#so did they miss the part where gatsby ends up floating dead in a pool and all the miserable deaths in wuthering heights#or did they miss that because there weren’t any chapters titled In Which The Sinners Are Punished For Their Errors#like. even if you require explicit moral instruction from literature it’s pretty hard to miss the comeuppance in those.
Huck Finn is about a white Southern boy who was raised to believe that freeing slaves is a sin that would send you directly to hell who forges a familial bond with a runaway slave and chooses to free him and thereby in his mind lose his salvation because he refuses to believe that his best friend and surrogate father is less of a man just because he’s black. Yes it features what we now consider racial slurs but this is a book written only 20 years after people were literally fighting to be allowed to keep other human beings as property, we cannot expect people from the 1880s to exactly conform with the social mores of 2020, and more to the point if we ourselves had been raised during that time period there’s very little doubt that we would also hold most if not all of the prevalent views of the time because actual history isn’t like period novels written now where the heroes are perfect 21st century social justice crusaders and the villains are all as racist and sexist as humanly possible. Change happens slowly and ignoring the radical statement that we’re all human beings that Twain wrote at a time when segregation and racial tensions were still hugely prevalent just because he wrote using the language of his time period is short-sighted and foolhardy to the highest degree.
I’m really kind of alarmed at the rise in the past few years of the “and we do condemn! wholeheartedly!” discourse around historical figures. it seems like people have somehow boomeranged between “morals were different in the past, therefore nobody in the past can ever be held accountable for ANY wrongs” to “morals are universal and timeless, and anything done wrong by today’s standards in the past is ABSOLUTELY unforgiveable” so completely, because social media 2.0 is profoundly allergic to nuance
please try this on for size:
there have always been, in past times as today, a range of people in every society, some of whom were even then fighting for a more just and compassionate accord with their fellow man and some of whom let their greeds and hatreds rule them to the worst allowable excesses. the goal of classics and history education is to teach you enough context to discern between the two, not only in the past but in the present
My mind just boggles at the “There’s Racism In That Book” argument. Yes, there is racism in that book, because that book is ABOUT RACISM. The message is that it is BAD.
My high school English teacher, who was a viciously brilliant woman, used to say that when people banned Huck Finn they said it was about the language, but it was really the message they were trying to ban, the subversive deconstruction of (religious) authority and white supremacy.
Huckleberry Finn can actually be seen as a powerful case study in trying to do social justice when you have absolutely no tools for it, right down to vocabulary. And in that respect, it’s a heroic tale, because Huck—with absolutely no good examples besides Jim, who he has been taught to see as subhuman, with no guidance, with everyone telling him that doing the right thing will literally damn him, with a vocabulary that’s full of hate speech—he turns around and says, “I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to participate in this system. If that means I go to Hell, so be it. Going to Hell now.”
(I used to read a blogger who insisted that “All right, I’ll go to Hell,” from Huckleberry Finn is the most pure and perfect prayer in the canon of American literature. Meaning, as I understand it, that the decision to do the right thing in the face of eternal damnation is the most holy decision one can make, and if God Himself is not proud of the poor mixed-up kid, then God Himself is not worth much more than a “Get thee behind me,” and the rest of us should be lining up to go to Hell too. Worth noting that this person identified as an evangelical Christian, not because he was in line with what current American evangelicals believe, but because “they can change their name, I’m not changing mine.” Interesting guy. Sorry for the long parenthetical.)
Anyway, the point of Huck Finn, as far as I can tell, is that you can still choose to do good in utter darkness, with no guidance and no help and none of the right words.
And when you put it like that, it’s no wonder that a lot of people on Tumblr—people who prioritize words over every other form of social justice—find it threatening and hard to comprehend.
I somehow don’t remember ever reading Huckleberry Finn in school as a kid, so I read it more recently (although still a couple years ago) after already having seen a lot of the racism discourse around it.
The surprising thing, to me, was that no one was talking about the child abuse and neglect that was affecting Huck himself, and all of the commentary was about slavery and racism. The commentary I saw on Huckleberry Finn seemed to insinuate – if not directly state – that it was the story of a privileged white boy who generously condescended to empathize with Jim, the poor slave who wasn’t born with the innumerable advantages Huck’s white skin blessed him with.
Then I read the book, and I was reading a story about a boy with a physically abusive, neglectful, alcoholic father who reappears in his son’s life only to attempt to seize his windfall wealth in a brazen act of parental theft that would have shamed James Spears, and an aunt a guardian whose self-righteous controlling behavior and spiritual abuse make Huck wonder whether he isn’t better off with the aforementioned dad.
So I think the adverse circumstances that both Jim and Huck face – although in many ways different from each other – have parallels that allow them to empathize with each other in a manner that’s closer to parity than “Huck gazes down at the pathetic Jim from the peaks of Mt. Privilege and feels pity.”
(There are times when Huck acts kind of patronizing toward Jim, but correspondingly there are times when Jim does the same thing toward Huck. In both cases, they tend to be confidently wrong, with Huck citing half-learned, misremembered, garbled lessons from school, and Jim citing various superstitions.)
Crucially, it is personal empathy, and not any kind of principled abolitionist morality that is at play here. Huck and Jim are thieves and vagabonds. Rejection of slavery comes in the context of a broader rejection of social norms and morality – and not some kind of consistent high-minded anarchism, either, but stuff like “we’ve gotta steal to survive, but persimmons aren’t that great this time of year, so we won’t steal those, and we’ll count the fact that we don’t steal persimmons as points in our favor morally.”
A cynical part of me wonders whether that’s the really offensive part of Huckleberry Finn – the suggestion that maybe the ability to transcend and see past society’s arbitrariness and injustices isn’t the exclusive preserve of the respectable classes using all of the right Diversity Equity & Inclusion-workshop approved language, or the YA authors obsessed with imparting the Correct Moral Lessons to the Youth (hmmm… which Huckleberry Finn character do they remind me of?), but might lay with outcasts and runaways who use some offensive language and do desperate things to survive, but who experience society from an outsider’s perspective and form bonds of necessity – and, ultimately, empathy – with members of other widely despised segments of society.
Update: Crossed out “aunt,” because I misremembered and Miss Watson is not Huck Finn’s aunt.
Please stop trigger tagging with #epilepsy tw/cw/warning/etc.
I need every single person to understand how horrible tumblr’s tagging system is
I go into the tag for epilepsy and its all flashing lights. We can’t use our own tag because people without epilepsy fill it up with improper warnings.
Use ‘flashing’ in place of ‘epilepsy’ in your tags. You aren’t warning people of epileptics, you’re warning us of flashing lights. Please please tag properly. Epileptics say this endlessly and constantly and it’s ignored. You are risking lives by doing this.
Here’s proof of what I mean:
THIS POST IS 100% OKAY TO REBLOG, I ENCOURAGE PEOPLE WITHOUT EPILEPSY TO ESPECIALLY DO SO!
Randomly remembered seeing this random old black and white photo from like the 50s, pretty sure it was from Sweden. A picture from a morgue, of a tall blond man in some kind of an uniform approaching another man standing beside an opened coffin, clutching something to his chest while looking at the approaching man with a look of wary insult on his face. The caption explained that this was an incident of a police officer stopping a man from putting a bottle of beer in his father's coffin (his own father, not the cop's father) because for some reason doing that was against Sweden's burial laws.
I don't remember the details but I recall how the guy had the looks of a rough life written all over him, ragged clothes in contrast to the police officer's pristine uniform - though obscured by motion blur as he was rapidly approaching with hateful intent - and the much finer burial clothes of the deceased. A small, skinny man with black hair, holding onto the bottle that's about to be confiscated like it's something precious to him.
I felt like something wasn't adding up and went to the comments to see if there was additional context that was missing from all this, and there was: The son and the father were Romani, and at least at the time it was still very much a tradition in Swedish Romani culture to bury the dead with little gifts - not necessarily extravagant or expensive, but things that the lost loved one would have liked.
This wasn't about a mourning son being stopped from playfully paying his respects in a way that someone else thought indignified. This was about a man being prohibited from performing his own peoples' funeral rites.
ok i did it. image for people who like defending caine but also want to make it clear that they Understand that He Did Bad Things. feel free to use, no credit required. enjoy
yeah i like to give my blessing to the most pathetic looking weak little knight at the tournament. she can’t even look me in the eye when i give her my flower and she stutters out that she’ll do her best or something of the like. i think its funny when she has to cry and beg my forgiveness and i get to say “such a shame, i suppose my hand in marriage will have to go to someone else…” and then i get to hear her whimper like a dog. ive done this like 6 times alrea-
So you know when I said in a different post that in Vigilante Zeldris au Meliodas’s memories are completely rewritten and he’s left without any memory of his trauma, his powers, past villainy, or even his brothers and everyone else around him had their memories rewritten as well to fit this?
Yeaah, so after a year and half they all realise that in order to defeat the demon king they’d need someone who’s the most knowledgeable about the demon king’s weaknesses and secrets as well as more power to help them fight him.
The only person they knew that ticked both of those boxes was Meliodas, so the plan was to get Gowther to give him back his real memories (but not anyone else’s cuz DK doesn’t remember that his oldest son even exists and they’d like to keep it that way) and then convince him to help them to defeat their father.
So… this is the conversation Meliodas and Zeldris have like straight after Mel gets his memories back in his apartment:
Meliodas panted, and gasped on the floor, still trying to cope as all his memories, all his terrible terrible memories flowed through his brain, seemingly on loop.
“Meliodas, are you…alright?”
There was a tense silence.
“…I thought I told you kill me.” His brother’s voice was hoarse but dull, just like it was a year ago.
Meliodas was back after all. Woo.
“...well I suppose out of the two of us, only one of us does what he’s told.” Zeldris leaned against the wall, “also your welcome for me sparing your life.”
“I never wanted it be spared and I never asked you to do so, so I don't owe you shit.”
This was true of course but Zeldris was feeling spiteful and wanted to push his buttons a little, “What for letting you finally be happy?!”
He turned to him incredulously, “Happy?! You fucking erased my memories, erased me!”
“I did that to let you live a normal life, a better one, the one you never got thanks to the demon king. Besides you looked oh so joyful without any memory of him.” Memories of him, but Zeldris didn’t say that part.
Meliodas laughed, sounding a bit hysterical, “Oh and I'm supposed to be grateful for that?!!”
“I never did it for your thanks, and i most definitely didn’t do it for you. And also, what exactly did you want me to do, leave you like that?! You were on a rampage, begging me to fucking kill you!!!”
The blonde growled and stood to his feet, “Zeldris-”
“Or, or would have preferred to continue to work for our father, is that it?!!”
“Fucking-YES yes i would’ve preferred that!!!”
Zeldris let out a crazed laugh, not surprised by this in the slightest, “Oh of course you would have. what the hell did i expect from the golden child, the favourite, the heir, what do you miss your crown oh terrifying prince of darkness~”
His brother growled, eyes overshadowed by his hair, “Shut. Up-”
“Oh nononono, please, enlighten me how the life you had back then is better than life you have now. Your life with a dog, friends, a girlfriend, people who care about you, who love you, plans to open up a bar! Why the fuck would you trade everything you have now for what you had back the-“
“BECAUSE AT LEAST EVERYTHING I HAD BACK THEN WAS REAL!!!”
Zeldris was stunned by this outburst comprehending what was said, “...Melio-”
“EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING I HAVE NOW IS FAKE, ALL OF IT!” Meliodas yelled, “EVEN, EVEN IM FAKE, ALL THE BEST PARTS OF MY LIFE AREN’T EVEN RE-AL!!!”
His voice broke at the end as Meliodas pinned his brother with harsh glare.
“AND AS SOON AS THOSE PEOPLE OUT THERE GET THEIR REAL MEMORIES THEY WILL ALL LEAVE, THEY WILL LEAVE WITHOUT A FUCKING SECOND THOUGHT BECAUSE I AM NOT SOME FUTURE BAR OWNER, I'M NOT SOME KID IN FRAT- HELL I WAS NEVER EVEN A KID.”
Meliodas furiously wiped at his eyes, it was only then when Zeldris came to the realisation that his brother was crying.
Then before he could blink, Zeldris was pinned against the wall struggling in his older brother’s grip, sure Meliodas still had the power inhibitor chip on his neck but Zel’s stunned reaction kept him from using his powers for the moment.
“Zeldris I am only going to say this once so listen up.” Meliodas hissed in his ear, “I am a fucking weapon, weapons aren’t made to have friends, weapons aren’t built to be loved, they are built to be used. I’m just a gun on wall, picking up dust, just waiting for someone anyone to pull the trigger because that is the only way i can feel anything, the only way i can be worth anything. And that is all i will ever be, there is no fixing me.”
Meliodas then let him go and stepped back, Zeldris trying gain back his bearings. “Also about the question you asked earlier, I’m done with this, all of it, so if you want help defeating the demon king go find it somewhere else cuz you won’t find it with me.”
Zeldris stoically nodded, “…and I suppose that you don’t want Gowther to release the spell on everyone else?”
At that the blonde paused and tensed, his eyes stoically studying Zeldris’s face before walking over the door, “do whatever, I don’t care anymore.” He unlocked the door.
“Pushing me away again, figures.”
“…Get out.”
Zeldris leaves.
(No Gowther does not undo the spell but Meliodas does cut off all contact with everyone he knows and isolates himself in his apartment for two weeks. He does eventually start helping his brother’s but it’s a shaky agreement)
@hanymatsuo I love the Deadpool Ban idea! He’d probs love to mess with Meliodas while in costume, cuz he’s like a mercenary/vigilante while Meliodas just finds him so irritating. (Holy Sexual tension Batman-!)
It’s gonna take a long long time for Ban to break down Meliodas’s walls enough for Mel to have a breakdown in front of him, never mind spill the beans. Mel knows that if he spills Ban true memories will come back and Ban will leave, he doesn’t want that to happen.
Also I’ve finally decided to make it Melban cuz I want part of Meliodas’s redemption arc to be realising that he’s not as straight as he thought he was.
You ever think about how Meliodas, as a demon, literally has the power to suck the soul out of anyone he meets AND WE NEVER GET TO SEE HIM DO IT!!!
Bitch I wanna him, preferably with berserk markings, snacking on a soul that's just a tiny bit too big for him and he has to squint a little bit to get it down, he would look so adorable!!!
A feral au where Meliodas lost all sense of… uh… humanity is what I’m looking for but it doesn’t really fit in a world where the main character isn’t even human
No but imagine like an au where Meliodas still seems like Meliodas, but he has a secret dark side that neither the sins nor Elizabeth or Hawk know about.
He never completely shook off his fathers and Chandlers teachings about other beings being worthless. He believes in a kind of inherent value of life that everyone has, but if a person is bad enough (think, like, domestic abuse, hurting others for petty reasons, abuse of authority, pretty much anything really really bad) then that person looses that value, and Mel would go out at night, seek out that person, and rob them of their soul, because taking it out of circulation/the revival cycle and digesting it is better than letting them go on, so he believes, and he whole heartedly believes that he’s doing the right thing.
Or at least that’s what he tells himself whenever his hungers overpowers his sense of judgement. The last time he let himself get out of control, he robbed whole village of their souls and he didn’t have the opportunity to judge whether or not they deserved it (if he even really cared in the first place and isn’t just lying to himself).
Ooh! That’s dark. I like it! And Elizabeth and Hawk wouldn’t really understand. They’d suspect something was up but they wouldn’t really think to investigate since, well, Meliodas is Meliodas! There’s no way he’d do something truly terrible! The two tend to forget that he’s a dangerous criminal, and even though he never actually killed Zaratrus, he still lives up to his title as the Dragon Sin of Wrath. Even when they learn that there’s a darker sid ego him they don’t really think in it much. Don’t realize that as a demon this is just part of him, a biological need so to speak. That’s why he’s always hungry, why he loses control so easily.
Usually in the middle of the night, Meliodas wakes up with an empty stomach. It’s not food he needs, but souls, though some food wouldn’t be bad either if he were to come across an animal or something.
To avoid waking up Hawk, who’s sleeping in the kitchen, Mel exits through the window. He unfolds his wings of darkness to float through the night and not hit the ground with a loud thump.
The night holds many mysteries and secrets, especially with most humans drunk off their asses and showing what they’re really made of.
Watching from the dark rooftops, Meliodas then picks out those that are absolutely despicable.
A thought that just came to me is that humans don’t really have natural predators, right? What if in this au, it’s demons that more or less were the humans natural predators (because human souls held more magic than animal souls, and were easier prey than any of the other races (basically the perfect balance of risk and reward)), and were sealed away precisely because of that? And with demons being gone, the other races, having worked together, mostly just fucked off to do their own things bc demons being dangerous to all of them was pretty much the only thing that really united them.
Which means, there’s an entire part of the world where demons used to live that’s now and still deserted, because that’s where the demons used to live. And no one wants to go where beings of dark magic used to live bc what if it’s cursed? This is mostly rumors tho. There IS demon magic residue in the land tho, which turns many non-demon plants and animals into weird things, which only reinforces the belief that the land is cursed, bc nothing will grow so you can’t settle there. Think of it like idk opening a frog farm in the middle of a desert with no way to get enough water to sustain the pond they live in and stuff. The frogs aren’t adapted to the heat, sand and dryness, so they’re gonna die.
Purgatory could be a sub-part of the demon realm in this case. Like if the demon realm were a jungle, purgatory would be a swamp within that jungle (not literally, just as a metaphor).
Meliodas can’t exactly stay there either, bc he would pretty much out himself as a demon, but he does occasionally go there to scavenge some things like plants and animals that aren’t found anywhere else.
Why wasn’t he sealed tho? Honestly, no idea. Maybe he didn’t care, bc back then, his father and Chandler did too good a job, which completely backfired and ended with Meliodas not caring about any demon other than himself so he had no issue with them (including Chandler and the DK, i’m not sure if I wanna include Zeldris in this tbh) being sealed.
This is also probably why it’s so rare for Meliodas to go out and hunt as a demon should. Since he specifically targets corrupted souls he doesn’t exactly get a satisfactory meal out of it, because he has a sweet tooth and the bitter, rotten taste of a corrupted soul is disgusting to him. But he refuses to target anyone who isn’t corrupted! He wants to make a better name for demonkind, for himself. He wants to be better than his fellow demons.
He generally cared little for other demons in general… with one exception. His brother. When he learned Zeldris was sealed he definitely was upset, but fell back in his training. Survival of the fittest. If Zel got sealed then he was not fit. He must have failed somewhere as a brother to make Zeldris not strong enough, probably coddled him too much like his father said. At least, that’s what his instinctive response said, the newer and softer side rod him would scream at him that wasn’t the case at all.
My apologies, @hanymatsuo , I'm giving you the evil broppy info-dump you deserve now.
Poppy and Branch meet the day of his seven birthday and she was crowned. The same day the King died.
She was... just a little girl. A six year old child with the weight of an entire kingdom on her tiny shoulders. She was scared. She just wanted her dad....
Branch found her after the ceremony. Crying, alone... and grey. He comforted her, because he understood all too well the feeling of losing a loved one...
He was vulnerable in that small moment, when he promised that they never again would lose someone.
But it would take time.
Time toughened them. It taught them how much they could trust each other! ... Only each other.
And time made them closer. They told each other their darkest fears, their deepest insecurities and their most mundane thoughts.
That's how they became friends :D
When the bunker was ready the Village moved underground. Everyone was safe (until Creek got caught and sell them out)
Regarding to the relationship, they have been dating for YEARS. But they got engaged recently. It took Poppy a while to think about who would be a good king.
Poppy loves her people, they are her life, and Branch cares about them as much as she does! That's why he would be perfect for the job. That's why she proposed marriage to him at fucking fifteen
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