and have remained present, one way or the other, ever since. But of that truth, Alexander has nothing at all to say.

It’s true that there have been Arabs living in the Land of Israel for many centuries. But the detail Alexander passes quickly by is precisely that there is nothing at all preventing the outcome she clearly dreams to see: the establishment of a Palestinian state in the Middle East. If they will it to happen, then it will surely be no dream! (I’ve lost track of how many nations already recognize the non-existent State of Palestine as though it were an actual political entity.) Yet all the misery of the Palestinians, so Michelle Alexander, is exclusively the fault of Israel. The Jordanians, who ruled over the West Bank for nineteen years and kept the Palestinians interned in refugee camps, are not mentioned. The extraordinary acts of violence directed against Israel—the tens of thousands of missiles fired at civilian towns and villages within Israel from Gaza, for example—these too are left unreferenced. Perhaps the author considers each of those missiles to constitute a valid expression of political rage. But I would only begrudgingly respect her right such an opinion if she were to write similarly about the people who brought down the Twin Towers on 9/11—that they weren’t terrorists or violent miscreants, just brave martyrs making a searing political statement.  

Alexander makes much of the fact that Martin Luther King apparently cancelled plans to travel to Israel after the Six Day War in 1967. She cites a phone call—but without saying to whom it was made or where recorded—according to which King based his decision on the fear that the Arab world would surely interpret his visit as an indication that he supported everything Israel did to win the war. That King had misgivings about this or that aspect of Israeli military or foreign policy is hardly a strong point—I myself  harbor grave misgivings about many Israeli policies, including both domestic and non-domestic ones—but infinitely more worth citing are Reverend King’s remarks the following fall at Harvard. Some of the students with whom he was dining began to criticize Zionism itself as a political philosophy, to which criticism King responded by asserting that to repudiate the value or validity of Zionism as a valid political movement is, almost by definition, to embrace anti-Semitism: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism!” And King’s final statement about Israel, cited above, certainly reads clearly enough for me!

To take advantage of the freedom of the press guaranteed by the Constitution implies a certain level of responsibility to the facts. To be unaware that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 is possibly merely to be uninformed and lazy in one’s research. To write about the West Bank as though it were the site of a formerly independent Palestinian state now occupied by Israeli aggressors is either to be willfully biased or abysmally ill informed. But to write about Israeli checkpoints designed to keep terrorists from entering Israel without as much as nodding to the reason Israelis might reasonably and fully rationally fear a resurgence of violence directed specifically against the civilian population—that crosses the line from ignorance and poor preparation into the terrain of anti-Semitic rhetoric that finds the notion of Jewish people doing what it takes to defend themselves against their would-be murderers repulsive…or, at the very least, morally suspect.

I have been a subscriber to the New York Times forever. My parents were also subscribers. In my boyhood home, the phrase “the paper” invariably referenced The Times. (If my father meant The Daily Mirror or The Post, he said so. But “the” paper without further qualification was The Times.) Much of what I grew up knowing about the world and thinking about the world came directly from its editorial and, eventually, its op-ed pages; that the writing in “the” paper was presumed unbiased, informed, and honest went without saying. That, however, was then. And this is now. I haven’t cancelled my subscription. Not yet, at any rate. And I really do believe that people should be free to express even the least popular views in print without fear of reprisal. But when someone crosses the line from harsh criticism of Israel to propose that there is something reprehensible about Israel defending itself vigorously against its enemies—that is where I stop reading and try to calm down by looking at the obituaries or the crossword puzzle instead.

[bekaroth-reads]

Who is Harvey the parrot? (Rusty Lake)

One of the characters that had me thinking the most in the games was Harvey. The first thing that caught my attention was that fact that even though the bird is named Havey, she is female (shown by the fact that she can lay eggs. She has been in almost all of the games, and while some could argue that the developers are just reusing assets, I think there's a reason for her being there, especially in the later games. The first game that she was in was Cube Escape: Seasons, where we see her alive for at least 17 years, but perhaps more seeing as she appears to be fully grown at the start of the game. To understand if this was a long time for her to live, I needed to see if I could find what type of parrot she was. Harvey has a unique design, but I was eventually able to track down that she was more than likely an alexandrine parrot, or at least something similar. Her color is basically reverse of a typical alexandrine, but I take it like how Scooby-Doo doesn't quite look like a Great Dane. That being said, alexandrine parrots typically live for 40 years, making Harvey's 17 years realistic. However, as started before, Harvey was alive before seasons started, and was fully grown. While I could take the time to go through each one of her appearances to try to gain her actual age, it would be much quicker to point out that 1) Rusty Lake is a hotspot for supernatural activities, and 2) Harvey is absolutely a part of it. This is best proven in the games where you play as her, Harvey's Box, and Hotel. In Harvey's Box she is shown having extremely high brain functions, even for the type of bird she is, by thinking in full sentences and being able to find a way to defeat the corrupted soul that comes to take her. In Hotel she is shown as a more person-like figure than a pet parrot, even taking on the role of butler. Being alive thought Hotel and Roots makes her well above the 40 years that are typical. But, just how long has Harvey been around? In my personal opinion, Paradise is the first chronologically of all of the Rusty Lake games. One of the extra achievements has Harvey appear in a windowsill. This means that she was alive then, actually before, because, like in seasons, she is already fully grown. But, where could a fully grown parrot have come from? The Island of Paradise was far out into Rusty Lake which is surrounded by a large forest. The area does not appear to be one that parrots would be natural too, but the distance of Paradise from everything else makes it where it is highly unlikely for somebody's domesticated bird to be able to reach. The answer to this is that Harvey is from Paradise, or rather was from Paradise. Think of what happens at the end of Rusty Lake: Paradise. The rest of the family sacrificed Jakob and turned into beings that were like the masks that they were wearing, resulting in the characters that are in Rusty Lake: Hotel, including Jakob as Mr. Owl. The thing is, Harvey, whom we have seen as a being similar in Hotel, shows up in the game before the sacrifice of Jakob occurred. If we were to assume that a similar process would have had to be done in order to make her into one of these beings, the she had to have been someone sacrificed before. The most likely candidate, in my opinion, is Jakob's mother. I know that she is seen wearing the owl mask at some point, but if those really were important masks that they were saving for a ritual, why use it on someone that would only make that effects last for a little while? Everything that happened on the island was in line with the plagues on Egypt, the last of which is the death of the first born son. So, even if she was a first born, she would be a first born daughter. So, what do you do when you don't have the actual thing you need? You imitate the desired item. You copy the original, and hope that it will work. That is why her mask ended up being a parrot instead of an owl. Parrots are known for their mimicking abilities, an animal that reflected her imitating the ritual that should have been done on her son. This could also be the reason that even though she seems to be an Alexandrian parrot, her colors are a little off. That was because she is based more off of the parrot mask than an actual parrot. The same goes for all of the other animal beings. You can tell what they are, and you might even be able to find a close real life equivalent, but you'll be hard pressed to find an actual feature for feature example because they are just interpretations of the animals. This also asks the question; how is Harvey Jakob's mother when we see the mother's corrupted soul? This is something that I believe happens with the ritual. This is the best way that I can describe it: In the original Dragon Ball series, there was a man that sought to be rid of all the bad that was inside of him, but in doing so he split himself into two people, the good and the evil, rather than just being himself with out the want to do wrong. This is what happens with the ritual held by Jakob's family. The soul splits into the good memories(the animal creatures) and the bad(corrupted souls). My proof for this is the fact that in Rusty Lake: Hotel, you can see Mr. Rabbit's corrupt soul while he is still standing alive in the room. It is the idea of looking at your reflection in the water. That is why the more defined personalities are living one the top of the lake while that blurred, corrupted souls are almost always four at the bottom of the lake. Back to Harvey, though. The last thing that I really want to touch on is her name. Why would a female bird be named a typically male name? The meaning of the name Harvey is along the lines of, "being ready to fight," or, "a warrior". This fits her personality as she was willing to give up her life for her son, and continued to help him after death, showing him the way to continue in another form like she did, and helping him gain vengeance on those that wronged him. This was pretty long, but thank you if you read it. I would like to know what you all thought if you would like to let me know. :)

[leadingwithoutlimits]

LEARNING TO SWITCH OFF 'THAT' VOICE IN OUR HEAD

Managing our time effectively is a challenge that many of us wrestle with on a daily basis. There are many strategies to doing this which I cover in other articles including creating effective boundaries, learning to say no and a wide range of techniques to save time and ensure you don’t duplicate effort. Once you master these techniques you would assume that you have cracked the issue of managing your time well, yet many people find the time they have free is dominated by that voice in their head.

The voice comes in a variety of guises.

There is the voice that constantly nags about things you have done or said which you realise with hindsight, it would have been better if you had hadn’t. Why didn’t you bite your tongue and remain silent? Why did you behave in that way when you knew there would be negative consequences? “Why did you……?”

Then there is the voice which harangues you because you failed to say what you really think or you wish you told someone you loved them or were sorry while you had the chance. It tells you that should have stood up to your partner, parents or workplace bully. “Why didn’t you …..?”

There is the voice that endlessly reminds you about all the jobs which need to be done, discusses all the options, gets you planning marketing strategies or rehearsing the interview you are going to attend in a few days time. “And then there’s …. And don’t forget ….”

There is the voice that constantly tells you that you are never good enough, that you have failed yet again and that it is no surprise because you have so little worth. “You are stupid…. worthless….. fat…… “

My personal experience and work with countless clients have demonstrated that the size and significance of the perceived issue appear to have little or no significance in relation to the volume and persistence of the voice in our heads. The voice is often at its quietest when we are busy. It only begins to be a real problem for the majority of people in their personal time and for many of those is at its loudest in the dark lonely hours when they are desperately trying to sleep.

Do we simply have to put up with this voice? Are we destined to be victims to the broken down record which goes around and around in our head?

The answer is No! As in all things we have a choice. If you choose to deal with the problem, there are many things you can do. You will need to experiment as different things work for different people in different circumstances.

If the voice persists or if you find your personal time or sleep is being affected you may find that working with an experienced coach can be really helpful

What is that voice? Many say that the voice in our head is our unconscious mind. It can be useful to think of it in this way, as there is usually an underlying reason which explains why we are hearing the voice and for what it is trying to say. Deal with that and the voice is easy to manage. Create a dialogue with your unconscious mind, it may feel strange but it can work really well.

The strategies fall into several categories:

1) The Mountain Or Molehill Test

The passage of time makes a huge difference to the way we feel about things. An incident that feels like the end of the world can appear insignificant after a few hours, days or weeks. If you have something which is really getting to you, one quick way to silence the voice in your head is to consider the following questions:

In the grand scheme of things is this a mountain or a molehill situation?

Will this incident feel as significant tomorrow? In a weeks time? Six weeks? Next Year? If you were at the end of your life looking back?

At what point will you be able to look back and laugh or at least smile about this?

How long will it take before this becomes a great story to tell a mate over a drink or dinner?

If it is going to become a molehill in a while why let it be a mountain?

Why not give it molehill status now?

2) Interrupt The Flow

The brain works rather like a record or CD. Thought patterns work like the patterns ingrained into the disc. Even though vinyl records have now become a collector's pieces we still use the expression “going on like a broken record” to describe how thoughts seem to stick and constantly repeat themselves in our head. If you wanted to stop a record or CD delivering its usual pattern of sounds you simply need to interrupt the pattern on the disc by scratching them with a sharp object. We can interrupt the constant stream of negative thoughts or sounds. There are a number of ways to do this:

Interrupt the pattern by doing something different. When you can do something very different which also changes your physiology the results are far more powerful. The results are even more profound when it is something that makes you laugh. Next time you are feeling low, when the voice is at its most insistent get-up and try a variety of silly walks around the house. Clients report that having physically done this a few times not only does it work really well but that just the thought of doing it becomes enough to break the pattern as it makes them smile.

Exercise can be really helpful. The change of activity and release of endorphins which exercise releases can help put things in perspective. Asking your unconscious mind to find a solution or to undertake the mountain/molehill strategy before starting to run or cycle can be incredibly helpful too.

Watch or listen to something which makes you laugh, go and cook or make something, work in the garden. Changing your physical state will change your mental state too.

3) Tell The Voice To Shut The _____ Up!

For some simply telling the voice that it is not being helpful, telling it to SHUT UP! is enough. If that isn't working visualise a large switch or dial and imagine turning it off and locking it into place can help. It is in the making the decision to take control of things that actually makes the difference for them.

One of my clients referred to her voice as 'The parrot'. I asked her how people quieten caged pet parrots, put a cloth over the cage was her response. She then smiled and said if that doesn't work I can shoot the bl---y parrot! This became her favourite method. She described how she visualised a cartoon where she shot the imaginary parrot with a blunderbuss initially but if the parrot regrouped in true cartoon fashion she then used a cannon. It made her laugh and the voice was quietened!

4) Learn The Lesson

When the voice is nagging you for things you have or haven’t done one strategy is to ask yourself what the underlying lesson behind the voice might be?

Ask yourself: what learning could I take from this situation that would be helpful in the future? Think about what situation has given rise to that nagging voice. Recreate that situation in your mind where you create a different behaviour, one which you know would lead to success. What would that look and sound like? How would it make you feel? What could you learn from this? Thank the voice for giving you the opportunity to learn and let your unconscious mind know you have taken the learning forward so it can now stop.

5) Compartmentalizing

Learning to compartmentalise can help you manage the voice in your head. Visualise putting the issue/s bothering you into a briefcase or a box. This is particularly helpful if you find it hard to switch off from work and the boundaries between work and personal time have become blurred. Create a compartment for work thinking - one which you will pick up again as you start to work the next day.

If you are travelling to and from work you can use the journey to create a separation between 'work' time and personal time. Create a point in the journey where you always make the changeover. Some find they need a neutral space between work and home. Use a section of your journey like the air chamber in a submarine which acts as the buffer between the sea and the inside cabin can help.

For those who are working from home, it is important to create some demarcation - some of my clients have found that creating a specific routine that becomes the marker between personal time and professional time helps. Music can be really helpful - playing a piece of music that represents the shift can help. What is important is that you create something meaningful for you.

6) Change Your Perception

Perception is everything. You filter everything which happens in your life and interpret it according to your values, belief system and prior experiences. Understanding that your personal perception is not a guarantee that you are always right, can be very helpful. How you interpret another person’s response makes an incredible difference to how you feel and to the voice in your head. Be open to the possibility that there are alternative rationales to the one you have initially created. It is not always about you.

7) Do Something With It

You are being kept awake, that voice in your head is constantly telling you about all the things which need doing or is bursting with ideas. It is far better to get up and capture the ideas, create a list of all the things which need to be done or write the letter saying sorry or stating your case. Once you have done everything which can be done practically at this time you are far more likely to be able to sleep. You can take any actions needed the next morning.

8) Let Go Of Regrets - It’s Too Late

A number of clients have talked about the voice which constantly reinforces the regrets that they didn’t tell loved ones, who have died, how much they loved them. Writing a letter where they could say everything they wished they had said, offered a positive way forward.

Doing so and actually verbalising how you truly feel to someone else can also be helpful. I believe that learning the lesson so that we take the time to value loved ones and friends and to thank people for the difference they make to our lives in the NOW (even though it may feel embarrassing) can have a profound effect on not only silencing the voice in our heads but in enhancing the quality of our lives.

There are any number of strategies you can use. The important thing for all of us is to realise that we don’t have to be a slave to the part of us that wants to take over and destroy the precious time we have by being nagged by a negative and persistent voice.

The quality of your life is up to you. Of course, life can throw you curve balls - I know I have been thrown many over my lifetime but what I have come to realise is that it isn't the challenge that defines you it is how you choose to deal with it.

SO

If you would like to become the leader of your own life:

Here is a personal invitation to join me for a -'BECOME THE LEADER OF YOUR OWN LIFE' - VIP Day Intensive/s where you will learn how to let go of old limitations and step into the limitless possibilities which await.

For more details and to book go to:

https://ginagardinerassociates.co.uk/page_48.php?pgenme=leadership-for-life&nav_group=all

Further Resources:

'leadership For Life' Radio and TV Shows on W4CY live every Thursday at 6pm UK time 1pm Eastern

https://w4cy.com/shows/leadership-for-life/

Youtube Leadership For Life Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR8ab6DHaK7nWQc2cG8WzJxnkD9_LUhqq

Books:

Thriving Not Surviving - The 5 Secret Pathways To Happiness Success And Fulfilment

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B074BPBLD3/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

The Happiness Challenge

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08BC1H4YS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3

Genuinely New -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Genuinely-New-Discovering-Leadership-Identity/dp/B08J578F2P/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Genuinely+New+by+Gina+Gardiner&qid=1614862410&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

Articles:

How To Create A Wealthy Life

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ginagardinerassociates_wealth-wellbeing-abundance-activity-6782571460750802944-cbg1

Healthy Relationships With Others Require A Healthy Relationship With You

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/healthy-relationships-others-relationship-yourself-first-gardiner

#mentalhealth #wellbeing #happiness #confidence #selflove #health #dealingwithstress #dealingwithanxiety

[skipygmod]

One time, David Hume articulated the word: "Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them." That sentence means that there's no such thing as an objective quality of beauty. That phrase has been used countless times to disagree with other maxims without thinking about an argument, to support modern relativism, postmodernism and basically to say that they're no objective requirements on criticism. Everything is opinions based on subjectivity because in the end "Beauty exists in the mind which contemplates it".

No one from these people has read Hume, as he was the opposite of a liberal who thinks critiques are opinions.

It's funny how they use a decontextualized phrase of an author, who was considered brilliant as a dogma, but at the same time won't use nor accept other quotes by the same author.

David Hume believed that something's beauty wasn't something objective and establish what is beautiful or not depended on the individuals' perception. That doesn't mean he believed that every artistic critique was subjective or in other words; they didn't have a substantial value, nor there was no rule or guideline.

While David Hume thought that beauty was a work of perception, he also believed that we had a good reason to think that something was beautiful. For him, some things are designed to be beautiful. Thus, it's normal that we sense them as such.

If you let me interpret the author; I believe that beauty is found in things sensed as biologically favourable and healthy. Someone can indeed consider the disease as something beautiful, and in the end, it's something so subjective as somebody who thinks that a sunset is beautiful. But that doesn't mean that the disease is something harmful, and the person who founds it beautiful is wrong.

David Hume also considered that superior tastes exist, even though, many aspects of critique are subjective and they're a matter of taste, to Hume; we should trust in some whose taste is superior.

It sounds contradictory for a postmodernist. Why trust in something subjective like the taste? Because if something subjective, A is as valid as B because Hume A wasn't as valid as B, even though they came from the perception.

Even if Hume, beauty comes from the perception and perception comes from the individuals, individuals are superior. A more intelligent, cultured individual with a higher spirit has the qualities to perceive reality. Thus, whatever they comprehend, as subjective it could be, is preferable and probably more beneficial.

Even inside subjectivity are hints; the colour you prefer is something subjective. And if you like blue is as valid as liking red, but in the end, that question has a null impact. However, if you prefer to spend your time in X way instead of Y, while it can be a subjective question, it impacts your life. It's a justified taste with valid reasons, and as subjective your preference can be, it doesn't change the fact that it could be harmful to society if it's being promoted.

I stumbled across many shoddy critics on YouTube that repeat like parrots, how I promote dogmas, that I think that criticism is entirely objective. Everybody should think the same when it was never the case.

I never said that criticism is objective, I pronounced objective guidelines, subjective guidelines, and the values of all these rules are something relative. Improving critical thinking doesn't have to do with just following a couple of steps. It doesn't have to do with JUST studying and memorizing some rules.

It has to do with – obvious to say- reasoning. And improving your life can achieve better logical thinking, turning you into a better person, because the criterion of a better person is one we can trust.

I can't entirely agree with everything said by Plato, David Hume or some philosopher about critique. Still, in the end, I can appreciate that many of them have certainty and they're conclusive. A philosopher or thinker who is not conclusive is garbage and doesn't deserve your time. And guess what? We're full of those thinkers on YouTube. They won't tell you you're wrong for thinking that X is Z nor liking Y. How many of these critics do you know that they're making clear this topic for you? Or make an effort to explain their criteria. They're so busy creating an image or trying not to offend anyone with their opinions; besides being subjective, they never try to justify with a solid reason.

So, back to my ideology about critical pragmatism, the quality of work is defined not only by its purpose and if it fulfils it but by the purpose's nature. Many thinkers throughout history have argued that there's no fixed goal on art, while many things have a clear intention, art does not. Traditionally art is for transmitting beauty and inspiring, but the understanding of art has changed for better or worse.

Some art pieces are looking to provoke the opposite, to show you that life has no meaning, to feel fear, disgust, anger, or to cause any negative emotion in general.

Alright, something that is just trying to entertain is that; entertainment, it's not art.

I'm not expanding on this again, and I already made an entry about the nature of art.

What I'm going to say with this is that the purpose is still the same. To invoke, to inspire and to reflect on. The thing is that the method has changed, now you can inspire with a tragedy or think about the negative parts of life.

Expressing yourself that way is not an unconnected concept to the ancient world; it always has been that way, it's just our understanding of it has distorted with time due to cultural subversions.

What makes cinema distinctive as art is handling time, the footage; alright, it means that the footage is the most important thing, the footage is essential and indispensable. It makes cinema what it is, but in the end, the goal of a film is to tell something, thus writing is the most important.

This principle applies to animation, comics, or literature. All these mediums use different methods for the same objective, to tell something.

The objective of a videogame, on the other hand, is not to tell something, but to entertain and cause a thrill, also videogames that are telling you something have them as a supporting feature. That is why I won't take them as a serious artistic medium.

The objective of every work of art is to invoke, inspire and be thought-provoking. The last statement is true for dance, painting and literature; what are they trying to invoke or transmit is an entirely different story, and it's something that I already mentioned before. Certain messages are better or more important than others.

After bothering to clarify my criterion, what we can expect from my opposition are edits about me, memes, insults to my family; to my persona. And we can expect content creators will ignore my post because I'm a polemic figure because of ad-hominem and so on. They got no serious way to respond because I'm one of the few who take these subjects seriously.

[yuehong]

I am about to finish my studies soon (ugh) and I started to reflect on a lot of stuff. It's pointless to share everything here, though, one thing which frequently comes to my mind are racial issues (unsurprisingly). I feel like dumping some stuff on my blog for no specific reason. Some of these have been mentioned before. The way my brain works is sometimes weird when it's past midnight.

When I was 4, I was bullied in kindergarten. Children made fun of my name and I went home crying every day till I switched to another kindergarten.

In elementary school our crafts teacher decided to let us design masks for carnival. She had a few suggestions like clowns, monsters, animals and Chinese. She described how they looked and drew a caricature on the blackboard. The other kids compared the image to me. I felt extremely uncomfortable and cried (again). I left the room to calm down. The teacher apologized by claiming that she had no ill intentions and that it was meant in a positive way as Chinese tend to have cute little noses.

Also, while I was elementary school age, my sister and I were wearing a Chinese shirt when we went grocery shopping with my dad. A lady with (probably) her child pointed at us, telling her child: "Look, there are Chinese!"

Also, during elementary school some of my classmates at some point learnt the German chant "ching chang chong - Chinese im Karton" (ching chang chong - Chinese in cardboard box) and followed me around while saying that.

My elementary school teacher also often wanted me to say things in Chinese or sing Chinese songs in front of the others.

When we started to receive grades in school, my mother told me, I needed to be great. Later, when I had to look for a job and had the same qualification as a German, the employer would choose the other person first. I was 8 at that time.

A guest in our restaurant brought a coin of the Qing dynasty to us. He told us it was the possession of his grandfather. He didn't know why he possessed it. My mother knew. Because of colonialism.

I cannot remember any representation of Chinese in media aside from the comic WITCH during my childhood.

After elementary school one goes to secondary school based on qualifications during the last year of elementary school. The "good" students go to the Gymnasium. My mother regularly read a newspaper about German-Chinese issues. Often economy-related. In one issue, a Chinese girl wrote about her experience at Gymnasium. She took part in a competition and placed second. While the school paid tribute to the winner, the Chinese girl was in the audience. She was approached by a stranger who asked her what she was doing there because that person assumed a Chinese couldn't be good enough to go to Gymnasium.

Once after a school trip I was sitting on the bus. Some of my classmates thought I already got off the bus and started to talk about me. The content in and on itself wasn't negative. They started to project from me onto 1.3 billion other people. I noticed, to them I represented all Chinese people.

During a violin event a girl told me I didn't look like a Chinese because my eyes were too big.

When I was in 7th grade, the "red spies" who came to steal and copy German technology hit the news. During a certain period of time then news frequently reported such instances. On a German-Chinese forum, several Chinese wrote that they suddenly found themselves jobless because their employers fired them without any reason (aside from fear that they could be spies). I realized my mother was right. I will have a disadvantage on the job market and I am easily disposable.

In 7th grade we had a skiing excursion. There was a presentation on climate change and the teacher claimed that China had a major impact on the climate. Responsibilities of other countries went unmentioned. I cried (a reoccurring habit). My roommates during the trip told the teacher and he apologized and explained that he understood that European countries had a big footprint.

In 9th grade I found a note next to my seat in the bus, roughly saying "You look cute Manga girl. Call me: xxxx".

A half-Indian friend wrote me that their brother liked his time in the US a lot. Less people would be envious of his success despite him being Indian. Later on that friend wrote me they were bullied. It was evident that them being half-Indian was a factor. I was... too young and my support was useless and not helpful at all. (still young tho and still making so many mistakes).

When I aced an exam, a friend would say: "That's our Chinese!"

A friend would randomly say "Confucius said"

A teacher would ask if Chinese used huge keyboards with all hanzi characters to type into their computers.

A teacher jokingly said, I would be an expert in eating dogs.

In grade 12 (roughly a year before graduating) an epidemic broke out in Germany and few other European nations. Chinese scientists figured out the genetic makeup of the specific virus and Spiegel ("mirror", a German news agency) wrote an article about how it was possible that out of all things it was Chinese scientists in Shenzhen who figured out what virus was causing troubles. Their answer: It was pure coincidence.

A student and a teacher would discuss that Buddhism is sexist because no female found enlightenment. At some point I was like no, and their only response was, oh.

During preparation courses for university another Asian guy in my course said if his family stayed in their home country, he'd be a farmer with several wives now. His new-found ethnically European friends laughed.

The week before first courses started at university for me, a group of drunk students stood in front of my dorm and called me "Ling Ling". I didn't know them.

Autumn after my first year in university, a 15 yo half-Chinese boy was beaten up in Hamburg by right wing extremists. He suffered trauma.

In the canteen a group of students were joking about how Muslims are terrorists and had several wives.

In the canteen a guy told his friends he would go to Thailand for vacation. His friend told him, he should get a Thai girl as souvenir.

A Chinese overseas student admitted to me they felt depressed because of how Germans saw themselves above Chinese and the effeminating view on Asian men.

A few German people told me, colonialism had good aspects. One of those people is one of my best friends.

In a students association which promoted social internships, they used random pictures of "poor, little African children" as advertisement for their volunteering program.

A Chinese overseas student recounted they could not join German flat sharing communities. He was denied because Chinese cuisine had a too strong smell due to spices and garlic. They didn't want that in their flats.

A Japanese friend of mine who came to my city and paid a visit to the museum was followed by a few guys who would chant "ni hao" behind her.

I joined a volunteering program in China. Another international participant was very vocal about how China is bad in so many ways. There was no real coffee. The food is too fatty. It is no wonder that Chinese men don't grow muscles. She had no interest in learning about Tibetan Buddhist art. "If it was Italian art from the renaissance, ok. But Buddhist art? Hmpf. No".

The Chinese in the organizing committee would frequently use the word 那个 (neige, "that") to describe things. Some of the volunteers would parrot them. (I am not sure if there is a relation but 那个 does sound similar to the N-word.)

An ethnically Chinese girl who was raised in Germany rejects her Chinese heritage and Chinese people.

Once I was waiting for a friend. Some guy would ask me where I was from. I said Germany. They laughed.

Often when people ask me where I am from and I respond with Germany there would be surprise in their mimic followed by silence.

My mother grew tired of people asking her when she will go back to China. Now she answers, she will first have to clarify whether she will still receive pension abroad.

I heard people say that the person who thinks something is racist, is the racist person because they interpret something as racist.

Someone told me they can't stand Mainland China

Last autumn I woke up in Hong Kong to the news of a right wing party being elected to the third strongest party in Germany.

A Chinese overseas student told me she got assigned the easy parts in projects because her German was not good enough. The subtle feeling of superiority makes her uncomfortable.

A select few instances. And the conclusion: My life is good. The things I faced are pretty common for German-Chinese to my understanding. I'm sure all German-Chinese have experienced a subset of my experiencs. And they have experienced things which I haven't. I'm sure there are people who have it worse. My experiences were probably on the lucky end. But I still want all of this to end.