#we’ve got the passion we’ve had it since the 19th century

[ohwatson]

i long to have been part of 2012-2016 tjlc tumblr like a woman longs for her lover to return from war

[pyroclastic727]

Owl House said fuck capitalism

So this episode was interesting. Lilith pretty much killed her sister. Why the fuck would she do that?

Even more interesting: why is Belos like that? How did Hooty put his head through one of those guards? Who the fuck is the Titan, and why does everyone like him? And how are these all tied together?

This episode was a metaphor for capitalism

...and another delicious step towards radicalizing the youth into dismantling this fucked-up neo-feudal system.

We’ll start with Belos. 

Emperor Belos is a weird name, don’t you think? We all thought it was spelled “Bellows,” but it wasn’t. In fact, it’s five letters, starts with Be, ends with os, and describes a megalomaniac emperor that restricts people’s freedom in order to accumulate wealth for himself.

Sound familiar?

Emperor Bezos Belos created capitalism. He saw the beauty of magic and decided to make himself the most powerful.

Belos created a system that destroys the masses and boosts his power.

 I’m dipping into fan theory a little, because the fan theory fits. We know that people get branded with coven magic that makes it so they can only specialize in one area. We know that Belos is the most powerful witch in the Boiling Isles. We know that the excess magic, magic created by restrictions, has to go somewhere.

It’s the same system that many viewers see all the time. A job takes up all your day and tires you for the night, so you can only do one skill for the rest of your life. Jeff Bezos is the most powerful man in the United States. Excess money, money taken by restrictions, has to go somewhere.

The magic goes to Belos, like how the money goes to Bezos. Belos created capitalism, and he won it.

The guards aren’t real. 

Look, we’ve never seen their faces. They’re all the same. Why would you work so hard to get to the top, just to become a nameless, faceless killing machine?

Oh, also Hooty stuck his face through one. There is nothing under the armor.

Why? Well, it’s the same reason you see all those celebrities going around flaunting their wealth and bragging about how hard they worked. Like all those songs about how they grind every day and work harder than everyone else while you’re out clubbing, and that makes them dope. And then you take a closer look at them and see that they had a small loan of a million dollars fueling them, or an entire talent agency behind them, or their dad was a famous country star in the 80′s. 

They’re fake. They’re hollow. They’re a ploy created by the capitalist emperor to try to delude you into working harder. 

Let me put this into perspective. I guarantee that every single one of you has heard stuff like this: “Hard work makes you successful.” “I put in the work, and that’s why I’m successful.” “If you work hard enough, then you can be as successful as Mark Zuckerberg.” 

And unless you’re a robot or really lucky, I’m sure all of you have failed at this. Maybe they told you that hard work would make you good at math, so you spent 22 hours a week working on calculus, only to pass it by 3 percentage points and have it destroy your perfect 4.0 GPA. Maybe they told you that if you talked to people enough, then you would make friends, so you spent a lot of time talking to people, only to end up lonely and friendless. Maybe they told you that if you did well in school, you would get a good job, so you spent all your time working hard to be a good student, and then ended up in a soulless, dead-end job.

The guards are there to delude you. Look, who really gains from you being productive? The answer is the ruling class, the CEOs, the government, the bourgeoisie. It has always been that. All you get from working is a paycheck that lets you survive. They get a paycheck that lets them get rich. Just like Belos gets the magic and productivity of the specialized coven witches.

The guards are there to trick you. The truth is that nobody can join the Emperor’s Coven. It’s just there to make you think that hard work will make you successful. Then you spend your entire life working hard, trying to prove to the person in charge that you’re worthwhile. You give your whole life to the Coven, and they give you nothing. 

Magic is supposed to be something you pursue for fun. Being skilled at things, being good at something beautiful...that’s supposed to be something you do because you want to. But they took that and made it into a source of productivity. It doesn’t matter if you make good content. All people fucking care about is if you upload the day of premiere, if you make a lot of content quickly, if you maintain a million different conversations with strangers who expect you to be the most interesting person in the room. They don’t care how it hurts you. They don’t care how you crack from the stress. How you cry when you think no one can see you, and then you check your phone and someone can see you, someone did see you, and you have to put on your face and be the charming, magnetic person they want you to be. (oh by the way that’s why I wasn’t online much last week)

And it ruins it. Suddenly you can’t watch The Owl House without being stressed. You can’t make any content. You can’t make spells as powerfully as you want to. Your passion is replaced by perfectionism and insecurity, a voice telling you to keep being the best at what you do, or else they’ll forget you and let you die.

There’s also the Titan. 

So nobody has mentioned him before, because in addition to the Boiling Isles being a hellscape full of witchcraft and queerness, it’s also full of atheists. 

But suddenly we have people saying all this shit about him? Shit like, he gave witches the gift of magic, and then they learned to use it in a civilized manner, since being uncivilized was disrespectful?

I mean, first off, that’s fucking wrong. The island gives people magic. The island, which just so happened to be shaped like a titan-sized human. But the island/titan gives everyone all types of magic. Hell, even Luz gets to use magic, and she’s human. 

It sounds really fucking familiar. (tw for discussion of homophobia and colonialism and misogyny). It sounds like when the news is on and they show some Tr*mp supporter talking about how fetuses have more rights than people and it is their holy duty to take away a woman’s control over her body and force her through unbearable pain and into an 18-year commitment she didn’t want to make. It sounds like all the times people tried to say homosexuality should be illegal, citing a single line in a book written two thousand years ago and heavily edited by a European king. It sounds like all the times people said God wanted them to conquer, to own the entire earth, to force the other races into pain to support them.

This is that bullshit thing people do where they commit awful sins and justify it by citing the will of God. 

Or, it’s the Coven using religion as an excuse for evil.

Look, the Emperor’s Coven is clearly colonizer-coded. Saying that people’s original form of magic was wild (and showing a picture with the same joyous, rowdy energy of an 18th or 19th -century Black or indigenous party), and that it was God’s will for them to be “civilized?” Sounds like that thing that powerful white people did where they went and murdered people and forced them into their twisted capitalist system. God, gold, and glory, is what they said, because history books just love to omit the gore.

Lilith is passing the abuse cycle along. 

You know, like a good little colonizer. God I fucking hate her. She’s a MILF, in the sense that she’s a Mother I’d Like to Fling off a cliff. 

Ah, enough screaming about how much I want to drown Lilith in a tub of Hooty’s mucus. Let’s go into why I want to do that, and how she took the evils of capitalism and just...adopted those.

So, Lilith is sick and twisted for what she did to her sister. But, uhh, that’s the point. You see, there are so many other people out there like Lilith who would do the exact same thing, if given the chance. These are the people who do mean things when the teacher isn’t looking, and then act nice and try to frame you. These are the people who will hate you if you’re better than them. These are people who would do anything to bring you down, if you dare outperform them.

It’s greed, my friends. The mental illness that capitalism blesses us all with.

Lilith herself said it: she dedicated her entire life to the Coven. What she wanted was to be the best. And she almost was...except for her own sister. Someone who lived with her, annoyed her at home, bested her at school. Someone she could never beat, no matter how hard she worked. And her sister was younger than her, too! How insulting was that? Lilith wanted to be the best, and someone in her exact situation did better than her.

Lilith was insecure. And it consumed her.

But why? Why does insecurity consume her? I mean, no one can be motivated by insecurity forever. Well, not unless someone conditions it into you.

The lovely thing about the capitalist system is the morals it teaches you. Things like: “You’re only useful if you’re the best.” “Being school smart makes you smart, while being social smart or sports smart or creative smart or fandom smart is worthless.” “Your worth can be quantified by numbers and is based off arbitrary measures like your income or your grades.” Things that can and will drive us crazy if we let ourselves believe them.

And it did drive Lilith crazy. She got so twisted by a society that said being good at magic is her only worth. Look, Lilith used to be good at things, probably. She was good at sports. At times, she slips up and does an okay job of being Eda’s sister. She has a powerful presence when she’s in a room. And she’s wicked good at manipulating people. 

But that didn’t matter. Lilith bought into the lies. She let herself believe that magical skill was the only way to measure her worth. And since she needed to be the best, she hurt Eda for it.

The beautiful thing is, Eda didn’t buy that. "It’s my power, kid. And before you showed up, I spent my whole life wasting it.” Is what Eda said, as she used up the last of her power, the last of her life, to save Luz. In her final moments, she proved that she’s not like them. She’s stronger than them.

None of this matters. Not magical prowess. Not the hierarchy. Not the promise of joining the Coven and having more power than anyone else.

The only thing that matters to Eda is her family. Her real family. Her Luz, King, and Hooty. And by extension, Willow, Gus, and Amity. Those are Eda’s real reason for fighting, for dying: to protect them. Look, there’s no way she would’ve come out of that fight alive. She has a family, and her love for them is stronger than greed or jealousy or capitalism. 

Lilith never understood that. She thought the water of the womb was thicker than the blood of the covenant. Or, that the water of the womb and the blood of the covenant are stronger than the bonds of found family. She thought it didn’t matter if Eda loved, her, only if the Emperor loved her. Fucking bitch.

And now, a little something to worry about, before we go. Amity Blight. The girl who wanted to join the Emperor’s Coven more than anything, who dedicated her whole life to doing well in school, to being the best, to being perfect.

And then she met Luz. She fell for Luz. Now she’s in a tricky place, where habit and conditioning want her to join the Emperor’s Coven, but her heart wants her to do the impossible and destroy capitalism.

She wasn’t in this episode. Funny that being injured and unable to work ended up saving her from watching her future mother-in-law die. So she bought some time.

But Luz’s true mom is dead. This is the second mom she has lost, and she’s only fourteen. As powerful as King and Hooty are, Luz needs Amity. Luz needs Amity to support her and help her get back her mom.

So Amity has to make a choice. Fear and insecurity, or love and a high chance of death? 

She’ll probably choose death. Because that’s the message that this family-friendly show is giving us kids. Fuck capitalism. All you need in life is to do what makes you happy and be with the ones you love.

[scotianostra]

September 2nd 1724 saw Maggie Dickson climb the gallows in Edinburgh after she had been sentenced to hang.

As you can see with the first pic the dates differ,  some sources make it 1728, a few say 1723, and only a handful attest a specific calendar date. Nobody seems to doubt the tale though, so much so a bar near where Maggie had her encounter with the hangman is named after her.

Deserted by her husband, young Maggie Dickson took lodgings at an inn in exchange for work, and became pregnant by either the innkeeper or his son. (Again — details in the various sources available read like a game of telephone.) Since single* pregnant working-class women had about as many employment options as birth control options, Maggie kept quiet about her condition in the interest of keeping her job.

And since male parliamentarians figured their job was to keep young lasses of loose character and modest means on the straight and narrow by criminalizing their options, Maggie’s sleight-of-womb put her in violation of a law against concealing a pregnancy. (The same situation was playing out elsewhere in the British Isles at this time.)

When the resulting infant turned up dead, the trail led straight to Dickson … but the concealment of the pregnancy and birth were capital crimes on their own, making it immaterial whether it had been a miscarried pregnancy, an act of infanticide, or simply one of the many early 18th century babies to die in the cradle. The law was an indiscriminate instrument to prevent women terminating their pregnancies.

Nothing noteworthy about the hanging itself is recorded; it seems to have been one of the routine public stranglings of the age, and even the scuffle over the body between family and medical students hunting dissection-ready cadavers was a normal occurrence.

The family won. And en route to Musselburgh for burial, Maggie started banging on the inside of the coffin, and was forthwith revived. Officials decided the sentence of hanging had already been carried out … and her awestruck neighbors suddenly started seeing Maggie sympathetically.

And they all lived happily ever after. This day’s principal, at any rate, gained a foothold in adequate prosperity, bore more children, and answered to the nickname “Half-Hangit Maggie Dickson” all the many more years of her life.

The story passed into legend; the dates, as we’ve alluded, fuzzed. One entrepreneurial English broadside publisher of the 19th century even transported the affair to February 1, 1813 — four years after a Concealment of Pregnancy Act reduced the penalty for Maggie Dickson’s “crime” to penal servitude. And near the site of the not-quite-Passion, should you call sometime in Edinburgh, you can raise Half-Hangit Maggie a pint at Maggie Dickson’s Pub, don’t expect much change out of a fiver though, a friend and I had a drink here during the Festival and got p change from the ten pound note! 

[animatedminds]

Splash Mountain, Br’er Rabbit, and the Tragedy of Being Represented By Other People.

So, this is probably going to be the realest post I’ll make for a while - or at least until The Boondocks arrives, but it seemed apropos. Immediately after this I’ve got rants about sci fi and Star Wars and other unrelated things coming up, but for now we have my earnest opinions on a decision I feel should have been better thought out than it was. This is going to read more like an article or an essay than a review, but I think it needs to be said.

It hasn’t come up too often on this blog, but I am African American. It’s my life and my perspective. And as an African American, a lover of animation and - though this definitely doesn’t come up on the blog - a passionate folklorist in what you could call an academic sense (in that I’m a writer and a student, and folklore is the subject of most of my research), people I know in real life have asked me more than once what my opinion on the removal of Splash Mountain in favor of Princess and the Frog, how I must be glad it’s finally being removed, what my take on the history there was, and…

Well…

To really give that opinion, I’ve got to start at the beginning. Not Song of the South - that, if anything, is the very middle. We have to start with Br’er Rabbit and who that character was. Sit back students, info dump incoming.

Br’er Rabbit is an folklore character of African American origin with - like many folkloric figures - a difficult to place date of origin, but he was known to have existed at least since the early 19th Century, He has obvious similarities to the far older figure of Anansi - with several Br’er Rabbit tales even taking elements of Anansi stories verbatim - though with a the notable difference that unlike Anansi, Br’er Rabbit was more often a heroic figure: an underdog and seemingly downtrodden figure who used his wits and his enemies’ hubris rather than physical force to win the day. The meaning of that kind of figure to an enslaved people is obvious, especially when you compare Br’er Rabbit to another, contemporary trickster figure in African American history by the name of John. Br’er Rabbit’s stories could even arguably be seen as a more child-friendly version of the John tales, in which a human trickster pulls the same kind of momentum turning ploys on villains - but those villains tended to be explicitly slave masters or overseers, and John’s payback often came with explicitly deadly results. The existence of John as escapism for the enslaved or just-post-enslaved (IE Reconstruction) populations is clear: a person who with no power who could fight back with nothing but their mind, preying on the fact that their enemies see them as incapable and helpless, and the connection of Br’er Rabbit to that message is difficult to deny. If anything, Br’er Rabbit comes off as a somewhat more child-friendly version of the concept.

But the most important thing to glean from this is who and what Br’er Rabbit is: a product of the African American community and its history, as a means of those people to express themselves and their values in the face of oppression.

Now we fast forward to 1881, and along comes Joel Chandler Harris: a white Georgian. Harris was a folklorist himself, and travelled the country collecting stories - most famously Br’er Rabbit stories. His stated reason was to bridge African American and white communities by sharing stories, but he was tainted by the perspectives of his world and his place in it, infamously creating a framing narrative for those stories in which the character telling them exuded the imagery of subservience and simplicity that was typical of perceptions of African Americans from the post-Civil War Southern environment in which he collected them: Uncle Remus, in other words. Harris is hardly the only white curator who adapted stories of black or brown peoples in a way that played up the people the stories came from as something of a theme park piece, as if noble in unintelligence and simplicity, but he’s one of the most famous ones to do so - and that’s because of the adaptation. To note, when people criticize cultural appropriation, this is the kind of thing that really triggers the outrage. Not any situation in which a white person is inspired by someone who isn’t white and creates something accordingly, but situations where someone else’s creation is taken and used for the fame and profit of others, to the detriment of the people who made it. It’s these situations like the one Joel Chandler Harris created centuries ago, specifically, that people are trying to draw attention to - even if sometimes social media gets a bit trigger happy sometimes, that’s the real, underlying problem. With that in mind, let’s put that aside and move forward.

Fast forward again to 1946. Walt Disney Productions, then less the company of grander, wider scale stories of epic quests and emotional upheaval that make us all cry and more a company more known for folktale adaptations in general, were looking for a but of American folklore to headline a live action, animation mix - a medium that allowed a bit more financial benefit, as straightforward animation was not always particularly profitable those dates. This wouldn’t be the last time they produced an adaptation of an American folktale or short story - their version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow a few years later being actually one of the more faithful adaptations of that short story put to film. Disney, who evidently read Chandler Harris’ stories, put together a project to see if they could adapted. Which they did. Pretty much verbatim. This is actually worth pointing out: the actual Br’er Rabbit stories in the films are very accurately adapted, and the actors involved in the story (including James Baskett, how also played Uncle Remus) did a fine job characterizing them. The issue is that Disney also adapted Chandler Harris’ stereotypical and offensive framing device pretty much verbatim, bringing Uncle Remus. And therein lies the problem.

To put the issue with Song of the South in perspective, the movie - with the framing device - can be categorized as something called Reconstruction Revisionism - which is basically a genre of post-Civil War media meant to present the pre-war South was perfect and idyllic, and that people are racially more natural in that environment’s dynamic and never should have left. One of the most infamous movies in history, Birth of a Nation, is the crowning example of this genre. Obviously, Song of the South is nowhere near as awful and inflammatory a movie as that, but there’s a degree to which it was seen as the straw the broke the camel’s back for black depictions in media, only a couple of years after Disney’s Dumbo also did the same. The end result, an African American creation was used in a film that ultimately demeaned the African American community, a decision that Disney has been ashamed of ever since.

Fast forward to now. Disney is removing Splash Mountain, the sole remnant of Song of the South that focuses exclusively on Br’er Rabbit - a choice we’ve had reason to suspect was coming for about a year now, but which was unveiled conspicuously in the middle of protests and campaigning for better treatment of people of African descent worldwide. The reveal was a rousing success, with people applauding the decision to finally wipe away the rest of that movie - though remember that for later, that the response relies on the perception of Br’er Rabbit as something that starts with Song of the South - and replace it with something else. Surely, as a black person I should be happy that they’re finally getting rid of that racist character for good and replacing him with something more positive? And again, well…

To put short, Br’er Rabbit has finished his journey from African cultural symbol to discarded pariah, all because others used the character in racist ways that they themselves now regret. And for that… let’s be clear, I’m not angry so much as saddened. I’m not railing against the company for making the choice, since I can see how from their point of view it was the wisest and most progressive thing to do. Song of the South is a badly old fashioned movie that they’re right to want to move on from, and it’s their right to downplay characters within their purview if those characters reflect badly on the company. I’m just outlining the tragic waste of it all.

For now, compare Princess and the Frog - the thing they’re replacing it with. I do love the movie, or at least any problems I have with it have little to do with representation, and I definitely don’t have anything against Musker and Clements and their beautiful visions and creations, but it’s difficult to deny that its an adaptation of a European story, adapted by a collection of mostly white creators (with Rob Edwards comprising but one third of the screenwriting team, but not of story conception), that’s ultimately just dolled up with African Americans characters and a very Hollywood-esque depiction of a African diaspora religion (Voodoo, which unfortunately has a long history of such portrayals). If we’re talking about representation specifically - which this move had definitely been presented as a champion for - it’s not the perfect example, more of a story with a surface covering of the black experience than one with an especially strong connection. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem (Tiana and her story do well depict strong black characterizations, and approach an interesting (if light_ implication about racism and hardship during the 1920s) if Disney had yet created any other franchise that was another actual adaptation of an African or African American tale or story (with involvement from such actual people), but Song of the South is actually it. They legitimately have nothing else to call on.

This is something I feel we should do more to remedy. I am a writer/prospective screenwriter myself, and trying to put more stories out there is one of my primary focuses and goals should I ever truly enter the industry, but at the moment we just don’t have very many options.

This is hardly the only time that people of color have had little control over depictions of their own culture - literary and film history is full of such situations in both minor and terribly major ways - but it’s something that stings especially hard due to being such a current example, and because of sheer irony of the end result. Now we have a situation where African Americans are being told that something their people created to represent themselves is negative and wrong, because years ago other people appropriated that creation and used it to paint a negative picture of the people who actually held claim over it, and now the enterprise that those people created wants to save face: another example of culture being treated like a possession of the ones who are poised to make money of off it. And what’s worse, while the culture is used and abused like trash, the people are now presented with this removal like it was a prize - like they’re finally being given something - when little has really changed.

Ultimately, the Splash Mountain news - though it had been coming for a while - made me rather upset for that reason. As a studier of folklore, I suppose I knew better than most where these things came from, and so the buzz around the move being a belief that Br’er Rabbit was an intrinsically racist character just highlighted the tragedy of how African Americans and their culture tended to be tossed about by American media. So no matter what, I can’t feel particularly happy about it.

Let me iterate, in the film industry, being represented by people who aren’t of your culture group is basically inevitable. That’s essentially how the industry works. I’m not saying we should rail against anyone who would try to represent cultures that aren’t their own. The people who produce and create are few, and eventually the truth is that you have to be represented by other people - at least for the moment. We shouldn’t be railing against representation by others in general, as that wouldn’t be cognizant of the situation and thus self destructive. What I’m saying is that we - both we trying to be represented, and those doing the representing - should be aware of the problem there: that when others choose to represent you in media, you essentially have to trust them to have a real interest in you and your best interests when doing so, and when they don’t that depiction is there forever. So it behooves us to try to be the ones who are representing ourselves as much as possible, and in situations where we can’t, to remind those who want to represent us that they have a responsibility to do so effectively.

This is Animated Minds for Animated Times, and really this blog is ultimately about emphasizing what makes animated media work, what makes it fun, and what makes it worthwhile no matter how old you are. And so in several years of sporadic and infrequent reviews, reactions and fandom posts it’s been rare for me to get this real about a topic, but this is something that is a serious issue feel was overlooked. Representation is complicated. And more often than not solutions that are handed to us are more band-aids that look like cures than necessarily being actually helpful, and that’s what happens when ultimately the decisions about how you’re represented lie in the hands of other people. Representation is one of the biggest things we need to work on in coming years, especially with stories and adaptations - which refer to history and culture that are often not widely known or accepted. Ask someone if they think there should be an African princess, and they’ll tell you they didn’t even have kings and queens in Africa - something that’s bluntly wrong, but is widely believed simply because those elements of culture are never represented.

And that’s the sum of my thoughts on the subject. I hadn’t updated the blog in months because this whole thing was stewing in me, and I couldn’t really go back to cheerful posts about new things until I got it out. I’ve got great thoughts about the Owl House, Amphibia, the new seasons of BH6 and Ducktales that are totally coming up soon. But for now, just a few sobering thoughts from someone who grew up loving cartoons, and desperately wishes people like me had more to look at in that field beyond apologies and promises.

[not-xpr-art]

Art Deep Dives #1 - The Value of Art ~

Hi everyone!

This is the start to another project I want to start on this account, a companion to my Art Advice tag, and each week or so I’ll be ‘deep diving’ into art history, arts & culture, society’s relationship to art, etc etc... (I basically want to make use of my history of art degree, and also because I genuinely love talking about this stuff... especially without the pressure of deadlines lol)

Side note: don’t worry about these being really ‘academic’ or ‘formal’, since neither of those things are in my vocabulary lol... this is a very casual, informal kind of ‘essay’ writing that I want to be accessible to everyone, regardless of how much you know about art! 

This first one is a kind of follow up of my Art Advice post talking about references, and I’ll be talking about the ideas of how we ‘value’ art.

(this is about 1600 words long by the way...)

The Value of Art

It’s no secret that art is highly subjective. Particularly when it comes to the question of ‘what is the most important type of art?’. It changes from person to person, country to country, and era to era. How we define ‘great art’ now is vastly different to how we defined it several hundred years ago. I mean, just look at the kinds of art in galleries in the modern era (Tracey Emin’s bed comes to mind) versus that of the 18th century (with the likes of Joshua Reynolds, JMW Turner and Thomas Gainsborough). Really, it’s clear to see that what we see as ‘the most important type of art’ is forever changing...

Or... is it?

In order to really answer whether the kinds of art we value now versus that of the past has changed, we need to first establish what ‘valued art’ even means. 

I think in today’s day and age, ‘value’ is often synonymous with ‘price’. So, a Banksy original chipped away from it’s original wall setting and having been sold at a Christies auction for £3.2million is, by this definition, what we as a society ‘value’ as art... Right? Or maybe ‘value’ is more to do with what kinds of works that are displayed in big galleries or public spaces? The Tate has an entire wing dedicated to the works of landscape/seascape painter JMW Turner, so surely that means that we today place a high ‘value’ on his work still? What about public sculpture? Architecture? Sculpture and architecture are often a lot more available for the general public, and even if most people wouldn’t be able to tell you who made the Statue of Liberty, they at least know about her and perhaps even enjoy to look at her? And surely the fame of buildings like the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal mean that they, too, are ‘valued’ as pieces of art? And what of artworks from other countries and cultures? A Chinese man may find no ‘value’ in a painting by a so-called ‘Great Master’ of the Italian Renaissance, but instead will ‘value’ a piece of Imperial Ming Dynasty porcelain instead, does that mean his opinion is the ‘right’ one? Colonialism has played heavily into what arts are now called ‘valuable’ and what are not, so how do we quantify whether a work has ‘value’ without placing our own individual cultural bias on it?

Basically what I’m getting at is, what we value as art in this day and age is very complicated, in a big way because our society is complicated. But for the sake of arguments, and for my next few points, I will be defining an art’s ‘value’ predominantly by whether it has been featured in a big gallery... Which also means I’ll be focusing on painting and sculpture... And also focusing on the Western world of art, specifically Europe, which I want to clarify doesn’t mean I personally ‘value’ that art more, it’s just where I’m from and predominantly what I studied in my course... 

Art historians often declare the Renaissance (around the 14th to 16th centuries) the ‘beginning’ of what we know as art today. But for this essay, I want to instead start a little before this, in the Early Medieval period. People often know of this era as ‘the dark ages’, in Europe at least, because it was after Rome had fallen and taken all their so-called ‘genius’ with them. A particular note for why for years we’ve seen this period as ‘regressive’ is through their art. A quick Google search of ‘Medieval baby’ will come up with a plethora of results for a wide range of paintings depicting babies (usually the baby Christ) as scaled down versions of adults, complete with receding hairlines and strangely buff arms and chests. 

Now, is this because medieval babies actually looked like this? I think this is... highly unlikely... I know most things happened earlier in that era than nowadays (girls getting married and pregnant at age 14, for example), but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to think their babies had six packs... No, instead it’s more likely that rather than being direct representations of babies, these were purely symbolic. And particularly given how they often were of Christ, art historians often say that the weird adult-baby hybrids are to represent Christ’s divinity. 

Now... What’s all this got to do with art and value? Well, the thing about early medieval art is that the value was almost entirely placed upon the symbology and meaning of a piece. Later in the medieval period, paintings began to become more ‘realistic’ to some extent, but it still for the most part stayed true to this idea of symbolism over representation. 

That is, until we get to the Renaissance and all of that gets thrown out of the window because artists want to be able to paint babies that actually look like babies, thank you very much! And with the likes of Leonardo da Vinci championing for art to become a science, surely this means that the kinds of art that was valued in this era were highly accurate portraits or landscapes... Right?

Short answer? No. 

Long answer? Well, portraits and landscapes had their place in the hierarchies of art. Portraits were often commissioned by wealthy patrons, and were basically ways of the artist showing off how good their portrait skills are. And landscapes were less important, more seen as ‘nice backgrounds’ than anything else. But the art that was highly valued by most wealthy patrons and art connoisseurs of the time was... (imagine a drum roll here please) 

History painting! These are basically big biblical or mythological scenes, often with a lot of figures doing a variety of things (think Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel), often with some pretty landscape as the backdrop, and often featuring a couple of portraits in the mix (including one of the patron who commissioned it, probably being blessed by the Virgin Mary, and a cheeky one of the artist peeking out from behind a bush or something...). From the Renaissance era up until basically the mid 19th century, History paintings were seen as the most important works of art to be featured in galleries. 

And really, things only really began to change when we reached the end of the 19th century, with the development of photography. 

Photography, and film, both lead to a massive shift in not only the kinds of art that are produced in the 20th century, but also the kinds of art that are valued. For so long art had been the main form of representation of society, and the advent of photographs meant that art had almost lost that ‘purpose’. Not to mention the leading towards a more secular society which no longer had a need for symbolic or spiritual artworks. 

So, the only place art could really go was to become a form of expression instead. The likes of artists like Picasso and Braque pioneering cubism, being about new ways of representing the world. The Surrealists delving into ideas of the subconscious. Pop-Artists like Warhol looking into media and consumerist society, and the list goes on... 

Which brings us onto my most hated period in the history of art: Conceptual art. 

I’m not going to go big into this period, which is still around today (unfortunately), but all you need to know is this twat Marcel Duchamp flipped a urinal (which he didn’t even make himself) upside down and called it a ‘fountain’ and shoved it into a gallery and thus art that has no value beyond it being ‘concept based’ was born. And yes, yes I hate it a lot (I’m not even trying to be objective about this, I hate conceptual art with a burning passion... some guy put some sh*t in a box and put it in a gallery & called it art and I am SO mad about it lol...). And as much as I hate this period, what it does signify is how art began to be valued not through the craftsmanship of the work itself, but instead the ideas. 

And this idea remains today. Damien Hirst has forged his entire art identity on creating works that are based entirely on some ‘meaning’ that could be forced onto it, rather than the aesthetic or material value. And as mentioned before, Tracey Emin’s infamous bed isn’t about the work and effort gone into the piece itself, but instead about what the artists intends for the piece to ‘mean’. So, the ‘value’ of the work is what it says, and not what it is, essentially. 

(This is not to say that there are no artists who work today that get featured in galleries and are highly skilled at their craft. The one that springs to mind is Grayson Perry, who’s well known for his pottery and tapestries with some kind of social commentary bled into them.)

This ideology around art also bleeds into online spaces of art (which I see as distinctly separate from the world of art galleries and the Turner prize). I still see artists, and non-artists, talking about how much they enjoy work that is ‘original’, and oftentimes ridiculing and demoting ‘fanart’ as purely ‘derivative’ or ‘unoriginal’. 

And all this brings us back to history paintings. Because their ‘value’ wasn’t just in the immense amount of skill that went into them. A large part of their ‘value’ was that artists and non-artists alike saw them as feats of the artist’s ‘genius’ or ‘imagination’ at play. And in the same way that Early Medieval art was valued for the symbology of the piece rather than the representation, history paintings had the benefit of including both elements. In essence, they were both meaningful AND beautiful. 

In conclusion (just to remind you that this is technically an essay lol), a lot about art HAS definitely changed in the last few hundred years, particularly in what kinds of art is getting made now (and why we make art in the first place). However, what we as a collective society ‘value’ as art has remained surprisingly the same, often with a heavy preference for a work’s meaning and symbology, which can sometimes overshadow the craftsmanship of the work itself. 

I still hate that godforsaken Duchamp toilet though...

(images used:

unknown medieval painting (I just liked that he had his hand down mary’s dress lool)

mona lisa by da vinky 

detail of the creation of adam on the sistine chapel by michelangelo

a photograph by louis daguerre, often known as the father of photography

*clenches fist* ‘fountain’ by marcel duchamp

‘my bed’ by tracey emin )

I hope you enjoyed this informal essay about art, I will definitely be doing more of these in the future! If you have any thoughts on this, feel free to reply to this or message me, etc! I love having open and frank conversations about art! 

[phoebehalliwell]

If Prue had lived, what do you think her kids would have been like, and how do you think they would have affected the various power level structures of the next gen?

okay so i think there are a couple options based on who’s the father of the child that would yield different results so in a very me fashion imma make this a very long post and break down all of them. this is 2.5k. it’s going under a cut.

andy so i think had andy not died he and prue would have definitely gotten married first i would say somewhere around the season 2 finale maybe the penultimate episode to end on a sweet high note while still setting up season 3 or something i think he and prue would have their first child ehh probably announced in the s3 finale. i think she’d be a girl i think she’d be a telekinetic like her mama and i think her name would definitely be patricia (and i wanna say in her teenage years she’d go by trix) i think her powers would definitely grow to advanced telekinesis by the time she’s of a fighting age. if i were writing her i would give her a gradual power development of like telekinetically lifting herself up in fights (like what we sometimes saw prue do) to levitation to flight if i wanna get really jiggy w it). i would think prue would definitely want multiple kids (ideally three daughters) and i think andy would definitely Also want sorta that white picket fence family. i think that piper and leo would still be pregnant at the end of season four, with prue’s second pregnancy occuring around beginning to mid season five. i also think about halfway through prue’s second pregnancy she and andy would choose to move out into their own home bc well let’s face it the manor’s a lil crowded (paige is also here in the au don’t ask me how). so wyatt matthews halliwell would be born in february prue and andy would probably move out in april their second child would be born hmm let’s say september. a girl named hmm it has to be a p name i’m firm on that but i don’t really wanna go penelope bc then i feel like it’s too locked in to a naming after ancestors thing but like also it would still be a very prue name & prue is already named after her ancestors so what the hell i’ll name her penelope. let’s talk powers. baby wyatt will keep his whitelighter based powers such as an orb shield, orbing, and healing, but he won’t be a telekinetic. he still has the power of projection. the twice blessed isn’t a thing. penelope i think would be the molecular witch, with powers of molecular deceleration & acceleration (but not freezing or combustion) as well as the ability to adjust her own molecular structure and “phase” (a la kitty pryde from xmen). next in the halliwell line would be chris who would still be born in october of 03 with powers of orbing, telekinesis, and telekinetic orbing, followed then by andy and prue’s third daughter born in utopia in s7 lemme go check the family tree for names there aren’t actually that many p names on there so now i guess lemme make one up one that sounds appropriately vintage like okay so i personally hc p bowen (prue’s past life) to be named pearl, p baxter as pauline, and p russel as phyllis out of all of those i think i’d chose pearl okay so i googled 19th century baby names p names i found were parthena permilia philippa pamela patience and priscilla. okay so i’m actually deciding now that the name philippa comes from andy’s side of the family and that’s the name of the third daughter who will follow suit with the charmed one’s schtick and have premonitions, which includes both precognition and retrocognition, as well as clairvoyance and limited telepathy (she’s basically a human lie detector, but if she actually wants to hear someone’s thoughts, she was to have physical contact and be in a quasi-meditative state). piper be pregnant with melinda at the end of s8, melinda’s powers would be empathy along with the whitelighter powers of healing orbing and photokinesis. next would be the twins tam and kat who would still split molecular combustion and immobilization as well as the whitelighter powers basically i wouldn’t change their powers from what they already have henry jr is also here, still a mortal. pj would not be named pj as Prue Isn’t Dead but i think phoebe would still really wanna stick with the p names. since prue’s already burned through the family tree i think she’d pick a more modern name (and i’m sticking with the gender neutral theme all of phoebe’s kids have) so like percy pax pemberley i’m also really tempted by pisces. hmm. pemberly. who i’d give astral projection and then also um well possession. like yeah y’know projecting her astral form into somebody else and being able to like read them while in their bodies all that. parker stays with premonition and uhh i just recently came up with a power progression for parker that i would love to employ but like i think i really wanna keep it a secret for now but i might end up talking about it later peyton would still be a telekinetic and all three cupitches can still beam and sense love. okay!

jack jack gets an obligatory section bc he was one of the few love interests to last more than one episode but uhh that baby would definitely be a whoopsie! or should i say,,, babies that’s right it’s twins. and i don’t think prue and jack would together romantically but i think they’d still be like y’know friends i think jack would be there to support prue & his kids but i do think prue would be the primary caregiver i think jack would maybe get them like on weekends or like every third week of the month. and i’m Really tempted to give them last name first names and have the kids be names warren and sheridan and Yes they’d be both boys. i sorta wanna melinda warren both of em and just like. give em all three powers what the hell. given that it’s so many powers stacked in one witch i don’t think their powers would ever greatly develop i don’t think there’d be any advanced telekinesis or molecular combustion or like astral premonitions but i do think they have all three powers. and they are identical. so they’re both born in 2000, flash foward to 2002 wyatt is born wyatt matthew halliwell with orbing, orb sheild, healing, telekinetic orbing, and telekinesis. cut forward to 2004 piper has her second child who is in this reality a girl, with orbing, molecular combustion/immobilization, & invisibility. her name would be melinda christina halliwell. i think we can fast forward the timeline a bit i think the piper and leo would have their third child at the end of s8 another boy named john after grams’s maiden name, orbing, premonition, levitation. i feel like cosmically we’ve already filled our twin quotient so no tam & kat in this universe so paige and henry only have one kid a daughter i always pick from shakespeare baby names for not!tam&kat bc like. they’ve got shakespeare names. in the past i’ve used isabel and beatrice this time i’m gonna go for jourdain who has the power of projection, as well as the whitelighter power of omnilingualism. henry & paige still end up accidentally adopting a mortal in this au, but here she’s a girl, so instead of making the henry jr joke henry calls her paige jr the name sticks she goes by pj. cupitches once again we’re going pemberley parker and peyton and once again i’m sticking with the same power set from the andy timeline.

bane okay so give me a sign they have sex prue is pregnanté bane is in jail. charges of racketeering, tax evasion, money laundering and embezzlement, but like okay he’s a career criminal, meaning their notoriously hard to catch. and i think he’s have a good lawyer. max sentence for racketeering is 20 years, tax evasion 5, money laundering 20, embezzlement 3. i’m not a law student i don’t know shit about like,, douple jeopardy all that but like. imma say sentenced to ten years in jail let out in 7 on good behavior + they’re all nonviolent crimes so. is that how it works? okay but basically baby #1 prolly a sagittarius born in 2000. i’m saying girl. i think again like with the jack situation this really isn’t prue’s white picket fence family this is strange and rebellious and unprecedented meaning it’s not guaranteed to be a “p” name but nothing’s like. immediately coming to mind. i feel like it has to be a name that captures prue’s rebellious spirit and the sorta intense passion she keeps below the surface so i wanna go for something outta left field. i also feel like prue cares a lot about the meaning / origin of her baby name so i’m gonna pick from a list of witches of myth. hecate’s obvi out as she’s a demon in charmed verse so i’m thinking circe or freyja. i feel like circe’s more associate with turning men into pigs than anything else so i’m gonna settle with freyja who’s technically a goddess and not a witch but like. minutia. i’m giving her the same power set as patricia / trix which is advance telekinesis + eventual flight. yada yada yada baby wyatt chris & melinda are born, powers as in canon (including empathy for melinda which is in fact Not Canon but like canon in my heart). tamora and kat are born, powers as in canon, bane is out of jail, pemberley is born, astral projection + possession, henry jr is there, prue and bane have another kid in ‘08, a girl (i’m sticking with the badass women of myth theme) named atalanta, nicknamed tal rhymes with the cal in calorie. yes i know i’m very white. powers of molecular immobilization & cryokinesis. next born in 09 cupitch parker still with cupid powers and premonition, then prue and bane’s third daughter born in 2010 (i’m telling you bane def has that like white picket fence adoring family dream. he frickin loves kids & like dutifully drives them to ballet practice every day after school type thing. loves the idea of being able to yell “honey! i’m home!” total sap) her name’s probs gonna be like. morrigan. her powers are a riff on the premonition aspect of thee power of three, she can pick up on “psychic reverb” and sense if a great act of magic has happened somewhere as well as sense great good, great evil, and immense power. also with the her psychic power she can mark crossroads and tell if a decision is about to be altering, though she can’t sense which outcome is the “best”. finally baby peyton still a telekinetic cupitch born in 2011.

justin congrats, bud. the only other prue love interest to make it past a single episode. too bad we really don’t know shit about this guy. simp? we can assume? yeah so in this timeline they come together basically when piper & leo are getting married so in this timeline we are still getting wyatt first with all his canonically op self. then we’re getting chris, same as in canon i guess i feel like he should have more powers give him combustive orbing what the fuck why not. okay so like maybe ‘03-’04 prue and justin move out / move in together, married by late ’04 (just before utopia in s7). they have their first daughter in 2005 still s7 once again named patricia and she’s a telekinetic like prue. we’ll push melinda up to ’06 still an empath + other whitelighter powers & tlk orb. 2007 will have both tam & kat with their canon powers, followed by penelope with cryokinesis, closed out with pemberley with astral projection. jump to 09 parker born with premonition in spring and i said philippa was an andy’s family name so patience in the fall. and she can uhh same thing as morrigan she’s psychic. 2011 the final baby is born it’s peyton telekinetic + cupitch powers as always. henry jr is also here placed where he normally is (slightly younger than pj/pemberley)

bonus round!dency addition okay so idk if i’ve said this before but i’ve actually sorted out dency’s relatives in her world one sec i gotta pull up the google doc okay dency born first only child the source’s heir next up is melinda penelope “penn” halliwell the only child of leo & piper aka the twice blessed followed by paige’s sons taran & kai, twins, the ultimate power. but now prue’s in the mix! i’m pairing her with andy bc that was her most significant relationship. as previously stated i think prue and andy’s first child would be born in early season four as patricia, same powers as stated earlier with advanced telekinesis & flight. dency technically would no longer be named dency in this au as once again, prue is not dead. she would be named victoria after her grandfather. same powers that she already holds (pyrokinesis, cryokinesis, flaming, limited telepathy (only the lie detector part) & super strength). her power rivals that of patricia’s despite not being the first born in the generation bc she was infused with the source. she would be born early s5. then keeping with the timeline piper & leo’s firstborn comes mid s5, another girl named melinda. melinda’s powers are orbing, molecular immobilization, and advanced healing. at this point prue is Pregnant Again and calls dibs on the name penelope so that does not become melinda’s middle name. in the dency au coop shows up earlier, which in turn accelerates paige and henry ending up together because i said so. piper is pregnant at the beginning of s6. prue and andy have their second daughter penelope, paige and henry get together, piper and leo have their second daughter christina. s6 ends. penelope gets molecular deceleration & acceleration. christina has orbing, telekinesis, & an orb shield. s7. whoops paige is pregnant. hey it’s twins! tamora & kat. tamora is the physical while kat is the spiritual. tamora can orb, telekinetically orb, and has normal telekinesis. kat has premonitions, clairvoyance, and omnilingualism. s8. prue gets pregnant again at some point. season finale. philippa is born. she can astral project, and will later develop suggestion. piper is pregnant again. it’s still 2006.  now it’s 2007. piper’s baby is born. it’s a boy??? meet baby john. an empath. omnilingual. can orb. henry jr also shows up. at this point it’s been like 5 years since phoebe’s traumatic incident with cole / the source and she decides she wants to have kids again. she and coop have their first daughter in 2008, a girl they name leona. cupid powers of beaming & sensing love, and levitation that will eventually develop into flight. limited precognition. 2010. they have another child, this time a boy, warren. beaming, sensing love, telekinesis, telekinetic beaming. 2011 they final baby of the generation is born, phoebe and coop’s daughter let’s call her charlotte. she doesn’t have molecular immobilization, that magic mix with a cupid’s control over time. she has temporal stasis (& beaming & sensing love) 

[misscrawfords]

The Rise of Skywalker: Part Two

Read Part One here.

One of the many things I’ve been grappling with over the 2 weeks since TROS came out is the validity and cause of my upset and anger. And it centres round the question: if Reylo had ended differently, if they’d had a happy ending, if Ben Solo had lived, would I still hate the film? Would I still be angry? Or would I forgive and overlook its other myriad flaws? And connected to those central questions is another that pressed upon me, namely: am I angry and upset because it is a bad film on multiple levels that insults its audience and breaks its own mythology in a way that is deeply distressing to female viewers and is fundamentally a poorly written film or do I only feel like that because I am a disappointed shipper? Am I only upset because I have got so attached to my HEA fluffy fanfic that I’ve lost sight of the story that canon is actually telling?

There’s a wider issue contained in these questions that I’ve been asking myself which is that there is a judgement implicit that responding to a film purely as a shipper is a bad thing, that it invalidates my criticism and my feelings if, in fact, I am simply an upset and disappointed shipper who wanted a happy ending. That’s an issue that is definitely worth pursuing but elsewhere.

It’s been two weeks. I’ve read multiple twitter threads, listened to bits of WTForce podcast (it’s very long... and was making me cry...), many reviews of the film, and today I finally started reading Valerie Estelle Frankel’s From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey through Myth and Legend which is blowing my mind and giving me the confidence to say what I’ve known for a while:

My feeling that TROS is a terrible film on multiple levels - all of them actually - is valid. You may disagree and that’s fine. It’s only an opinion. But it’s my opinion and I stand by it. And, returning to the initial question that has been perplexing me - in fact I cannot separate the way the characters of Rey and Kylo/Ben were treated from the film’s other flaws. If Ben had lived, if Reylo had had a happy ending, if their relationship had played out differently, even if they had both died, yes, I would have been more inclined to forgive the film its many other flaws and misjudgements, but the fact is, if Reylo had been written in a satisfactory way then it would have been a very different film. Reylo is only one - one massive, egregious error - thing that contributes to the mess that this films. It is not the only thing that is enraging and upsetting but it is probably the biggest. I’ll talk about these other things in yet another post, but for now...

Let’s talk about Reylo.

tl;dr: Reylo is canon and the movie still sucked. Here’s a 5000+ word dissertation on why. Maybe don’t read if my opinions on this are going to make you sad/angry.

I’m going to break down my problems with Reylo in this film logically and honestly, I’m not sure I’m going to say anything that hasn’t already been said, but perhaps reading another perspective will help others who feel similarly? I’m guessing it’s going to help me if I write about it. We’ll see.

There are three problems. There’s the problem of the fate of Ben Solo. In a way, that’s the easiest and simplest one to deal with. Death was always on the cards as a possible ending for him. A tragic hero who commits terrible acts is redeemed in death by saving the world. The death of this character is... not a surprise and has always been an ending I worried about because I’m a shipper and I like happy endings over sad ones. And I’ve been very convinced by the meta and arguments of shippers who have argued passionately that Ben had to live. However, arguably the problem is not the death in itself but the circumstances and the context. So I’ll come back to that.

The second problem is that of Rey. Rey’s development (or lack of it) and especially her ending. Yep. This is a big problem. Far bigger IMO than the death of Ben which, while tragic, could have been beautiful and fitting.

Thirdly, is Ben and Rey together. Reylo. Their relationship and the way it plays out and the way, ultimately, all of this breaks the mythology being established in previous films.

So three very interlinked problems.

To summarise. In TROS Kylo regresses to being the Supreme Leader and trying to source dark power. This is not terribly surprising considering the ending of TLJ. Rey also regresses to someone who is training and who does not believe she is worthy of Luke’s lightsaber. This is surprising because Rey has already accepted her destiny and her role as a Jedi at the end of TLJ. There is no reason for her to feel insecure about it a year later in TROS.

Rey and Kylo connect through their Force Bond and fight. Their anger is understandable but these fights continuously rehash exactly the same material as what was covered in TLJ, leaving me feeling, well, not very much. Kylo is trying to tell Rey something about who she is (a question that was resolved in TLJ) and Rey is angry at him because of reasons. 

There are some good parts here. Unlike a lot of people, I really liked the fight at Pasaana. I felt it took something from TLJ and added something else. It was a rehash of the throne room fight over the lightsaber but while that conflict was entirely personal over an object that meant something to them but not the wider population (beyond what it could do as a weapon), the same conflict here was over a transport ship containing real people and Chewie (apparently), a character of importance to both. So what happened is that their inability to reconcile with each other and meet half way is manifested in a completely balanced conflict which has a living cost. Chewie dies! Rey kills someone dear to her - accidentally, sure - but she now has a body count showing how truly destructive her fight with Kylo is. It is a symbol of how necessary it is they work together and find balance. Daisy Ridley’s acting here was great and I felt genuinely shocked. Shocked that Rey plunged so immediately into a kind of darkness that put her on a level with Kylo and shocked that Chewie was killed off so casually without warning or build-up - a real casualty of war and the raised stakes in this film. I thought it was a great way to build on TLJ and extend it.

So you can imagine how I felt when Chewie’s death was retconned.

Pretty similar to how I felt when C-3PO got his memory back.

I will probably talk more about this in Part Three, which is my wider issues with the film, but it’s sort of unavoidable mentioning them here because of course the way the film invalidates serious emotion by showing in so many ways that Death Is Not The End and is consequently meaningless impacts on Reylo and the fact that Ben dies.

Another nice moment was the snatching of the beads through the Force Bond. I mean, Kylo literally stole some fertility-coded beads from Rey’s neck!? Uh, this subtext is rapidly becoming text, as they say. Pasaana was weird though, right? Rey talks to children, is at a festival of life, she is fulfilling her role of becoming a symbolic mother which she started in TLJ and which fits the child Jedi at the end of that film (who was never seen again but we’ll deal with that later) and Kylo receives a gift of a necklace (a feminine symbol) from her immediately afterwards... This is pretty hot and heavy symbolism. Of their union and a future involving children, real or metaphorical.

And Rey learns how to heal with the Force, trying it on a giant worm as practice. This fits with her heroine’s journey - she is not using the lightsaber (a symbol of masculine power) but is using her power to preserve and save, which is feminine power. So far so good. I mean, it’s a shame they are wasting all these Force Bond sessions backtracking on TLJ to the extent that instead of enjoying their interactions, I’m going “Yeah yeah yeah okay but we’ve already done this but better”. But there’s still development so it’s okay and sometimes it’s even kind of hot.

Rey Palpatine. 

Oh dear.

Look, it’s not the thing itself. The union of a Skywalker and a Palpatine, the balance coming from the union of two great families on either side of the Force, is honestly not a bad idea at all. Ben as the Skywalker with a bit of darkness in him balanced by Rey the Palpatine with a bit of light in her. BALANCE. It could be beautiful. 

Unfortunately it isn’t. Rey’s lineage was resolved really well in TLJ. Rey Nobody is a great idea for all the reasons everyone already says - opening up the Force to everyone instead of keeping it as a kind of aristocratic lineage etc. Retconning this is really unnecessary and also sends a terrible message to the audience, especially women, as everyone has already discussed to death. Rey is literally told her power comes from a creepy old man who won’t stay dead instead of something innate within her. Instead of letting the past die, we are digging it up like an overzealous and ignorant 19th century British aristocrat let loose in Egypt with a pick-axe and period-applicable racism. Rey is then told that her parents sold her and abandoned her… to protect her. Another great message. And apparently Luke, Han and Leia all knew this?????? Honestly, I was confused by all this when I was watching the film but from what I’ve read afterwards it seems this is the case and in which case not only does that not make literally any sense at all in terms of what happened in TFA and TLJ but also has pretty awful implications for the OT characters and how they related to Ben. 

As I mentioned, it is also unnecessary for the plot for Rey to be a Palpatine. If Palpatine has to come back (which he doesn’t but okay whatever) then surely it’s enough that Rey is extremely strong in the Force for him to either want to kill her or want to control her? Like, literally that’s what he did to Anakin. Why does she have to be related to him unless the film is making some very unfortunate conclusions about blood. Good blood, bad blood… yeeeaaaaaah, this isn’t great as a message. It could be but that’s not the story the first two films have told. Also does Palpatine want to kill her or control her? Like, I’m genuinely not clear on that. I’m not sure he is. I’m not sure the film is. What is actually going on? Also if Palpatine has been controlling Ben his entire life why the hell didn’t he control Rey? Surely it’s easier to invade and control the mind of his own flesh and blood than that of another random Force child he isn’t related to? Who is surrounded by other powerful Force users? When Rey is all alone? Like if Palpatine is able to build up an insanely massive army that nobody has noticed across the Galaxy while still being kind of dead, surely he can access the mind of Rey on Jakku? Also, how did he manage to impregnate a human woman while being sort of dead and old? On both a mythical level and on the level of a question of taste and plausibility, HOW??? 

THIS PLOT MAKES LITERALLY NO SENSE WHAT IS GOING ON AAAARGGGHHH 

And breathe. 

So anyway, Rey Palpatine. Rey and Kylo fight and Rey kills Kylo. It didn’t really work for me though I’d have to watch again to figure out precisely why. This epic, wet fight just… wasn’t quite as epic as I expected it to be. Maybe it was because Finn was randomly there. Maybe it was because it didn’t have the dialogue from the trailer. Maybe it was because I was just tired of watching them fight and not seeing their relationship progress during the film when it had already progressed beyond this in TLJ. And she kills him like it’s a calculated thing when his guard is down and this whole thing is a mess. Now, it’s coming back to me! The order of events don’t make sense. The characterisation doesn’t make sense. 

Kylo and Rey are fighting. Leia gives her life force to communicate something to her son and dies in the process. I don’t quite understand what she’s doing and why this means she has to die. She’s not force projecting like Luke did. How is this different from in TLJ when she says “Ben” then and he waivers about killing her? She was fine after that! I get that they’re working with what they could for Leia but nevertheless, if you’re going to include it in an actual film, it’s still got to have internal consistency. Not that this film cares. Anyway, Leia dies to make Kylo pause and then Rey kills him which seems very rushed and kind of mean but whatever. Then Rey immediately uses Chekov’s healing to bring him back to life and when she does he’s Ben without a scar. So this is all confusing to me. Did Leia redeam him by saying “Ben”? Did she do anything else that makes sense of her dying? Did Rey killing Kylo bring Ben back? Was it Han’s memory? A combination of all these factors?

But the order strikes me as off. The death of Kylo Ren to allow Ben Solo to live is good. Excellent content. But all that is needed to do this is for Kylo to die – meaningfully (which being randomly stabbed by his lover at the moment when he was changing does not quite feel to me) and be brought back to life – meaningfully. I’m not saying what Rey did wasn’t impressive but I don’t remember being overawed by the music and the cinematography here. This is in many ways, or should be, the turning point in the entire ST: the moment when Ben Solo is reborn. And the exact moment of it happening is uncertain. And does he need the moment with Han’s memory afterwards? I’m not saying it wasn’t very touching to see Han and to have their moment together but it nevertheless didn’t quite gell. Like so many things in this film, it’s a nice moment that is over too quickly and doesn’t quite hang together with coherent plotting and characterisation. The entire sequence is rushed with too much happening – fight, Leia, death, healing, Han, lightsaber, RANDOM FINN etc. etc. And in fact, this moment that should be climactic is then later overshadowed by later Ben healing Rey in the same way, a completely narratalogically meaningless act. But more on that later. 

And I realise that in my hurry to get to this fight, I’ve forgotten Dark!Rey. Dark!Rey, like Rey Palpatine, is an idea that could and should be amazing and, apart from the cool graphics and a moment of gasp for effect, isn’t and fundamentally doesn’t work. Rey is struggling with her inner darkness throughout this film, something that was suggested in both TFA and TLJ, so I’m very much on board with it, and I think it’s important to see women on screen be angry and especially angry in a wild, ugly way. I think Daisy Ridley did a great job with that. But TROS attributed this anger and darkness to Palpatine rather that all the myriad and understandable reasons that Rey had for being angry. Perhaps that could work in some contexts as a metaphorical way of showing her anger but Palpatine is too present physically for that to stick. Instead, her characterisation is given wholesale to her genes and a male influence. This is… not great.

Confronting the dark part of one’s self is vitally important in the heroine’s journey. Only when the heroine has reconciled the dark parts of her psyche can the heroine be whole. TROS has worked out that this important but then hasn’t really known how to execute it. The physical manifestation of Dark!Rey for Light!Rey to fight is hellishly unsubtle and is also over so quick you quickly forget that she’s there. (Again, momentary effect is prioritised over anything that actually makes sense in terms of storytelling.) As a manifestation of Rey’s inner anger, she’s completely pointless. Rey fights her quickly but fighting Dark!Rey doesn’t result in Rey unifiying her dark impulses with her heroic self. She still has dark impulses throughout the film! In fact, she never succeeds in fully reconciling them. If defeating Dark!Rey had been a striking and climactic moment then that would work, but it doesn’t. She continues to fight Kylo straight afterwards and Kylo himself is in some respects (certainly in TLJ) a physical manifestation of what Rey fears and needs in herself. It is Kylo who is truly Rey’s dark double in TFA and TLJ. He tells her what she knows and cannot admit, forcing her to confront that in herself. He attracts her yet repels her. According to what is set up in TFA and TLJ, until Rey can both kill Kylo and reconcile with him, she is not conquering and reconciling with that part of herself. After all, they are two halves of one protagonist. But in TROS Kylo no longer seems to take that role, or not coherently. For example, he delivers information (“Rey, yer a Palpatine lol”) that she doesn’t in fact know. So it doesn’t work. And yet it also doesn’t work that Rey fights Dark!Rey and then immediately goes off and fights Kylo! One of those fights is redundant, perhaps both. If Dark!Rey had been a real character who does stuff, who tempts Kylo, who replaces Rey (Odile/Odette-like) then this would be meaningful. But she doesn’t. I know that some people are arguing that Rey in the subsequent fights is possessed by Dark!Rey but honestly? I did not see that in the film and I just do not think the film is sufficiently coherent to be that subtle about something that is such a major plot point! So she continues to struggle with darkness even after supposedly defeating Dark!Rey which is just nonsense in terms of mythology. She struggles all the way up to her confrontation with Palpatine. 

So let’s get to that. Look, I’m going to be completely honest here: I have no idea what was going on. Palpatine was rigged up on a crane on creepy evil villain life support, there was a giant jam jar filled with pickled Snoke heads, Rey was there, Ben showed up having thrown away one lightsaber but then found another two lightsabers (there were a lot of lightsabers, I couldn’t keep track of which was which and why they were significant), the Knights of Ren were there to do a soundcheck for their upcoming gig IDEK, Finn wasn’t there which made a change and Palpatine wanted Rey to kill him so she would become super powerful until he didn’t want her to kill him. He was tempting her and used the standard threat of “I’m going to destroy the universe unless you take on these super dangerous powers to stop me but if you do then you’ll be evil yourself mwhahaha”. I’m not sure really how that benefits him. Was his end-game plan to build up a massive Sith Empire for his darling granddaughter to rule, ignore her for years in favour of corrupting Ben Solo via some dude called Snoke and then reappear from nowhere in order to die again so she could rule? Because that’s a really, really flawed plan. Like, my cullender is less holey than that plan. I may have got this wrong. But before anyone jumps in to “Well, actually” me, my point is valid: I’m an intelligent viewer who spends plenty of time thinking about SW. If I couldn’t follow the main reveal plan in the climactic film of the ST, then… that is a flaw in the writing and conception. It shouldn’t be that difficult!

 Anyway, back to Rey. She is being tempted yet again (which she shouldn’t be by this point in the film or trilogy) and, briefly (though I’ve mostly given up on hope for this film by this point) I am engaged by her quandery. I think it would be really interested if she takes the power offered and fully embraces her Palpatine heritage – she becomes a Sith in order to save the lives of her friends! Perhaps Dark!Rey was just a warm up to seeing the real Rey transform into Dark!Rey. Then Ben has to save her! As she has saved him from being Kylo Ren, he will save her from being Dark!Rey! Balance. So I think that could be interesting and it raises some interesting moral questions about whether doing something bad for good reasons is ever justifiable. But of course Rey resists! Rey is not allowed to actually do anything bad in this movie! It’s infuriating! Rey is completely good. I think the message the film thinks it’s giving out is that Rey is more than her ancestry – that she is good despite being a Palpatine, that everyone has the power to move beyond their background. Unfortunately, that message was already there when she was Rey Nobody! And the actual message is that Rey is a static, pure character who despite apparently containing darkness is never in any way truly tempted by it or gives into it. Any narrative tension over whether she will succumb or do something interesting is very rapidly dismissed. Just as Chewie’s death is retconned and C-3PO gets his memory back. 

Anyway Ben arrives and they somehow have two lightsabers (???? whatever) and stand and face Palpatine and I think at this point we need to talk about how this is just waaaaay less impressive on every level than them facing Snoke in TLJ. There was tension there and uncertainty and when they fought together it was genuinely breathtaking and surprising. There was no surprise about Ben and Rey facing Palpatine together, but there was a tired feeling of “Oh look, we’ve got to face off against another creepy old man who wants to hold onto power for evil after his time is well over. Oh well, I guess if we have to…” If nothing else, this sums up the Millenial experience very well! Ultimately, not only is Palpatine a confusing final villain, he’s also a boring one. The Chancellor in the PT was interesting on a political level, the Emperor was truly creepy as a foil to Darth Vader in the OT, but this fossil on life-support is neither scary nor original nor even particularly threatening.

That’s the thing with escalating the threats continuously – it becomes meaningless. Making the Boss bigger and badder and threatening the Universe instead of the Galaxy doesn’t make the drama more exciting, it just makes it less believable. It looks very impressive to have the entire sky filled with ships and the threat of Palpatine destroying everything but it’s also ultimately meaningless. A massive threat just means a massive reset button or deus ex force lightning. Superhero movies are very guilty of this terrible storytelling, so is Doctor Who. First London faces an alien threat, then England, then the planet, then the Galaxy, then the Universe… and where do you go from there? The audience doesn’t care about the world at large, they only care about our plucky little heroes and their lives. If Palpatine had said “I have Finn and Poe and if you don’t take on these Sith powers I’m going to murder them” the effect would have been the same, maybe even better because Rey’s dilemma would have been even more personal. Hey, another interesting idea: “I have Ben. Only way to save him is to adopt Sith powers!” Anyway.

So this confrontation is yet another less impressive copy of the throne room scene in TLJ. The lore also gets confusing here. Ben and Rey are tortured which makes no sense because doesn’t Palpatine want Rey alive? Not sure what he’s trying to achieve here except it makes our heroes look powerless. Then Rey takes on the force lightning and does some snazzy special effects to win the war very easily. So easily that you feel no emotion whatsoever at how easily this massive army of ships is instantly wiped out. (Side point, but I’m guessing there were lots of people on those ships and Rey’s just killed them all? And considering we’ve just got an admittedly half-baked but still a plot about the defection of storm troopers, isn’t this just a bit concerning? But Rey can do no wrong and it’s all for the greater good because this is the Light Side of the Force and she is All The Jedi so I guess we’ll just pass over this casual genocide on the part of our heroine.) This seems to kill Rey despite Palpatine telling her to do it to get more power a few minutes earlier. No seriously, isn’t this what happens? I’m so confused. At which point Ben force heals her as she force heals him and whereas she was fine and dandy after doing it, it kills him.

Which… okay. Is a thing that happens. It’s hella inconsistent. And makes no sense. But okay, I mean, okay. I wasn’t even sad. I was just like “…right.” And fortunately the film immediately moves on and completely fails to acknowledge Ben’s existence while triumphant music plays. So that’s a thing.

Remember how I said at the beginning of this meandering dissertation that I was always aware of Ben dying being a possible ending but it was the execution that failed here? Right! Well, the thing is that every time a death happens in the context of a hero’s journey, it’s got to mean something. In a world where people can be resurrected and, uh, SW is very much that world (or it is in TROS), then you can’t just die for no reason! And neither Rey nor Ben’s deaths made sense. Rey absolutely needs an underworld journey as part of her heroine’s journey but her death near the end of the film does not fulfil that criterion. An underworld journey is a way for a heroine to shed part of her behind, to learn something, and to confront herself. The cave scene was Rey’s journey to the underworld. Arguably, the scene on Pasaana where she learned force healing was another type of katabasis. Heck, you can argue that when she finds the lightsaber in TFA it’s a katabasis or when she ships herself to Ben in a coffin it’s another. Like. Rey has lots of metaphorical underworld journeys. But when she dies at the end of TROS she has already reunited with Ben, she has no darkness in her that needs to be purged because she never waivered from the light and when she is brought back she is the same person she was before. Unlike Ben who comes back from the dead literally a different person. So Rey’s death makes no sense either in terms of the magical world and powers in play but also for her heroine’s journey. Maybe she could have collapsed. Maybe the effort should have drained her and Ben of their Force powers – a sacrifice for using powers they shouldn’t have touched. That would have made sense and would have been entirely fitting. But death? Nope.

And Ben’s death consequently makes no sense. Force healing has been established within the very same movie to have no real consequences on the user (also similarly established in The Mandalorian) so Ben’s death makes less sense than anything else in the entire film. The internal logic of the film says that there are no consequences for force healing. And then it kills off someone who does it. Sadness is not the reaction to that; confusion is. And then on a mythological level, Ben shouldn’t die. Kylo has already died. And Ben has been reborn!  I know it’s a meme, but Ben has done nothing wrong. Kylo has been punished for his actions and what is left is Ben. This is very, very clearly spelled out within the film. This makes Ben’s death a senseless tragedy that makes no sense, a final death in a film that has continually shown that death is not real or an ending. Except for Ben Solo. Because… I don’t know? I’ve managed to go 4812 words without mentioning redemption but I guess I can’t avoid it now. I’m actually not a big fan of redemption because it gets all thorny and becomes about morality and specifically Christian morality and I’m just… I’m tired of that. I’m a classicist and stories of classical mythology and classical heroism have nothing to do with redemption and being good and evil and I really see the Skywalkers as a kind of Greek tragedy lineage rather than people who have to be redeemed. I know Vader died changing his mind and killing the Emperor for his son but I don’t see that as redemption. That was a man who had done many awful things making a choice out of love at the very end of his life. And again, Ben saved Rey – this was an act of personal love and had nothing to do with the Galaxy. Redemption seems to be an active, ongoing thing that is about more than the purely personal. Vader wasn’t redeemed and neither was Ben – because he didn’t have a chance. And it all gets confused because, as I keep saying, Kylo Ren died!!!! On a mythical level, that’s all that’s needed! Ben Solo, on a mythic level, has nothing to prove, nothing to atone for, nothing for which he requires redemption. On the level that SW is also a story of politics, if Ben had lived, he would have had to reconcile his past actions as Kylo Ren with his present experience as Ben Solo – and it would have been fair if he had to pay a penalty in the human world. But not the death penalty. Because he has already paid that. Ben succeeds in reconciling and facing off his inner darkness in the way that Rey does not in this film. But he is then punished again and dies needlessly and shockingly in order to save Rey, who also shouldn’t have died.

It’s very unsatisfactory. On a mythic level, it really doesn’t make sense.

And I haven’t even mentioned the whole thing about if they are dyad (lol I keep reading this as dryad and getting a very weird set of mental images) or two halves of a protagonist or soulmates or whatever you want to call it where if one dies the bond just remains as a wound. This is a scenario where Rey and Ben have been very clearly set up as a pair animus/anima hero/heroine who belong together whether that is in life or death. I’ve just been reading about Brunnhild and Siegfried from the Nibelung Ring Saga – they both die at the end when they’ve finally been reunited but they are united in death. It’s sad but their death is inevitable after what’s happened to them and it’s sort of uplifting because they are together. This could definitely have worked for Rey and Ben. And considering death doesn’t stop you appearing multiple times and even doing cool stuff like lifting ships out of the sea, it wouldn’t even have been very sad. The mystical hero/heroine who cannot remain in society once their journey is complete is not uncommon. Look at Frodo going off with the Elves in a metaphor for death at the end of LotR where the more down-to-earth Sam is able to stay and rebuild. It would make total sense for Ben and Rey to be unable to integrate with society at the end of TROS whether that means simply exile or death. So long as they are together.

Anyway, they’re not together which makes the whole thing horribly unbalanced and unnervingly wrong on a profound level. The myth is broken! It simply does. not. work.

But if the ending for Ben and Reylo as a whole was disturbing, false, internally inconsistent and emotionally empty, that’s nothing to the ending Rey gets. Lots of people have already written about this so I’ll try to be brief. Rey has no connection to Tatooine. Rey is not allowed to grieve. Rey regresses to a childhood state, her very definite, spelled out future as a symbolic mother being absolutely aborted. Rey takes as a family name one that she has no personal connection. Rey is left with absent friends and nobody but the ghosts of Luke (who she didn’t like) and Leia to talk to in the role of weirdly incestuous sterile parents. So I guess this is a win for the Luke/Leia shippers?

Okay, I just need to rant a moment. (Yes, this is 5556 words of ranting but you’ve got this far – indulge me?) I’ve seen several takes from people I follow who aren’t Reylos saying that this is a great ending for Rey because she has a family and I’m just like ARE YOU EFFING SERIOUS?????? Are you ACTUALLY trying to tell me that living alone on a barren, desert planet reminiscent of where she lived as a child before she heard the call to adventure, where she was symbolically asleep with nobody but the GHOSTS OF SIBLINGS for company and ABSENT FRIENDS is FINDING A FAMILY???????????? JUST KILL HER ALREADY – she’s ALREADY DEAD!!!!! You want to make me feel Rey at the end even if Ben is dead? Show her surrounded by her found family in the Resistance and show her WORKING WITH CHILDREN?????????????? IT. WOULD. NOT. BE. HARD. TO. DO. THAT. AND. MAKE. IT. UPLIFTING. But this -this is just painful, truly painful and insulting. And don’t give me this crap that she’s not living there, she’s just there temporarily to bury the lightsabers and leave and go back to her friends. WHAT ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT. This is the ENDING of a NINE MOVIE SAGA. The ending matters???? And the ending is of Rey alone with the droid she rescued two movies back staring at some binary suns that only matter to the audience and not to her. THE FILM DOES NOT TELL US THAT SHE IS GOING TO LEAVE AND MEET HER FRIENDS. THE FILM DOES NOT TELL US THAT. IT DOES NOT IMPLY THAT. So this is a bloody stupid argument.

Yeah, I cracked. I don’t regret it. This is so infuriating I actually have literally nothing to say about “Rey Skywalker”. Like, whatever. The film’s already done its worse. Just… whatever. Who cares at this point? It’s meaningless. I laughed in despair at the cinema screen and was glad it was over.

 The fact is, according to the heroine’s journey, this isn’t the end of the story. It makes sense that within 24 hours of the film premiering, AO3 was filling up with “fix-it fics” where Rey goes to the World Between Worlds to get Ben back. Because that’s what heroines do. They save their loved ones. They do it patiently and through endurance. And they always succeed. And unlike heroes who go to the underworld to save their wives (cf Orpheus), heroines who go to get their man succeed. This story needs Rey, like Psyche, to go save Ben. She hasn’t finished her heroine’s journey. In fact, she is in many ways back where she started. Her attempts to integrate and confront her darkness have been confused and ultimately meaningless. She has not unified permanently with her lover yet. She has not become either a literal or symbolic mother. There is a stage in the heroine’s journey where she retreats to where she comes from for reflection and growth. That is acceptable. But that is not the ending!!!

And to place this ending of the film, with Rey smiling and saying “Rey Skywalker” as if this means something and some triumphant music over the top alongside what so many viewers feel instinctively, namely that the myth is incomplete and broken, leaves the audience – or at least it left me – feeling cheated and empty and bemused about why it feels so wrong. Ultimately Ben dead and Rey pregnant would make more narrative sense than the sterile and barren and infantilised ending we were given. And that was just about the worst case scenario of bad writing that we ever thought could happen. 

The myth is broken. Good night.

(Tune in soon to the much shorter Part Three where I discuss everything else that isn’t Reylo related that is wrong with this movie.)

[ficsandcatsandficsandcats]

Here’s an idea for Punk!AU! How about Sam is on her first proper date with Nic, and Daddy Jaskier with the help of Uncle Geralt and Uncle Valdo follow them to spy on them (as Jaskier is feral that Sam and Nic might do more than just kissing), and Jaskier sees them kissing passionately, and overthinks that they’re going to get it on, in which Sam gets angry at her for treating her like a child, and Jaskier feels guilty thinking his daughter hates him and they hug and say sorry in the end.

Fandom: The WitcherPairing: Punk!Jaskier x Fatherhood, Punk!Uncle SquadWord Count: 2,176Rating: TTaglist: @heroics-and-heartbreak @whatevermonkey @mynamesoundslikesherlock @magic-multicolored-miracle @writingstudent @mlleecrivaine @coffee-and-stories @ultracolorfulnerdcollection @astouract@your-not-invisible-to-me @kemmastan  a/n: Bless these sweet babies and bless the Uncle Squad + Dad!Jaskier’s hearts and most of all bless you for the prompt, nonners

Jaskier had actually allowed himself to believe that maybe Sam and Nic wouldn’t ever date. Valdo shot that down every time he voiced it, citing his own longtime feelings for Aevryn that he didn’t act on until much later. Geralt never really told Jaskier he was wrong but he grew suspiciously quiet and distracted by something whenever Jaskier asked him to back him up. The pair had been crushing on each other a bit since they’d met in middle school and now they were in high school and still nothing.

Until today.

Sam had announced casually that Nic was taking her on a date to the aquarium that Friday evening and when Jaskier protested that he hadn’t asked his permission she’d wrinkled her nose and reminded him that it wasn’t the 19th century. Jaskier had looked to you for support but again was left on his own as you gave him a look.

“Nic is a good kid,” you told him later, “They’ve known each other forever. Yennefer is friends with his mom. There couldn’t be a better first boyfriend for her.”

But Jaskier wasn’t convinced and finally he got the support he was looking for when he told the guys about the date.

“He’s making his move,” Valdo said, leaning against the pool table he’d been practicing on like some sort of mafioso. Geralt’s brows furrowed and he clutched his tumbler of scotch a bit tighter.

“I like Nic, don’t get me wrong. I trust Sam and I trust him as two separate individuals but put them together and it just feels….” Jaskier trailed off, trying to find a word to describe his roiling emotions.

“Off,” Valdo finished for him, “As well it should be. We’ve all been young kids before. Some of us are still old in fact.”

He preened as Geralt and Jaskier rolled their eyes.

“She’s your daughter too so we have to be careful of that,” Valdo remarked. Jaskier’s eyes shot daggers as he pulled himself up to his full height.

“What the hell does that mean?” he demanded.

“Oh calm down we know exactly what that means. The kid is a charmer and she’s got an appetite for romance. It isn’t bad, god knows I’m not judging or shaming, but she’s still only 16 and doesn’t understand the emotional toll of being intimate,” Valdo explained. Jaskier paled. He hadn’t even considered… intimacy. He and Y/N had talked with her about sex a long time ago, emphasizing matters of consent and dispelling the virginity as purity myth. You tried to raise her with a healthy knowledge of sex but that didn’t make the idea of you engaging in it any better. When Jaskier looked at you he could still feel the weight of you in his arms, the clutch of your tiny fist around his finger.

“What do I do?” Jaskier exclaimed, feeling utterly at a loss.

“You said it’s this Friday? As in tomorrow?” Valdo asked. Jaskier nodded in agreement.

“Valdo…” Geralt said, his voice warning.

“Hey! Listen! I mean no ill will to the kids but there was a time not long ago when chaperones were a thing. I’m just wondering if perhaps it may behoove us to bring that tradition back,” Valdo said.

“I don’t know…” Jaskier said, though Geralt could see the wheels turning in his mind.

“Alright well how about this… It’s been awhile since I went to the aquarium, a very public space which people have every right to go to. And it’s been awhile since the three of us went out for a guy’s trip,” Valdo suggested. Geralt swirled the scotch in his glass and thought for a moment. He could feel Jaskier waiting for his response, gauging how he felt and trying to be patient.

“I do like the otters,” Geralt said simply.

—–

“Oh my god they’re so cute!” Sam exclaimed, watching a sleek river otter work at opening a clam. Nic watched her, his long, brown curls brushed out of his face so he could watch her face light up with delight. He’d wanted to do this for some time but he was always scared, worrying that asking out his best friend would lead to losing her. His mom had advised him to go for it, ultimately. And he was so glad. They’d had some seafood for lunch and he’d impressed her with his octopus facts. In truth he could have told her anything about any creature and she would’ve been impressed, happy to hear him speak and that his hand kept brushing against hers, as they were right now. She reached out and took his hand in hers and pointed with the other one to a fluff otter baby but Nic’s eyes were on their entwined hands, heart pounding with excitement.

“Ah bless,” Valdo sighed, watching the young couple from around a hall corner.

“She looks so happy,” Jaskier whispered, brushing a tear away.

“Hmm,” Geralt replied, but there was a mistiness in his eyes too. Ciri hadn’t begun dating yet (as far as he knew), too focused on school and her activism, but he knew the day would come before he was ready. This was a bit of a test run for him, except Sam felt just as much like a daughter as Ciri.

“Shit they’re on the move,” Valdo hissed and the three men nearly fell over themselves running out of the way. They successfully followed at a distance, each wearing an attempted disguise to not bring attention to themselves from fans or Sam, and they followed them into a circular room where fish swam around the sides and above them. Though it was a popular attraction there weren’t as many people and Sam and Nic seated themselves in the middle, staring up as beautiful varieties of fish swam around.

“You know, the Pacific Northwest has over 40 subspecies of Sculpin alone?” Nic said, his deep brown eyes finding Sam’s pale blue ones as he recited the fact.

“How do you know so much about fish? You’re a baker, not a fisherman,” Sam asked with a laugh.

“Hey, I can be both! Don’t put me in a box, Pankratz,” Nic teased, a glint in his eyes. She quirked her an eyebrow at him and pretended to tap her foot, waiting for the answer. He finally relented, dropping his gaze sheepishly.

“I, uh, may have done some googling ahead of time to try and impress you,” he admitted.

“Nic Merigold, that may be the cutest thing I have ever heard,” Sam said. Nic’s eyes met hers again and she leaned in a bit closer. He swallowed hard, eyes falling to her lips, and he moved in as well until their lips gently touched.

“That’s alright, that’s fairly painless,” Valdo said, though he whispered through gritted teeth. Geralt clutched Jaskier’s arm, both to comfort him and because he needed to wrap his fist around something, the primal protective urge he wasn’t proud of bubbling up in his chest.

Sam slid a hand into Nic’s curls and moved to deepen the kiss, tongue sliding across braces a little clumsily. They pulled apart suddenly as someone fell over by the entrance.

“Uncle Valdo?” Sam exclaimed, rising and walking over to the man who carefully righted himself. He tried to gesture subtly for someone behind him to move away but she ran up too swiftly and caught Jaskier and Geralt who were frozen mid-stride, their faces turning guilty.

“What… the… fuck?” Sam muttered, staring incredulously as Nic walked up beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. He was a shy boy but when someone he cared for was upset that became his focus and Sam was definitely upset.

“Sam!” Jaskier exclaimed, “Fancy seeing you here!”

“Don’t,” she snapped, tone and voice becoming an echo of her mother’s, “Were you spying on us?”

“Spying is a harsh word,” Valdo began but he stopped as Sam shot him a dirty side-glare that reminded him oddly of his own wife. It seemed Sam had taken a bit of all of the Vicious Mockery ladies. The way she held herself and the anger that emanated from her was all Yennefer, though she remained in command of her actions, much like her Aunt.

“Nic thank you for a wonderful day but I think I need to go,” Sam said. Nic reluctantly pulled his arm away and she gave him an apologetic look that cut through all three men’s hearts, as did the mournful look in Nic’s face as well.

“Until next time?” Nic asked. Sam turned to him and planted a brisk kiss on his lips, squeezing his hand and summoning a smile as she nodded. He smiled back and lamely waved at the three men before moving off towards the exit. Sam turned back to face the three of them and to their mutual horror there were tears in her eyes.

“Mitka, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to-”

“I’m not a little kid anymore. How can any of you tell me that I’m independent and can take what I want from the world and then turn around and spy on me when I go on a date. With Nic! Nic who you all know and love! Nic who’s been by my side since I was a kid! Why would you do this to me?”

She didn’t wait for their answer, spinning to run away towards a different exit than the one Nic had gone through. Jaskier moved to go after her but Geralt stilled him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Let her go,” Geralt said. The words struck terror into Jaskier as he considered the weight of all they could mean, but he relented.

Jaskier talked with Y/N about the day, confessing his role in what had happened and after a long conversation with a lot of similar expressions as the one he’d gotten from his daughter earlier that day, the two of you waited for Sam to return. You heard the door open and close downstairs five minutes before Sam’s curfew and Jaskier sat up.

“Do you want me to go with you?” you offered. Jaskier shook his head.

“I need to make this right on my own,” he said. You nodded, giving his hand a comforting squeeze, and texted Yennefer and Aevryn to thank them for dropping her back home, knowing that they’re who she would have gone to while upset.

Jaskier found Sam sitting in the kitchen, drumming her fingers against the granite countertop of the island. She glanced up when he walked in but looked away again.

“Uncle Valdo has offered me a car if I stop being mad at him. What’s your best offer?” she asked. Jaskier swore internally and made a note to talk with Valdo – yet again – about extravagant presents, much less bribes.

“What’s the going rate on a sincere apology?” Jaskier asked. She raised a hand and gave a “so-so” gesture which was all of the encouragement he needed.

“I shouldn’t have betrayed your trust,” he began, leaning against the counter to face her though her eyes stayed on the counter, “It wasn’t right. You’re smart and responsible and vastly wiser than I ever was at your age. And I do trust Nic, he’s a good kid. It’s… hard to watch your kids grow up. And that’s not on you, that’s something I need to deal with myself, but I want you to know that I see you as the young woman you are and I’m proud of you. And I won’t butt in again. Unless you want me to.”

“I won’t,” she said, eyes rising to meet his.

“I know,” he said a little sadly. She caught the sadness and sighed.

“Daddy I know you mean well and I know it’s hard. But it’s not like that much has changed. I still need you, just in different ways. Like, I may not need you to tie my shoes but I need you to trust me. And I may not need you to fight my battles for me but I do need you to be there for me when things go wrong,” she said. Jaskier smiled softly and nodded.

“I can do that,” he said.

“Good. Also, you’re totally paying for our makeup date,” she insisted.

“That seems fair,” Jaskier agreed.

“And you’ll let Uncle Valdo buy me the car,” she said, a sly look in her eyes.

“Nice try, Mitka,” Jaskier said, crossing over to her and pulling her into a hug.

“Eh, can’t blame a girl for trying,” she muttered, wrapping her arms around his waist and returning the hug. “I love you, daddy.”

“I love you too,” he replied, murmuring into her hair and trying to blink back the tears. When she pulled back there were some in her eyes as well.

“I gotta text Uncle Geralt. He’s been sending me memes all day so he must be real upset,” Sam said, reaching for her phone again. Jaskier shook his head and went back to the room where you were waiting for an update.

[awed-frog]

If you don’t mind the question, what did you mean about writers not knowing their country’s history?

Well - this is actually something I’m passionate about so I’ll do my best not to write an essay here, but the main problems here are that 

we mostly learn ‘simplified’ history because we learn it only when we’re very young and 

we learn deliberately sanitized history because we see stuff through a Christian / current ethics&morals filter and 

we learn history from the people who survived it (ie the nobility and the intellectual elites), which gives us a bizarre view of what the world was actually like and also 

we know jack shit about many things because a lot was lost forever and proper modern archaeology was born, like, yesterday so even the textbooks from my own days as a student are now painfully outdated. 

Aaaand add to that the fact that books also reflect who you are, your biases (conscious and subconscious) and the world you live in right now. 

Aaaaaaaaand add to that the fact the books need to make sense in a narrative way, so the more you delve into your own story, the more you move away from the ‘actual’ and ‘real’ past even if you’re writing a period novel, because everything about a novel is necessarily artificial.

For instance, the other day they confirmed that this magnificent Saxon grave from the 6th century they found a few years back contains a lyre made with Sri Lankan wood, but you’ll never find a historical or fantasy novel exploring trade between England and South-East Asia in the 6th century. Or, I don’t know - I have a goddamn M.A. in archaeology and I can’t walk two feet without tripping in a Celtic artefact and yet I was last year’s years old when I found out Gaulish society was incredibly gay - and the only reason I even discovered that is because I was researching that specific stuff (marriage and interpersonal relationships in ancient Gaul) for fanfiction.

(Fanfiction!)

And I know I tagged that other post GoT because that’s what I’m currently annoyed about, but since I don’t know much about the Middle Ages, I don’t want to wade in that and make even more of a prat of myself - instead, just look at Antiquity. Did you know that before HBO’s Rome, which truly made an effort, the most accurate depiction of the period came from an 18+ movie? Because apparently the director was like, “I want to shoot this incredibly, ridiculously E, all warnings apply, non-con, violence, incest story BUT I want the best actors of our generation and it must be historically accurate” and seriously W.T.F.? It was the first movie to show people writing on tablets instead of paper (paper!), and also the first movie to reflect what an imperial palace actually looked like (think a Kardashian’s bathroom but worse - more gold, more velvet, more glitter, more randomly placed stuffed peacocks).

(As a warning: if you’re now tempted to watch it, please note I’m not joking - this is a dead dove do not eat kind of situation.)

So, I don’t know. Speaking as someone who’s struggled to make sense of a foreign and distant past for about twelve years, I think that when it comes to history we’ve got a perfect storm of bad and worse things.

On the one hand, history is objectively hard understand because everyone in it is - well - dead. Archaeology is slowly filling the gaps, but there’s still a lot we’ll probably never know.

On the other hand, history is also an incredibly delicate and divisive subject, both for individuals and for nations. That’s why we keep rewriting textbooks and why we pretend we were never related to someone unsavoury (like this sweet old German lady I met who managed to ‘forget’ her parents had been enthusiastic Nazis) or try to redeem them in some way (apparently what’s going on in most of the US South).

And on the other other hand, we’re all brainwashed into thinking we know stuff about history because many of us had to sit through six to ten years’ worth of lessons - but, because of the previous two points and also all that stuff in bold above, we actually don’t. What science is going through right now, with people confusing access to Google with actual knowledge, is a lot more common with history, and has been common for a long time. 

So, I guess my point was - we should stop harassing writers for writing about their country’s actual, mythical or imagined past - which is normal, everybody does that - and start wondering why we keep hearing the same three stories based on 19th century stereotypes on what that past was like. I mean, it’s 2019. Why don’t we leave weird propaganda behind and teach better history, starting in primary school? And why don’t we translate more? Why did we have to wait for Netflix to have easy access to subtitled foreign stories? Why aren’t we more familiar with the history, religion and mythologies both of our own countries and of people we’ve been living in close proximity with since bloody prehistory? Why is world culture dominated by basically three countries?

(Uuuugh.)

Not to sound overly bitter or anything, but I’d like for people to be more curious, and I’d like to live in an economic system promoting and rewarding that curiosity, and instead we’re all stuck here.

[judefan843-blog]

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[terry-perry]

Adam’s Family

Once again, this goes out to @ladyfluff! It was so great being a part of something of yours, and I hope this isn’t the last time we do a collaboration!

Previous chapters by the aforementioned author right here:

Adam’s Family.

Adam’s Family

After one of the cameramen knocks on the door, it’s opened not long after by a barely awake Y/N. She gives the crew a drowsy smile and waves.

“Hey guys! I almost forgot you were coming. I’m normally not up until past midnight.”

She lets out a yawn as she rubbed one of her eyes with a finger before motioning them all to come in.

“Welcome to New York! The city that’s always up, even when I’m not.”

Everyone is now downstairs in a shop, with the camera zooming in on different pieces of Y/N’s collection.

“This is my little shop where I keep a few things that I’ve gathered throughout the years. As you can see, most of them are pieces of furniture, artwork, and just stuff I thought was quite lovely.”

She pauses to take off a rather old looking music box from a nearby shelf and give it a good polishing with a rag. Once she does, she opens it and smiles fondly at the little dancer inside twirling to a soft melody.

“This little beauty is from the 19th century, as are most of the things you find in here. Back up in my apartment are the things I absolutely refuse to sell due to the sentimental value they possess. Songbooks from old composers I used to pal around with, unfinished statues from artists I admired, and some stuff my brothers have given me of course!”

Someone from behind the camera asks her a question that she tilts her head at.

“I technically haven’t gotten into any form of business with either of them. We all do collect things, yes, but it’s just a habit you pick up when you’ve lived as long as us, I suppose. And lived enough lives.”

She lets out a sudden giggle, thinking of something.

“In fact, there’s this lava lamp Adam gave me that was given to him by -“

The standard chiming of the bell that rings from someone entering stops her anecdote. She looks over and lights up from seeing who came in.

“Hey! I didn’t know you were on your way already!”

She runs over to wrap her arms around her boyfriend Ian and kiss him fully on the mouth. He responds with an equal amount of enthusiasm by lifting her off her feet and wrapping his arms around her waist.

“I told you I was able to get an earlier flight! Didn’t you get my text?”

“Funny story about that…”

——

Back upstairs in Y/N’s apartment, there’s clutter that could rival her brother Adam’s. The camera records the different marbled faces and eerie painted scenery, along with a couple of bookshelves she had that contained early editions of classic novels. Some show visible signs of their age due to the slight tears on the spines, and the titles being somewhat faded. Other than that, the books seemed to be rather intact for the most part. The crew now have their focus on the couple snuggled up on the couch.

“We’ve been dating for a good while now. We met through Adam technically. I was there visiting him when I met Ian.”

“I don’t know what you could’ve seen in me at the time. I was a stuttering idiot when I first saw you.”

“I thought it was cute! You were so shy and sweet! It took him weeks before he could properly ask me out.”

“I remember practicing in my mirror so I wouldn’t screw it up,”

They’re asked about what keeps their relationship intact despite the list of complications they have.

“It was a bit tricky at first to maintain it since it’s not very common for my kind to have an actual relationship with a zom- human. Force of habit. It’s one of the main reasons my family wasn’t exactly too thrilled about us.”

She is asked to elaborate.

“Well it isn’t unheard of for people like Ian and me to be together. But normally it’s only for a short while, because the human is eventually turned. It’s not like that with us, though.”

“We’ve talked about it once we got more serious, and I learned more about her and the others. There can be some risks, with most of them involving either one of us getting killed during the process. So I’ve decided to just enjoy spending this life I have with her now. And then hope I get the chance to meet her in the next one she lives in.”

Y/N shields her face in Ian’s chest to cover up the grin she had, and the tears. He gave her a goodhearted chuckle and held her close.

“So far we’ve been able to make some adjustments for each other. We visit each other every chance we get. And I’ve been able to get these cool blackout curtains that I’ve made sure are pinned down to the wall and clamped shut. And she actually tried to start cooking because of me. Which may, or may not, have started a couple fires…”

Ian laughs when she punches his shoulder.

“I’ve gotten better!”

——

Scene changes to a club of some kind where Ian is sat onstage melodically plucking at a guitar while looking over to Y/N at the mike.

“It’s very clear, our love is here to stay...

Not for a year but ever and a day…”

We go back to the apartment where Y/N is now alone on the couch. Ian had left for the airport not too long ago. She appears to have been crying.

“As you know, I grew up during a time when women didn’t get a lot of good options for their future. For me, the future could’ve been to be married off to some farmer almost twice my age. To be his submissive wife that was only meant to serve him, and give him children that he could also ignore. If it weren’t for Adam meeting Eve - and giving me the chance to have a new life - I probably would’ve fooled myself into being content with the expectations made for me.”

She looks over at a framed photo on one of the bookshelves. Zooming in, the camera sees that it’s one with Y/N in a dark Victorian styled gown standing between her two suited up brothers while Peter’s husband Rowan stood on the far right end by Peter and Eve stood at the far left with Adam. The crew are informed that it was taken during Adam and Eve’s third wedding.

“I’ve always been grateful to have Adam and Peter as my brothers. Everyone else did their own thing and were compliant with whatever it was our parents wanted them to do. The three of us were the ones that stood out as the black sheep. Peter was the one that was always openly supportive of everything I did. I think that was mainly due to the fact that he hid who he truly was for such a long time. He’d let me go hunting with him, and taught me how to ride a horse. And he was also the one that I loved to cause mischief with, especially when it came to annoying Adam. His angry face is just as hilarious as it was 500 years ago!”

She lets out another little laugh as she reminisces.

“But he was always a good sport about it in the end. Adam and I had a larger age difference between us, so you can say he was both like my brother and father. Which he pretty much was. He was the one I went to whenever I had a bad dream. He’d let me crawl into bed with him, and he’d read to me until I fell asleep. Even though they both have shown some reluctance in accepting my relationship with Ian - with Adam especially taking some time to be open about it - they’ve welcomed him into the family once he spent more time with us, and they saw how happy he makes me.”

“The radio and the telephone and the movies that we know

May just be passing fancies and in time may go…”

Ian sits in a cab and looks out at the familiar desolate streets of Detroit while being lost in thought.

“There was this night she slept over at my place - before I knew what she was - and some sunlight peeked in from the curtains. She screamed because of the burns she got on the side of her face. I was just worried about what the hell I could do to help her, I didn’t even hear her say ‘I’m sorry,’ over and over the way she did. She thought it was her fault…”

“But oh my dear...

Our love is here to stay…

Together we’re going a long, long way…”

“I had always looked at my brothers’ relationships with their partners, and I had often wondered what it would be like to have someone. To actually be in love.”

“Y/N is hardly like anyone I’ve met. She’s so cultured, sweet, loving, and fun. And I’m so used to being told to settle down when I babble on about whatever. Or I don’t even get paid much attention to. But with her, I feel like I can tell her anything.”

“Ian’s been so open minded about everything, so selfless. And he is so passionate about music, not to mention more talented than he gives himself credit for.”

“I won’t lie, I’m a little disappointed that I won’t get to share certain things with her. Like going to the beach, showing her off to my family, sharing a milkshake at Eileen’s, having babies with her…”

He seems to do a little more thinking; most likely imagining the last scenario.

“But none of that would be stuff I want if I couldn’t have her,”

“In time the Rockies may crumble

Gibraltar may tumble

They're only made of clay

But our love is here to stay.”

Ian strummed the last few notes of the song and shared another look with Y/N while the audience applauded. It wasn’t their approval he sought out to have.

[momo-de-avis]

Hi! Just wondering about your opinion that if the Catholic Church sold its art&treasures it would no longer be there for the world to enjoy and would fall into private hands&be hoarded away (many saying the church should sell rn) I've often sat in cathedrals like Notre Dame and marveled at what palaces were built for the masses to enjoy. Like a little luxury for all of us, even the least of us. I know you are an art historian and wondered what you thought of this. : ) hope you are well : )

Thank you anon! I hope you are well too!!

To be frank, this is actually a legal question. And as such, it varies from country to country. 

The Notre Dame, for example, is not owned by the Catholic church. I think France has very similar laws in this respect to my country, and what that means is: the monument, itself, is a National Treasure or National Monument (I don’t know the correct definition, but what it means is: it’s a building highly classified, of not just historical interest to the country, but in heritage as well, and as such is prioritized above others).

In my country, for example, if I am not mistaken, churches that are not classified as National Monuments do not belong to the church entirely (they are allowed financial compensation from the Vatican, which should be employed in restoration, but then priests… you know), but if they aren’t, then the State has to stay away from it. This is because our Constitution states the separation of Church and State, and it’s a double-edged sword: if you wonder why stuff like the infamous restoration of that Jesus painting by Dona Cecilia happened, it’s because the church it’s the sole holder of the building and every artefact inside of it. Stuff like that actually happened several times over in our country: because there is no legal classification of the building, nor the artefacts inside of it—thus no legal protection from the State—priests do what the fuck they want and hire retired 80-year-old painters to slap some plastic paint on an 18th century mural (I wish I was kidding but this shit actually happened).

Again, I don’t know how it goes in other countries, but in Portugal, since the law defines ‘culture’ as something that belongs to everyone, everyone is allowed—and motivated to—act if they see a certain building decaying or believe it to be in danger. This is actually something a lot of people don’t know, and instead take it to facebook, but as a citizen, you can walk into your local city hall and present a form of petition (I sincerely forgot what paperwork this involves) requestion for the monument in question to be classified as ‘in danger’. As soon as that classification happens, the withholder of the monument will be inquired, and if anything happens to it, the owner will be fined.

So, what I mean to say is: the actual Catholic church actually doesn’t own lot of the churches out there classified as Monuments. One thing that also helps to preserve these monuments and to maintain them as public property—actually, now that I think of it, I think it completely forbids governments from selling a monument to a private owner—is if they are classified by Unesco. If it’s got a Unesco stamp of approval, it’s public and cannot be private, I believe (though correct me if I am wrong).

When it comes to privately owning art, however… I am for the opinion that art belongs to everyone, and though you are entitled to own art privately, you have to keep in mind that it is not yours, but everyone’s, and thus SHOULD allow for the art you possess to be viewed by the public. I don’t mean display it in a museum, but work towards images and information of the artwork you own to be made public and accessible to everyone. I say this because portuguese art history is a nightmare. You have an insane amount of incredible artists from the 19th century, and the vast majority of their works, you can’t even find an image. 

See, I teach art history, and it’s absolute hell for me. I remember telling my students, super frustrated, that I couldn’t find a single picture of more than 2 or 3 paintings by Aurélia de Sousa. And what is more frustrating is that, the more you progress through history, the less resources you find. Portuguese Neo-Realism is inexistent. If you google it, this is what you get:

The most important painting, the one that set the movement, isn’t even on the first few pages. Now would you believe if I told you we actually have an entire museum dedicated to neo-realism? Would you believe if I told you it was one of the most important artistic movements in the end of second world war, and an incredible voice against fascism at a time? Probably not, because we don’t really have anything out there to be seen.

This happens because, since our market is tiny and absolute shit, most things that exist are privately owned—usually, heirs of the painters or people who bought it in auctions for pennies—in other words, people you have to wait to die out to actually see the paintings. And there’s something incredibly cruel there. I teach this shit and I have nothing to teach, no tools to teach my students, because these private owners of art refuse to share—and I mean refuse. Aurélia de Sousa, for example, was a passionate photographer, which is something people don’t know. Why? Because the man who owns her photos, for years, refused to let anyone even touch them. This raises another issue as well: if you refuse to let anyone get close, then you suck because art needs to be preserved. 19th century photos in particular wither away. With everything, happens.

With that in mind, there’s also the issue of how these privately owned artworks are preserved. Paintings, if you don’t know, cannot be exposed to natural light, especially sunlight—particularly older paintings. Photos and film have to be preserved at a particularly cold temperature. Wood has to be constantly polished, but because of how old it is, it requires the right technique and materials. Same with silver, gold, etc. Of course, a museum, a cathedral, or what have you, they all have teams at ready for that sort of conservation—but when a private owner acquires a piece of art that isn’t legally classified in any way, they can very well be responsible for its distruction.

We’ve had two very important works burn because of that. First, this painting by Vieira Portuense, who is the only other name we have to have defined neo-classicism (it was short-lived here, we were to busy having a civil war or fending off the french). It’s an emblematic painting for its time, because it’s an embryonic moment of transition between neo-classicism and romanticism. But it’s gone, because the house it was in burned down. Another one I don’t remember the name, but it was Josefa d’Óbidos—the first female painter to have her own workshop here in Portugal. Again, a flood caused a short-circuit which caused for the house to burn down, and the painting was lost.

If a painting (and I think other artefacts as well) is classified in some way (National Treasure, National Interest and uhhhh…. there’s a third one I forgot D:), the owner IS forced to keep it preserved. He is forced to clean it and restore it. If he damages in any way, he is fined and the painting can be confiscated from him. Same for buildings that are classified as anything below National Monument. But if it happens to be a work of art that isn’t classified in any way, legally speaking… Well, if it disappears, it’s gone, and the owner just loses a painting. 

So it’s an incredibly delicate issue. On the one hand, privately owning art is necessary for artists, and I speak of both galleries and auction houses. It keeps the flow of the art economy going (though the art world is RIDICULOUS INFLATED economically speaking, but that’s a whole other conversation) and the market value of artists that are alive and, well, need to eat, is raised every time they sell something. Also, a country’s art market increases if they manage to sell more of their art alongside international artists (why Portugal fucking sucks in that respect), so that in itself is of great interest to artists who are alive and practicing, as well as for the country itself.

But on the other hand, it’s really a double-edged sword. Because I still maintain that art belongs to everyone, and no matter how many artworks you own, you have to keep that in mind. I had the chance to work for art collector who was very conscious about this: he lent his art constantly without charging anything and he kept his every artwork so well preserved he actually had restore works after lending them to museums. Now if everyone had that conscience, the world would be a better place.

So I put it this way to sort of generalize it, because I don’t believe, for one second, the church is exempt from this in any way. In Europe, they detain a great part of many country’s heritage. In our own country, they hold like half of our shit. But again: double-edged sword. 

You said something that is very accurate: churches like the Notre Dame were built for the masses. They were built for everyone, because it is the House of God where everyone is accepted and welcomed. Yes, it initially had a purpose, bore a function that doesn’t serve entirely anymore (though mass is still held in it, the fact that it is today a touristic attraction has shifted the church’s initial purpose, so to speak). So to think that the Catholic Church would close it down, or simply decide that suddenly they couldn’t allow people inside because they own it goes against not just (in our case) the legal definition of cultural object, it goes against the very principle of catholicism—something they turn around easily by opening its doors free of charge during mass. There is a huge debate in my country every like, two summers, because some cathedrals you have to pay to get inside—and something about that isn’t right. If you have to pay to enter, that means the building in itself is important enough that it’s classified as something, at the very least National Monument, but by charging money to get inside, you’re already breaking the very definition of cultural object, legally speaking: everyone is allowed to experience culture. This is a serious debate that happens every so often, and reason why it’s moved certain parties to try and end this shit of pay-to-enter churches, which is maddening to me (supposedly, they say, it’s to tame touristic masses a bit, but we all know that ain’t it).

What’s graver, as I said, is the case of small parishes that happen to own ancient artefacts like statues from the 18th century. Because priests aren’t educated on the matter, they think, oh this is a pretty little nativity scene! And hire some old dude to paint over a fresco. The example I mentioned above, where this happened?

This is what it looked like before:

this is after:

Yeah. I mean, I laugh every time cause it is fucking funny, but you gotta do it not to cry lmao

So like, for me, if we are going to entrust the Catholic church with artefacts and monuments—not necessarily sell them, you can legally lend them, like a legal guardian sort of agreement (I’m sorry, there’s a correct legal term for this but I don’t know it, the shit about law is that you have to address things with the right word)—you gotta force these fuckers to respect what they own. Force them to have restorations made, to clean their shit, to maintain their possessions. Force them to make an effort into bringing awareness to the existence of these things. For the love of God, FORCE THESE PEOPLE TO MAKE AN INVENTORY. Bitch, HIRE ME, I’LL DO YOUR INVENTORY FOR YOU.

And bring these artworks into the world. Create a website. Make pictures of these artworks publically available, free of charge, so that people can look at it, study and it and have free access to it. Have you ever walked into a museum and got told you aren’t allowed to photograph the works inside? I’ll tell you that’s bogus. Sure, flash damages the work, but no flash causes no harm. When a museum does that, I can guarantee you it’s one of two things: one, the artwork you are forbidden from photographing is privately owned by some Elongated Muskrat who thinks they’re above everyone else because LoOk aT mE I oWn ArT, and two: the museum is telling you to buy a catalogue.

What museums usually tend to not understand is that the free circulation of images of their artworks is actually what brings MORE people to their museum. Like, this is a fucking proven fact—that’s why they sell postcards, prints and tote bags with their paintings on it. Case in point? London: you think they give a shit if you take up-close photos of their paintings in Tate Britain? I know they don’t cause I was the idiot photographing paint drips on a goddamn William Holman Hunt. And you don’t even pay to get inside. But do you remember what artworks are inside the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid—aside from the Guernica? Yeah, which one has a strict policy in not photographing their paintings, you ask? Well.

So, tl;dr: if you’re gonna own art, make it available to the public, whether by putting it in a museum or making information about it—including pictures—accessible to all, and the government should be all over your ass annually to make sure you’re not damaging the artworks, otherwise lose custody of the baby and pay a fine. If you’re not gonna abide by these principles, then I am of the opinion that you don’t truly know the real worth of what you’re in possession of, and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to have it. AND THAT MEANS YOU TOO, VATICAN. Fuck your parishes, hire me. There’s a bunch of qualified people to do the job for you, you guys are just lazy and are keeping the Vatican’s money in your pockets.

[here-to-fill-in-gaps]

Helena Frith Powell lives in France and is the author of Two Lipsticks and a Lover, an investigation into the lives, lusts and secrets of French women, from the cultural circles of Saint-Germain-des-Prés to the exclusive Sonia Rykiel sex shop.

"Why are French women so sexy? Ever since 1066, we've been enthralled by the innate superiority of the French female. Never mind Larkin and 1963; the French were at it well before that. French women are beautiful, stylish and chic - but they have something else that many English women lack. One of their tools, every bit as potent as their matching underwear, is their knowledge of literature. They see being well-read as important as being well-groomed. In order to outwit our French female foes across the Channel, here is a list of the top 10 sexy French books, guaranteed to land you a date with Thierry Henry."

1. Chéri by Colette

All 10 books on this list could be by Colette, the most sensual and evocative writer of all time, who lived like one of her sexy heroines, still dancing on tables at 65, and marrying her son-in-law. Every woman's fantasy, this tells the story of an ageing courtesan (49!) who remains irresistible to her much younger lover.

2. Madame de by Louise de Vilmorin

Classic faux-brow, this is the book that French girls love to take seriously, even though it's nothing more than a story of adultery, written by the lover of Duff Cooper, British ambassador to France during the 1940s. When Cooper was away, Louise hunkered down with Diana, his wife. The smouldering passion between the fictitious ambassador and his mistress is a splendid example of Parisian society at its best and most snooty. Cooper himself did the English translation.

3. The Ravishing of Lol Stein by Marguerite Duras

Possibly the maddest book ever written, but the title alone makes the book worthy of inclusion on this list. Voyeurism, lesbian leanings, broken hearts and adultery: what more could you ask for?

4. Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan

The sound of cicadas and the smell of suntan oil jumps off the pages. Is there a sexier location in the world than the south of France? Not only are the teenagers getting down and dirty, the grownups are too. As the young narrator says, "Fidelity is arbitrary and sterile." - a mantra her father lives by. This sexy, poignant, moving and brief book is a must. If you read only one book on this list, this should be it.

5. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

No list of French books of whatever genre is complete without Madame Bovary. The unfortunate heroine, whose only crime is an endless search for romantic love, gives us some of literature's sexiest moments: the mussed-up bed, the carriage ride, the sheer foolishness of falling in love with French men. Madame Bovary's choice of lovers are 19th-century versions of Bridget Jones's fuckwits.

6. Emmanuelle by Emmanuelle Arsan

My husband's favourite French book. He says he reads it for the philosophy. It is the story of a woman getting laid. A lot. In just about every position and place imaginable, but mainly Thailand. This book has entertained French boys since publication. I fully expect to find it under my son's pillow in a few years' time.

7. Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos

"It's beyond my control." Is there a more brutal line in literature? This is the book that justifies any amount of appalling behaviour. It turns seduction into a game and an art form. While the Anglo Saxons were reading Pride and Prejudice by candle-light, this book was teaching French society how to frolic and seduce.

8. I Wish Someone Were Waiting For Me Somewhere by Anna Gavalda

Worth it just for the opening story, the Courting Rituals of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Two strangers meet in a street; dinner follows; candles flicker as the sexual tension burns.

9. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond de Rostand

A play based on the life of the 17th-century swordsman Cyrano, this is the olden day equivalent of a cyber romance. Proof of the enduring attraction of words. And that you can still be sexy, even if you've got a big nose and a floppy hat.

10. The Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin

In the first half of the 20th-century, if you wanted to publish anything vaguely sexy, it had to be in Paris. Nin is the quintessential female player, willing to risk everything for the sake of art and adventure. This is one of her best books, a collection of erotic short stories. Her catchphrase was: "I really believe that if I were not a writer I might have been a faithful wife." Unlikely, but extremely cunning to blame her creativity for her lasciviousness.

[charliecuwt239]

What Freud Can Teach Us About Dama International Fallow Deer Project

Fair Activity - An Arts and Humanities Point of view on Venison.

Why doesn’t the British community eat Substantially venison? I’ve questioned this question to plenty of folks and also the replies are identical: venison is expensive; a food stuff of Michelin star dining places or for all those posh folks who experience throughout the landscape shooting deer (and hunting is really a cruel blood Activity – run Bambi, run!).

For several years I had been of the opinion way too And that i however battle with the idea of killing animals, Most likely unsurprisingly as I’m a left-wing vegetarian who is against animal cruelty and social inequality. Peculiar then, that I now find myself Performing pretty carefully with deer stalkers to actively market the intake of wild venison.

I use the time period ‘wild’ to denote deer that live freely within the landscape. Under this definition I involve nonfarmed park deer; those are still left to their very own equipment and therefore are not presented supplementary feed.

So, what caused this monumental U-switch in my beliefs? It happened progressively as my expertise in deer administration, both previous and current, amplified. For over a decade I happen to be looking into the organic and cultural background from the fallow deer, Latin title Dama dama dama (or, fairly, that spotty one that the thing is during the deer parks of stately residences).

This species of deer is attention-grabbing since it is not really indigenous to Britain or northern Europe – it’s from Turkey. All through the previous couple of millennia fallow deer been transported world wide by people today and our new AHRC-funded investigate challenge Dama Global: fallow deer and European Modern society 6000 BC – Advert 1600’ is examining the timing and situation in their spread.

We now have by now proven that fallow deer were initially launched to Britain about two thousand decades ago, with the Romans who liked searching unique quarry. The collapse in the Roman Empire, however, noticed a decline during the Roman’s looking society and our evidence suggests that fallow deer also became domestically extinct.

It wasn't right until the Norman invasion of 1066 that fallow deer had been re-launched to Britain (possibly in the Norman kingdom of Sicily) and, this time, they have been here to remain. In fact, our genetic https://onegeology.org/news/item.cfm?id=4467 research advise that all fashionable fallow deer populations in northern Europe descend from animals introduced to Britain from the Normans.

The Normans were being probably essentially the most passionate hunters that Britain has ever found searching was the ‘pop culture’ of time, about-hunting resulting in the virtual extinction from the roe deer. Fallow deer aided to plug the venison-hole remaining by declining roe populations and, by the tip of your medieval time period thousands of deer parks have been arrange across Britain, Each individual housing a huge selection of fallow deer and scaled-down quantities of red deer.

Deer hunting as well as the usage of venison had been central to medieval Culture, assisting to build Group as people today arrived alongside one another to assist attain and take in the venison from only one animal.

Just like all well known tradition, having said that, looking fell outside of trend. People identified other mechanisms for socializing and, since the style for venison dwindled, deer parks fell into disrepair as well as their inmates escaped. But even though the hunters went absent, the deer did not – within the absence of human as well as other normal predators (people today had effectively exterminated all British bears, wolves and lynx by at the least the 13th century) the deer bred, and bred, and bred…

As outlined by modern govt files deer at the moment are extra various than at any time in the last thousand yrs.2 Burgeoning populations of pink, roe and fallow deer happen to be joined by escalating quantities of exotic species (namely the sika, muntjac and Chinese drinking water deer) imported inside the 19th and twentieth centuries.

How lovely to have this kind of a big amount and range of deer in Britain! Properly… it's possible…Deer are undoubtedly lovely things which boost the seem in the landscape and, in moderate numbers, Use a good impact on the atmosphere.

However, in large quantities, they may have the possible to accomplish plenty of environmental injury – ravaging crops, retarding woodland regeneration and influencing negatively on biodiversity. Nor are massive populations superior to the effectively-currently being in the deer by themselves – a lot of animals in one location or park will lead to starvation, ailment and sickness.

Then We've street targeted visitors incidents, with an approximated 40-70thousand deer killed around the roadways each year. Collisions with deer also carry human casualties: in excess of 1750 targeted visitors collisions involving deer are actually noted leading to human injuries in the ten many years 2001-2010, such as forty two mishaps resulting in human.3 In sum, during the absence of human Command contemporary United kingdom deer populations are unsustainable environmentally and, arguably, unethical when it comes to animal welfare.

So, what on earth is for being accomplished? Our exploration reveals that modern deer management troubles really are a legacy of the medieval time period, so Possibly we want to search for medieval methods. We feel that in lieu of currently being a ‘difficulty’ deer are a wonderful resource, if only we could reconnect With all the thought of venison.

At a time when locally sourced, seasonal, healthful and ethical foods are at the very best of buyers’ wish-lists, wild venison ticks every single box – wild deer, or the ones that haven't been supplementary fed, present exceptionally lean venison 4 and, most importantly, you don’t get a more totally free-range and ‘satisfied’ meat than wild venison!

However, the information isn't having by - the public’s abhorrence of animal killing, and ‘looking’, is just too powerful. Obviously, community attitudes don’t prevent deer culling, it just implies that most of the venison made in Britain is exported. Like that wasn’t poor ample, the tiny venison available in British supermarkets is from farmed deer, Considerably of which happens to be IMPORTED – it’s a crazy planet around!

This is when our arts and humanities investigate have gotten vital – We have now the opportunity to serve up this tough challenge in additional participating and palatable way. To accomplish this, We've got introduced the Honest Sport Initiative, an educational campaign staffed by archaeologists and deer stalkers, to elucidate the background of Britain’s fallow deer and the many benefits of consuming their venison.

Our technique is arms on. Soon after an introductory lecture we get the job done as a bunch, pursuing the instructions published in medieval looking manuals, to ‘unmake’ (pores and skin and butcher) an entire fallow deer. Every person receives involved in the process, Finding out various critical classes encompassing archaeology, anatomy, animal welfare, environmental ethics, foodstuff protection, healthier feeding on and record.

Our purpose is to democratize venison and make it accessible to all, for example these internal-city college young children who expended the day dealing with us to make a delicious food for his or her mothers and fathers. Opposite to well known perception, venison is much cheaper than almost every other meat, if obtained direct from your stalker. It is usually healthier – what much better solution for our kids’s school dinners? And what better way to help you regulate Britain’s deer populations?

The Truthful Match Initiative aims to roll-out across the country, linking deer stalkers to educational establishments, and finding neighborhood venison on to school menus.

[polotanker6-blog]

Through all of the ups and downs, Joakim Noah is the happiest he has ever been

Basketball for Joakim Noah long was a dream, the gangly French kid trying to assimilate in a strange society, and become familiar with the United States as well. Basketball was a New York City religion that viewed a kid like Noah as an apostate, for he was. But he played the game the right way on and off the court and he became a star, a celebrity, an iconoclast, and then, as it often happens, his dream became a nightmare of failure, uncertainty, rejection and anguish. The darkness for one of the most famous and infamous players in Bulls history finally seems to have receded after almost four years. It's almost as if Joakim Noah awakened and asked, "Is this heaven?"

No, it turns out it's Memphis.

"I lost my confidence," admits Noah, whose Memphis Grizzlies are in the United Center Wednesday for the final game before All-Star break. "Now I am starting to get my swagger back on the court. Memphis gave me an opportunity; that was the only team that called. I am starting to feel better and better every time I step on the court because I am playing consistently and I am healthy for the first time in a long time, knock on wood."

A successful life requires a lot of luck. And a lot of work. The Spurs' organization has polarized the stonecutter's credo actually made famous in New York by 19th Century social reformer Jacob Riis. Keep hammering until the stone breaks. Joakim Noah's basketball career, indeed, encompassed some knocking on wood and breaking into the seemingly impervious rock of professional basketball.

"Everything with the Bulls, it was so early on, the best times," reminisces Noah about that nine-year run in Chicago in which a 6-11, mop topped, hippie bohemian was perhaps as much everyman as any who have been through the city's sporting landscape. "The Boston (2009 playoff) series was so much fun, Brooklyn (in 2013). Winning and losing is important, but it is also appreciating what you are doing; we were living a dream even though we didn't know it.

"I think if this would have happened to me in Chicago, losing the way we are losing, losing like this, blowing a 20-point lead in the fourth quarter (against Denver in January), losing streaks, the cooler would be destroyed and the heads would be off the showers and those bottles would be all over the place," Noah said with a smile, pointing toward a row of energy drinks as we sat in the Grizzlies locker room after a recent game. "I don't think I could have handled it. I couldn't sleep. I would just be an ass to everyone around me. Like now, I can appreciate just being in the locker room, to experience life playing with some hungry young guys who are fighting for their lives, guys who are working hard, things we all can work on, but keep on improving.

"Losing," Noah acknowledged, "obviously is frustrating. But you have to learn from it, use this time to keep building because with losing comes frustration and frustration can take away what's important. So we've got to keep a mindset on what's important and be ready. I feel pretty good. I haven't played in a while, three years, honestly, since I've gotten consistent minutes. It was tough, injuries and suspension and a lot of factors. So I'm just cherishing my opportunity and just trying to do my best. I'm not about trying to be my old self; it's about being happy on the court and competing and I feel I am starting to get to a level where I am enjoying myself.

"This is my 12th season," Noah noted, and he seemed as surprised as I was. "I've been through a lot of ups and downs. There were times with the Knicks I thought it was over. But right now as much as we are losing, it's like I'm the happiest I've been in my life. I've got my daughter, who is a beautiful daughter, Leia; she's two. My son Emaan. My beautiful girlfriend (Lais Ribeiro) is awesome; I love her to death. I am at peace in my life."

You just have to feel good and smile for Joakim Noah, and not just because of that season high 19 points and 14 rebounds earlier this week in the Grizzlies win over New Orleans. Noah added a typical eight points, four rebounds, four assists and two steals in the Grizzlies Tuesday one-point loss to the San Antonio Spurs. He doesn't play every game, always off the bench and often fewer than 20 minutes with the Grizzles going through their own doubts. But you can still find him at the high post searching out those lob dunk passes and back door cuts, with that high dribble out of the backcourt you're wincing about until it turns into a layup. Bearded with his hair in a bun in that most unconventional of NBA looks and his arms always outstretched ready for the pass, Noah seems to be welcoming the present as a gift. He still isn't looking for the shot much. But he's rolling hard off those screens and dunking with not so peaceful intentions. Noah has two double/doubles in his last four games and is averaging 11 points and 8.7 rebounds in 23 minutes per game this month.

But like Noah says, being back is both not everything about the games, but so much about the game.

"I've been through a lot of ups and downs. There were times with the Knicks I thought it was over. But right now as much as we are losing, it's like I'm the happiest I've been in my life." - Joakim Noah

The camaraderie of the locker room, the exotic aromas of deodorants, lotions and old socks, the expanding cacophony while running out of the tunnel and onto the court, the feel of the rough leather of the ball, the lights and noise and then the moment tracing the arc of the ball to find position, the ensuing wrestling match, the chance to do something for your guys.

"After that first year in New York, I had just got my drug suspension, I had my shoulder surgery and a knee surgery at the same time; I was just emotionally drained," Noah admitted about his bitter free agency. "I didn't even want to play anymore. The injuries were piling up so much I didn't feel I could physically do it anymore. But I was blessed to be around some good people. I got in a real healthy environment and I'm starting to feel…. It's taken a long time to get that feeling back. I haven't felt this good in four years."

Never much the classic athlete with those long strides and almost military style arm movements running, Noah was hardly the recruiting poster for NBA achievement. Which perhaps is one reason why he related so well. His famous soliloquy about why he plays, for the guy freezing outside selling newspapers, the guy at the top of the arena cheering like crazy, the people whom the game means so much and to whom he wants to take pride in their team. It may have been the most genuine and revealing explanation of the game and what drives fans' passions.

Noah had that funky, sideways spinning shot and looked the least like a world class athlete. He was bursting with the intangibles most so cherish but cannot scout. He led his U. of Florida team to a pair of NCAA championships, wasn't a top five draft pick, arrived at the NBA draft in an outfit better suited for Ringling Brothers and a body looking like the recipient of beach sand.

"I look back on my time in Chicago and I don't want to think of the bad things because the great times outweigh that so much." - Joakim Noah

But before he was done in Chicago he became all-NBA first team, a Defensive Player of the Year, probably the greatest center in franchise history and the star of two of the greatest games in franchise history. Neither won a title, so they aren't quite as celebrated. But there was Noah with the winning play against Paul Pierce to wrap up the triple overtime win over the defending champion Boston Celtics in Game 6 of the 2009 first round series. The Bulls would lose Game 7. Then there was a double/double in Nate Robinson's crazy triple overtime win in the first round of the 2013 playoffs, though the highlight really was Noah's seventh game domination without injured Derrick Rose, Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich to defeat the Nets in Brooklyn even on foot injuries so bad he wasn't supposed to play.

Joakim Noah gave his body for the game and the fans and it eventually couldn't couldn't sustain.

The Bulls understood it was going bad in the 2015-16 season, and so was the team as it would be the last for Rose and Noah in Chicago. That great group, so beloved and so close, was at its end.

"Even coming off the bench (behind Pau Gasol), so many things I look back on my time in Chicago and I don't want to think of the bad things because the great times outweigh that so much," Noah said. "I'm not afraid to talk about the good and bad. I just saw Luol, Taj (Gibson) at dinner. You don't even have to say anything being with those guys now. It's just about the vibe of being around, how much respect there is there because of what we went through. Now that I've been around I realize and found out that it's rare. But you don't know it then.

"Because it's genuine what we went through, some wars and we wanted to win so bad and we fought so hard every night," Noah recalled. "I'm so (darned) proud of that to this day. That's what will be the highlight of my career.

"That Boston series, but I also look back on so many little things like being in the locker room with Derrick. With Lu and Taj, we were talking about this the other day. A little thing," Noah says. "We are playing Phoenix with Vinny (Del Negro) as coach. Kirk was our best pick and roll defender and so Vinny goes, ‘Kirk, you got Steve Nash.' And D-Rose is a rookie and goes, "Nah, I got Steve Nash. I'm not running from no matchup.' And Vinny goes, ‘But Kirk is our best pick and roll defender, you got Barbosa.' He goes, ‘Nah, I got Steve Nash.' And so we're like. ‘Oh crap, the rookie's talking like that?' Then in the game you see D-Rose standing next to Steve Nash. ‘I got him! I got him!' Things like that, stuff we'd laugh at being on the plane, rolling dice with Drew Gooden; it was always more than just the basketball.

"We didn't win it," Noah notes. "But the energy and the hope of having the chance, and we had a chance. And that's almost just as big. You realize after. Do you have a chance to win it? Maybe one, two times in your career if you are lucky. The year D-Rose got hurt and the year before there was a chance. That was special."

When it's going good it's normal and natural not only to believe it will continue, but get even better. So it seemed for Noah, a big, four-year contract to play back home in New York and for Phil Jackson, whom Noah long idolized, in front of his old crowd who laughed at the clumsy and spindly kid who got to the good basketball camps by agreeing to help pick up towels. In the world's greatest arena for his team growing up, introduced from his Hell's Kitchen neighborhood just west of the arena. How great was this going to be?

"I don't even know what happened in Chicago," Noah admits about that awkward final season in 2015-16 with a new coach, on the bench, lots of unpleasantness. "I didn't want to shoot. By the end of the Chicago thing, I wasn't loving it; it was starting to become a job. There were so many things going on I was starting to lose my love for the game. But it's like I wish what I went through in New York earlier I would have realized how good I had it in Chicago. I am not pointing fingers at anyone; it's just what happened. It sucks because I think just not being right mentally and physically at that time, it cost us."

Noah had shoulder surgery following that final Bulls season, but he seemed recovered enough for that contract. His highlight may have been that first game in Chicago early in the season, 16 points and nine rebounds in an easy Knicks win. His last double digit scoring game as a Knick was in January of that season, 12 points and 16 rebounds, and again against the Bulls in a win. But he wasn't producing enough in a dysfunctional New York environment, exacerbated by the demands of being back home. It's much more difficult to go home in the NBA that in life.

"It's tough to play at home," Noah concedes. "Even tougher with success with someone like Derrick. Something people don't realize is being young and that successful and having to deal with home. People can't relate. I remember my first game in New York against Memphis. I played well, the whole Garden was chanting my name, I was in tears and it was crazy. I had like 50 people in my apartment after the game and my father was looking at me shaking his head like, ‘This is a going to be a long year for you.' I was like, ‘I got this.' But I wasn't ready. I thought I was ready and I was not ready."

Noah had a 20-game drug suspension at the end of that season into the 2017-18 season, and his Knicks contract was already being condemned and mocked. He became the face of Jackson's failure. He played briefly, played a game in the G-league, got into a verbal exchange on the bench with coach Jeff Hornacek and basically was banished. He was released before the start of this season owed the last two years of his contract. He played in 53 games over two years in New York and averaged about five points and eight rebounds.

"Failing at home on a real public level was very humbling," Noah admitted. "We had a lot of success in Chicago, but what happened in New York also made me grow as a person and focus on what was important because a lot was thrown at me in New York in a really short time. In Chicago, everything was about winning and losing basketball games, and I realize now that I can compete and also have a life, a balance.

"It was not good, but now I can go back and say I wouldn't trade it because it makes me cherish even more what I have," Noah says. "It's tough because I'll look back and say I wish I played well at home, I wish I didn't let Phil down. It took me a long time to even digest that. I used to think I was playing for people's respect, almost like people looking at me like I was a joke. Even in New York, it was, ‘He's a clown, doesn't take the game serious.' So after my first year in New York, I wanted to come out and prove to everybody I could help the team and be a player and help the team compete and I never really got that opportunity.

"I'm sitting on the side of the bench in Madison Square Garden, not even on the bench, behind the bench, healthy. I had to deal with that for months," Noah lamented about his exile. "That was one of the toughest things I ever had to deal with, getting killed in your home town and not being able to do anything about it. I felt management and the coach at the time, they didn't show me any respect for what I was going through. There were times they could have given me opportunities and didn't.

"At the point I got kicked off the team, I was really angry and pissed off," Noah admitted. "I was partying and getting paid a lot of money and had no direction; that was tough. You don't realize with basketball and the NBA and high school and college, it's your routine and you are so locked in you take it for granted until you don't have it anymore. So it became, ‘If you really want to keep playing basketball, it's not a situation you can wait the way I was living my life.' If I kept doing what I was doing it's over."

The life vest was Noah's surfing friends Laird Hamilton and Gabrielle Reece. They took him into their home and their intense training, the healthy environment and food, the lifestyle. He finally was ready, but the NBA wasn't. Not for the flake. Finally, the Grizzlies called and it became Christmas morning again. Life was great; now it could be even better at 34 later this month.

"Failing at home on a real public level was very humbling." - Joakim Noah

We talked for a long time after that game in Charlotte. The Bulls were in town waiting to play the Hornets. The Grizzlies were staying over that night, and Noah was going to meet up with some of the old Bulls support staff. That's right, the workers. The Grizzlies' security said the team bus was leaving. Typical of Noah, he said he'd walk back to the hotel. NBA players do not do this anymore. With Noah wrapped up in a hooded sweatshirt, I asked him as we walked if he would consider returning to the Bulls to finish his career, even for a day in one of those one-day contracts players sometimes sign. The Bulls talk a lot about spirit, heart and soul, Joakim Noah's daily companions.

"I'm a live in the moment type person," the 6-11 maverick said with a smile. "So I'm not there. I just want to finish this year off strong and be healthy and grow from there."

Source: https://www.nba.com/bulls/features/through-all-ups-and-downs-joakim-noah-happiest-he-has-ever-been

[wellsjahasghost]

Hi! Just wanted to let you know that I really enjoy your fics! I was even thinking about printing out Survivor's Guilt so I could put it on my bookshelf. Read it 2x so far and the beach scene made me cry every single time! And your Reincarnation AU: the accuracy of your research, amazing! How did you actually decide on which places and historical events you wanted to use? And were there some you really wanted to but stayed a draft? Do you want to give us a tease? Keep up the work! Thank you :)

………PRINTING IT OUT AND PUTTING IT ON YOUR BOOKSHELF?? Im speechless ??? NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS WOULD I HAVE EVER THOUGHT SOMEONE WOULD LIKE SOMETHING I WROTE /THAT MUCH/

before i truly start crying let me actually answer ur question perhaps… under the cut.

I knew HYSA was gonna start roughly 1000 AD and I initially wanted to try and get a lifetime from each century leading up to canon. I literally googled “world events 11th century” “world events 12th century” etc to find stuff I might be interested in LMAO… I made a list of events and chose from there. That’s how I came up with the Jerusalem plot, and the Khan Dynasty (honestly, as soon as I saw Genghis Khan had a half-brother named “Belgutei” I was sold). I also really wanted pirates!bellarke and witch trials!bellarke so I did some research into lesser known pirate locations and witch trials. And I also wanted a lifetime in the Philippines to honour Bellamy’s heritage so that’s where the orphanage one came in. Then there was SO MUCH STUFF from the 19th/20th century that I had trouble choosing. Did I want to do 1920s gangsters!Bellarke, Titanic!Bellarke, Victorian!Bellarke, WWII!Bellarke, or ? I eventually went with Cold War Bellarke because I had a brain wave to use the Berlin Wall as a device to keep them apart, lol.

BUT WAIT. Let me tell you about this ONE life that I actually spent time developing that I never got to put in. YUKON GOLD RUSH BELLARKE: Bellamy is a prospector looking for Gold, stops for supplies in the shop that Clarke works in. They decide to get married to take advantage of a loophole in the law which I found on Wikipedia aka the most reliable source to exist:

Under Canadian law, miners first had to get a license, either when they arrived at Dawson or en route from Victoria in Canada.[161] They could then prospect for gold and, when they had found a suitable location, lay claim to mining rights over it.[162] To stake a claim, a prospector would drive stakes into the ground a measured distance apart and then return to Dawson to register the claim for $15 ($410).[162] This normally had to be done within three days, and by 1897 only one claim per person at a time was allowed in a district, although married couples could exploit a loophole that allowed the wife to register a claim in her own name, doubling their amount of land.

ANYWAY, you can see how this lifetime was gonna go. Basically a fake marriage AU. I ended up not doing it because the emotional storyline felt too similar to other lifetimes that ended up in the fic, but I still really love the plot bunny. 

Also…. in my earliest idea of this fic, Bellarke never remember each other UNTIL the canon lifetime… and there is no end to their reincarnation; they simply find each other again in the post-canon life. Obviously, this isn’t what happened in the final fic, but I actually did write these scenes before I decided to change it, so since you asked for a tease….

Many years— decades— pass.

It turns out if earth doesn’t kill them, their bodies do. Cancer should be expected, really, after all they are living on a radiation soaked planet, and their bodies are only barely equipped to metabolize it all. It only makes sense that it would all slow down at some point, and Earth would catch up with them in the end.

(But they ran as fast as they could until then.)

Now Clarke is nearing her time, unable to move from her bed, and Bellamy is afraid. He’s got the cancer too, but she’s worse.

She’s going to die soon, and he’s terrified.

He voices this, and Clarke reaches up with one near-emaciated hand to tug at one of his curls. He can see just enough of it in his vision to see the silver in it. “At least we got to grow old,” she tells him, voice raspier than usual. “Not everyone can say that.”

They’re not that old, although they look it, he supposes. Clarke’s got more lines around her eyes, around her mouth in laugh lines. Some of them are from age. Some from illness. Either way, she’s his best friend, and so she’s beautiful.

He takes her hand, interlacing their fingers. “I’m gonna miss you.”

“Not for long,” she says lightly, and he huffs a laugh.

“You think?” He’s always argued that their remembrance of their past lives broke the curse, that this life is the last one for them.

But she’s always argued different. “I know,” she says, fervently.

She exclaims it so passionately, looking so earnestly into his eyes, that he feels he has no choice to believe it. It makes his heart hurt less, at least. He leans down to press a kiss to her forehead, but she makes a noise, tilting her head up. He hesitates, because he doesn’t want to kiss her lips, waste what little energy she has left, but she’s looking at him with a kind of fierce desperation— desperation for him— that he feels he has no choice but to concede.

When their lips touch, she surges up with surprising strength to kiss him properly.

He gets lost in it a moment too long and she falls back into the pillows with a tired huff. He instantly feels guilty, but there’s a brightness to her eyes from the kiss, and he would never wish that wasn’t there.

“Kiss me as soon as you see me in the next life,” he tells her, trying to keep his tears at bay with a joke. “So we don’t waste any time.”

Clarke smiles a little painfully and says, “It was  never a waste of time.”

“I know,” he replies softly. She’s not done, continuing earnestly.

“Just getting to know you before any of this— before remembering any of the lives we’ve lived before— was one of the happiest parts of my life.”

He knows that. “Is,” he corrects. “Is one of the happiest parts of our life.”

She doesn’t answer. The light is fading from her eyes now; the blue, roaring oceans of her irises fade into blue paint dry on a canvas, nothing compared to the real thing. This is it, he thinks, and an anxious feeling rises in his chest. He’s just— he’s not ready. He’s not ready to live his life without her, however brief it might be.

He squeezes her hand. “May we meet again,” he manages to say through his tears.

He doesn’t expect her to say anything more, but she does, a cracked whisper using up the last air in her lungs— and her mouth turning up in something of a smile at the end.

“We will.”

YEAR 2300

She sees him for the first time in the Skybus terminal.

He’s on the other side of it, and yet he catches her eye immediately. Dark haired, wearing a blue jacket and black jeans with boots the other side of the terminal he turns around suddenly, as if sensing her watching. She sits up straighter without meaning to. He stops in his tracks.

Their gazes lock, and then collide.

His eyes are dark brown, so dark in the low light of the cloudy day that she really shouldn’t know their colour. But inexplicably, she is hit with a strong sense of deja vu.

And with that thought, comes a landslide of others.

Snippets of things, really— lips on her lips, warm and comforting, hands touching her skin, a deliriously giddy feeling taking flight and then settling back low and warm in her chest over and over and over again, and fire. So much fire.

But even through the fire, she hears his voice. Gravelly, pitched low. But it’s there. It makes something stir restlessly in her soul in yearning. In familiarity. Some deep part of her just knows that voice is his— belonging to the dark-haired man in front of her.

All this happens in the space of a single breath, and when she exhales, so does he. They stare at each other for another second, and she’d almost think that he’s sorting through the same questions in his head.

Then, unexpectedly: He tips his head and smiles at her.

It’s a small and slow one and maybe even a little shy. And yet, it bedazzles her, strikes her speechless. She’s buoyed by it, even though maybe he’s not feeling the same thing— maybe they’ve just been staring at each other too long to be socially acceptable so he felt like he had to. But that doesn’t stop her from giving him a very overeager sort of wave from across the terminal.

His smile doesn’t fade, and she finds her own lips stretching into one as well. I know him, her heart sings. And he’s home.

He comes closer, and he’s heading for the same gate, she realizes with a start, that her flight is on. “Hi,” she says to him.

A pause. He blinks at the sound of her voice. Then:

“Hi, Clarke,” he says.

Her heart rattles. The way he says her name is extraordinary— his deep voice softens like butter around it, and she’s electrified. “How’d— how’d you know my name?” she asks.

He nods over to her boarding pass that she’s clutching onto. Looking down, she realizes that her name is boldly printed there in plain sight. “Oh,” she laughs a little, ducking her head at her own foolishness. But it’s funny, because— she could’ve sworn he just knew it.

His small smile widens almost imperceptibly. “I’m Bellamy,” he tells her, and she nods because that sounds about right.

“Bellamy,” she repeats, tasting the word on her tongue. It’s sweet.

He nods and hitches his bag higher onto his shoulder. “Nice to meet you.” It’s the polite thing to say, but it feels sincere somehow. There’s a beat of silence, and then, almost as if struggling with it, he slowly slides his gaze away from her and walks away, towards the departure gate.

She watches him stroll away, rooted to the bench yet simultaneously feeling like an invisible rope is tugging her towards him. She is seized with a strange desire to go after this stranger and only barely manages to fight it back. She doesn’t know him, she tells herself. At least, not yet. She can’t just run after him right now. She’ll probably see him on the plane; and if not, she’ll find him in Arrivals.

Decided, Clarke settles back into her chair, but keeps her eyes on the man until he disappears from sight into the throng of people. Instantly, she feels that urge swell up again but she squashes it. She’ll find him later. There’s no need to rush, after all. 

They’ve got all the time in the world.

You’ll recognize some of those lines because I recycled them into the actual fic haha. I do that a lot. The last bit, with them in the Sky terminal, was me filling a prompt that came into my inbox– that prompt is actually what inspired me to write this entire fic, and it didn’t even make it into the fic ! lmao. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed a little insight into my writing process, and thank you for your question! I’m super flattered that you were interested in knowing. :’)