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ofcowardiceandkings · 3 years

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Can I get you to infodump about the danelaw because I literally only know about it from crusader kings 3 and much as I love paradox idk how well history gets distilled into a management game

Kthx have a good day

this took me so long to get to APOLOGIES

i've kind of cherry-picked important and interesting bits without writing a whole book or something so here goes lol

first off its important to note that the Danelaw in and of itself was a VERY brief spit of time which was also constantly in flux !! it lasted less than 100 years sandwiched between the start of the Norse invasions and the ousting of a king (and his death), then it was only another 100 years until the Norman invasion, it was a Wild time

ALSO i'll mention too that the term "Danelaw" was probably not a contemporary term. It's first recorded mention as Dena lage in the 11th century, over 50 years after what's now considered the Danelaw had dissolved. It's a term used to distinguish the self-governed Norse-held areas of Britain from those under West Saxon or Mercian law, literally The Danish Law and wasn't used to describe the geographic area until a little later.

It's also worth mentioning that while certain parts of the Danelaw were maintained as kingdoms or client kingdoms of some form (namely the Kingdoms of York and East Anglia), a whole lot of what was part of Mercia or Essex was left to its own devices under Jarldoms of the larger towns (boroughs/burhs). What was called The Five Boroughs of the Danelaw were a very important area in their own right, constituting a strong alliance between the Jarldoms of Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford. The area south of there was also under various Jarldoms (like Cambridge and Northampton) but they weren't as influential or closely knit as the Five. Technically speaking, the Danelaw is considered a Confederacy under the Kingdom of Denmark, but even aside from the existing peoples, the Norse people living there weren't all from Denmark by any stretch. After it's reunification under Alfred, the whole of England did become part of the Kingdom of Norway for a while under Cnut the Great, before his death split the various territories again, though England was still under Scandinavian influence of some degree all the way up to the Norman Conquest.

one of the more interesting things about the whole affair is that the culture and languages of the Scandinavian Norse and Anglo-Saxons were actually very similar as they had come from the same core groups of people not too long before. the speech was mutually intelligible at a basic level, both parties used a form of the Younger Futhark in some part, a lot of cultural concepts were the same. Aside from the Norse being an outside force, the only big difference was religion. The Saxon kingdoms had been entirely Christian for at least 100 years, despite the Saxons themselves being an interrupting force in the spread of Christianity through Britain even from during late Roman occupation.

Probably the EASIEST thing that made it all compatible other than the language was the similarity between the legal systems of the territories. For example the concept of compensatory damages existed in both places (weregild, literally man-gold), the Norse land division wapentake was more or less interchangeable with the Anglo-Saxon hundred, and so on. A lot of vague traditions held by Saxon peoples were continued in their own fashion, and other than the obvious upheavals of new rulers and raiding parties, not much else actually changed. The descendants of the united Scandinavian armies also made it a relatively peaceful area considering the remaining Anglo-Saxon kingdoms regarded them as squatters, but their closer shared culture and remaining unity actually made it pretty easy for the loose alliances of the Danelaw to stand up to the Anglo-Saxon pushback until it was mostly just Wessex left, with King Alfred in hiding somewhere in the Somerset marshes. It's really quite astounding Alfred bounced back to unify England at all after that on the face of it.

the geographic spread is also an interesting thing ! the first recorded Viking raid is in 793 at Lindisfarne monastery off the coast of modern Northumberland (VERY north) but the first recorded wintering of Norse peoples intending to stay long-term was actually in East Anglia (VERY south). What the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles called "The Great Heathen Army" marched the length of England to go and take advantage of a civil war happening back in Northumbria, where they captured and sacked York (Angle: Eoforwic, Norse: Jórvík) in 865. This established the START of the Danelaw as its usually measured, which spanned from 865 to 954.

It actually took only 10 years from the sacking of York for most of the Danelaw to become the Danelaw as most of its maps depict at its maximum, and for Alfred of Wessex to make peace with yet another settled Norse group in Dorset. Also! its worth noting that Alfred only became the king of Wessex after his brother Æthelred died in 871, well after the Dane forces had already taken hold of the Kingdom of York, the Kingdom of East Anglia, and a significant chunk of Mercia. He was of course already involved in the affairs but he did get chucked in at the deep end lol

Part of the peace keeping the re-established Kingdom of Wessex under Alfred and the Danelaw at large under fairly steady and peaceful borders for its more stable periods (definitely a relative term) from 878 , was down to Guthram and Alfred's agreements. After Alfred came out of his hiding in exile with an army, and forced the Danes to surrender, Guthram agreed to be baptised with Alfred as his godfather, and also agreed to go back to his Kingdom in East Anglia. In 884 Guthram made a run of it again and attempted to take Kent, but in being unsuccessful he signed the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, which basically established the formal border of the Danelaw and let them self-rule if they did keep to themselves. It wasn't until 902 that shenanigans started happening again, but considering how generally tumultuous the entire period was, just shy of 20 years of formalised peace wasn't bad going.

Eiríkr Haraldsson (or Eric Bloodaxe) was a pretty obscure guy for a lot of his life considering he was definitely Norwegian nobility. It's thought he may have been King of Norway for a short time, and maybe Northumbria twice over - though definitely for the second time when he was ousted from Northumbria - which essentially brought the end of the Danelaw proper. He's mentioned in a LOT of texts (Egils / Orkney / Icelandic / Norwegian sagas, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. potentially Historia Norwegiæ, Annals of the Four Masters, Annals of Clonmacnoise), but he's still a bit of a vague figure somehow. He's noted as being a son of Harald, and the Icelandic and Norwegian version of events is that he was one of Harald Fairhair's many sons, although some people think he may have been the son of Harald Bluetooth. He DID definitely exist though, the last Norse minted coins in York are stamped with his name. Norse Northumbria and York was very strongly tied to the Norse Kingdom of Dublin (which lasted a LONG time by comparison), but upon his being removed in 954 the hope of the lands becoming a two-part kingdom fell apart.

The end of the Viking Era itself is often cited as being the defeat of King Harald (Hardrada) Sigurdsson of Norway at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. He had landed hoping to retake York and the English crown as a whole with the help of King Harald Godwinson's brother Tostig, but the English forces managed to stop them. This actually probably helped out William the Conqueror (also of Norse decendant, Norseman - Norman) efforts less than a month later to take England, since the English armies had already dealt with the same thing and were mostly in the north away from the attacking forces from Normandy. Under William's Norman rule there were a few more attempts by other Scandinavian rulers to retake or at least plunder York, but the efforts never went very far. The last serious raids on England from Scandinavia came from Eystein II of Norway, who took advantage of The Anarchy (a civil war in Norman territories over a succession crisis between 1135 and 1153) to plunder the East Coast.

OKAY i'll stop waffling now but here we go jfkddfjdk

i hope this was interesting enough and something like what you were after instead of just some word puke gjfkdkjfd !!!

#meraxes-of-new-albion #asks #long post #history #rory's ramblings

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docholligay · 4 years

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Chinese Food in The American West

One of the things I frequently come across as a student of the American West* is that people get most of their information from movies and TV and then act like they know things. Wyatt Earp was not a Lawful Good champion who always did his level best even when it was hard to know. (You want Seth Bullock or Bass Reeves). Racism was far more complicated than white vs not white (I’ve talked about this EXTENSIVELY in Strange Empire, so I’m not going to bore you here**).

And they didn’t just eat steak. In fact, they rarely ate steak.

Steak as cowboy food isn’t INACCURATE, but it is MODERN. From about the early 1900s on, you had less and less drives and more and more ranchers who were staying put, with less and less hands needed, and so food was grabbed less “on the go.” Cows could be slaughtered and used to feed the family, allowing for more opportunities for things like steak, yes, but also things like chili, a play on sauerbraten, southern-style biscuits. The cattle drives were a real blend of culture and race, and a lot of what we have left as “Western food” owes a great deal to that.

And if we leave the cattle drives and head into the towns of the American West, as we will today, we find things like oysters, pies, and various things like that. Far more well-heeled than the general expectation.

I mean, here’s the menu from the Occidental Saloon circa the late 1880s:

Soups

Chicken Giblet and Consumme, with Egg

Fish

Columbia River Salmon, au Beurre Noir

Relieves

Filet a Boeuf, a la Financier

Leg of Lamb, Sauce, Oysters

Cold Meats

Loin of Beef, Loin of Ham, Loin of Pork, Westphalia Ham, Corned Beef, Imported Lunches

Boiled Meats

Leg of Mutton, Ribs of Beef, Corned Beef and Cabbage, Russian River Bacon

Entrees

Pinons a Poulett, aux Champignons

Cream Fricasse of Chicken, Asparagus Points

Lapine Domestique, a la Matire d'Hote

Casserole d'Ritz aux Oeufs, a la Chinoise

Ducks of Mutton, Braze, with Chipoluta Ragout

California Fresh Peach, a la Conde

Roasts

Loin of Beef, Loin of Mutton, Leg of Pork

Apple Sauce, Suckling Pig, with Jelly, Chicken Stuffed Veal

Pastry

Peach, Apple, Plum, and Custard Pies

English Plum Pudding, Hard Sauce, Lemon Flavor

This dinner will be served for 50 cents.

-I got this from the book “Saloons of the Old West” by Erdoes

But none of that is precisely why I’m here, I just can’t stop myself from talking about this, why I’m here is that one of the things I say that often surprises people, is that Chinese food was incredibly common for the, well, common man to eat. There’s very much a conception that we as a non-Chinese American people did not start eating Chinese food until the 40s and 50s, and its truer that it took longer to catch on in the American East than the West simply as a matter of proximity and choice.

Not MORE choice but LESS. Part of what made the West so unique, historically, is that the lack of choice and the basic scarcity caused people to work with and patronize people that their general prejudices would have kept them from using back east, because they had CHOICES. But out in the west, less so. There were few choices for a quick, cheap meal on the go. That dinner I just posted above is a lavish affair, and a great deal at approximately $20.00 in today’s money. (Which does not allow for the fact that cost of supplies has gone up and this dinner would most likely be offered for no less than 70 or so today.)

People desperately wanted something that was cheap and quick, and the other options in the American West were few, far between, and not intensely pleasing. No one had really come up with the sandwich shop as of yet, and in any case, fresh meats and cheeses would have been too difficult for the low-cost supplier.

ENTER THE CHINESE POPULATION.

If you have read my Strange Empire blogs, I hope you know that Chinese people were a huge presence in the American West, mostly working for the railroad and various mines, but also doing things like laundry, work that was extremely hard but took little in the way of English speaking. They existed in Chinatowns, for a combination of cultural and legal factors, but it’s a misconception that non-Chinese*** people never went to Chinatown.

People are not new, and it was not unusual for non-Chinese people to use the laundries, tailoring, and other services of Chinatowns while suppressing the rights of Chinese people int he same breath. There were always individual Chinese people any given non-Chinese person liked and did business with.

In time, they discovered the inherent wisdom of the noodle bowl.

I don’t mean to suggest that all these early restaurants served was noodle bowls, but that was where it all started. Remember, Italian food had little prominence in America at the this time, as Italian immigration didn’t really get into full swing until the 1870s in America. While there are noodle traditions half of everywhere, and there is nothing new under the sun, what we today would consider a stir-fry bowl was wildly new to most of the non-Chinese folks in the West. That it could be offered up so cheaply, was so filling, and so delicious (more on this later) was a wild revelation. Everyone from simple cowboys (which, fun fact! Was a slur back then!) to mayors were swinging by Chinatowns to try the dishes.

By the 1920s, chop suey, a fully Chinese American invention derived from the words for “various leftovers” was a hugely popular American food among all sorts.

Doc, you may ask, was it just that these folks coming through to get medicines or laundry were SO adventurous? Not at all! Chinese restaurants back then actually, in a very short amount of time, realized that their non-Chinese townsfolk were an excellent way to make money as well, and began to adapt and change dishes to better fit the Western palate, leading what we call American Chinese Food today, which is a legitimate foodway I will defend to my death. Unfortunately, none of these menus survive today--the only ones we have are from places in San Francisco, places that were much more posh, and not the subject of this essay.

There is a scene in Tombstone where Wyatt and his brothers are eating Chinese food, and it’s one of the things people often ask me about, assuming it’s anachronistic. Actually, it isn’t at all--the anachronism is that there’s broccoli in those noodle bowls, which had not yet hit our shores by the time of the OK Corral. Chinese food was a huge hit, Chinese restaurants were doing extremely well, and some Chinese restaurants were even beginning to attempt to print menus in English, with sit down areas, instead of serving simple fare from food carts.

As the food from these “chow chow houses” grew in popularity, as we can infer from the advertisements of their competitors promising free potatoes with every meal, and other such niceties to entice, there was, as ever there must be, blowback. Anti-Chinese sentiment grew to a fever pitch, and with this came overt pressure for ‘Good Americans” to patronize ‘American restaurants’. The social pressure is actually where we get some of that old racist jargon about Chinese people serving dogs and cats, which people often think was spread by competitors to degrade the Chinese restaurants, which isn’t UNTRUE, but was just as often said sheepishly by someone who couldn’t stop themselves from going and grabbing a noodle bowl or even the American dishes they offered, such as roast chicken or pork chop sandwiches.

(I won’t comment with anything but an eyeroll on the bullshit of people saying they’re ~allergic to MSG~ okay I’ll believe you when you stop eating processed food, meat, aged cheese)

It actually kept this type of reputation as being slightly scandalous well into the early 1900s, as being something you ate after the bar, something to be had in the shadows, but it was all for naught, because Chinese food became an important part of American identity. But for all that, no one ever pictures the Lone Ranger chowing down (the American phrase ‘chow’ for food actually comes from these ‘chow chow houses’) on some chop suey, but there’s every reason to believe he would have. American Chinese food is just as American as the Germanically-influenced hamburger.

(There’s a whole subtopic to go down about Jewish and Chinese communities and Kosher Chinese Food, two marginalized and othered communities coming together, but that’s a WHOLE other topic)

(Also someone please buy me Chinese food. This shit always makes me so hungry.)

*The American West is a specific time period, as far as the study of history goes. It covers the period between the end of the Civil War and the New Century, generally, and is, obviously, concerned with the western half of the country. It doesn’t cover stuff like Lewis and Clark (that’s Expansion) or even the Civil War itself, though you cannot possibly hope to study the American West in any level of seriousness without understanding the Civil War. Anyway! I know a lot about America between 1865 and 1900, and am just knowledgeable enough to be dangerous on everything else. Most History nerds are highly specified like this. We’re not as much help to your trivia team as you think.****

**I actually have had little chance to talk about ~European-style xenophobia~ as it played out in the west, because Strange Empire takes a more modern pass at it. But there was a hierarchy of “whiteness” as well, as still largely exists in Europe, land of intentionally clean ethnostates.

***I use the term “non-Chinese” instead of white because believe it or not, non-white people were not magically free of racism against Chinese people. It was horrific and BASICALLY every non-Chinese person was guilty of it to some level, a wild-ass level of hatred that led to Chinese folks not being able to PURCHASE PROPERTY BY LAW in ENTIRE STATES. Being Chinese or Native in this place and time was your Worst Bet.

****I actually was on a competitive trivia team, you DO want me.

#That was Oddly Specific #Holligay is 34: The celebration

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fatehbaz · 4 years

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why are you against the use of the term anthropocene

Well, I’m not totally against its use; I think it can be useful, especially in discussions in popular mediums outside of academia. But I do think that academic discussion of and much of the popular discourse around and involving that term, especially among Euro-American scholars, is Eurocentric and pedantic. Eurocentric, in the sense that the discourse ignores Indigenous criticisms while simultaneously appropriating Indigenous cosmologies and accepting funding/concessions from (neo)colonial institutions. Pedantic, in the sense that the discourse is too focused on finding a specific start-date; too focused on fossil fuels and not enough attention is given to the arguably more-influential role of industrial-scale agriculture throughout human history; and not enough discussion of the human institutions (social hierarchies built to facilitate empires and resource extraction) that inflict social and ecological destruction. I do sometimes like the term as a rhetorical device, but prefer terms like “Plantationocene” which are more specific about which institutions and imperial cosmologies are most influential in provoking both violence against humans and ecological change and apocalypse.

You have probably heard of alternate proposed names for the same era of human influence: Plantationocene, Capitalocene, Cthuluscene. I agree that the distinction matters, and many people (especially Indigenous people and others from Latin America and the Global South) have written about the importance of this name. Indigenous writers and scholars have, in my opinion and not surprisingly, offered the most biting criticisms of Anthropocene discourse. From the perspective of North America, I enjoyed the writing of Dwayne Donald (Papaschase Cree); Zoe Todd (Metis); Kali Simmons (Lakota); and Kyle Whyte (Potawatomi); all of whom write explicitly about the Anthropocene, the ethics of ascribing a name to this era, its Eurocentric discourse, and alternative Indigenous interpretations of global environmental history. And if my rambling is annoying and if this post seems too absurdly long to read, then I would recommend reading what Zoe Todd has written about the importance of how the name of the era influences narratives told about human social and ecological stories; she also addresses other shortcomings and Eurocentric aspects of the Anthropocene concept: Heather Davis and Zoe Todd. “On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” December 2017.

—–

Here’s how I feel about the term “Anthropocene”:

Assuming we agree that the intertwined forces of colonialism, imperialism, industrial-scale agriculture, resource extraction generally, and the hierarchical social institutions which support them (including forced labor, severance of community connection to ecosystems through closure of the commons, racial and gender hierarchies, and Indigenous dispossession) are basically the major influences on global ecological change now and over the past few centuries or millennia (including the present-day, the era of overt European colonization across the globe, and earlier manifestations in historical “classic” state-building and early ancient hydraulic civilizations): Instead of looking for a specific date sometime around 1822 in Europe when fossil fuel emissions scarred the soil, like a technical geologist might, I instead try to ask at which point industrial-scale resource extraction (especially including agriculture and deliberate devegetation campaigns even in its ancient manifestations), supported by and to the benefit of social hierarchies and imperial worldviews, begin to alter soils at vast continent-wide scales enough to be the planet’s leading driver of change in soils, vegetation, oceans, and atmosphere?

Did it begin with the advent of industrial specialist guilds in Mesopotamia, when kings would bribe irrigation engineers not to help a farmer water their fields until the farmer had paid tribute or rent? Did it begin in Zhou-era or Warring States period China when deliberate devegetation campaigns, large forest-clearing projects, and flood-prevention dam infrastructure installation led to local extinction of tiger, rhinos, and elephants? Rome? The Columbian Exchange, institutionalized slavery, and plantations in seventeenth-century European colonies in the Americas?

Is an Isconahua community in Amazonia’s forests equally as responsible for global ecological change as a multi-billion-dollar American mining corporation?

This is an example of what might be the most common criticism of the term: The Anthropocene term, by invoking “anthropos,” is imprecise because rather than identifying the actual source of global ecological change (certain systems, institutions, and practices) it implies that blame be ascribed to humans-as-a-species for provoking this global ecological apocalypse. This criticism (”Anthropocene obscures responsibility”) is just one of many.

These are probably my major issues with Anthropocene: (1) According to Indigenous scholars and many writers from the Global South and especially Latin America, the name obscures responsibility and doesn’t adequately imply which human systems and institutions are responsible for global ecological catastrophe, erasing and obscuring the ongoing violence which those same institutions continue to enact, both upon ecosystems and human lives. (2) And given geologists’ common focus on fossil fuels as the key indicators of Anthropocene start-date and human influence on environment, I think that this distracts from the arguably more influential and more important role of agriculture (and associated devegetation for purposes of settlement, rangeland, etc.) as perhaps the more dramatic human influence on global ecological history. Fossil fuels didn’t kill the bison and change the entirety of the Great Plains from boreal climates to the subtropics. Empires seeking resource extraction, accomplished through violence and dispossession, killed the bison and changed the continent. (3) The concept is the result of Euro-American academic discourse and does not adequately incorporate Indigenous and non-Western criticisms. And while paying superficial lip-service to “decolonization, the same academic departments maintain relationships with (neo)colonial nonprofits and government agencies while the discourse also simultaneously engages in continued appropriation of Indigenous concepts. (4) Finally, if we agree that industrial-scale resource extraction (including agriculture) and its associated social institutions are (or at least were, for most of the past) the major human influence on altering ecology, then assigning a specific start-date is extremely difficult and probably just an exercise or thought experiment, because at what point in history did these extractivist cosmologies reach “critical mass” and become the leading worldview through which (some) humans disproportionately exercised so much power over altering landscapes?

—–

I’ll recycle something I’ve previously said:

“Did the Anthropocene begin in 1821, or 1822? Did the year 1821 mark the definitive shift into a global expansion of urbanization and monoculture plantation crops, or was it the year 1822?” These are, to some degree, technicalities. This is not, or should not, be the point of “Anthropocene.” I mean, it is often important to know some specific dates; like the specific date that Russian settlers first encountered Steller’s sea cow; the specific date that English authorities issued permits for corporate monopolies on guano trade in Peru; the specific date that deliberate fire-setting dispossessed Indigenous people in Borneo and signaled arrival of palm oil plantations; the specific dates that certain agricultural, colonial, and imperial institutions invaded, expanded, or consolidated their power. But “the single date when imperial cosmologies achieved critical mass as the dominant ecological force”? I think that’s more ambiguous.

I appreciate that some popular venues or forums like academia, occasionally, are at least attempting to openly discuss a 12,000-year-old trend towards imperial power consolidation which relies on social hierarchy, disconnecting communities from local native species and landscapes, Indigenous dispossession, and the commodification of ecological systems. Glad it’s being discussed. But the discourse has issues and I think we can do better than “Anthropocene” as a term. Even if we treat Anthropocene more like an informal thought experiment, and improve it by renaming it “Plantationocene” or something, I still don’t think formally defining a specific date or “Day 1 of the Anthropocene” is as important as clearly identifying which systems and institutions actually provoked centuries of dramatic ecological change and the current ecological collapse. I think that identifying a technical start-date for a geological epoch is comparably a distraction from the discussion of ecological degradation and extinction; a distraction from the concept’s implied-but-inadequate criticism of imperial cosmologies; and a distraction from how global ecological collapse and crisis is closely related to and deeply intertwined with social hierarchies, institutions, and violence against other humans.

–

Thank you for the question :)

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blockwarden · 4 years

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Selflessness in Times of Trouble: Looking Back on What We’ve Lost

As I sit down today on my patio, the sounds of a distant ice cream truck twinkling along with the violent whirr of a lawnmower, I can’t help but feel nostalgic for a time I never lived, a time where community and neighborliness ruled the roost, where we did what we could—what was necessary—to lend a helping hand.

Nothing makes me so nostalgic for this time than the current COVID-19 pandemic. The United States is in the midst of a dramatic, fatal spike in cases far before even the ubiquitous “first wave” has passed. The situation we find ourselves in has been politicized between those who follow CDC guidelines and those who don’t, those who blame China or call it a hoax and those who see and recognize the science behind it. While we’re bickering about red versus blue, almost 130,000 Americans are dead, and there have been 2.6 million cases in this country alone.

I don’t really care to get into the politics or the epidemiology of the current pandemic. It breaks my heart too much to see all this death, suffering, and strife. I myself lost my job as a direct result of the pandemic, as well as both of my parents. I know people who are effectively homeless because there is no rent relief, and I know people who’ve lost loved ones. Every single day, my heart aches more and more at the senseless and preventable loss of life we’re experiencing.

What I do think about often during this crisis is the loss of civil defense. Civil defense began during WWII as a way for citizens to protect the home front so troops could focus on the Pacific and European theaters. It was a way to keep people alive and safe, and ultimately was a tool for morale—if the men overseas had nothing to come home to but ash, what was the impetus to keep fighting?

As civil defense developed in both structure and focus after the war, it increasingly became an act of selfless duty to one’s country and—more importantly—their neighborhood. Air raid wardens took up the mantle of responsibility for their blocks voluntarily, dedicating hours of time after work and on weekends to creating lists of household occupants and their special needs, devising evacuation routes, planning and running drills, and educating the 30 or so people under their wing on how they could survive the atomic bomb. The Warden Handbook itself emphasizes this idea of neighborhood intimacy—you as the warden know who needs what, where they need to go, and what they need to do.

It’s easy to look back on civil defense and see it with rose-tinted lenses—of course, civil defense and general emergency management of the time was focused on the white atomic family. But there was still an effort made to be all-inclusive. The Warden Handbook itself suggests involving women as block wardens, and appointing persons as translators for areas where English was not the dominant language. There’s also endless documentation on how to protect rural populations—how to till your farms, how to protect your cattle, even how to treat and feed livestock and what meat is safe to consume after a bombing. It wasn’t enough, of course—civil defense hinged on the idea of a family having a basement and being able to afford to build a shelter, or having running water, electricity, or a radio. But at its core, civil defense was focused on preparing everyone. It was never about 100% survival—we knew that was never possible. But if we made a concentrated effort to prepare ourselves and our neighbors, we’d have a fighting chance to survive and rebuild.

And this is the crux of it all. Civil defense relied on neighborliness. It relied on the moral truth that we are all Americans and that we must do what we can to protect each other.

When civil defense was effectively disbanded with the creation of FEMA, we lost this. We lost this idea of helping each other. Instead, we sat back and expected the federal government to do the heavy lifting. We no longer took up the responsibility of preparing or responding. And we certainly no longer lent a helping hand to our neighbors. We saw this especially with the spike in gun sales at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the most sold-out ammo being common handgun rounds. Handguns, of course, being far less useful for hunting, but widely favored for self-defense.

FEMA is too big and too broad to know the exact needs of your specific neighborhood though. It doesn’t know that Old Mrs. Johnson next door needs insulin, or that Mary down the block only speaks Hungarian. FEMA is not a successor to civil defense. FEMA is not your friendly neighborhood block warden who knew your name, where you worked, and if you had a basement for shelter. FEMA is, by all means, the faceless government agency that sometimes drops money and water bottles on a town in the hopes that it’ll help.

And I can’t help but wonder, can we ever get back to where we were?

When I worked in emergency management, my director and I had a pipe dream: establish student-led response teams. Our agency is not big enough to attend to everyone in a mass casualty emergency, but what if we could train students to respond? Essentially, what if we could bring back civil defense?

While there were a lot of factors that made this idea impossible, I wonder if we as a society even have that sense of selflessness to make it possible. We’ve seen people in times of crisis step up and help, yes, but it always seems to be the exception, not the norm. In the age of social media clout as well, this muddies the conversation. How many people are “doing it for the ‘gram” or are genuinely selfless at heart?

If anything, the COVID-19 pandemic and the spike we are currently seeing tells me that we could never get civil defense back. People are refusing to do the most basic things like wearing a mask and washing their hands. People are having meltdowns in groceries stores and coughing on people (which is assault in some states) simply because they were asked to follow the CDC guidelines. People were protesting during the April peak because they wanted to get a haircut or go to prom. If we can’t do the simplest things to protect others, how could we ever expect something as robust and thorough as civil defense to work in this country again?

The short answer is we can’t. The long answer is that somewhere in the last 20 years, we’ve lost the sense of community that made civil defense possible, but it can come back.

My memories of September 11th, 2001 are hazy, but I remember September 12th, 2001 vividly. I remember drawing cards for firefighters, blood donation centers popping up all over, American flags being sold out of every single store in the country. I remember older kids from my neighborhood enlisting, florists sending arrangements to funerals thousands of miles away. I even remember our president tearing up on live television.

If at any point in the 21st century was there a time that civil defense could have come back, it was September 12th, 2001. We did what we could, holding tight to the bounds of simply being Americans, and helped each other.

Ultimately, I fully believe civil defense—maybe not by name, but by concept—could return. But it starts with empathetic leadership, it starts with reinforcing the bond of country, it starts with knowing your neighbor, but more importantly, it starts with having a heart. It’ll take a massive cultural overhaul, but it could work.

People have lost faith in FEMA because it is too big and too slow to respond. But what if you had a neighborhood coalition with specialized teams? An accountant by day would have the necessary skills to tally stockpiles and rations. A sous chef would be able to lead a pop-up kitchen. A nurse could lend their skills to first aid. Electricians, plumbers, and construction workers too could be valuable members of debris clearing and repair teams. What if, when an emergency hit your neighborhood, you could respond as soon as it was safe to instead of waiting for FEMA or the Red Cross?

I might be naïve. I might have too much hope for the people of this country. But I do believe that we can do it. We might have lost the inherit selflessness of civil defense, but it can come back—in a new form, under a new name, with a new focus—but it can return. We just have to want it. We just have to change our thinking in a crisis. It is never us versus them. It’s us versus the disaster.

At the end of the day, we’re all Americans, and there is no duty so honorable as doing what you can to protect others.

-- Warden Elizabeth

#warden posting #civil defense #covid-19 #analysis #articles #discussion

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rwood2477 · 3 years

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You may not realize it, but you are currently funding some dangerous people.

They are indoctrinating young minds throughout the West with their resentment-ridden ideology. They have made it their life's mission to undermine Western civilization itself, which they regard as corrupt, oppressive and “patriarchal.”

If you're a taxpayer—or paying for your kid's liberal arts degree—you're underwriting this gang of nihilists.

You're supporting ideologues who claim that all truth is subjective; that all sex differences are socially constructed; and that Western imperialism is the sole source of all Third World problems. They are the post-modernists, pushing “progressive” activism at a college near you.

They produce the mobs that violently shut down campus speakers; the language police who enshrine into law use of fabricated gender pronouns; and the deans whose livelihoods depend on madly rooting out discrimination where little or none exists.

Their thinking took hold in Western universities in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when the true believers of the radical left became the professors of today. And now we rack up education-related debt—not so that our children learn to think critically, write clearly, or speak properly, but so they can model their mentors' destructive agenda.

It's now possible to complete an English degree and never encounter Shakespeare—one of those dead white males whose works underlie our “society of oppression.”

To understand and oppose the post-modernists, the ideas by which they orient themselves must be clearly identified.

First is their new unholy trinity of diversity, equity and inclusion. Diversity is defined not by opinion, but by race, ethnicity or sexual identity; equity is no longer the laudable goal of equality of opportunity, but the insistence on equality of outcome; and inclusion is the use of identity-based quotas to attain this misconceived state of equity.

All the classic rights of the West are to be considered secondary to these new values. Take, for example, freedom of speech—the very pillar of democracy. The post-modernists refuse to believe that people of good will can exchange ideas and reach consensus.

Their world is instead a Hobbesian nightmare of identity groups warring for power. They don't see ideas that run contrary to their ideology as simply incorrect. They see them as integral to the oppressive system they wish to supplant, and consider it a moral obligation to stifle and constrain their expression.

Second is rejection of the free market—of the very idea that free, voluntary trading benefits everyone. They won't acknowledge that capitalism has lifted up hundreds of millions of people so they can for the first time in history afford food, shelter, clothing, transportation—even entertainment and travel. Those classified as poor in the US (and, increasingly, everywhere else) are able to meet their basic needs. Meanwhile, in once-prosperous Venezuela—until recently the poster-child of the campus radicals—the middle class lines up for toilet paper.

Third, and finally, are the politics of identity. Post-modernists don't believe in individuals. You're an exemplar of your race, sex, or sexual preference. You're also either a victim or an oppressor. No wrong can be done by anyone in the former group, and no good by the latter. Such ideas of victimization do nothing but justify the use of power and engender intergroup conflict.

All these concepts originated with Karl Marx, the 19th-century German philosopher. Marx viewed the world as a gigantic class struggle—the bourgeoisie against the proletariat; the grasping rich against the desperate poor. But wherever his ideas were put into practice—in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia, to name just a few—whole economies failed, and tens of millions were killed. We fought a decades-long cold war to stop the spread of those murderous notions. But they're back, in the new guise of identity politics.

The corrupt ideas of the post-modern neo-Marxists should be consigned to the dustbin of history. Instead, we underwrite their continuance in the very institutions where the central ideas of the West should be transmitted across the generations. Unless we stop, post-modernism will do to America and the entire Western world what it's already done to its universities.

I'm Jordan Peterson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, for Prager University.

#democratsareevil #democratshateamerica #biden corruption #biden crime family #communist party of china

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gunnerpalace · 4 years

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Hi! Same anon as the previous one. Tbh, I agree wholeheartedly with you. Y'see I do ask rhetorically,too but i could really accept and understand how and why ppl can be oblivious to IchiRuki, and somehow felt that the 'canon' should suffice, even the most excruciating of all is the fact a number found the ending even acceptable (ships aside, too). Again, I could respect that. But it's my greatest bane when ppl ask 'why' and not be clear they are asking rhetorically because I literally will

provide you an actual answer. And I get it, it’s the reason why ppl find shipping wars toxic and silly. But then again, as human, conflicts are always part of us (partly because as social psych explains so, we are gravitated to the negative for that allows us to change and survive), and the reason why “logical fallacies” are coined in the first place. Human will always debate, and argue about something; the only thing we could change is how we approach the opposing views.

Again, I dont condone any way, shape or form of abuse and harm. In some certain extent, I could perhaps understand it’s much harder for some IH to approach the actual argument being there’s either too much noise, and trapped in their own island between sea of salt. Thus becoming too acquianted w/ few IH who shared the same thought until it became their views as the only truth (see, that’s why its important to have debates! it is what keep us grounded and fair! Just like you said)

Who am I to speak though? I never ever challenged anyone anyways. And as you said, you just have to understand things in every way you could possibly think of–endless ‘whys’. Which is where I agree in your reply the most–this silly fandom wars is just the black mirror to every truth that lies beneath human psyche–the dark and the grimy. Heck, being a psych major is like staring at dark hole–at times, good, but most just plain confusing, revolting even or just heartbreaking.

Sorry it’s been long, but for the final of this ask: let me tell how glad I was with IchiRuki fandom I found in tumblr. It was the saltiest I’ve ever been (im not generally a fandom person anyways) but it’s the himalayan salt–expensive and actually nutritive it really deepened my desire to become wiser in general. And you for your wonderful essays, critiques and whatnot. I definitively would love to talk with you more not only about IchiRuki but the wonders and nightmare that us humans! Kudos!

I have sitting in my drafts a post spelling out my thoughts on “canon” (and thus, the people who cling to it) in that as a concept it privileges:

officiality over quality when it comes to validity (thus violating Sturgeon’s law)

corporations (intellectual property rights holders) over fans, and thus capitalists over proletarians

hierarchical dominance over mutualist networking within fandom

curative fandom over transformative fandom

genre over literary content

plot over characters

events over emotions

It is notable that (1) generally degrades art as a whole, (2) generally advances the capitalist agenda, and (3–7) generally advances the dominance of men over women (as the genders tend to be instructed by society to view these as A. dichotomies rather than spectrums, and B. to ascribe gender to them and make them polarities). These form the sides of a mutually reinforcing power structure (in the typical “Iron Triangle” fashion) designed to preserve and maintain the status quo.

Who really benefits from say, the policing of what is or is not “canon” in Star Wars? Disney, first and foremost. And then whomever (almost certainly male) decides to dedicate their time to memorizing the minutiae of whatever that corporation has decided is “legitimate.”

One can imagine a universe in which fan fic is recognized by companies for what it is: free advertising. (Much like fan art already is.) Instead, it is specifically targeted by demonetization efforts in a way that fan art isn’t. Why? Because it demonstrates that corporate control and “official” sanction has no bearing on quality, and it is thus viewed as undermining the official products.

In the same way, by demonstrating that most “canonical” works are frankly shit, it undermines the investiture of fans in focusing on details that are ultimately errata (the events, the plot, the genre), which is the core function of curative fandom and the reason for its hierarchical structure. The people who “know the most” are at the top, but what they “know” is basically useless garbage. And those people so-engaged are, of course, usually male.

To “destroy” the basis of their credibility, and indeed the very purpose of their community, is naturally viewed by them as an attack.

(This is not to say that efforts to tear down internal consistency within established cultural properties are good unto themselves, or even desirable. For example, efforts to redefine properties such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Ghostbusters, for the sake of a identity-politics agenda have largely A. failed as art, B. failed as entertainment, C. failed to attract the supposedly intended audience, and D. failed to advance the agenda in question. Trying to repurpose extant media in the name of culture wars is essentially always doomed to failure unless it is done deftly and gradually.)

(At the same time, this also shows what I was talking about last time, with regard to people seeing whatever they want to see. You will see people complain that Star Trek and Doctor Who didn’t “used to be so political,” which is obviously nonsense. These shows were always political. What changed was how their politics were presented. For example, Star Trek has, since TNG, always shown a nominally socialist or outright communist future, but was beloved by plenty of conservatives because they could [somehow] ignore that aspect of it.)

Of course, almost no one is seriously suggesting that one side of the spectrums outlined above be destroyed, rather merely that a new balance be struck upon the spectrum. But, as we have seen time and again in society, any threat to the status quo, whether that be 20% of Hugo Awards going to non-white male authors or the top income tax rate in America being increased by a measly 5.3% (from 28.7% to 34%… when the all-time high was 94% and for over 50 years it was above 50%) is a threat. This is why, for example, Republicans are out there branding AOC as a “socialist” when her policies are really no different at all from a 1960 Democrat who believed in FDR’s New Deal. (Which they, of course, have also demonized as “socialism.”)

(As an aside, all this ignores the fact that most of the “literary canon” of Western civilization, or at least English literature… is Biblical or historical fan fic.)

And this is when I finally get to my point.

Those people out there who denigrate and mock shippers and shipping, the people who hurl “it reads like fan fiction” as an insult, and so on, are the people who benefit from and enjoy the extant power structure. You will see the same thing with self-identified “gamers” complaining about “fake girl gamers.” Admitting that the hobby has a lot of women in it, and a lot of “casuals,” and is indeed increasingly dominated by “non-traditional demographics” is an affront to the constructed identity of being a “gamer.” They are “losing control.” And they don’t like it.

This exact same sort of population is what the “fanbase” of Bleach has been largely reduced down to through a slow boiling off of any actual quality. Of course they’re dismissive of people who are looking for anything of substance: their identity, their “personal relationship” with the franchise, is founded on a superficial appreciation of it: things happening, flashy attacks, eye-catching character designs, fights, etc.

(What this really boils down to, at heart, is that society at large has generally told men that emotions are bad, romance and relationships of all kinds are gross, and that thinking and reflecting on things is stupid. So of course they not only don’t care about such things, but actively sneer at them as “girly” or “feminine,” which is again defined by society at large as strictly inferior. And this gender divide and misogyny is of course promulgated and reinforced by the powers that be, the capitalists, to facilitate class divisions just like say racism generally is.)

(The latest trick of these corporate overlords has been the weaponization of “woke” culture to continue to play the people off one another all the time. “If you don’t like this [poorly written, dimensionless Mary Sue] Strong Female Character, then you are a racist misogynist!” They are always only ever playing both sides for profit, not advancing an actual ideological position. It is worth noting that there was a push by IH some years ago to define IR as “anti-feminist” for critiquing Orihime for essentially the exact same reasons [admittedly, not for profit, but still as critical cover].)

Which makes it very curious, therefore, that the most ardent IH supporters tend to be women. (Though there are more than a few men, they seem to tend to support it because it is “canon” and to attack it is to attack “canon” and thus trigger all of the above, rather than out of any real investment.) I think there are a number of reasons for this (which I have detailed before) and at any rate it is not particularly surprising; 53% of white women voted for Trump, after all.

What we are really seeing in fandom, are again the exact same dynamics that we see at larger and larger scales, for the exact same reasons. The stakes are smaller, but the perception of the power struggle is exactly the same.

Of course, the people who are involved in these things rarely think to interrogate themselves as to the true dimensions and root causes of their motivations. People rarely do that in general.

Putting all that aside, I’m glad that you have found a place you enjoy and feel comfortable, and thank you for the kind words, although I am not of the opinion that there is anything poignant about the non-fiction I write. It is, as I keep trying to emphasize, all there to be seen. One just has to open their eyes. So, it’s hard for me to accept appreciation of it.

Anyway, don’t feel shy about coming off of anon rather than continuing to send asks. We don’t really bite.

#Asks

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ayearinfaith · 4 years

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𝗔 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗵, 𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝟭𝟭: 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗺 Syncretism is a process by which two or more belief systems fuse into either an extension of one or both or into something entirely new. The practice was very common historically and is a crucial aspect of the development of almost all modern major world religions. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗘𝗺𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗲 Some of the most obvious examples we have of purposeful syncretism come from historical empires or kingdoms with a powerful central and ethnically aligned government. Nowadays most people consider Greek and Roman gods to be basically identical, but this is only true because the Romans identified every Greek god as one of theirs. Some gods were similar enough; Jupiter and Zeus are both storm kings with a troubled relationship to their father. Others barely line up; the Roman war god Mars is one of their most important and revered deities, whereas the Greek Aries was relatively minor and often viewed poorly. The Greeks themselves were keen to interpret Egyptian gods as their own, sometimes leading to syncretic figures like Hermanubis, a blending of Hermes and Anubis whose image is the title card of this entry. The impact of Roman syncretism can be seen in the English names for days of the week. Romans named the days after gods, and when the Roman week was adopted by Germanic peoples the names were chosen based on the Roman perceived equivalent deity. Thus Spanish “Martes, Miercoles, and Jueves”, named for Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter (Jove), respectively, become English “Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday”, named for Tyr, Odin (Wotan), and Thor. Though not always tied to a single government, Christianity and Buddhism utilized syncretism to expedite their expansion across Europe and Asia. Many local deities never had to be ousted in favor of Christianity, but could instead have their stories and traditions brought into the fold with one alteration: instead of a god they were a saint. Buddhism, similarly, has many Bodhisattvas (compassionate beings who purposefully forego Nirvana in order to help people reach enlightenment) who were once local gods. The power of Syncretism for both the Greek and Roman empires (as well as many more besides) and in the spread of Christianity and Buddhism is that it removes the need for direct subversion or conflict. Pagans do not need to be weeded out or be forcefully reeducated, they can simply be incorporated. 𝗚𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼-𝗥𝗼𝗺𝗮𝗻, 𝗝𝘂𝗱𝗲𝗼-𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗻, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗟𝗶𝗲𝘀 It’s important to understand that the syncretism of the past should not be viewed through the modern lens. The modern concept of “cultural appropriation”, while perhaps having some relevance, is too far removed from the context and perception of ancient religion and trying to use it here should best be avoided. This is not to say that all historical syncretism was benign or without political motivation. As mentioned above, we now perceive the religions and even cultures of Greece and Rome as being so similar we have a word for it: Greco-Roman. However, they were actually quite different. During the early days of the Roman empire, Classical Greece was seen then, as it is still seen now, as the birthplace of western civilization. Romans were very aware of this and adored Greek culture to the extent that they basically took it as their own. The Roman national epic, the Aeneid, purposefully ties Roman heritage to Greeks via the battle of Troy. Roman syncretism was so fervent, it is sometimes difficult to determine what aspects of their mythology predate syncretism. For example, its possible Jupiter’s relationship to his father, Saturn, was not quite so stormy as Zeus’ relationship to Kronus, but it definitely became more similar as the Empire grew. The concept of “Greco-Romanism” is the result of a very successful propaganda campaign started over 2,000 years ago. A more modern syncretic term that is often used is “Judeo-Christian”, obviously blending Judaism and Christianity. This is not a stretch, as Christianity is literally a development of a messianic Jewish sect. However, there are many issues with this term. For one, Islam is notably excluded, despite the fact that most things that persist across the Jewish/Christian divide also exist in Islam. For another, despite common origins Christianity and Judaism are really quite different, with radically different ethic and moral philosophies, views on God and scripture, which stories are valued, etc. Like “Greco-Roman”, “Judeo-Christian” is a concept with a marketing campaign it, and its origins can be traced back to still extant movements among some Christians to perceive Jews a part of the Christian fold. 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗵𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵𝘀 Faiths are very much based on tradition, and when peoples merge so too can traditions. West African slaves in the American South and Caribbean found themselves mingling with other West Africans with similar but distinct traditions within a very Christian dominated society. From these, religions like Haitian Vodou and Louisiana Voodoo were born, both getting their names from Vodun, an indigenous religion of Benin. The introduction of Buddhism and Hinduism were incredibly influential in Japan, and the native Shinto faith incorporated much. Of the “7 Lucky Gods”, some of Japan’s most recognizable deities, only 1, Ebisu, is not a syncretized Buddhist or Hindu figure. Syncretism also is incredibly common, to the point of being arguably a defining shared feature, of Esoteric traditions. These more secretive faiths in both modern and historical times have often based themselves on the concept that there is a single truth that makes itself visible, if enshrouded, in all worldly beliefs. Ancient Roman mystery religions, such as the cults of Mithras, Orpheus, or Isis had such themes. The great Western Esoteric tradition of Hermeticism is explicitly based on this, and its Eponymous figure Hermes Trismegistus is a syncretic form of Hermes, Thoth, and Enoch. Image Credit: Marble Statue of Hermanubis in the Vatican Museum, carved in the 1st or 2nd century CE

#A Year in Faith #Syncretism #AYIF #Religion #Mythology #day 11

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toonpunk-game · 3 years

Text

Fluff Updates 4: Some Core Concepts

Well, it’s time for another one of these. We’re going to do a little housekeeping, first and foremost: we’re going to show you the currency of the world--the rainbow-colored Chromatic Dollar; the inkbloods, whose condition of is spoken of seldomly and somberly; and, rather belatedly, Toonpunks themselves! What is a ‘toonpunk’, how is it different from a ‘cyberpunk’ or a ‘steampunk’, and why would anyone want to be one? Read on and find out!

The Chromatic Dollar

If you’ve been in the open population for any length of time, you’ve probably seen or heard about the Chromatic Dollar—usually called “CDs” or “Hands”. This is the currency of the world today—not the only one, of course, but definitely the most important one. Almost everywhere you’ll ever go, hands are the preferred legal tender: you’re going to get paid in them, and odds are you are going to steal quite a few. So, for those of you who don’t already know, time to get yourselves learnt!

The CD is an asset-backed currency—which means that in theory, each bill represents a fixed quantity of ink. However, it’s not quite so simple as that (get used to that phrase, newcomers). Rather than being directly traded at a depository for ink, most CDs contains ink in themselves: each dollar is woven out of fabric, and tinted by being immersed a watered-down mixture of colored ink. When submerged in cold water, this ink can be drawn out of the bill, leaving it blank. As you may recall, inkish life needs a regular infusion of ink to survive. What this means is that chromatic dollars are, in fact, literal meal tickets: normal civilians can immerse them in cold water to bleed the ink out of them, creating a mixture that is substantial enough to maintain an inkish life form, but is not strong enough to be classified as a hazardous material.

Of course, even that is not quite so simple. Of the 7 CD denominations of CD—White, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Red, and Black—only 5 actually contain ink within them. The white and black CDs do not actually contain any ink at all, due to respectively being worth very little and being worth a really great big bunch. White bills are the “single unit” denomination—they represent precisely one “CD”. They are not actually dyed, and are simply desaturated colored bills. Their value comes from the fact that they can be traded in bulk to the Morbux cartel reclamation facilities in exchange for bills of greater worth. They are often used as a baseline currency for small transactions—specifically as tips in retail or service industries.

Yellow bills are the smallest denomination which actually contain ink. They each contain approximately 1/1000 of a milliliter of ink, and are worth 500 CDs. Other denominations are Green (1000 CDs, or 1/200 of a milliliter); blue (5000 CDs, 1/100); purple (10000 CDs, or .2 milliliters); and red (50000 CDs, or .5 milliliters). Black bills, like white bills, do not contain any ink in themselves; but unlike white bills, are worth such a ridiculously high amount that it is actually impossible to store that much ink in a single bill. Specifically, a black bill is worth an entire liter of ink, or 200,000 green bills—a whopping50 million CDs. Black bills are basically never put into circulation—they were only invented so that governments and mega-corporations would have an easier time arranging bulk ink transfers between each other. Instead of physically procuring and delivering ink en masse, they could simply transfer bills (or credit for a bill, more accurately) and redeem them with their bank of choice.

History of the Chromatic Dollar

The Chromatic dollar was introduced into circulation by Black Sea Banking in 2090, 2 months after the Frontier Development Bill permitted the production and exchange of company-owned currencies. While frontier companies were the primary beneficiaries of this provision (since it allowed them to reestablish the “company store” of bygone eras) BSB was the first major company to introduce private bills for widespread circulation. A limited run of black, red, and (now-defunct) orange bills were distributed to several of BSB’s partners in lieu of liquid ink; and then, after this initial success, BSB allowed its inkish employees to receive a portion of their salary in CDs instead of their normal currencies. The option proved enormously popular, since it allowed inkish persons to sustain themselves without making trips to dedicated ink depositories. Demand steadily grew, until an inordinately successful write-in campaign garnered 16.5 million signatures imploring BSB to introduce the CD into public circulation. After drafting the exchange rates, BSB began printing chromatic dollars for public use in 2092—and it was all uphill from there.

Now, just over 200 years later, the CD is the most common currency in local space. It’s traded on all civilized worlds, and a number of the uncivil ones as well. Wherever electronic infrastructure exists, the CD will soon follow—even to places as remote as Pluto. The only place it has not found purchase is on the frontier worlds, where efforts at civilization are often bowled over by six-pack wars, or other even more unpleasant things…

Inkbloods

In most materials, elemental ink is sparse—less than 0.002% of the total composition. In the Saskatoon municipal area, this number can go as high as 0.006. In human beings, this number skyrockets to 0.65%—the highest concentration outside of ink-based life forms. While this might not sound like much at a glance, it must be understood that even a small amount of ink carries enormous potential: differences of as little as .05% blood-ink-concentration have been shown to increase life span, muscle growth, and cognitive capacity by tremendous amounts—upwards of 20%, in many cases. Naturally, there is a tremendous temptation to use it as a performance enhancer—and it is here that inkbloods enter the equation.

An “inkblood” is any meatman who has a BIC of 2% or higher; and has maintained such for longer than 24 hours. The human liver can filter out small quantities of ink, much as it can filter out alcohol or other substances; but there are some people who deliberately maintain a high BIC for an extended period of time, for several reasons: at a glance, inkbloods are more physically able than most humans—the ink within their bodies swells their muscle mass to considerable proportions, and they often enjoy sharpened senses and longer lives. Furthermore, they often display an enhanced aptitude for illustration and inktek. However, there is a damning dark side to this: all inkbloods will, with time, invariably descend into utter raving insanity.

First among the inkblood degenerations, both in severity and in order of onset, is an immutable compulsion towards self-flagellation. Over the course of their derangement this will increase from such relatively benign things as discomfort with their hairstyle, to the wholesale removal of fingers, limbs, and eyes. While these compulsions never drive the inkblood to suicide, they will leave them hideously disfigured: while the ink will regenerate small portions of their bodies over time, any limbs or large internal organs removed will usually have to be replaced.

As of writing, no medical consensus explaining this phenomenon has yet been reached. Potential explanations range from acute derangement resulting from over-acuity of the senses, to a form of cognitive decline no more remarkable than mercury poisoning; but there are others on the fringe of the medical community, who whisper of a spiritual dimension to the ink--one which reacts poorly to prolonged observation...

Toonpunks

What is a “Toonpunk”? Most of you reading this will already know—but those of you from very isolated areas, or those of you who have just incarnated, may be unfamiliar. The word shows up often enough to return billions of search engine results; and it’s such a common talking point that a whole 3.5% of all current news articles feature it as their primary subject (according to Billiun analytics from 2302). It is a recognized word in over 500 languages as disparate as Russian, Urdu, Japanese, Quenya, and English.

Vernon Vernacular’s Living Dictionary defines Toonpunk thusly: 1. Noun. A person, most commonly young and/or of inky description, who commits criminal actions including theft, assault, vandalism, arson, murder, and jaywalking, as a form of protest or self-expression. 2.Adj. Slang. Of or referring to anger or disdain towards large corporations, incumbent governments, The Inkquisition, capitalism, or functioning society as a whole.

“Toonpunk” is a stylistic movement that began in the year 2045, though its roots trace back to a year earlier. During The Rabbit’s I-day gag spree, billions of people were astonished to learn just how much devastation had been wrought by one animal in the name of slapstick. Among them were numerous working-class meatmen, many of whom were disillusioned with the dehumanizing day-to-day existence of a late-stage capitalist world. Knowing that the single greatest act of vandalism and destruction in history was committed “because I wanted to” captured the imaginations of people who had very little power of their own.

As Bloody March carried on, the tension very rapidly became unmanageable. Nearly every country on Earth was struggling under the weight of an unprecedented refugee crisis, and a slew of freak environmental disasters. Many governments employed violent and reactionary measures which often only compounded the issues—most famously during the P-K massacre in Russia. By the end of the month, wide-scale riots were commonplace throughout most of the civilized world, and would not simmer down again for almost 3 years.

It was during this period that the first Toonpunks began appearing. Shortly after The Rabbit disappeared, a number of disparate gangs began emulating his unique brand of terrorism: prioritizing vandalism, property destruction, and public visibility over material gain. This form of high-risk-low-reward crime was described by many of its practitioners as a form of rebellion or self-expression against an increasingly bizarre and stifling world. This was most notably espoused by High Noon and the Longcoat Gang on April 1, when they defaced the side of the Thunder Tower Office Plaza and publicly lynched Thomas Thunder’s 2 youngest sons.

Toonpunk didn’t become a popular movement for almost 3 decades. After the Thunder Tower incident, it was generally regarded as a form of neo-terrorism; and it did not receive its Robin-Hood-Style grassroots support until 2084, when the new meatman generation spawned a vocal anti-Inkquisition counterculture. Nostalgic for their forefathers’ liberty of expression, the Confederacy of Classic Culture lead a brief but eventful series of public demonstrations. When the Ministry forcibly disbanded them three months later, its supporters were forced to adopt a more unconventional and direct form of protest—and so the modern Toonpunk mythos was born.

Today, Toonpunks are often regarded in the same way that hacktivists were in the 21st century, and beekeepers were in the 22nd—as a small minority working outside the law for the good of the people; and they are often romanticized in movies, television, and music. In the common parlance, “Toonpunk” is often mistakenly used to refer to any inkman criminal or gang, regardless of their ideology—much to the chagrin of its devoted supporters.

That’s enough about the philosophy side of things, though—how does this affect you? If you’re reading this, you are most likely a Toonpunk—or one of your friends is, or you stole this from one. Judging by the company you keep, we here at Electric Eye can tell a few things about you:

-You’re probably broke. According to our own research from 2300, 65% of self-identified Toonpunks and Toonpunk sympathizers exist within or just above the poverty band—with the remainder primarily coming from middle-class arcology families. 25% of those polled reportedly spent between 1500 and 2700 hands a month on food, with most of the rest going towards rent; and 70% reportedly have no form of personal motorized transportation. A small but notable minority of toonpunks exist within the upper strata of society—most having identified their lifestyle as a “gilded cage”.

-Your job is probably terrible. Most lower or middle class toonpunks in our poll were working temporary or menial jobs—usually as factory hands, miners, construction workers, data entry clerks, personal assistants, or retail employees. 60% were working part-time, while another 34% were working as day laborers; and 43% were additionally pursuing higher education on top of their job and illegal enterprises. Many from the upper salary bands described themselves as “not in employment, education, or training”—which has by itself lead to the stereotyping of upper-class toonpunks as either spoiled, bored sociopaths; or misguided activists.

-You could be doing this for basically any reason. When we asked our subjects what originally drew them to the toonpunk lifestyle, we received numerous different answers. Most of these fell into one of a few categories. 24% of those polled stated that they had been laid off or fired from their legitimate employment during a time of financial stress—commonly cited reasons were mortgage, children, or medical care. 22% did it for themselves, stating they liked it, they were good at it, and they truly felt alive. 16% stated that it was simply the way of life they had always known; and a further 16% maintained that they had no additional attraction to the toonpunk life, and were merely lashing out at a corrupt and unjust world.

8% were pursuing some form of revenge against an estranged friend, family member, or co-worker; and 7% took it on as a “one-time-thing” needed to pay a debt of gratitude, blood, or actual debt. 6% cited an intense criminal compulsion due to mental illness, or that they were simply drawn that way. 3.7% maintained that they were victims of one or more shadowy and malevolent conspiracies with city/world/solar-system-changing implications; and finally, 1.3% stated the belief that they were the pawns of extra-dimensional beings, for whom the whole of our universe is a work of simulated misery they created for their own twisted entertainment.

#cyberpunk writing #Cartoons #cyberpunk #worldbuilding #scifi writing

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22drunkb · 5 years

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Some thoughts about Bran Stark

Okay, so--not to butt in and trample around, as someone who never read the books and stopped watching the show sometime around season 3--but the thing is, I feel like the ending has finally allowed me to understand exactly what it was that turned me off Game of Thrones, which I never quite did put my finger on till now, and I want to at least write it out once. (Ironically, this has made me like the story better, though not its execution.) To attempt a spoiler-free summary: I’m going to be thinking about the thematic structure of the story and why that should make certain things make sense, and how they came to not make sense anyway.

The thing is, thematically and structurally, Bran ending up king makes absolute and perfect sense. It’s just that they didn’t write the story in line with the structure they were given. The problem with the show is--and always has been--that the writers don’t actually understand what “subverting fantasy tropes” means or could look like, and they don’t care about it in any meaningful way. What they care about is doing big, bloodthirsty, quasi-historical fiction with a lot of nudity. (See: the Civil War show they wanted to do.) And Bran’s whole situation only makes sense (or would have made sense, if executed properly) in the context of high fantasy.

Keeping in mind that complicating high fantasy tropes was an important part of what Martin reportedly set out to do, each of the Stark kids (the story’s backbone) had a clear thematic purpose. Each of them a) was a take on a trope, b) had a clear character trajectory that would allow that take on the trope to be developed while functioning as a working character arc, and c) through that trope-inflected arc, could allow the audience a window into specific part of the society (i.e., they supported the worldbuilding), which in turn allowed the further development of these takes on the tropes by giving them specific, appropriate settings and side characters to bounce off of. This is to say that GRRM did a good job setting himself up to do “trope subversion” in a way that would comment on the things he wanted to comment on, function as part of a larger world and story, and help support a plot that would be in harmony with all of the above. This is one very solid approach to character design. To be clear, despite this paragraph being about characters, I’m talking about themes--it has nothing to do with their personalities or whatever. This is about what ideas come together in the concept of each character and therefore how each character’s story develops the ideas.

A good reason to approach character design in this way is if you have set out to subvert, complicate, comment on, or otherwise mess with genre tropes. To do so, the characters have to themselves be tropes, or at least be designed in close relation to tropes, in order to derange them. So like, just to take the simplest two examples:

Robb: The Prince. Firstborn, shining favorite, destined to inherit. Set up (normally) to avenge his father, restore order to his kingdom, and go home. Bungles it entirely by seeking true love; meanwhile, in the course of his story we learn about the regional politics of the North, the politics of alliances by marriage and kinship, etc. Narratively, his failure allows the entire political and military situation to get infinitely more clusterfucked. All of those pieces fit together well thematically.

What is being subverted here is the prince’s marital destiny. We have loads of fairy and fantasy stories about prince and prince-types for whom pursuing true love just happens to be convenient (they can marry whoever they want), or whose pursuits of love are rescued by fate (his true love turns out to be his promised princess all along! She’s secretly a magical being of some sort, and that trumps betrothal agreements! The one he was originally supposed to marry died or decided to marry someone else! etc). This is totally kosher in traditional high fantasy (or in the folklore that the genre draws on) because it’s an expression of the harmony of the story-world; the characters go through their trials and adventures and end with a resolution in the form of marriage that announces that all is as it should be. What it looks like GRRM set out to do is ask what happens when people still follow those rules and the rules aren’t in harmony with the world they live in.

In particular, the entire thing points square at the fact that princes are political animals. It seems to me that Robb’s story was meant to say, well, actually, sometimes people with power just have to marry people they don’t love as a condition of being powerful (which comes up constantly throughout the whole show). After Ned and Catlyn, basically every “true love” couple is dysfunctional, incestuous (Cersei and Jaime, Daenerys and John), and/or gets narratively stomped on, as far as I’m aware. (Did Sam and Gilly make it? If so, I think that’s allowed because they’re commoners.) Ironically, Ned and Catlyn set Robb up to fuck up by modeling one of these convenient political-and-true-love marriages. He thought he was supposed to be allowed to have it all. He was wrong. The end. Next. But the show seemed to expect me to feel that the outcome was unjust and tragique for Their Love, when all that was unjust and tragique about it was that Robb was idiot enough to bring the consequences of his actions on his entire group of followers. That is the point. That his status has to constrain his behavior, and when it doesn’t it has consequences for others. The status itself is what’s being problematized.

Jon: The Secret Heir. Second-oldest, bastard-born, treated with contempt. In relation to the family, literally a supplementary person. Set up (normally) to be rediscovered as the true heir to the throne and end up as king (moving from the margins to the center; getting the acceptance he couldn’t have as a bastard). The twist is the “true” dynasty he represents is composed of inbred lunatics, and his potential access to the throne goes not only via that bloodline but via repeating their tradition of incest. Dovetailing nicely with that, he was set up from the start as less wanting access to the kinship system than wanting to be free of it, so instead of becoming king by virtue of being a Targaryen, he stops the reinstatement of the Targaryen line altogether. Meanwhile, for most of his story, as a “supplementary person” he gives the audience a view into a lot of corners of Westeros that are concerned with what is excluded from Westeros: the Night’s Watch, the Wildlings, and indeed the White Walkers.

Again, all of that lines up together well. It’s part of the larger derailment of the blood-as-destiny notion of a “true” king, heir, ruling dynasty, etc. (I think the main reason GRRM goes so hard on the incest, not to mention having not one but THREE bastard characters, is in service of this; it also means Jon’s character arc of wanting out of the bloodline system fits into the thematic structure. See? Everything ties together neatly.) But I mean. We all know the character was not executed well.

And so on. I could do the same for Sansa and all the rest of them. (Sansa and Arya are probably the two most successful executions of what their character designs set them up to do; it’s not a coincidence those are the characters whose stories people seem to be happiest with.) But the thing is, a lot of these tropes, while certainly common in high fantasy, are also found in lots of other genres. Chosen Ones and Unexpectedly Eligible Chosen Ones and Princesses and Warrior Maidens (whether in literal forms or not) show up all over the place. The fact that these aren’t strictly fantasy archetypes perhaps means they were less prone to being mishandled. Bran, though. Bran belongs firmly and only in high fantasy. He is, literally, supposed to be a magic priest-king. A take on the Fisher King, even (I’ll explain about that later). And his story was weighted toward the end because of what it seems like Martin was trying to do more broadly, meaning it was much more on the showrunners to do it right.

High fantasy is always trying in some way to engage with ~the numinous~, which is to say the sort of never-explainable mystery and magic of the world. Magic in high fantasy is usually closely tied to deep time, the land, nature, or the metaphysical. Ancient beings, lost secrets, nature spirits, hidden realms, that sort of thing. It’s part of the genre’s inheritance from the mythology and folklore it’s all based on, which had a much more enchanted, vitalist view of the world than we generally do now. (In a way, that’s the purpose for high fantasy’s existence as a modern genre--keeping some access to that.) What Martin set the whole story up to do was question the tropes that often go along with the genre by making the setting one in which almost everybody has forgotten about all the magic and mystical knowledge that is in their history. Westeros is an extreme, historicized take on the Shire, basically. (”English pastoralism you say? I’ll see you and raise you the English Civil War” -- George R.R. Martin, presumably.) They have no notion of what’s really out there and what’s really possible in the world, and have quite comfortably isolated themselves in a situation where they need not remember. As a result, the social institutions that were developed long ago in relation to the ancient magics and knowledges become, instead, just social norms that can be manipulated, distorted, and played out in a much more historical-fiction kind of fashion, which gives Martin lots of room to point out that, say, ironclad patriarchal bloodlines cause problems. (That is, if you take away any magical justification, by virtue of connection to the land or the spirit realm or what have you, for the right to rule, then you stop having to have your One True Kings also be good people. It allows him to pull apart the different pieces of that trope and suggest that their being connected in the first place is questionable. Which it is! He’s right and he should say it!)

But the magic has to come back at some point, or else it’s really not high fantasy. And it seems like what he wanted to do was have all these elements from outside Westeros--the White Walkers, that god whose name I’ve forgotten, and Daenerys with her dragons--converge on it such that the characters would have to go back to their deep history and call those things back up in order to deal with the real world they live in (instead of the wealthy political bubble of all the scheming) and thus get to a point where they could actually change their system for the better. You can think of it as a very elaborate deus ex machina in a way, except the deus ex machina isn’t Daenerys showing up with dragons to fight the White Walkers or Arya having trained (again, outside Westeros, for the record) just the right way for killing the Night King. It’s all of these external forces forcing the characters in Westeros to get their fucking shit together. Otherwise there’s really no resolution to the war, in a high fantasy version of the story. It’s just historical fiction with some weird bells and whistles. Without a need to go back and figure out whatever the First Men were up to, there’s no incentive to go back to the numinous. That he intended for sure that some version of a return of the numinous end up being a big part of the climax is reinforced for me by the fact that the Starks--again, the backbone of the whole story--are set up as being unusually in touch with this mystic/magical heritage (the old gods, the crypt, the godswood) and unusually faithful to the traditional ways. They were introduced that way for a reason.

So where does Bran come in. The thing is that Bran is literally named after the mythic founding king of Westeros, Bran the Builder. The other thing is that both of those Brans are clearly named after Bran the Blessed, a literal mythic god-king from Welsh mythology whose name means crow (but who for various reasons also often gets associated with ravens, which in turn are commonly associated with transcendent knowledge, magic, etc; it’s a long story). So you have a younger member of the story’s key Stark family, already closer to the sources of magic and mystery than most. You name him after the founder of Westeros who lived in a time of magic, traffic with other beings, and great building works and other inherited accomplishments for which the associated knowledge has since been lost, etc. You have him gain mystical abilities to transfer his consciousness to other bodies, or through time (absolutely typical Mystic Powers). You have him even take on a special priestly status passed down from the era of magic by leaving Westeros to hang out with other kinds of magical beings, which means he is now explicitly named both Bran and Raven.

OBVIOUSLY this kid is supposed to be king. He’s going to restore the realm to a situation in which the ruler, the realm, its various life forces and nature spirits, and the metaphysical are all connected to one another and, in a sense, present in the same body (which is the kind of genuine mythological shit high fantasy is always drawing on). But the writers then just sat around and did nothing with him for years on end until whoops hey he’s king now. Of course no one thinks it makes any sense!! It’s fucking malpractice!!!!

If you go to the GOT Wiki and just read Bran’s page, everything makes sense and lines up well in terms of a list of events. (Although it’s really notable how short the entry from s8 is, and how everything it lists is things that happen to Bran, pretty much.) There is a progression that makes sense. But from what I understand--this was certainly the situation when I stopped watching--nothing was ever done to suggest that any of this mattered. The Three-Eyed Raven, the forest spirits, the magics and so on--it was treated at most as a backstory machine. It had no connection to or effect on the rest of the story, so far as I can tell. The fact that none of this played into the battle with the White Walkers at all is flatly insane. The thing I most remember people saying about Bran after that episode wasn’t even “Why didn’t he use X or Y that he learned in the forest?” but “Why was he there?” which just goes to show how completely and utterly bungled this entire piece of the narrative was. Like, if your high fantasy story is making its audience ask “Why would the story put the one character with the greatest knowledge of ancient magics and powers at the scene of a battle against an all-but-forgotten ancient threat,” then I’m sorry, it has gone fully off the rails, and not just in its most recent season. That’s not subversion, it’s just fully dropping the ball.

You know what would make sense as a lead-in to Bran becoming king? Oh, his performing some spectacular feat of insight, magic, strategy, or all three at the battle that no one else could have pulled off because no one else had his background or powers. Even after years of screwing this part of the story over, that could at least have bothered to make a case for why any of it mattered to the rest of the story. It would not have been very subversive, but when you’ve fucked up this royally you don’t get to be precious about your radikal innovative approach, Davids. I can’t believe Peter Dinklage had to sit there and make a bullshit speech about storytelling, when a decently-handled story would have made it seem natural and self-evident by then (you can still have surprises along the way!) that Bran should be king.

Anyway, in closing: part of the reason I checked out when I did was that I felt like they weren’t doing the things I thought they should do as the story developed. Genuinely, one key part of that was that they seemed to be doing absolutely nothing with Bran, which was baffling to me because it seemed obvious to me he was set up to be an incredibly important character. At the time, I thought they were going somewhere close to this with Bran but just taking way too long at it for some reason. What’s now clear is that the showrunners didn’t understand what they should have been doing with him. (Everybody who was taken aback by this outcome is not a fool for not seeing this. They were, quite reasonably, following the narrative cues they were given along the way, all of which said “Bran doesn’t matter.” It’s maybe clearer to me because I stopped watching.) And what that now makes clear, in my opinion, is that they never really understood what Martin was trying to do by “subverting fantasy tropes”; that in fact they didn’t really understand the genre, let alone what subverting it entailed. Which is exactly what bothered me about it even years after I stopped watching, but couldn’t put my finger on--until, ironically, they proved me right about Bran.

#game of thrones #bran stark #bran the builder #bran the blessed #i really tried no to write this bc who wants to get into got discourse right now but i couldn't get it off my mind #so here #i had a whole thing about disability and the fisher king but honestly it wasn't necessary #let's just say i think what martin (presumably) had in mind for ''bran the broken'' was something more complex #probably still fucked up! but differently

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beneaththetangles · 4 years

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BtT Light Novel Club Chapter 17: Infinite Dendrogram, Vol. 3!

It’s time to dive yet again into the world of Infinite Dendrogram! While the anime adaptation may not have won us over, the original light novels still look to be great, so in we go to volume 3! (By the way, if you have only been watching the anime adaptation, as of the time of posting, the adaptation has stopped just before reaching the material in this volume, so everything here is still spoilers.)

Before we begin the discussion: This novel can basically be divided into two parts: the first part features the “main story” from Ray’s perspective, and the second part features some side stories from other characters’ perspectives. As such, the questions will be split accordingly.

We have a bit bigger of a discussion group this time around: @jeskaiangel and @gaheret are both joining me this time!

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What are your overall thoughts on the main story of the volume?

Jeskai Angel: The first half of this book is basically one big prologue to the next volume — I wonder if it should have just been numbered vol. 2.5 instead of 3. It deals with the aftermath of the Gouz-Maise showdown in the previous volume, and then sets the stage for things to come. Compared to the first couple volumes, the pace is a lot slower and the stakes are much lower. In the Xunyu-Figgy fight it didn’t really make much difference who won, unlike the climactic confrontations with Gardrandra and Gouz-Maise where a lot of lives (albeit tians) were on the line. I don’t hate this part of the book, but I don’t really love it either. It’s fun enough, but it also felt like the Xunyu-Figgy fight was just a needlessly drawn out plot device contrived to provide opportunities for foreshadowing (of which there is a TON).

stardf29: Yeah, I definitely agree that there’s not really anything significant happening and that all this is basically a huge prologue. (I mean, I did say I had trouble thinking of questions, so…) The fights are a nice diversion and a highlight of the battle system outside of what Ray and co. would likely be involved with (and should make for decent anime material for the action fans), but it’s definitely not the high point of Dendrogram.

Gaheret: For my part, I liked the main story, and will go on reading. I find the wordlers-ludos dilemma a quite difficult one, and also quite compelling. Not having read the previous two volumes or having any experience as a gamer meant that everything was quite new to me, yet it managed to give me an enjoyable time. I had to rely on my memories of Stephenson´s “REAMDE” at first, but everything (Masters, kingdoms and geopolitics, monsters, tians, powers, jobs, embryos, ultimate movements, levels of power, money, consequences of dying, death penalty, statistics, interactions, time, tournaments) was explained quite clearly and organically.

I liked the personalities of the main characters (Ray, Nemesis, Hugo, Marie, Shu), and even the minor ones have distinct voices. The international aspect of the VRMMORPG was very interesting for me, too. The focus of the characters who are players on appaerance and theatrics, and often roleplaying, is to be expected given the concept and was a very interesting aspect of it all. As people can change how they look and focus on the impression they want to give, they are for the most part idealized (and creative) versions of themselves. I was in the theatre club in University, and have participated in some roleplaying games and events, so the psychology of the performers is an aspect which I´m definitively interested in.

It is mentioned, for example, that Ray´s brother is a rich NEET in real life, while he himself knows in his head, but rejects in his heart, that this is a game. Certainly, to have a young prince of the Hermit Kingdom, seemingly a conscious and free personal being, ill from a plague with could kill him for good, or a child-murdering cult like the one described, could make it difficult to log out and, say, go to work or do homework. As for the tournament itself reminded me of Boku no Hero Academia, which I find to be a good thing.

This is truly half gamer, half isekai story, which means there are two contradictory logics for everyone involved. The fact there are ludos, “worldlers”, and even cults involed, and that the tians undoubtly have conscience means that there is something very interesting going on here from a philosophical and ethical point of view (torturing your enemies increases your Grudge ability? That´s kind of messed up). I found myself enjoying also the mysteries such as the real in-game status of Ray´s brother or that of Marie. I was astonished, in particular, for the level of detail devoted to the magic-technology explanation of the game mechanisms and the insights on the tian civilizations and societies, and the impact of the contemporary players in them.

In this volume, we start to see Hugo now as part of the Triangle of Wisdom, with plans to attack Altar, and we see his interactions with Ray given that. What are your thoughts on this?

Jeskai Angel: Ray is a weirdly / amusingly smart-and-dumb protagonist. Sometimes he proves quite perceptive and clever, and other times he’s painfully dense. I particularly noted instances of the latter in this volume, and one example of that is his dealings with Hugo. We the readers have meta reasons to expect Hugo to be important to the plot (his role in vol. 2, being a maiden’s master, etc.). I know Ray doesn’t have the benefit of our perspective, but he still comes across as strangely oblivious. Like, I don’t expect him to be so suspicious that he goes 1-v-1 in the middle of town, but couldn’t you be a little more observant / inquisitive when someone with a potentially suspicious (i.e. hostile) background starts saying / doing suspicious things?

stardf29: Ray’s obliviousness definitely is something. He’s definitely too trusting overall, but perhaps it’s that trust that starts to get to Hugo a bit.

Hugo’s side is more interesting to me, as he’s starting to wrestle with how he will soon be Ray’s enemy. I think that now that he’s actually gotten to interact with a Maiden’s Master like himself, but in Altar, he’s starting to realize how people might get hurt by the plan he’s part of. This is all still build-up right now but it definitely interested me in how it would play out later on.

Gaheret: I like good stories concerning friends at opposite sides of a conflict, such as Marvel´s Civil War. Someone who fights alongside you against a child murderer or an alien invasion might fight you when it comes to questions of what is the best here and now, and there may be legitimate ground for doubt. I think I would have liked to discover Hugo´s loyalties at the same time as Ray, too. I also find quite perplexing how he feels it morally necessary to give his friend a hint about something as important as an invasion, though perhaps knowing that this is a game is a part of it. But again, I have yet to read the second volume.

What do you think of Xunyu?

Jeskai Angel: Xunyu is weird and cool. Wiping out the bandits in the beginning, combined with showing all the deference from the court officials and even royalty, works quite well for establishing that this character is a big deal. Xunyu doesn’t seem to be strictly what we’d call “handicapped” (although I’m not really clear on that point), but she does rely on prosthetic limbs, which is a rather interesting touch to see in a video game, especially one that leans more fantasy than sci-fi. I also loved the hilarious confrontation where Ray mistakenly thinks Xunyu is kidnapping the ambassador, faces them down only to be nearly killed, but then Shu shows up, and the situation ends with Xunyu FLIRTING with Ray!

Tangent: I can’t help but wonder how Xunyu’s odd diction is represented in Japanese — that language doesn’t have upper / lower case letters like English, after all. I was also reminded of the way the easterners talk in the Cooking with Wild Game series; in that case, the translations deploy excessive / inappropriate commas to help convey the feeling that their diction is unusual.

stardf29: Yeah, Xunyu is an interesting one. Particularly once you find out who she is in real life (which is said in the premium-exclusive stories for this volume but not in the normal releases, so I probably shouldn’t go any further into that). She does have some fun interactions with Ray already and I want to see them “playing together” later on.

Gaheret: It is interesting how having to cope with inhuman abilities the human body is not exactly designed for apparently gives high-level players a somewhat inhuman instance. Xunyu, with her operistic behaviour, her violent, gory tactics, her implication in the politics of the Hermit Kingdom (it is very natural for tians to resent these immortal, theatrical, somewhat hedonistic strangers who play such important roles in their society, can avoid physical pain and achieve insurmountable powers in a few years, as the tian assassin narrator of the last story shows) and her monster-like appaerance, may be the most interesting case. It must require a lot of work to step into that role. At least, that cacogen-like way of talking seems to be a product of the talisman, not of her acting.

What do you think of Figaro?

Jeskai Angel: We already knew Figaro was powerful, so that comes as no surprise. What was more interesting to me was seeing how he’s buddies with Shu, and that’s more significant for what it says about Shu than about Figaro. Like, Figaro is super strong, best of the best. And Shu hangs out with him in animal costumes calling him “Figgy.” Especially considering that we also know Figaro is a solo player who doesn’t join parties, for Shu to pal around with him as he does implies something about Shu’s own status within Dendro (which has also been hinted at in other ways, of course). I also thought the reveal that Figaro’s embryo was his in-game avatar’s heart was pretty cool — we’ve heard that embryos can be nearly anything, but Figgy’s is the most creative, outside-the-box one we’ve learned about so far.

stardf29: Yeah, that is definitely the most unique Embryo yet. I’d wonder what kind of Embryo it is but we know that there are more types of Embryos than the ones we’ve been told of, and his may very well be one of those special types.

As for Figaro himself, one thing about him is that he’s one of the most “pure gamer” players we’ve seen so far. Given his dedication to solo play, such that he doesn’t get involved in the country’s wars, and only resolves the player-killer incident earlier because it intrudes on his dueling interests, he actually makes for a contrast with Ray, at least as far as we know.

And yes, it’s definitely quite telling that Shu is so close to Figaro. I’ll say that, as of reading this volume I pretty much had Shu’s identity figured out with all the clues, but since it is still technically a spoiler at this point, I’ll have to bear with it a bit longer…

Gaheret: I rooted for Figaro during the battle. Insanely powerful as he was, his powers had a more human vibe, and as a local champion against the high authority of an Empire, he was the underdog. The heart embryo seemed more integrated and organic than the multiple arms of his opponent, and as taking your enemy’s heart is a very ugly tactic, it was poetic justice that this turned out to be the case. Aesthetically, he being up against faster-tan-eye tentacular, lethal arms and a power that can extract organs, resist, then fight back was a satisfying experience. About his character, I got the sense that he is a veteran around Shu’s age, and more of a wordler.

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What are your general thoughts on the side stories in this volume?

Jeskai Angel: It’s a ton of fun and I enjoyed reading it much more than the first half. The second half of the book is a pair of shorter stories about what Ray’s party members Rook and Marie were up to back in vol. 2 while Ray was off doing the whole Gouz-Maise thing. They turn out to be surprisingly heartwarming tales, as Rook befriends a cowardly slime and Marie befriends a little girl. Each story provides some excellent character develop for its lead, and really helps sell me on Lucius / Nagisa, err, Rook / Marie, being realistic, relatable people (especially Marie!). It’s also cool seeing the author show off the ability to narrate for an extended period in voices besides Ray’s. The way Rook narrates his story feels different than how Ray narrates in the main story, and Marie’s narration is likewise different.

stardf29: I really like these sorts of side stories that look at another character’s perspective in any story, so these short stories are great.

Gaheret: To be frank, I’m not sure they are a good idea. I enjoyed Marie’s, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had happened as a part of the main story: the hints, maybe an encounter with Princess Elizabeth or the nobleman as the protagonist looks for clues about the Death Shadow, an indirect conversation where she reveals the reason why. That sort of thing. I think the sense of mystery about this kind of character is better served by evocation sometimes. It works for me in the case of Shu, for example.

The assassin and the escape artist.

So with this volume, we get the big reveal that Marie is actually the Superior Killer. What do you make of this reveal?

Jeskai Angel: First, Marie’s constant jokes and pop culture references were great. I’d forgotten what a strong narrator Marie is, and now I really want a whole volume told from her perspective. The main story has dropped a number of hints that there’s more to Marie than meets the eye, so a revelation was inevitable. Knowing what goes on vol. 4, I think it was smart of the author to place Marie’s big reveal here, where it can stand out and be exciting on its own, rather than get, err, overshadowed… (see what I did there?) by all the other big things occurring in the next book. The manner of the reveal is also satisfying. Marie’s story keeps teasing us with an escalating series of hints; it’s obvious something is up but the reader is still left a bit uncertain about where this is going, and it’s cool to see all the clues finally come together. One fun hint that jumped out at me this time, that I overlooked on my first read, was that Marie mentions that she used to publish a manga about a female journalist, and that’s what her Dendro character is based on. Later, Marie mentions that it was a shounen manga. And you blink and think, wait, what kind of shounen manga stars a female journalist? The switch to the tian assassin’s narrative POV was also used quite well, facilitating a suitably dramatic reveal — “I’m not using a high-rank job.” We confirm that Marie is indeed the Batman…err, the “Superior Killer,” and get the fun surprise of learning she holds the Superior Job Death Shadow (a super ninja-assassin). This volume really did save the best for last.

Gaheret: I suspected something like that (not specifically the Death Shadow/Superior Killer, but something of the sort) since she recognized the status of Shu. As strange as the tought of a girl wearing a suit and sunglasses in a medieval-like world is, I like Marie´s perspective, focused in the character she wants to roleplay, which is also significant for her as an artist, and a cool, idealized superhero (I didn´t connected this much with Rook or Rook´s story, I must confess). She is more of a “wordler” than Ray, and that is enjoyable in itself: she is acting, he is not, and she finds that interesting. Her decision not to tell Ray of her identity to keep the game interesting makes sense from a gamer perspective, but I wonder if Ray would think the same.

That said, her ironic distance makes me wonder sometimes, as well as the cold-blooded demeanor with which she lets the paralyed killer explode in flames after taunting him, and the conversation between her and the depressed nobleman. In the first case, she may have been protecting the princess, but even so. He was harmless now, and she points out how he could have been put in custody by the guard. Even if one doesn´t believe (against all evidence, at this point) that these are real people, to take life-or-death decisions while roleplaying cannot be helpful. It is a fine line to walk.

Jeskai Angel: I got serious Batman vibes from Marie. She’s got a secret identity, she metes out vigilante justice to street thugs while dressed in dark clothing, and when Marie left the assassin to get blown up by his own bomb, it reminded me of how Ra’s al Ghul dies in the movie Batman Begins (watch the scene at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJCxgt7Qb6k). Ra’s and Batman are fighting aboard an out of control train (which Ra’s set up) that’s about to crash. Ra’s taunts Batman about whether he’s willing to “do what’s necessary” and kill him. Batman answers “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you.” Then he jumps out of the train, leaving Ra’s to experience a fiery crash of deadly flaming death. Is Marie morally obligated to save the man who is actively trying to murder the princess and her from his own bomb (a bomb he set off trying to kill her)? It’s an interesting dilemma, one I don’t know has a clear answer. How far does the idea of loving one’s enemies go?

Gaheret: That’s an interesting question. I would say that when you can save an enemy from a deadly threat without personal risk, not doing so is equivalent to actively killing him. That is, it would be moral when he is a credible and deadly threat to oneself (given her abilities, he is not), or others (maybe this protects the princess?), or a war operative warring against one’s people (as he commands an army, I would say Ra’s fits here). Just as one may shoot a person in those cases, provided that there are no other feasible means to stop him, one may let them burn or explode.

In a medieval world, perhaps it would be also legit as a mean of execution, where there are not functioning authorities (or at the authorities command). As was done with pirates on the sea.

What seems troubling, in this case, is that she explicitly notes that he would be taken care of by the authorities, were not for his stupid act. Plus, she is a player, so I don’t think she has a right to self-defense, if we consider him an intelligent being. But she may not consider him so, as he is an IA. In sum, this world is quite a paradox.

stardf29: If you ask me, the fact that there was an activated bomb in play is more than enough of a threat of danger that I would say that no one in Marie’s position was morally obligated to save that person. I would also say that, even given that players don’t “die” when they are killed, they still have some right to self-defense. After all, the effective 72-hour lockout can be very crippling, especially if there is a tian the player is trying to protect. In this case, Marie is trying to protect the princess, and being out for three days could result in serious danger to said princess–to say nothing of the chaos Prof. Franklin is about to wreak.

But yeah, I believe it is not selfish to prioritize self-protection over risking your life to save someone, if you are in a position where you can potentially save more people by remaining alive. There may be specific cases where someone should risk their lives, but in this case, given that the choice is between remaining alive to protect someone important to the country and risking her life to save a random criminal, I didn’t even see any sort of moral quandary for Marie here.

As for Marie’s reveal in general, it is easily the highlight for me here. Not just in how well it was executed overall, but also how we get to see her own story, how she got into Dendro and how she got interested in Ray.

One interesting thing about her is how her approach in the game seems to be role-playing a particular character of hers, that is largely different from herself in real life. I know this is a popular way for some people to play games: rather than treating it completely like just a game or playing as an extension of themselves, they play as a way of bringing a separate character to life. I think that fits nicely somewhere in between the pure “gamers” of the world and those like Ray who see the world as real.

What are your thoughts on Rook and his side story?

Jeskai Angel: I don’t recall Rook being the subject of as much foreshadowing as Marie, so it makes sense that his story doesn’t have the same kind of major reveal that Marie’s does. If anything, Rook’s story itself serves a vehicle for dropping clues that there are hidden depths to this character. Reading about Rook’s efforts to tame the Mithril Arms Slime, I was struck by how influential The Lord of the Rings is. Tolkien’s fictional metal, originally found only the Mines of Moria (Khazad-dûm to all our dwarven readers), has since turned up in a surprising number of other worlds (including, in this instance, a Japanese work). I wondered if Rook’s penchant for naming his creature after famous actresses is just a joke from the author that implies nothing about Rook himself, or if Rook the character is in-story choosing to name all his monsters after actresses. It was also amusing to be reminded that Rook really does take after Ray a little, in terms of being super smart and observant sometimes, but in other cases (e.g., “Catherine”) seeming oblivious to the weirdness obvious to everyone around him.

stardf29: Rook’s story is definitely fun to see how he goes about his taming work. Also, I am quite amused and curious about his fear of mice… That has to have an interesting backstory to it.

Jeskai Angel: Regarding Rook’s mouse incident, it’s interesting how Babi comforts him, and he says it reminds him of his mother. That feels like potentially a hint about why Rook ended up with the embryo that he did.

Gaheret: I usually do like stories about the bond between master and beast, but not in this case. I guess that when I hear «slime», I do not associate it with the wilderness, the animal life and the balance between the animal nature and the Master’s nature that make the proccess of taming so enjoyable. I’m not a fan of the pimp, neither as a concept nor as it played out here. I like Rook just OK.

What do you think of Elizabeth, the young escape artist princess?

Jeskai Angel: Elizabeth was fun, and I’m impressed at how the translation was able to convey that she speaks in a manner both childish and formal at once. The way she talked really sold me on the idea that this is a person raised as a prim and proper princess…who’s also still a young kid. I wonder how much of that is on the author vs. the translator.

stardf29: Elizabeth definitely seems like the sort of royal girl who feels constrained by her upbringing and responsibility and just wants to get away from it all for a bit. And we really do get a feel for just how “realistic” her character is. I bring that last point up because this week’s episode of the other VRMMO anime, Bofuri, had an example of what NPC sidequests would normally be like, with the NPC spouting pre-programmed lines even when they don’t quite match what actually happened. So yeah, that was a nice reminder of what games are generally like, and by contrast, how realistic Dendrogram is.

Gaheret: On the other hand, I found Elizabeth to be a very interesting character (even if the concept was a bit formulaic, as Marie herself notes). Aside from her being a tian, I like stories about family and royalty, which entails responsibility, danger and also a legacy, and the different traits of the three princesses are enjoyable, while the politics are complicated enough to make this interesting. I liked her better for coming back on her own after the fun. He being in danger made the story feel relevant and urgent.

====

Thanks for joining us for our Light Novel Club discussion! Because of how this volume was, it ended up being mainly about the various characters, which I think is fine since Infinite Dendrogram has so many great characters. Let us know in the comments what you thought of these characters!

Next week, we will be announcing our next two titles, so look forward to that! Here’s a quick teaser of what our next titles will be: – Definitely doesn’t drink Dos Equis – Back to where it all started

See you next time!

#Light Novels #BtT Light Novel Club #Infinite Dendrogram #Articles #Author: stardf29 #Author: JeskaiAngel #Author: Gaharet

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kingflups · 5 years

Text

Compounded: Home, but not Alone - Chapter 1: Prelude

Word Count: 5730

Mini summary: The Avengers are out on missions across the globe. Little do they know that plans to break into their base have begun to circulate- and word travels fast among criminals. Multiple plots of robbery, theft, and heisting arise- all with their eyes set on the Avengers compound. A young team arises to meet the crisis, with every tool and trap inside their tiny grasps. Expanded summary and story under the cut.

Expanded Concept/Summary: A Home Alone style fic set at the Avengers compound. A bizarre timeline AU that I pulled out of my own ass. Ages are sqweed for the sake of having a cast. Our Home Alone children are: Wanda Maximoff, Peter Parker, Cassie Lang, Shuri, and Morgan Stark. Maybe even the Barton kids. Actually just Lila. I aged down Wanda because I liked how she was a teen or young adult in AOU and Civil War, and I want to use that young Wanda- she seems cool. Cassie, Morgan, Shuri and Peter are their post-endgame ages.

A supervillain organization has sent out a powerful and widespread computer virus to select secure compounds, prompting the Avengers to deploy teams across the globe. During this adventure, however, the younger members are left behind. Little do the Avengers know that word travels fast among villains. Multiple plots of robbery, theft, and heisting arise- all with their eyes set on the Avengers compound.

Along the way, alliances are formed and broken; fights against one another began to tear the Avenger’s home apart! ...But the kids are working together better than they ever have before. It seems that the gained knowledge to the villians that their advisories are children begin to tear their uneasy alliances apart. What will happen now as heroes defend their home, villains show their heart, and supervillains flex their lack of empathy?

Documentary Cassie is watching: Medieval Monsters- Peek inside the Strange, Secret World of Bugs - A National Geographic Showcase [ Link ]

Ballpark kids ages:

Wanda- 20

Peter- 16

Cassie- 16

Shuri- 15

Morgan- 6

Lila- 15

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AVENGERS COMPOUND:

Approx. 10 AM.

Living quarters- Recreation Hub

Clint leaned against the wall as he pulled on his left boot.

“I’m sorry, Lila, I know I promised a tour of the compound, but it will have to wait.” He said. “Bad guys wait for no one.”

Lila bounced her legs against he countertop she sat on. She was wearing baggy jeans and some flannel. She looked like she had just arrived from off the family farm.

“Yeah, no problem Dad.” She said. “Go be a hero.”

“Sure wish I could go.” Shuri piped in. She was sprawled out, upside down, on the couch. She was also wearing casual clothes. Between her fingers she twiddled with a small electronic as she spoke.

T’challa scoffed.

“If you thought I was letting you come before, I am most certainly not letting you come now.” T’challa said. “Mother would have by hide if I got you anywhere near a viral contagion.”

“Only an airborne one!” Shuri said, sitting up. “I mean, come on! You guys are fighting A.I.M.. They’re a bunch of yellow-suited nerds!”

“They’re world-class scientists Shuri- terrorists ones.”

“They’re yellow-pushovers with gas masks and cartoonishly high IQ’s.” Clint said.

Shuri getured to Clint excitedly.

“Exactly! Give me suit and I’ll have those too.”

T’challa sighed. He began to tap his fingers against his chin.

“Well, I guess you’re right…”

He trailed off. Then, T’Challa grabbed Clint by the elbow.

“But you are still not coming.” He turned his back to Shuri. “Come on Barton- We are needed in the UK.”

“What?!” Shuri protested.

T’Challa turned to his sister and stuck his tongue out before his mask materialized over his face. Shuri pulled herself over the back of the couch and stuck out her tongue twice as dramatically.

Clint stumbled as T’Challa lead him to the door.

“Yup, yup. Coming, your highness.”

He quickly grabbed his quiver as he passed through the doorway.

“Lila, watch yourself, alright? Party only a little, and don’t let the compound burn down while we’re gone.”

“Of course Dad,” Lila said. “Watch yourself out there, Hawkeye.”

Clint smiled as he disappeared from the door. His voice echoed down the hallway.

“You too, Hawkeye!”

Shuri and Lila listened in silence as the compound was filled with the echoing sound of a Quinjet taking off. It was the last one still in the hanger- the others had already been deployed across the globe.

Shortly after the Barton’s arrived that morning, communications began blowing up. Data banks from across the globe had been simultaneously attacked. Digitally, firewalls and other digital defenses completely collapsed at a prison in the States, a research facility in Chile, and multiple facilities across Europe and Africa- and those were the only ones they knew about.

There was a physical attack too- A.I.M. scientists arrived at each location shortly after beginning the digital attacks, armed to the teeth with tech and weapons. With their arrival also marked the release of an unknown toxin, causing seizures and blackouts to those caught in the area. Children caught in these zones became unstable- it seemed young systems couldn't handle the contagion. Early reports considered the virus harmful to adults and life-threatening to adolescents.

Shuri sighed, tossing her collection of electrical bits into the cushions of the couch.

“So much for a family tour night, huh?”

Lila chuckled.

“Yeah, guess so.” She said. “But I ain’t surprised. I mean, come on- like a chill night at superhero headquarters would go uneventful?”

“”Superhero”? Is that what you call your Dad?” Shuir asked. “Barton is your dad, right?”

Lila scoffed.

“Well, yeah, but I wouldn’t call him a superhero..”

“That’s what you said.”

“No. No, no, no. Everybody here has powers and supersuits and magic and junk. My Dad is… my Dad.”

Lila shook her head, then jumped off the counter. Her boots thunked against the tile as she made her way to the couch.

“I think we got off on a weird hand. I’m Lila Barton.”

“Hawkeye’s kid.” Shuri said.

“One of ‘em.”

Shuri laughed.

“Of course he has more than one kid. He always seemed like the kind to have a troop around him. At least, that's what it sounded like when T’Challa spoke about him.”

Shuri scooted backwards and patted on the couch. Lila crawled over the seat and sat on the back.

“That’s right. T’Challa’s your brother. What’s that like, being a princess and all?”

Shuri laughed.

“That’s right, but only technically.”

“So basically what I said was completely right.” Lila grinned.

Shuri rolled her eyes.

“Well, yeah, but I’m also a scientist. Do you think my brother could have built that suit?” Shuri clicked her tongue. “That’s all me.”

“For real? That’s so cool. My mechanical skills advance pretty much only to cars and lumber.”

Lila bent over and began to peel off her boots. She tossed them aside, piling them at the base of the television across the room, where several other pairs had been placed.

“My Dad doesn’t let me anywhere near his work. The skills and stuff, sure, but not danger-danger.”

“Pfft. You think T’Challa is any better? Between him and Mom, I might as well be stuck in a bubble. I build nearly indestructible suits, and I am still restricted to the lab at the first sign of trouble. It takes a full scale invasion for me to suit up.”

Lila sat up.

“Wait- you’ve fought before?” Lila gasped. “That’s really cool. I shoot, you know, like my dad.”

Lila mimicked dry-firing a bow into the hall.

“He would never bring me with, but I kinda really want too. I think I might be good at it.”

“Well that’s the dream, isn’t it?” Shuri sighed. “But instead, we’re locked in the most secure compound this side of the equator. The most action we’re going to see tonight is on the big screen.”

“I mean... we could still go on a tour.” Lila said.

“By ourselves?” Shuri asked.

“Yeah, you said it yourself- we’re in the safest place probably on the whole planet. Let’s walk around a bit.”

Shuri grinned.

“I like the way you think, Barton.” Shuri said. She jumped off the couch and to her feet- it didn’t make a sound as her socks touched the floor. “I was going to sneak off myself, but if since your down…” Shuri trailed off as she collected her electronics off the couch and tossed them haphazardly onto a nearby coffee table.

“Let’s get this party started.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

11:53 AM.

INCOMING TRANSMISSION.

UNITED STATES MARSHAL SERVICE CLASSIFIED FACILITY

DESIGNATION: THE RAFT

BROADCASTING FROM AN EMERGENCY FREQUENCY.

CONTAINMENT BREACH.

PRISONER TRANSFER: UNSUCCESSFUL.

EMERGENCY CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL: UNSUCCESSFUL.

STAFF EMERGENCY PROTOCOL: FAILING.

MAIN POWER: FAILED.

EMERGENCY FIRE PROTOCOL INITIATED.

EMERGENCY POWER: OPERATING AT 47.3%.

S.O.S.

REPEATING MESSAGE.

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Living Quarters- Ms. Maximoff.

Wanda rested her head against her folded hands. A large leatherbound book was laid across her crossed-legs. It was hand-written in a decadent script in a language she had never seen before. Dr. Strange said it was a collection of runes and spells belonging to extinct school dedicated to the study of chaotic magic.

It was beautiful.

It also complete nonsense.

“Where does this line go?” Wanda hissed.

She traced her finger along a line of text at the top of the page. The line ran clearly at the top, then pulled a 90 degree angle into the lower text. Then it looped, divided, and corkscrewed… Was it even still going? Or was this a new line altogether?

A reference book was also placed next to her on her pillow deciphering the runes into old English. An old English dictionary laid next to that. And next to that laid an open notebook covered in ink notes and highlighter.

Wanda sighed, pushing the book aside.

“I’m getting nowhere.”

Carefully, she collected all of the books and carried them in a stack to a bookshelf across the room. Lining the shelf was a row of candles, only one of which was lit. It was a small white candle set in an unmarked jar. Next to it, unlike the other candles, there was a series of photographs.

Wanda placed down the books and kissed her hand. She then placed her hand against three of the larger photos- One of her and Vision sitting outside the compound. Another was of her and her brother Pietro perched on the wall of a fountain somewhere in Europe. Pietro was balancing haphazardly along the wall, his arms clenched around Wanda’s shoulders to keep himself from falling in. Her own hands were buried in the edge to keep herself from being pulled into the water. They were both smiling.

Wanda’s hand lingered on the last photo. It was of her family. It was folded and crumpled, and a lone piece of tape held it together even in the frame. A much younger version of herself and Pietro looked back at her. Their parents looked back at her too, and between them was squeezed their younger sister, Lorna. The photo was ridiculously formal and rigid for being taken on their couch, but everyone in it looked happy. Uncomfortable, sure, but happy.

"Can I hide in here?"

Wanda jumped, knocking over the picture frame. She turned to the doorway with a hand poised protectively over her chest. Morgan looked back at her.

"Can I?" She repeated.

"Oh, Morgan!" Wanda said. "I didn't know you were here."

Morgan grinned.

"Yeah! Momma said I could sleep over. Isn't that neat!" She smiled. Morgan made her way over to the bed and lifted Wanda's sheets.

"Can I hide here?"

Wanda blinked.

“I suppose,” Wanda said. “Why are you hiding?”

“I’m playing with Peter.” Morgan said. She peeked under the sheet and made a face. “There’s too many boxes under here. I can’t fit.”

Morgan reached under the bed and pulled out a large and deflated stuffed bear. It was nearly as tall as she was. Morgan tossed the toy critter on the bed and then began to worm her way under the mattress.

Wanda followed, dropping to the floor so that she laid next to the young Stark. Morgan stared back at her from beneath the overhanging sheet.

“Playing hide and seek?’ Wanda said.

Morgan nodded.

“Well, did you know that me and my brother were the hide and seek champions?”

“That’s silly.” Morgan replied. “No one can be a champion at hide and seek.”

Wanda scoffed.

“Well, we were.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yeah-uh!” Wanda said. “And I can prove it.”

Wanda pushed herself off the ground and wiped off her leggings. Offering a hand to Morgan, she used her other hand to pull up the sheet and uncover her hiding spot.

“How about I show you the best hiding spots in the whole compound?”

Morgan peeked out from under the bed with a skeptical look on her face.

“There’s more than one?” Morgan said.

“Oh yeah, there’s plenty, if you know where to look.”

Morgan stayed under the bed for a moment, her face twisted deeply in thought. Then her face exploded into a grin.

“For real?” She said.

“Yeah, for real.” Wanda grinned.

Morgan squirmed out from her hiding place and latched onto Wanda’s hand.

“Let’s go!” Morgan jumped excitedly. “I’m so excited!”

Wanda laughed as she lead Morgan out of the room.

“You really like hide and seek, huh?”

Morgan let her head fall to her side as she spoke.

“Hide and seek is okay,” Morgan replied. “But I’m excited to win.”

Wanda snorted.

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FEDERAL PRISON: UPSTATE NEW YORK - EMERGENCY LOCK-UP

“Hubbard! Get that door closed!” Barked an armed man.

Against him leaned another guard whose hands were clenched around a gash at his hip. A third rushed behind them, forcing a metal latch into place at a large fire door. Several others filled the now enclosed space. Several sported the same armed-guard regalia; others were in a plain, employee garb.

A thick mist hovered over the floor, reaching many of the employee’s waists. It smelt of pepper and vinegar.

“Where is our back-up?” One of the guards said. The man who first spoke answered.

“They should be here by now.”

He pulled the man at his side closer to himself, forcing the other man’s wound into his side as another buffer.

“Keep your hands against that gash, Ramos.” He commanded

Ramos nodded. He leaned deeper into the first man, letting him hold him completely. The first man continued.

“We need to communications up. And we need to get Ramos patched up. And that door needs to stay shut.”

One of the employees stepped forward.

“Captain?” The employee stated. “We still don’t know what’s going on- what’s happening out there?”

The captain locked his jaw, then spoke.

“The prisoners are out. High profile ones.” He said. He looked down to Ramos, who was growing paler. Pulling Ramos closer, he continued.

“Those bastards who broke in are letting everyone out. They’re handing out damn gasmasks!”

The employee who spoke before recoiled. The captain continued.

“Everybody stay calm. Nobody’s getting through that door.”

“How can you say that?” The employee argued. “We’re trapped in a cell in a prison full of convicted felons!”

The captain grabbed Ramos and placed him on a table. A man in a nurses uniform rushed to his side. The captain turned back to the employee with a grim look overcasting his features.

“Because we’re not anywhere near the exit.”

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AVENGERS COMPOUND- KITCHEN

“The new forest contains many unique habitats. Here, there are trees over six hundred years old. For some, their time is up- But death brings new life. Beneath this fallen giant, the earth is stirring.”

On screen, a beetle began to worm it’s way out of the dirt beneath a fallen tree. The angle of the camera made it seem like the animal was massive. The enhanced soundtrack made his footsteps sound like something akinded to an elephant.

“A male stag beetle. He has spent the last six years as an underground grub feeding on the deadwood. Now, his quest begins to find a mate before the end of his short adult life.”

Cassie watched as a large beetle bumbled out of the ground on screen. A comedic heavy soundtrack played as the beetle slowly meandered his way out of the ground.

“Aw, you’ll find somebody dummy.”

Cassie tossed a piece of popcorn at her mouth, but missed. It bounced off her lip and tumbled to the floor. Tapping quickly filled the room as a dog-sized ant appeared from behind the counter, diving at the piece and plucking it up into its jaws.

“Aw, nards.” Cassie said. “Five second rule, Antonette! I could have still eaten that.”

The ant continued to make a clicking sound as she perched her front legs against Cassie’s. Antonette then stuck her jaw into the bowl and removed another piece of popcorn.

“Hey!” Cassie protested. Antonette jumped backwards and disappeared once more behind the counter. Cassie made a face, then tossed another piece of popcorn into the air. She propped her mouth open wide to catch it.

“Cassie!”

Cassie lurched forward in surprise, gagging as the airborne piece of popcorn collided with the back of her throat.

“Cassie!” Peter repeated. He slid into the room, jumping over and into the barstool next to Cassie in a single fluid motion. It was really quite graceful. Cassie missed this, as she was doubled over in her seat, coughing into her hands.

“What?” Cassie managed. She beat a fist against her chest as another fit of coughs took her. “You scared the crud outta me.”

“I can’t find Morgan.” Peter said. He ran a hand through his hair as he spoke. His clothes were disheveled and twisted, as his he had been running, but didn’t have time to straighten them out.

Cassie set her bowl aside.

“What do you mean you can’t find her?”

“I mean I can’t find her!” Peter said. “I told Mrs. Stark that I was going to watch her. So, we were playing hide and seek, and I started looking, and then I kept looking, then I said the game was over, then I kept looking, and still can’t find her.”

“Wait, you lost her during a game? She’s around her somewhere, dude.”

Peter jumped off the stool and began to pace about the room. He opened the fridge and began to peer into each of the shelves.

“I don’t think she is.” Peter said. He closed the fridge and opened the nearest shelf. “It’s like she’s poofed away."

Cassie arched her head back and screamed into the hall.

“Morgan! Game over, Congratulations! You beat Spiderman!” Cassie yelled. Peter and Cassie listened is silence for a moment. No reply came.

“Oh my god, I lost her.” Peter said, cupping his face in his hands. He opened the next cabinet and began to peer behind the stack of plates inside it.

“Peter, she’s not behind the plates, man. We’re in a massive building- she’s probably under table somewhere.”

“I don’t know, maybe she shrunk down or…or.... Can anybody turn invisible? Could Morgan have grabbed like a suit that turned her invisible?”

“Peter.” Cassie repeated. “No way, man. Let’s just look some more. Come on, I’ll help.”

Jumping off the barstool, Cassie wiped off the large chunks of popcorn salt from her own crumpled pants. The space of floor where she sat was now slightly discolored with the sheer amount of crumbs.

��Thanks a ton.” Peter said. He quickly opened the remaining cabinets, then rushed to meet Cassie at the door. “After that, we need to talk about how messy you are. That floor is nasty.”

Cassie scoffed.

“Nah man, Antonette loves it.”

Peter passed Cassie as she spoke, positioning himself so that his back was to the hallway. Cassie was still scrubbing food bits from her baggy pants. Behind her, her pet ant had crawled over the counter and was currently burying her head in Cassie’s bowl of popcorn.

“I guess she does like popcorn.” Peter conceded. He watched as Antonette flipped the bowl over, perching the piece of dishware onto her antennas to keep it from clacking to the floor. The ant then jumped to the floor and began to eat the pieces from the ground.

“My folks love her. We haven’t had a vacuum in two years. Well, I mean, dad never ever had one, but it was a happy improvement for mom and my stepdad.”

Cassie straightened up, clapping her fingers together. The last particles of salt from her fingers twinkled to the floor.

“Let’s go find Morgan.”

Peter immediately took off down the hall, leading Cassie by her hand.

“Woah, Peter!” Cassie said. “Slow down! You’re going to tear my arm off!”

Peter slowed down, but only a little.

“Sorry! I know I’m probably overreacting, but normally I’m wearing a mask, so people can’t tell when I panic.”

Peter turned to Cassie as he pulled her through the hall, pointing to his face dramatically.

“But I’m not wearing a mask.”

Peter paused at an intersection in the hall, then yanked Cassie with him to the left.

“Otherway!” Cassie said. She dug her heels into the floor, snapping Peter to a halt.

“You want to go armory first?” He said.

“Well, yeah,” Cassie said. “Just because Morgan probably didn’t shrink down or turn invisible doesn’t mean she for sure didn’t.”

Peter’s face dropped further.

“Oh my god,” he said. “Oh my god, Pepper’s gonna strangle me.”

“Pepper’s not going to strangle you, dude. Morgan’s a kid! Kids love hide and seek! She’s probably just really good at hiding.”

Peter paused, facing Cassie. His grip tightened for a moment.

“Cassie. I have been ‘seeking’ for Morgan for over an hour and a half.” Peter said.

Cassie was quiet for a second.

“Oh my god.” Cassie she finally managed.

“I know.” Peter said.

“Oh my god.” Cassie repeated, with more feeling this time.

“Uh-huh.”

Cassie began to rush toward the armory and Peter quickly fell into rushed step beside her.

“Dude, don’t panic," Cassie said. "It's probably nothing."

"Nothing?" Peter questioned.

"Yeah, it's probably nothing! But um, Hope doesn’t lock up her gear and, uh, we should check it. Maybe."

Peter sharply inhaled, his pace doubling and then passing Cassie's.

"Peter, I said it's probably nothing " Cassie said, overly calm. She too quickened her pace to match Peter’s new speed.

“Why doesn’t she lock her stuff up!” Peter hissed. “She’s so… Professional! She’s dating a professional former thief!”

“You always have to be ready!” Cassie said. “And who would steal from her- it’s in the most secure room probably on the whole planet! Most of the time it works out!”

"Cassie, no six year old is this good at hiding." Peter said. "Morgan could be on the moon at this point!"

"She's not on the moon."

"The quantum realm then!"

Cassie got quiet.

"...Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean you should say it out loud." She huffed.

Peter rounded a corner, sticking his fingertips to the wall as he pivoted in the new direction. Cassie swerved on foot, her feet sliding against the slick floor. She caught herself before she could stumble out of control.

"We're so dead." Peter said.

The pair reached a large metal door. It was reinforced with braces. A large keypad was imbedded in the wall beside it, outfitted with a camera and small touch screen scanner.

“Oh, that’s fantastic.” Cassie said, huffing between her heavy breaths. “It’s still closed.”

Peter gazed at the door for a second. His eyebrows furrowed, then he turned to the keypad. He punched in a series of numbers, then pressed his whole palm against the touchscreen. It illuminated light blue for a second, then disappeared. Something behind the door hissed. Cassie reached forward and opened the newly unlocked-door.

“Morgan, are you in here?” Peter called.

He squeezed past Cassie and slipped into the open room. There were no windows. Just walls and air vents. Lockers lined a row of disjointed walls. Some contained old suits, broken armor, and partially functional prototypes. Behind the wall of lockers was a large set of containment bars. Some contained large suits and others broken pieces of large scale equipment.

Cassie rushed to one of the lockers at the end of the row. She opened it- it was unlocked.

“Hope's spare suit’s here.”

Peter walked down the row of lockers, peering into the bars of each one.

“Nothing looks gone that shouldn’t be.”

Cassie planted her hands on her hips. She sighed.

“Maybe Morgan wandered outside.”

Peter shook his head. He pushed away from the last locker.

“I don't think so… we made a rule that we would stay inside.”

“You should have made a rule to keep to just one room.”

Peter nodded.

“Yeah, I know. How was I supposed to know a six-year-old would take advantage of such a huge space! I thought she would go behind the curtains or something! ...I’ve never babysat before. I think I’m bad at it.”

He sighed, then ran his hands through his hair again.

“Okay, yeah. Let’s check outside.”

Peter turned to the door and Cassie fell into step beside him.

“Have you asked Wanda? I think she’s around her somewhere.”

“For real? I thought-"

The pair were cut short as an alarm cut through the building.

“Peter?” Cassie yelled. Her voice was nearly lost in the sound. “What is that?”

“I don’t know!” Peter yelled back, covering his ears.

The alarm continued for several seconds before it cut out. The lights flickered out after it.

“That can’t be good.” Peter said.

A ear-piercing boom shattered through the air from somewhere in the building, shaking the walls and lockers. Cassie dropped to her knees.

“Peter?” Cassie repeated.

Red light suddenly illuminated room. A female voice played over a set of loud-speakers.

Emergency power online.

“Oh my god, I think we’re under attack.” Peter said. He turned to Cassie, his own shaken expression reflected in her face.

“We gotta find Morgan.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LAST RECORDING FROM DAMAGED CELL BLOCK CAMERA B.

TIME OF RECORDING: 12:35 PM, EASTERN TIME. RECORDED APPROX. TWO HOURS AGO.

BEGINNING PLAY-BACK.

“Get back into your cells!” Barked a guard. He opened his mouth to speak again, but a prisoner swung a chair at the man’s head before he could manage. The guard’s head snapped backwards. His form tilted toward his back and pivoted over the railing he was against. The man who hit him smirked, then rushed into the fray of moving bodies.

Among the crowd that had gathered near the lunch tables, a man in a yellow hazmat suit appeared. He stepped onto a table and held his arms out to the room.

“Attention!” He yelled. “I am Doctor-”

A can flew across the room and nailed the speaker in the head. He stumbled forward but caught himself before he fell off the table.

“Shut up, asshole!” Shouted someone from the crowd. The A.I.M. scientist scowled, but continued.

“I am a scientist, with Advanced Idea Mechanics! You might know us as the international agency A.I.M.!”

“The egg-heads?” Shouted another prisoner.

“Yeah, the nerds with M.O.D.O.K.!” Shouted another.

“The gross floating head?” Said yet another.

“M.O.D.O.K. is a breakthrough is techno-organic technology!” The doctor yelled. “But that is besides the point! I was the lead researcher on that project, and my work was critical, but again, besides the point! A.I.M. has decided to release you all as a thank you for your cooperation!”

“For what?”

“Yeah, we haven’t done jack-shit!”

“Speak for yourself! I totally killed that guard Roswell!”

“I thank you for your upcoming cooperation!” The Scientist corrected. “We have released you all in our efforts to recruit your minds! We look for intelligence, skill, and determination! We look for your doctors, scientists, and mechanics!”

The crowd grew quiet. Finally, a prisoner in the back spoke up.

“...You want us to work for you?”

“Some of you.” The scientist replied. “We look for the smartest among you to join our ranks.”

“Only some of us? That’s elitist.”

“Bro, I think it’s called mentalist.”

“No, stupid, that’s a show on CBS.”

The scientist waved his hands over the crowd, again grabbing their attention.

“Gentlemen, please!” The A.I.M. man called. “Let me explain our first job! Surely this will interest you- all of you! We have a credible reason to believe that tech taken from you, ourselves, and other global efforts are currently being stored at the Avengers central compound. A.I.M. has already caused threats world-wide, pulling almost every known avenger away from the facility! With your help, we can overwhelm their remaining defenses and steal the most powerful pieces of technology this side of the galaxy!”

A wave of murmuring overtook the crowd. Several groups formed around the tables. One man pushed through the crowd, forcing his way to another man.

“Schultz!” Hissed the man who had moved through the crowd. Schultz jumped, rearing back his hand in a balled fist. He sighed in relief as he met the man’s eyes.

“Adrian!” Schultz said. “You scared the hell outta me, boss.”

"Prison riot- I know. It ain't great for the nerves." Adrian shouldered past the last man between them, elbowing the stranger out of his way. Schultz sighed, letting his shoulders drop from their defensive position.

“What do you make of the show-boat?” Adrian asked, nodding his head to the A.I.M. scientist. Schultz frowned.

“I don’t like it boss. It seems too easy.”

“Yeah. I thought so too. Doesn’t mean we should toss the idea.”

Schultz shook his head.

“Don’t tell me you’re actually thinking about it.”

“Hell no,” Adrian said. “They’re going to dump us as soon as they get into the Avenger’s lock up.”

“That’s where they’re keeping our gear, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

Schultz and Adrian both sighed.

“I mean, we’re already in prison, and we aren’t getting out anytime soon.”

Adrian sighed. He crossed his arms, shaking his head as he thought.

“What if we break into the Avengers compound first? Before they get a chance?”

Schultz nodded.

“That could work.” He said. “Easy buck off materials we already know how to sell. We still need a way to get there.”

“What if we stole their jet?” Adrian said.

“Excuse me?” Schultz hissed. He leaned in closer to Adrian. “Adrian, neither of us know how to fly.”

“Did I hear you boys mention something about needing a pilot?”

Adrian and Schultz turned to the new speaker. He was shorter than the two of them and spoke with a thick southern drawl.

“Who are you supposed to be?”

“Somebody who knows how to fly.” The man said. He held out his hand in the shared space between Adrian and Schultz. “Name’s Montana.”

“Montana…?” Adrian trailed off.

“Just Montana.”

“Just Montana.” Adrian huffed. “I’m sure that’s a real name too.”

Adrian huffed again, placing both hands against his hips. He bit his lip as he thought in silence. After a moment he sighed.

“You can fly a jet?” He finally said.

“Anything with a half-decent engine. I bring my boys with and we can get a damn dinosaur back in the air.”

“Fine. We'll take ya.”

“Boss, you’re sure?” Schulz said.

“No, I’m not sure, but I’m not hanging around mid-prison break until I make up my mind.” Adrian said. He turned to Montana. “Grab your crew- we’re getting outta here.”

Montana nodded, and he disappeared into the crowd. Adrian and Schultz began to make their way toward the exit.

“Boss, I don’t know if we can trust that guy.” Schultz said.

“Neither can I, but I’ll take my chances with the hick before I try my luck with A.I.M..”

Montana reappeared near the door, with two other men in tow.

“This your crew?” Adrian asked.

“Yessir,” Montana said. “Meet Ox and Dan.”

“We’ll have time for pleasantries in the air.” Schultz said, brushing past the group. He disappeared into the hall.

“You heard ‘em boys,” Montana said. “Let’s go.” They too disappeared.

Adrian sighed.

“You’d think being the ‘boss’ they’d wait for my word.” He huffed. He walked into the hall, out of view of the camera.

The scientist on the table held out his hands once more to the crowd.

“Gentlemen!” He cried. “Do you have your answers? Are you ready to join the ranks of wondrous A.I.M.?”

“Fuck no!” Came a voice from the crowd.

The scientist stepped back in surprise.

“E-excuse me?” He said.

“I ain’t going anywhere with somebody who could use me as a guinea pig!” The man yelled.

“Hey, man! Shut up! These guys are getting us outta here!” Shouted another man.

“No way! I’ve heard about the experiments these sick fucks commit! I ain’t going anywhere!”

The man reeled back, punching the second prisoner in the jaw. He fell backwards, tumbling into the crowd. The effect rippled, and chaos broke out among the prisoners. Shouting quickly filled the space. The scientist who had spoken before was thrown from the table he stood on as a prisoner tipped it over. He was lost in the riot. Other A.I.M. soldiers entered the room and began to fire into the crowd. A prisoner leapt off a balcony and plunged a make-shift weapon into the side of one of the yellow clad-men.

A stray gunshot was thrown into the air. It struck the camera.

The recording went black.

#avengers #avengers fanfiction #mcu #marvel #fanfiction #not gonna its basically superhero home alone #spiderman #lila barton #shuri #cassie lang #peter parker #morgan stark #wanda maximoff

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prakathesh · 5 years

Text

May 18.

May 18. I still remember that day so clearly, I was 14 years old. My family and I were driving back home from Sydney after a protest. We were in the car. My mother gets a call…All I hear from her conversation is ‘Aiyo’ as she starts crying and screaming. We all were concerned. News broke out. The war had ended.

My entire body was frozen. Without understanding what to say. 3 decades of armed struggle. More than 3 decades of oppression. My entire childhood was centred around learning about Tamil, the war and our people. I didn’t even know any English until after I attended school which is not common for a child born in an English speaking nation such as Australia. All those years growing up thinking by the time I was an adult I would get to go home to Eelam and claim it as my country. It’s been 10 years since that day. 10 years since the lives of Eelam Tamil’s were shaken, shattered and broken. Our dream of an independent state. Our dream of freedom. Our dream for the next generation. It is so hard to write about this loss. This loss isn’t digestible. It is as if something has been stuck in my throat for a decade now. Every Maaveerar thinam, every Black July, every Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day. EVERY SINGLE DAY THE THOUGHT OF THE LOSS OCCURS IN MY MIND.

How could this occur? How are we still fighting for basic answers to the war crimes which were committed? How are were still seeking answers regarding the missing Annas and Akkas? How are we still seeking justice? How is oppression still occurring, where is this so called ‘unity’? When you look back in time, you will notice that the war began due to Tamil youth feeling that they could not rely on the government nor the politicians anymore. They felt the need to begin an armed struggle as they could no longer face oppression and started to realise that the continued oppression will only get worse for the future generation. Many of us grew up on the notion and belief of Tamil Eelam. Many of us grew up wishing for an independent state for the Tamil people, a state where there was equality and a place which was home without discrimination.

I ask you, for one moment, let us put the concept of having an independent state in the back burner. Let us focus on the present moment and focus on what is going on now, 10 years later. Let us start by asking this question first; why are we still living in oppression? Why are the Tamil people of Sri Lanka still getting monitored with systematic militarisation? It is one thing to say the war is over, yet why is there systematic militarisation still occurring? Why is there still constant harassment to former cadres and their families throughout the north and eastern provinces? Why?!

So far, I have poured my heart out and spoken about my raw emotions of a time that was a struggle and continues to be to this day. It’s a feeling that is scattered all over and lays in a bed of heartache. Going forward I have broken this piece into parts to educate and put these emotions into perspective. Let’s discuss a few things starting with;

- The war

- The aftermath

- The next step forward

- Removal of anger and hatred

- Unity

- The future generation

- The closing paragraph

The War

This part is about education regarding why it all started, what happened and starting from the beginning of the bloody, gruesome, lengthy 30-year civil war. Firstly, this was a war which started due to the oppression our Tamil people faced from the Sri Lankan government and the opposing extremist. Notice how I state the government of Sri Lanka and extremist because to hate on all Sinhalese people will make us no different from those that commit the atrocities towards our people. To say that there are plenty of good Sinhalese people would be rude as its understating how many of them are good. So, hating them as an ethnicity group would be wrong. Both sides faced a loss and we must first acknowledge that if we want to rebuild. We are against the oppressor. Now moving onto the facts.

This war started in the 80’s but the oppression was established long before that, prior to the first president coming into power. This oppression occurred when there was a shift in power and the equally living Sinhalese and Tamils were placed in a position where the majority race was given ruling power. In the hands of power, small changes occurred which caused distrust in the Sri Lankan government and eventually the Sinhala Only Act was brought in to play in 1956. This was a major influence in distrust and a major impact to the Tamil people. This was the government saying that the Tamil people were not of the same value. Move forward a few more years and the Sri Lankan flag was officially adopted on December 17, 1978. Prior to 1815, the gold lion was originally the national flag of Ceylon; its four pippul leaves are Buddhist symbols and the sword is said to represent authority. On this modern version, the green represents Muslims, while the orange represents Hindus. Want to know more about the little things on the flag.... just Google it. Please don’t be ignorant. So, let’s be honest just from these two things you can tell there’s a major shift in power and there is definitely a sign of racism. Now skip forward to 1981. The burning of the Jaffna library. Our literature. Our history. Our ancestral information and writings. Then, what about Black July? 1983. Black July. Wow. The black and white images still haunt me and I haven’t even seen them all.

The 1983 riots are what led to the beginning of a 30-year war which saw the loss of countless innocent lives. It sparked a flame which continues to burn to this very day. As a child of an immigrant I grew up seeing our immigrant parents and the difficulty they faced. I grew up seeing and hearing the oppression my Tamil families faced back home. I grew up facing an identity crisis and a struggle of being so privileged that at times I too was ignorant. Once again, I’m rambling my emotions. Let’s go back to the facts. 1983 riots sparked the war to which there was a back and forth struggle between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) against the Sri Lankan Government and Sri Lankan Armed forces. A war which lead to a multitude of innocent civilians being raped, tortured, discriminated, abused and living in fear. To this day, the rape, torture, discrimination, abuse and living in fear still occurs to Tamil people in the North and East of the country....

The Aftermath

10 years on.

No answers to the missing people. No answer to the white van kidnapping. No answers to all the questions we ask in regard to justice and war crimes. There is continued militarisation through the North and Eastern provinces. The Tamil provinces of Sri Lanka have been seeing multiple structural and cultural changes with Sinhala based identities being placed. With simple examples of a Buddhist temple being built in Jaffna. Religious logos being written in Sinhalese instead of Tamil. Whether it be a big change or a little change, there is systematic assimilation which occurs to this day.

Let’s break down the aftermath of the war. Firstly, the massacre in the end which led to the death of what is stated official as 40,000 innocent civilians. Mainly Tamil but Sinhalese too. However, some say the number reaches nearly 140,000 or more. For a second imagine how many people were injured, lost a limb, displaced and how many families were ruined by the loss of one or more members. This was the beginning of the aftermath. With no armed resistance the government started to kidnap and torture multiple Tamils. Anyone they were suspicious of, even without any proof they would take away and question them, torture them and hold captive until they pleased. In some cases, victims have stated that they have been held captive for more than 5 years. The officials had a list and documented all the people that they had captured or taken away and yet there is no list being released ten years on and those people are still missing or presumed dead. Just early this year and late last year various mass grave sights were found with a plethora of bodies from infants to grown adults. There has been a systematic assimilation of Sinhala into the North and Eastern provinces from the military based tourism projects, to building Buddhist temples and even tiny changes like signs in Sinhalese on our buses. There has been a systematic militarization of the North and Eastern provinces where the military operate as either military or locals working in military based businesses. Just recently as I write this the Sri Lankan government are celebrating their so called ‘Independence Day’ by having military parades and parading various weaponry as a sign of power and mass destruction. Independence should be about unity and peace yet their overall reflection on this matter clearly doesn’t show the same. The aftermath of all the genocide and civil war has left Tamil people in the same place they were prior to the civil war. They are still not treated with equality and they are yet to be given any justice or answers regarding all the people that are missing.

The next step forward

This is probably the most important part and why I began to write this piece. I cannot believe I have been trying to write this for over 5 months now. The present. The current moment. This is where the Tamil diaspora can investigate making a change and empowering our fellow Tamil people whether it be those in foreign nations or those back home. There are many organizations and individuals in the international community whom work towards rehabilitating. I recently read something which really stuck with me. When it comes to those who wonder what they can do for those back home, here is your answer. There are many ways and there isn’t one right thing to do. Knowledge is power and you need to educate yourself. Once you’ve educated yourself, you’ll be able to find out what you can do based on your suitability to help the struggle. There are many activists and organisations out there who are more than happy to help assist and spend their time assisting new activists find their feet. The learning should never stop as there will always be more to learn. Some of us focus on research and advocacy with countries, others focus on strengthening the community within the diaspora, then some choose to build institutions and support the people back home with education and livelihood. There is no one set path you must take when there are multiple options you can use in order to make a change and have an impact. After all its a ripple effect. Even recently early in May I was having a discussion with my partner and sister to which I heard this being said; ‘everyone has a role to play’, that is something that resonated so deep within me as it is so true. Those that want to give back and help, all have a role to play, what that role looks like is based on the individual. However, we should not look down upon or segregate those that are trying to help, in a way that suits their lifestyle.

The next step forward is to realise the rebuilding and unity are the core focuses. If our actions bring us to that goal then we have hope in a better future for the future generations. It gives us the opportunity to focus on rebuilding our communities and uniting our Tamil people together in order to achieve the greater good.

Anger and hatred

Recently with the Easter bomb blasts there was a lot of Tamil people speaking up and raising awareness regarding the atrocities which happened in 2009 as it was a time where the international media had a spotlight on Sri Lanka, and it was a great opportunity to spark debate and investigation. During this time there was a popular hashtag going around - #prayforthevictims. This was a response to the hashtag of -#prayforsrilanka. It was an interesting time as during this distressing and awful period, many Tamil people raised their voices without bashing any Sinhala people. So, kudos to us. However, I want to touch on 2 points regarding the topic of anger and hatred. First and foremost, I applaud everyone who genuinely was out there raising their voice for their rights and during that time there were many Sinhala supremacist who chose to attack various activists and threaten them. During that time, it was so upsetting to see our Tamil youth go through and face hatred aimed at them, although what prevailed in the end was adversity as they were supported through it all. It’s amazing to see that through all we faced, even then the concept of anger and hatred was not placed towards Sinhala people but only towards the Sri Lankan government, the Sri Lankan armed forces and Sinhala supremacists. With that being said, what I did see was my own people bash one another since there is a belief that we all should hold the same beliefs and play the same role towards helping back home. It got to the point where people I knew felt uncomfortable speaking up as they felt as if what they did and do with good intentions was interpreted incorrectly. We need to remember that spreading that anger and hatred towards our people whom choose to voice their opinions and help in their own manner will not do anything but cause them to show anger and hatred back.

Unity

This is something that truly means the most to me as even today I see so much distance between Tamil people and I truly believe we need more unity. I understand not everyone can get along with everyone though and when I talk about ‘unity’ it comes to helping those back home. At this present moment, the desire for a De Facto state of Tamil Eelam is not going to occur anytime soon, so what we need to really address is uniting as Tamil people and helping our brothers and sisters out. They deserve it. The Tamil brothers and sisters back home deserve more opportunities to live happy lives. Further, the Tamil brothers and sisters living within the diaspora, those who are seeking a new life and those who are the youth of the future generations of the diaspora, who are not fully informed about the struggle and the resistance. We need to come together and understand that the trauma and pain which each person has endured is will be different from one another. We need to accept that pain and trauma affects everyone differently and we must come together to unite and rebuild ourselves and those around us.

The future generation

My biggest concern is Tamil going extinct one day. I even wrote about it a few years ago, with that being said, it will only become extinct if we do not teach and educate the future generation of what our people went through or if we do not try and make sure that the future generations speak in Tamil and are proud to be Tamil. I see too many kids these days, refusing to learn or speak Tamil. Too many youth who are not even aware of the struggle and to what extent it was carried out in. So many people who choose to turn a blind eye when our brothers and sisters back home are still facing injustice. Remember, that could have easily been us or our parents. We are fortunate to live in a foreign nation with all these luxuries when our people back home are still being oppressed. Educate yourself and those around you as that alone will go far in making a change. If you cannot voice your opinions, if you cannot financially contribute, if you cannot advocate for the rights, at least educate yourself and those around you, that way it will spark a conversation and awareness and as that awareness is raised, you will be surprised to see how many people will be inspired. I am speaking from personal experience; the more you educate, the larger we will grow.

The closing paragraph

With all that being said, I stand by a few things. First and foremost, being that Tamil is such a beautiful language with such rich culture and heritage, when you do your research you come to learn that it truly is such a marvel itself. For instance, growing up I used to wonder and think to myself how stupid it was to have three different mei ezhuthukal to pronounce one sound, yet when you truly explore it the differences between the ழ, ல and ள are used to distinctly emphasise the sound behind each part in a word. Our language, culture, traditions and the Tamil struggle for freedom are all significant things that make us who we are and which we must continue to emphasise and educate ourselves and one another on. The future of Tamil and Illankai Tamil is in our hands. It is in the hands of the youth and the future generation. So, let’s take a step forward and unite and find avenues to help those in need. There are so many organisations out there and so many individuals, so reach out. If you do not know where to begin, message me, I would be happy to provide you with various options so that you pick something that best suits you. Do what you can, the way you want, so that you are happy and satisfied at the end of the day. Because no matter what, we will forever be united and fighting for one cause that is, Tamil.

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