BBRS 6.8

[teaboot]

I’m not Christian, I don’t go to church anymore, and my pastor died, but when he was alive I’d sometimes go to his sermons and I remember one time he said “it feels good to hate, but we know that it isn’t allowed, so when we’re told that we’re allowed to hate someone we get so excited that we forget we’re supposed to love”, and if my humble atheist ass might borrow some church talk I’d like to perhaps submit that

[teaboot]

Anyhow sometimes on the day to day I feel disgust or revulsion and I have to ask myself “is this a danger to anyone at all or am I just looking for something I’m allowed to hate” and a solid 98/100 times it’s the latter so once again thank you pastor D

[c-is-for-circinate]

There are exactly two takes on 'do your child soldiers kill people or not?' that I really respect, and it's Fullmetal Alchemist and Animorphs.

[c-is-for-circinate]

From the replies:

@nordicninja Aaaand Avatar the last Airbender

And like, okay, true! But also consider: on this particular front, AtLA is good at this because it is a solid 8.5/10 on the FMA side of this scale.

(The 8.5/10 isn't a critique of AtLA, which is an excellent show on all counts, but it doesn't quite measure up to the FMA threshhold here simply because of the limitations of being an American kids' show. It can do the thing, but it can't foreground the thing or spend five seasons of anime/27 volumes of manga meditating on the ravages and implications of violence, because it's busy also being aimed at 10-year-olds and about other stuff too.)

Witness:

You could defeat the enemy, if you killed him. Your allies say you should. It would work.

It wouldn't even make you a bad person -- not here, not now, not in these circumstances. Of course you wouldn't be "as bad as they are," that's bullshit. Putting down a single mad dog does not equal literal genocide. FFS.

You could do it. You should do it. It would work, and isn't that the most important thing? To stop the horror? In the light of all the sheer destruction and evil at play, your own personal lily-white rejection of culpability is purely selfish. Isn't it?

But, god, you don't want to. You don't want to kill. The whole point is that life is important, is sacred, is worth protecting. You haven't been forced to yet. You keep finding ways around it. You've seen enough death. You don't want to do it.

Here and now, if you did -- it would fix the problem. It would fix things! It would save the day! The world would be inarguably better. You know this!

You know this. You know it because the world will not stop telling you this. Everything you've seen, everything you've been taught. Everything the people you love and respect say to you. And it's not a lie, it's not made up, it's true -- killing, here, in this one case, would help.

Why is the world so set on forcing you to kill? Why is this how the world works, that a child (you're not as young as you were when you started, but you're a child, you were a child, the first time somebody assumed you would someday simply have to be a murderer) gets handed a weapon and made to use it?

We are using the rules that the world set. We are using the rules that the genocidal maniac set. They are the same rules, because there's a reason genocidal maniacs are able to come to power in the first place, because the world is built in a way that violence works.

You know this. You're good at it! You're skilled at violence. It's how you've come so far.

But.

((and you know, the only reason you're able to have these thoughts, is because other people have already killed for you. will kill for you again. will wear the blood on their hands to save your life. somebody else is taking it so you don't have to, and you do not get to forget that.))

But maybe, if you're skilled enough. If you're good enough. If you can find a third option. Maybe, maybe, if you are just clever enough, if you're willing to risk losing entirely, you can do more than save the day.

Maybe you can rewrite the rules. Maybe you can rebel, not just against the genocidal horror villain about to doom the world, but against the entire world in the process.

If you're good enough to find the loophole -- to master the magic -- to put everything you've ever learned into practice. If you can find another way. If you can prove that another way exists.

Maybe you get to do more than close the door on one evil.

Maybe you get to open a new door on the possibility of changing the world.

[c-is-for-circinate]

And also:

@thoughtful-collections Could you go into the Animorphs side of the child soldier question? Obviously they do kill and I think one character even kills many of the yerks while they are defenceless and justifies it as a necessary step to win. I suppose that series is saying there is no avoiding murder/killing/getting your hands dirty in war?

Yesssss

Look, there are a lot of child soldiers in the genre, whatever 'genre' that may be. Some kill easily, thoughtlessly, like any action movie star. Some have Important Moral Lessons on how killing makes us no better than the bad guys. Many of them get their very own generous plot device get-out-of-jail free card: either they have some form of captivity that their opponents get sent to at the end of a fight and we never have to think too hard about false imprisonment without trial (Steven Universe; at least one instance of Power Rangers?; Batman and Robin generally; etc), or, their opponents aren't really people, so it doesn't actually count as murder (media as diverse as the Persona series all the way back to good old Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Sometimes, through sheer force of will, grit, and absolute unparalleled protagonist energy, child soldiers get to avoid killing in a world that makes it a genuine option.

Animorphs looked at all of those options, and it said, nah.

You want a war story, little child? Okay, the books say. Here's a war story. This is war.

Here's how it starts: you're goofing around with your friends one night. You take an ill-advised turn. You watch somebody get horrifically murdered.

No, you can't save him. Yes, you can save yourselves. Get used to that. Get used to it so, so fast.

You're on a trolley. Up ahead are two tracks. On one side: a dozen evil aliens. On the other side: your brother. Make a choice.

Good job, you didn't crash the train into a cliff. By the way, did we mention there are a thousand more tracks? More people tied to each and every one?

You get to put your hands on the steering wheel. You get to drive the trolley. This is a gift. Make a choice.

(Refusing to act is still a decision.)

You can jump off the train, if you want. You don't have to be the one to steer. Maybe you'll even survive the fall. Maybe the friends you're leaving behind will be good enough to make sure they don't run you over on your way down.

Your mom is on one of the tracks, by the way. Your dad. Your sisters, your cousins. Your brother, still.

You don't have to steer. You don't have to do this. You can let the train take its course, you can let it plow through all of humanity. You can let it happen. You get to do that, if it's what you want to do.

Nobody is coming to save you.

On one track: the aliens have names, thoughts, dreams, personalities. On the other track: there are six billion humans on this planet today.

Every single option in front of you is a war crime. If you're lucky, you'll get to pick which one.

(Refusing to act is still a decision.)

It's fun sometimes, driving a train. When there's nobody in the way, for just a little while. When you can pretend you're mowing down enemies in a video game. When you can give into the rush of adrenaline and just be glad you have the skill.

Maybe, maybe somebody will come to save you. They'll take over steering. You won't have to choose.

(Refusing to act is still a decision.)

Who will they choose to hit? Will they care? Will they care enough?

You watch TV. You watch Xena, and X-Files, and Buffy. You can pretend to live in a world where your enemies are nameless monsters without souls, if you want. If that makes it easier.

Is it easier, to kill them soft and vulnerable and completely powerless, unable to fight back? Does that feel better than killing the ones hunting you down, weapons in hand?

You are looking for a loophole. You are looking, and looking, and looking for a loophole. You don't get to fight monsters without souls. You don't get to lock them up in tiny bubble jail. They are going to kill you. This is what you get.

It's you. You're the one standing here. This is what's happening.

Refusing to act is still a decision.

(There is a loophole, eventually. A third path. One of you finds it, eventually.)

(It would not have worked, without years of war first. It took you years of war to find it and if you hadn't killed so, so many, it would not have worked.)

You don't get to be good, in war. You don't get to save the day by sacrificing your own life and remaining morally pure. That would be too easy. War means dead bodies. That's what it means.

That doesn't mean you give yourself over to despair. That doesn't mean you shrug and figure the lives being spent don't matter. You don't get to throw your own moral code on the altar of heroic sacrifice and claim to be the real victim here. It never stops mattering. It will never, ever get to stop mattering.

That doesn't mean you never fight. It just means that when you choose to step up and fight for something, you'd better be goddamn sure it's worth the cost, because chances are somebody a lot less powerful than you is going to be the one to pay.

On one track: Your brother. Your cousin. Seventeen thousand unarmed, helpless enemy agents.

On the other track: a new train's barreling straight at you and all six billion members of the human race. All-out slaughterous war. Giving over the steering wheel to the last hands that decided the best answer to their problems was genocide.

(REFUSING TO ACT IS STILL A DECISION)

You make a choice.

[ruinconstellation]

@thejakeformerlyknownasprince

[prokopetz]

It kind of feels unfair that the Legend of Zelda franchise exists because it takes so many fun hypotheticals off the table. "Which video game series would be the worst if you had to invent a timeline where all games occur in chronological release order" no bet, it's Zelda. It's always fucking Zelda.

[poondragoon]

That's why I love Zelda.

I've never seen another series be so openly contemptuous of canon or continuity, like it was purpose-built to screw with fastidious nerds who are allergic to non-Watsonian reasoning.

Forget the timeline, just look at the geography! Is Kakariko village a Western European hamlet bordering a forest? An Edo-period thatch-roof village high in the mountains? A tin shack ghost town in a desert slot canyon? Is Lake Hylia to the south, southwest, or southeast of Hyrule Castle? How do entire provinces just materialize, disappear, and jump across the country between installments? How many continents does Hyrule span across? The obvious Doylist explanation is that Hyrule has vastly different geographies depending on what best serves the flow and pacing of the game. The Watsonian explanation is that there is no Watsonian explanation.

It is, as an intellectual property, disinterested in maintaining continuity to a degree that is nothing short of impressive in today's media landscape. What events from prior games are canon? The minimum necessary to contextualize the immediate plot of the game you're currently playing, so somewhere between none of them and all of them simultaneously. What Zelda game is [Insert Zelda Title] a sequel/prequel to? Throw a fucking dart.

The fact that its nominal genre has it bumping shoulders with Tolkien is just icing on the cake.

[ohnomykokoro]

People are fighting about LOTR vs GOT on twitter and it's kind of amazing to watch. 😆😆😆

Like I love Tolkien but never finished the Silmarillion so it's amazing to see those Tolkien nerds describe in details why anything about Tolkien's work would leave GOT in the dust. And there's like, the Martin fans who try to glow up GOT but it's so obvious they have never read Tolkien and only know the movies... 😬😬😬

GOT butthurt fans 😤: who cares if Martin never finished his serie! His Targaryan DRAGONS would burn down Middle Earth!

Tolkien nerd 1 🧐: Smaug was killed by a human archer and he was bigger than the GOT dragons.

Tolkien nerd 2 🧐: balrogs are made of fire and can only be killed by angelic creatures. There aren't any in Westeros.

Tolkien nerd 3 🧐: Ancalagon was a dragon as big as mountains. He would stomp them like flies.

GOT butthurt fans 😠: Martin invented languages!

Tolkien nerds 🧐: he invented a few sentences. Tolkien invented several entire languages.

Yeah... sorry GOT fans. Tolkien will remain the king of Fantasy. I don't think it's fair, nor relevant, to compare any other fantasy author to him.

[bbrs-68]

Imma be real, if this is an accurate summary of how the twitter argument is going, that’s kinda depressing. Because that looks like 90% power scaling, and 10% “extra is the author?” And while those things are all well and good, that’s not what makes Tolkien exceptional.

What makes Tolkien exceptional is that he fought in WWI, one of the most brutal wars to be a soldier in. He lived in a London that was more hopeless and nihilistic than it had ever been. He watched as England was dragged into a Second World War, one that threatened to destroy them forever. And Tolkien took that trauma, that nihilism, that uncertainty, and he asked the question:

What if there was hope?

What if our ideals are attainable?

What if there was Good, capital G Good, and what if it could defeat Evil?

What if all our pain, and loss, and suffering, couldn’t just disappear, but what if something new, and Good, and beautiful could emerge from it?

Tolkien poured his heart and soul into his work, trying to bring hope and idealism to a world that thought that both were dead and gone. And that’s why he’s the king of Fantasy.

[bbrs-68]

Episode Three was easily the best episode of Season Two so far, and probably one of my favorite episodes of the entire show, so without further ado, let's get into it.

So the first half of this episode was devoted to the idea of a "ridiculous adventure." This ties back into why Stark joined Frieren's party in the first place. He remembers Eisen's stories of his adventure with the Hero's Party, described as often being ridiculous, and he wants some similar adventures, and similar stories, of his own.

So in this episode, we reach a place point where Stark remembers his master's story of this place. And while we don't get the actual flashback until a good bit later, what Eisen has to say about it is "The hidden hot spring of the Etwas mountains was just a footbath. It wasn't worth the effort at all. It was a truly ridiculous adventure." So it's funny that when Stark hears that they're in the same spot, he absolutely wants to go see it, putting in all this effort and struggle, even fighting a giant hydra monster, for something that he knows will absolutely not be worth it.

And of course, the reason for that is that Eisen's words don't end where I previously cut them off. "It's strange though. I wouldn't trade my memories of those ridiculous adventures with my friends for anything." Memories are thematically super important in this story, having memories, holding onto memories, being shaped by and growing through memories, etc., so this is a recognition from Eisen, and the show, that even if something isn't worth it by any tangible metric, and can be worth something in and of itself. To put a cliche on it, the journey is more important than the destination.

And one way that the show shows this, I feel, is in just how much time is spent this episode showing Frieren and company travelling to the hot spring. This half of the episode lasts about ten minutes, and a solid half of that is just the party travelling to the hot spring. There's a montage, including a few humorous moments that I've already seen people reposting, and they have a cool fight against a hydra. It would be easy for the show to just jump to the hot spring/foot bath, get straight to the point of the episode, but they don't do that. Instead, they choose to show us a journey worth remembering.

[bbrs-68]

Frieren Season 2 is going strong, and last episode we got our first introduction to the legendary Hero of the South.

The first thing that stands out about this episode, is Stark's reaction to the statue of the Hero. Basically, "wait a sec, this isn't Himmel. Who's this dude?" Because like, c'mon Stark, we've already talked about this. There can be more than one Hero. Heck, if you want to get technical, even Himmel wasn't the "real" Hero, someone else still needs to draw that sword someday.

So that's the first lesson of the episode. Despite how much everyone praises Himmel, he didn't save the world on his own. Not only did he need the other members of the Hero's Party (Frieren says that without any one of them, they would've failed), he was also relying on and aided by the effort and sacrifice of countless others like the Hero of the South. Because no one ever really does a great work by themselves.

But it's also interesting just how willing the Hero of the South was to be just a link in the chain. He knew that he wouldn't be the one to kill the demon king, he knew he wouldn't be the one to save the world, but he still did everything he could to work towards that goal, cutting a path forward for whoever would one day manage it. And too me, more interesting than the fact that he's willing to sacrifice so much for this goal, is that he wants nothing in return. Not fame, or glory, or statues, nothing. He's willing to fight and die to help save humanity, even if no one ever remembers him.

So what makes the Hero of the South a true Hero is, ironically, his willingness to not be THE Hero. Helping people, saving people, and being some part of saving the world is all he asks.

[a-clockwork-justice]

One of the things that strikes me the most about Wake Up Dead Man is the portrayal of Grace Wicks.

Normally when a character (usually a woman) who starts the story being villified and villainised, just as Grace was deemed "the harlot whore" for 60 years, their redemption in the eyes of the story comes from the revelation that they were a better person than people gave them credit for. Maybe they were a good mother, or did their best in the face of the deck being stacked against them.

With Grace, we don’t see that. I can’t recall any instance in the movie of her being a particularly good person, or a good mother to Jefferson Wicks, or a virtuous woman as befitting her name. A lot of her actions are recontextualised to be more understandable within the story, yes, but that’s not necessarily the same.

Grace is messy. Some would call her shallow with her focus on expensive brands. She’s unashamedly destructive. She probably wouldn’t have wanted her father’s church where she was pretty much held hostage for years to be named after her, even if the Wicks family weren’t in charge anymore.

And she STILL didn’t deserve what Prentice Wicks and her family did to her, whether she was a good person or not.

There are no perfect victims. Trauma, shocker, tends to mess with people’s mental state a lot, and they’re not always going to act the way people think they should. They can’t always be, well, graceful about it- I dare say they can’t be EXPECTED to be.

And people don’t have to be perfect or even particularly good people to be sympathised with as victims.

And it didn’t take anyone finding out about her secret better side or good deeds. All it took was one person - Vera - having a change in perspective, to consider things from Grace’s point of view and realise she never really had a chance to BE a better person, to plant that idea in the heads of the characters and the audience.

That poor girl.

[kadens-a-bee]

When the pairing is so good that it doesn’t matter if you see it as romantic or platonic. What matters is that you see them and know that one is not complete without the other. Frequently bought together. Do not separate. If you separate them one of them will bite you

[bbrs-68]

Frieren's back baby! And Episode One did not disappoint, bringing us right back into episodic, emotional, party shenanigans that we all know and love. That being said, here's the aspect of yesterday's episode that I found the most interesting:

I am fascinated by the what-if of if Stark went Wirbel and co. Because obviously he wouldn't, he's more loyal than that, but if he did... He'd be in a very amusing position to teach all of these actual mages something about magic.

The thing (or at least, one of the things) that makes Wirbel an interesting character is that, despite being overall sympathetic, he isn't perfect. And not only is he not perfect, but he falls short of one of Frieren's main virtues/ideals: He does not love magic, and instead sees it as just a tool. He says as much to Serie when she asks him what his favorite spell is.

And so I just imagine the world where Stark is travelling with Wirbel and co., having already been with Frieren and Fern, and he starts to notice some discrepancies between how these two parties view magic. "Wait, do you guys not have a spell for that?" "Oh hey, they've got a Grimoire, do you want it?" "You know, I've noticed you guys don't use a lot of spells outside combat, what's up with that?"

It's just hilarious to me that, had he decided to hourney with them, Stark, an absolutely non-magical man, would be in the perfect position to teach this team of actual mages the love of magic.

First | Previous

Related Posts:

Love of Magic

Magic for More than Killing

Wirbel

Scharf (the punk)

[bbrs-68]

Fun/Interesting details in Frieren as a Countdown to Season 2 Day 3!

So Serie and Frieren are obviously perfect foils for each other, in a wide variety of ways, but one of the smaller ways in which they contrast each other is through their costuming. Obviously here Serie's outfit is a bit more complex and ostenstatious than Frieren's (note the jewelry), putting it in line with the sorts of things that Flamme points out that people do to signify wealth and status, but that's not really what I'm referring to here.

What I mean is that when these two meet up again one thousand years later, Frieren's obviously in a completely different outfit, and a new hairstyle, and everything, but Serie has not changed at all. And it's an interesting detail because it shows how, despite her bemoaning how quickly fashions and conventions change, Frieren is still affected by the world around her and the passage of time. But Serie stubbornly refuses to change at all.

Some in-depth analysis

[bbrs-68]

Fun little details from Frieren as a countdown to Season 2 (Day 2):

When Frieren first tracks down Fern as she is training, she mentions that even she had a hard time sensing Fern's mana. The audience probably isn't supposed to think much of this at first. After all, it makes sense that the quiet little war orphan would be skilled at hiding her presence. But it changes when we learn that suppressing your mana is the entire centerpiece of how Frieren does magic, and that Fern seems to have been getting a start on that before having even met Frieren.

Of course, in Episode 11, we learn in a flashback that Heiter was one of the few people to ever realize that Frieren was suppressing her mana, and her asked to learn more about it, in case he ever needed to train a mage. And what's beautiful about this is that Frieren is, to a large extent, a show about learning from and being changed by your relationships with others. Frieren is always thinking back on her time with Himmel and the others, and thinking about what they would do in any situation. But this detail is a reminder that those relationships are not one sided. Just as her time with the Hero's Party affected Frieren, she affected them, to the extent that, when faced with the task of training a mage, Heiter's first thought seems to have been: "What would Frieren do?"

Some in-depth analysis

[bbrs-68]

Frieren Season Two is coming out this Friday! I love this series so much, and could not be more excited! And to help whet my appetite, I'm going to be posting little details I find interesting/funny about the show all week leading up to Friday. So, to start us off...

If you're watch Frieren in the original Japanese, you might just notice that a couple of the words are still in English. Namely "dungeon" and "party". For example, when Frieren says "I'm the mage of the PARTY that conquered the most DUNGEONS in history.

What's funny about that, to me at least, is that it means that these words are being used exclusively in their fantasy/RPG sense, and completely divorced from their original meaning. So "party" does not mean "a gathering of people," it JUST means "a team of adventurers." Similarly, dungeon doesn't mean "a structure for holding prisoners," it's just "that place that adventurers go into to fight monsters and find treasure."

And that just makes the part of my brain that cares about how words evolve and change happy.

Some in-depth analysis

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

God really has a habit of letting things get like hellishly bad — and I mean that literally — only to do something to remind me that. no actually. The adversary is not the god of this kosmos; Christ is. Jesus of Nazareth is the Ruler of Nations, King of Glory, and Lord of the Cosmos. My God weeps at the grave of Lazarus and then commands him to come out.

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Too many rightists keep reblogging this post so let me make this extremely clear: I am a gay genderqueer Orthodox anarcho-communist and this post is about liberation theology. It is about the fact that my mtf trans suitemate didn’t fucking die in the hospital, and just as God delivered her from death, so also will She deliver the oppressed from their oppressors.

It is about the declaration of the reign and rule of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the son of Mary and the Son of God, as the Divine-Human King of the Cosmos, to bring joy to the poor and powerless, to liberate those who are captive and imprisoned, to bring care and life and health to those whose bodies are held captive to decay and death and sickness, to set free those who are oppressed and marginalized. To declare his reign and rule as King. And it is the duty of us as the Church — the immortal multiethnic family and sociopolitical institution of other-centered, life-giving, intimate love — to carry on that message. This post is anti trump administration, anti ice, anti Republican, anti democrat, anti American government — heck it’s anti government. Period. I hate this country: it is idolatrous, blasphemous, up to its neck in blood — the blood of my ancestors and siblings — and Babylon will be healed responsible for all innocent blood shed on the earth.

Christ is King. Free Palestine and Sudan and Congo and Nigeria and Turtle Island and Brasil and Kashmir and all other places under the yoke of colonialism and imperialism and every and all people oppressed by the kyriarchy. This is the Great Commission: and it is not complete until Jesus returns and all people are free to work their own vineyard and rest beneath their own fig tree.

[writing-prompt-s]

"Whomsoever steals from a dragon’s horde is cursed to turn into a dragon." A desperate, undefended village under threat by an invading king’s army weaponizes this curse by having all the villagers steal something from a nearby slumbering dragon’s horde.

[bbrs-68]

That's the story, anyway. It was so long ago, that no one's really sure, anymore. Certainly no one remembers which king it was, or what army, that sparked such a drastic response. They may have been a mighty army, capable of conquering half the known world, but that small village that intended to invade almost as an afterthought wiped them out so completely as to leave no trace behind.

Not that all was well for the village. Dragons are territorial. Fiercely so. And given that they do not reproduce naturally, they have no reason not to kill each other until only one remained. Who can say who that final surviving dragon was in their former life. A mayor who had formerly tried to keep all his people safe, a baker whose ambitions had extended no further than baking the perfect loaf, or even a little child whose world had begun and ended with that little village.

All that mattered was that, by the time the battle was over, there was nothing left to fight over. The little village had no defense against dragonfire, and not even its foundations can still be found. And even now, with that last dragon finally slain, the area around the village is a desert of ash where nothing good can grow.

It was a tragedy. A waste. The villagers destroyed their village and everything around it to keep it out of that army's hands. And yet... I can't help but understand it. For the villagers, faced with such a great evil, with such certain doom, to decide to make that destruction mutually assured. To act, even if it was out of spite, to rail against such an unfortunate end, and ensure that their death would blaze throughout history, and no cruel king or heartless conqueror would benefit from their demise.

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Nonbelievers should not celebrate Christmas. But this post isn’t about nonbelievers. To be extremely clear this post is about my hatred for Christianity’s, my religion, and the Church’s, my home, role as a weapon of kyriarchal imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and racism. Christmas is a Christian holiday — there is no reason it should be a national holiday, or that nonbelievers should observe it, or that nonbelievers — especially Jews and other communities with trauma inflicted upon them by the Christian Church — should be shamed by other (mostly nonbelievers for some fucking reason) for not observing Christmas.

Christmas is a religious holiday, a specifically Christian religious holiday about the birth of our God. It is not about family or gifts or sons vague liberal sense of generosity. It is about the incarnation and birth of the Christian God as a human being in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the son of Mary and the Son of God, to declare his reign and rule as the Divine-Human King of the Cosmos, to bring joy to the poor and powerless, to liberate those who are captive and imprisoned, to bring care and life and health to those whose bodies are held captive to decay and death and sickness, to set free those who are oppressed and marginalized. To declare his reign and rule as King. And it is the duty of us as the Church — the immortal multiethnic family and sociopolitical institution of other-centered, life-giving, intimate love — to carry on that message.

Merry Christmas. Christ is King. Free Palestine and Susan and Congo and Nigeria and Turtle Island and Brasil and Kashmir and all other places under the yoke of colonialism and imperialism and every and all people oppressed by the kyriarchy. This is the Great Commission: and it is not complete until Jesus returns and all people are free to work their own vineyard and rest beneath their own fig tree.

[kendrixtermina]

One detail I liked about silksong is how you had something that you don't often see represented in fiction is to see a character who's sort of from an immigrant background but identifies more with the place she grew up in.

The story starts with Widow (a bad guy) telling Hornet "you've finally come home" & at the end of it she affirms that "she'll always be a daughter of Hallownest", taking back her own authorship of where her home is supposed to be.

In the current discourse there's the highly politicised expectation that if you're in any way descended from immigrants you have to identify chiefly as an immigrant - in a way you are forced into that when your country's mainstream society doesn't accept you / rejects you & you experience discrimination... or, more positively, if you are simply raised as part of tightly knit immigrant community so that this becomes an important part of your life.

But that isn't everyone's experience - I don't have emotional attachment to my parents' country, I've lived here since I was a baby, cartoons & books I read in school & social norms I grew to expect etc. are all the ones from here. I never immigrated anywhere at least not while being able to fom conscious memories.

This is definitely down to an individual's life experience not something where there's an universal answer. So I see it as being a bit like how you rarely see ppl who are happy their parents divorced. Divorce is always treated as this terrible thing etc. IRL there's both ppl who were traumatized by divorce & those like me who wish their parents had divorced cause it sucked to watch their fighting - it's individual-specific.

The Weavers were in a revered, high-status position in Deepnest, & Hornet as an individual seems to identify with Hallownest as her home (including in that one line where she wonders about the possibility of wealth inequality existing. Anyone who cares about their home would also be willing to question it / fix possible flaws - hatred & blind patriotism are not the only options here. & she's phrasing it from the PoV may not have been critical enough in the past, - a question not a statement; We already knopw Hallownest had some wastefulness (like most societies). Far from being "exactly the same as Pharloom")

While there were hostilities between the two kingdoms in the past by the time Hornet was born they were allied & fairly interconnected, extensive trade, connected transport networks etc. She certainly proudly wears the red traditional hunter outfit from Deepnest & is quite influenced by their attitudes as tough survivorlist types; In terms of which region of her home caves she's from & doesn't see it as contradictory to also carrying that tool pouch with a Hallownest seal on it.

It's unclear if the "princess knight" bit still canon, but if it is, she even chose to work there. (& it would imply that she made it to "job picking age" before the infection returned)

This is why it annoys me when ppl ignore all the actual evidence in the game to force her into the "generic" narrative, no matter how much this requires them to twist the characterization of everyone involved.

We're shown it was the Weavers who gave her shit for being a half-breed (which she explicitly commiserates over with Eva), if anyone tried to erase any part of her heritage it was them. (not to demonize/flat villain them either; They obsly came from a fucked up place, were deeply wronged by GMS & wish to preserve their rich & unique history after) - & we have Herrah as an individual standing out somewhat & the rest of the faction who stayed.

Meanwhile even in the 1st game we had the White Lady speaking fondly of Herrah & bringing up Hornet's resemblance as a positive. (& everything else we know about the general character of the ppl at the court such as Ogrim or Ze'Mer)

In the flashback where we see her in the white outfit she's at least a young adult; No one forced her into that.

It's of course just as important that while she doesn't see it as her "home", Hornet does come to appreciate some positive things about Pharloom & some small traditions like the music & the wish walls, or how she ends up finally matching her siblings' skill in sorcery after coming into contact with-level users of her own 'flavor' of magic.

I often heard my parent lamenting that they miss nice & worthwhile things about their country though they had to flee because of the shitty government. My sister once went to visit & that one beach is actually as mind-bendingly pretty as they describe it. etc, definitely nuance & complexity applied there - on the one hand she can see now what made her 'aunts' so messed up (& how hard her mother was trying to transmit/repeat some of the effed up aspects of where they came from) but like IRL everything is always a mixed bag, she also discovered some nice, enrichting things like learning from the cool tech Pharloom has or feeling personally enriched & more connected to her fellows through coming to appreciate the wishwall tradition, still an enriching experience for her, also involved discovering that her ancestors had their own dirt & not everything was great (at the same time coming to understand why they did many of the things they did)

Like you can definitely see Hornet putting up a wishwall in Dirtmouth after she comes home.

That's also an important point given how pl living in countries with shitty governments often get demonized, there is still beautiful nature & government isn't completely synonymous with culture. A lot of the fucked up attituted in Pharloom were influenced by GMS' shitty rule but it existed before her as did some of the culture/traditions. It shows how the individual engaging with culture is a complex process where you take & continue the good stuff & leave behind / break the cycles on the bad stuff.

The choice she's faced with was NEVER to "pick between the sides" (indeed we're supposed to understand the other Weavers were doing a fucked up & lowkey hypocrtical thing by asking that of her... while we can still be sympathetic to what drove them to it. )

It was between chosing between what the scheming aunties wanted for her (the Weaver Queen ending - revanchism & following their expectations) & what her 4 parental figures wanted... (to go her own path / dream of something better) & which they are very much portrayed as having been on the same page about despite disagreeing on some other fronts.

[bbrs-68]

I can't believe I didn't register Hornet as a TCK (Third-Culture Kid), absolutely kicking myself that I missed that. Excellent insight and analysis.

[bedupolker]

I feel like the problem with both of the avatar remakes is neither of them understood or appreciated Aang and his philosophy

[bbrs-68]

The main issue here (not the only issue, but I think the biggest one) that kneecaps adaptations of Aang is that, while Zuko is a character who happens to be in a cartoon, Aang is a cartoon character, through and through.

There is an intentionally exaggerated and caricaturish level of exuberance, optimism, and frankly, silliness to the character that makes it hard to take him 100% seriously. His first words in the show are a moment of heavy Bathos, as instead of some dramatic proclamation from this mysterious boy in the ice, we get “you wanna go penguin sledding with me?”

And this is intentional, and necessary. Because it means that, in his big serious moments, Aang isn’t just the last of his people, burdened with the weight of the world on his shoulders, he’s a kid, who wants nothing more than to just be a kid, but is unfortunately also the last of his people, burdened with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

And even if this level of exagerrated childishness is possible to achieve with a real, live action, flesh and blood Aang (which I'm not convinced it is) the AtlA adaptations are designed with an implicit disdain for cartoons, or at the very least a deep seated belief in their inferiority as an art medium. After all, why adapt the story to live action if there isn't something inherently better about that medium? So everything cartoony or childish about Aang gets stripped away, meaning that, outside of the scenes where the focus is on his being the Avatar or The Last Airbender, in the scenes where he is allowed to just be Aang, there's nothing there.