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lonestarbabe · 4 years ago

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How do you think the writers could improve the characters? Like aside from Owen because we all know how he needs to change, they just aren’t doing it and making these changes for his character. I mean for Mateo, Paul and Marjan. I feel like when they have their little storylines, they don’t rly show much I mean they are interesting and I love seeing more of my faves of course but they don’t rly show these characters progressing in any way aside from Marjan’s recent storyline where she saved the girl in the house and maybe Paul’s with his sister. But with TK or Judd and even Grace’s storyline after the crash, we have seen slow growth in their characters and how they have learned from some experience to be better and be more open or something. Mateo’s was interesting because we saw his roommates and life outside of work which I loved but he moved in with Owen and we rolled right into another Owen-center or Owen-related plot line and it’s just annoying. Of course it was nice that Owen offered Mateo a place to stay because his burned down but as soon as Mateo moved in, it was all about Owen’s man pain and we cut to a later intervention about Owen lying about his surgery and other behavior. Paul’s first I think was when he went on the date with that woman who basically told him she couldn’t date him because he is trans at least that’s what I got from it. And like that’s not a nice storyline Paul didn’t learn or grow from that and probably only felt like shit in the end despite brushing it off. And the one with his sister was eventually resolved but I want a storyline for him that doesn’t involve his identity because that’s not just who he is- of course it’s a very important part that shouldn’t be ignored but I just want storylines for him that aren’t JUST about that- he’s Paul with great observation skills and he’s a good friend and a nice guy. And Carlos, too. The one in 2x8 with his dad was *chef’s kiss* amazing but I want more solo storylines for him. I know he’s TK’s partner and I love that for him because they’re cute but I want storylines for just Carlos. And I don’t meant to complain because the arsonist storyline where his place burns down looks rly good and maybe that’s a start if it’s just him in the house but I hope you get what I mean? And I love Marjan, Mateo, Paul and Carlos I don’t mean to complain about their storylines because I’m grateful we even get anything on them with how much the writers have eyes just for Owen but yeah I just want more (and better) for them

You make a lot of strong points, and I really think you’re right that there’s still more to do, adn that there’s a lot I hope for when it comes to those characters. Yeah, I think the main thing is to give them time, but not just time, they need to give them quality screentime. Some characters have been getting more screentime without being more developed, which is a major struggle that the show needs to get over to better showcase its characters. Oh no, this is going to wind me up!!

(TLDR: they just need to flesh out the characters and show that they are more than just one part of their identities.)

You’re right about those storylines not allowing growth. Paul’s storyline with his sister ended up being about his sister’s growth, and the thing is, the Josie storyline was very similar in all the wrong ways. It was about Josie’s discomfort. Transphobia becomes something that is about the phobic people rather than the person who is experiencing it! These people also claim to be accepting of his transition, but they also show the opposite with their reactions (Josie was like, “you’re perfect but I can’t date you because you’re trans” while Paul’s sister also commented that she didn’t care that he was trans but also droned on about how she missed her sister... who Paul points out never existed. Like the whole storyline seems to be a pat on the back for transphobes, as if to reassure them that their behaviors are what we should be empathetic to.) Ultimately, Paul wasn’t the active participant in his own story; thus, he can’t really grow and develop. Paul needs to have more storylines that he is an active participant in (by making the scenes in his perspective rather than that of the subjugators). We also haven’t seen Paul’s flaws, whereas we’ve seen flaws of the more fleshed out characters. We know he’s heavily intellectual, observant, and a great listener, but I also want to see a moment when he has more of a struggle (one that is not related to him being trans because he needs a plot beyond that one part of him).

Mateo also is reduced to basically an object in other storylines. His screentime is rarely about him. Even in that last episode that featured a storyline about him, that storyline basically reduced him to a pawn in Owen’s storyline, which didn’t allow Mateo to have any growth. We didn’t learn anything new about him (at least not anything meaningful to the deeper nature of his character). We know very little about what makes Mateo ticks, and I think he is the character who is most reduced to just a few characteristics. He’s constantly a ditzy figure, and I want to see him as more than the probie. In the first episode, we saw that he’s attentive, and that he works hard. Let’s show those qualities some more. I think that especially because he is dyslexic, that it’s harmful to not showcase more diverse sides of him and to neglect the ways that make him stand out. He’s treated as a kid too often, and it’s okay to make him naive on some things because he’s newer to firefighting, but he needs to grow and show that he is making progress and is growing. I like that they bring up his dyslexia, but I don’t think they’ve utilized it as well as they could have, and it would be nice to show how he deals with it and how it impacts him. Just like I want to see mentions of Judd’s PTSD continue to pop up (and they’ve brought it up several times, whcih is nice), it would also be cool to see his dyslexia pop up casually and not as a forced “look he has dyslexia” plot. Like it has to do more for his character. Further, I would never want to see him reduced to just his dyslexia, so I think it’s a careful balance. With Mateo, I just want to see him become a real person because right now, he just feels like a stock character.

Marjan has seen some more development than Mateo. I’ve liked that she’s joined the Austin Annihilators, and I also enjoy the storyline we just saw with her, which really showed us more of her, and I’m glad we saw a storyline that wasn’t about her religion (because like Paul, she deserves to have storylines that show the full extent of who she is as a person). You see a lot about Marjan’s flaws as well as her deep drive for good in the episode. You see that she cares, but you also see that maybe ego does influence her in a way that isn’t always positive (which let’s be real... that’s true of ANY person haha). She’s going in the right direction, but I still think there’s more developing to do.

Also, Grace seems like she has more development, but she also still hasn’t had that much. Like in the episode where she could have been featured more, that was still Judd’s perspective, which I have no problem with. The episode was beautiful, BUT I still want to see a moment that is just Grace’s. 2x10 gave us some of this where Grace was struggling with her injury, and that was excellent. We know a good amount of her history, too, but I want to see the world from her perspective. Also, add in flaws (which again we got a little bit of in 2x10)! I want Grace to be more than the diligent wife who is constantly there to support Judd. She needs to be her own character.

In some ways, they’ve been letting Tommy down too. They started well with her, but they’ve still got some ways to go for me. We’ve seen a lot of her with her family and the same issues of her feeling out of touch and disconnected from them when she goes back to work, but I’d like to see some fresh storylines on that front!

Carlos, of course, still fails to get all the attention he deserves as well. He’s had some independent development, but I would like to see him in more scenes with other charaters. I live for Tarlos moments, but I also want Carlos to be separately connected and have relationships of his own that they explore in the show because he should never just be TK’s plus one! Like a lot of the other characters, I don’t want him to become an object for other people’s storylines. I’d like to see more of his mental processes and how he deals with his career and maybe see him in action more because we don’t see that a whole lot (and Owen somehow became the hero in 2x08, which is okay, but it was also Carlos’ plot so it was a funny choice to me). Anyways, MORE CARLOS. Let us see this wonderful man in all his multifaceted glory.

Even TK and Judd could use more development, but they’re obviously much better off. Owen, on the other hand, the character we’ve seen so much of, also has an interesting development. We’ve seen a lot of him, but I don’t know that he’s even developed that well (he’s pretty stagnant even if we’ve seen more sides of him) because his storylines are a bit repetitive. That repetition in general is an issue for Lone Star because they tend to latch on to just one trait of a character and then they keep doing plots based on that one trait.

Really the theme here is that without flaws, characters are always going to feel flat. They don’t need to be big dramatic flaws like having murdered someone or something equally dramatic, but I need to see the gradients in the characters and see more range of reactions and their personalities. They need to have balance, and they need to feel like they have depth and aren’t just being used to tell plots. Moreover, I don’t want characters to be props for plots that are not their own. Of course, characters always support other plots, but if they never have any moments that are their own, they become objects rather than actors!

#911 lone star #meta #screentime #character development #character analysis #elise rambles

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fapangel · 4 years ago

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help, how do I write, well... armoured infantry fighting eachother? like, everyone's decked to the nines, so now I have the problem of gunfights devolving into brawls as people run through mags.

Treat armor much like how it works in real life - incredibly valuable for buying you a second chance, but not nearly so impervious that you can just stand around getting blasted. I presume you’re having a problem where you apply this metric and it makes modern-day style firefights where cover is king grind on forever, right? Well, you might be surprised to know that many real-life firefights actually do work that way. This is why “fire and maneuver” is such a key component in modern ranged combat, and why flanking is as important in the modern day as it was in rank-and-file melee combat of the ancient world. When both sides are in cover (and they will be since if they’re not in cover to begin with they’ll get there fast,) and playing peekaboo with each other, many rounds will be expended for relatively little effect. To do damage, you have to literally flank the enemy - if he’s hiding behind a rock, you have to move around to his side, so you’re shooting at him from two directions, so both sides of his rock are threatened.

Naturally, once your enemy is flanked in this fashion, they tend to retreat and regroup rather than stay in their compromised position and be swiftly annihilated. Compare this to B.H. Liddel Hart’s words, where he says that strategy “is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this. In other words, dislocation is the aim of strategy...”

Liddel Hart was describing strategy, but his observations apply equally well to tactics, even squad-level tactics, in modern warfare. Which, in itself, neatly shows you why insurgencies are so hard to combat - infantrymen with rifles are superb tools - in truth, the ONLY tool - for taking and holding ground, but forcing an enemy off the ground you want to hold is a lot easier than actually pinning them down and eliminating them. Thus the goal of insurgencies is to not actually hold any ground of their own, but stay ephemeral.

Thus the integral relationship between fire and maneuver which you see military theorists constantly kicking around. All you need to keep in mind (a point said theorists often get too deep into the weeds to remember) is that applying firepower is the point of maneuver. You need 1. something to shoot and 2. a clear shot to your target in order to use it. If they’re in foxholes or a bunker, for example, that means getting close enough to use grenades.

So to apply power armor to a firefight, we have to consider how it affects fire and maneuver. Now in the history of war there has always been a fluid relationship between armor and firepower, one that often changed rapidly as technology changed. Sometimes it’s the pre-dreadnaught era, where even the biggest nutcracking guns afloat couldn’t penetrate the crucial spaces of opposing battleships, and sometimes it’s the 1940s era, where body armor is mostly an afterthought as no practicably wearable technology can really oppose the weapons in use. But more often it’s been Conquistador-era, where people check for the “bullet proof” dent in the armor that proves it can stop a musket ball - or for that matter, a (lighter) crossbow bolt - but know there’s no option to protect the face or limbs, because they’ve already used up their weight allotment on the armor protecting their torso.

One of the first things you have to decide about the technology in your story is, this relative relationship between offense and defense. Is one currently enjoying advantage over the other, or are they in a period where they’re relatively evenly matched?

From there, account for the effects of (what I assume is) power armor. Powered suits not only let you carry more armor, but also more powerful weapons to punch THROUGH the armor of your enemies. They also allow you to move a lot faster, over much rougher terrain, as the infantrymen are freed from the limits of human strength. This boost in mobility is doubled by the reduction of firepower. The basic technique of fire-and-maneuver is covering fire; you pour fire onto the enemy so they have to stay behind their cover and can’t light up your troops as they move. Thus the concept of “effective fire;” you need to put enough rounds on your enemies that they are actually forced to duck, or if they are moving, force them to stop advancing and hug cover. If armor is stronger, then it takes more fire to be effective. This benefits everyone, of course, but I’m going to wager it helps troopers trying to maneuver relatively more, as the ones behind cover already have very good protection. The armor mostly protects against blast-frag; i.e. shrapnel. (Shrapnel is the primary killer of infantrymen because it spreads the “love” around. This is why things like tanks were historically hard to kill with artillery or airpower; blast-fragmentation compensated for the innate inaccuracy of unguided munitions. You either needed direct fire [like the 37mm gunpods Stuka’s used, or yes, the GAU-8 decades later,) or ‘spread’ munitions that could kill tanks, like napalm or armor-piercing bomblets.) The precision-guided munitions revolution has largely negated many ordinance distinctions born of blast-frag primacy; pretty much any weapon, even ones fired out of a rifleman’s underbarrel grenade launcher, can be precision guided and home in on a single target; even a single power-armored infantryman. So while power armored infantry in the real world, right now, would be very tough to kill because most standard artillery rounds couldn’t root them out, in a futuristic setting we can presume that they’re dropping self-guiding submunitions with micro-sized armor piercing warheads. Thus the real beneficiaries, comparatively, would be the guys maneuvering - not only are they faster, but they’re primarily threatened by hostile small arms, and with better armor, the same amount of firepower threatens them less. Overall mobility on the battlefield would be enhanced.

That naturally leads to firefights happening at shorter ranges as both sides aggressively maneuver on each other, as neither sides fire will be effective at suppressing the other till they reach shorter ranges (mainly due to accuracy. The more rounds clustered tighter on target, the more likely they’re going to drop.) And both sides can reach close range faster. So fights will be shorter, faster, and more intense.

Remember - it doesn’t HAVE to be this way. You can approach this from a question of “what kind of dynamic do I WANT?” and then simply write the tech in the story to support that. Remember what I said earlier about the struggle between firepower and armor through history - it can change fast - so it’s entirely plausible for your story to be happening at any point on that spectrum. Those pre-dreads I mentioned? Only 40 years later, in WWII, firepower had caught up so drastically that the guns of a cruiser could punch clean through the belt armor of a battleship under 15,000 yards or so. But that was suicidally close for a cruiser... because of the battleship’s own guns. Again, fire and maneuver. Or firepower, maneuver and armor, if you want to make it a triangle; each one has both offensive and defensive applications. The shape of that triangle dictates the blend of them that will be used to conduct warfare and in what fashion. So if you don’t have a specific, desired combat dynamic in mind for the story, it’s also good (and fun) to nail down what that triangle looks like FIRST, and then extrapolate from there to discover what it’d be like. It all depends on your priorities as a storyteller.

A last note - everything I discussed above is an issue under serious consideration IRL as pertains to infantry. Body armor has gotten scary good, in the last few decades especially. The Army was first kicking around a 6.5mm round in the 90s and the topic is coming up for consideration more and more often, as well as alternatives like three round burst and such (remember the AN-94s clever super-fast doubletap? Ayep.) So you can read up on current IRL discussion on this topic to get ideas about how things might change and how armies will adapt.

My discord is Demetrious#5963 and I’m on Rizon under Demetrious as well; hit me up if you wanna talk more on specifics or whatever~

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sanathanadharmasblog · 4 years ago

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Powerful Narasimha Mantras – Meaning – For Protection

Narasimha who is one of the most powerful avatars of Lord Vishnu, (the protector in the Hindu Triad) is known to be fierce to fight and remove all that is evil and as a result protect all his devotees from every negative aspect of life. He is regarded as the embodiment of victory of good over evil.

Vishnu assumed this fierce form on top of Himvat mountain (Harivamsa). He is believed to have taken the avatar to destroy the demon king Hiranyakashipu.

Lord Narasimha is said to have half human and half lion appearance where the torso and the lower body is that of human while the face and claws are that of a ferocious lion. In conjunction with the bodily appearances, Lord Narasimha is described in various forms and is said to have about more than 74 forms with respect to different postures and weapons that he holds in his hands. The 9 main ones are collectively known as Nava-narasiṁha and as follows :

Ugra-narasiṁha

Kroddha-narasiṁha

Vīra-narasiṁha

Vilamba-narasiṁha

Kopa-narasiṁha

Yoga-narasiṁha

Aghora-narasiṁha

Sudarśana-narasiṁha

Lakṣmī-narasiṁha

Out of these forms, the Lakṣmī-narasiṁha is the form where Goddess Lakshmi is sitting on His lap and the Lord is calmer than the other forms.

Due to the nature of Narasiṁha’s form (divine anger), it is essential that worship be given with a very high level of attention compared to other deities.

Narasimha Mantra

In many temples only lifelong celibates (Brahmācārya) are able to have the chance to serve as priests to perform the daily puja. Forms where Narasiṁha appears sitting in a yogic posture, or with the Goddess Lakṣmī are the exception to this rule, as Narasiṁha is taken as being more relaxed.

The form and outlook of Lord Narasimha teach us that evil does not triumph over good. Those who support malevolence would be annihilated by God as He is everywhere. A number of Mantras in Sanskrit herald, praise and pray to Lord Narasimha and chanting any chosen Narasimha Mantra with due reverence, diligence and devotion can remove fears and bestow all good on the devotees. A collection of simple, but profound Narasimha Mantras that can confer multifarious benefits are as given below.

Narasimha Mantra

Narasimha Maha Mantra

“Om hrim ksaumugram viram mahavivnumjvalantam sarvatomukham।

Nrsimham bhisanam bhadrammrtyormrtyum namamyaham ॥”

Meaning: ‘Oh Angry and brave Maha-Visnu, your heat and fire permeate everywhere. O Lord Narasimha, you are everywhere. You are the death of death and I surrender to You.’

Benefit: Reciting this Mantra with utmost devotion results in the gain of the armour of Narasimha which protects everything that is blessed and destroys all problems of the chanter.

Narasimha Pranama Prayer

“Namaste narasimhaya, prahladahlada-dayine, hiranyakasipor vaksah, sila-tanka nakhalaye |“

Ito nrsimhah parato nrsimho, yato yato yami tato nrsimhah, bahir nrsimho hrdaye nrsimho, nrsimham adim saranam prapadye ||”

Meaning: ‘I offer my obeisances to Lord Narasimha, who gives joy to Prahlada Maharaja and whose nails are like chisels on the stone like chest of the demon Hiranyakasipu.

Lord Narasimha is here and also there. Wherever I go Lord Narasimha is there. He is in the heart and is outside as well. I surrender to Lord Narasimha, the origin of all things and the supreme refuge.’

Benefit : This is a powerful mantra that when recited regularly will relieve people of their debts and insolvency however severe and acute and give protection against any further problematic situations.

Dasavatara Stotra

“Tava kara-kamala-vare nakham adbhuta-srngam,

dalita-hiranyakasipu-tanu-bhrngam,

kesava dhrta-narahari-rupa jaya jagadisa hare ||”

Meaning: O Kesava! O Lord of the universe! O Hari, who have assumed the form of half-man and half-lion, all glories to You! Just as one can easily crush a wasp between one’s fingernails, so in the same way the body of the wasp-like demon Hiranyakasipu has been ripped apart by the wonderful pointed nails on your beautiful lotus hands.’

Kamasikashtakam

“Tvayi raksati raksakaih kimanyaih,

tvayi caraksati raksakaih kimanyaih iiti niscita dhih srayami nityam,

nrhare vegavati taṭasrayam tvam॥”

Meaning: ‘O Kamasikha Narasimha! You are sarva sakthan. When you are resolved to protect some one, where is the need to seek the protection of anyone else? When you are resolved not to protect some one, which other person is capable of protecting us? There is no one. Knowing this fundamental truth, I have resolved to offer my saraṇagati at your lotus feet alone that rest at the banks of Vegavati river.’

Divya Prabandham

“Adi adi agam karaindhu isaipadip padik kannir malgi engumnadi nadi narasinga endru, vadi vaduum ivval nuthale ||”

Meaning: ‘I will dance and melt for you, within my heart, to see you, I will sing in praise of you with tears of joy, I will search for Narasiṁha and I am a householder who still searches to reach you (to attain Salvation).’

Narasimha Gayatri Mantra

“Om Nrisimhaye vidmahe vajranakhaya dhimahi tan no simhah Prachodayat |

Vajra nakhaya vidmahe tikshna damstraya dhimahi tan no narasimhah Prachodayat ||”

Meaning: ‘Om! Let us be well aware of Nrisimha, the lightning-nailed. May the Lion promote our thought and actions. Let us meditate on He who is known as the possessor of nails as hard as thunderbolts and sharp teeth. Let us all be enthused by Lord Narasimhadeva.”

Sri Narasimha Maha Mantra

It is stated in Shastra that this mantra is the essence of all kavacha mantras, or mantras meant for wearing in a kavacha (capsule). The mantra is often written on a small piece of bark, such as from the botch tree. Then it is sealed in the capsule with a tulasi (Holy Basil) leaf or even flower petals that have been offered to the deity of Lord Narasimha. After worshipping the deity of Lord Narasimha with sixteen upacharas or items of worship, the pujari or priest performs a ritual called prana-pratistha: he calls the Lord to reside in the kavacha. He then worships the kavacha. Then it has full protective power. Men can wear the kavacha around the neck or on the upper right arm, while women wear it around the neck or on the upper left arm. The Kavacha may be worn in all circumstances, at any time, or in any place.

“Ugram viram maha-vishnum jvalantam sarvato mukham |

nrisimham bhishanam bhadram mrityur mrityum namamy aham ||”

Meaning : ‘I bow down to Lord Narasimha who is ferocious and heroic like Lord Vishnu. He is burning from every side. He is terrific, auspicious and the death of death personified.’

Narasimha Prapatti

“Mata narasimha, pita narasimha

Bratha narasimha, sakha narasimha

Vidyaa narasimha, dravinam narasimha

Swami narasimha, sakalam narasimha

Itho narasimha, paratho narasimha

Yatho yatho yahihi, tatho narasimha

Narasimha devaath paro na kaschit

Tasmaan narasimha sharanam prapadye ||”

Meaning: ‘Mother is Narasimha; Father is Narasimha

Brother is Narasimha; Friend is Narasimha

Knowledge is Narasimha; Wealth is Narasimha

My Lord is Narasimha; Everything is Narasimha.

Narasimha is in this world, Narasimha is everywhere (Omnipresent)

Wherever I go, there is Narasimha

Narasimha is the Supreme Lord, there is none other than HIM

So, I humbly seek refuge in you, Shri Narasimha.’

Benefit: A simple sloka that acts as a ‘great protective shield’ at all times.

ॐॐ ALSO READ NARASIMHA KAVACHAM MANTRA ॐॐ

Narasimha Mantra Benefits

Narasimha Mantras, also known as Kavacha mantras have the power of protecting those who chant it. The literal meaning of Kavacha is armor or breast plate that the soldiers wear during wars to protect their bodies from the deadly weapons. In the same manner, the Kavacha mantras act as protective shields to safeguard the welfare of the devotees. If so, then imagine how powerful Narasimha Mantra could be when the sole purpose behind the incarnation of Lord Naraismha is to save his devotee.

Narasimha Mantra - For Protection

Lord Narasimha is highly benign and merciful though he might appear ferocious. He came to being in response to the answer given by Prahlad to his angry father. When Hiranyakasipu, the demon king was torturing his son Prahlad since he was devoted to Lord Vishnu, the difficulties and dangers endured by Prahlad came to a saturation point. However, he was bearing all the troubles with patience and smile with a sense of total faith and surrender. At a point, Hiranyakashipu grew weary with the unchanging attitude of his son and asked him where Lord Vishnu was and whether Prahlad could show him. To this, Prahlad said he resides in every atom of the universe. Hearing this, Hiranyakashipu struck a pillar in the palace with his mace and asked whether Lord Vishnu was there in the pillar. When Prahlad smiled in confirmation, Lord Vishnu assumed the Narasimha form and emanated from the pillar only to kill the vicious demon Hiranyakashipu with his finger nails. Prahlad witnessed the divine incarnation and wondered at the majestic appearance of the Lord. The Lord blessed Prahlad and returned to his divine abode.

Chanting Narasimha Mantra can, therefore, remove all sufferings and alleviate the troubles of people. It can bestow the state of fearlessness, peace, prosperity and tranquility.

To have Lord Narasimha in one’s favour and get the best of results from chanting His mantras, one must keep in mind the following things :

One should start chanting from a Thursday facing north.

Yellow clothes should be worn for this purpose.

A ghee lamp should be lit in front of Lord Narasimha and he should be offered with incense & flowers.

Thus, worshipping Lord Narasimha is the way to attain the ultimate salvation in life and get rid of everything evil and harmful. Chanting His mantras makes one’s life fall into sync and his mental peace is known to stay undisturbed.

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troybeecham · 4 years ago

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Today the Church remembers St. John Chrysostom (c. AD 349 – 14 September 407), Archbishop of Constantinople, Early Church Father.

Ora pro nobis.

He is known for his preaching and public speaking, his denunciation of abuse of authority by both ecclesiastical and political leaders, the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, and his ascetic sensibilities. The epithet Chrysostomos means "golden-mouthed" in Greek and denotes his celebrated eloquence. Chrysostom was among the most prolific authors in the early Christian Church, exceeded only by Augustine of Hippo in the quantity of his surviving writings.

John was born in Antioch in AD 349 to Greek parents from Syria. Different scholars describe his mother Anthusa as a pagan or as a Christian, and his father was a high-ranking military officer. John's father died soon after his birth and he was raised by his mother. He was baptised in AD 368 or 373 and tonsured as a reader (one of the minor orders of the Church).

As a result of his mother's influential connections in the city, John began his education under the pagan teacher Libanius. From Libanius, John acquired the skills for a career in rhetoric, as well as a love of the Greek language and literature.

As he grew older, however, John became more deeply committed to Christianity and went on to study theology under Diodore of Tarsus, founder of the re-constituted School of Antioch. According to the Christian historian Sozomen, Libanius was supposed to have said on his deathbed that John would have been his successor "if the Christians had not taken him from us".

John lived in extreme asceticism and became a hermit in about AD 375; he spent the next two years continually standing, scarcely sleeping, and committing the Bible to memory. As a consequence of these practices, his stomach and kidneys were permanently damaged and poor health forced him to return to Antioch.

John was ordained as a deacon in AD 381 by Saint Meletius of Antioch who was not then in communion with Alexandria and Rome. After the death of Meletius, John separated himself from the followers of Meletius, without joining Paulinus, the rival of Meletius for the bishopric of Antioch. But after the death of Paulinus he was ordained a presbyter (priest) in AD 386 by Evagrius, the successor of Paulinus.He was destined later to bring about reconciliation between Flavian I of Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome, thus bringing those three sees into communion for the first time in nearly seventy years.

In Antioch, over the course of twelve years (386–397), John gained popularity because of the eloquence of his public speaking at the Golden Church, Antioch's cathedral, especially his insightful expositions of Bible passages and moral teaching. The most valuable of his works from this period are his Homilies on various books of the Bible. He emphasised charitable giving and was concerned with the spiritual and temporal needs of the poor. He spoke against abuse of wealth and personal property:

“Do you wish to honour the body of Christ? Do not ignore him when he is naked. Do not pay him homage in the temple clad in silk, only then to neglect him outside where he is cold and ill-clad. He who said: "This is my body" is the same who said: "You saw me hungry and you gave me no food", and "Whatever you did to the least of my brothers you did also to me"... What good is it if the Eucharistic table is overloaded with golden chalices when your brother is dying of hunger? Start by satisfying his hunger and then with what is left you may adorn the altar as well.”

His straightforward understanding of the Scriptures – in contrast to the Alexandrian tendency towards allegorical interpretation – meant that the themes of his talks were practical, explaining the Bible's application to everyday life. Such straightforward preaching helped Chrysostom to garner popular support. He founded a series of hospitals in Constantinople to care for the poor.

One incident that happened during his service in Antioch illustrates the influence of his homilies. When Chrysostom arrived in Antioch, Flavian, the bishop of the city, had to intervene with Emperor Theodosius I on behalf of citizens who had gone on a rampage mutilating statues of the Emperor and his family. During the weeks of Lent in AD 387, John preached more than twenty homilies in which he entreated the people to see the error of their ways. These made a lasting impression on the general population of the city: many pagans converted to Christianity as a result of the homilies. As a result, Theodosius' vengeance was not as severe as it might have been.

In the autumn of AD 397, John was appointed Archbishop of Constantinople, after having been nominated without his knowledge by the eunuch Eutropius. He had to leave Antioch in secret due to fears that the departure of such a popular figure would cause civil unrest. During his time as Archbishop he adamantly refused to host lavish social gatherings, which made him popular with the common people, but unpopular with wealthy citizens and the clergy. His reforms of the clergy were also unpopular. He told visiting regional preachers to return to the churches they were meant to be serving—without any payout.

His time in Constantinople was more tumultuous than his time in Antioch. Theophilus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, wanted to bring Constantinople under his sway and opposed John's appointment to Constantinople. Theophilus had disciplined four Egyptian monks (known as "the Tall Brothers") over their support of Origen's teachings. They fled to John and were welcomed by him. Theophilus therefore accused John of being too partial to the teaching of Origen. He made another enemy in Aelia Eudoxia, wife of Emperor Arcadius, who assumed that John's denunciations of extravagance in feminine dress were aimed at her. Eudoxia, Theophilus and other of his enemies held a synod in AD 403 (the Synod of the Oak) to charge John, in which his connection to Origen was used against him. It resulted in his deposition and banishment. He was called back by Arcadius almost immediately, as the people became "tumultuous" over his departure, even threatening to burn the royal palace. There was an earthquake the night of his arrest, which Eudoxia took for a sign of God's anger, prompting her to ask Arcadius for John's reinstatement.

Peace was short-lived. A silver statue of Eudoxia was erected in the Augustaion, near his cathedral. John denounced the dedication ceremonies as pagan and spoke against the Empress in harsh terms:

"Again Herodias raves; again she is troubled; she dances again; and again desires to receive John's head in a charger", an allusion to the events surrounding the death of John the Baptist. Once again he was banished, this time to the Caucasus in Abkhazia. Around AD 405, John began to lend moral and financial support to Christian monks who were enforcing the emperors' anti-Pagan laws, by destroying temples and shrines in Phoenicia and nearby regions.

The causes of John's exile are not clear, though Jennifer Barry suggests that they have to do with his connections to Arianism. Other historians, including Wendy Mayer and Geoffrey Dunn, have argued that "the surplus of evidence reveals a struggle between Johannite and anti-Johannite camps in Constantinople soon after John's departure and for a few years after his death". Faced with exile, John Chrysostom wrote an appeal for help to three churchmen: Pope Innocent I, Venerius the Bishop of Milan, and the third to Chromatius, the Bishop of Aquileia.

In 1872, church historian William Stephens wrote:

The Patriarch of the Eastern Rome appeals to the great bishops of the West, as the champions of an ecclesiastical discipline which he confesses himself unable to enforce, or to see any prospect of establishing. No jealousy is entertained of the Patriarch of the Old Rome by the Patriarch of the New Rome. The interference of Innocent is courted, a certain primacy is accorded him, but at the same time he is not addressed as a supreme arbitrator; assistance and sympathy are solicited from him as from an elder brother, and two other prelates of Italy are joint recipients with him of the appeal.

Pope Innocent I protested John's banishment from Constantinople to the town of Cucusus in Cappadocia, but to no avail. Innocent sent a delegation to intercede on behalf of John in AD 405. It was led by Gaudentius of Brescia; Gaudentius and his companions, two bishops, encountered many difficulties and never reached their goal of entering Constantinople.

John wrote letters which still held great influence in Constantinople. As a result of this, he was further exiled from Cucusus (where he stayed from 404 to 407) to Pitiunt (Pityus) (in modern Georgia) where his tomb is a shrine for pilgrims. He never reached this destination, as he died at Comana Pontica on AD 14 September 407 during the journey. His last words are said to have been "δόξα τῷ θεῷ πάντων ἕνεκεν" (Glory be to God for all things).

John came to be venerated as a saint soon after his death. Almost immediately after, an anonymous supporter of John (known as pseudo-Martyrius) wrote a funeral oration to reclaim John as a symbol of Christian orthodoxy. But three decades later, some of his adherents in Constantinople remained in schism. Saint Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople (AD 434–446), hoping to bring about the reconciliation of the Johannites, preached a homily praising his predecessor in the Church of Hagia Sophia. He said, "O John, your life was filled with sorrow, but your death was glorious. Your grave is blessed and reward is great, by the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ O graced one, having conquered the bounds of time and place! Love has conquered space, unforgetting memory has annihilated the limits, and place does not hinder the miracles of the saint."

These homilies helped to mobilize public opinion, and the patriarch received permission from the emperor to return Chrysostom's relics to Constantinople, where they were enshrined in the Church of the Holy Apostles on AD 28 January 438. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him as a "Great Ecumenical Teacher", with Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian. These three saints, in addition to having their own individual commemorations throughout the year, are commemorated together on 30 January, a feast known as the Synaxis of the Three Hierarchs.

O God, you gave your servant John Chrysostom grace eloquently to proclaim your righteousness in the great congregation, and fearlessly to bear reproach for the honor of your Name: Mercifully grant to all bishops and pastors such excellence in preaching, and faithfulness in ministering your Word, that your people may be partakers with them of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

#father troy beecham #christianity #troy beecham episcopal #jesus #father troy beecham episcopal #saints #god #salvation #peace #theology #Church Father

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peachdoxie · 5 years ago

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I'm really happy for your three way fight analysis post for HTTYD 3, because I see a lot of people be like "oh, Hiccup just gave up on peace" when it's not that? It's that keeping the dragons and fighting every threat that comes until there is peace isn't what's best for the dragons, at least not in this moment. Maybe it will be someday, but for now Hiccup needs to let the dragons go because that's what's best for them NOW.

For reference, that's this post anon is referring to.

The end of How to Train Your Dragon centers on a concept that I rarely see in the fiction I consume but is one I really like, and that's the concept of the hero yielding the fight to someone better able to win it.

Hiccup realized that he and the Berkians were fighting a losing battle. The warlords were far more powerful and had more resources to enslave dragons that the Berkians had to rescue them, even with the help of Toothless the Alpha. Hiccup had already been thinking along these lines during the meeting after Grimmel's attack:

Grimmel is just a sign of the times. Our enemies are getting smarter, more determined. We're not just overcrowded. We are exposed, and vulnerable. Short of full-blown war and risking everyone we love, I don't... I don't see a way of staying here any longer.

In particular: "Short of full-blown war and risking everyone we love...."

What Hiccup wanted most was to avoid a war with other humans. He grew up in the middle of a war between dragons and humans, and that was one of survival, not domination: "They raid us because they have to! If they don't bring enough food back, they'll be eaten themselves." The Berkians' response was primarily defensive, with Stoick's attempts at offense literally blowing up in his face. Even then, Stoick's offensive attacks were more about driving the dragons away than annihilating them. (I wrote about this more here.)

But Hiccup learned first-hand how devastating a war with a person who wants war is when Drago used Toothless to try and kill him and Stoick pushed Hiccup out of the way. There was no good outcome for any of the Berkians. Stoick died. Toothless was forced to kill him. Hiccup watched both happen and was powerless to stop it. Not to mention how much of Berk was destroyed when Drago attacked it.

And a year later, things haven't improved. In fact, they've gotten worse. Grimmel shows that, as Hiccup explained. He was able to get past their scouts and install a large trap for Toothless, leaving the Light Fury there as bait. He broke into Hiccup's house to threaten him, and even if Hiccup anticipated that, he didn't anticipate the Deathgrippers on the roof and how much they'd damage Berk (an attack eerily similar to Drago's attack on the gathering of Chieftains from Stoick's flashback).

The only solution Hiccup had was to leave:

Hiccup: If we want to live in peace with our dragons, we need a better plan.

Gobber: So, what are you saying, Chief?

Hiccup: I'm saying we have to disappear. Off the map. Take the dragons to a place where no one will find them.

That's it. Leave Berk and hope they can find the Hidden World. Staying and fighting would risk war.

But even before Hiccup saw how inhospitable the Hidden World would be to humans, it wasn't shaping out to be a feasible idea to move everyone there. The Vikings liked New Berk a lot, as evidenced by the party they threw:

Gobber: Don't say I thought you were a little off your raw for this but it isn't half bad.

Hiccup: This is supposed to be a temporary solution.

Eret: It's unanimous. Everyone agrees we've definitely traded up. Well done, Chief.

Hiccup, really, was the only person convinced that moving everyone to the Hidden World was the best solution. Very few Berkian Vikings had heard of the place, let alone believed it existed. Even Astrid, Hiccup's most staunch supporter, doubted his plan.

And as he learned, they were right. The Hidden World isn't a place that humans can easily live in. It's a world of dragons.

Hiccup knew this even before Grimmel kidnapped Toothless and the Light Fury from New Berk: "You belong there, with her. We don't." It's important to note that, before he says this to Toothless, he glances up at the buildings the Berkians had started to put up. They're happy there and are already getting settled. Uprooting them again would be immensely unpopular, even if the Hidden World could support humans.

Of course, Grimmel finds them. The warlords bring an armada. Even though New Berk is "defensible" and "hidden," the Berkians aren't safe there. They're not safe anywhere.

This brings me back to the concept of yielding the fight to someone else better able to win it. Hiccup realized that he and the Vikings were fighting a losing battle. Continuing to fight risks a new war that would be even more deadly than the one between Berkian Vikings and dragons. I think that Toothless falling from the sky, unconscious from Grimmel's dart, was when it really hit Hiccup that this wasn't something he could continue to fight. It was the first time in the entire trilogy when Hiccup was completely powerless to save Toothless.

Even in HTTYD 2, during Toothless Lost and Stoick Saves Hiccup, Hiccup wasn't nearly as powerless as he was during As Long As He's Safe. Yes, Toothless fell from the sky into the ice, but he was conscious, and Hiccup could at least yell at Valka about going back for Toothless (even though he'd already been rescued). When Drago takes Toothless, even though the dragon is being mind controlled, he's at least not at risk of dying immediately. But when Toothless is falling from the sky, unconscious, he would die if he hit the water.

In the context I'm talking about, yielding is not the same as giving up, or conceding defeat, or fighting on until you're at your last breath and letting someone else save you. It's making an active choice to yield the fight to someone else because you know it's the only way to succeed as best you can. Hiccup's only option to save Toothless was to yield the rescue to the Light Fury. And as I wrote about in my three-way fight analysis, it's mirrored a short while later, when Hiccup's only option to save the dragons is to yield their safety to the seclusion of the Hidden World.

Personally, I find this immensely satisfying, though I'm aware not everyone does. So often, I'm bombarded with stories about characters never giving up and fighting on until they either win or are forced to give up. There's something to be said for perseverance, but I think it is also an incredibly dangerous way to think and act. Knowing when to yield and realize that continuing towards a certain goal or dream is an incredibly valuable skill to have. I've watched too many people I know, and read/watched too many stories in fiction, continue on a path when it's damaging them more than the end goal will benefit them.

Quite frankly, the only time I've seen this concept of learning when to yield a battle to someone/something else explicitly part of a character's arc is in the Last Olympian, the final book in the original Percy Jackson series, and coincidentally the book-equivalent of the HTTYD films in how much it impacted my life (which is a lot). Percy was advised to yield Pandora's Box to someone better equipped to protect it instead of fighting for it (and against the temptation to open it) himself. And at the conclusion, the "single choice [to] end his days" that Percy was prophesied to make was about choosing to let Luke end the fight with Kronos instead of making it his fight, as you'd expect the hero to do.

I've been enamored with this concept since 2009 and wished for more of it in my media, and found it lacking. And yet, in the artistry of fate, I found it in the conclusion of the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy. It's a very similar execution of the concept, though less explicit than in PJO. Despite it being Hiccup's goal to live in peace with the dragons, and despite the fact that he's the hero of the story and thus expected by common narrative conventions to win at all costs, he chooses not to continue the fight because he knows he can't win it. (I talk about this more at length in this post.)

The end of HTTYD 3 is laden with irony. We expect Hiccup to fight until he wins or die trying, as part of common narrative expectations. And it's set up in the repeated emphasis of how stubborn Hiccup is, throughout all three films:

"We're Vikings. We have stubbornness issues." (Hiccup, HTTYD)

"Every bit the boar-headed, stubborn Viking you ever were!" (Gobber, HTTYD)

"Boar-headed! Just like his mother!" (Stoick, HTTYD 2)

"You know what he's like. He won't give up, Gobber. And if Hiccup finds Drago, before we find him…" (Stoick, HTTYD 2. Stoick's tone greatly contrasts that of the previous line, here expressing serious concern about Hiccup's stubbornness, for the first time showing that stubbornness can go too far.)

"You are the bravest, most stubborn, most determined... knucklehead I know. Toothless didn't give you that, Hiccup." (Astrid, HTTYD 3)

So the end of HTTYD 3, with Hiccup not continuing with his stubborn determination to bring peace between Vikings and dragons, is heavily ironic, and I think a lot of people dislike that, either because they wanted to have a happy ending (not unreasonable) or because they see it as Hiccup being out of character instead of Hiccup undergoing character development in an unexpected way.

In addition to personally really liking the concept of yielding and knowing when to stop following a certain path because it's how you started, I also agree entirely with you that it's not Hiccup "giving up" on peace (if I hadn't already made that very clear). And ultimately, while "peace" is what Hiccup has been fighting for, especially in HTTYD 2, "peace" isn't really what matters to Hiccup. I talk about this at length in this post, but to summarize: what matters the most to Hiccup is that Toothless and the other dragons are safe and free. He mentions both of these things in his goodbye to Toothless:

Go on, bud. Lead them to the Hidden World. You'll be safe there. Safer than you could ever be with me. It's okay. I love you too. And I want you to be free. Our world doesn't deserve you... yet.

The title of the music track at this moment, "As Long As He's Safe," emphasizes this, as does Hiccup's willingness to literally die in order to let Toothless live. The cinematography of the scene really enforces that Hiccup's primary concern was about making sure Toothless was safe, which I've written about here. By being okay with letting the dragons go to the Hidden World, even if it meant leaving the Vikings behind, it shows that Hiccup ultimately didn't care about peace between the Vikings and dragons. He cared most about letting the dragons live in safety and freedom, without threat to their lives or autonomy.

It's for this reason that I don't like to say that Hiccup didn't "win" at the end of HTTYD 3. Sure, he didn't achieve his goal of peace between Vikings and dragons, and so in that way he lost to Grimmel and the warlords (even though they didn't win either). Instead, Hiccup and the Berkians won in the way that they were able to succeed in what matters most to them, and that's the well-being of the dragons. And because this is what matters most to Hiccup, I don't see his actions at the end of the film as out of character.

It makes me think of the line in the original film, when Hiccup says to Stoick,

Dad. It's not what you think you're up against. It's like nothing you've ever seen. Dad, please! I promise you that you can't win this one! For once in your life would you please just listen to me?!

I don't count this as foreshadowing, nor am I sure of how much of a parallel it's meant to be, but the same thing happened to Hiccup as he told his dad. He learned he couldn't win this fight. Luckily, he listened to that fact and didn't engage in a futile battle from which there would be no way to win. No Hiccup ex machina to save them. The only way to come close to winning was to not continue the fight.

All in all, do I think that HTTYD 2 and HTTYD 3 are a little too subtle in how they show these themes? Perhaps. Do I think that people went into the final film anticipating a different ending, though a combination of conventional Hollywood narratives and an expectation of how an animated "kids" movie is "supposed" to end? Absolutely. Will I be talking about this in my PhD dissertation? Almost certainly.

Am I aware that not everyone agrees with my views in HTTYD 3? Yes. Do I think that I'm biased in my opinion about HTTYD 3 because of my own personal preferences, my skill in literary and cinematic analysis, and the fact that I've watched all of these films multiple times and have spent years analyzing them so I know these films more in depth than the vast majority of the world? Certainly.

Do I also think that the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy is an incredibly well-crafted masterpiece of literature of the highest degree? Yes. And do I think that Dean DeBlois should have been nominated for and won all the major awards for best screenplay for HTTYD 3? Also yes, and I will be forever pissed off that he wasn't.

#how to train your dragon #httyd 3 #httyd commentary #thanks for sending this anon because it got me to talk about this more #id been meaning to lol

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littlemisssquiggles · 4 years ago

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I love rose garden 😍

I think oscar hasn't dated much at best maybe a girl or to in school or a girl is age is ant set him up with ,so he maybe knows how to date,

I don't think ruby dose,I don't think her date let her date,am after becane fail ,I don't think dating on her mind but I think at some point after,salem gone

Ruby and Oscar will start dating as the show ends I could maybe see them having an on screen kiss in the last volume

Do you think ,rose garden will kiss or date

Sorry if u been ask this be for

You and I share the same sentiments about this wholesome ship between these two budding smaller, more honest souls, anon-chan. Personally I agree with you on thinking that Oscar has probably never dated or been in a romantic relationship before. My assumption is that Oscar has lived a pretty sheltered life with his only source of human contact and companionship being his family back on the Pine Family farm.

Since Oscar stated that he never met huntsmen and huntresses before back in V5, my assumption was that he and his aunt probably lived in the middle of nowhere in Anima where the closest neighbours were probably towns away. Either that or many of their local neighbours moved to the kingdom for the protection of the huntsmen. That being said, my hunch was that Oscar didn’t interact much with kids, especially ones around his age growing up which would explain his social awkwardness when meting RNJR for the first time. At least he’s courteous to adults highlighting a good boi (best boi) who was raised right by his family.

I also liked the thought of Ruby being the first girl Oscar ever truly had a genuine crush leading to those feelings ultimately evolving into love. Looking at Oscar, I more saw him as being one of those types who didn’t really bother much about romance; so much so that I imagined Oscar would be so inexperienced to love that he wouldn’t even realize his own feelings until someone else had to help him make the realization for himself.

I saw Oscar as the type who only allows love to blossom if it’s with someone he trusts wholeheartedly since to him, trust is everything and he’s not one to open his heart to any and every one. But once he does and he’s found the one who has tamed his heart, he will be ever devoted to said person; loving and supporting them unconditionally with every bit of his being.

I pictured Ruby being the same as Oscar. For me, I think outside of admiring them in her favourite childhood fairy-tales and supporting the relationships between her friends in real life, Ruby is quite the little red novice to romance herself. I perceived her as not really being all that interested in romance too since the feeling has never really hit her before. Unlike other characters she might know, the little light of love has never sparked in Ruby before so much like Oscar, she strikes me as being another who probably wouldn’t realize she was in love with someone even if Cupid damn right thwacked her over the head.

That being said, this is what makes the potential of a Rosegarden romance so fascinating to me and why I like it so much. At the end of the day, Ruby and Oscar are just two kids fitted with roles of responsibility beyond their years. They are both often looked to as figures of guidance and wisdom or at least are expected to. All the more reason why I love how the show has highlighted the two showing support for one another since, within our main group of young heroes, they share the most in common (at least in my humble opinion) and can understand each other in ways unique to them; thus making their bond more meaningful than any others they might share.

At this point, I can’t really say whether or not romance is in the cards for the rosebuds. Don’t get me wrong. As I’ve voiced multiple times in the past, this squiggly Rosegardening Pinehead is all for Ruby and Oscar falling in love with each other (particularly if it parallels the Fairy-tale romance that happened between Ozma and Salem a long time ago only with a much happier ending and happily ever after). I’m down for a Rosegarden romance but whether that will be is up to the showrunners. I’m not sure if Ruby and Oscar will “date” but I do like the idea of them sharing an onscreen kiss.

As a matter of fact, once upon a time, long before it was revealed that Oscar will be kidnapped by Salem, I was one of the theorists who kept advocating for it. Therefore I had concocted this scene in my head where Salem gives Atlas an ultimatum to surrender Oscar over to her in exchange for sparing the kingdom from annihilation. And while his comrades were strongly against this, Oscar, on the other hand, had made up his mind that he was willing to trade his own life if it meant the protection of everyone.

I had this scene of Ruby and Oscar professing their true feelings for one another after Ruby desperately tried to convince Oscar not to give himself up to Salem. I had this idea of the Rosegarden first kiss mimicking the first on-screen kiss between Katara and Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

In that series, Aang kissed Katara after expressing his concerns of never returning from confronting Fire Lord Ozai. And as Katara goes in to object, Aang kisses her on the spot as his way of letting Katara know his true feelings for her just in case he never got the chance.

For me, I pictured something like this being done for Oscar with Ruby. With him kissing her as a means of letting her know right then and there how much he loved her; just in case he didn’t return to her in the event that Salem killed him.

I even had this idea of “I love you” being the very last thing Oscar says tearfully to Ruby before he is taken prisoner by Salem and she and the others are left to die in the destruction of Atlas Kingdom. Even if we never get a Rosegarden onscreen kiss, I personally would still like the show to confirm Oscar having feelings for Ruby.

The longstanding Pinehead headcanon is that Oscar has a crush on Ruby and has been in love with her since the moment he looked into his silver eyes; paralleling the young man who met the lone Silver Eyed Warrior in the Warrior in the Woods tale from Fairy Tales of Remnant.

That being said, I’m waiting (ever so patiently) to see if the show would…y’know…do something more to make the notion of Oscar being in love with Ruby more official since I feel like they’ve been more or less teasing that since V5. It’s obvious that Oscar cares a lot for Ruby. It’s clear that he admires her and looks to her as a symbol of hope. However at the same time, it is also clear that Oscar acknowledges Ruby’s vulnerability (the side that she rarely likes to show but is evident to certain characters like Oscar and even Maria Calavera and of course, us as the audience) and the huge burden of responsibility placed on her shoulders and does his best to support her when he can in his own way.

But does this mean that Oscar is in love with Ruby? I’d like to think he is but I’m waiting on the canon to confirm since I feel like they’ve building up to it since the very moment Oscar met Ruby. I don’t know whether or not romance is in the cards for the rosebuds but what I can say for sure is that something important has been building between these two kids since V5 and I’d like to think thatV8 is the time to actually prove this or not since Oscar is expected to be taken by Salem at some point.

Not to mention that he’s also supposed to be dead a la Ironwood and I’m still waiting to see if that will be mentioned at any point by Ironwood when RWBN_P go to confront him up in Amity.

But we’ll have to wait to see what happens anon-chan. But whether or not, Rosegarden is carded to be together or not, let me say this, fam. I’ve voiced this point possibly several times in the past but given the nature of this fandom and how certain-certain shippers are behaving these days, this squiggle meister is going to make this firm statement.

Just like you anon-chan, I love Rosegarden too (if it isn’t obvious already XD). As a RWBY ship, they are my OTP and I adore this ship very much for the potential it has. Despite my own personal gripes with the writing of the show, if there is one thing I will give to the CRWBY Writers is that thus far, I’ve enjoyed the progress they have made with the growing bond between Ruby and Oscar. It is thanks to them and the things they have done with these two why I like them so much and humbly look forward to whatever else they have in store for their growing bond.

That being said, while I might love Rosegarden and why I may even wish for the series to pursue a romance with them---at the end of the day, that is NOT my ONLY motive for supporting this pair. It’s not even my main motive.

I don’t love Rosegarden solely because I want the showrunners to make them endgame and should the showrunners not do so, I will hate them forever. That’s NOT it. That’s not how I am as a person. I have always, ALWAYS said that whatever the showrunners do with this pair---whether it becomes a romance or stays purely platonic, I will respect it.

And even now, as we’re entering a new season, I stand by that. Regardless of what the showrunners choose to do with Rosegarden, as a supporter of the pair, I will respect it and it will NOT deter me from giving the pair as much love and support as I’ve always done.

Basically---in a nutshell, if Rosegarden becomes canon, this squiggle meister will support it. But if Rosegarden doesn’t become canon, guess what? This squiggle meister will still love and support it. How about that, huh?

I feel the need to express this now because there honestly seems to be this weird vibe in the FNDM in respect to Rosegarden and its community. It always annoyed me how certain-certain shippers and their respective community would go around the place acting as if their favoured ship was better than others even going so far as to bully other shipping communities because of it. In my opinion, there is no need for that. Just like what you like. Enjoy it however you wish and be respectful enough to allow others to do the same. That’s how I’ve always looked at it and that’s how I move.

And that’s one thing that made me appreciate the RG community. For the most part, all of us share that same sentiment. We love our ship but we respect other ships and their respective shippers. Probably because some RG shippers are multi-shippers. While I’m not a multi-shipper--- since I more tend to latch onto one favoured ship and stick with it till the end---this is one thing that I liked and respected a lot about the RG community.

…Which is why it honestly disgusts me when I see the things that certain-certain shippers say about us.

What’s even worse is that even when we attempt to defend ourselves, somehow that proves to make things worse than better because then other certain-certain shippers start implying that we’re fighting a war with certain-certain ships when in reality, we’re not fighting anything. We’re just shielding ourselves against the nonsense the other people are sparking.

We didn’t start the fire yet…we’re being held responsible for it by association and even when we try to out the fire, somehow we still get chastised both by the folks who hate us and the ones we hoped would understand. It is honestly a mess and if you’re unware of it then stay oblivious, fam.

For the longest while I have heard stories about the toxicity within the RWBY shipping communities. But back in those earlier times, the toxicity was mainly contained to a few certain-certain ships and their shippers. Now it may seem that the toxicity is starting to spread into the RG community. Not in the form of us becoming toxic ourselves in our own behaviour towards other ships but more in the sense of certain-certain shippers kicking up dirt and trying to start fights with the RG community by making arguments against us whether it be here on Tumblr or Twitter or the dreaded cesspool that is the RWBY Reddit community.

And…sadly to say, I’m seeing some of my fellow Rosegardeners taking the bait and…that honestly needs to stop.

That type of attitude is one of the reasons why I’ve started to slowly back out of the RWBY community. That doesn’t mean that I’m jumping ship. I’m still following the RWBY train---just picture it more as me following it alone from the comfort and sanctity of my own little squiggle mobile gently chugger-chugging down the tracks. This way I can enjoy the show the way how I want to only engaging when I feel like it and more importantly, staying very, very, VERY FAR away from all the chaos that I’ve seen stirring up for seasons.

I still like the show and I’m still very much invested in seeing where it goes, particular with Rosegarden but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t becoming increasingly difficult for me to just enjoy the things that I genuinely like about RWBY.

Rosegarden and the development of these two smaller, more honest souls (individually and as a pair) are two of the things I still really like about RWBY. However I’m honestly tired of going on the tags and seeing my fellow RG shippers sharing and responding to the discourse surrounding the ship sparked by certain-certain shippers.

I’m tired of seeing all the weak strawman arguments made by said certain-certain shippers against RG and why they believe their ship is superior and more likely to become canon and whatever. Like seriously? WHO CARES!

I’m tired of it all and I genuinely wish my fellow RG shippers would stop answering these types of people. When will you learn that you are fighting a losing battle? It doesn’t matter how many posts you make. How much good evidence you provide from the show or the showrunners. Even if you are in the right, it all doesn’t matter. These types of people don’t care. All that matters for them is stirring up nonsense and throwing hissy fits when they don’t get their way. It is childish behaviour at display and nothing anyone says will stop it. So why even bother to entertain it at all?

This is not me trying to knock down my fellow Rosegardeners in the RG community or even me throwing shade at others to “start shit”---I’m just…tired! Tired of seeing that shit, y’know what I mean?

Shipping is supposed to be fun. Happy fun times where you get to gush and nerd out about your favourite pairings, not really because them becoming canon was all that important but just because you like it. What happened to just liking something and having a perfect platform to like it and enjoy it with others who feel the same way about it with you…IN PEACE? No malice. No disrespect. No fighting over which ship is going to be canon endgame (as if the canon means jack-shit in the long-run because look at Zutara, Sheith and Klance for Pete’s sake). I dunno. Overall, I’m just tired of the RWBY shipping community as a whole and it’s becoming tough just to have fun being a Rosegarden shipper anymore. So I think stepping back is a good way to go.

Sorry if this response went off course anon-chan. It’s just that your question motivated me to express things that’s been on my chest for some time. I hope you don’t mind and hopefully I was able to give you a decent answer in all of this. Feel free to let me know or not.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)

#squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #ruby rose #oscar and ruby #rwby rosegarden #rwby theories #rwby volume 8 theories #Anon-ninja #squiggles answers

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beyondstardustdarksky · 4 years ago

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Photographer Rinko Kawauchi

I chose Rinko Kawauchi as the artist to focus on and explore more about because her photos are inspirational to me of how she is able to capture very small details, uses a subtle color palette and each photo has a different composition which portrays a different message in their own way.

I want to explore more in using nature and everyday objects that can be associated to the cycle of birth and death. More closely I want to focus on creating different compositions and using objects that we do not think of that can represents life, birth, wonder, death, intimacy, and isolation. We go about our daily lives and busy schedules of going to work and school trying to make a living and not even think about simple things that can represent life and death. We take granted of those thoughts until it we actually encounter experiences of birth, intimacy, wonder, isolation and death with ourselves and our loved ones.

I love how Kawauchi’s compositions are not always the same and that it differs in each shot she takes, which can lead the viewer to interpret a different story or message based on her compositions and the range of items and subjects she used. The concept that I get from Rinko Kawauchi photos is the notion “less is more”, where she uses mundane everyday objects, the environment we are part of and her own family to tell a more profound message about life. Photographer Kawauchi still continues to portray poetic sensibility in her photobooks, where she released Hanako, Hanabi, and Utatane all at one (2001) to As It Is (2020).

In her new book As It Is, Kawauchi the publisher articulated “the pages navigate between the inside and the outside, always within close distance as, through her unique eye, Kawauchi effortlessly catches the fleeting beauty of the in-between moments, telling the story of an ordinary family going through life just as it is.” This photobook includes subjective meanings where Kawauchi shows the birth of her daughter three years ago and images of her daughter growing up with the association of optimism towards the world and meticulous detail of tiny creatures of nature.

One of the photo I chose from her new photobook (2020) As It Is, was the little girl (seems to be Kawauchi’s daughter) appears playful in the sunlight. Kawauchi took this photo from a side angle of the girl’s body, which makes this composition more interesting to see a different view of the little girl rather than full face. When I see this photo, I get the feelings of warmth, spontaneity and excitement based on thinking what is actually happening in this photo. Is the little girl playing a game? Or is she running towards or away from her mother? Is the little girl learning how to run? Is someone holding her around his or her neck?

As the viewer, I do not know if the girl is walking, sitting on something or if someone is holding her, which Kawauchi wants the viewer to imagine what is happening in the photo. The second photo was a side view shot taken of a bird trying to fly off the cliff. I felt this photo and the one with the little girl displays the notion of adventure and a new beginning or chapter in someone’s life. The bird seems to be learning how to fly and the little girl seems to be encountering something new, yet I do not know what it could possibly be.

https://www.shashasha.co/en/book/as-it-is

https://www.torchpress.net/en/product/2174/

Through an interview, Kawauchi explained that her best photos are taken when she is not thinking about anything. Which makes me think that her best shots comes out when her mind is empty? That is interesting fact to know about her. In her youth, Kawauchi loved to read photography books that included animals creatures in nature even though she did not understand the books. Her reason of producing photobooks is that she wanted to be objective but was hard to get through because the photos contain personal images of her family. Kawauchi wanted her work serve as a catalyst for people to think about themselves and their relationship to the world (about their own selves, family/ relatives and the environment we are part of).

http://www.rosegallery.net/blogarchive/2011/06/21/foil-editor-interviews-rinko-kawauchi

Kawauchi stated “I want to create a quiet, intimate place where people can be alone and listen to their inner voices while they are looking at my works.” She wanted people to find their inner selves that is not only subjective to them, but wanted her photos to create that spiritual connection to the viewer.

The photo of the hand hovering over the flame from the lighter displays the spiritual connection to light. The flame that is shown can symbolize anything, from lighting a candle, a cigar, cooking a meal to mediating upon the light to release the negativity that can annihilate the inner soul that is part of one’s self. The composition of this photo of the hand hovering over the flame reminds me of the idea of people staying and embracing a positive mindset to further overcome their struggles in life. Also, the flame can symbolize the idea of protecting the “goodness” of family, that includes love, tenderness, laughter and comfort.

The concept of Kawauchi’s work involves imagination in her photos. I felt imagination plays a role in the photo of the sewing machine. As the viewer, it makes me think of the different things or objects someone can create using only one equipment, a certain style of sewing and specific type of thread to produce many different types of things. The single thread that are build upon each other to create something is a great analogy to illustrate that trust, respect, honesty, communication and support is used to construct the foundation of a family, particularly relationships. Also, the item that is created can be used for someone’s family as symbol of love, protection and the basic needs as clothing.

She wants the viewer to think about what is happening and going on in the photos “One haiku is like a one picture. I don’t describe my images, I say it within haiku. At the same time, my images are poetic” stated Kawauchi. Rinko Kawauchi’s photos has an interconnection of family, nature and imagination that makes the viewer think profoundly of the subjects she used and what they could actually mean. Thus, her photos are considered poetic, intimate, fragile, and dream-like.

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chelsmcd · 4 years ago

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Those who work in Game Ops.

When people find out I work in sports, the automatic assumption is I grew up playing them. I apparently have a look about me that, when the truth comes out, shocks a lot of people.

I did not play sports as a kid. Sure I tried, but I got hit in the shin with the baseball when playing T-Ball, my cleats were too small in soccer, I was too uncoordinated for dance, not really a ton of flexibility or spatial awareness for gymnastics… I was pretty good at skating, I mean I skipped level 3 but it didn’t last. In high school, I attempted to play Rugby, but mom reminded me I would snap like a twig, and really... at 14, I wasn’t about to discover some unhidden talent. So, suffice it to say, my experience with sports has been two things:

1. Dressing up as my high school mascot (which for the record is a hot, sweaty and gross job)

2. THEATRE SPORTS! Yeah, I was a drama nerd. We know we what are, we own it. I will always look for and run into the spotlight. I’m an entertainer, it’s in my blood.

So how did I end up working in sports? Well, it’s a long story, and while this is my own blog and I don’t tire of my own stories, I’m hoping you’ll stay with me to the end, so I’ll skip the long version. The main point…is that sports provides a melting pot for all walks of life. No one cares what you do, what kind of car you drive, what neighbourhood you live in, what colour your skin is (unless you painted it the opposing team’s colours)…none of it matters. In sports…If you’re in the same venue as me, and we’re rooting for the same team, we’re friends.

I’m like a mother hen with my friends, I’m the one who plans the events for everyone to get together, I make sure people feel welcome, comfortable and at home. How does this translate? In sports, I work in game day operations or events (depending on whether I’m with a team or the league office) – but it’s my job to provide the space to bring people together.

There is a feeling, I can’t quite describe, when you hear everyone erupt with cheers, or sing/chant in unison (Oh, Canada anyone)? It wells up in me. It literally gives me butterflies of excitement and I want to cry because I need to get it out somehow. One of my favourite moments was with the Kingston Frontenacs back on January 28, 2017. We hosted a night honouring The Tragically Hip (for those who are in the dark on this one, the Hip are from KTown). We invited the band, they hung out in the suite, the players wore a special Hip Jersey that had their song lyrics all over it, and in the third period we did a sing along. Now, in a regular game, no, there is no way I would dare to have a break that is just (essentially) karaoke. But for this game, something grabbed me, and I felt like it would take off. I didn’t have full support at the time, but I was passionate about this one and I’m so glad it was green lit. It was a moment that gave me those butterflies. We had it all planned out, the host would get two fans to sing along to lyrics on the screen, camera pan out, mic down, and … WOW. The whole stadium, in unison (and I’m pretty sure on key) singing the chorus to, obviously, Ahead By A Century. Honestly, when that moment happened, it was like the whole arena was hugging The Hip. We don’t get this for the national anthem (not everyone wants to sing Oh Canada, some want to respectfully listen, and that’s cool), but in Kingston, dare I say, this is a civic pride? The breaks in the OHL are short and sweet, but the refs gave it a second too, they let the fans sing it out, and you just had to feel it. It was an energy, or in today’s trendy words “It was a total vibe.”

Game Ops, or Game Presentation, it’s a tough act. You aren’t responsible for the literal score on the board, but you are responsible for the scoreboard (now much more commonly known as videoboards or jumbotrons). You are responsible for what’s happening off the ice, off the turf, off the pitch and in between the whistles. You can’t control if your team wins or loses (but I’ll tell ya, if I could, I’d have a winning team!) So the job of Game Ops people is to ensure you have the best night, even when your team gets absolutely annihilated. Did you hear a great song? Was there a hilarious moment on the videoboard? Did the mascot come to your section or heck… the most simplest way to engage: did you get a free t-shirt that is so big for you, it will only ever end up seeing the darkness of your bedroom? That’s Game Ops, people.

COVID has been hard on these staffers. Now, I don’t want to alienate anyone, because every cog in the wheel matters, but Game Ops people are the first to be scrutinized and usually the last to be congratulated. Their success isn’t always quantifiable. With Partnership sales there are numbers, with ticket sales, there are bums in seats, with PR & Outreach there are likes, follows and analytics, but with Game Ops… there’s … sentiment. How do you accurately measure opinion? The naysayers or grumpy cats are always the loudest and the first to take to social media. The supportive ones or the people who enjoyed themselves, they don’t go out of their way to talk about the good, because, that’s the way it should be, and while I agree – I’ll ask all fans, here and now… when you have a good time at a game

PLEASE TALK ABOUT IT!

The person writing the script needs to hear it. The people trying to pump you up, can always use that positive reinforcement, heck the person sitting directing the videoboard, or switching the camera angle, or the person who edited a video two weeks ago, or the person who designed the graphics – often go unsung.

Game Operations take a talented individual. Someone who can manage and plan but also throw their script out the window because things changed yet still deliver on all ‘sold assets’. If you don’t work in Game Ops, you have no idea the pressure these people are under – because the right people for this role, don’t let you know they are under the pressure. They keep it together, composed and focused.

Ok, tangent over. So, to hiring managers… As I mentioned earlier, COVID has not been kind to those who work in Game Operations (myself included), so at the risk of standing on a soap box, here’s what I think you should know while evaluating those resumes:

The Game Ops People are:

the first to show up

the last to leave

the most adaptable

quick learners

born with ambition & don’t need incentive to perform (but hey, if you can put a bit of financial gain in front of them, it never hurts)

inclined to say yes, you may need to remind them it’s OK to say “my plate is full” or to ask for help

some of the most resilient people you will meet

your biggest champions

never the ones to say “that’s someone else’s job” - they figure it out & get it done

Their skill sets? They manage budgets, they manage people, they manage time, they manage fans (and complaints) – they are easy to teach! I ask you, if a resume of a sports person comes across your desk, understand that who you’re hiring isn’t always something that can be captured in a cover letter and resume. If I’ve learned anything in my career thus far, how you do a job is just as important as what you know coming into the job. You can teach the skills, you can’t teach personality.

I started this post, thinking about all the things I miss this year with not having a Grey Cup in Regina, and I didn’t even touch on it. I’ll save that for another post; I think this one is more important.

With that, please stay healthy, physically distant and socially close.

-me.

#Work Covid Sports GameOps

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kob131 · 4 years ago

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https://itsclydebitches.tumblr.com/post/613974327525883904/one-of-the-worst-parts-of-the-entire-volume-7

One of the worst parts of the entire Volume 7 clusterfuck is that by not saying any of the truth about Salem team RWBY has actively helped Salem more than any other person or group in the entirety of the show through a single action and even with the Ace Ops and Ironwood "turning" on them there really is no acknowledgement of the sheer horror that should be had at what they did. They chose to let an entire nation of people blindly march off to their deaths and they have the moral high ground?

Because they didn’t, seeing as they told the truth later on. And wouldn’t Ironwood turning on them BE the sheer horror after how much we got to know him?

It really does confuse me. So many people are insisting that Ironwood is the one causing division because:

Oh this should be good.

He’s taking resources from Mantle… to build a means of uniting the whole world, an action that he believes will eliminate the Salem problem completely.

And Ozpin lied to try and unite the world and give it hope: he still lied and shouldn’t have done that because he never considered how damaging that would be to his cause. Just like Ironwood not helping Mantle wouldn’t work if Mantle’s a god damn ghost town.

He refuses to work with Robyn… even though he doesn’t refuse, merely points out that they both need to find common ground for an alliance to work, while she’s the one proving that he was right to mistrust her (stealing supplies, spying on his projects, trying to use her semblance in front of Jacques, immediately abandoning Ironwood the moment he makes a decision she doesn’t like).

They HAD common ground: Help the people. You even admit she worked with the man the moment he proved he was trying to help. And guess what caused her to side against him? Him trying to arrest Qrow (in her eyes, an innocent man) and DITCHING MANTLE.

He arrests Team RWBY… because they made it clear they wouldn’t support him first. They’re the ones who broke this alliance, telling him in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t do things their way they would stand against him. More importantly, they broke that alliance weeks ago by lying to him and keeping secrets right at the start. If RWBYJNR doesn’t trust Ozpin because of those lies why in the world would they expect Ironwood to trust them? Throw in Blake and Yang betraying him again and it’s clear that they were never willing to work with him. They’re only willing to use him as a resource that follows their orders, free of compromise.

... You wanna know what kills your argument before you even make it?

Being biased.

‘he didn’t do things their way’ = ‘Leaving Mantle to die to save Atlas’

‘keeping secrets right at the start’ = ‘Ironwood did the same thing with Amity’

‘’They’re only willing to use him as a resource’ = ‘Ironwood is making a decision that fundamentally goes against Team RWBY’s and his own principles.’

This whole post so far has been blaming other people or making excuses for Ironwood’s own decisions and their consequences. For people who bitch at the ones defending Team RWBY for doing, you sure are comfortable doing it yourself.

The only thing Ironwood has done to arguably divide people is decide to leave with Atlas and, as I’ve pointed out extensively elsewhere, that’s a matter of trying to save some in the face of inevitable destruction.

An ‘inevitable destruction’ they don’t know is ‘inevitable’.

What does it matter if the Kingdom is divided if the entire Kingdom is dead

Because he’s been preaching ‘save everyone’ for the whole Volume, it’s his duty as a public servant and leaving people to die will just make everyone angry and distrustful of him...which will lead them to die ANYWAY.

That’s the same issue we’ve seen in regards to his supposed dictator choices, like having a curfew and letting his robots roam the streets. Does that feel like an unpleasant thing that may infringe on people’s individual rights? Yep. Is that helping to ensure that people don’t get eaten by grimm? Yep.

Because authoritarian dictators have never used a crisis to seize power and not like America, the country PRODUCING RWBY, is fundamentally against this shit.

If you want a current semi-comparative example, look to the regulations in place due to Corvid-19. There are people going, “You can’t make me stay home. It’s my right to go wherever I please. It’s not right to demand that I stay indoors/give up my vacation/not leave the state/etc. because I am entitled to those freedoms.” But of course the obvious push-back to that is, "These rules are in place to help keep everyone alive.

At the cost of making them miserable and distrusting in the government, which leads to people ignoring ALL Covid regulations, even the non-invasive ones, and then people start dying again but no one cares at that point because they feel the government has ignored and abused them. Kind of like what happened with Ironwood and Mantle, as Mantle became hostile towards him as he never tried to understand or compromise with them.

Sometimes people in power claim that there are justified reasons for their infringements on peoples’ rights when in fact those reasons are total BS, but I don’t think Ironwood is one of those cases.

You’re so biased for the guy I doubt you would admit it even if you though Ironwood was like that. And even then, so called ‘justified reasons’ still aren’t reasons to infringe on people’s rights.

It’s a matter of, “You might not like having robots in the street but they’re there so they can at best take out grimm and worst buy you time to run away,” which is precisely what we saw when the group first arrived.

And then they all got fucked when said regulations caused such a volatile state that when Jacques took advantage, it began a chain reaction that caused the Grimm to attack and everything in the climax to happen.

If Ironwood wanted to be a dictator he would have declared martial law ages ago. Instead his thinking has always been balanced between what is right and what is practical: what do I need to do to keep my people alive? They can be pissed at me all they want, but at least they exist to be pissed.

You don’t need a want to make mistakes and do bad shit: all it takes is being misguided. Ironwood never shows he considers what is right, only what is practical within the boundaries he thinks is right. He never listened to others until before Salem and it continuously costed him.

You know, for as much flak he got, Ozpin shows why his way worked better than Ironwood. Yeah he lied to but he also considered the feelings of others, he listened to them, he accepted their arguments and went out of his way to try and accommodate them. Because of this, even now, everyone is still loyal to him in some way. They’re all chasing flawed versions of Ozpin’s way, because the man lived long enough to see the path that was best.

Like we’re going, “Yes, we will fine you for leaving your house without a permit so you don’t contract and spread this deadly disease.” Ironwood is going, "Yes, I will require that you keep the streets clear so that you don’t draw in and get eaten by these deadly creatures.”

And then the people said “We don’t care anymore, you have shown us no reason to trust you.”

You cannot ignore the people’s wishes forever without consequence.

The blurry line between protection and infringement will always be debated, but to my mind Team RWBY’s perspective is far too much on the other side of things.

Cool, you’ve proceeded to understand HALF the conflict. 50% is still a failing grade though.

It’s dangerously naive.

Same with you. Meanwhile, Ironwood is dangerously pessimistic, disregarding others viewpoints and feelings to march ahead, never realizing he’ll never reach his goal because his methods destroyed any chance at it. Down to even ignoring a fundamental aspect of human nature.

They want to win this war without anyone going through any hardship and, while noble, that’s just not possible.

... Yang lost an arm and they’ve watched people DIE.

That is HIGHLY reductionist of their view.

hey can wish and strive for that all they want, but so long as that keeps them from making logical decisions—like saving at least some of the Kingdom when you have no plan to avoid total annihilation—then they’re hurting more than they’re helping.

Meanwhile, Ironwood can make all the ‘practical’ decisions he wants, but as long as he continues to ignore fundamental aspects of human nature, like opposing oppression even if it means mutual destruction, he can’t save anyone.

Ironwood, like Ozpin, understands that winning any war, let alone a war against an enemy like Salem, is going to be rife with hard and messy choices. Which means that there will always be division.

And Ozpin went out of his way to ensure UNITY. He tried to be as honest as he could be with people, consider their feelings, stand by his principles.

Let me ask you: Why doesn’t Ozpin just take away four baby girls from their parents and raise them to be the Maidens as his undeniably loyal underlings? Lock the Maidens away so no one can ever get to them, thus preventing their power from falling into the wrong hands? Why doesn’t he just declare open war on Salem and sacrifice countless lives to forever keep her in check?

Why doesn’t Ozpin act like a worse version of Ironwood?

Because he knows better than to do this.

here’s literally no choice in existence that keeps everyone happy and safe and never feeling any negative feelings about the shit storm raging around them. Salem wins in that regard simply by virtue of the fact that life is hard and life isn’t fair. Accepting that hardships will exist and trying to mitigate the damage from them doesn’t make Ironwood a villain and it certainly doesn’t make him as bad as Salem.

Yeah, it just makes him as bad as the people he turned against.

The person causing division as an inevitable byproduct of trying to save the entire world is not the same thing as the woman trying to wipe out that world.

It does make him as bad as his predecessor.

Yeah, remember the Great War in RWBY? The one that started because of events in Mantle. Events that infringed on the citizen’s rights for survival’s sake and it did the opposite, causing a fuckton of death and destruction?

Yeah, Ironwood is doing the SAME BASIC THING the King of Mantle did. He’s REPEATING his land’s own mistakes.

When you ask that Ironwood be seen as the good guy here, you ask that people not only ignore events in the show, events in real life, the foundation of the country RWBY is made in, the foundation of the show itself but the foundation of the people he’s trying to save.

That doesn’t work.

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pitiless-achilles-wept · 5 years ago

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All I want for Christmas...is a working cancer treatment

Hello friends,

It's getting to be that time of the year again. No, not Christmas, although I'm reliably informed that it will indeed be happening again and soon (a thing I, who haven't bought or made a single gift yet, can't quite believe). It was this time last year that I first called my doctor about the mass in my breast that had become too large--and too tender and painful--to ignore any further. They didn't see me right away...because of the holidays and because for someone with my risk level (basically 0 - at age 34 with not a single person in my family with breast or ovarian cancer) it didn't seem urgent. It was.

And now, tomorrow (Tuesday the 17th), I'll be heading into my oncologist appointment at Penn expecting to hear, based on the results of my scans from Friday the 13th (spooky!) that the initial tumor has gotten bigger again and that I will need to leave the clinical trial and pursue other options. I'm expecting this, though I hope desperately to be wrong, and have a visit to my supervising oncologist at Dana-Farber in Boston planned for the 19th. From there I'll go to Christmas with my parents and New Year's with a friend in Colorado before returning home to whatever new treatment 2020 has in store.

Now, obviously I hate that I'm going through this at all. After I heard about the tumor growth last month I was crushed that I hadn't even managed to make the average time that participants in this particular trial found to make a positive difference (6 months...I got 4). And I still am crushed. I'm not going to lie and say that I'm over it ,or not furious, or not disappointed. But what I especially hate right now is that it feels seasonal and like it's going to ruin my holidays again and stretch on through all the coldest and most miserable months...just like last year. It's a series of bleak anniversaries that I was already dreading even when things were going well. And now that they're not, well, you can imagine how dread is compounded with fear, anger, and sadness.

Since not all of you were there (and since this blog did not exist) let me tell you a little about what it was like at this time last year. [Account below the cut]

As I said above, it was around now (December 19th, actually) that I first called my GP's office to talk to them about the lump I had been aware of (but not really concerned by) for a few weeks. It's likely that it was around for far longer than that - long enough, certainly, for me to be diagnosed Stage 4 from the start. There are a lot of reasons why I didn't "catch it" earlier. (I actually hate this phrasing. It makes it sound like I could or should have been more vigilant and thus bear responsibility for my own illness.) I won't go into them here except to say that the previous year had itself been the worst of my entire life. There was a lot of loss and it's not really an exaggeration to say that it annihilated me. But I was able, with the support of friends and family, to reconstitute myself. I was proud of having done it too. What I didn't realize, though, was that in rebuilding myself some parts were coming back...wrong, almost as though psychic damage had been written on a cellular level.

“Did you know?" "Could you tell?" Nearly everyone asks me these questions, or some variation on them, at some point. I would say that I’d like to ban them from all discussions except that they are all I think of all day, asking myself: Did I know? Could I tell? And (more accusatory) “Why didn’t I know? Why couldn’t I tell?”. Despite knowing better, I still often believe that I brought this upon myself. I believe that I should have noticed sooner or, when I did notice, I should have acted faster. But, the thing was, I just couldn’t stand for another thing to go so horribly wrong in my life. So when I look back at this time, the time before I was aware of a lump in my breast, I can hardly fault myself for not noticing. I first felt that something was wrong with the swelling in my breast that would not go down around Thanksgiving 2018. I Googled furiously and convinced myself repeatedly that it was probably hormones, a cyst, or an infection. I assessed my risk factors (0) and and the chance that something so terrible would happen to me right after this other terrible thing had happened.

Surely, I felt, the universe couldn’t be that cruel.

I called in mid-December and my doctor’s office told me it would be hard to fit me in around the holidays. What I described sounded like it was probably benign and, since my risk level was so low and since I had even had it confirmed that I was cancer-free in 2016 (when they did a spinal tap because my chronic fatigue was so bad and my white blood cell counts so high), they advised me just to come in when I was back in January. I stayed in St. Louis for a memorial service, celebrating the life of the woman who was effectively another grandmother to me--my parents’ oldest and dearest friend--and had a strange feeling the whole time. I remember sitting among her very many friends and family, surrounded by photographs and poetry and music and all the signs of how loved she was, thinking with an improbable certainty that people would soon be remembering me this way and hoping that they would say I had positively affected their lives as much as she had.

Meanwhile, the swelling was huge. It was hot to the touch and ached like a bruise. I tried to see this as a good thing; heat and redness mean infection, which meant it was probably mastitis. I was worried enough to call my parents’ doctor to ask if I should go into the cancer center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. He said the same things about how unlikely it was and how it was probably infected. I saw my doctor when I returned and, worried, she nonetheless prescribed me a course of antibiotics. She was also hoping, I think, not to be confronted with the truth.

The antibiotics upset my stomach terribly as did my constant anxiety. After five days with no effect, she gave me a stronger one, which also did nothing. It was now ten days since I had talked to her, a full month since I had first called. She sent me for a biopsy. It was on the 21st of January. On the 24th I heard that the tumor was cancerous. On the 28th, I heard that my cancer was also in my lungs and that I would need more scans and MRIs to determine the full extent of the metastasis. Then the terrifying and seemingly endless cycle of scans and bad news began. I don’t want to rehearse that here, though these months hold a series of bad anniversaries for me. What I want to do is to say that, at a certain point, of course I knew. Unlike most people in my life, who regarded the biopsy almost as a formality, I absolutely thought that I had cancer. Maybe it was just because I try to prepare myself for the worst. (I was still notably unprepared for this.) But maybe it was because I knew my body, even on a subconscious level, and could tell something was amiss.

I do have a sense, too, of when treatments are working or not. I can’t tell you the extent of why I know, often, but the tumor itself is one indicator. It’s very large and when things aren’t working it gets even larger. It ambiently hurts all the time, in a way that is subtle and that it is easy to almost (but never) forget and that is too minimal to mention to people. (Actually, these past two days it has hurt so badly that it feels like someone punched me. I cannot take this to be a good sign.) Since I heard my latest results from my doctor a month ago the tumor has gotten bigger. I probe it all the time, examining myself in the mirror from different angles--bra off, bra on--like when I was so desperately hoping to grow real breasts in middle school. I assess how far it sticks out in one position vs. another and how red it is at certain times. I try to convince myself that the pain is hormonal, that the apparent growth is how I am standing. But that’s just repeating what I was doing at this same time last year, casting around hopefully for an explanation that isn’t the one I fear.

For tomorrow, I hope for the best, but I expect the worst. It may be that you think I’m too worried too soon; I know some of you may. And let me tell you that, although it's contrary to my nature in general, I would love to be wrong. I hope I am. I will do my best to share news here, even in a short post, since I know that those of you along for the journey will be anxious to know too. For tonight, I'm scared. I'm better able to cope with bad news once I know what it is and am able to make a plan or a choice - to exert some control. And I'm certainly (sad to say) not feeling much of the spirit of Christmas, which is a shame since I actually love it. If you have extra love or cheer or, heck, any Miracles on 34th Street (I'm willing to commute!) please send them my way.

Love, Bex

#my life as a cancer patient #breast cancer #stage 4 #mbc #health update #clinical trials #personal #bex writes

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enevi · 5 years ago

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Shirogane no Oka, Kuro no Tsuki - Volume Four

Welcome to Mt. Kan'you where overwhelming darkness and silence are its captive only companions. Seven long years spent in total isolation while desperately trying to survive. One miraculous encounter later newly freed King gets straight into… With no one to seat on the royal throne the kingdom slowly falls into ruin, winters are becoming harsher and there's not enough food and coal to survive the long period of heavy frost. Also the wild beasts roam the ravaged country. Some come out of the depths of the earth and one of them sleeps in the bowels of Mt. Kan'you. Having investigated all of its accessible corridors Gyousou starts to prepare a trap for suugu he found there. Knowledge gathered during those few years spent in the wasteland of Yellow Sea and the accidental gift found in the basket, make it possible for him to improvise and successfully catch the beast. Taming it is difficult and dangerous but he manages and names his new companion Rakou. All of this brings back some memories of Taiki and how Gyousou was able to make a young kirin happy just showing him the way to set the trap. So many years have passed and even though the king knows that Taiki is probably all grown up, he's unable to imagine the adult version of the sweet and innocent child he once knew. Everyone said that kirin's disposition didn't fit in with the fierce personality of Tai itself. For one has to be temperamental enough to survive country's harsh climate. Does it now? Still imprisoned in the dark, Gyousou apologizes to Taiki for not having been able to save him. Then thanks the Heaven for giving him the means to escape…

*** Meanwhile in the capital city of Kouki the guards foil the attack on Taiki and the quick investigation leads the ministry to Shison, who desperately tries to convince others that he just tried to save the country from kirin impersonator and when he sees that his master doesn't come to his rescue, he confesses that Chouun was the real mastermind and having the testimony of various officials within the ministry, the royal court is able to get rid of both Shison and Chouun at the same. Thus despite some protests and thanks to Asen's support Ansaku becomes the temporary chousai, but he still plans to become something more and starts his own game for real… *** At the same time more and more people start to come to Seisai where Gyousou's followers are gathering forces, with the official reason being the restoration of the local temples destroyed in the purge few years ago. Risai and her companions are full of hope and with the Kyuusan's rebels lending their hand in Gyousou's search the task doesn't seem so impossible anymore. That is, till Sekirei brings the report from Tonkou saying that something suspicious is happening in the local office as the provincial army got the orders to prepare the accommodations for the troops coming from the capital itself. For a moment the group debates if the government has somehow gotten the wind of their actions, but as the number of mobilized soldiers (around 2500) is quiet small for the forces moving under the order to annihilate the rebels, they come to the conclusion that there must be something else… And as the rumor says that the coming troops are interest in getting to Mt. Kan'you the resistance is not really happy about the possibility of having to abandon their search that has yet to really begin… *** As forces led by Yuushou and Ukou arrive at Rin'u they discover that previously thought to abandoned Mt. Kan'you and neighboring cities are occupied by the rebels. And when Yuushou plans what to do, Ukou proposes what he thinks to be the easiest solution: attack the bandits, make the cooperate in digging through the corridors and after getting their hands on Gyousou simply get rid of the workers. Quiet simple, but somehow Yuushou is even more disgusted with Ukou so he temporarily backs out. After leaving one unit (500 men) in Rin'u the troops head for Sokou and send the messenger to Kyuusan demanding him to let them through to the Mt. Kan'you. Kyuusan's people suggest contacting the resistance (Risai and co.), but their leader quickly shoots down the idea stating that it's ridiculous since they're no allies and yes, they cooperated once but that's it. And as the band plans to hold out as long as possible for innocents to escape, resigned Yuushou gives the order to attack. Rebels don't give in for some time, but then suddenly evacuate under the cover of the night leaving the city empty. Fearing them coming back Yuushou leaves yet another unit in Sokou ordering them to get in contact with those waiting in Rin'u and leads the rest of the troops towards the mountain. Not long after that the resistance stationing at Seisai gets the news about the siege of rebels' city and people start to discuss sending reinforcements, but since Sougen doesn't know Kyuusan in person to him Kyuusan's people are just plain criminals and he simply has no intention in aiding them, as their involvement may result in Asen discovering their existence and sending the army to destroy them, before they're able to get enough people to fight back. As of now they've only gathered around 5000 people, most of them not being real soldiers and what’s more they still have no idea about Gyousou's exact whereabouts. Risai and Kiitsu try to convince to convince him, but knowing it might take too much time to really make a difference for Kyuusan, Kenchuu leaves the group to gather volunteers and manages to get around forty to go with him. In the end Risai is able to convince her friends to help and starts to make preparations to move out with Sougen's forces backing her own. Meanwhile Yuushou's forces continue the siege of Anpuku and impatient Ukou has enough of it and ignoring the order to stay put he gathers his men and they move out to get rid of the runaways. As they discover the small group of the rebels hiding in the ruins of the two abandoned villages they proceed to annihilate them with Ukou taking a great pleasure in dismembering an old woman himself in the second village and leaving the young mother with children to his people. As Kenchuu and his companions run into Ukou's men, Kenchuu himself gets wounded by their leader himself who getting the job done runs back to his own companions, extremely angry that he lost his expensive mount and had to use the one left by his man. As he nears the place where he left one group of his men, he's greeted with the suspicious man easily defeating his subordinates. As he observes the man fighting he recognizes the one they where suppose to dig out in the first place and hearing Kenchuu's men getting closer, he runs. When Kenchuu and the others make it there they just find a mysterious man holding a crying child, the corpses of Ukou's man and after searching the nearest house are shocked to discover just what Ukou is capable of doing. Since there's not many of them they fall back taking the unresisting man with them. Yuushou's becoming more and more impatient with the siege taking so long and starts to think about finally using air cavalry to speed things up, but suddenly there's commotion and Ukou's barging in saying that he saw Gyousou. Yuushou's surprised and displeased with Ukou's actions but sends the soldiers with hi to go after the king. Sometime later his men come back and their leader, Shishin is furious because not only did Gyousou got away, but the soldiers discovered the aftermath of Ukou's massacre and are voicing their complains about involving Ukou in the first place. Yuushou promises to address this matter later, but now they have to go after Gyousou. Even as the night falls Yuushou decide to go after Gyousou and sends order to move out to the unit in Sokou. Kyuusan gathers survivors and as the army leaves they prepare to escape the fallen city and try to get the attention of the rear forces in order to aid their escaping families. But as they make across the river they discover that their friends were destroyed earlier by Ukou's men and also that something else than them is stopping army's advance. This something being soldiers protesting against Ukou's actions and demanding Yuushou to intervene but as they're in the middle of the battle there's little he can do and what's more the hated groups laughs off the threats saying that Asen's backing them. This enrages soldiers even more and Ukou uses the commotion to his own advantage and escapes with his surviving and Yuushou has to send a search party for them, which in the end is unable to locate them. As the dawn nears Yuushou seeing the state of his troops and orders them to go back to Anpuku to regroup. Noticing that Kyuusan's group makes a desperate run toward the abandoned city but finds the air cavalry there. Seeing the backing army and air troops going after them, they think that it's the end but suddenly they hear the battle cry of thousand voices and one of the Kyuusan's companions who managed to climb the slope cheers seeing the forces coming to their aid. Shocked Kyuusan can't do much more than staring as Risai descends from the sky on the back of her powerful beast. The general greets the rebels and sends them ahead to join their surviving families. As rebels escape Risai starts thinking about withdrawing as defeating royal army was not the purpose of this escapade. It was simply to disorient the troops and make it possible for the Kyuusan's band to run away, but as they talk, Seishi's cry announces the sudden arrival of Sougen's forces, because as Kiro explains, the provincial army was not moving so Sougen decided to mobilize his troops effectively entrapping Yuushou's forces and making it resistance surprising victory. The mysterious cavalry from Anpuku turns out to be some of Risai's former forces under the lead of her long-lost companion, Oukou, who general is extremely happy to see. She learns from him that even though much of her troops perished in the purges, about half of the people survived, including three of five of her direct subordinates, one of them being Kouyuu, currently moving with his soldiers to Bun Province. Yuushou himself quickly becomes resigned to his fate when he discovers that the air cavalry flying from Anpuku does not belong to his troops. He's also furious because clearly his troops walked into the situation with no way to win. Not knowing beforehand about rebels occupying Mt. Kan'you, underestimating their numbers and abilities and on a top of that having to tolerate Ukou's behavior and soldiers consequent protests. Yuushou and his men were once Asen's people and took pride in it. But with this defeat everything comes to an end. In the aftermath of the battle resistance forces settle in ruined capital of Kan county, Saihou, regrouping and dealing with the prisoners. Suddenly though Risai and Sougen are informed about the existence of the suspicious man whom Kenchuu's forces took captive and as the officers noticed his weapon, they thought it necessary to inform their superiors. Risai takes one look at the sword and quickly demands to be taken where the prisoner is held. Full of hope but also dread Risai and Sougen run to the ruined house and discover that the emaciated man clad in rags is no one other but Gyousou himself. The king doesn't hide how glad he is to see them but is also fairly amused with their spontaneous reactions - Sougen, Seishi and Oukou openly crying and Risai frozen in place. As the news about Gyousou's sudden appearance travels through the camp and soldiers are celebrating, Yuushou quietly contemplates his own situation, musing that if the situation were reversed Asen probably could never get the same reaction. At least, the person who Asen has become - withdrawn, but also merciless and unnecessarily cruel. Coming to terms with the 'death' of his former master Yuushou bids him farewell and readily accepts his fate. Whatever it may be. In the meantime, Risai introduces Gyousou to the people without whom she wouldn't make it this far. After hearing the story of Zui'un Temple the king expresses his gratitude towards the priests that spoke up for him when no one else did and thanks Kyoshi for everything. He's also really intrigued by Houto, who comes from the same province as him and praises his design of the new flag for the resistance troops - the same white one as used by survivors of Tetsui, but with touches of the black ink to differentiate themselves from normal pilgrims. Then they proceed to discuss their immediate plans - escorting Gyousou to En Kingdom to ask for help. First they will take him to the nearby city of Rokou to rest and then depart for the abandoned mountain in Kou Province to get above the Sea of Clouds and then to En. They not only want to visit Touka once again and thank its residents for help, but also are reluctant to use any nearer mountain in fear of getting unwanted attention and alarming the capital. And as they have to travel away from the prying eyes they will need to take a long way around through the mountains of Ba Province in the west and then moving south to Ten County in Kou. The next day Gyousou leaves camp for Rokou. Sougen, on the other hand, goes to talk with the captured leader and as he makes way though the makeshift prison, some of the arrested soldiers ask after Gyousou and make their allegiance to him clear, but Sougen doesn't respond to that. First he needs to speak with Yuushou and he's afraid to hear that somehow Asen got the wind of their actions, because if that's the case he will have to order his people to get rid of everyone captured, his former friend included. Thus he extremely relieved that Yuushou's purpose was to investigate Mt. Kan'you and bring Gyousou back. In turn Yuushou asks about them coming to rebels help, but also congratulates Sougen on finding the missing king, to which Sougen answers that his master freed himself and they met him by accident. They joke about it for a moment, but then Sougen turns somber and asks Yuushou what he's intending to do. The defeated leader readily declares that he himself would gladly serve Gyousou as Asen finally went to far, rejected his loyal retainers and tolerated Ukou's behavior. Then Yuushou proceeds to convince his subordinates to defect to resistance and they agree, becoming the part of Sougen's forces. They also talk about the situation in Hakkei Palace. Yuushou is shocked to learn of the possibility of Taiki lying, but then describes how the court reacted and how many people still have their doubts about the Asen being New King, but on the other hand it's hard to not believe kirin's word as it comes straight from the Heaven. Sougen in turn is worried at first when he hears that Taiki's bodyguard, Kouryou ran away, but is assured that Saiho's not alone and has a few loyal subjects by his side. With all the preparations the Gyousou's escort group of twenty led by Risai consisting of Oukou, Kiro, Kyoshi, Houto and the others, depart with their flying beasts towards Ba Province. *** Sometime before the battle in Bun Province takes place Asen decides that they need someone to take over the post of the governer in Hakurou as the current one has become the useless puppet and in the end the choose Keitou. The man himself is clearly unwilling to go as he's got his post as deputy governor and works for Taiki, but as he goes to his liege, kirin calmly explains that he was the one to nominate him for the provincial post, as he needs the trusted individual to take control of Bun Province and if necessary provide help for Risai and her companions. Hearing that Keitou gladly agrees and leaves some time later with charm against jisen provided by Yari. The deputy of the former Minister of Heaven, Kakei, takes over his post and for the time being everything seems to work in favor of Taiki, as after the uproar of Chouun and Shison's betrayal most of the courtiers come to conclusion that Ansaku being Chouun's direct subordinate makes him suspicious enough and kirin being the creature of mercy is the safest political option. That it, until the report from Bun Province comes stating that Yuushou's forces were defeated by the local rebels. Asen discusses the situation with Ansaku and Shukuyou but there's not enough information, but suddenly Ukou barges in and after dismissing the courtiers Asen gets his report about finding out Gyousou and him witnessing Yuushou's defeat by the unknown army. The next time Asen talks to the ministers the second message delivered from Bun, states that the one leading the resistance is Risai. Hearing that Asen is clearly surprised that she survived that long after being found guilty of assassinating the king. He also muses what if he met her earlier and knew her better, because as far as he's concerned Risai wasn't Gyousou's followers. They went together to Mt. Hou and then it turned out that she wasn't to be the king, later became king's general and, in Asen's experience this kind of relationship quickly turns to hate, at least from the person of the lower rank. But then it's all in the past and nothing will change it so Asen proceeds to order the ministers to prepare for the new purges as rebels cannot run freely. He also keeps Gyousou's escape secret and wonders what he would do if the roles were reversed coming to conclusion that the most efficient thing to do is heading west and trying to get hold of the castle or two. *** With Risai and Gyousou having departed for En, Sougen relocated his troops to Rokou as not to endanger Seisai new residents that have nothing to do with the resistance. While he and Yuushou discuss other generals' (Eishou and Gashin's) whereabouts and come to the conclusion that with all the gathered forces they finally stand a change against Asen's army, Sekirei comes with the report from Tonkou that Bun provincial office prepares for the purges. And not having enough information, Sougen believes it'll be safe to leave Rokou in the hands of the surviving rebels and focus on finding other place. Then Seishi tries to convince Kyuusan's group to escape, but Kyuusan says that too many of his comrades died the awful way and he can't forgive Ukou's man and he along with some of his man want to fight against the usurper's army. *** On their way to Ba Province Risai's group leads Gyousou to the ruins of Tetsui so he can pay his respects to its fallen citizens. After that they come upon the burning village and a little group of rebels stealing what they can. On Gyousou's demand the group goes to help free the citizens who were supposed to burn to death, as the revenge for standing against the rebels who in the past often cam by the village to demand not only food but also hostages with villagers later finding the missing people's bodies discarded along the nearby valley. Now that they all almost died the citizens are desperate and ask for the travelers' help. But the group needs to move on and doesn't answer their plea. In turn one of the residents who recently lost his mother to the rebels suspects that it might involve certain traveler who disappeared right after the residents got freed… *** Not so long after that Asen gets information that someone witnessed person resembling Gyousou making their way through the south-eastern parts of Bun Province and immediately plans to send the air cavalry unit to go there and investigate. But in the meantime… Kisen, who was supposed to go meet with his superior and other officers to discuss the placement of the remaining Yuushou's soldiers, is suddenly summoned by Asen to the Inner Palace. The man is overjoyed at the possibility of finally properly serving his lord but before he goes there, he sends a message to Santou explaining that they won't be able to go together to the meeting with Hinken. Santou is surprised but goes to the meeting alone. There he learns that Hinken knows nothing about it and starts to worry, but tells his superior and himself that it's good that Asen finally acknowledged them and that there's no doubt that soon Hinken will also be summoned. On the way back to his quarters Santou visits Kisen's place and finds him there, but the man's eyes are strangely empty and he acts as if he doesn't recognize Santou. Not that he can do anything about and is forced to leave Kisen be. Impatient Ukou happily goes to Asen's side who finally thought of summoning him, but as he gets there the unpleasant awaits. It turns out that Asen doesn't plan to let him lead the forces that are suppose to hunt down Gyousou and his companions. Ukou is furious but as he sees who is there to replaces him he just laughs, but quickly becomes enraged when Asen pulls out the charm to get hinman out of him, for this was the source of Ukou's remarkable fighting abilities. Though he doesn't have much time to hate Asen as suddenly Kisen draws his sword and cuts him in half. The Kisen himself is still somewhere there inside and can't help but feeling sad and lonely when Asen orders him to take the air cavalry, kill the rebels and bring Gyousou back alive. Some time after the cavalry departs Asen is visited by very displeased Taiki who demands the explanation about using the forces under his command without him at least getting notified about it. Asen bluntly answers that he did it to hurry up Gyousou's return and get rid of the rebels. When at first Taiki questions his decision and then tries to leave, he's stopped dead in his tracks by Asen asking if he's intending to contact new governor of Bun Province to get him to aid Gyousou's escape. When Taiki doesn't answer, he pulls out the charm and explains that even if Keitou were already in Hakurou, he wouldn't answer Taiki's call, because the charm he got from Yari is useless. Taiki is visibly shaken and asks how can Asen even do something like this to his own subject. To this Asen says that Keitou is no longer his subordinate and that he doesn't care. Outraged Taiki reminds Asen that actions such as these can result in Heaven forfeiting their blessing, to which Asen just laughs bitterly and says that he knows the whole 'New King' thing is a lie and that he's been simply playing along to see what Taiki would do. For it was simply impossible that Taiki would choose him. For once the idea itself is ridiculous as Asen's had too many things that disqualify him as the candidate for the throne. And what's even more important Taiki is suppose to be unable to fulfill his role as the envoy of Gods ans Asen cut off his horn sealing his powers. Which means he can't hear the Heaven, can't sense the king's aura and can't make anyone a monarch. Truth to be told, Asen barely managed to stop himself from killing younger Taiki, because of the hatred he felt for him for choosing Gyousou to be a King. And after that Taiki's disappearance spared him from having to interact with kirin, because of the necessity to keep both Taiki and Gyousou alive to stop the next king from taking throne from Asen. But then Taiki's returned and announced that Asen was to be appointed as a rightful leader of Tai. Asen couldn't believe but accepted the fact that Taiki has willingly became his hostage and never planned to aid him in case of any problems. But as it turned out he had to act because Taiki got involved if conflict with Chouun and started to gain real support among the courtiers. Even when Taiki managed to pledge himself to Asen he still didn't believe. Taiki was too calm and too convinced about his abilities to make things work the way he wanted them to. And the fact that unflappable kirin was finally forced to show his emotions makes Asen really, really happy. So he tells Taiki that the only thing he can hate if the Heaven itself. For it made him choose Gyousou as the king. When Taiki comes back to his mansion he's confronted by Minister of Fall who tells him that according to Chouun's statement his deputy, Kakei, has been arrested for her part in the attacks against Taiki. Taiki's own protests are ignored and he's informed that due to the suspicion of more people being involved with the traitors and to keep Saiho he and his retainers need to be confined within the mansion and no one is suppose to enter or leave without Asen's approval. Thus Taiki becomes the prisoner in his own home. *** As the royal army is making their way towards Rin'u Sougen and Youshuu plan their own movements in case they are attacked After discussing all of the options they come to conclusion that even if the royal army move against them the provincial one is just there to pose as a threat, since it's clearly impossible for Asen to organize such a great hunt as the last time since this time he's about to be enthroned and can't risk enraging the Heaven. So they split up their troops, escape from the vicinity of Mt. Kan'you, gather back and the try to get a hold of a most available castle. But the most important thing is to no engage in battle and to save their strength for later. As the royal army arrives in Rin'u the message from mysterious informant in Hakkei Palace is delivered stating that Asen sent the air cavalry to take Gyousou captive. At first Sougen is unsure whether to believe this letter or not, but is quickly convinced that they can't ignore it, even if it's fake and have to arrange for someone to go and warn the group traveling to Ba. They manage to gather twenty five soldiers and hurry for the border between the provinces, but they don't have much time and even if they'll make it in time, it's may not be enough to stop the enemies from abducting their king, as Sougen suspects that also the provincial army of Ba is ready to make its move. *** Five days after helping with the fire in the village of Nanshou, the king and his entourage finally make it to the provincial border that's just beyond the mountains ahead of them. It won't be long before they see their friends in Touka… But as they travel through the dense forest one of their scouts suddenly flies back and informs them that there are strange shapes in the distance not so far behind them. At first Risai can't believe but the only think they can do now is to hurry to the border hoping that the lose their pursuers on the mountain trail. But just as they start to run, the wild beasts attack them. One of them is especially problematic as it can call over the others with its cry and being small and agile is very hard to kill. Kiro ends up getting killed by of the beasts and Oukou urges Risai, Gyousou and the others to go ahead. They run but the enemies catch up with them and only thanks to Hi'en's reflex and Gyousou's help Risai survives the brutal attack of the soldier she recognizes as one of Asen's followers. As she and Gyousou make it further, they quickly talk about the time when Ukou attacked the king and how the trained beasts were also there and how unexpectedly hard Ukou was to fight. Gyousou suggests that it might have a hinman but their discussion is interrupted by the sudden appearance of the soldiers just ahead of them. Kyoshi's mount gets hurt and the man falls to the ground. As they try to get to him on of archers aims his arrow at Gyousou. For a second Risai is terrified that it's too late to save him, but suddenly Kisen jumps between the archer and the kings and takes the shot for him, as he blearily remembered something about needing to keep Gyousou alive, but even as he succumbs to his wounds he's not sure what it was all about. Oukou that was left behind if found by the group sent to help and together they try to make it in time to help Gyousou and the others. As Risai gets attacks once again she can't locate Gyousou, then after a moment she sees him going for the fallen Kyoshi. Houto and his friend are closer and try to get to him, but their beast gets attacked by the enemy and they also fall to the ground. As Houto runs for Kyoshi and is one step from grabbing his hand another soldier appears and strikes him with the sword. As the man falls to the ground, shocked Kyoshi hears Houto shouting at him to run. Then someone grabs him by the arm and it turns out to be Gyousou, who then gives Kyoshi his sword and practically puts him on Rakou's back telling him to hold on tight and orders his suugu to fly away. As the young priest and Rakou disappear into the night, Gyousou calmly kneels over dying Houto, not even trying to run from the soldiers closing in on him. Yes, he hears his followers crying for him to go, but something in him breaks and he knows that they probably won't make as the enemies just keep coming. Too many people have already died for his sake, too have suffered because of the empty throne. Suddenly he's extremely tired and simply just can't take it anymore, seeing his people getting decimated… Risai tries to make to Gyousou, but is stopped by the only other man left alive, who tells her to go back to Sougen and report the situation and he will go after Gyousou. Then he runs not giving her enough time to answer. The next moment Risai sees Oukou coming with help and tells him that the provincial army attacked, but they can still make it in time to save Gyousou. She wants to go with them, but they convince her not to as Hi'en is badly wounded and won't be able to hold the fast pace for to long. Noticing that Risai urges them to go, but begs them not to go through Ken county as Zui'un survivors are out there and if they're found by Asen's army the local citizens will be left without the people to make medicine for them. *** In the meantime, Sougen gets the news from Hakurou that the provincial army left the capital for the western parts of Bun. At first the gathered are confused but quickly deduce that it probably means that the army succeeded in capturing Gyousou and that one provincial army plan to deliver him to the other to finally get him over to Rin'u or somewhere nearby for the royal army to take him to Kouki. Then Risai suddenly appears and confirms their suspicions. For a moment they grieve for the dead, but have no time to spare, as if they want to get Gyousou back, they'll need to recapture him before the provincial army meets with the royal one. And so they start to plan their next movements wondering where the transfer would probably happen and where to attack. Back in Hakurou Tonkou warns Houyou about the local government movements and urges her to be very cautious. Then he goes back to the provincial castle to wait with the other officials for the arrival of the new governor, who might be able to help the resistance since in Kouki he'd been serving Taiki and probably knows the situation. Everyone gathers in the courtyard to welcome the next head of the province and when the man suddenly arrives Tonkou is shocked and devastated when he notices Keitou's unresponsiveness and his soulless eyes… At the end of the fourth month the great battle takes place in the central part of Bun Province, but even as the resistance desperately fights to reclaim the captured Gyousou, it fails and Risai and Sougen's troops are forced to fall back. They are also attacked by the local people furious about the rebels destroying the crops they worked so hard to get ready for the upcoming spring. Nothing gets to them as they throw the stones at 'the criminals', because the rumors of Asen's enthronement spread quickly and the only king they now is in the capital city of Kouki, not caring about the one being transported by the army marching through the land. As they try to escape Kyuusan gets badly wounded and Risai trying to save him urges Kenchuu to go ahead while she herself covers them. But as the group of enemy soldiers suddenly attacks again, thrashing Hi'en throws her off its back and Risai desperately tries to fight them, but as the last of the man comes at her fallen Hi'en is suddenly there covering the general with her body and only seconds later the beast grabs her owner and flies away from the battlefield. All Risai can do is to watch her forces being chase by the enemy troops, while knowing that her loyal mount is heavily bleeding from the wounds it took for her… As Sougen finally makes it back to Seisai, he heads to the mansion where the wounded are being looked after and tries to get Kiitsu's attention when he notices that the young priest has just finished taking care of Kyuusan, who unfortunately didn't make it. Sougen asks about Risai and as Kiitsu regards him with a grave expression he suspects the worst, even though he never saw Risai getting seriously injured. But Kiitsu assures him it's not Risai he's sad about. It's Hi'en. And when Sougen walks into the courtyard he sees Risai sitting in the corner with Hi'en's head on her lap. When he comes closer Risai starts talking about how Hi'en had always been there for her, be it Kei, be it Mt. Hou. And how Taiki always looked forward to see Hi'en… And how her precious friend protected her. They sit there for the moment in silence stroking Hi'en's already cold fur. Then Sougen quietly thanks the beast for saving Risai this one last time and slowly walks away to plan yet another attack on troops transporting Gyousou to Kouki. And they do try to get their king back, but still don't succeed. Many of them die and despite their efforts the cart transporting Gyousou makes it to Zui Province, now heading straight to the capital city. And the ones that were suppose to join the resistance are forced to go into hiding as the news about royal army destroying the rebel forces spread through the country… The newly appointed governor of Bun Province ordered his troops to get rid of the resistance and the army stormed the city of Seisai. Some of the residents made it to Rokou, but almost half of those who stayed behind didn't survive. Allies from Sekirin and Koutaku also didn't make and about two thirds of Risai and Sougen's combined forces didn't come back from the battlefield. Now Risai stands in front of Yotaku's grave trying to cheer up grieving Kiitsu, who hates the fact that he had to evacuate with others to Rokou. What's more Houyou's estate in Hakurou was burned to the ground along with almost all of its residents. As the survivors talk to Tonkou, who fled the provincial castle after the new governor ordered the purge. He tells them that the only thing that can do is to escape, otherwise they'll be destroyed. The army stands at the province border and no one on a flying beast will get through to Zui. It's time to give up, at least for some time. Since there's no way that Asen will spare Gyousou and will most probably stop Taiki from choosing another king, the surviving resistance troops can only wait for the new kirin to be born and when it chooses the next king, then they can avenge their fallen leaders by killing Asen. But for now, there's nothing they can do. Risai and her companions can't simply accept that it was all for nothing. Not after sacrificing so much in their last attempt to free their king. If only they knew then what they know now… *** Meanwhile Ansaku is trying to convince Asen to accept his plan and to his relief 'the New King' likes it. They need to make a show out of Gyousou's abdication and for that they need audience. For that it's important to spread the false information about Asen being the true king whose place Gyousou took by force all those years ago, having wounded and used the young kirin. And after Asen confronted him about it Gyousou fled the capital and made Taiki disappear thus making it impossible for the rightful king to ascent the throne and rule the country, which consequently fell into chaos. And for that Gyousou has to publicly apologize to Tai citizens. Ansaku also emphasizes that it's dangerous to let Gyousou leave the kingdom at all and the best way to get rid of him is to incite the crowd gathered in Kouki to kill him 'the usurper'. Just provide them with the stones and have someone throw the first one and others will follow seeking justice for all their suffering through all these years. Simple: the people get their justice for all those years of suffering and Asen gets Gyousou dead. What's more, not by his own hand… Some time later the messenger comes to Taiki's mansion announcing that the strict protection is no longer needed as the traitor were executed. Not that it makes its residents as they are still confined here… Juntatsu cannot believe that Kakei could have been guilty, but Taiki says that the truth doesn't really matter anymore. He also proceeds to tell the others about Asen's plan concerning Gyosuou and and he's suppose to be there too. Ganchou laments that his king will die dishonored and hated, as the Gyousou would never put his own life above kirin's, if it comes to Asen threatening him with taking Taiki's life if the king won't submit. And Gyousou would have no way to tell if Asen's telling the truth or not. But Taiki assures Ganchou that he won't let it happen as he intends to get to Gyousou and bow before him in front of the all gathered people. This might throw both people and some soldiers into confusion, giving Gyousou the chance to escape. But as Ganchou ans Yari thinks about they come to the conclusion that Taiki being black kirin may take away the impact needed to move the crowds, since in everyone's mind the envoy of Gods always has golden hair which makes them stand out thus they're instantly recognizable. On the other hand, Taiki with his unusual, but still black hair won't be instantly recognizable to anyone as no one from the crowd knows what he really looks like. Also, how is Taiki even suppose get to Gyousou in the first place as Asen plans to surround him with guards. To that Ganchou and Yari promise to do everything in their power to make it possible for Taiki to get to Gyousou in time. Taiki himself really wants believe that his actions will be meaningful, but as he thinks about it, he begins to realize that it probably won't change anything. Because Taiki has no idea where Gyousou is being kept and that he won't be able to see him before the judgment day comes. There is nowhere to get information from and what's more, there will be no help coming from the outside, as news about resistance's defeat is spreading like a wildfire and it's hard to believe that Risai or anyone else survived the purges. So the only person able to do something is Taiki himself… But Asen is also planning to let any of the remaining rebels inside the capital and get rid of them if they do anything like trying to save Gyousou himself or at least his honor. The royal army will be ready and as the show starts, the soldiers will close all the gates making it impossible for anyone to escape. So Taiki decides to at least try to save Juntatsu's life and thus sends him with the letter to Touka in Kou Province, also asking him to take the beast which Taiki himself came with to the Royal Palace, because he promised to send it back… Not that the letter will change anything. Taiki writes to the citizens of Touka to thank them and apologize for every trouble he and his companions caused along the way… *** The most people gathered in Bun decides to travel to Kouki, to pay their respects to their leader. They know that there's no coming back from that and that most of them, if not all, will die while trying to do something for Gyousou. They won't let him be killed by his own people like some kind of traitor. They'll at least try to free him to let him die like a warrior he's always been. Risai tries to convince her followers to leave for En as they're not bound to sacrifice their lives, but no one wants to even hear about it. Oukou won't let his general go alone this time, Seishi's been too long with Risai to suddenly leave her side and Sekirei has always admired Risai as not only great general, but also as the fellow woman in the army, who's always been her hero and the evidence that even in the environment dominated by men women also can become successful. So does Sougen and Yuushou's subordinates. Even Kenchuu and some of the rebels plan to join them. In the end those left alive prepare to depart for the capital city where they'll die with their liege… *** The day before planned abdication Yari watches the crowds coming into the capital, while also noticing how tightly guarded the whole place is. As she reports it to Ganchou, she also confirms that there's no way that someone would be able to save Gyousou and get him out of the city. Dejected Ganchou leaves the mansion for a moment and then Taiki tells Yari how he's already given up and that since he already caused so many deaths and couldn't do even one useful thing for Gyousou, he at least intends to show everyone who the real king is, since he may be useless as kirin, but he's never regretted choosing Gyousou. Then he thanks Yari for everything and asks her for one last favor: to help him get to Gyousou during the abdication. Yari seems slightly overwhelmed by it and leaves without a word to find Ganchou and inform him that Taiki plans to die tomorrow together with his king. When Ganchou protests, the girl says she agrees that there is no other way to save Tai. As kirin's death will place the fate of the kingdom in Heaven's hands and it's the only certain way defeat Asen. Yari also says that she intends to make Taiki's wish come true no matter what… *** At the same day Risai and others make it to Kouki silently following the great numbers of people who's come here to see the traitor for themselves, while Risai and others came to save him, even if only in metaphorical sense. They stay the night at the local temple and early next morning go the great courtyard in the public part of the palace where normally celebrations like coronation take place. Now there stands a big platform with one post in the middle. People start gathering for the show that's supposed take place exactly at noon. Risai sees people like Sougen, Seishi and together they try to get as close to the platform as possible, for they won't have much time to free Gyousou before soldiers step in. When the bell rings the plaza becomes quiet and the Palace doors open to show courtiers gathered inside. Risai is shocked to see that the blinds next to the main throne pulled down as it means that Taiki's there to watch. Then the side gate opens and the executioner brings out the traitor. Gyousou followers hold their breaths as the prisoner makes his way through the crowd and is finally being chained to the pillar. Seishi can't stand this sight and barely stops himself from acting, when suddenly there's a huge commotion among the courtiers… *** Just before the Palace doors open everyone takes their respective places. Taiki just beside Asen's throne, surrounded with guards and weaponless Yari at his back. The girl carefully observes those closest to her as the show starts, when Taiki's gaze suddenly flies toward the close side gate and after a moment Gyousou is brought in chains in front of the crowd. The second he's placed on the platform and Taiki abruptly stands up, grabs the arm of the nearest guard, while stealing his blade and stabs him in the gut. Then he storms from behind the blinds and runs down the dais with Yari by his side. No one knows what's going on and the courtiers fly into panic, while Taiki hurries through the crowd towards the platform and Yari gets rid of every person getting in their way. The second the soldiers turn toward the Palace Risai and her companions attack and the whole plaza falls into chaos as people have no idea what's happening. When Risai notices Taiki she runs to him. Taiki throws himself to his knees before Gyousou apologizing for his long absence. And when he looks up he suddenly can't speak while his king laughs warmly commenting on how his Kouri is all grown up. Taiki bows before his kings, but as Ansaku shouts for soldiers to stop him, as there's no way that the real kirin could have killed a man, he's almost dragged away. 'The rebel' saves him and when Seishi tries to free Gyousou and another guard tries to stop him Taiki lifts his stolen sword and injures the man who stumbles back only to be cut down by Sekirei. As bloodstained Taiki stands there trembling Gyousou takes the blade out of his hand while saying that he's done enough. And when their eyes meet, Taiki suddenly transforms to his beast form… Everyone is struck dumb when they see the jet-black creature with the magnificent horn bowing before 'the criminal' and nuzzling up to him. When dazed Asen just stands there and watches, Ganchou and Rousan comment on how they can't believe at what's happening and Rousan says that it's Taiki's win as he managed to hide the fact that his horn has healed for such a long time. In the meantime Gyousou's followers gather around him and Taiki and when Gyousou climbs onto Taiki's back and the group tries to make it through the panicked crowd only to find the city gates closed. But then they open and there is Eishou coming to their aid with his and Gashin's troops. As they get away from the capital Eishou and Gashin explain what they've been doing for the last few years and how Risai and Sougen's actions in Bun made it possible for them to gather in secret and get ready to strike. Gashin also tells Risai and Gyousou that thanks to one lost suugu and its rider they found in Ba Province, they managed to send the messenger to En Kingdom with Gyousou's sword and Taiki's false passport tied to it. They also managed to get a hold of one provincial castle where the envoys from En already await Gyousou's arrival and that En warships are moored just beyond the country border. Then suddenly Taiki faints from the blood poisoning and the one to save him is Keito, who was most probably brought there by Rousan. As some of the soldiers want to go after her transformed Taiki stops them by saying that despite everything that happened Rousan is most likely their ally, to which Yari says nothing. The battle continues as the royal army goes after them but the runaways are able to fight the army off and get to their temporary base, where Gyousou meets with Shouryuu and Rokuta, who are very happy to see him and gladly offer their help. The next few days are the celebration of reunions while also grieving the ones died or has gone missing. Risai reunites with Kaei and they both talk about how Ganchou managed to free tortured Seirai and get her to safety. They also discuss Taiki's condition which gradually worsened and they had to take him to Mt. Hou for healing and that he'll probably be able to come back within the next month… Away from all the commotion Kouryou finds Kyoshi and they talk about returning to Touka, as it's Kyoshi home and Kouryou promised Enshi that he'll come back to her side… *** A few weeks later in the middle of the summer Enshi is working with other women gathering the flowers for the medicine. She wonders how Kouryou is doing since she's heard about Gyousou's return and him getting a hold of one of the castles in the northern part of province. She hopes that maybe one day Kouryou'll come back, not knowing that this tranquil and quiet area will soon become the stage to another uprising… *** And from the Kingdom Chronicles we learn that in the end of the tenth month Gyousou manages to strike Asen down and finally reclaim his throne with Taiki by his side… THE END BACK

#twelve kingdoms #juuni kokuki #juuni kokki #shirogane no oka #kuro no tsuki #fuyumi ono #novel #summary #taiki #risai #tai kingdom #gyousou #asen #十二国記 #白銀の墟玄の月 #小野不由美

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