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sunshine_challenge and its floral theme.
So this post decided it wanted to go in a few different directions. There's references to the struggles of trans people and the history of fascists attempting genocide. So if that's not something you want to tangle with at this moment, by all means, take care of yourself.
Strength of character, faithfulness, moral integrity, and remembrance. All of these are ambivalent virtues to me, the kinds of things that can be admirable or reprehensible, depending on which side of the dispute someone is, or the methods that they use to achieve the results that they want.
Pearl, for example, from Steven Universe, has all of those characteristics. She's strong-willed, has a personal moral code that she follows, and is faithfully carrying out the requests that were entrusted to her from Rose Quartz (and Pink Diamond before her). And she remembers both of those missing Gems, to the point where she's trying to turn Steven back into Rose or to Pink, even though, as Steven finally says to the other Diamonds, Pink Diamond is gone, and so is Rose Quartz. Pearl is terrified of the possibility of having to live her own life without someone to serve, and so she stays in the space of remembrance and faithfully serves the memory of who she was, putting all of that character and integrity toward avoiding having to adapt to the new situation that she's in. (Adaptation is not a strong suit of any Gem, except perhaps Amethyst, and even she has her limitations.) Contrast Connie, who's all human, and has all of the same qualities - she can wield Rose's sword, and does so with a certain amount of vigor. Her moral integrity is centered around the idea of women being able to participate instead of having to be passive and let men do things for her. Pearl tries to train her to be the sword to Steven's shield in the same way that she was the sword to Rose Quartz's shield. Steven intervenes, because he sees what it's done to Pearl and he doesn't want the same thing to happen to Connie. He respects her as an individual and wants her not to be attached to him in service, even though Connie definitely wants to accompany Steven on his adventures and protect him from outside forces.
Or, for that matter, take Adora and Catra, from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. They both have all of those elements as well. Catra and Adora both are strong-willed, and while it takes them five seasons to actually manage to confess their feelings for each other aloud, they have definitely been faithful to each other from a very young age, even in the situation where Adora is being groomed to be the golden child of Shadow Weaver and Catra is being groomed to be the scapegoat of the same. Adora has strong moral principles, and Catra does as well, although for both of them, their morals come out in twisted ways because of their upbringing and because Catra still has a need to prove herself to be the very best to all the people who said she couldn't hack it and Adora has a world-saving destiny and the anxiety that comes along with it when she doesn't have a clue how to be She-Ra, much less how to save the world. And they're both self-sacrificingly suicidal throughout, Adora and Catra both, definitely for each other, but Adora will also do it for her friends, and Catra will definitely do it for Adora, but Catra will also do it in self-destructive rage or because she's going to take all the punishment for everyone else who doesn't deserve to have received it. And Adora and Catra are both clinging to the memories they have of each other, to try and dull the pain of what they see as their other half betraying them and doing the wrong thing. (At least, until the "fools to lovers" plot resolves and they can get back together.)
And there's both team RWBY and team JNPR from the show RWBY, who all have these aspects, but whose experiences have all of those virtues come out twisted. Volume 9 made it much clearer to everyone that Ruby's been on a bad tangent for several volumes to this point, because everyone essentially believes that she's going to be the linchpin to defeat the Big Bad of the series. The pressure of that, of being expected to know what to do, to always have a plan, and to always be relentlessly cheery, has made her suicidal when things don't go positively and everyone still keeps expecting her to fight through, to find another pathway, to keep going. Strength of character, moral integrity, faithfulness, and remembrance, too, of her mother, who Ruby had also built up into a somewhat mythic figure and is slowly finding out that this wasn't the case. Her mirror in JNPR is Pyrrha, who couldn't say no out of a sense of duty, and because of that, she had a similar buildup of being the ultimate warrior, a perpetually cheery and invincible hero who was on the cereal box (literally), the perfect person to take on an even greater responsibilitiy. And then it turned out that someone else wanted what she had and was willing to stop at nothing to achieve it. But even after dying, the image, the memory, the picture that had been built up of Pyrrha survives and is enshrined in statuary. And in Jaune, perhaps the only person who didn't see Pyrrha the legend, and therefore was the person she relaxed with and was affectionate with. But she was also his hero, because she helped him to become better at what he wanted to be, a hero, someone who comes in to save the day. Volume 9 shows that Jaune still has that need, to the point where he starts messing with the natural flow of things. And he's at least slightly self-aware that it's not a healthy pattern, but he still needs to have his heroic moment, even though, as it turns out, he's actively hindering the progression of things in the Ever After by trying to hold a small part of it static so he can act out his dreams of heroism. Weiss, Blake, Yang, Nora, and Ren all have their own issues to overcome, whether physical setbacks like losing an arm, or getting beyond abusive relationships, or confronting their own fears of abandonment or the ghosts of their pasts, so those virtues they have get put to use in adapting and overcoming and learning to stand on their own and not let their pasts define them.
Heck, even Neo, a persistent antagonist of the teams, has these virtues, but it's been focused down to a single desire for revenge against those who killed the most important person in her life. To the point that once she achieves that goal, she realizes that the whole quest has basically been hollow, and she decides to take some time and contemplate what she wants her life to be like after her major quest has been achieved.
It's probably not for nothing that the gladiolus plant is a straight stem with flowers stacked on top of each other, enough that makes me think of the Roman weapon, the gladius. Swords to plowshares is the kind of situation that we'd all like to have, because wear and conflict is often bloody and deadly, and often for goals that seem less than noble or warranted, and it tends to primarily affect the poorest and the most vulnerable whether as the ones who fight or the ones who die in the conflict. The idea of a plant that grows a blade and then festoons it with flowers seems like the kind of thing we can get behind - the repurposeing of weaponry for more aesthetically pleasing thing. Growing fields of poppies in remembrance of those who fell to the metaphorical sword. Flowers on gravesites and present at the rituals and remembrances of death. (Perhaps most ironically, those tend to be cut flowers, so they, too, will wither and die after having served the purpose of trying to bring color, life, and bauty to a sad and somber affair, unless they are artificial flowers.) And words of a familiar ritual of my childhood: "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return." But while you fight entropy, make the most of what you have and behave according to the precepts that have been set forth for you. Thus, you demonstrate your strength of character, faithfulness, moral integrity, and, every time you do the ritual, you do it in memory of the one who set these precepts before you.
Strength of character, faithfulness, moral integrity, and remembrance. All of which hinges, to some degree, on whether the history books decide that you were on the right and moral side of the conflict in question, or whether they believe that you were in the wrong. At which point you become admirable for sticking to your belief systems and for acting on them, and for being consistent about them, but that admiration can never get any closer than an arm's length, lest the people who admire you also be condemned for choosing the wrong moral path to live their lives with. And this situation applies to those who are living in the correct gender for themselves, despite the obstacles strewn in their path by legislators, justices, and specific religious believers that think their moral integrity demands they try to erase you, and for those people who are strewing the obstacles in the path of those people trying and succeeding at living their lives in the correct gender for themselves, because both of them are acting according to their own deeply-held moral beliefs and trying to be true to them. And similarly to those who fought fascists who intended to genocide everyone who weren't themselves and those who agreed with the fascists that plenty of "inferior" people should have been genocided. (And still agree with them as the fascists resurge in our times.) Which loops us back to the Gems in Steven Universe, because they're basically all about the destruction of "inferior" beings so they can mine their resources and use entire planets to make more Gems. The Diamond Authority and the rigid caste systems and the relentless persecution of anyone who does cross-Gem fusions and the belief that anyone who doesn't come out perfectly formed is a defect and should be destroyed, all of that is pretty clearly modeled on those governments who espoused eugenics and genocide as the way to create a perfect and master race that would be inherently superior to everyone else and therefore are the only true entities deserving of rights and participation in the society and the government. It's not subtle, shall we say, and it's all the more interesting that it was bundled up nicely into a children's animated show. Along with all of the queer relationships that do exist in the show. (You can get away with a lot in animation, is all I'm saying.)
And that's before we get into Over The Garden Wall, and the nature of The Beast and his seductive lies, what the Woodsman is doing (and the lie at the heart of what he's doing), and the ways that the Beast manipulates anyone who listens to him, and what kind of moral strength is needed to resist him, and how it's not Wirt who eventually goes over with the Beast, but Greg, because Greg has the moral integrity and a desire for others not to get hurt, so he'll go with the Beast if it promises not to hurt others. Because even if the Beast is ultimately lying, it's worth whatever temporary reprieve there is, at least to Greg.
It's the same logic that brings the summoner on their quest in the Spira of Final Fantasy X. They know that the Calm is temporary, and that Sin will return, but the summoner goes on the pilgrimage and summons the Final Aeon because the Calm is the better alternative to the constant destruction of Sin. And most of us are too tired to consider the possibility that there may be a better option available somewhere, but to strive for it requires more effort and more discomfort and more potential personal sacrifice than we have the capacity or desire for. And then, sometimes, we feel ashamed, or someone tries to shame us, that we weren't fighting full-heartedly on all of the possible fronts that we could have been, and that somehow means we lack the moral integrity and the strength of character that we should have and we are no longer "good" people because we weren't perfect. Even as the people who could make much more progress on change if they wanted to refuse to do so because they prefer the rest of us to suffer, or because they like their profits more than they like helping others.
There isn't necessarily a pat ending to this, or a stirring and rousing speech that gets us to go back out with renewed vigor and continue the battle that's going on. I don't have the answers to this. I may never have the answers to this, even as I try to work on things with my professionals and everyone else around here. What I do have, at least in this specific instance, in addition to the whirlwind tour of various fandoms here, is The Latest Kate, involving a lot of cute animals, occasionally in Lisa Frank-type colors, with encouraging messages attached to them about how it's okay, sometimes, to have just made it through the day and not done anything more. Or that you are perfect exactly the way you are, and that you have done well for existing and surviving up to this point in your life. They're very cute. They're very positive. And, at several points in my life, and possibly in yours, they're very necessary for knocking back the cloud of brainweasels. (Oh, I have thoughts about the Netflix Nimona compared to the graphic novel Nimona, but they're not thematic to this post.)
sunshine_challenge and its floral theme. Prompt 2: Gladiolus
Generally, gladioli represent strength of character, faithfulness, moral integrity, and remembrance. Gladioli are actually the traditional 40th-anniversary flower and the birth flower for the month of August! Each individual colour of gladiolus is also symbolic.
Bonus Prompt: Coral Rose
So this post decided it wanted to go in a few different directions. There's references to the struggles of trans people and the history of fascists attempting genocide. So if that's not something you want to tangle with at this moment, by all means, take care of yourself.
Strength of character, faithfulness, moral integrity, and remembrance. All of these are ambivalent virtues to me, the kinds of things that can be admirable or reprehensible, depending on which side of the dispute someone is, or the methods that they use to achieve the results that they want.
Pearl, for example, from Steven Universe, has all of those characteristics. She's strong-willed, has a personal moral code that she follows, and is faithfully carrying out the requests that were entrusted to her from Rose Quartz (and Pink Diamond before her). And she remembers both of those missing Gems, to the point where she's trying to turn Steven back into Rose or to Pink, even though, as Steven finally says to the other Diamonds, Pink Diamond is gone, and so is Rose Quartz. Pearl is terrified of the possibility of having to live her own life without someone to serve, and so she stays in the space of remembrance and faithfully serves the memory of who she was, putting all of that character and integrity toward avoiding having to adapt to the new situation that she's in. (Adaptation is not a strong suit of any Gem, except perhaps Amethyst, and even she has her limitations.) Contrast Connie, who's all human, and has all of the same qualities - she can wield Rose's sword, and does so with a certain amount of vigor. Her moral integrity is centered around the idea of women being able to participate instead of having to be passive and let men do things for her. Pearl tries to train her to be the sword to Steven's shield in the same way that she was the sword to Rose Quartz's shield. Steven intervenes, because he sees what it's done to Pearl and he doesn't want the same thing to happen to Connie. He respects her as an individual and wants her not to be attached to him in service, even though Connie definitely wants to accompany Steven on his adventures and protect him from outside forces.
Or, for that matter, take Adora and Catra, from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. They both have all of those elements as well. Catra and Adora both are strong-willed, and while it takes them five seasons to actually manage to confess their feelings for each other aloud, they have definitely been faithful to each other from a very young age, even in the situation where Adora is being groomed to be the golden child of Shadow Weaver and Catra is being groomed to be the scapegoat of the same. Adora has strong moral principles, and Catra does as well, although for both of them, their morals come out in twisted ways because of their upbringing and because Catra still has a need to prove herself to be the very best to all the people who said she couldn't hack it and Adora has a world-saving destiny and the anxiety that comes along with it when she doesn't have a clue how to be She-Ra, much less how to save the world. And they're both self-sacrificingly suicidal throughout, Adora and Catra both, definitely for each other, but Adora will also do it for her friends, and Catra will definitely do it for Adora, but Catra will also do it in self-destructive rage or because she's going to take all the punishment for everyone else who doesn't deserve to have received it. And Adora and Catra are both clinging to the memories they have of each other, to try and dull the pain of what they see as their other half betraying them and doing the wrong thing. (At least, until the "fools to lovers" plot resolves and they can get back together.)
And there's both team RWBY and team JNPR from the show RWBY, who all have these aspects, but whose experiences have all of those virtues come out twisted. Volume 9 made it much clearer to everyone that Ruby's been on a bad tangent for several volumes to this point, because everyone essentially believes that she's going to be the linchpin to defeat the Big Bad of the series. The pressure of that, of being expected to know what to do, to always have a plan, and to always be relentlessly cheery, has made her suicidal when things don't go positively and everyone still keeps expecting her to fight through, to find another pathway, to keep going. Strength of character, moral integrity, faithfulness, and remembrance, too, of her mother, who Ruby had also built up into a somewhat mythic figure and is slowly finding out that this wasn't the case. Her mirror in JNPR is Pyrrha, who couldn't say no out of a sense of duty, and because of that, she had a similar buildup of being the ultimate warrior, a perpetually cheery and invincible hero who was on the cereal box (literally), the perfect person to take on an even greater responsibilitiy. And then it turned out that someone else wanted what she had and was willing to stop at nothing to achieve it. But even after dying, the image, the memory, the picture that had been built up of Pyrrha survives and is enshrined in statuary. And in Jaune, perhaps the only person who didn't see Pyrrha the legend, and therefore was the person she relaxed with and was affectionate with. But she was also his hero, because she helped him to become better at what he wanted to be, a hero, someone who comes in to save the day. Volume 9 shows that Jaune still has that need, to the point where he starts messing with the natural flow of things. And he's at least slightly self-aware that it's not a healthy pattern, but he still needs to have his heroic moment, even though, as it turns out, he's actively hindering the progression of things in the Ever After by trying to hold a small part of it static so he can act out his dreams of heroism. Weiss, Blake, Yang, Nora, and Ren all have their own issues to overcome, whether physical setbacks like losing an arm, or getting beyond abusive relationships, or confronting their own fears of abandonment or the ghosts of their pasts, so those virtues they have get put to use in adapting and overcoming and learning to stand on their own and not let their pasts define them.
Heck, even Neo, a persistent antagonist of the teams, has these virtues, but it's been focused down to a single desire for revenge against those who killed the most important person in her life. To the point that once she achieves that goal, she realizes that the whole quest has basically been hollow, and she decides to take some time and contemplate what she wants her life to be like after her major quest has been achieved.
It's probably not for nothing that the gladiolus plant is a straight stem with flowers stacked on top of each other, enough that makes me think of the Roman weapon, the gladius. Swords to plowshares is the kind of situation that we'd all like to have, because wear and conflict is often bloody and deadly, and often for goals that seem less than noble or warranted, and it tends to primarily affect the poorest and the most vulnerable whether as the ones who fight or the ones who die in the conflict. The idea of a plant that grows a blade and then festoons it with flowers seems like the kind of thing we can get behind - the repurposeing of weaponry for more aesthetically pleasing thing. Growing fields of poppies in remembrance of those who fell to the metaphorical sword. Flowers on gravesites and present at the rituals and remembrances of death. (Perhaps most ironically, those tend to be cut flowers, so they, too, will wither and die after having served the purpose of trying to bring color, life, and bauty to a sad and somber affair, unless they are artificial flowers.) And words of a familiar ritual of my childhood: "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return." But while you fight entropy, make the most of what you have and behave according to the precepts that have been set forth for you. Thus, you demonstrate your strength of character, faithfulness, moral integrity, and, every time you do the ritual, you do it in memory of the one who set these precepts before you.
Strength of character, faithfulness, moral integrity, and remembrance. All of which hinges, to some degree, on whether the history books decide that you were on the right and moral side of the conflict in question, or whether they believe that you were in the wrong. At which point you become admirable for sticking to your belief systems and for acting on them, and for being consistent about them, but that admiration can never get any closer than an arm's length, lest the people who admire you also be condemned for choosing the wrong moral path to live their lives with. And this situation applies to those who are living in the correct gender for themselves, despite the obstacles strewn in their path by legislators, justices, and specific religious believers that think their moral integrity demands they try to erase you, and for those people who are strewing the obstacles in the path of those people trying and succeeding at living their lives in the correct gender for themselves, because both of them are acting according to their own deeply-held moral beliefs and trying to be true to them. And similarly to those who fought fascists who intended to genocide everyone who weren't themselves and those who agreed with the fascists that plenty of "inferior" people should have been genocided. (And still agree with them as the fascists resurge in our times.) Which loops us back to the Gems in Steven Universe, because they're basically all about the destruction of "inferior" beings so they can mine their resources and use entire planets to make more Gems. The Diamond Authority and the rigid caste systems and the relentless persecution of anyone who does cross-Gem fusions and the belief that anyone who doesn't come out perfectly formed is a defect and should be destroyed, all of that is pretty clearly modeled on those governments who espoused eugenics and genocide as the way to create a perfect and master race that would be inherently superior to everyone else and therefore are the only true entities deserving of rights and participation in the society and the government. It's not subtle, shall we say, and it's all the more interesting that it was bundled up nicely into a children's animated show. Along with all of the queer relationships that do exist in the show. (You can get away with a lot in animation, is all I'm saying.)
And that's before we get into Over The Garden Wall, and the nature of The Beast and his seductive lies, what the Woodsman is doing (and the lie at the heart of what he's doing), and the ways that the Beast manipulates anyone who listens to him, and what kind of moral strength is needed to resist him, and how it's not Wirt who eventually goes over with the Beast, but Greg, because Greg has the moral integrity and a desire for others not to get hurt, so he'll go with the Beast if it promises not to hurt others. Because even if the Beast is ultimately lying, it's worth whatever temporary reprieve there is, at least to Greg.
It's the same logic that brings the summoner on their quest in the Spira of Final Fantasy X. They know that the Calm is temporary, and that Sin will return, but the summoner goes on the pilgrimage and summons the Final Aeon because the Calm is the better alternative to the constant destruction of Sin. And most of us are too tired to consider the possibility that there may be a better option available somewhere, but to strive for it requires more effort and more discomfort and more potential personal sacrifice than we have the capacity or desire for. And then, sometimes, we feel ashamed, or someone tries to shame us, that we weren't fighting full-heartedly on all of the possible fronts that we could have been, and that somehow means we lack the moral integrity and the strength of character that we should have and we are no longer "good" people because we weren't perfect. Even as the people who could make much more progress on change if they wanted to refuse to do so because they prefer the rest of us to suffer, or because they like their profits more than they like helping others.
There isn't necessarily a pat ending to this, or a stirring and rousing speech that gets us to go back out with renewed vigor and continue the battle that's going on. I don't have the answers to this. I may never have the answers to this, even as I try to work on things with my professionals and everyone else around here. What I do have, at least in this specific instance, in addition to the whirlwind tour of various fandoms here, is The Latest Kate, involving a lot of cute animals, occasionally in Lisa Frank-type colors, with encouraging messages attached to them about how it's okay, sometimes, to have just made it through the day and not done anything more. Or that you are perfect exactly the way you are, and that you have done well for existing and surviving up to this point in your life. They're very cute. They're very positive. And, at several points in my life, and possibly in yours, they're very necessary for knocking back the cloud of brainweasels. (Oh, I have thoughts about the Netflix Nimona compared to the graphic novel Nimona, but they're not thematic to this post.)
The BLACKSMITH: Choose for yourself: One who can leave your burdens behind…or choose one who will be enough to bear them.
SUMMER ROSE (voice): I love you, just the way you are.
RUBY ROSE (standing in front of her choice): This one. What happens…if I choose me?
THE BLACKSMITH: Then maybe, that girl is enough.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-08 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-08 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-08 07:07 pm (UTC)I can absolutely get behind this! Thank you for spelling it out, I had some problems wrapping my mind around the shape of the plant. :) And the Latest Kate animals are really top-notch and wise!
It's alright to not have THE ANSWER to everything, and acknowledging it AND talk about it with others is probably the most important step to not despair, but to realize you're not alone? I'm glad about your kind and unhurried thoughts, thank you for sharing!
no subject
Date: 2023-07-09 01:25 pm (UTC)I'm glad you found something useful in the past. It doesn't always feel like there's something there, but people keep saying they found something useful, so I have to assume it is there.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-09 01:35 pm (UTC)THIS. I hadn't thought much about it before, but you're so very right. And I loved the fandom examples, particularly Pearl and the Summoners of Spira.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-09 02:05 pm (UTC)