Scylla Rhiadra

Wow. Thank you. It reminds me a lot of the episode in All Quiet on the Western Front when Paul confronts a French soldier in a shell crater and stabs him . . . only to be forced to witness with utter horror and remorse his victim's slow and excruciating death over many hours. There must have been countless such moments.

Huh. Yes. I hadn't seen that before. Surprising, and the more affecting because of that. The Great War seems destined, I think, to endure as one of history's great symbols of gut-wrenching and tragic futility. Years ago, I watched the movie Gallipoli. Once was enough: I don't think I could handle the ending again.

I think you'd probably have a much more difficult time living with an injunction about not posting anything solely to do with RL than would I, Phorumities. Again, be careful what you wish for. As for my thread . . . well, the mods will do with it what they choose to do. We are all SL residents, certainly. But what is most important, and what actually brings us back again and again to connect with others here is our shared humanity. I don't think it's out of place to acknowledge here on important occasions the most fundamental values that we share as humans: that life is better than death, happiness better than pain, and peace better than war. I am pretty sure that you share those values too.

Yes, this. And no one, not even the most fervent soldier, deserved the nightmare that war inflicted on all of them.

For sure, or I might not like it so much! More obviously, though, what about a violent or sexist rap song appearing on the What Are You Listening to Now thread? Or any protest song? "This Is America"?

I think that Kanry's comment here points to a danger. I have made a real effort to keep the Dulce et Decorum Est thread relatively "unpolitical": read the OP. My choice of poem is hardly very contentious in RL: it's a very well known poem that appears a lot in memorial and remembrance ceremonies. BUT . . . there is no question that my choice of this poem rather than, say, McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" is political, as Phorumites correctly notes. So too would be the choice of McCrae's poem: on some, indeed many, issues it is pretty much impossible not to be at least implicitly political. Do we really want to ban anything that can be read as political? Be careful what you wish for: we may find ourselves unable to talk about anything here other than how to debug dance HUDs.

Thank you for this, Alyona! It's really very useful! Interestingly, as I've got (a little) better at doing the work in-viewer, I've found I've needed and wanted to do much less post-processing in PS. I'd offer tips if I had any. (I'm still too busy trying to remember to do the basics!) But I do hope others have suggestions to make here!

I want to explain why I love Owen's poem so much, beyond its protest against war. First of all, it is an absolutely brilliant poem, technically speaking. Listen to Ecclestone's reading with your eyes shut, and hear the taut, jarring rhythms of the verse, and the explosive sounds of the words and alliteration. Listen to the concrete physical detail, and the nightmarish impact of the narrative and his images. Secondly, this is a poem about real men, in a vividly real and terrifying situation. When McCrae's "dead" speak, it is as the disembodied, unindividuated voice of "The Cause." Owen shows us individuals, real men alongside whom he fought and suffered and died. We can identify and empathize with them. They could be us, or those we know. The poem is about the human dimension of war.

Very true. But I very much want to focus on the human dimension here.

As I also liked your first post here -- and with which I agreed a great deal less. And no one is "mocking" anyone's cause. Owen volunteered to serve, and was invalided out for some 6 months after suffering shell shock. He died willingly leading his troops on the front line: his is an utterly authentic voice.

Phorumities, did you not read what I wrote immediately above? This is how threads get locked. And I'd particularly like this one not to be, because it is dedicated to the memory of all of the incalculably valuable lives lost to war. I don't care if they are Confederate or Union, British or Canadian or German: their lives were important. There are places where partisan bickering is not appropriate. Please respect the purpose of this thread, and take the politics, as important as such discussions are, elsewhere, to another thread? Thank you.

Arguments and discussions about the nature of war, and whether it is ever "justifiable"(jus bellum justum) or not, are obviously vitally important: they go back to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas at least. I have very strong views on this myself, which are at least hinted at by my choice of poem. More important, maybe, in the context of this one day of all days -- Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, Memorial Day, or whatever you call it -- is the act of memory. It's about ensuring that we do not forget those whose lives were extinguished by human conflict. Whether their deaths were justified or not is relatively less important because the lives of all of those who died, on whatever side they fought, or whether they were military or civilian, had, and should still have, infinitely more meaning than is drawn from our appraisal of the conflicts that killed them. In other words, it is their lives, not their deaths, that are ultimately most important. No one should be remembered primarily by the way in which they died: our lives are too full of meaning and importance to be reduced to that. And so this thread is about remembering and celebrating those lives, captured so vividly in Owen's poem, and in the excerpt that Skell has posted. I'd ask that we reserve discussions about the nature of war for another day, or at least for another thread. I'd like to focus on that most important of things instead: life.

Well, McCrae was Canadian. In theory, I should like his poem best. I really don't, though, and the last stanza exhibits just exactly the attitude you've criticized. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. "In Flanders Fields" was actually used over the last 2 or 3 years of the war in recruitment literature and on posters.

I don't know the full textual history, but these (and Owen's other war poems) were published posthumously. We only have his original drafts in manuscript. I am guessing that particular editors have chosen variants from these that, for whatever reason, they prefer.

Well, again . . . I wear a white poppy, to commemorate civilians as well as military victims. So yes. I don't think, personally, that their deaths -- all of them, civilian and military, on all sides of the conflict -- should be dismissed as meaningless. I think we need to attach meaning to them. And that means making our mourning, and our commemoration, and our celebration of their lives (not their deaths) a means to put an end to war. THAT is meaningful. I don't think we are at all in disagreement, actually.

Well, yes. I actually agree. The best way -- maybe the ONLY way -- to give their deaths significance is to end the conflicts that are killing them. Did you read the poem?

"Dulce et Decorum Est" Wilfred Owen (d. 4 November, 1918, near Sambre, France) Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. I hope you will take a moment today to remember all of the victims of war, and give some thought to how we might best celebrate them, and give meaning to their sacrifice.

And here's one I took with a disposable camera at home . . .

It seems kind of typical of my usual way of doing (or not doing) things that I should spend an hour in-world preparing a new profile pic (and crashing twice in the process) about which I feel kind of "meh," and then get home, take a couple of quickie shots (requiring 5 mins work) that I end up liking much better. Here's my carefully staged in-world profile pic . . .

I didn't realize lucky chairs were still a thing! I never had the patience myself, but I do remember getting urgent summonses when a friend was waiting, and an "S" came up. "Drop whatever you're doing! I need you NOW!"

Looking pensive? Linden for your thoughts.

I was essentially out of SL for a while, and didn't log in at one point for, I think, about 4 years. I may well be misremembering, but I'm reasonably sure that at some point, after maybe 3 years absence, I received some kind of notification that I wasn't going to be receiving offline IMs anymore. (I would periodically, if rarely, check my email for personal messages.) I do know, for sure, that I was set up to receive them before, and had to reset this when I came back a month or so ago.

QED, what I said about Lindal ^^^^

Hi. I didn't know Angel (and I doubt that anyone here did -- the forums represent a pretty small slice of the SL population), but I'm very sorry to hear of your loss. And I think it's kind of you to want to let his friends in-world know about his passing. In defense of Lindal, let me say that she works very hard to teach and train "residents" (as we call users) in-world in things that include safety and security, and I don't know many people who understand the dynamics of personal interactions and relationships here better than she does. She is right: it is possible to cause a great deal of trouble this way (and I should note that, for that reason as well as for others, it is against Linden Lab's ToS to use someone else's account), and I think her natural instinct to warn and protect came to the forefront here. She is very far from "toxic." Most of your father's friends will be accessible through his friends list, or his in-world groups. I can't suggest that you use these to contact people directly, because (as I say) it's against the ToS. But perhaps you can locate one or two key friends, and have them pass on the word to others? What LittleMe says is correct: the mods here will deal with this thread, moving it if appropriate (and shutting it down if not). Again, I'm very sorry to hear this. I've lost a few in-world friends myself: believe me when I say that the grief and sense of loss can be every bit as real as losing someone you know IRL.

Ouch. True. But maybe it will work for that reason as an inducement for abstinence-based contraception?