Hate Wins and Love Loses

I totally forgot the most important part which is that they are ALSO both plagued by sinister old men who are into them for all the wrong reasons and are trying to manipulate their respective countries for their own suspect ends (Gandalf and Grima)

Now that the presentations from the Tolkien Society’s seminar are up I can share one of my favourite slides from Cordeliah Logsdon’s presentation >:3

The left are all quotes about Eowyn, the right are quotes about Denethor. Their relevance is even more pertinent when you hear the passages read aloud and in full on the video. 

Remembered something I needed to add to this but Aragorn’s final confrontation with Eowyn and Gandalf’s final confrontation with Denethor are LITERALLY the same scene, same character motives, same despair and with the same defiant end. 

Versus!

DO YOU ALL SEE HOW IT’S LIKE... TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN? Eowyn, whom has never had control of her life or been able to fight back against the ever growing despair haunting all of them, caged by duty, just wants to spend her last moments in angry ferocious defiance and battle. MEANWHILE DENETHOR, who has been caged by duty into always struggling and battling, having all the responsibility that comes with his position but none of the freedom, forced to ‘spend even his sons’ in Gondor’s defense, wants to spend his last moments with his son and for them both to be safe from this perpetual war and pain forevermore, DO YOU SEE HOW IT’S LIKE THIS GENDER ROLE REVERSAL THING DO YOU SEE?? With Gandalf and Aragorn serving as mouthpiece for the paternalistic society they are both rebelling against? I go insane about it. Did you know that in draft versions of lotr, Eowyn died? I hate this book so much

Actually it occurs to me now, as it has many times when reading Sam’s specific point of view in Mordor, that this is one of the most revelatory passages in regards to the point of many of the other narratives within LotR. And honestly I say this as both praise and scorn. Because yes, this is a beautiful passage, and it’s language inspires almost unheeding of it’s specific meaning. The high beauty and passing shadow means as many things as the number of people that read of them. 

But I’m afraid I will once again make this about christian religion AND Denethor AND Boromir so sorry. (not really) 

Here, defiance is framed as selfish. When Sam is exhausted at the top of the tower of Cirith Ungol, hopelessly lost, surrounded by death and darkness, he sings just for the sake of adding something beautiful into that terrible place. He is defying the darkness around him. But, as this passage tells us, this is apparently not an un-complicatedly good or even neutral act. Instead, Sam should not have even worried for the darkness to begin with. His fate, and the fate of the things he loves, should not have troubled him, because in the face of the untouchable light and high beauty, none of it really matters apparently. 

Obviously in this universe high and beautiful things and celestial lights are holy, they are divine, so the meaning is clear; ‘No matter what happens to you, so long as Eru is on his throne, nothing is wrong with the world and you should not even begrudge the pain and suffering levied upon you and your loved ones, it will all turn out right in the end.’

This is a very Christian sentiment and it spotlights the specific ‘sin’ Denethor AND Boromir are committing within the morality of the books. Because Denethor and Boromir are concerned with the things they love and their suffering. Boromir himself is apathetic about the high beauty and Eru’s rightness and elves and the divine blood he and Aragorn carry. His whole motive is to protect his people, he does not care about whether the actions he takes in their defense could be considered a challenge or an affront to Eru (as the Ring is an instrument by which Sauron seeks to challenge Eru’s divine right to the throne of the world, and therefore using it is inherently blasphemous.) To Boromir, if he is working towards the safety of his city, his people, his family, then he is content that he is serving as he should be. Boromir is, in essentials, the agnostic of this story.

Denethor, on the other hand, DOES have a relationship with this high beauty, albeit a very complex one. He has loved the divine light, he is a member of the faithful, he has kept to their ways and loved as they have loved his whole life.  He is even much more circumspect about using the Ring as well, favouring just keeping it safe and out of Saurons hands. He wants to be good. And that has destroyed him. It has taken all things he has ever loved from him, this eternal defence and embattlement against The One Who Would Be God to champion Eru. Boromir literally died on a quest because of a divinely ordained dream, his son! And here is Gandalf, the closest thing to an angel middle-earth has, a divine messenger, here to tell him what else he has to sacrifice and how he mustn’t begrudge Boromir’s loss anyway. 

Denethor is ultimately defiant against the darkness, he wants to protect his people, he oversees everything from the large to the small, he barely sleeps, he has dauntless will and resolve to protect Gondor and it is because of him that Gondor survives at all. But to the narrative, that is still a selfish motive. In the end the only thing he can think of to save himself and the son he loves from more suffering is to die. But suicide is a sin, Denethor ‘does not have the authority to order the hour of his own death’ as Gandalf says. It is another blasphemous act, because Denethor has LOST faith, one might say he has lost the perspective of the high beauty and his own insignificance. Denethor in fact now believes that the lives and peace of his sons ARE more important to him than God. So Denethor represents a man who, through the trials of the world, LOSES faith. 

And then there is Faramir, THE faithful one. He is the one his family must be compared too, caring for his people to an extent, but firmly reinforcing the fact that, ‘I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory.’ A sentiment he reinforces when Denethor challenges him about it, ‘Ever your desire is to appear lordly and generous as a king of old, gracious, gentle. That may well befit one of high race, if he sits in power and peace. But in desperate hours gentleness may be repaid with death.’ [-] ‘But not with your death only, Lord Faramir: with the death also of your father, and of all your people, whom it is your part to protect now that Boromir is gone.’ And Faramir says ‘so be it’, Faramir loves God more than he loves his people or his family, he is willing to let all of them suffer and die in order to keep faith with Him, and the story rewards him for it with the life and peace his brother and father were never allowed.

And technically both Denethor and Boromir as apostates are treated quite gently and sympathetically by the narrative in comparison to much christian dogma. Boromir and Denethor are still allowed their nobility and valour and good intentions, but in the end they are pitiable figures to the wider morality of the tale. They have loved people too much and God too little and through it have lost that perspective that the faithful believe is necessary to pass through the world properly. Neither of them could lie down and let ‘for a moment, their own fate, and even their loved one’s, cease to trouble them’. 

And that! Is literally why they’re my favourite characters, I too love people more than God, even in the face of a fathomless eternity. If I were given the choice to save people from terrible suffering in their short lives at the cost of defying God’s right to the throne of the world, I would also take it. Mutable things that do not last are just as divinely important as eternity. I will not wait till I’m dead to give my full love to things and neither did Denethor or Boromir!!!

Mami's fighting style includes showing off. Big guns, pretending to be caught just to go "Ha, as if I would let that happen", never dropping the smirk, taking her time with her transformation and with killing the witches to seem unbothered.

Because she has to set an example for other magical girls. Because she needs to look confident and unbothered and make it seem easy if she wants to attract juniors.

Kyoko's fighting style includes energetic movements, never taking time to breathe, insulting the opponent sometimes, almost looking like she's having fun.

Because she's constanly trying to convince herself that her ruthlessness is the way to go. That she's fine with her "Live for yourself only" mindset.

Sayaka's fighting style is the closest one to something noble. Throwing all of herself in the fight, because she'll heal anyways. No attempts at being flashy or having fun, because that's not what it means to be a magical girl. Very painful and exhausting for herself, but effective for killing witches and finishing battles quickly without anyone having to get hurt.

Because she desperately wants to be a hero, and she thinks that means following this strict moral code in which she's constanly sacrificing herself.

Sat in the shower for a while thinking about how Eowyn's story ended, how after all that time of trying to prove herself courageous and worthy to fight, she lays down her sword and retires to a garden, how someone could misconstrue that as her returning to her 'place' as a woman and giving up all she has fought to achieve, but it's not. How it's truly about how courage can be shown as softness, and the bravery that is to continue living after the fight.

Alright, what I’d like to acknowledge is that this is a completely reasonable interpretation of Eowyn’s arc. If this is the narrative you enjoy out of her story then take it! And indeed, as a wider rule for any story, readers should take whatever they desire out of it, it’s a reader’s right.

But I am also frustrated by this persistant narrative that anyone who percieves Eowyn’s marriage as a return to her status quo have an unenlightened and simplistic misunderstanding of the themes or something. This weird sense of superiority that comes through of like ‘oh these silly people who just don’t understand what the great Professor Tolkien meant! You’re all just haters who want to call him sexist’ is incredibly common amongst the Tolkien-apologetics academia that also cry ‘victorian mindset!’ for everytime some ‘slant-eyed swarthy’ man is called inherently untrustworthy in the books. I don’t know why Tumblr is so eager to shut down any discussion of the issues within Lord of the Rings, but here’s my singular defense of the ‘Eowyn is rechained’ perspective.

Firstly, Eowyn is not riding to war to prove herself. She wants glory, yes, but it is not for a lack of self-worth or some unmoored desire at recognition. She is desperate for an escape, she has been trapped in a house as the servant of her King-uncle whom barely sees her, whose trusted advisor harasses her with impunity, for five years now. She has watched her brother and cousin freely ride away from their gradually worsening political and personal situations, whilst she is caged by her 'duty' and forced to sit and watch and wait for it all to crumble down around her, with no agency or control whatsoever. And now, with the end of the world looming, she wants to at least control how she dies. Merry's perspective of Eowyn-as-Dernhelm is not of some young person fired with the thrill of battle or lust for blood and glory;

A young man, Merry thought as he returned the glance, less in height and girth than most. He caught the glint of clear grey eyes; and then he shivered, for it came suddenly to him that it was the face of one without hope who goes in search of death.

Because that is all the control fate (and the men in her life) have left to Eowyn, she wishes to 'spend her life as she wills' as she has 'heard too often of duty'. This is a control Aragorn tries to deny her, refusing her even as she weeps brokenly and begs him to allow her to ride with him to war, allow her to reclaim some agency in her life before it ends. And when he refuses her she realises no one will help her but herself. As she says; All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.

Like, Eowyn herself associates her sense of imprisonment with being a woman and the misogynistic demands of the men around her. She associates the demands men have on her, as a woman, and her 'place in the house' directly with her own bitterness and despair and meaninglessness. 'You have leave to be burned with the house, for the men will need it no more'.

But we, the readers, are not drawn directly to sympathise with these things, we are supposed to pity her, just as Aragorn does. Indeed, Aragorn designates himself as proper mouthpiece for Eowyn's 'troubles', taking it upon himself in the houses of healing to 'explain' Eowyn to her brother before she is even conscious. And then Faramir commands Eowyn to 'not scorn Aragorn's pity', since Aragorn is so gentled hearted to have bestowed it upon her. And Eowyn is suddenly cured of her sorrow, of her wish for control, of her striving for anything beyond 'the house' that she had previously raged against.

Faramir tells her not to scorn pity, that she is beautiful and that he loves her and she says; the Shadow has departed! I will be a shield-maiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.

Great! Love that for her! What about every single other man in the books who rode to war for glory? Where was Eomer's apparently so necessary arc of realising he should lay down down his sword, retire to a garden and continue living after the fight? Aragorns? Gimli's? Legolas'? Angbor's? Ingold's? Theoden's? All of these men continue going to war after the end of the books. Indeed, the only man in the books who actively rejects battle and chooses the 'house' is Denethor; 'Nay, I will not come down,’ he said. ‘I must stay beside my son. He might still speak before the end'. But according to Gandalf that is also the wrong choice, the only difference between him and Eowyn being; Gender.

Not to mention the fact that both Eowyn and Faramir percieve their engagement as Faramir 'taming' Eowyn; 'would you have your proud folk say of you: ‘‘There goes a lord who tamed a wild shieldmaiden of the North'".

And that isn't even touching on the fact that both Faramir and Aragorn diagnose Eowyn's reason for wanting to die as being, quite literally, because Aragorn rejected her; You desired to have the love of the Lord Aragorn. [-] But when he gave you only understanding and pity, then you desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle.

Again, drawing out poignant meaning for yourself from Eowyn's story around forgoing violence and finding peace after war is not wrong, of course. But you can do that without dismissing all feminist critique of her story as 'misconstruing' when quite blatantly Eowyn does return to her place, as the dominant societal demands of her gender decree. She marries her social equal, after giving up both the ambition to be a warrior as well as the ambition to be a Queen, and keeps his house (not hers, and far from her homeland) and bears his children and no deeds are recorded for her thereafter. The fact that the book tells us she finds peace, happiness and meaning in that is not a subversion or exoneration of the misogyny within the narrative, but part of it. After all, if only women would 'know their place' they would all be much happier!

@gloomweavers there's definitely a lineage of thought there, although I would not necessarily say it was a 'refusal' of Eru, that is a bit too active, it is more like... Boromir simply did not look for him any longer, from a pretty early age, and the longer he lived the more that attitude felt like the only logical option.

But Finduilas' death was very tied up in Boromir's emotions and his relationships with the rest of his family, it was his fault, his father's fault, Mordor's fault, her own fault, no one's fault but fate, different people blamed it on so many things and each possibility hurt in an entirely new but incredibly mundane way. There simply was not space to think about it in cosmological terms. Indeed initially he tried to be more religious, as a child who believed he'd killed his mother, he needed to understand how he could make amends and what part of him was so inherrently vile to have done such a thing.

But as that extreme settled down, and as he came into contact with other people who were apparently inherrently lesser in the eyes of the West, the fact that he understood what that felt like (especially as he confronted his sexuality) was what really 'radicalised' him one might say. In the end his theological positions are informed mostly by his class and racial politics, but he was sympathetic to those so called 'lesser' people precisely because he had felt 'lesser' himself, and in doing so had somewhat shattered the illusion of inherrent racial superiority or morality. Whether he deserved it was neither here nor there, the people he met definitely did not deserve to feel as he had felt as a child.

When you lost your father..

this is an cool & evocative picture and it also contains a tension which is Very Homestuck Art because ok look at homestuck art the thing about homestuck art is that it is Flat like not like Flat like it’s two dimensional but Flat like it’s Representational like it’s Symbolic like it’s a placeholder for something that “Really” might’ve “Happened” in 4K but we just happen to be observing it through the Platonic Vagueifier that renders everything Iconic like not like Iconic like it’s eminent but Iconic like it’s Flat

except the things that happen in homestuck only ever have happened in homestuck so they don’t “Really” ever “Happen” in any way that isn’t Vague and Symbolic and Flat and sometimes that is not enough

sometimes the characters are stumbling through character growth and having complicated emotions and it overwhelms the Platonic Vagueifier because the artstyle requires depth (and specificity) to communicate in any accurate manner the increasing complexity of the world & characters and so we spend act 4 and 5 wilding through different art possibilities but the Platonic Vagueifier does not give up easy & it does not give up at all & it does not in the end even finally lose & whatever that’s not what matters right now

so that’s part of the tension captured here. the shading, the shadows, the shapes. it feels a like a more realistic style is clashing with the homestuck art Flatness in the same space

because you can’t be a Symbol and have your dad’s bled out body laid between your converse sneakers. it doesn't fit. for something like that, like it or not, you’re gonna be Real

It's sooooo interesting how in Harrow the Ninth, Harrow is constantly noting all the ways Ianthe is failing at femininity: the awful frilly nightgown, the clothes that don't fit (in the bust, in the hips), her hair, her attempts at flirtatious behavior, the specific way she is sucking up to Augustine etc. And like, this is a weird house for Harrow to be throwing stones from, sure, but I think it makes way more sense after The Unwanted Guest gave more context to soul permeability wrt the status of Naberius Tern, because it is now arguable that Ianthe is essencially being forcemasc'd throughout the entierty of HtN -- we just dont know about it bc Harrow dgaf. And this is doubly interesting to me because when we next see her in Nona the Ninth, she is now Ianthe Naberius, a Tower Prince in masculine dress and leather trousers and boots, and she no longer has any of that sort of gender failure going on.

So I’ve been turning this take around in my head since I read it this morning, and it rearranged my brain.

I want to note though, that it’s not Harrow narrating Ianthe’s awkward second adolescence, but it’s Gideon. Gideon who always saw her as an appendage to her hotter, more performative femme sister. Gideon who is jealous as hell after having witnessed up close Harrow kissing Ianthe with tongue. So some of the disparagement of Ianthe’s gender presentation might be down to Gideon just being a dick about it.

But that doesn’t soften in any way the blow that Ianthe is being forcemasc-ed in a way she was not prepared for, along with everything else she’s going through. She thought of Babs as Colum: a battery. And the Unwanted Guest shows us it’s much more complicated. That by eating Babs, his essence becomes part of her. Ianthe has lived her life as the moon to her twin’s sun, but now she is becoming someone else, something even less like Coronabeth in all kinds of ways including her internal gender compass.

The way she plays dress up in Valancy’s old clothes is just so poignant to me. Ianthe knows she could go to John and ask for well-fitting clothes to be sent to the Mithraeum, but instead she spends her time there trying on an image of long-dead womanhood that just won’t fit. She says it represents the energy she wants to bring forward into her future, but is it really? Or is it just an energy she’s desperately clinging to because she’s scared of losing control over the changes in her identity?

Just want to offer, I think the force-mascing might be even more gradual than this.

Consider that Ianthe is a princess who has a very narrow view of what constitutes as valuable knowledge. Meanwhile, Babs' skillsets included sewing and putting together an outfit. It seems reasonable to assume that this was part of his service to Ianthe and Corona: helping with their look. With fashion easily outsourced to a third party, there is no reason why Ianthe would ever have had to seriously pay attention to her own look. She needs to look decent and not take glam away from Corona; that's it.

So, immediate aftermath of ascending to Lyctorhood, Ianthe can barely dress herself. Makes sense, since she's never had to. She takes Valancy's clothes because she's entitled to them as the new Third House Lyctor, but they don't actually work for her; another indignity. Everything's awkward and nothing fits UNTIL Harrow helps her with The Arm, at which point things finally seem to start working for her.

It's after this we get the dinner party and the styling sequence, where suddenly Ianthe understands clothes. She's styling Harrow and herself, performing admittedly basic alterations to their clothing, and everything fits. At this point, the performance is still fem. She deflects compliments, pointing out that Babs had way more skill, but that majorly downplays what a DIFFERENCE there is already between how she was dressing herself at the start of HtN and how she's managing her look post-bone arm.

On first read/pre-TUG, we figure she's just gotten herself out of her slump and she's more confident she's going to be able to pull the Lyctor thing off despite the initial setback. But that's a really good way to sneak in the start of her transition. And it's something she may not consciously notice; rather than a change in herself, she might perceive it as simply a return to normalcy. With her cav serving her again as he's supposed to, of course her look has come back together. It all fits.

Because if we take the styling as a manifestation of Babs, it's also Babs in a form that reflects their former dynamic: Babs performing a service, still subservient. It's an aspect of what he did for the girls, but it doesn't connote ownership, only presence.

By the time we get to NtN, even Ianthe is starting to admit that she's having a hard time keeping control over everything in the real world. The Prince presentation is potentially a form of her bossing up, but with permeability of the soul in mind, it's probably Babs taking more control. Now he's not styling the girls, so to speak; he's putting together a good outfit for himself. Ianthe is not in control anymore.

Circling back to Ianthe's gender failure at the start of HtN: I think there is a very serious thing throughout the entire series in that we have no idea really who Ianthe is. As already noted above, she was in Corona's shadow, and we're now learning that since she ascended, she has been tinged, if not at times overtaken, by Babs' influence. We have never, ever seen a genuinely independent version of Ianthe and we probably never will. It's very possible that the gender failure of it all is part of her, that Ianthe is way more trans than originally perceived, but we're just never going to know because we're always going to attribute any self-expression on her part to Corona's or Bab's influence (which I think is the point, and the tragedy, and it's delicious and I hate it)

aesthetically I think Kiriona looks best in white and gold but THEMATICALLY I think the choice to put her in white and silver is good, specifically because it really doesn't fit. she has gold eyes. she has red hair. she was practically designed in a lab to look good with warm tones and yellow metals, and silver does not fit her in the same way that, inherently, being a Tower Prince does not fit her. she's dead and depressed and all her dreams have turned to ruin, and it should show in her outfit too. saddest girl in the whole world :(

Sudden brain blast over morning coffee:

John Gaius, necrolord whatever, cringiest man alive, refuses to let the earth die. And not just in the literal sense of locking the earth’s soul in a barbie on ice, in subtler ways too.

The most obvious is the memes, John constantly references memes that are dated even to us, but are in universe from a culture that died ten thousand years ago!

Slightly more subtle is the years. Why does everyone in the Houses measure in earth years? It’s been ten THOUSAND years since anyone lived on the earth! But John keeps them as a unit of measurement.

Even more subtle is the language. In sci-fi and fantasy we’re all used to the idea of the translation for the reader, people don’t speak english in lord of the rings, or dune, but the dialogue is in english for us, the readers. Not in The Locked Tomb. In this series, they ARE speaking english. Modern, bog standard english, to the point where two people born thousands of years apart speak similar enough dialects that one can pose as the other (dulcie/cytheria).

Now, this could possibly fall under that standard sci-fi trope, EXCEPT!!!! In Nona The Ninth, we see the non-house humans! And they speak dozens of languages, like you’d expect after TEN THOUSAND YEARS of linguistic drift!

John is trying SO HARD to keep the earth alive that he’s forced a language to stagnate for, say it with me now, Ten Thousand Years, to the point where even completely new things with no equivalent in our world don’t even have new words, just repurposed old ones (flimsy, sonic).

John Gaius, the first necromancer, could resurrect the planet itself, and millions of people, but he couldn’t resurrect the culture. So, John, cryogenics researcher, tried to put the culture on ice, to keep it as close to the one he remembers as possible. And he still failed.

Another unfinished thought: 

The Lord of the Rings isn’t just a blend of narrative styles, it’s a melding of narrative paradigms. The Elves are in a tragic story; events that involve them are characterized by beauty and sorrow. The Men are in a heroic story; their elements are weakness and strength. The Hobbits are in a comic story and their elements are fear and comfort.

Further: Merry and Pippin, having spent most of their story with Men, get an ending in the heroic paradigm: triumph, coronation, social order restored and renewed. Sam gets the hobbit ending: marriage and homecoming. And Frodo just walks straight off into an Elvish story.

dirkrose is really good and im tired of pretending it isnt

when a father and daughter are 1. gay 2. self obsessed 3. extremely aware of the Narrative and their role in it 4. extremely lonely and mentally ill and self destructive it's gonna end up in them being obsessed with each other and dirk embodying The Father and rose embodying The Daughter in all the ways they have always craved and resented. dirk literally remaking rose in his image and rose leaning into being understood and seen at last. both of them pretending they're far above emotions and attachment and enabling the worst in each other and deliberately barely ironically playing into their roles in the gothic incest horror narrative that they've created

there's something about the way people talk about john gaius (incl the way the author writes him) that is like. so absent of any connection to te ao māori that it's really discomforting. like even in posts that acknowledge him as not being white, they still talk about him like a white, american leftist guy in a way that makes it clear people just AREN'T perceiving him as a māori man from aotearoa.

and it's just really serves to hammer home how powerful and pervasive whiteness and american hegemony is. because TLT is probably the single most Kiwi series in years to explode on the global stage, and all the things i find fraught about it as a pākehā woman reading a series by a pākehā author are illegible to a greater fandom of americans discoursing about whether or not memes are a valid way of portraying queer love.

idk the part of my brain that lights up every time i see a capital Z printed somewhere because of the New Zealand Mentioned??? instinct will always be proud of these books and muir. but i find myself caught in this midpoint of excitement and validation over my culture finding a place on the global stage, frustration at how kiwi humour and means of conveying emotion is misinterpreted or declared facile by an international audience, frustrated also by how that international audience runs the characters in this book through a filter of american whiteness before it bothers to interpret them, and ESPECIALLY frustrated by how muir has done a pretty middling job of portraying te ao māori and the māoriness of her characters, but tht conversation doesn't circulate in the same way* because a big part of the audience doesn't even realise the conversation is there to be had.

which is not to say that muir has done a huge glaring racism that non-kiwis haven't noticed or anything, but rather that there are very definitely things that she has done well, things that she has done poorly, things that she didn't think about in the first book that she has tacked on or expanded upon in the later books, that are all worthy of discussion and critique that can't happen when the popular posts that float past my dash are about how this indigenous man is 'guy who won't shut up about having gone to oxford'

*to be clear here, i'm not saying these conversations have never happened, just that in terms of like, ambient posts that float round my very dykey dash, the discussions and meta that circulate on this the lesbian social media, are overwhelmingly stripped of any connection to aotearoa in general, let alone te ao māori in specific. and because of the nature of american internet hegemony this just,,,isn't noticed, because how does a fish know it's in the ocean u know? i have seen discussions along these lines come up, and it's there if i specifically go looking for it, but it's not present in the bulk of tlt content that has its own circulatory life and i jut find that grim and a part of why the fandom is difficult to engage with.

hangon i'm just peer reviewing @ignitesthestxrs

#tlt#the locked tomb#i don't really have an answer lmao this is more#an expression of frustration and discomfort#over the way posts about john gaius seem to have very little connection to the background muir actually gave him#like you cant describe him as an educated leftist bisexual man#without INCLUDING that he is māori#that has an impact! that has weight and importance!#that is a background to every decision he makes#from the meat wall to the nuke to his relationship with the earth#and it also has weight and importance in the decisions that muir makes in writing him#it is not a neutral decision that he's known as john gaius lmao#it's not a neutral decision that the empire is explicitly of roman/latin extraction#it's not even neutral that this is a book about necromancy#it's certainly not a neutral fucking decision that john was at one point a māori man living in the bush#when the nz govt decided to send cops in#like that is a thing that happens here! that is a reference to nz cultural and political events that informs john's character and actions#and with the nature of who john is in the story#informs the narrative as a whole#and i think the tiresome part of this experience is that#in general#americans are not well positioned to understand that something might be being written from outside their experience as a default#like obviously many many americans in online leftist & queer spaces are willing to learn and take on new information#but so much of the conversation starts from a place of having to explain that forests exist to fish

Absolutely love this, it made me realize that I was just assuming that my own knowledge of how indigenous people on this continent (America/Canada) made me just assume that John ended up creating a culture devoid of these touchstones because he'd been assimilated into whiteness by being essentially orphaned, raised in a boys school (which I also just assumed was like the schools natives were forced into over here, which seems like it is at least superficially correct), and then going to an ivy league western school. But in thinking back about it, almost all of that was me filling in context that didn't exist explicitly in the text.

I also didn't know about some of the potential themes/contexts underlying certain decisions John made that others in the comments pointed out, though in retrospect it's like "Oh yeah, that makes sense" (the sheep/cows being introduced by white settlers and the damage it did to native ecology, the fact that the residential school would have been steeped in catholic ideology, etc.) It for sure makes me wonder how much was intended and just not written into the story by Muir in an explicit way in the same way you have to infer certain things due to unreliable narrators/lack of context or info, but is that an excuse I'm making as a fellow white person?

In particular, I agree very much with the critique made above that americans are bad at assuming things are outside our experience as a default. I found myself struggling with a scifi book by an african author recently until I made the mental adjustment that I couldn't make some of the assumptions I was making and needed to kind of step back and try to understand this new perspective (which is always so exciting honestly, it makes me WANT to be asking folks to explain their cultures and that itself is fraught because while well intentioned it's still feels like me being a weird white person).

Would love it if this got more traction as a discussion and would be thrilled if Muir herself eventually found the above posts and had some reflection or response to it. I think there's always room to learn and grow and I would hope that she would feel the same.

I do wonder what she can do at this point, not to fix it necessarily but to take in these critiques and improve her narrative interpretation and representation of John's culture.

I don't disagree with the original post and the ideas within. I think it has many good points that do need to be discussed more. I do disagree with some of the comments made, particularly that because TM doesn't explicitly call out John's experiences in a residential school and how that affects him, she is fumbling the themes and isn't qualified to write it.

This series is entirely built on inference. From what I recall, even John being Māori is an inference and not directly stated. Yes, it is still relevant to the story. We do know that he went to a residential school with all that implies. But this is the unreliable narrator series, and this is all coming directly from John. He's not going to sit down and talk to Harrow about his deepest feelings about his relationship with his culture. I don't see, given the way these books are built, how she could organically include things since the only one who would possibly know them is John himself, who clearly doesn't like talking about it based on his interrogation of Wake. Except for Wake and by extension BoE, John is the only person with a cultural memory at all, and he didn't pass it down (ergo no cultural touchstones in the nine houses).

I can't find it, but I read a post by someone in NZ who said it was full of things that people outside of NZ just aren't going to get. I remember them talking about how they couldn't imagine reading this series without a basis in certain Māori cultural practices such as whakapapa. Someone mentioned the cattle wall, which is something I wouldn't have known. I wonder 1. how much is there that people in the US just don't have context for? And 2. How much of the lack of culture is a deliberate statement about colonialism, how it shapes people, and what is lost under it? (I suspect the answer is quite a bit).

This is not the post I mentioned, but it is a counterpoint to this one in this discussion.

reblogging again to add that there's a great discussion going on in the notes about TM's authorial intent vs. possible writing slips in how the series introduces some NZ cultural elements later on. I also want to add that John being Maori IS explicitly stated in NtN (and it's very easily inferred that G- is also indigenous although there's so much fandom noise about John relating to G as a Black man in a way that imo feels very US centric). I'm obviously not from NZ either, but I think it's quite obvious that there are many cultural references in NtN that are trying to say something, even if it's a background I'm not familiar with, and go look it up (like when John namedrops Dilworth in the very first page; many people won't know what it is but if you're trying to analyse the text meaningfully, you know it's something you should look up.)

I agree with prev reblog in that a lot of the nature of the House could (is probably meant to be) a direct consequence of John's action and definitely commentary on cultural erasure, although we're one book away from judging how well that landed, there are voices in the fandom better equipped to judge that when the moment comes. There's also the perfectly plausible possibility that she initially decided to go in a different direction, then course corrected adding more backstory / cultural elements (see discussion in the replies! it's great) .

Either ways... like I said in the tags of a previous reblog... THIS is the kind of John analysis and debacle should be having, imo. When he erased his friends memories he also robbed them of their past and conception of self and heritage. It's much more interesting (to me, etc) and imo also much closer to the main points of the series than other reductive, and often bad faith takes I've seen floating around

Several years ago I witnessed a discussion about how Orube is Lawful Good in the comic and a good arc for her would be moving more towards True Neutral, learning to focus on herself.

She is *not* Lawful Good.

She is Lawful Neutral. It's huge. And moreover, as I have literally just realized while thinking this through to write about it in a server, even though in general I'd been thinking about this for this entire time:

Specifically, the moments where she *either* shows care for others (like with Maqi) *or* does something good for others (like when she let the 'Astral Drops' go) are also the moments where she goes *against* the system, does something she was not supposed to do.

Oh, she absolutely needs to learn to care about herself! But the reason she does not is not because she was taught to care for others instead. It's that she was taught to not care for either others or herself.

This misconception is also a part of a large tendency I see, not anywhere limited to the W.I.T.C.H. fandom (with which I have not interacted for a while), not limited to fandoms at all, but I don't have the spoons to word it out rn. I do want to post this now though, I think :) [smiling emoticon]