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#also just a wildly ahistorical take
marisatomay · 2 years
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“the coverage of the don’t worry darling press tour and set rumors is only because a woman directed the movie; when a man has a fraught set it’s business as usual” actually the woman-directed film is the most recent one to happen so people are talking about it hope this helps
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khaire-traveler · 1 year
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please go off about the Zeus hate in the wider community some time because I would love to have this conversation
Oh gods, I'm not sure if you know what you're asking for lol. I could go on for a long time about it, for a variety of reasons.
(I can't add a cut because this is so far down in my drafts that I don't think I'll be able to find it again, even if I tried, so for those uninterested, I just recommend scrolling past this. I'm sorry. 💀)
***TW: MENTIONS OF SA, R*PE, AB*SE, AND OTHER SENSITIVE TOPICS***
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Where to even begin? There are so many faults and flaws within the argument that Zeus is just generally a "bad person". That's the argument I see most often, anyway.
I guess to start, I'll just get right into the controversial stuff: Zeus and sexual assault/rape. I'll start with me personal experience, as an assault and sexual abuse survivor. I can guarantee you that if I felt Zeus was a r*pist or an assaulter, I would not be worshipping him, personally. It would make me wildly uncomfortable, and I feel like it would seriously taint my view of him. So, when people claim that Zeus is a r*pist, or otherwise, I think it's important to acknowledge that you are talking about mythology. Just as the Christian Bible has been heavily influenced by the opinions and thoughts of its writers, Greek mythology works similarly. The surviving stories that was have were written by people who lived in a VERY different society than our modern one. Not only is mythos not meant to be taken literally (unlike Christianity, which is very mythos literal, most of the time), but Greek myths were often very metaphorical or served the main purpose of explaining an natural phenomena. It was also heavily influenced by the culture, at the time, so to understand why so many Greek myths discuss sexual assault, r*pe, and the like, you really need to take a hardcore look at the culture behind the myths. In not doing so, you make yourself look like an uneducated fool, honestly.
And I don't know how many times this had to be fucking said, but the gods are not their myths. Instead of making all these assumptions about them, maybe just, I don't know, talk to them yourself? Maybe do your own research into the behind the scenes of the stories they were featured in? Maybe stop taking mythos so damn literally? Like, even at the time, there has been some talk of historians believing that the ancient Greeks themselves didn't take mythos literally and interpreted the stories more as lessons to be learned. It's kind of obvious that many of these very impossible stories are most likely not what literally happened and are more metaphorical or sometimes even entertaining. The idea of mythic literalism feels like something that is very Christian - although I could be wrong, so do not take my opinion at face value - and frankly, Hellenic religion is not Christianity, it came before Christianity. Taking these myths of Zeus and interpreting them so literally does nothing but harm you as a worshipper and hinder your growth as a Polytheist, in my opinion. Plus, it makes you look bad. Why shit on an entire pantheon of gods? It's just dumb and disrespectful, even outside of mythic literalism stuff.
Another thing: cancel culture is heavily influencing this Zeus debate, in my opinion. People feel the need to "cancel" thousand year old deities who stem from cultures that were vastly different from ours - like, do they not realize how they sound? First of all, that shit was from thousands of years ago; do you not think that the gods have changed since then? Do you not think that they adapt to human culture as it grows and changes? Like, what? Second of all, cancelling gods from a literal ancient civilization is just plain ridiculous and very ahistorical, in my opinion. For real, I cannot stress enough that ancient Greece has a vastly different culture from our own. Shit was genuinely VERY different back then, and topics we now recognize as fucked up we're not recognized as such, back then. And there is nothing you, or anyone else can do, to go back in time and magically change the ancient Greek culture as a whole, so what's even the point of "calling out" this supposed behavior of Zeus? What's the point if he is very different now and interacts very differently with humans? What's the point if you are pulling your "evidence" from stories meant to be largely fictional? Like??? What exactly do you hope to accomplish by shitting on the King of the Gods in modern times with a very different cultural viewpoint? Tell me what you're hoping to achieve. Tell me why you're projecting all of this hatred towards Zeus, a literal fucking GOD, about fictional stories. Go ahead, I'm curious.
Along with all that, it's SO important to consider how Zeus was viewed in ancient times. It's not as though people saw him as a playboy and were like, "Ew, don't worship that god, he's doing all these bad things, blah blah blah." No, Zeus was actually HIGHLY respected. He was considered the King of the Gods, King of Olympus. He was worshipped for SO many different aspects of his and was extremely popular. He represented all kings, in a way, and was on top of everyone, in regards to hierarchical status. He was literally even considered to be the most powerful of all the gods, even instilling fear into the other gods with how strong he was! Like, Zeus wasn't someone to fuck around with or to criticize. I cannot emphasize enough how wildly disrespectful it is to call him shit like a r*pist (again, based on fucking fictional stories, y'all) - this literal King of Kings and God of All. He is ZEUS. He's not some celebrity that got into a scandal and deserves to be called out for their shitty actions. He is fucking ZEUS, people.
Honestly, my anger is very muted, on this topic. I have a lot of just "I'm so done with this debate" energy. Like, personally, I don't know how Zeus can be so patient with these people, especially after such a long time of them bashing him publicly for no good reason, treating him as though he's some celebrity or something that needs to learn his lesson. Human morality cannot be applied to non-human gods. It just can't. That's simply not how it works. They are not human, and I feel like it's very easy for people to forget that, especially when it comes to debates like these. Zeus - not a human, Apollo - not a human, Hermes - not a human. They are gods. Literal gods. Maybe instead of shitting on gods due to their mythical stories people should be focusing on the humans in today's world that are chasing actual harm - current harm, even. Because frankly, there are more important things to focus on.
I literally love Zeus. He is a fantastic god who literally helped me escape from a wildly abusive person. He is the reason I got out of that situation unharmed spiritually. Zeus is not some cruel god who doesn't give a shit about how other people feel. He is a kind, considerate, and thoughtful leader who holds much wisdom and knowledge from his thousands upon thousands of years reigning as King of the Gods and Olympus. He is not indifferent or disrespectful. He is not cocky or rude. And even with the flaws he may have (since everyone makes mistakes), he is still a god who deserves worship, praise, and acknowledgement for his great deeds. There is SO much Zeus does for humanity, outside of just lightning bolts and weather, and I'm just so exhausted from people who refuse to acknowledge that. Zeus is a damn blessing. He is a fucking King. He deserves respect.
That's all I've got to say for now. I'm not much of an angry person, so it takes a lot of energy for me to be mad about something. Thank you for letting me rant. May Zeus be with you, if you so wish. 💜⚡
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anghraine · 1 year
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I saw a post awhile back that was up in arms at the idea that fandom meta could be considered literary criticism in any sense, without giving much in the way of arguments for why that's wrong beyond "how dare!!! your silly shipping manifesto isn't literary blahblahblah."
It's obviously deeply akin to the gasp! horror! at comparisons of prestigious literature that re-purposes specific characters and events from other sources to fanfic. And the way in which the responses are mostly akin, IMO, is that in nearly all cases, they use vague scorn in the place of substantive argument. The argument is usually phrased along the lines of "how dare!!! your silly A/B/O slash fic isn't literature blahblahblah."
Both arguments (basically the same argument) rely on a) using very specific subtypes of meta/fic that the speaker obviously holds in contempt to stand in for the entirety of the broader genre (e.g., just going with AO3, ~146,000 of its over 10 million works are tagged with A/B/O, while less than half are m/m slash). The point isn't that the genres used are actually representative; rather, they're used to provoke disdain or disgust in place of some kind of coherent criteria for literary criticism/literature that could consistently distinguish fanworks from prestigious works or genres.
I actually agree that some commonly-cited works are not really fanfic (especially religious texts written by adherents of the religion in question), and if you've followed me for awhile, you probably know I have a lot of issues with a ton of popular fandom meta and fanon takes. At the same time, the idea of a hard line between (say) meta and literary criticism in terms of approach or quality just seems kind of absurd to me.
Let's be real, if you're in literary criticism, you know that some of it is really bad, and if you're in fandom, you've probably encountered very insightful meta at some points. There's a lack of quality control as with fanfic, sure, but that doesn't mean that meta is intrinsically inferior or fundamentally different from all forms of literary criticism, just that a higher proportion is likely to have problems that would often (though not always) be caught through peer review. At the same time, it allows people (including literary critics) to reach others without the problems of the journal system (inaccessibility/paywalls, glacial turn-around, etc).
So there are differences on the gatekeeping front, sure. And there are different conventions and certain theoretical approaches that tend to be treated as gospel more often in fandom than in some areas of lit-crit (fandom meta tends strongly towards anti-intentionalism, for instance). I'm not saying that formal literary criticism and fandom meta are customarily identical in style or perspective, but that they are fundamentally related. At the end of the day, they are sustained interpretations of stories, whether they're particularly good ones or not, and the distinction is more of a spectrum than a line anyway. I don't think fanwriters are wrong or mistakenly defensive in seeing a connection there when there so obviously is one.
Additionally, the argument-by-cultural-disdain (in addition to being just generally poor argumentation) is often extremely presentist. It's grounded in contemporary assumptions about the nature of literature, interpretation, and originality, for both meta and fanfic, that are wildly ahistorical when applied to things like early modern English drama. And people who use that argument tend to also be completely uncritical about the modernity of their assumptions, so there's that, too.
Usually, the argument seems to be "and don't mention Shakespeare, that's different" without any evidence or argument for why, beyond sometimes, again, falling back on vague contempt ("so you're saying fanfic is equivalent to Shakespeare now?"). Like, why should originality be a defining quality of literature for some things but not others? Deflecting onto the question of quality doesn't answer that.
(It especially doesn't when you consider that early modern "quality control" for works in English typically involved patronage from aristocrats or being one yourself, and the ability to navigate heavy state censorship—which I assume the "fanfic is not literature, somehow all early modern storytelling of any quality is tho" people are not advocating for.)
Now, I don't personally think Shakespeare et al. wrote fanfic, but for me, it's not a matter of quality but of the fandom context. Fanfic, in my view, intrinsically rises out of fandom, and though it can overlap (sometimes very heavily) with other kinds of derivative works in terms of tropes etc, it has to be part of a fandom's activity (not necessarily Western media fandom, but something recognizable as a fandom) to really "count" as fanfic. It also has to be intended as fiction, even if inspired by real life. Many of the usual examples don't satisfy those criteria for me, so I don't consider them fanfic.
These don't mean that fanfic can't ever qualify as literature, can't be analyzed in literary terms, whatever, but that a lot of other things don't qualify as fanfic. It's a stricter category. And that's my own definition—other people's may differ, though I think mine is pretty common (if often unspoke
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soldier-poet-king · 1 year
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Halfway thru gkcs st Francis book and like. Extremely mixed feelings. Chestertons whole ch 2 historical set up is BIZZARE, I feel like I'm forever cursed to chafe against ahistorical mirages, and yeah maybe he's simplifying for rhetorical effect, but it's not very effective rhetorically and it's just. Bad???? But the actual chapters on my #1 main saint and name sake and tbh just life model???? Are so good???? Chesterton is one of the few ppl I'd trust, tbh, to get Francesco right, to balance the acesticism and joy without falling into Gnosticism 2.0 self flagellation or secular humanism that Misses the Point. Gkc is right when he says you can only understand Francis as a man madly in love. That he is a man broken and humiliated by God to be built up into smthn that takes joy in the absurd miraculous gift of the everyday. Chestertons one of the only ppl I'd trust with that. But his historical framing is just so BIZZARE and also???? Wrong?????
I shouldn't be this up in arms about it but I'm also extremely possessive of Francesco. He's MINE. He's so Personal! My namesake. I hated him so passionately as a child. So violently and aggressively. And it turned into being broken in turn. And a complete 360 flip. A flip, 1x1, where nothing has changed but an undeniable process has occurred. It is about being wildly in love and in hope and not out of ignorance but out of a stubbornness. A grasping with both hands the absurd awe-ful nature of creation. It's about joy deliberately sought.
A Troubadour and a Fool and my whole entire heart and I'm supposed to be calming myself down and doing my practical responsible job (and also taking care of my very uh. health rn.) but instead! I am singing
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larnax · 8 months
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ok im not strong enough. hater mode activate.
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im only so angry about this because its the first time ive ever seen bottom surgery even mentioned in a fandom context and its to shit on it. im gpnna turn into the joker
easy to DIY" this is dumb for the same reason "DIY wheelchair ramps" are dumb. gcs and making hrt both take skill and knowledge the average person does not have. DIY hrt saves lives and is many peoples' only option i am not disagreeing with that but its not your buddy brent making it in his bathtub its someone who has the medical knowledge who just isnt operating in an official capacity. you cannot do it Yourself unless you want to end up injecting olive oil. this is even more true for surgery. do you think you could perform a DIY vaginectomy????? have at least a baseline respect for the people who developed gcs procedures and the people who perform them
"leaves scars" every non op trans person owes me $500USD. i am so fucking tired of people who never bothered to address their internalized ableism/transphobia about ew yuck icky scars making that my problem by loudly announcing how disgusted they are by an extremely normal part of the human experience. there is nothing wrong with having visible scarring and there is nothing wrong with surgical scarring and acting like there is provably makes people avoid procedures that would unambiguously improve their lives
"certain procedures can be risky" aw cmon bud we all know which procedures you mean! pretty please keep fearmongering about how risky bottom surgery is otherwise someone might decide to actually get a surgery which has an extremely normal success rate for surgeries. yes they make you sign a bunch of forms acknowledging the risk thats called Informed Consent and 90% of the complications are true for literally any surgery or literally any surgery on the urethra/genitals. bottom surgery is not some uniquely dangerous procedure
"implants and bottom surgery highly imperfect" every non op trans person owes me $1000USD. would you say this about any other aspect of transition? is there any fucking room in your head for the fact that postop trans people actually exist in real life and could possibly see you talking about how disgusting you find them? because im 1) real and 2) fucking your mother with my Imperfect Dick right now
"doesnt leave scars/looks completely natural" every non op trans person owes me $1500USD. this stupid fucking idea people have that The Natural Body is 1) even a thing and 2) something we should aspire to or protect is so wildly transphobic and ableist that it, too, turns me into the joker. would you say this to an amputee? to someone who had an organ transplant? because people do and its the same bullshit. the right to bodily autonomy includes the right to alter your body! i dont fucking care if i Look Natural(although its worth noting that most people cant actually tell fully healed phallo dicks and natal dicks apart. i went to a urologist and he only realized i was postop when i told him) and it should not be treated as an unambiguously good thing.
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LIKE EVEN THE FUCKING DOCTOR IS NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE MEDICAL BOTTOM SURGERY. olberic had an "averse reaction to medicine" <- directly against canon where he can be healed fine WHOLESALE INVENTED just so that we minimize the amount of people who could theoretically have phalloplasty
also youre lying to yourself and more importantly me if you think ophilia has any medical knowledge whatsoever shes literally a faith healer who cant even deal with poison
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like ok "a wizard did it" is better than literally not even acknowledging some trans people want to "switch their junk" like most people do or arguing that its ahistorical to have any medical transition, However this is just having that so you can present it as the better alternative to the inferior gross medical transition which . go fuck yourself!!! go fuck yourself.
again im mostly so mad about this because when i saw the words "bottom surgery" in a fandom thing i was really really excited because i never get to see even other fans who acknowledge that their favorite characters could be like me! i had a solid 5 seconds of just being ecstatic to be represented and then i actually read the damn thing and it was just more of the fucking same.
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stillness-in-green · 3 years
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Ahistorical, Absurd, and Unsustainable (Introduction and Part One)
An Examination of the Mass Arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front
INTRODUCTION
The title states my premise here: the breezy way My Hero Academia presents and resolves the mass arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front is ludicrous. If taken as presented and allowed to stand without being further addressed, it serves as a breaking point from which the series will be incredibly hard-pressed to recover. Why, you ask?
From a logistical standpoint, it strains credulity. From an ethical standpoint, it suggests deeply troubling problems with the state of Hero Society. From a thematic standpoint, it unravels whole portions of the narrative’s spine. I’ll be looking at each of these facets in turn to discuss the questions they raise which My Hero Academia has not yet seen fit to answer. Many in fandom don’t seem to be thinking about it too hard, so I’d like to lay out—in exhaustive detail—all the reasons I find this plot element so wildly out of touch with causal reality.
Please note that while they are discussed when relevant, this essay is not principally about the named characters in the League of Villains or the erstwhile high command of the Metahuman Liberation Army. The sorts of consequences Shigaraki Tomura or Re-Destro would and should be facing in a courtroom are orders of magnitude beyond what Random Liberation Warrior X would be, but it’s the mass numbers of Random Liberation Warrior Xs that this essay is most concerned with, as they are the ones most in danger of being swept under a rug and forgotten by the series in its current state.
Further, be advised that this essay in its full form is both very long (about 21K words excluding Sources and Further Reading) and will contain extensive discussion of real-life Japan—comparisons to historical events, minutiae of its legal and carceral systems, and general cultural views on criminality. This will include references to imprisonment, government oppression, and incidents of terrorism both real and in the context of My Hero Academia.
Being as it is about quite a recent event in the series, it will also contain heavy spoilers all the way up through the most recent chapter as of this writing, Chapter 310. It likewise contains spoilers for the spin-off series My Hero Academia: Vigilantes up through Chapter 95.
The essay will be posted in parts on tumblr and in full on AO3. For the tumblr posting, I will provide links to other tumblr posts as I reference them; however, as I would like this to actually show up in the tags, outside links containing my sources and further reading will be provided in a separate post following the conclusion of the essay.
Lastly, I spent an entire month writing this as a fan who is sympathetic to the villains in general and the MLA in particular. If your response to the very concept of this essay is anything to the tune of, “Who cares what happens to a bunch of disgusting quirk eugenicists?” know that you and I have radically different views on the MLA, and the role of the justice system in general. You are, of course, welcome to read the essay anyway, but, having said my piece about the MLA and their relationship with quirk supremacy elsewhere, I will not be engaging with arguments or gotchas on that subject here.
PART ONE: The Facts at Hand
Before we get too deep into things, let’s lay out the basic facts: how many people are actually involved in the arrest, as well as some comparisons to real-life events to contextualize that number and provide some referents for the issues the arrest raises.
Re-Destro gives the numbers of the Metahuman Liberation Army as 116,516. A lot of people go on to die in Deika, though we’re never given a solid count. The biggest batch we see killed in a single go are the press of sixty or so people Shigaraki decays, then the sixteen-ish Toga drops, though some of those might possibly have had quirks that allowed them to survive. Any number of people certainly died as well simply in the moments we didn’t see, and who even knows how many were caught in the radius of Shigaraki’s last attack.
Further, there may well have been a measure of organization bleed when the MLA became the PLF (though I imagine trying to leave was a very dangerous proposition, giving an additional reason to stick it out on top of the general cult-like mindset the MLA displays); likewise, I find it hard to believe that there wouldn’t have been some deaths at the Gunga Villa, be it from Gigantomachia’s departure, Geten cutting loose, or combatants—be they hero or comrade—overcompensating somewhat in the middle of a chaotic melee.
I suspect it’s overestimating the depletion, but for the purposes of simplicity, let us call it 115,000 remaining members at the time of the raid.[1]
We are told that, in all, 16,929 people were captured at the villa—just about 17,000. 132 escaped in the confusion; this is a fairly negligible number, save for the fact that it includes high-ranking advisors, but not Machia and those of the Front that were with him.
We are further told, and I quote, “Their bases scattered around the country were hit too, and the sympathizers rounded up.” Horikoshi did not provide any solid numbers for this,[2] but if we’re to assume that it is just the rest of the group (more on the logistics of that bit of spycraft later), “the sympathizers” would be 98,000 additional people.
However, 98,000 may be a significant underestimation. It’s based, after all, on a number Re-Destro cites to describe “warriors lying in wait, ready to rise to action.” This begs the question: is Re-Destro quoting the entire membership of the group, or only those who actually are ready to take action? In other words, does his number account for non-combatants? Is he counting young children? I tend to assume the MLA doesn't have a retirement age as such,[3] but if they do, does his number account for the elderly?
How many more people might be “sympathizers” to the PLF insomuch as they are e.g. the six-month-old infant daughter of an MLA couple? What about the ninety-year-old man in the retirement home whose only real act of war these days is tying up the phone line at City Hall to complain about repressive quirk use laws? How about the fired-up fifteen-year-old that was going to get their official code name next month, just in time to join the first wave of attacks? If he’s being literal in his usage of “warrior,” the actual count of the MLA could easily be twice as high as the number he actually gives.
But okay, maybe Re-Destro’s number does include absolutely everyone. Maybe he’s just being rhetorical—maybe, in his mind, even the six-month-old is waiting to rise to action; she’s just going to have to wait a bit longer than the rest, is all. For simplicity’s sake, let’s stick with the numbers we have: a low-end of 17,000, a high-end of 115,000, captured not merely in a single day, but allegedly in the span of a few hours.
I’m sure I don’t need to stress that that is a lot of people. But how many people is it, practically speaking? Is there a precedent? Anything we can look to for guidance on how this kind of thing would go in real life?
Comparative Analogues
The PLF is tricky to categorize for the purposes of real-life comparison, especially compared to how they’re treated in-universe. In some lights, they resemble a protest movement; in others, a terrorist group. Just looking at the way the government reacts to them—and certainly in terms of their combat capabilities—they might as well be an all-out insurrectionist uprising! Below, I’ll examine a handful of historical incidents that cover that spectrum; they will continue to provide useful reference points throughout the rest of this essay.
The March 15 Incident
In the first half of the 20th century, Japan saw a huge uptick in socialist and communist activity, much to the general dismay of the ruling powers. In response, they passed a series of laws commonly referred to as the Peace Preservation Laws, designed to better enable authorities to suppress political dissent and freedom of speech, particularly that of leftists and labor movements.
The Japanese Communist Party was founded in 1922, but outlawed in 1925. This merely drove members underground, however, from which position they pointed supporters towards the numerous other parties with more legally tolerated leftist policies that had cropped up in the wake of the JCP’s dissolution. Following the February 1928 General Election (the first in Japan held with universal male suffrage), those parties supported by the JCP saw enormous gains in representation in Japan’s National Diet. Alarmed, the Prime Minister declared the mass arrest of known communists and suspected communist sympathizers. Accordingly, on March 15, 1,600 people were arrested throughout Japan.
Over the course of twenty years, some 70,000 people would be arrested under the auspices of the Peace Preservation Laws, the majority of them in 1925 through 1936. The laws would eventually be repealed by American occupation forces after WWII, and the JCP allowed to operate openly once again.
The Rice Riots
In 1918, an inflation spiral had driven the price of rice out of control, exacerbating economic insecurity and hardship. Farmers were being paid a pittance of the market value of their crop by rice buyers and government agents, while urban consumers were being charged an exorbitant price for the staple food, as well as a great many other consumer goods, and their own rents. In response, a series of riots ripped across Japan in late July through September. Beginning with peaceful protesting in a small fishing town in Toyama Prefecture, the unrest escalated to involve riots, strikes, looting, even bombing in demonstrations that reached major cities like Tokyo and Osaka. The scope was and remains unprecedented in modern Japanese history, seeing some 25,000 people arrested.
The Sarin Gas Attacks
If you’ve heard of any of them, it’s probably this one. On March 20, 1995, members of the cult Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on five different Tokyo Metro trains in the middle of morning rush hour. Thirteen people were killed and over 5500 injured, about a fifth of them moderately to severely so. If not for small errors in the production of the gas and the rudimentary distribution method thereof, loss of life might easily have been catastrophically higher.
Aum Shinrikyo was a doomsday cult, but the motives for that particular attack were much baser than bringing about the Apocalypse: at the time, the organization was under police investigation for its involvement in the kidnapping of a public official. Its leader, Asahara Shoukou, hoped that the attack would divert police’s attention from a planned raid.
It did not do so; police executed raids on numerous of the cult’s compounds, arresting many of its senior members both immediately and over the course of the following months as the investigation unfolded. In all, over 200 members were arrested of an organization that counted its membership prior to the attack as numbering 11,000 people in Japan.[4]
The February 26 Incident
There have been a significant number of uprisings and violent protests in Japan’s modern history; when looking for a representative example, I focused my attention on the military coups of the 1930s and 40s, largely because they took place in what was closest to the modern Japanese legal context.[5] Of that subset, I chose the February 26 Incident for the severity of the government response. The others disintegrated before they could be properly carried out or were met with sympathy for the dissidents despite the obvious illegality of their actions. The February 26 Incident, however, was when they finally became too troublesome to dismiss, and the Emperor himself ran out of patience.
In this period, the Japanese military had become drastically factionalized into two main groups—an ultra-nationalist group, largely powered by a group of young officers, which supported the Emperor and wanted to purge Japan of Western influences, and a more moderate group mainly defined by their opposition to the above faction.[6] Occurring in 1936, the February 26 Incident involved the young officers, believing that they had tacit approval from higher-ranked officers of their own faction, launching assassination attempts against the nationalists’ most prominent enemies in the government (six assorted Ministers and former Ministers in the Emperor’s Privy Council and the Diet) and a bid to seize control of the administrative center of the capital and the Imperial Palace, after which they planned to demand the dismissal of more officers and the selection of a new Cabinet.
The seven ringleaders had convinced eighteen other officers to lend their forces to the attempted coup, a total of around 1,500 men, calling themselves the Righteous Army. Several of their assassination attempts failed, however, and while they succeeded at taking the Prime Minister’s residence and the Ministry of War, they did not manage to secure the Palace. The outraged Cabinet demanded the Emperor take a hard line with the rebels, and by the 29th, the Righteous Army was surrounded by 20,000 government troops and 22 tanks. In this hopeless situation, the officers dismissed their troops; two committed suicide (a third attempted it unsuccessfully) and the remainder were arrested by military police.
International Examples
For obvious reasons, I prefer to limit my examples to events that happened in Japan. However, I will also be briefly referring to a few international incidents of mass arrest, taking place in India, the U.S., and Egypt, respectively.
In the following parts, I'll use these facts and comparative analogues to take a closer look at what readers were told became of the Paranormal Liberation Front.
Part Two
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Footnotes (Part One)—
[1] Over three months’ time, they likely gained some new blood also, simply in the course of their usual recruitment tactics. You don’t get an underground organization that size by sitting back and waiting for people to come to you, after all. I don’t know a practical way to calculate that, though, so just bear it in mind for when I talk about new members later.
[2] Possibly because he was aware that 17,000 people captured in one fell swoop was difficult enough to swallow without adding on more than five times that number.
[3] We do, after all, see some very aged people fighting in the streets of Deika.
[4] They were considerably more international than you may have heard. They had 50,000 members at the time, some 30,000 of them based in Russia.
[5] The Meiji Constitution was ratified in 1889; universal suffrage (for men) was granted in 1925. The modern constitution was enacted in 1947.
[6] More moderate, mind, in the context of the Imperial Japanese military. Neither of these factions had any time whatsoever for leftist movements, hence all those suppressive crackdowns.
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queenlua · 3 years
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rambling about The Study Of History TM or whatever; got longish so it’s under the cut
i’m a little “eh” when people wax poetic about how studying history shows us that “people have always been people,” people are the same everywhere, etc
not because i disagree!  obviously we have been homo sapiens for a very long time, and to deny the commonality between you and some ancient peasant farmer, between you and some dude across the ocean, etc, cheapens your understanding of yourself & your place in the world
but!
quite often, people end up presupposing, or ahistorically projecting onto the past, a value system / framing / worldview that those people would not have recognized, that those people may well have found incomprehensible.  being an atheist in ancient times generally meant something very different than it would mean now, for instance; i always found it a little uncomfortable when new atheism would gesture at atheists from hundreds of years prior, as though they were both perfectly describing the same sort of thing.  (particularly when e.g. the "atheists” themselves wouldn’t have described themselves in those ways; i vaguely remember some blog post series about how certain older quakers / sufis were actually atheists, and like, yes, based on their writing you could argue that, but they would not describe themselves that way, and also they were in a much different intellectual milieu, were not reacting against modern fundamentalist christianity, etc... just seems polite to at least acknowledge those differences) 
or like, e.g., when contemporary conservatives argue that the judiciary is some fundamental tension between “originalists” and “activists,” and framing it as though it’s some age-old dispute, they’re erasing the history of how that framing came to be (which is quite recent even by US history standards!).  and to accept that framing when talking about how e.g. early-1800s justices would’ve understood their role is just incorrect.  gotta try and understand them on their own terms
((for the full comedy version of this, check out neopagan arguments about the question of animal sacrifice, in which modern practitioners will earnestly argue that somehow Odin nowadays is totally cool with modern conceptions of animal rights & welfare, and this doesn’t conflict with older understandings at all due to [insert weird theological reasoning here], even though ancient Norsemen would... obviously disagree... lmao))
like, obviously shouldn’t go Shitty Pop Historian and make lazy/essentialist/orientalist/etc claims about “other” and/or ancient peoples; i roll my eyes into the back of my skull whenever there’s a take that’s like “actually [group] is like this due to [foreign word referring to some religious/cultural concept from like five hundred years ago],” as though you can reduce a huge swath of people to some lame buzzwords, as though you don’t need to bother understanding them in their full cultural/economic/etc context
but what’s exciting to me is, even though people are always the same, the kinds of societies/frameworks/values we can construct can vary wildly, which means if there’s something about society that sucks, it’s not necessarily an eternal thing; we can change it, and i think that rules
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writingwithcolor · 4 years
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I'm writing a lighthearted story about lady cowboys which will include queer and PoC rep. However, I know the concept of the Western frontier is colonialist because it was originally indigenous land, and I plan on having one or two Native characters (likely Cherokee). How do I address this as a white writer, without speaking over/for Native people and without detracting from the lightheartedness of the story? Would it be better not to address it at all, or would that be irresponsible?
Addressing Native Issues in Cowboy Story
Cherokee is probably the wrong tribe to pull depending on the time period. In the 18th century is when they switched from being a mostly Eastern tribe to a plains one, and the area is filled with a much different mix of tribes. You could be dealing with everything from Plains to Southwest, which is hundreds of potential peoples. 
People pull from Cherokee because it’s popular in Hollywood, and because they’re the largest name, and I get a little sick of everyone pulling from Cherokee when there are so many other tribes to pull from. Especially for highly regional pieces in regions they didn’t always live in.
Cowboy history is interesting. It’s an intermingling of Mexican, Black, and Indigenous culture, and the reason it’s cowboys was infantization of the PoC involved. 
I noticed you didn’t ask about the cowladies, which I take it to mean you planned on them being white—this is part of the colonialist narrative that is, at its core, at least partially ahistorical; you’re more likely to have Mexican, Indigenous, or Black cowladies than you are to have white. So changing the ethnicity of your leads will help add a different twist, from “colonizer exploiting” to “marginalized person trying to survive.”
I’d say it’d be irresponsible to not address Native issues if this story is meant to be grounded in history. Elaney has a guide on cowboys that you can start with. There are also sources such as this (which is unfortunate in its use of “Indians”, but this is an edu), this piece on African American cowboys, and another piece on Native cowboys for you to just get a basis on what the population was actually like.
Ranching provided some wealth. It provided a lot of land displacement. It provided hunting/raiding targets that helped offset the land displacement and created a lot of wars and feuds. If you want to keep it more lighthearted, I’d love to see the skills Natives had with the profession respected. 
But, all of this advice is dependent on what time period within cowboy history you’re pulling from. Is it the 1500s, where it’s basically exclusively Hispanic and fairly contained to Mexico (where Texas now is) and the main conflict is Apache versus Mexican? Or is it in the late end of the period when the government is involved and outlaws and the typical Hollywood cowboy, but more Natives have started ranching for economic purposes/to keep land?
The advice will change wildly depending on where within that 350~ year period you’re dealing with. There are so many different contexts and pieces at play in the wild west that it’s impossible to narrow it down into something more useful. 
So nail down a time period, do the appropriate research into the state of colonialism at the time, and come back with something more specific. 
~ Mod Lesya
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hoochieblues · 3 years
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100 Days of Writing: Day 31
What's a pet peeve you have, that you focus on to do differently in your own stories?
for @the-wip-project 
Probably I have two main peeves, I think. Further to wittering from yesterday: I don’t like perfection in characters. Having a character who’s a badass is great, having them be the best at something or capable of great insight is fine... but I don’t get excited about characters who lack flaws, insecurities etc. 
Similarly, I want to see characters earn redemption, work through things, and make decisions I wouldn’t, but which make sense in the circumstance, or even be railroaded because of their failings, hubris, or just specific traits/experiences. 
In my Feasting on Dreams rewrites, Meri is a character thrust into dealing with human culture and politics (fuck you, Eamon) in ways she absolutely has no ability to handle.  
After the events at Redcliffe, she has no interest in heading north to Denerim to seek out Brother Genitivi. She believes the party should be focusing on the treaties and the Blight, but gets railroaded because Teagan and Isolde don’t listen, and Alistair’s hyperfixating on saving Eamon, because clearly there’s no possible way anyone could take charge of Redcliffe without him. (facepalm)
There’s a couple of scenes I’ve been expanding where she quite literally is at a disadvantage bc she can’t read a map, doesn’t know the geography of the area - why would she, she lived in a few square miles of Denerim? - and has no background in logistics. She gets completely ignored and pushed aside, is steaming mad about it... but has no way of arguing bc she’s aware of her own limitations. (Again pursuant to yesterday’s question, I also realised that, while I originally wrote Meri to be just barely literate - a dent to her pride, bc she can read better than most city elves she knows - she can be read as mildly dyslexic, especially factoring some of her other processing things. I don’t know if I’m going to bring that out yet.)
This is - in part - what fuels her tantrum in the Brecilian Forest, where her refusal to listen and steadfast determination to stick to something she wants and believes in totally blows up in her face. oof. 
The dyslexia point leads me to Peeve #2. RESEARCH. I think there’s a lot of room - especially in fic, where people are often exploring AUs and timelines creatively, and are generally not able to avail themselves of tons of editors and betas - to handwave a lot of things. 
When I started the FoD rewrites, I spent ages looking at the DA2 Grey Warden armour and trying to work out how the fuck to describe something so simultaneously cool-looking but wildly ahistorical/impractical. I then thought, ‘fuck it, just hc something that works and stick to that’. Because we die like creators, goddamn it. 
I have a postgrad thing in medieval history. I can tell you the difference between a brigandine and an arming jack without having to use google, but not everyone can and that’s fine. 9/10 times it won’t even matter. 
Thing is, where it’s relevant to the plot or description hinges on it, incongruities from iffy or lacking research get to me (yes, I assume I am wildly fun at parties; I haven’t been to one in a long time. Can’t think why. I’m also super fun to watch movies with.), while writing that packs in the world-building and solid research gives me so much immersion and serotonin, ungh. 
Once, I wrote a thing that involved a MC going to prison. A reader asked if I’d had a friend/family member inside, or if I’d worked in the system myself. At that time I hadn’t, it was all google, but you can bet I screenshotted that damn review and used it as motivation for a really long time. 
Even if I’m the only person who knows that I sat down and worked out the minutiae of the world building/research with a calculator and a pencil, I still know. And if just one person gets the same immersion kick from it that I do, that makes me happy. 
It doesn’t mean I think it’s the only way to do anything - just as having a super badass MC who has no flaws is a beautiful, cathartic thing - but it’s what I like. 
And, continuing the theme of me whining petulantly a lot in these posts: Imma do what I want. Hah.
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clove-pinks · 3 years
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Top 5 historical fiction characters?
I'm going to attempt to answer this one since I don't want anon to think that I'm blowing them off (or that the ask never went through, knowing tumblr), but I'm really struggling to answer since I don't read much in the way of historical fiction. And does it even count if it's someone's fictional take on a very real historical person whose character and personality is known? (If it does, I like how both John Wilson and Kristina Gerhmann have written James Fitzjames).
I have to dig deep into the sands of time to remember historical fiction that I've read and liked. The most recent historical fiction that I've read is by Frederick Marryat, and as much as I love his Napoleonic-era novels that are based on his lived experiences, as a historical fiction writer he is just Bad. Like many otherwise talented authors are, because I think it's challenging to set something in The Past without being wildly ahistorical and/or leaning into the purple prose. It's a difficult blend of heavy-lifting research, empathy, and imagination.
I remember enjoying Pat Barker's historical novel Regeneration, which is about the First World War, and I want to say the character of Billy Prior who is an officer from a lower-class background, but it has been like 20 years since I read this book. (The movie adaptation is also good, but the second book in the Regeneration Trilogy disappointed me and I gave up on it.)
An equally long time ago, when I was apparently on a WWI kick, I enjoyed Kim Newman's horror/alternate history novel The Bloody Red Baron. I can't think of specific characters but it was very well-written and I enjoyed it in spite of my general antipathy to vampires, who I think are used too often as boring cliches. (In case it wasn't obvious, I am an ancient xennial and I had to live through the corny vampire craze of the 90s).
I have tried to find—don't laugh—War of 1812 romance novels, but everything I've found in this highly niche genre looks very meh. It's always about the Spirited Young Woman and her oddly modern outlook on life and never about the soldiers. If anyone has any recommendations I'm open to suggestions.
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benlaksana · 7 years
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Hope and hopelessness
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I grew up as a Catholic, went through the rituals of baptism and even catechism. Which up to this day I’m not entirely sure what that actually means. This just shows how much of a Catholic I am. To be honest I never really understood why I went through all that, but I guess peer pressure can often take you to places you never intended to go to. This remains true to this day, although to a lesser extent. I think.
Interestingly enough I consider my family as half-heartedly religious. By that I mean, the only person I considered religious in my family was my father. Sunday churches, prayers before dinner, my dad was central in reminding us to do these religious chores. Everyone else just went with the flow of the spiritual (and moral) ideals of the man of the house.   
Although I was never particularly religious, and have now perhaps shaken off whatever Catholic/Christian labels I have left in me (not that I had much to begin with that is), I did always know though based on this religious upbringing that I was a minority in Indonesia. The obligatory religious identity written on our national identity cards constantly reminded me of this. However, I didn’t at that time understand the implications of having such an identity even if it was purely administrative purposes.
However, to be honest, my experiences of growing up as a minority didn’t necessarily make me feel like a minority. Even if most of my schooling that I went through in Indonesia, which amounts to a hefty 11 years of my youth, were mostly in private Catholic schools, the schools and universities were open to non-Catholics. And so, I made friends, very good friends with non-Catholics, non-Christians, and of course with many Muslims. The predominant religion in Indonesia.
This was never an issue for me. As my own late grandfather from my mother’s side was a Muslim and a huge chunk of my family up until this day are Muslims. The majority-minority labels and the baggage that comes with it were not non-existent but just unimportant in my life. It was a bit foreign or even odd if someone were to bring it up trying to solidify a magical boundary between us and them. Religion was never a hindrance towards building family ties, friendship or even my own personal pursuit in finding love. I think I can honestly say that building relationships with people of differing religious backgrounds was just normal. Mundanely normal.
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I had the naivety (and to be honest I think I still continue to do so) that the difference in personal religious beliefs could always be transcended by the realization of how as human beings we are fundamentally no different from each other. Physically, emotionally and first and foremost existentially. Everyone had blood coursing through their veins, feeding their minds and hearts that gives birth to emotions that we all can understand and relate to. And everyone has and will continue to ask, some through openly written pieces and public discourses, some secretly during their morning showers, of the meaning of life or how to have a meaningful life or variations of this question.
Basically, I just saw religious differences as inconsequential in building relationships, again be it romantic or platonic, as we all are tormented by the same wish to understand our existence, our individual importance in a vast sea of people.
This somewhat fatalist view of diversity is I guess the reason why I felt that I could connect, befriend, be respected, and be truly loved by all regardless of their religious beliefs. Which then made me feel part of something bigger than myself. I had a sense of belonging with the society, my Indonesian society. My approach to religious diversity was of course, I soon found out, not shared by all, not even many.
Fast forward this a few years later and it is overtly apparent that Indonesia is embroiled in sectarian tensions and conflicts and it turns out, to my dismay, has historically always been that way. Perhaps not as alarming as today but nonetheless it is nothing new.
In the past few years, I’ve witnessed how some of my personal relationships with friends, neighbours, family, have changed. Outlooks on life, social values and morals have been reshaped through a more conservative and many times segregated lens. Collective ideas or wishes of where Indonesia should be headed have become vastly different. A widening gap of the social imagination imagined by the divided imagined community.
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I find it sad if not tragic that my own academic research only reaffirms this, and it seems that Rara’s research so far also confirms this.
Truthfully, at times like this, I feel disconnected, disenchanted, alienated & most definitely I feel powerless. I feel that my connection with this nation-state called Indonesia, that my citizenship, my legal, cultural, emotional connection with the land I was born in is useless and pointless.
And I write this in English, not in my so-called native tongue of Indonesian. With the reason being English is the language I grew up with (due to the privilege of having a highly-educated family). English has become my most fluent language, the one that I am most comfortable with, it is the language I think in. If I were to use Indonesian in speaking, my brain would take a few precious seconds translating it before sputtering it out. It has helped me though to listen more, deep listening, that it in itself is quite positive I reckon. Especially living in a society where people are wanting more to be heard. If I were to use Indonesian for writing, it is a tremendously taxing effort, thankfully for this I have Rara to help me edit many of my writings. And I truly understand that by using English as my main communicating language I am alienating myself even further.
I am a minority in many ways aside from my ‘legal religion’ or my ideas on life and society. 
I do though find the innocence of many Indonesians amusing if not briefly alluring when they talk how beautiful Indonesia’s natural scenery is, or how diversely unique Indonesia is, or how resource rich Indonesia is blessed with and most certainly how patriotic Indonesians are with their red and white flags. Often quite excessively. Sometimes even drawing from historical footage of our brave forefathers fighting against Dutch and Japanese colonialism to make their point. They all seem to be blissfully unaware of the deep-seated issues continuously dividing Indonesians. Issues of religious and social conservatism, ahistorical understandings and normalized injustices just to name a few, so deeply ingrained within the consciousness of many.
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Some might say then that ignorance is bliss. But then I would think that we would then be unaware how often unseen structural forces governs our lives. We would live life, at many times in anger, sadness or even despair yet oblivious of its deep structural causes. Then if that is the case, does knowledge of which give us the impenetrable sight to see these determining hands of our lives, also provide us with the pleasure of knowing such a thing? Does knowing give us hope? Is hope essentially about not only knowing more of the conditions in which we live in but also by knowing these conditions we would then find some form of solution that gives us hope in return. 
I feel more of a minority today than when I was in high school or university which come to think of it was more than 10 years ago. To have gained the knowledge to see how remnants of colonialism, a gripping hold of state capitalism, seeping neoliberalism, persistent feudalism, ever-growing fundamentalism, consuming consumerism, and a dumbing education system have all been rolled into one. This knowledge is either damning or enlightening or a sad mixture of both, reflecting nothing more than the contradictory nature of the human being. It is not just the condition of which my society is in that I often weep for, but the lack of progress within these shameful areas that disheartens me. I do in many way feel hopeless.
I am sure Indonesia will become “makmur” or wealthy in the near future. Economists have prophesied this, partially thanks to our abundance in population and our unhinged consumeristic lifestyle. But the increase of wealth does not automatically translate into a more critical, inclusive, democratic citizen, which we desperately need in a precarious time such as now. We would need much more than wealth. Nor does Indonesia’s damning current education system provide such a thing. Those who only actively support such a system, in whatever they do, I only see them as accomplices in preserving the uncritical state of Indonesia’s citizens.
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What I then struggle with now is the constant oscillation between hope and hopelessness, the comprehension and acceptance of my current reality and the possibility of some kind of better future. I am looking for a more consistent form of hope.
Come to think of it, it would be foolish for me to define the singular nature or source of hope. Hope I’ve come to realize, can be one, it can be many, it can move wildly from one to another. It can evolve from one to many, or be reduced from many to one. Hope is everything that gives value to one’s soul. 
I guess this is where my fusion of social sciences, which I understand is becoming more grounded in Marxist-Freirean views on critical citizenship, and engaged Buddhism kicks in. Where I’ve noticed over the years has become a constant endeavour to find consensus between the two (liberation theology of revolutionists from South America is a clear influence to this though). As what gives value to one’s life, to my life, is what I consider to be deeply personal, a deep insight into the self yet at the same time intertwined with being more empathetically responsive to my socio-political milieu.
However, while my interest and empathy towards society is one of the main driving force of my social activities, what gives me hope to act towards societal injustices resides within my personal relationships. Especially my relationship with Rara. This I’ve noticed can become an issue. I often would think what it would be like if she is no longer here with me? What would happen to me?
I am afraid to lose Rara, as my life clearly rotates around her presence. That is why I fear the inevitable. What do you do when you have the experiential knowledge that life will end? What do you do with this understanding? What do you do when you try to escape from this, and realize that you will only eventually return to this. That there is no escape, only temporary forgetfulness or deliberate denial. What if I were the one to pass away? What would happen to Rara?
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Rara is perhaps not only my source of hope, but she is hope itself. It is what the anthropologist Michael D. Jackson, while studying the Kuranko tribe of Sierra Leone, calls on alternative names of hope. Rara is the alternative name of hope for me. She is what gives value and meaning in my life. Other issues, I can clearly attest to this, are secondary.
I do though realize I ask these questions because I am traumatized, greatly traumatized by my father’s quick and sudden death 5 years ago. And I’ve realized it has been that long and I have yet to move on from it. I guess I’ve come to accept that there is no magic cure for grief, no magic drug that can easily lift this burdensome pain away. You end up just living with it, carrying it everywhere, every time. During your highest and proudest moments in life, during the lowest, most depressing moments in life. Both of which amplifies grief. One through the desire to share your achievements with your loved one, whom you then realize is no longer here. The other is when you have nothing and wish your dad, who you realize is no longer here to come back for a brief moment and give you a pat in the back or a nice simple encouraging warm hug. And let us not also forget that we carry grief most often in the everyday mundanity of life. This is why grief is excruciatingly oppressive.
But until another excruciating day comes, I’ll be carrying this hope close with me wherever I go, and whatever I do. My work has to have value and meaning and for it to have value and meaning it has to come from a place of value and meaning. I remain hopeful of the world and of Indonesia and humanity in general because hope is the only thing that keeps us all from being pointless.
And watching the world pass by, at times with elongated sighs, I genuinely understand how easy it is to fall prey to the bottomless pit of futility.
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Rereading what I just wrote, that probably didn’t make any sense, but hey at least I finally updated my blog after a year even if it was just unfinished thoughts.
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vardasvapors · 7 years
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A meme ask almost prompted me to give this long tangential answer, but I had the presence of mind to refrain from that and put it here instead:
On the topic of offbeat ideas about Numenorean society, and by extension, an offbeat but by no means unheard-of idea about society in earlier Arda in general, I headcanon thus: Numenor was the first society to invent real libraries! Especially, public lending libraries.
In the real world, the history of libraries and library loans is long and complicated. But Arda sure as hell bears little resemblance to real life history - which is kind of the whole point of the setting being Arda! Alternate and convergent explanations for history and the present day, with each one resting on wildly different constructions of reality. See, in Arda, my headcanon is that all throughout the Years of the Trees and the First Age, libraries of any sort weren’t really a thing, and even written lore wasn’t really much of a thing. Dwarves in the First Age didn’t let most non-dwarves come into their halls, and also wrote a huge proportion of their lore in non-mobile stone engravings - the walls of their cave cities, steles - and in systems of non-text semiotics via their craftwork. Elves both of ME and Aman were largely oral societies and writing was kind of, extra, either for small-potatoes practical communication or for really fancy stuff (this is just fun extrapolation given the immortals-with-perfect-memory thing). And so were the Edain for the most part (I think this is more canon, as a big part of the history of humankind in Arda is that the ancestors of the edain abruptly stopped passing down a certain cluster of oral traditions shortly before they came to Beleriand, which left the later humans with significant gaping holes in their history regarding the Fall etc).
Until, of course, the speeded-up clusterfuck of wars and mass death starting with the Bragollach.  As the whole Beleriand debacle sped up through the Nirnaeth and the kinslayings and on into the War of Wrath, people began frantically writing stuff down and keeping haphazard hoards of it here and there, Nargothrond and Gondolin, Doriath and, especially, Sirion (Dirhavel was a BIG proponent of this due to having a deep appreciation for the idea of information being lost via death, which is why the Narn i Hin Hurin has so much more internal consistency than the Quenta Silmarillion whose writing was....lets say not nearly as well-organized, and Elwing and by extension the bb!twins were mad for Dirhavel.) And then carting anything that survived off into Ossiriand after/during the War of Wrath. SO. Very little written lore at all before this time.
In the early Second Age, of course there would be a huge amount of work in Middle Earth among the groups who migrated from Beleriand, to get peoples’ knowledge gathered up, written down, etc. But there’s lots of immortal elves, lots of oral tradition, lots of unconnected disparate populations, etc, and also ME is kind of a disaster zone due to the aforementioned continent-destroying war. Low resources, low organization, lots of problems and probably violence to juggle, high strife, high scatter, high danger. Plus, there is still plenty of conflict and enemy populations, to make security and barriers to access important to keeping precious records safe. So just gathering and compiling all the lore, or writing it down in the first place, would be the big challenge in ME.
But Numenor! Numenor, otoh, is a peaceful island paradise with almost no danger and more resources than anyone needs, with a single pretty unified human population under a single king’s rule. The people born there live a very long time, the men don’t need to do any fighting, children are few per family, the childbirth and child-rearing period takes up only a small fraction of womens’ lifetimes, and everyone has a whole ton of free time after the first stage of building and establishing communities and cities is done. Plus they’re friends with Tol Eressëa. This is when the second-generation Numenoreans decide to do a huge push to get an army of scholars and librarians to get everything written down, organized, catalogued, and made accessible to everyone, since humans, unlike elves, can’t just live forever and remember everything they’ve heard, and need to work as a relay race, maintaining and building on the work of their predecessors in order for information to remain intact. And given how much time and wealth just about everyone has and how good life is for the whole population, it’s actually logistically feasible (even without (before? Numenor is firmly ahistorical) the printing press) to make multiple copies of many tomes of various types of lore and just let people borrow them whenever without a big security deposit beforehand - just return them in a set time okay!
Of course this was all restricted later on when control of information became super important in order to control a population through control of the narrative of the Numenoreans’ history, but well, at least the concept caught on elsewhere!
By which I mean, of course Elros personally decided to make them, and of course Elrond deliberately ripped him off in Rivendell much later. What else did you expect from me, man.
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