#littlestarprincess

this is technically like... late-game PW spoilers but honestly I think anyone who's been around here a while would have called it the second Shrike was introduced in the comic anyway

“Ha, I’m at the Guru episode of ATLA.  It’s funny to revisit this one...”

this is all true but i'm curious about the context of that fucking post?

A while ago, when She-ra and the Princesses of Power first came out, I was liveblogging it and came to the episode where Light Hope, a character who’s a deconstruction of the “Wise Mentor” archetype in Western fantasy and sci-fi fiction, gives the whole Western Fantasy spiel of how a hero must “let go of their attachments” to their friends if they want to be a hero.  While the phrase comes from various Asian philosophies (mainly Buddhism and Taoism), most Western fantasy fiction doesn’t actually articulate that philosophy well.  They boil down the concept of letting go of attachments - which SHOULD mean “accept that you can’t control the world and that sometimes you will lose things and people that you love” - into “if you were a good hero you wouldn’t care at all if other people live or die, and because you DO care you will fail to stop the big bad man.” 

This is an EXTREMELY common trope - the most prominent examples would be the Guru episode of ATLA and, like, EVERY teaching session by a wise jedi mentor in Star Wars (Yoda, Obi-Wan, Qui Gon Jin, the list goes on).  And it’s bad for a couple of reasons:

1. It gives people the wrong impression of what this philosophy is supposed to be

2. It’s horrible advice that allows people to justify selfish cruelty as “heroic” - I’m not callous about human life, I just have no attachments, that makes me a hero!

So, yeah, I hate the Western fantasy fiction “let go of attachments” trope, and when I saw She-Ra UTTERLY SKEWER IT by having it presented as being horrible advice and a reason why Light Hope can’t be trusted (which, spoilers, she definitely couldn’t be) was very satisfying.  It was so satisfying that I made a very short - shorter than this - post about how I hate the Let Go of Attachments post.

And that’s when the shitstorm began.

First I had a couple of Tumblr Buddhists claiming I hate Buddhism, despite me explicitly saying I hate this trope when it crops up in Fantasy fiction.  Then I had some horrible Christians using the post to explain why they think Buddhism is an inherently cruel and evil religion.  Then there were dozens, perhaps even hundreds of people (the post has tens of thousands of fucking notes) trying to argue that Star Wars is very smart actually and totally understands Buddhism and that Master Yoda gave a perfectly accurate summary of what “Let Go of Attachments” is supposed to mean (he doesn’t).  Then I had hundreds of people claiming the post was ONLY about one given show - which show depended on the poster, with people arguing it was solely about:

Star Wars

ATLA

She-Ra

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Daredevil

Supernatural I think?

A few dozen others I forget

Instead of, y’know, being about a trope that’s in a LOT of fiction and thus is very common.

Oh, and at one point noted dipshit Trilllizard666 commented on it to talk about how not caring about people is a MARVELOUS virtue and that the Western take on letting go of attachments is better than the Buddhist one it’s corrupted from.  I got to Kung Pow Penis him over it though, so that was kinda fun.

I think it exactly tracks. The thing I find so disturbing about Ben is how meta-meta(?)textual his character is. His character was already a metatextual critique of fan perceptions of What Being A Skywalker Is, but then now Ben’s own treatment by the writers/viewers itself mirrors his treatment in the story-- someone who was innocent of the “first sin” both the story and the writers gave to him, yet punished as though he was just as guilty.

this is all true but i'm curious about the context of that fucking post?

@littlestarprincess - 

@tyrantisterror made a post a little while back about disliking the “let gooooo of your attaaaaachments” trope that comes up in spec fic a lot (particularly in Western spec fic that borrows from Japanese stuff without understanding it) 

this caused a bit of a kerfluffle, as The Nuisances Of Tunglr.Hell came down on him hard. “WHY DO YOU HATE BUDDHISM?????” , explaining what the actual Buddhist view of “letting go of attachment” is (without understanding why he hates the trope which is not the same thing), and/or citing Works That Use The Trope as “good” when he was actually vaguing about them.

(4/4) WE JUST DON'T THINK ABOUT IT!!! And anyway I'm big worried about Hiyori now because yeah all this stuff is going down with Yato and his dad and Yukine but also we're starting to get more of Hiyori's problems, and I KNOW I started this wanting Adachitoka to back up their word but I have CHANGED MY MIND THANKS. I NO LONGER TRUST THEM WITH MY HEART I'm kidnapping Hiyori and making her do her school work, thanks. ANYWAY JUST HAD TO GET THIS OFF MY CHEST still not far into this volume tho RIP

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Tumblr ate parts 1 and 3 i hate it here

Haha I know… enough to begin with, with gardening! I’ve begun a lot of projects, but now they’ll take months or years to really see to fruition. 

I will say: I have found many books by longterm gardeners very helpful, and the blogs of people in my hardiness zones, but I’ve found Youtube to be patchy in its usefulness. A lot of Youtubers are people just starting out their gardening or farming journeys, so they’ll make a video documenting a brand new process they’re excited to try out for the first time, but it’s a lot harder to find follow-up “Welp, that didn’t work” conclusions. The videos are good to show my mom to demonstrate what the work will look like, but I want to do more research before I decide to try a technique.

I have definitely found that other local gardeners are really valuable to get to know! It can be really hard to figure out what works in your specific area and a lot of it requires trial and error, so it’s helpful to know what’s already been tried. You can also end up sharing tools, plants, seeds, and labour. 

Finding people local to you can be as simple as finding local garden centres or seed stores (preferably dedicated year-round places that hire people specifically for plant knowledge, not just the pop-up garden centre at a store that doesn’t really focus on plants). That way you can talk to employees who have seen a lot of gardeners try things locally and hear how it went. I’ve gone to some really useful talks given by independent greenhouses.

However, a step up from that are actual local gardening groups or clubs. Local to me there are events like Seedy Sunday, which is organized in March in my area, where outdoor planting is still a few months away but people might be starting seeds indoors soon. It has a seed swap, vendors, and information sessions. There I learned about the local permaculture guild’s annual festival a month later, and it had even more info sessions, and the presenters there frequently handed out seeds or were like “PLEASE come and take an apricot seedling from my back yard, here is my address, PLEASE.” From there you might even make garden friends whose garden you could visit, or who could visit your garden, to say things like “Yeah that’s a fungal infection” or “This part isn’t getting enough water.” (I mean, you could also get a landscaper or garden consultant to do that, but it costs money.)

Because really the trick with gardening, as far as I can tell, is all about location and region. I automatically add “zone 3″ to all my google searches now. Clover works really well in some places–I’ve successfully grown it on the bare dirt on the north side of my house, dangit I forgot to post pictures–and not as well in other places. It’s going to act differently depending on what kind of winter you have (Cold but not freezing? Frosty but not snowing? Snow and ice that freeze and thaw several times over the winter? Heavy consistent snow blanket until spring?) and what your general climate’s like. In some places you might be better off with prairie grass or an eco-friendly fescue mix or a mix of grasses and flowers..

I tend to sow seed over the living grass of my lawns instead of completely getting rid of the old grass. I guess I mostly figure that if the new grass really is a better fit for the lawn, it’ll choke out the old stuff. It’s… sometimes worked out well so far? Although I live in a pretty arid area, and I learned that if I want my grass to grow, it MUST get an inch of water every day for the first two weeks, and then at least once a week for a good month or two. It’s drought-resistant when it’s mature, but not when it’s a baby. My garden lives and dies by my automated water timer.

If you wanted to completely kill the grass you had starting out, I’m also not sure about the specific procedure for smothering grass and replacing it with a different lawn cover. A really common technique is to smother it with newspaper or cardboard and mulch like wood chips, straw, hay, or autumn leaves, but I’m not sure how well it works to seed something new on top of that–I can forsee patchiness if you’ve got clover trying to establish itself in, say, wood chips. Maybe mulch and a bit of soil? Complicated questions. Anyone know? @elodieunderglass? Bueller?

Anyway, the smothering process takes months. I moved into my new garden May 2019 and spent the whole summer using the bare-earth beds that came with the house and plotting out where 2020′s new beds would go, and then lasagna gardened them in October 2019 so they’d smother and decompose and be ready for next May 2020′s planting. And I’m still very nervous about whether it’ll work out! All my elderly neighbours are very dubious about the whole idea and ready to lend me their rototillers. My PRIDE is on the line.

sure thing ! 

Basically he’s the embodiment of that “Bad Boy Everyone Wants To Fix" cliché. He comes from a rich and pretty influential but shitty family - so he does everything in his hand to rebel against them and pretend he doesn’t know them. Or you know, just try to get disowned and kicked out. 

Wears leather jackets with absolutely nothing underneath and also probably has a motorcycle. Jun’s bad boy aura and aesthetics are strong af but he has obscure interests that no one expected him to have like gardening or feeding every single stray dog in the entire city. Oh yeah and katanas and swords.

Speaking of stray dogs, Jun denies that he’s the one that has been taking care of them for years - he’ll even deny giving them names but the fucker can easily recognize each and every one of them on the streets. No matter how hard he tries to teach them to leave him alone while in public, there’s always a couple of puppers following him around.

Has been stuck in an on and off relationship for 5 years that he’s unable to let go (but it’s not like he wants to let go either). Jun most likely stalks their social media all the time. Also I bet he’s the type to post weird posessive shit in the comments to “let everyone know they’re taken”. Definitely the type of guy every friend would advise you to break up with.

A city guy but hates the city and how crowded it is - which is why he spends most of the time chilling in parks or at the countryside. Or just on the road with his bike. Def skips class all the time and enjoys knowing that his family is wasting so much money to keep him in college. But the only time you’ll see Jun around it’s when he chills behind a 7/11 like a fucking cryptid, surrounded by dogs.