East of the Sun

I would be reluctant to use fridging in this exact context, because this isn't some imaginary scenario to generate manpain for a white hero, this is a much more common experience of Native American and First Nation people, having their wives and daughters and sisters (in particular, but not exclusively) go missing. And never getting answers, never learning what happened, and not being believed that there's a problem in the first place.

This is like how being rescued from a tower by a prince is not particularly empowering or affirming to cis physically able straight thin perisex white women and girls, but can be for basically anybody else. Particularly black girls and women, who do not get a lot of cultural messages that treat them as people who are so valuable and precious, who may not have the strength to save themselves, or may wish that they didn't fucking have to save themselves (and everyone else) all the time.

White men have this story so often happen that we have a trope name specific to one specific and particularly egregious version of this, but you don't often see men who look like Robbie dealing with this type of story in fictional settings, even though it happens for men like Robbie in real life with horrifying frequency.

What makes this story so important (and not fridging) to me is that this isn't some half developed character that only exists to create something for Kattigan to overcome, Kattigan is an alcoholic and a druidic initiate that has been heavily implied to have had a land stewardship relationship with the land he was living with his family on, and it's for these reasons that people assume his missing and murdered wife and daughter are neither missing nor murdered and that has severed his relationship with his druidic magic and connection with the land.

This is important to me because my great great grandfather's murder was ruled accidental without criminal investigations because he was an alcoholic and he was drowned on his indigenous band's historic land which is on an archipelago and the only people who had evidence and were calling for an investigation were indigenous women. The first time anyone outside of the band took it seriously was in around 2014, 40+ years after his death, when a new hire at the cold cases unit saw the case after the TRC investigations, but the murderer that everyone in the community agreed had done it had already died of old age.

The reality that came with that? My great grandfather converted to the LDS and joined the military, getting himself disenfranchised temporarily along the way. I never once heard him speak his indigenous language, not even to say hello, even though I know he grew up speaking it even after his father was disenfranchised for 3 generations and his mother was sent to residential school. His family fell apart when his father was murdered. I've spoken to his five sisters a total of 9 occasions, and not 9 each, there have been 9 occasions I can remember ever where I have seen at least one of them, despite the fact that they are all still alive. One of those occasions was their mother's funeral in 2009 which was the first time I'd ever seen smudging done, and remains the only time I've seen members of my family smudging. 5 years before anyone called. In 2015 he got into a car accident and stopped being able to visit the archipelago safely, so he got one summer up there since having any inkling of justice before he couldn't be on his land anymore. I've been to one pow wow in my entire life and it wasn't with him or any of his other descendants, only one relative from his side of the family was there, one of his sisters, and she was part of the organizing council, it was my other parent's family that came with me, and at that point my dad didn't even know his mother was indigenous because she was adopted in the 60s and her birth certificate has never had her real parents on it or she wouldve been scooped never would've known it either. My dad didn't learn that past the fact that she was adopted until a year and a half later in 2023 when I asked her point blank if she was indigenous after hearing decades of suspicions from my mother's family. My great grandfather died early May of this year.

his son, at this very moment:

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

So different, yet kindled all the same.

This is a take that on its face sounds subversive and meaningful, but taken to its logical conclusion enables a lot of the same issues as history that was baldly written as propaganda. Reducing all history telling, especially modern, academic history to “stories written by the victors” is in my opinion both anti-intellectual and anti-academic. And this is not meant as a callout post or reprimand to anyone who’s used the phrase because in a lot of ways it sounds right, and it is important to think about who is writing history and what their agenda is, but it’s often used as a dismissal and conversation ender by people trying to sound progressive who I don’t think are considering the wider implications of that dismissal.

My credentials to discuss this are that as historian, my research and teaching focus has been on ideas memory, memorialization, and historical forgetting. I have conducted graduate level classes on this topic. For a bold and thought-provoking intro to these studies, I recommend the excellent essay: Why Every Single Statue Should Come Down, by Gary Younge.

We all of course know the common examples of “history written by the victors” erasing bad actions and atrocities. This is how history has been used as a propaganda tool, and why newly uncovered evidence and research like critical investigations into the atrocities of early US presidents who were slaveowners and books like Imperial Reckoning by Caroline Elkins, which uses primary sources to destroy the myth of the “peaceful” British exit from Kenya, are so important. But those revisions and deconstructions are not only also history, they are a far better example of what history is as a discipline now. It’s why the rising fascist governments find modern history and historians so dangerous and are cutting their funding: because relying on research, facts, and evidence, while not changing the fact that history is written as a narrative with a perspective, make unpleasant pasts harder to refute.

A large current example of this fascist rejection of history is the Trump administration ordering the National Park Service to take down signs at the presidents house in Philadelphia. Those signs detailed the reality of George Washington’s life as a slaver, and focused on the courage and full lives of individuals who escaped from enslavement while he was president, such as Oney Judge. Even though the administration was court ordered to return the signs in February they have not done so.

The Trump administration’s argument about these panels is that they present a “distorted” history “written by the victors” that is exaggerated and trying to make America look bad. The idea that the North distorted and exaggerated the horrors of the American South in their histories because they won and it made them look better is not new, and is the reason for the “lost cause” myth and the fact that today many Southern US schools do not teach accurate history about slavery.

Another large example of how the idea of “history being written by the victors” can be used to aid historical forgetting of atrocities is Holocaust denial. This is actually a common tactic with denial of many genocides but Holocaust denial is the clearest example because we can point to a legal trial around it. In 1993, historian Deborah Lipstadt wrote a book called “Denying the Holocaust,” which critically engaged with the distortions of evidence used by Holocaust deniers. One of those deniers, David Irving, sued Lipstadt for libel, essentially trying to argue in a court of law this his narrative of the Holocaust was as valid as hers and not “denial”. The court ruled in Lipstadt’s favor, crucially finding that Irving’s distortion of evidence did invalidate his history and make it illegitimate, and that it was not libel for Lipstadt to refute his bad research and call it denial. This trial is a huge statement on what modern, academic history is. Citations and documentation are a fundamental part of history as a discipline, as much as if not more so than crafting narrative out of what those documents show us.

(As an aside, the way more fun drama that happens in history now is when someone gets caught drawing terrible and incorrect conclusions from the primary documents they did cite, such as when Naomi Wolf’s entire dissertation and book premise was debunked as a completely avoidable lack of understanding of what “death recorded” meant in UK legal terminology in the 19th century. She has since, unsurprisingly, become a right-wing grifter who can’t stop posting on X).

The Gala Incident - The Three Parties*

*(minus the Magpies)

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Until you remember Sora. Plus, the fact that in OPLA (thanks to the power of foresight), Sanji shares his experience about his mother.

So, it kinda makes sense for Sanji to be the one who had the most time watching over Nami. He's scared. He's worried.

Not to mention that he obviously has experience with caretaking. At least compared to the others. If I had to pick, it would be Sanji.

That isn't to say that the others didn't watch over her. Realistically, Sanji wasn't there 'the whole time' for those four days. I'd wager that there were moments Sanji had to leave the room to cook, but not before making sure someone is there with Nami. Hell, the others probably had to force him out so he could sleep and they take turns keeping watch.

Plus...it's possible the others...don't feel comfortable seeing Nami (someone strong and independent) so sick and weak...

Like Usopp. His mom died to illness too...

It's not that no one cares...

nami has had one on one moments with all of the rest of the crew across both seasons; luffy throughout all of season 1 which ends in arlong park, the scene in the bar with zoro and her worry about him during his fight with mihawk and then scattered moments with usopp, the way she holds his hand whilst watching zoro’s fight and then their conversations in little garden but sanji is notably missing from that, who is also in the same boat: by 2x06 he’s had interactions like that, meaningful ones, with everyone but nami. obviously we see how much he cares for her but it’s pretty much always within the realm of his flirtation and that flowery nature of his when it comes to her. having those scenes where we see him being incredibly vulnerable and worried for her was important for both us as the audience and nami as a character to see and understand just how much he cares for her, not because she’s a girl and because he’s flirting but because she’s his friend and his crewmate and he loves her because of that

that’s why their conversation in 2x08 is so important for both of them; nami seeing him completely stripped back and vulnerable, no act, no flirty or quips, just him, scared and upset talking to his friend about something very important to him

there’s also the fact that the season was written to have a bit more focus on each straw hat for each island and with the idea that each stop would provide them with a “challenge” in some way; luffy in loguetown, nami on reverse mountain with her navigation, zoro in whiskey peak and usopp on little garden which were also obvious choices which left sanji and drum which coincidentally also made perfect sense as he’s faced with something that reminds me of the worst time of life and losing the one good thing he had then which was sora, and seeing her when nami was sick

Occtis and Pin

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