#Also the books had a sort of weird thing that felt anti-choice?

[twilight-is-dead]

me: I wonder why I enjoy whump so much…

the keeper of the lost cities series, deviously sitting on my shelf and collecting dust: please read us again

[the-shared-brain-in-retrograde]

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

Or, What if Clint Barton had Magical Diabetes?

a joint review...

Well, well, fuck me, well (as our good friend Sebastian would say). A series of choices were made bringing this film into fruition, and we suppose we will discuss them now.

The spirit of this week's review is summed up in the wise words of @cassandrafey who said last night, while discussing our feelings on the movie we'd just endured, "let’s not get too bogged down in the fine details...", so we won't, because the writers and director didn't seem to either.

Firstly we didn't know MTV made films, and in hindsight this is probably why. They gave it a go, good for them, but perhaps they should stick to terrible car crash tv instead.

Shall we start at the beginning when two children are told to stay put and instead break into a poor woman's house, and begin to eat it. Don't do that. We don't like to victim blame in this house, but also you sort of brought this on yourselves kids. But to share equal disgust with the witch, that oven was not suitable for cooking in. Too flamey, that's a burning oven, and no one wants burnt food. Shame on everyone involved.

We then get quite the animated montage of anti witch propaganda. Boo, but it brings us up to speed with the story we guess, and then straight into town where a man is shouting utter rot. He's accusing a woman of being a witch (haven't we all been there ladies...) but obvs she can't be a witch (as expert Hansel helpfully points out) as she is far too pretty, and witches are terribly ugly and dress as if they're from Norwegian Death Metal bands that went to Camden Market in the 00s to buy their entire wardrobe.

Can you hear the bitterness yet?

We should point out this is the first of many times Hansel doesn't know his arse from his elbow. It’s not even himbo energy, it’s just stupidity. Becks described our Hansel in her notes as 'Poundland Dean Winchester', which made Cass raise an eyebrow in question, and Becks now sees (after completing the film) that she was being far too optimistic. Also, a choice was made or maybe a hand forced, with getting the pair to use American accents in what we presume to be medieval Europe (although who the fuck knows with outfits and the weapons). Becks has decided it was down to dear Gemma to step up as we're pretty sure we've never heard Jeremy Renner do a non-american accent. Perhaps that's slander, but until proven otherwise it’s the side we're on. Come on Jezza, let’s hear it!

Cass really took to Gretel from the start. She liked it when she nutted that man, she saw it coming and loved it a lot. She also liked Gretel's hair and she thought she was also quite clever. Although Becks pointed out that, with Hansel seeming pretty dim, it’s all relative isn’t it?

They then go break into another witch's house and kill her. Turns out she had nothing to do with them missing kids, and the only crime she'd committed was identity theft, Noel Fielding to be precise. Then they nicked her stuff and talked shit about once in a generation blood moons. Factually incorrect, but go on.

We're then treated to the most horrific scene of the movie, enough to make any person stomach turn. A beer trough. A fucking beer trough. WERP. That can't be a thing surely?! Just an open trough of beer that any old fucker can stick their dirty hand (or other appendages) in and get a drink. DISGUSTING. Becks felt very strongly about this, and missed some key plot points that followed due to the rage now simmering. Cass however was on the ball, and we got to meet a weirdo kid with a scrap book, who had collected down all manner of stalkerish clippings, thoughts and feelings about his absolute faves, and put them all together in a neat book that he could keep forever. What a fucking weirdo. We definitely think that's weird and would never do anything like that...

Meanwhile a band of stupid men go into the woods at night to go hunt down a witch, where they meet a woman alone in the woods, and don't realise she's a witch, because they are fucking idiots, and as such die terrible deaths. We love to see it.

The next day we're introduced to a plot point that Cass declares dances on the line between stupidity and genius. We are of course talking about the magical diabetes. After eating too much of the witch's house and then being forced to eat more of it, Hansel now has magical diabetes, which he says he needs to take medicine for regularly after COLLAPSING (fucking takes your meds before it gets to that point you tit) but we don't really hear any more about it until the end of the film. Such good storytelling. He also does a bit of painful flirting with the white witch they saved earlier. Hansel is the worst at flirting we have ever seen. Ever. Ever. Stop talking about witches' piss. We don't like to talk on behalf of women everywhere but, come on now.

Then he buys some kids clothes, and builds a pumpkin child in the woods with a medieval gramophone, and lures in a hedgehog headed dumb dumb of a witch. Who shouts ‘help I’m alone in the woods’ honestly? It was clearly a trap, hedgehog head.

Becks has just had a small break whilst trying to write this.

The more I think about this film the more I hate it. Good gods...

Anyway, they capture the witch, who tells them the witches' plan, nice one idiot, so they are away to go find the only child born in April in the whole town (how convenient). Becks' favourite head witch rocks up though, which is nice, comes to be a bit menacing, but Cass takes it all the wrong way and loses her mind (clearly thoughts of Noel Fielding still lurking about towards the forefront…)

"I go by many names..."

Cass: Some call me Secret Peter!

"None of which you are worthy of pronouncing."

Becks loved it none the less. There was also some storytelling here, where Gretel, and her family, clearly are more linked to the witches than they thought.

Meanwhile, the other witch has Hansel by the dick, which elicited quite the response from both of us. Surprise from Cass, thrilled encouragement from Becks. She really went for it. Good for her. He did get his own back with a swift stab to the eye though, and then hitched a ride as she flew off on her broom.

Gretel then wakes up being molested by Goldilocks, as she ties to figure out the events and consequences of the night before. Becks would like to have seen Gretel give that kid a sharp smack at this point, and Cass would like to have seen her smack all types of people. That's the problem with this film, men.

Clint then shows through a little, as we find him hung upside down from a tree, moaning and generally exuding old man energy. But we don't like to compare Clint to Hansel. Because no.

As Gretel is beaten, bites a man's nose off, and is threatened with rape, Hansel gets his end off with the white witch in the pond. Quite different storylines right? It does lead us swiftly into another favourite part of the film for Cass, the part were we are introduced to the feminist troll. And what is this trolls name, we hear you ask? Well we’ll tell you. It’s Edward. Edward the troll. Who gave off creepy Ludo vibes, but out of all the men in the film seemed like one of the better ones.

Then we get told more important plot points.

"Once upon a time, near a shitty little town..." and everyone turns out to be a witch, apart from Hansel who has fucked one, so it’s sort of the same.

We'd like to say that we had sort of given up by this point in the film, although because we are professional women we did keep going until the bitter end, but our hearts and minds were not in it, so we apologise for the vagueness.

Gretel gets kidnapped again, and all the other witches turn up in their cool outfits and batman voices, then Hansel rocks up talking shit like any woman is going to listen to him, and then there are machine guns. It was a lot, and yet at the same time, somehow disappointing.

For supposedly very powerful women, they all seemed very easy to kill, and the male director really showed through with exploding heads and tits just suspended there.

Then we had the cheese wire trap. We really don't understand, if you're going to trap someone who can fly, surely you need to make your trap bigger then a few meters high? Surely just fly over it?!

@cassandrafey: What is this, We're Going on a fucking Bear Hunt?

@becksxoxo: Oooh, literary reference.

Anyway, most of them didn't just fly over, they flew through and got sliced the fuck up. Apart from the Head Witch, obvs, as she was the only one with a pissing brain in the whole coven.

Then we go back to the start, back to where it all began, the gingerbread house.

Hansel chooses to enter the building using a forward roll (and you all know how much we love a forward roll, it’s our favourite thing ever, and may have even redeemed the whole film for us.) It has inspired Cass to do this for each new place she enters, but without getting smacked in the face with a spade on completion.

We honestly don't know what happens next. There's a fight, and they managed to kill the Head Witch with the spade she smacked him in the face with. But they don't burn her, which we think will come bite them in the arse should a second film ever be made (gods we hope not).

Also look at that gif up there, alongside the context of a man saying to a woman "who did this to you?" and tell me you're confused if they're brother and sister or not. Neither of us have siblings, but we're pretty sure this is straying into Game of Thrones territory.

In conclusion, this movie was terrible.

We don't think this has been our best review ever, and we really are blaming it on the film we were working with. There is very little to comment on as the film is just so bleh. There is no substance, and very little style. We've read other people's reviews, and we just don't get it. It’s got over 6 stars on IMBD, and some high scoring reviews on Letterboxd. So many people have it down as a guilty pleasure, but we just don't get it. But if it has made you happy go for it. However, we will be enquiring as to who we need to contact to get all the time we have wasted on this film back.

Next week will be better. We're taking on Zodiac for our Bruce Banner film, with extra points as we also have dear Tony and fart helmet Quentin Beck. We shall see you then.

love becks and cass

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook thrives on criticism of "disinformation"

The mainstream critique of Facebook is surprisingly compatible with Facebook’s own narrative about its products. FB critics say that the company’s machine learning and data-gathering slides disinformation past users’ critical faculties, poisoning their minds.

Meanwhile, Facebook itself tells advertisers that it can use data and machine learning to slide past users’ critical faculties, convincing them to buy stuff.

In other words, the mainline of Facebook critics start from the presumption that FB is a really good product and that advertisers are definitely getting their money’s worth when they shower billions on the company.

Which is weird, because these same critics (rightfully) point out that Facebook lies all the time, about everything. It would be bizarre if the only time FB was telling the truth was when it was boasting about how valuable its ad-tech is.

Facebook has a conflicted relationship with this critique. I’m sure they’d rather not be characterized as a brainwashing system that turns good people into monsters, but not when the choice is between “brainwashers” and “con-artists selling garbage to credulous ad execs.”

As FB investor and board member Peter Thiel puts it: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.” In other words, the important word in “evil genius” is “genius,” not “evil.”

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1440312271511568393

The accord of tech critics and techbros gives rise to a curious hybrid, aptly named by Maria Farrell: the Prodigal Techbro.

A prodigal techbro is a self-styled wizard of machine-learning/surveillance mind control who has see the error of his ways.

https://crookedtimber.org/2020/09/23/story-ate-the-world-im-biting-back/

This high-tech sorcerer doesn’t disclaim his magical powers — rather, he pledges to use them for good, to fight the evil sorcerers who invented a mind-control ray to sell your nephew a fidget-spinner, then let Robert Mercer hijack it to turn your uncle into a Qanon racist.

There’s a great name for this critique, criticism that takes its subjects’ claims to genius at face value: criti-hype, coined by Lee Vinsel, describing a discourse that turns critics into “the professional concern trolls of technoculture.”

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

The thing is, Facebook really is terrible — but not because it uses machine learning to brainwash boomers into iodine-guzzling Qnuts. And likewise, there really is a problem with conspiratorial, racist, science-denying, epistemologically chaotic conspiratorialism.

Addressing that problem requires that we understand the direction of the causal arrow — that we understand whether Facebook is the cause or the effect of the crisis, and what role it plays.

“Facebook wizards turned boomers into orcs” is a comforting tale, in that it implies that we need merely to fix Facebook and the orcs will turn back into our cuddly grandparents and get their shots. The reality is a lot gnarlier and, sadly, less comforting.

There’s been a lot written about Facebook’s sell-job to advertisers, but less about the concern over “disinformation.” In a new, excellent longread for Harpers, Joe Bernstein makes the connection between the two:

https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/

Fundamentally: if we question whether Facebook ads work, we should also question whether the disinformation campaigns that run amok on the platform are any more effective.

Bernstein starts by reminding us of the ad industry’s one indisputable claim to persuasive powers: ad salespeople are really good at convincing ad buyers that ads work.

Think of department store magnate John Wanamaker’s lament that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Whoever convinced him that he was only wasting half his ad spend was a true virtuoso of the con.

As Tim Hwang documents brilliantly in his 2020 pamphlet “Subprime Attention Crisis,” ad-tech is even griftier than the traditional ad industry. Ad-tech companies charge advertisers for ads that are never served, or never rendered, or never seen.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

They rig ad auctions, fake their reach numbers, fake their conversions (they also lie to publishers about how much they’ve taken in for serving ads on their pages and short change them by millions).

Bernstein cites Hwang’s work, and says, essentially, shouldn’t this apply to “disinformation?”

If ads don’t work well, then maybe political ads don’t work well. And if regular ads are a swamp of fraudulently inflated reach numbers, wouldn’t that be true of political ads?

Bernstein talks about the history of ads as a political tool, starting with Eisenhower’s 1952 “Answers America” campaign, designed and executed at great expense by Madison Ave giants Ted Bates.

Hannah Arendt, whom no one can accuse of being soft on the consequences of propaganda, was skeptical of this kind of enterprise: “The psychological premise of human manipulability has become one of the chief wares that are sold on the market of common and learned opinion.”

The ad industry ran an ambitious campaign to give scientific credibility to its products. As Jacques Ellul wrote in 1962, propagandists were engaged in “the increasing attempt to control its use, measure its results, define its effects.”

Appropriating the jargon of behavioral scientists let ad execs “assert audiences, like workers in a Taylorized workplace, need not be persuaded through reason, but could be trained through repetition to adopt the new consumption habits desired by the sellers.” -Zoe Sherman

These “scientific ads” had their own criti-hype attackers, like Vance “Hidden Persuaders” Packard, who admitted that “researchers were sometimes prone to oversell themselves — or in a sense to exploit the exploiters.”

Packard cites Yale’s John Dollard, a scientific ad consultant, who accused his colleagues of promising advertisers “a mild form of omnipotence,” which was “well received.”

Today’s scientific persuaders aren’t in a much better place than Dollard or Packard. Despite all the talk of political disinformation’s reach, a 2017 study found “sharing articles from fake news domains was a rare activity” affecting <10% of users.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586

So, how harmful is this? One study estimates “if one fake news article were about as persuasive as one TV campaign ad, the fake news in our database would have changed vote shares by an amount on the order of hundredths of a percentage point.”

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.31.2.211

Now, all that said, American politics certainly feel and act differently today than in years previous. The key question: “is social media creating new types of people, or simply revealing long-obscured types of people to a segment of the public unaccustomed to seeing them?”

After all, American politics has always had its “paranoid style,” and the American right has always had a sizable tendency towards unhinged conspiratorialism, from the John Birch Society to Goldwater Republicans.

Social media may not be making more of these yahoos, but rather, making them visible to the wider world, and to each other, allowing them to make common cause and mobilize their adherents (say, to carry tiki torches through Charlottesville in Nazi cosplay).

If that’s true, then elite calls to “fight disinformation” are unlikely to do much, except possibly inflaming things. If “disinformation” is really people finding each other (not infecting each other) labelling their posts as “disinformation” won’t change their minds.

Worse, plans like the Biden admin’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism lump 1/6 insurrectionists in with anti-pipeline activists, racial justice campaigners, and animal rights groups.

Whatever new powers we hand over to fight disinformation will be felt most by people without deep-pocketed backers who’ll foot the bill for crack lawyers.

Here’s the key to Bernstein’s argument: “One reason to grant Silicon Valley’s assumptions about our mechanistic persuadability is that it prevents us from thinking too hard about the role we play in taking up and believing the things we want to believe. It turns a huge question about the nature of democracy in the digital age — what if the people believe crazy things, and now everyone knows it? — into a technocratic negotiation between tech companies, media companies, think tanks, and universities.”

I want to “Yes, and” that.

My 2020 book How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism doesn’t dismiss the idea that conspiratorialism is on the rise, nor that tech companies are playing a key role in that rise — but without engaging in criti-hype.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

In my book, I propose that conspiratorialism isn’t a crisis of what people believe so much as how they arrive at their beliefs — it’s an “epistemological crisis.”

We live in a complex society plagued by high-stakes questions none of us can answer on our own.

Do vaccines work? Is oxycontin addictive? Should I wear a mask? Can we fight covid by sanitizing surfaces? Will distance ed make my kind an ignoramus? Should I fly in a 737 Max?

Even if you have the background to answer one of these questions, no one can answer all of them.

Instead, we have a process: neutral expert agencies use truth-seeking procedures to sort of competing claims, showing their work and recusing themselves when they have conflicts, and revising their conclusions in light of new evidence.

It’s pretty clear that this process is breaking down. As companies (led by the tech industry) merge with one another to form monopolies, they hijack their regulators and turn truth-seeking into an auction, where shareholder preferences trump evidence.

This perversion of truth has consequences — take the FDA’s willingness to accept the expensively manufactured evidence of Oxycontin’s safety, a corrupt act that kickstarted the opioid epidemic, which has killed 800,000 Americans to date.

If the best argument for vaccine safety and efficacy is “We used the same process and experts as pronounced judgement on Oxy” then it’s not unreasonable to be skeptical — especially if you’re still coping with the trauma of lost loved ones.

As Anna Merlan writes in her excellent Republic of Lies, conspiratorialism feeds on distrust and trauma, and we’ve got plenty of legitimate reasons to experience both.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

Tech was an early adopter of monopolistic tactics — the Apple ][+ went on sale the same year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail, and the industry’s growth tracked perfectly with the dismantling of antitrust enforcement over the past 40 years.

What’s more, while tech may not persuade people, it is indisputably good at finding them. If you’re an advertiser looking for people who recently looked at fridge reviews, tech finds them for you. If you’re a boomer looking for your old high school chums, it’ll do that too.

Seen in that light, “online radicalization” stops looking like the result of mind control, instead showing itself to be a kind of homecoming — finding the people who share your interests, a common online experience we can all relate to.

I found out about Bernstein’s article from the Techdirt podcast, where he had a fascinating discussion with host Mike Masnick.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210928/12593747652/techdirt-podcast-episode-299-misinformation-about-disinformation.shtml

Towards the end of that discussion, they talked about FB’s Project Amplify, in which the company tweaked its news algorithm to uprank positive stories about Facebook, including stories its own PR department wrote.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/22/kropotkin-graeber/#zuckerveganism

Project Amplify is part of a larger, aggressive image-control effort by the company, which has included shuttering internal transparency portals, providing bad data to researchers, and suing independent auditors who tracked its promises.

I’d always assumed that this truth-suppression and wanton fraud was about hiding how bad the platform’s disinformation problem was.

But listening to Masnick and Bernstein, I suddenly realized there was another explanation.

Maybe Facebook’s aggressive suppression of accurate assessments of disinformation on its platform are driven by a desire to hide how expensive (and profitable) political advertising it depends on is pretty useless.

Image: Anthony Quintano (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_(41793470192).jpg

Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[themonkeycabal]

Wheel of Time Finale

 I am sad to say I did not like that much at all. 

I’ve enjoyed this season, but the finale was a boring, confused mess. So anti-climactic for the climax of the season. They wasted so much time on people standing around talking or walking and talking and just ... talking. And there was no real sense of struggle or triumph. It all felt very empty. 

I’ve mostly liked the changes from the books for this season, but I’m struggling with some of the ones at the end here. 

There were things I liked. Mostly in the first half of the episode. The back half was where it really fell apart for me. 

Spoilers below (some vague book spoilers, but I don’t think super spoilery) 

But before my grumpies, here are some of the things I liked:

* Lan's "I will hate the man you choose because he is not me. And I will love him if he makes you smile." speech. Awww, I'm so glad they saved that. Daniel Henney is so perfect as Lan and his delivery of this speech was lovely. 

* Much of Rand and Moiraine's time together. I like how much we get a better sense here that she is just trying to help him. In the books so often it feels like everybody's so defensive and abrasive and suspicious all the time. Yes, Moiraine has her reasons, but that doesn't make her help insincere or lacking in compassion. I like how we feel that more in the series. Her task is huge, literally the end of the world big. She has to make difficult choices, but not out of any callousness. 

* Also, in that vein, I really particularly loved the symbolism of the near-Pieta we get when she's holding Rand at the Eye (pre-knife). Beautiful shot. 

* Did also like Rand finally thinking to ask if Moiraine expected to die at the Eye, too. And, without waiting for her answer, tells her to stay behind. That's so Rand. I feel like Josha Stradowski is perfectly Rand, and plays well that he is truly just a sweet, polite, kind farm boy, but one who's got literal hell ahead of him. 

* Actually, I have nothing but praise for their casting across the board. Now, hire Shohreh Aghdashloo and it'll be pure perfection. 

* Thrilled to be seeing Lews Therin at last. And loved Ishamael saying he could see Lews Therin behind Rand's eyes — that gave me chills, tbh. 

* Loved that the first of the Forsaken we meet, newly escaped, is dressed future-y (past-y). He would be, he'd be dressed in the manner of his time. He's fresh out of prison, he would not have had time or reason to change. I like that, for the most part, we do get a sense of power and menace from him. The Forsaken are meant to be terrifying. 

* Really liked that the first seal broken was fricking massive. It didn't occur to me that it was actually one of the Dark One's seals until Moiraine holds a broken piece of it and tells Lan it's cuendillar. She looks tired and broken and a little lost and how could she not? I adore Rosamund Pike’s Moiraine.  

* And, of course, Lan comforting Moiraine in the end. I love we got so much of their bond and friendship, the true, profound depth of it, that love and respect, through this whole season. It’s definitely in the top 3 of favorite things of this whole season for me.  

* Ohhh, Seanchan! Howdy, ya’ll batshit assholes! 

And now for some of my several problems:

* The Eye of the World itself was entirely anti-climactic. I understood they couldn’t have the Green Man for plenty of reasons. That was not what I was missing. Though, also, the Horn of Valere just sitting under the throne in Fal Dara was a weird choice. Sort of undermines its mythic quality if it was just sitting in the dust in a border fortress rather than under the Eye. Yes, you need Padan Fain to steal it, but that was just kind of a letdown. I feel that could have been achieved a different way without stripping the Horn of its mystical nature. This change felt like it was forced solely to have Fain steal the horn in season one instead of season two. I don't think that's necessarily a good enough reason to change something. 

* Anyway, at the Eye itself, so much standing and talking. Both there and in the dream world. I don’t mind Ishamael shielding Moiraine. I think it’s an interesting choice and I’m intrigued to see how that plays out. It was a nice way to show the Forsaken are far more powerful than Aes Sedai, if nothing else. 

The dream world, I don't mind that they lifted that from Egwene in the books, particularly as Rand is the one who I think dreamed of that more than she ever really did (and I actually really like that Rand recognizes and acknowledges that and that he would never want Egwene to live a life she doesn’t want, no matter his own dreams). 

But … it was a lot of standing. It would have been more interesting for Ishamael to try to tempt Rand to save his dream world rather than solely make it real. Or rather “if you make it real you can save them. Oh look, a Fade has your baby. Better do it quick.” So there would be an actual sense of pressure and tension, which was entirely missing from Ishamael's 'temptation'. I guess that would make moot Rand’s bit about not wanting to force a life on Egwene, but it still felt so passive and low stakes. Perhaps something between the two? 

Also, why did Ishamael just stand there and take it while Rand shot him in the face with, what I assume was balefire? Just ... So. Much. Standing. A small smile, part of a larger plot to break the seal? That’s iffy for me. None of the forsaken ever really showed themselves to be particularly self-sacrifice-y. I guess it might not have been balefire. Ugh. I don’t know. It didn’t work for me. 

There is the sense Rand asked Ishamael to teach him so that he could learn in order to do something to stop him, because Rand’s not a dummy, but they didn't show it clearly enough. And rather than balefire, they could have had Rand and his flaming sword. Did we run out of CG money at the end of the season here? It would have made more narrative sense, given Ishamael mocked him about his father and the sword earlier. There should have been a moment of triumph, Rand overcoming one of the Forsaken (who he thinks is the Dark One, btw). Instead the dude just stands there. It was … so flat. The seal breaks either way, because they’re all weakening. 

Also, Ishamael was not nearly insane enough. I mean, he didn’t need to be a gibbering madman or anything, but there was a lack of overall intensity from him. 

* Next, the five channelers holding Fal Dara. So, three women weak in the power, only one of them trained at Tar Valon, and then Egwene the newbie, and Nynaeve the rage healer who is more powerful than anybody on the planet who isn't one of the Forsaken and even then it's a toss up but who also cannot control that for the life of her. They're going to destroy 20,000 Trollocs and 60 Fades. Like … I guess? I mean okay that's a thing you could do? I don't get it. It was far too OTT. They needed more balance for this to work. The women defending Fal Dara was great. This? Was a weird mess. Sorry Amalisa, they did you dirty here and I don't know why. (Though, also, they kind of did Agelmar no favors, either. It was all a super weird setup. Though, I’m not as certain as my roommate that he’s dead. They made such a point about his armor. Unless the point was “he chose the wrong armor” but that’s not better in any way.) 

Then the whole weird thing with Nynaeve burning out and Egwene magically (derogatory) healing her or some shit? What was that? It made no sense. I don't get what the point was. That was some nonsense. 

Should have had Rand fight Ishamael in the sky. That was an important sign of the Dragon having been reborn. If the goal was to show the balance of the One Power in saidar and saidin, working together to defeat the Dark One, then you could have had the ladies hold the Gap and then the Dragon drive the dark army back. And we didn't need the melodramatic nonsense of the burnout and … just whatever the hell that was. 

* Fain stabbing Loial with the ruby dagger. Why? I mean, I assume Loial survives, but … was that just to show us Fain had the dagger? Okay, I guess. But felt extra for no real purpose. 

* And while on that scene, I particularly loved (and by loved mean hated) the bit where Perrin runs from the throne room, presumably after Fain, then runs back to the throne room after all the violence has gone down AND THEN he picks up the axe and just stands there. That was so perfectly the episode in a nutshell. If I could sum up the boringness and emptiness of this episode in one scene, it's that one. People stand around and they mostly don't do anything. Blah. 

* Far too little Lan. You have him take off after Moiraine and vanish for 75% of the episode. Unacceptable. 

* Also, Nynaeve telling Lan how to track Moiraine because she has a tell. Um, Moiraine was unconscious for like half the time Nynaeve was tracking them. That was a silly choice to make. I get they had to find a way to have Lan find her with their bond masked, but come on, Lan can track her, too. Should have had Nynaeve say she was tracking Moiraine because she could feel her (in the books it’s Egwene she can feel for reasons, an easy thing to change), which would have been a big admission for Nynaeve, since she’s very skittish about the power, she can offer to lead him to her, Lan can say, "your duty is with the kids, I know how to find her, too. And I’ll bring back Rand". See, equals. They're perfect for each other. No reason to add nonsense. 

 Anyway. Alas. 

I am very disappointed, overall. They were doing so well and fumbled right at the end there. I can really feel a lot of things got cut for time, a lot of things were rushed for time, but there were many things they could have done with this episode that wouldn't have cost time. Especially when some of those changes felt like changes made simply to try and force a sense of tension and jeopardy, and they just did not work for me at all. 

I am quite sad about this. I think I’ll sit with it a while and maybe watch the whole season at a run when I get the chance and maybe it will feel better. 

eta: I revisited the finale and had a change of heart. I still don’t really like it, but I see what happened.

[missbrunettebarbie]

All the Barbie protagonists I know -from best to worst

I feel like starting with a disclaimer that this is just my opinion, which should be implied. Anyway, this list took forever because I kept switching them. Look I am bad at picking favourites. The top 3 is actually pretty interchangable.

1. Eden Starling (Barbie in a Christmas Carol) - I love her with all my heart and then some. I love her design, her backstory, her personality, how unique she is from every other Barbie on the list. (Whoever came up with Barbie as Scrroge is a genius that deserves an Oscar) The fact that I relate to her in some aspects makes her even more loveable in my eyes. Also I think she deserves #1 spot because out of all the characters on this list she's the one I sorted before even rewatching her movie -and the rewatch confirmed the sorting. She's that memorable!

2. Princess Annika (Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus) - I love her too: her determination,her cleverness, her bravery, her justified anger. The "Destroy Wenlock!" speech alone guaranteed her a place in top 3. The fact that she doesn't back down even in the face of impossible odds - or maybe especially because the odds are impossible, her relationship with Aiden and with Brietta and her passion for ice-skating make her a very interesting character. Annika is a powerhouse and her entire journey is *chef's kiss*.

3. Merliah Summers (Barbie in a Mermaid Tale 1&2) - I think what I love about Merliah is that she put herself first, in both movies. Her first priority was her career as a surfer and only later did she come to accept her role as a mermaid princess. Her relationship with her mother is also great, I love them when they get along and I also love them when they don't - probably my favourite mother-daughter relationship from all the Barbie movies. Merliah's initial skepticism, her putside the box thinking and her competitive streak are delightful. Also her and Kylie might my favourite ship in the Barbieverse.

4. Blair Willows (Barbie Princess Charm School) - A Barbie with actual money problems?! Of course I was soft for Blair from the very begining. Her dedication and love to her adoptive family made her an instant fave. I loved that once Dean Privet helped her with her lessons she did her damn best to graduate from the school. She had her clothes torn, was accused of theft and looked in a safe, yet nothing stopped her.

5. Mariposa (Barbie: Mariposa) - I always had a soft spot for her as a kid. Her desire for adventure -for escape- the way she felt like she didn't quite fit in, her love for books, the somehow-anti-social attitude made her a perfectly relatable character in little!me's eyes. The way she refused to believe the rumors and the stereotypes in the second movie makes her even better. I loved her friendship with Catania and her romance with Carlos was cute too. Also her design might be my second favourite after Eden's.

6. Ro/Princess Rosella (Barbie as The Island Princess) - This movie is a goddamn masterpiece and Ro is a huge part of why. First I cannot help but be impressed by how adaptable she is: not only did she survive on a deserted island for ten years, she thrived. And then she had the courage to leave the only home she knew to go with Antonio and find answers about who she is. My heart ')). Then there is the fact that she risled her own freedom to help save the animals or how she was ready to step back and let Antonio do his duty and marry Luciana despite the fact that she loved him. And the ending wjere she finds her mother and starts singing the lullaby? It is what had cemented my love for this film and this character.

7. Corrine (Barbie in the three Musketeers) - In a lot of ways I find her and Merliah very similar -they both have goals they want to achieve and are somehow selfish because of it in the begining- but I think Corrine is a much kinder person: remember when she got that violin bow for one of the girls as a way to apologize? It felt like such a character establishing moment. I love that she took no shit for anyone, even the prince, and never faltered for one second in her desire to be a musketeer.

8. Princess Genevieve (Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses) - In a lot of ways she reminds me of Blair as she's a quieter personality but forceful in her own way. The way she always stood up for her younger sisters, her love for dancing, her relationship with her father and the fact that she was so heart-eyes when it came to Derek -seriously I don't think any other Babrie was so smitten with her LI from the very first moment- made sure she'll have a place in top 10. The only reason why she's not higher is because I love the others more.

9. Princess Annelisse (Barbie as Princess and the Pauper) - I think my favourite thing about Annelisse is that she completely understood her duties as a princess and was ready to sacrifice her personal happiness for her people. I also really like how she never shied from using her royal status- even if it didn't really work- or how she still tried to help the other taylor with the work when she was thought to be Erica, pity she had zero skill. Her relationship with her mom is my second favourite after Merliah-Calissa. Also collecting rocks is such an unique hobby AND she's a cat girl. Of course I love her.

10. Erika (Barbie as Princess and the Pauper) - Another cat girl! And so snippy and unafraid to be herself. Her dynamic with Annelisse is gold: Erika had all the reasons to despise Annelisse but instead clearly ~bonded with her from the very first moment and went along with an insane plan just to help her. Not to mention, she's the first Barbie who explicitly said "I am gonna fulfill my dreams and have the guy I love; what's this nonsense about choosing only one?" and I have to appreciate her for it.

11. Rapunzel (Barbie as Rapunzel) - The fact alone that she is best friends with a dragon gives her major points in my books. Her love of painting and the way she used it as a literal way of escape? Go, girl! The fact that she refused to let Stefan tell her his name just to make sure Gothel won't find out? Impressive and so spiteful! And the disgust in her voice when she realized Gothel had kept her prisoner for years because her father hadn't married her? Perfect.

12. Kristyn Farraday (Barbie in the Pink Shoes) - I really liked her enthusiasm for getting to actually be the characters she didn't even get to dance in the real world, the way her mind immediately internalized the rules of the fairytale-esque world despite how insane it was and how she refused to conform to the rules. I see the movie as an exploration of Kristyn's creepling fear of failure and the pressure she felt as a proffesional ballet dancer and seeing her come out triumphant on her own terms felt really good.

13. Actress!Barbie (Fashion Fairytale and Fairy Secret) - Probably the most three-dimensional of the "real" Barbies. I think what I like most at her is her determination to save Ken in the second movie. What can I say, I love a Barbie-in-shining-armour. I also like that she knew when to step back and let others do their jobs - in fact she doesn't so much in the first movie, just motivates people. If I had to pick a Barbie to have as a friend, I think she'll be my first choice. She seems like a good listener and someone who knows how to solve problems.

14. Elina (Barbie: Fairytopia 1&2&3) - She is an interesting character and one whose stories I do like, but something never clicked for me when it comes to Elina. Buut, this doesn't mean I don't appreciate her desire to save everyone or how she never drowned in self-pity when she was the only fairy without wings.

15. Clara (Barbie in the Nutcracker)- Clara doesn't get the chance to do much, but I love the glimpses of her intelligence we see (how she figured out the Nutcracker is Eric) or how she longs for adventure and excitment.

16. Thumbelina (Barbie present Thumbelina) - I like that she's an inventor and that she is ready to use Mackena to save her home, but overall I found her unimpressive.

17. Liana (Barbie and the Diamond Castle) - I always had a grudge on her as a child on Alexa's behalf. I always felt like Liana dragged her down. This being said, Liana is still a super smart cookie and very devoted to her friends so she avoids being even lower on the list.

18. Princess Lumina (Barbie: Pearl Princess) - The most memorable things about her are how she loooved having a job and how she refused to condemn the woman that may have raised her but had also kidnapped her from her family. Now both these traits should make her an intriguing character, unfortunately the movie is pretty boring and it never taps into Lumina's potential.

19. Princess Alexa (Barbie and the Secret Door) - Look I relate to her: Lover of books? Check. Desire to escape your life full of rules? Check. Not good with people? Check. But Alexa's development was so weird, the movie was very boring and felt like it had no trajectory and it affected the protagonist a lot.

20. Odette (Barbie in Swan Lake) - She just...doesn't do much. I wish we have seen her more involved in her own story. Not to mention I really didn't understand why she was so afraid of being in the spotlight or how being turned into a swan helped her get over it.

21. Starlight!Barbie (Barbie: Star Light Adventures) - I think my opinion of her -and the whole movie- can be summed up in the world "meh". There is simply no spark of life here.

22. Teen!Barbie (Barbie Diaries) - I have such an overwhelming repulsion towards "unpopular" girls wanting the be popular. Especially since I cannot see what exactly is holding Babrie back from being happy? She seems to have everything (great friends, nice life, good grades and music talent!), but doesn't care about any of it. Not to mention, she's the only Barbie who has to settle for a guy that was pining for her while she only saw him as a friend and I resent that.

[sk1fanfiction]

the many faces of tom riddle, part 4

-attachment, orphanages, and yet more child psych: time to add yet another voice to the void-

FULL DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS JUST MY OPINION OF A CHARACTER WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE STRONGEST CANON CHARACTERIZATION, AND THUS ALL THIS IS BASED ON MY CONCEPTUALIZATION.

I'm going to be super biased, because my favorite portrayal of Tom Riddle is actually Hero Fiennes-Tiffin as eleven-year-old Tom Riddle, in HBP and I get to chat about child psych in this one, sooo here we go.

First of all, I’m just so impressed that a kid could bring that much depth to such a complex character.

This is the portrayal, I feel, that brings us closest to Tom’s character. Yes, Coulson’s brought us pretty close, but by fifth year, the mask was on.

We don't really get to see Tom looking afraid very often, but it's fear that rules his life, so it's really poignant in our first (chronologically) introduction, he looks absolutely terrified.

The void being the fandom's loud opinions on a certain headmaster. I wouldn't call myself pro-Dumbledore, but I'm certainly not anti-Dumbledore, either. (Agnostic-Dumbledore??)

Since I'm not of the anti-Dumbledore persuasion, I decided to poke around in the tags and see what the arguments were, so I don't make comments out of ignorance.

Most of the tag seems to be more directed towards his treatment of Harry and Sirius, but a few people mentioned that Dumbledore should have treated Tom with ‘exceptional kindness’ and tried to ‘rehabilitate’ him.

As I said in Parts 2 and 3, I am 100% in favor of helping a traumatized kid learn to cope, and I don’t think Tom Riddle was solidly on the Path to Evil (TM) at birth, or even at eleven. Not even at fifteen.

Could unconditional love and kindness have helped Tom Riddle enough for the rise of Lord Voldemort to never happen? Possibly, but...

Yes, I'm about to drag up that Carl Jung quote, again.

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

The problem with this is that if you’re going to blame Dumbledore for this, you also have to blame every other adult in Tom’s life: his headmaster, Dippet, his Head of House, Slughorn, his ‘caretakers’ at the orphanage, Mrs. Cole and Martha, and possibly more. In fact, if we're going to blame any adult, let's blame Merope for r*ping and abusing Tom Riddle Senior, and having a kid she wasn't intending to take care of.

Furthermore, you cannot possibly hold anyone but Tom accountable for the murders he committed. (I should not have to sit here and explain why cold-blooded murder is wrong.) And if you like Tom Riddle's character, insinuating that his actions are completely at the whim of others is just a bit condescending towards him. He's not an automaton or a marionette, he's a very intelligent human being with a functioning brain, and at sixteen is fully capable of moral reasoning and critical analysis.

I've heard the theories about Dumbledore setting the Potters up to die, and I'm not going to discuss their validity right now; but he didn't put a wand in Tom's hand and force him to kill anyone. Tom did it all of his own accord.

And while yes, I have enormous sympathy for what happened to Tom as a child, at some point, he decided to murder Myrtle Warren, and that is where I lose my sympathy. Experiencing trauma does not give you the right to inflict harm on others. Yes, Tom was failed, but then, he spectacularly failed himself.

We also have no idea how Dumbledore treated Tom as a student.

In the movies, it’s Dumbledore who tells Tom he has to go back to the orphanage, but in the books, it’s Dippet. We know that Slughorn spent a lot of time around Tom at Slug Club and such, yet I don’t really see people clamoring for his head.

I regard the sentiment that Dumbledore turned Tom Riddle into Lord Voldemort with a lot of skepticism.

But let's hear from the character himself -- his impression of eleven-year-old Tom Riddle.

“Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time?” said Dumbledore. “No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be what he is. However, I was certainly intrigued by him. I returned to Hogwarts intending to keep an eye upon him, something I should have done in any case, given that he was alone and friendless, but which, already, I felt I ought to do for others’ sake as much as his."

Now, assuming that Dumbledore's telling the truth, I'm not seeing something glaringly wrong with this. No, he hasn't pigeonholed Tom as evil, yes, I'd be intrigued, too, and it's a very good idea to keep an eye on Tom, for his own sake.

“At Hogwarts,” Dumbledore went on, “we teach you not only to use magic, but to control it. You have — inadvertently, I am sure — been using your powers in a way that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school."

Again, it seems like he's at least somewhat sympathetic towards Tom, and is willing to at least give him a chance.

More evidence (again, assuming Dumbledore is a reliable narrator):

Harry: “Didn’t you tell them [the other professors], sir, what he’d been like when you met him at the orphanage?” Dumbledore: “No, I did not. Though he had shown no hint of remorse, it was possible that he felt sorry for how he had behaved before and was resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. I chose to give him that chance.”

Now, I think Dumbledore is pretty awful with kids, but I don't think that's malicious. Yeah, it's a flaw, but perfect people don't exist, and perfect characters are dead boring. I am not saying that he definitely handled Tom's case well, I'm just saying that there's little evidence that Dumbledore, however shaken and scandalized, wrote him off as 'evil snake boy.'

It's also worth taking into account that it's 1938, and the attitudes towards mental health back then.

Why is Tom looking at Dumbledore like that, anyway? Why is he so scared? What has he possibly been threatened with or heard whispers of?

"'Professor'?" repeated Riddle. He looked wary. "Is that like 'doctor'? What are you here for? Did she get you in to have a look at me?"

"I don't believe you," said Riddle. "She wants me looked at, doesn't she? Tell the truth!"

"You can't kid me! The asylum, that's where you're from, isn't it? 'Professor,' yes, of course -- well, I'm not going, see? That old cat's the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they'll tell you!

Tom keeps insisting he's not mad until Dumbledore finally manages to calm him down.

I'm really upset this wasn't in the movie, because it's important context. Instead we got these throwaway cutscenes of some knick-knacks relating to the Cave he's got lying around, but I just would have preferred to see him freaking out like he does in the book.

There was extreme stigma and prejudice towards mental illness.

'Lunatic asylums,' as they were called in Tom's time, were terrible places. In the 1930s and 40s, he could look forward to being 'treated' with induced convulsions, via metrazol, insulin, electroshock, and malaria injections. And if he stuck around long enough, he could even look forward to a lobotomy!

So, if you think Dumbledore was judgmental towards Tom, imagine how flat-out prejudiced whatever doctors or 'experts' Mrs. Cole might have gotten in to 'look at him' must have been!

Moving on to the next few shots, he is sitting down and hunched over as if expecting punishment or at least some kind of bad news, Dumbledore is mostly out of the frame. He’s trapped visually, by Dumbledore on one side, and a wall on the other, because he’s still very much afraid. uncomfortable, as he tells Dumbledore a secret that he fears could get him committed to an asylum (which were fucking horrible places, as I said).

It brings to the scene that miserable sense of isolation and loneliness to that has defined Tom’s entire life up to that point (and, partially due to his own bad choices, continues to define it).

And, when Dumbledore accepts it, his posture changes. he becomes more confident and more at ease, as he describes the... utilities of his magical abilities. 

"All sorts," breathed Riddle. A flush of excitement was rising up his neck into his hollow cheeks; he looked fevered. "I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to."

Riddle lifted his head. His face was transfigured: There was a wild happiness upon it, yet for some reason it did not make him better looking; on the contrary, his finely carved features seemed somehow rougher, his expression almost bestial.

I do think Harry, our narrator, is being a tad bit judgmental here. Magic is probably the only thing that brings Tom happiness in his grey, lonely world, and when I was Tom's age and being bullied, if I had magic powers, you'd better believe that I'd (a) be bloody ecstatic about it (b) use them. And, like Tom, I can't honestly say that I can't imagine getting a bit carried-away with it. Unfortunately, we can't all be as inherently good and kindhearted as Harry.

Reading HBP again, as a 'mature' person, it almost seems like the reader is being prompted to see Tom as evil just because he's got 'weird' facial expressions.

So... uh...

Nope, let's judge Tom on his actions, not looks of 'wild happiness.'

To his great surprise, however, Dumbledore drew his wand from an inside pocket of his suit jacket, pointed it at the shabby wardrobe in the corner, and gave the wand a casual flick. The wardrobe burst into flames. Riddle jumped to his feet; Harry could hardly blame him for howling in shock and rage; all his worldly possessions must be in there. But even as Riddle rounded on Dumbledore, the flames vanished, leaving the wardrobe completely undamaged.

Okay, one thing I dislike is Tom's lack of emotional affect when Dumbledore burned the wardrobe, in the books, he jumped up and started screaming, instead of looking passively (in shock, perhaps?) at the fire. Incidentally, I can't really tell if he's impressed or in shock, to be honest. I think they really tried to make Tom 'creepier' in the movie.

This is one of the incidents where Dumbledore's inability to deal with children crops up.

I think he was trying to teach Tom that magic can be dangerous, and he wouldn't like it to be used against him, but burning the wardrobe that contains everything he owns was a terrible move on Dumbledore's part. Tom already has very limited trust in other people, and now, he's not going to trust Dumbledore at all -- now, he's put Tom on the defensive/offensive for the rest of their interaction, and perhaps for the rest of their teacher-student relationship.

Riddle stared from the wardrobe to Dumbledore; then, his expression greedy, he pointed at the wand. "Where can I get one of them?"

"Where do you buy spellbooks?" interrupted Riddle, who had taken the heavy money bag without thanking Dumbledore, and was now examining a fat gold Galleon.

But I'm not surprised Tom is 'greedy.' He's grown up in an environment where if he wants something, whether that's affection, food, money, toys, he's got to take it. There's no one looking after his needs specifically. I'm not surprised that he's a thief and a hoarder, and I don't think that counts as a moral failing necessarily, and more of a maladaptive way of seeking comfort. It would be bizarre if he came out of Wool's Orphanage a complete saint.

Additionally, I think given that the Gaunt family has a history of 'mental instability,' Tom is a sensitive child, and the trauma of growing up institutionalized and possibly being treated badly due to his magical abilities or personality disorder deeply affected him.

And there are points where it seems that Dumbledore is quick to judge Tom.

"He was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control."

"Yes, indeed; a rare ability, and one supposedly connected with the Dark Arts, although as we know, there are Parselmouths among the great and the good too. In fact, his ability to speak to serpents did not make me nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy, and domination."

"I trust that you also noticed that Tom Riddle was already highly self-sufficient, secretive, and, apparently, friendless?..."

And while this is all empirically true, these are (a) a product of Tom's harsh environment, and (b) do not necessarily make him evil. But the point remains that child psych didn't exist as a field of its own, and psychology as a proper science was in its infancy, so I'd be shocked if Dumbledore was insightful about Tom's situation.

But I've gone a ton of paragraphs without citing anything, so I've got to rectify that.

Let's talk about Harry Harlow's monkey experiments in the 1950-70s.

If you're not a fan of animal research, since I know some people are uncomfortable with it, feel free to scroll past.

Here's the TL;DR: Children need to be hugged and shown affection too, not just fed and clothed, please don't leave babies to 'cry out' and ignore their needs because it's backwards and fucking inhumane. HUG AND COMFORT AND CODDLE CHILDREN AND SPOIL THEM WITH AFFECTION!

I will put more red writing when the section is over.

This is still an interesting experiment to have in mind while we explore the whole 'no one taught Tom Riddle how to love' thing and whether or not it's actually a good argument.

Andddd let's go all the way back to the initial 1958 experiment, featured in Harlow's paper, the Nature of Love. (If you're familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, him and Harlow actually collaborated for a time).

To give you an idea of our starting point, until Harlow's experiment, which happened twenty years after Dumbledore meets Tom for the first time, no one in science had really been interested in studying love and affection.

"Psychologists, at least psychologists who write textbooks, not only show no interest in the origin and development of love or affection, but they seem to be unaware of its very existence."

I'm going to link some videos of Harry Harlow showing the actual experiment, which animal rights activists would probably consider 'horrifying.' It's nothing gory or anything, but if you are particularly soft-hearted (and I do not mean that as an insult), be warned. It's mostly just baby monkeys being very upset and Harlow discussing it in a callous manner. Yes, today it would be considered unethical, but it's still incredibly important work and if you think you can handle it, I would recommend watching at least the first one to get an idea of how dramatic this effect is.

Dependency when frightened

The full experiment

The TL;DW:

This experiment was conducted with rhesus macaques; they're still used in psychology/neuroscience research when you want very human-like subjects, because they are very intelligent (unnervingly so, actually). I'd say that adult ones remind me of a three-year old child.

Harlow separated newborn monkeys from their mothers, and cared for their physical needs. They had ample nutrition, bedding, warmth, et cetera. However, the researchers noticed that the monkeys:

(a) were absolutely miserable. And not just that, but although all their physical needs were taken care of, they weren't surviving well past the first few days of life. (This has also been documented in human babies, and it's called failure to thrive and I'll talk about it a bit later).

(b) showed a strong attachment to the gauze pads used to cover the floor, and decided to investigate.

So, they decided to provide a surrogate 'mother.' Two, actually. Mother #1 was basically a heated fuzzy doll that was nice for the monkeys to cuddle with. Mother #2 was the same, but not fuzzy and made of wire. Both provided milk. The result? The monkeys spent all their time cuddling and feeding from the fuzzy 'mother.' Perhaps not surprising.

What Harlow decided next, is that one of the hallmarks being attached to your caregiver is seeking hugs and reassurance from them when frightened. So, when the monkeys were presented with something scary, they'd go straight to the cloth mother and ignore the wire one. Not only that, but when placed in an unfamiliar environment, if the cloth mother was present, the monkeys would be much calmer.

In a follow-up experiment, Harlow decided to see if there was some sort of sensitive period by introducing both 'mothers' to monkeys who had been raised in isolation for 250 days. Guess what?

The initial reaction of the monkeys to the alterations was one of extreme disturbance. All the infants screamed violently and made repeated attempts to escape the cage whenever the door was opened. They kept a maximum distance from the mother surrogates and exhibited a considerable amount of rocking and crouching behavior, indicative of emotionality.

Yikes. So, at first Harlow thought that they'd passed some kind of sensitive period for socialization. But after a day or two they calmed down and started chilling out with the cloth mother like the other monkeys did. But here's a weird thing:

That the control monkeys develop affection or love for the cloth mother when she is introduced into the cage at 250 days of age cannot be questioned. There is every reason to believe, however, that this interval of delay depresses the intensity of the affectional response below that of the infant monkeys that were surrogate-mothered from birth onward

All these things... attachment, affection, love, seeking comfort ... are mostly learned behaviours.

Over.

Orphanages, institutionalized childcare, and why affection is a need, not an extra.

His face is lit the exact same was as Coulson’s was in COS (half-light, half-dark), and I said I was going to talk about this in Part 3. I think perhaps it's intended to make Fiennes-Tiffin look more evil or menacing, but I'm going to quite deliberately misinterpret it.

Now, for some context, Dumbledore has just (kind of) burned his wardrobe, ratted out his stealing habit, and (in the books only, they really took a pair of scissors to this scene) told him he needs to go apologize and return everything and Dumbledore will know if he doesn't, and, well, Tom's not exactly a happy bugger about it.

But interestingly, in the books, this is when we start to see Tom's 'persona,' aka his mask, start to come into play. Whereas before, he was screaming, howling, and generally freaking out, here, he starts to hide his emotions -- in essence, obscure his true self under a shadow. So this scene is really the reverse of Coulson's in COS.

And perhaps I'm reading wayyy too much into this, but I can't help but notice that Coulson's hair is parted opposite to Fiennes-Tiffin's, and the opposite sides of their faces are shadowed, too.

Riddle threw Dumbledore a long, clear, calculating look. "Yes, I suppose so, sir," he said finally, in an expressionless voice.

Riddle did not look remotely abashed; he was still staring coldly and appraisingly at Dumbledore. At last he said in a colorless voice, "Yes, sir."

Here's an article from The Atlantic on Romanian orphanages in the 1980s, when the dictator, Ceausescu, basically forced people to have as many children as possible and funnel them into institutionalized 'childcare', and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

There's not a whole lot of information out there on British orphanages in the 30s' and 40s', but given that people back then thought you just had to keep children on a strict schedule and feed them, it wouldn't have a whole lot better.

The only thing I've found is this, and it's not super promising.

The most important study informing the criteria for contemporary nosologies, was a study by Barbara Tizard and her colleagues of young children being raised in residential nurseries in London (Tizard, 1977). These nurseries had lower child to caregiver ratios than many previous studies of institutionalized children. Also, the children were raised in mixed aged groups and had adequate books and toys available. Nevertheless, caregivers were explicitly discouraged from forming attachments to the children in their care.

Here's a fairly recent paper that I think gives a good summary: Link

Here, they describe the responses to the Strange Situation test (which tests a child's attachment to their caregiver).

We found that 100% of the community sample received a score of “5,” indicating fully formed attachments, whereas only 3% of the infants living in institutions demonstrated fully formed attachments. The remaining 97% showed absent, incomplete, or odd and abnormal attachment behaviors.

Bowlby and Ainsworth, who did the initial study, thought that children would always attach to their caregivers, regardless of neglect or abuse. But some infants don't attach (discussed along with RAD in Part 2).

Here's a really good review paper on attachment disorders in currently or formerly institutionalized children : Link

Core features of RAD in young children include the absence of focused attachment behaviors directed towards a preferred caregiver, failure to seek and respond to comforting when distressed, reduced social and emotional reciprocity, and disturbances of emotion regulation, including reduced positive affect and unexplained fearfulness or irritability.

Which all sounds a lot like Tom in this scene. The paper also discusses neurological effects, like atypical EEG power distribution (aka brain waves), which can correlate with 'indiscriminate' behavior and poor inhibitory control; which makes sense for a kid who, oh, I don't know, hung another kid's rabbit because they were angry.

Furthermore...

...those children with more prolonged institutional rearing showed reduced amygdala discrimination and more indiscriminate behavior.

This again, makes a ton of sense for Tom's psychological profile, because the amygdala (which is part of the limbic system, which regulates emotions) plays a major role in fear, anger, anxiety, and aggression, especially with respect to learning, motivation and memory.

So, I agree completely that Tom needed a lot of help, especially given the fact that he spent eleven years in an orphanage (longer than the Bucharest study I was referring to), and Dumbledore wasn't exactly understanding of his situation, and probably didn't realise what a dramatic effect the orphanage had on Tom, and given the way he talks to Tom, probably treated him as if he were a kid who grew up in a healthy environment.

In case you are still unconvinced that hugging is that important, there's a famous 1944 study conducted on 40 newborn human infants to see what would happen if their physical needs (fed, bathed, diapers changed) were provided for with no affection. The study had to be stopped because half the babies died after four months. Affection leads to the production of hormones and boosts the immune system, which increases survival, and that is why we hug children and babies should not be in orphanages. They are supposed to be hugged, all the time. I can't find the citation right now, I'll add it later if I find it.

But I think it's vastly unrealistic to say that Dumbledore, who grew up during the Victorian Era, would have any grasp of this and I don't think he was actively malicious towards Tom.

Was Tom Riddle failed by institutional childcare? Absolutely.

Were the adults in his life oblivious to his situation? Probably.

Do the shitty things that happened to Tom excuse the murders he committed, and are they anyone's fault but his own? No. At the end of the day, Tom made all the wrong choices.

And, for what it's worth, I think (film) Dumbledore (although he expresses the same sentiment in more words in the books) wishes he could go back in time and have helped Tom.

"Draco. Years ago, I knew a boy, who made all the wrong choices. Please, let me help you."

[takerfoxx]

Wonder Egg Priority: I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.

Fine. Let's do this.

Okay, so if you've been following my blog over the last year, you'll know that I've been really high on Wonder Egg Priority. I love the characters, the concept, the direction, the weirdness, the gutsiness in directly tackling uncomfortable topic, and the relationships. I praised it highly and stand by that praise, and despite all the criticisms I'm about to lobby towards it, my feelings toward the show on the whole are mostly positive.

But then the show ended without resolving anything. It introduced a ton of characters and concepts that no one was really asking for, answering questions that very few people were asking while raising further questions in their place, and it ended on a cliffhanger.

But okay! A real finale was promised, a special hour-long episode to resolve things. We'd just have to wait for it to come out!

And then it did, and...

Everyone hated it.

It's was like the ending to Game of Thrones all over again. Well, maybe not on that scale, but I heard things like hot mess, waste of time, total disappointment, etc. Honestly, it put me off from watching it entirely for several months, because I still liked the show, and didn't want to be let down.

But I knew I had to tackle it sooner or later, and last night I did, and...

Well. Those were certainly...choices.

I mean, it might have helped had they not promised an hour but only delivered 45 minutes. And it also might have helped had half of that not been a recap of the series, leaving a normal-episode length for the actual finale.

But even then...

Look, we didn't need Frill and the bug girls in the show. No one was asking for a central villain. But if you're going to devote an entire episode to introducing her, then at least do something with her! Like, on its own, she's a cool concept! But instead of actually making use of that concept, everything...just sort of peters out. Nothing is really done with her.

And the wonder eggs? The girls that our cast was fighting so hard to bring back? Well, they do come back, but none of them actually remember any of the girls that were fighting for them, so I guess they weren't resurrected so much as pulled from an alternate universe, which just raises further questions that go answered. And our girls are upset at first, but then they just sort of shrug their shoulders, go "Oh well," and move on? Koito was a jerk the whole time who killed herself by accident? And then the girls all drift off and don't talk anymore? That's it?

And Neiru...did she kill herself or not? Her fellow clone friend shows up from another universe and then just sort of slips off. What's with Neiru's rat that gets swiftly forgotten? What's going on?

Look, I know this show had a very troubled production. And I know the writer admitted to making stuff up as they went along. I get that. And I'm not saying that anti-climaxes can't work. We didn't need a big, action-packed finale. We didn't need a huge battle against Frill. American Gods is my favorite book, and it very much ended on an anti-climax.

But that anti-climax worked because it still took the time to resolve everything! It still made sure to wrap up its plotlines and definitively end the story!

This isn't an ending. This resolves nothing. This feels more like the penultimate episode that leads into the finale. This feels like the writer tried to answer all the questions, threw a bunch of ideas at the wall, but then forgot to do anything with any of them.

And what's more frustrating is that when judged as a standalone episode, it's actually all right! Like I said, it's perfectly serviceable as a buildup episode. But as the finale? No. I'm sorry, it just doesn't work.

Now, this nothing of a finale hasn't soured me on the good parts. This isn't like how I felt about Future Diary, where all the bad bits made me come to dislike the story as a whole. What's good is still really good! But this really ought to have been better thought out. For everything that was great, there still was a lot of wasted potential here. And while writing by the seat of your pants can work, there are times in which it can blow up in your face. This is one of those examples.

So yeah. Those are my thoughts.

[popculturebuffet]

Uncle Scrooge by Don Rosa:  The Isle at the Edge of Time (Thank You Comission For Rosie Isla)

Hello all you happy people! Today’s review is a bit special as it’s the result of another review. See I had trouble finding a translation of the subject of last weeks’ mother’s day special, Family Ties. 

No not that one. I have Paramount+. I can watch all the Family Ties I want and that’s a fact that i’m pleased as punch about. 

No it was the story 80 is Prachtig, called Family Ties in the copy used, Della’s first major comics appearance and one that explains what happened to her in the classic continuity, one that clearly served as the foundation for her far more fleshed out 2017 versions personality and backstory. It also had Pinocchio in it for some reason, and spent most of it’s large run time on a meta comedy plot that had nothing to do with the reason anyone wanted to read this story in the first place.

But despite being a vitally important story, it never got an english translation, something that baffled me till I read the story and found cameos of the racist indigenous stereotypes from Peter Pan. In 2014. You may commence booing. Even with how weird the story was I simply couldn’t find the story googling it and the Della tag is too vast and deep to go spelunking in.

So what’s all this have to do? Simple I put out a post last month when neither I nor Kev, who wanted to comission it as part of Moons, Millionares and Mothers, my coverage of all three season 2 Ducktales story arcs, could find a copy and offered a review to whoever found it.  Weeks passed I got nothing.. then in the 11th hour I got a break as the lovely @rosieisla​ found a translation that was on this very site, one she seemed to have helped with. As a result I could do the review and as a man of my word, offered it up despite her clearly having not seen that part of the post and simply having done this to be nice. Still she gladly took up the offer and offered me my pick of two stories: The Carl Barks Story Back to Long Ago or this one. 

As for WHY I picked this one Back To Long Ago didn’t seem bad, i’m just not a fan of “The Cast is put in the past as their own ancestors” type deals. Or in some cases put the cast as people from that time period. It’s just not for me and is most often done in TV where it can get really goofy, Beverly Hills 90210 being a prime example of this, though Girl Meets World was no slouch in being embarassing... that being said I really need to finish that show and miss it. 

So yeah when put up against a story with two intresting hooks and FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD, even if i’ts not the version that’s my boy, it was no contest. So what are these hooks you ask? Well join me under the cut and find out. 

We open with a weird stylistic choice: This story has a narrator complete with caption boxes. Now for those of you familiar with comics or pastiches of comics in tv and film, this probably dosen’t seem like a big deal. It was a common thing in comics from their inception to 90′s to have caption boxes, big boxes of text narrating the action to help move things along faster. It did start to fade out by the 80′s and was gone by the end of the 90′s for the most part, replaced instead with first person narration. It’s the kind of thing you’d see most often in the Golden and Silver Ages, with stuff like tihs

It’s not a BAD device, it’s good old cheesy and bombastic fun and some writers did get clever with it.. like that time Chris Claremont used the narration to yell at a greiving cyclops after he lost a teammate early in his long and storied run on the uncanny x-men. 

This is a objectively weird scene that’s still somehow effective by the by. On the one hand it does come off as Chris Claremont essentally bullying Cyclops who already feels guilty for a death that was not in fact his fault as Thunderbird was told the plane he was attacking with fleeing villian Count Nefaria was about to explode and refused to listen.. and that they needed to get rid of either him or Wolverine as both served the same purpose and chose the non-white guy. 

On the other htough it comes off just as much as Scott beating himself up in his grief and anger over the event and his perceived failings as a leader. It’s good stuff and shows why this run caught on as this was only three issues in. Also the rest of the issue features the X-Men fighting a giant cyclopian demon that Cyclops accidently freed in his rage by destroying the stone thing keeping him imprisoned. No really here’s the cover

Huh so tha’ts what Nifty’s dad looks like. Neat. Also I REALLY hope we get the X-Men fighting aliens or demons in the MCU. Unlike the XCU the MCU isn’t alergic to getting batshit.. and for the record Deadpool and New Mutants are the exception, not the rule.

My point that I swear I do have is that this was common practice for most comics.. but never really for Disney Duck comics. It popped up ocasionally, like with Scrooge’s introduction, but Barks and those after him never really used them that much. Sure they’d have caption boxes for flasbacks and what not but Barks and Co geninely only used this sort of thing to set up a story. The most i’ve seen it in a duck comic is life and times and even then i’ts usually only used for gags or to set up the passage of time, as the story IS covering decades and thus often needed to have montages to show time passing, and in the case of chapter 11, had to cover decades in the span of a single chapter, so it’s not like they had many other options. So even Rosa as a personal quirk didn’t really use these often. 

Rosa used this specifically because he felt the plot was complicated by the use of the international date line. As for what it is, it’s essentially a line marking calender dates from one side of the hemisphere to the others. To use the offical defentition from the National Ocean Service I found via a quick google:

“The International Date Line, established in 1884, passes through the mid-Pacific Ocean and roughly follows a 180 degrees longitude north-south line on the Earth. It is located halfway round the world from the prime meridian—the zero degrees longitude established in Greenwich, England, in 1852.

The International Date Line functions as a “line of demarcation” separating two consecutive calendar dates. When you cross the date line, you become a time traveler of sorts! Cross to the west and it’s one day later; cross back and you’ve “gone back in time."

Despite its name, the International Date Line has no legal international status and countries are free to choose the dates that they observe. While the date line generally runs north to south from pole to pole, it zigzags around political borders such as eastern Russia and Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.”

Rosa felt this made the story complicated.... and that... really isn’t remotely true. The narration is mostly used for gagas and really dosen’t clarify anything. it’s mostly used well in the opening.. but the actual explinations for the date line are clear enough in the story that even if I hadn’t looked the thing up, I still would’ve got it and i’m sure a kid would’ve too. It just feels like a weird thing to ruminate on, especially because he’s got actual things to make up for: while to his credit the native american characters he cribbed from carl barks are sympathetic, their culture respected and treated decently and used for a green aseop, their dialouge is stitled and sterotypical something he dosen’t even comment on (And these trades ewren’t THAT long ago) 

And of course it dosen’t help that he dosen’t even comment on using a common device in american superhero boooks.. in the same volume where he ONCE again makes an unwanted and outdated diatribe about superhero comics. I’ll probably cover the Super Snooper Strikes again so I can throughly tear this apart but higlights include: Calling superhero comics “Unwanted” just because he dosen’t like them personally, when people like me would disagree and they’ve lasted through a LOT of highs and lows, outdately saying they took over the American market as the only suitable comics which while true for a TIME,but by 2015 when this book was printed is laughably out of date, as non superhero works like The Walking Dead, Saga, and Scott Pilgrim were massively popular, one of my faviorite comics that is entirely slice of life and would go on to bea huge hit, Giant Days, re-debuted that very year. He also has the fucking gal to insult The Uncanny X-Men by name and I swear to god I did not know this when I made those references earlier, but as you probably guessed REALLY god me livid. 

And this is just on his COMMENTS on the story I can’t imagine just how bad the content itself is and having read the first few pages which come off as Rosa using Donald to essentially do an “old man yells at cloud rant” about superhero comics, I really don’t want to. Might make htis a patreon exclusive or again would do it on comissoin. You all make the call.... the point is I don’t likes his elitist bullshit about superhero comics, and this is clearly something that gets my hackles up as I just spent a good two paragraphs of an entirely unrealted review yelling at the guy for it. I don’t like when he does this and this authors notes entirley felt like an excuse. I GET the dark age of comics were bad, they REALLY were that bad, but I will NEVER accept painting an enitre genre as bad just because one work in it is bad. And I wont accept it from someone who himself writes about an often throughly unlikeable anti-hero for a living.  Scrooge may not have a gun on his gun on his gun or get to stabbing or have pouches, but he DOES finacially abuse his nephew, scoff at people’s personal troubles, and often refuse to use his wealth to help others in general. So yeah in conclusion Rosa really needs to say less about this subject. 

Okay so where were we.. right the story hadn’t even started yet. Jesus. 

Okay so our story begins with the narrator. Whose going on about time and what not. The main point of this speech about time is that it’s night in Duckburg and Scrooge is going to bed as, even being the workhorse that he is, he can’t keep going 24 hours. While he’s snoozing though something major happens and it’s the hook that made me pick this story along with the international dateline one.. an island rises thanks to volcanic erruption.. and the lava is GOLD. That’s just pure unabashed classic Duck Stuff: a mysterious treasure or phenominon of gold bound to bring scrooge in. 

But Scrooge isn’t stupid: the sun comes up and the world still spins while he sleeps, so he set up a satalite to monitor for this sort of thing. The thing naturally goes nuts.. and even more naturally breaks down becasue Scrooge bought cheap parts. A nice gag and a fully in character way to bring our antagonist into the picture, as the Satellite of Loaded falls in the middle of South Africa... right on the property of my boy Flintheart Glomgold. 

This is something Rosa brought up in his commentary for the story i’d never thought about. It turns out Glomgold being a citzen of Duckburg WASN’T an invention of the original Ducktales but the comics: some overseas had understandably moved him from his home country of South Africa. Him bieing in the same town as Scrooge instead of half a world away allows for easier setups and more intresting ones.

Rosa however being obdient to Barks Version of things, ketp Glomgold in South Africa like barks did, which was an .. ifffy decision given Apartheid had JUST ended at the time of this story. Not so much in the reboot as not only had apartheid been long gone by the time of the reboot, but that’s more fair. Still we do get some gorgeous vistas as a result as Glomgold’s minon goes to look at it and finds it’s from McDuck Mining company... Glomgold’s reaction is obvious. 

So on that note we cut to Scrooge rushing to Donalds house and forcing him awake and not telling him anything at first. Look his Ducktales Counterpart straight up kidnapped his donald in my last review, I’d call this a win. He also tries to dress Donald while explaning both his panic to find the crashed satlitle and what it found: the golden island. The end result of him dressing donald is worth a chuckle

So after Donald puts his shirt and little hat on our heroes get rollin rollin rollin what keep rollin rollin rollin who to Manilla. On the plane we get the scene I mentioned: The boys make a quip about Scrooge having lost a day and the group go over the international date line. It’s a fun little scene especially Donald trying to get paid early at the end. Classic scrooge and donald stuff without the abusive undertones some of their classic stuff has. 

Meanwhile Glomgold works out the data and finds out about the gold island, and his excitement accidently wakes a giraffe outside.. welll it was nice knowing him, Giraffes are the deadliest species known to man.. here’s an educational video t back that up....

So at Manilla Airport, Scrooge finds out abotu the south african crash, figuring he’ll get a laugh out of glomgold being there ... only for Donald to spot the Jet. Scrooge figures this can’t be anything good... now come on man maybe he’s just promoting his energy drink. 

As super sayin god super sayian as my witness, I will never get tired of Ultra Instinct Glomgold here. 

Scrooge isn’t so nice about that though and figures he better find out if Glomgold knows about the island and bribes one of the fueling crew for his uniform. He sucesssfully eavesdrops on Glomgold talking to his pilot, finding out from him exactly WHERE the island is. He ends up hilariously botching the mission though: when getting ready to leave Glomgold complains abotu the price of gas and that naturally causes Scrooge, just as cheap, to join in... and Glomgold to find out it’s Scrooge. The two wrestle outside the plane but before this can progress to a game of Naked Robber an airport security guy comes up and Scrooge cleverly claims that Glomgold’s plane has an infestiation, requring it to be quanrantined and allowing Scrooge to jet on.. thoguh not with an actual jet. With Glomgold seemingly dispatched, he can afford to save some money and take his time with a seaplane and I know just the man for the job. 

Oh nope looks like he’s busy. So one time related rambles later we meet Keoki, their asian pilot from the tiny island of Wookawooka.. and no that’s not a real place i checked... and no Fozzy dosen’t own it his check bounced. That being said it is a very well done represntation of someone from a smaller country: he’s doing this job to try and bring money back home, but being a seaplane captain just isn’t enough and his island is dying. Scrooge naturally is about as sympathetic as you’d expect, having apparently never even heard of the idea of a bonus when Huey, Dewey or Louie suggests it. 

Even less suprising is that Glomgold streaks by in his Jet:turns out Manilla was already overun with the bugs Scrooge claimed and Donald rubs it in that had Scrooge got a JET this wouldn’t of been an issue. 

So Glomgold easily beats them there, and to add insult and actualy injury to a cash based one, our heroes get blasted by golden lava on the way in and crash. Should’ve gotten launchpad... got the crashing professional. Keoki is dispondent as this means his people are doomed. He also dosen’t know waht staking a claim is when Scrooge mentions it and the boys bring him up to speed with the poor guy saying he wish he could for WookaWooka. Donald also makes a valid point about how greedy and heartlress scrooge can be.. and really billiionares in general.

No no YOUR the Grouch who refuses to have one drop of emapthy. Donald’s just pissed at your general selfish and terrible behavior. 

Glomgold glomgloats and has seemingly won... but naturally that rant that seemed extranious at the time about the date line comes into play: turns out the Island is on it, and since glomgold put his marker int he west, Scrooge simply puts his in the east which is a whole day before. Now GRANTED there’s nor eal legal prescendice for the intetaoinal date line itself , as noted above... but there’s enough witnesses in Scrooge’s favor that it simply does not matter anyway. Scrooge SEEMINGLY wins.

But Huey, Dewey Or Louie instead backs another claim: Keoki’s from earlier. While it was made in gest, he and the others along with Donald back it as witnsses instad. WookaWooka is saved and SCrogoe ends the story yelling at the narrator.

Final Thoughts: Don Rosa.. did not like this story, feeling it wasn’t one of his best and apologizing for it. I however.. really loved it. It’s not PERFECT: the narration feels not entirely necessary and the gag isn’t as funny as he thinks, though the payoff of scrooge saying “it’s time for this story to end” is fucking hilarous. I also feel it’s a bit too compressed: the story is only 16 pages and was only THAT long because Rosa added a few for exposition, a worthy addition. This feels like one of his 30 page adventure stories but slightly crammed into half the length. I also feel the golden island bit was BADLY underused as it’s such a cool setting but barely shows up in the story. 

But despite that.. it’s still a fun story: as is standard for Rosa the art is gorgeous and the humor is great. And unlike some stories where Rosa casually ignores how terrible scrooge is, here it’s his own greed and hubris that do him in: had he actually agreed to help Keoki, the boys likey would’ve let him keep the island but his own cold refusual to be a human being does him in, just as his cheapness nearly did. Flintheart is also decent here.. not the deepest foe but frankly most classical duck antagonists really aren’t all that fleshed out, and we still get some good bits with him. The dateline bit, while telegraphing that it will be important, as I said REALLY isn’t that hard to understand. All in all while i’ll agree with Rosa this isn’t his BEST, it’s still a really damn good story and one he shoudln’t be ashamed of. 

Tommorow: Green Eggs and ham is back for some train shenanigans! Kay. 

Saturday: The Tom Retrospective returns for it’s last detour! Eclipsa and Moon team up to stop meteora but grapple with diffrent wants: One to save her daughter.. the other to stop waht she clearly sees as an out of control monster. The result.. will only lead to tragedy and a hell of a two parter. 

If you liked this review consider joining my patreon, patroen.com/popculturebuffet. At as low as 2 bucks a month you get accesss to my patreon discord, exclusive reviews, and to pick a short when I do one of my shortstragavanzas, a marthon of theatrical shorts honoring a characters birthday. And given Donald’s is next month, now’s the time to get on board. 

But if you go up to 5 you get a guaranteed review of whatever you want every month, and will get me to my next milestone, which will give everyone including yourself a monthly public darkwing duck review, reviews of the two Ducktales minis’ I haven’t covered (Time is Money and SuperDuckTales) and a reivew of the Danny Phantom film the Ultimate Enemy. So please join today and if you cannot, like this review, subscribe and give me your opinions on it bellow. Or even if you can feedback is always appricated and I will see you at the next rainbow. 

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Is It Really THAT Bad?

How many fucking times must I talk about this movie?

I feel like this movie doesn’t need an introduction. Everyone knows this film. Its reputation precedes it. It didn’t bomb and it’s not generally considered one of the worst films ever made (at least on the level of films like Robot Monster or The Cat in the Hat), but this movie is easily one of the most divisive films ever made. This film has generated enough arguments that, if we harnessed the energy of all the flame wars it has caused, we could probably power the entire world until the heat death of the universe.

With the impending release of Zach Snyder’s bloated redo of Justice League, I’ve decided to go back and ask myself of this film here… is it really that bad?

THE GOOD

Here comes the most uncontroversial opinion: the action scenes in this movie rock (or at least two of them do). The standouts are the titular showdown, which almost makes sitting through the rest of the movie worth it, and the epic warehouse fight Batman gets into, which is like something straight out of the Arkham games. It’s so good. And aside from that, a lot of the cinematography in the film is good. The film knows how to look good, though unfortunately it does end up being a lot of style with little substance.

On the subject of Batman, I think Ben Affleck is a great and inspired choice. I certainly think he’s worthy of standing alongside Batmans like Clooney and Keaton, easily embodying both the Dark Knight and Billionaire Playboy aspects fairly well, though the writing does not always handle him quite as well as it should (we’ll get to that soon enough). Henry Cavill, while still a rather dour Superman, is as good as ever as Superman, and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman was a great choice here, especially since she didn’t have control so that she could insert anti-Arab racism, like some DCEU movies.

Perhaps one of the movies most impressive feats is how, in an uncharacteristic moment of brevity, it manages to condense the backstory of Batman into the prologue, getting it out of the way and not making us sit through yet another Batman origin film. This is literally the only thing the movie has over the MCU; where that franchise just has the character Spider-Man inexplicably in existence without even a hint of his origins, they just get Batman’s tragic backstory out of the way so we can see him beating the crap out of people. If more superhero movies want to take this route and just condense the backstory into an opening montage like this, I’d be down for it.

THE BAD

I really could just say “most of the movie” but that’s such a cop out. Let’s actually look at the problems. Let’s work our way up through the things from least problematic to most, shall we?

The best place to start is what Zach Snyder did to Jimmy Olsen.

Jimmy Olsen is made into a CIA spook who is brutally killed early on, and yes, that was Jimmy Olsen. Snyder put him in to shock audiences with his senseless murder, and also because he felt the character had no place in his series. Does making Watchmen just turn people into joyless husks who like to horribly bastardize iconic characters? Jimmy Olsen is ultimately a small microcosm of the film, but he is the sum total of everything wring with the early DCEU. He is bleak, soulless, and shows a critical lack of understanding about the comics and why people enjoy them.

Now let’s move on to the more exciting problem to discuss: the villains. I don’t even think it’s worth wasting much time discussing what’s wrong with KGBeast. While it is kind of interesting they’d think to use the guy at all, the fact he never dons the costume and dies by the end of the film is unfathomably lame for a character named KGBeast.

Now, onto the main antagonist, and the most infamous part of the movie: Lex Luthor.

Lex Luthor is horribly, horribly miscast. Jesse Eisenberg is a great actor for sure, and he’s effective in movies like Now You See Me, The Social Network, and the Zombieland films. But here he is being asked to play one of the most diabolical cunning geniuses in comic book history, and rather than play him as such, he plays him like a cartoonish twit. This Lex is utterly unrecognizable as Superman’s greatest foe. Does anyone think Lex Luthor would send a jar of piss to someone as a joke before he blows them up? That’s more something the Joker would do on an off day. Lex is not cunning, not intimidating, and not diabolical in the slightest, and yet there are moments where Eisenberg’s acting chops shine through and Lex, for a moment, is almost engaging. Luthor really suffers the way Doctor Doom tends to in film adaptations: the filmmaker clearly doesn’t get why people like the villain, and decide to do some weird, unique take that will only cause to alienate fans.

But perhaps the worst of them all is Doomsday. Doomsday has exactly one claim to fame, and that’s killing Superman, so as soon as he shows up if you have even a passing awareness of the character you know how the movie is going to end, which robs the film of tension for its last battle. The fact he also appears with little buildup and doesn’t have any characterization doesn’t help; Doomsday is just the Big Gray CGI Blob that superhero movies try and pass off as a final boss for the heroes to fight. This has worked precisely once, in Iron Man. The Incredible Hulk and Venom did not make it work, and this film is nowhere close to being in the same ballpark as Venom.

By and far the biggest problem, though, is the movie’s incredible length and its very existence in the franchise at this point in time. This is an epic superhero crossover in which two of the biggest comic book characters of all time fight and then team up… And it is the second movie in a franchise. While they do a good job of establishing Batman rather quickly, Wonder Woman comes out of nowhere. And then at the end, Superman ‘dies.’ We have had one single movie prior to this to make a connection to the guy, and yet here he is getting a temporary comic book death with no buildup whatsoever that we know is going to be reversed sooner than later because the movie telegraphs this to us.

Imagine if, instead of building up the character over the course of a decade and putting him in all sorts of different stories, the MCU went right from Iron Man to Endgame. You go from a simpler, character-driven piece to a massive crossover where a hero dies right away, and it doesn’t give anyone time to care. Tony Stark had multiple films worth of characterization under his belt before they threw him in a crossover, let alone killed him, but Snyder expects you to give a damn about a Superman who just started his career in the previous movie of a franchise.

And the ass-numbing length of the movie is no justification. Even before the director’s cut came out this film was a slog, and the director’s cut really does nothing to earn its existence. All it does is add more runtime to an already tedious and bloated film, leading to the same exact ending and fixing none of the overarching narrative problems of the thing. The problem with any director’s cut is that ultimately the movie is still going to be Dawn of Justice, it’s still going to lead to extremely rushed character decisions, and it’s still going to be a mess. You’d have to redo half of the film to make this into a worthwhile and coherent narrative that’s actually worthy of being an entry in a superhero franchise.

And to top it all off, the movie spends far too much time foreshadowing for its own good. People criticized The Mummy for shoehorning in way too many shared universe elements right off the bat, and if that movie was bad for it, so is this one. The cameos from all the members of the Justice League, while striking, could be excised from the plot with little to no impact, and the Knightmare sequence is just excessive and weird.

Is It Really THAT Bad?

The answer to this question has never been harder.

On the one hand, this film does have some merit. There is some good casting choices, good cinematography, good action… But then, on the other hand, the film is overly long, pretentious, has poor writing and dialogue, mishandles everyone aside from Superman, and is just incredibly unpleasant.

This film is in many ways the exact problem Christopher Nolan created with his Dark Knight trilogy. Nolan, by grounding the fanciful characters of comic books into a realistic setting, created a climate in which someone could suck any sort of joy or meaning out of comics. The success of his films meant that people would see dark, gritty realism as preferable to joyous, colorful escapism, and the negative effects of his films, however good you find them, are still felt today even as filmmakers are finally shaking off the grit. Dawn of Justice is the zenith of Nolan’s style of superhero film. There is nothing fun, joyful, or engaging to be found here; it is simply the characters you know and love forced into dark, miserable scenarios that ends in death and misery. Where’s the fun? Where’s the color? Where’s the wonder, the excitement, where is any of it? This film paints a bleak and miserable and hopeless picture of a world of superheroes. It really makes me think of this rather famous comic panel:

I absolutely hate this movie, but not because I think it’s bad. I hate it because it has enough good ideas where it should be the best thing ever, but it really isn’t. It’s a miserable slog of a film that does nothing to justify or earn its massive runtime whatsoever. It really does belong somewhere between 5 and 6 on IMDB, because I can almost see why people like it, but it just isn’t even remotely close to being how good its fan say it is. This is not a good superhero movie, and this is not how we should want superhero movies to be. There is a market for serious superhero fare of course, and there’s no reason that these films can’t engage with mature themes or anything, don’t get me wrong. But this is absolutely not the way to do it.

[readingaccountability]

snow crash - neal stephenson

my playlist (because of The Way That I Am)

final thoughts:

okay, im going to be honest right out of the gate- i cant decide whether this is a book id recommend or not. it was really fun for the most part, but personally there was a lot more exposition than id like. the early portions of the novel have exposition which feels completely fair, mostly things relating to worldbuilding. stephenson creates his own vision of future america, and some places online referred to it as cyberpunk, and some as post-cyberpunk. id be more in the latter camp, mostly due to the way he plays with tropes, leaving the reader unsure of which will be subverted and which wont.

the use of language was really fun, and i enjoyed the worldbuilding a lot. his vision of a futuristic capitalistic earth feels surreal in its immediacy and recognizability. the back jacket blurb ends with "a future america so bizarre, so outrageous, you'll recognize it immediately." which, yeah. a texan info-tech magnate? two competing corporations owning the highway system? suburban city-states? this was another enjoyable thing- everything was colorfully named, and names treated totally normally, which kind of poked fun at how we have everyday things named very ludicrously and for the most part we are totally blind to it.

one aspect i really enjoyed was that the author often doesn't make certain things clear to the audience, until he does, and then it becomes necessary to reassess the entire story and setting. this goes to underscore the theme of the importance of information and the ways we take it in and perceive the world based upon it. for example, we don't learn that y.t. is fifteen until maybe 75 pages in, at which point a lot makes sense in retrospect. the same thing occurs in the worldbuilding, as suddenly a detail is given in passing and the reader must incorporate it into the setting, which by default we assume to be similar in many ways to our idea of america. it keeps the reader on their toes as well as furthering the worldbuilding. for the most part, the tech stuff didnt feel outdated to me, despite being a future projected out from '92.

however, aspects of the book are definitely very 1992. id put these into two camps: the first, being that the book does at different times use slurs. the main character is black and asian, the n word is used a few times by racist side-character/antagonist types, as are a few other racial slurs. there was also the occasional usage of the r slur, within the narrative prose itself, rather than usage as an insult within dialogue.

the protagonist, who is named, unfortunately, hiro protagonist, is a great character and felt very fleshed out to me, though at times he reminded me more of dirk strider than normally would be ideal. (its obvious that stephenson and andrew hussie are of a similar type of writer, and play with similar tropes, lmao.) hiro is a man of many worlds. he seems to shift between them easily, though never fully existing in any of them. this is reflected in his background, both in his biracial identity and in having been raised on a myriad of army bases. this is layered further in his fluidity in interacting with both reality and the metaverse, yet remaining slightly, consistently aloof. fascinatingly the first moment i sensed this drop was when we meet juanita- aka where his real and meta realities coincide. the description of them as the adam and eve of the metaverse is both insanely romantic and thematically key (good god i wish we had more than like, two conversations between them). juanita designed the facial component to metaverse avatars, doing the majority of this work when the two were together, and hiro can see echoes of both their facial tics in the face of every avatar in the metaverse. in a way, by having done this work juanita is positioned by the narrative as one of the gods of this digital realm. she is also hiro's call to action, being aware of the coming trouble and alerting him to it, as well as connecting him to the informational database he needs to prepare.

y.t., the secondary protagonist, fucking ruled. i loved that she was just a fifteen year old punkass kid whose mom doesnt know how crazy this part time job is. y.t. being worried about her mom was a great thread throughout, and a really good balance to how obviously independent y.t. is. i do wish there had been a chance to explain more about her background (she has a dad who left who is mentioned in a throwaway sentence, and a boyfriend who is mentioned near the beginning but never again.) i really enjoyed how obviously hyperaware y.t. was at all times about her own place within the insanities of the setting, while also consistently writing her as a teen maybe in way too deep who thinks about things in typically teenage ways. but like, that wasn't ever held against her? the narrative meets her where she is. it was honestly awesome. HOWEVER,

i absolutely hated the raven and y.t. scenes. how creepy!!! he basically statutory rapes her!!! we know hes at least late 20s early 30s, because hes the same age as hiro. if this sort of content is upsetting to read for you, i definitely do NOT recommend this book. (if you want to avoid reading these bits: ch 47 y.t. meets raven, ch 50 they are in a bar eating, ch 52 things happen that result in y.t.'s anti-assault device activating- she did not activate it on purpose, but forgot it was there- and raven is knocked out.)

please PLEASE dont take any of the following analysis as like, trying to be apologetic towards this scenes. because again they were awful and hard to get through and really gross. but im also cognizant that the author was obviously trying to convey something by making the choice, like the way it was written is obviously not condoning this sort of thing.

i think maybe what stephenson was trying to get at with that, was that we see hiro internally negate any potential for anything untoward with y.t. basically immediately, since he kind of senses that she might have a small crush on him (though this doesnt last more than a fleeting moment, especially from her perspective). vs raven, whose 'poor impulse control' warning tattoo eventually elicits a sarcastic remark from hiro after he finds out raven and y.t. were "a thing". i really dont think hiro knew how far it went? like it was just suuuper weird, but i figured it was meant narratively to 1. execute the chekovs gun of y.t.'s anti-assault device, 2. contrast hiro and raven (especially considering the bike-racing argument where theyre telling the story together, which is supposed to parallel them, while contrasting the differences in how they ended up?), and 3. just to get raven unconscious, i guess. but good god it was weird and i hated every second of it, why couldnt the device have like, activated way earlier?? gah. fucking upsetting. moving past that!

honestly i was really frustrated by how little screentime juanita got, because the way she was introduced was so fucking interesting and then shes mostly off doing her own thing. the bits of explanation she gives at the end about what she was up to on the raft are so sparse and im like damn, can we get a little bit of her pov in here? please? that would have ruled. additionally, shes supposed to be hiros love interest, but we see so little of them interacting outside her intro scenes. a huge portion of why hiro is getting into the sumerian mythology is literally framed as something that will help him understand juanita, but we dont get to see him talk to her about it barely at all.

the supporting characters were quite fun, i particularly liked the librarian. big surprise, i liked the overly literal ai information-dispensor, lmfao. watching him and hiro interact reminded me SO hard of geordi laforge having honest to god conversations with the computer where he tries to coax information out of it, aka one of my favorite little aspects of tng.

and lastly, the major plot themes themselves. i adore the way stephenson approached action, it was very entertaining. usually i cant really visualize action scenes written out, but his use of language was really really effective and engaging. the plot itself was absolutely fascinating, though i found the premise pretty contrived. which isnt bad in itself, i was fully suspending my disbelief until the last hundred pages or so. which for a 550+ page book, isnt too bad.

i did like the approach of linking the ancient to the modern, that is always really neat. and i think ultimately stephenson did it in an interesting way, not how i would have done it, but definitely interesting! creating these ideas about information infrastructures, and there being words that can access those and be used to control people, was wild. not sure if i agree about the equating of religion to a virus, though he did specifically establish that it was more the approach to religion, than religion itself. (maybe if juanita had been more goddamn present in the narrative that could have been elaborated on a little more. literally her perspective would have been perfect in balancing that out!!)

ultimately what did me in was the very very very long winded MONOLOGUE where hiro re-explained the whole premise, in ways that didnt really neatly organize into a cohesive argument. a lot of the scenes where hiro talks to the librarian, which are interspersed throughout the book, are really exposition heavy, because stephenson is rooting his ideas in historical concepts that need to be explained to both hiro and the audience. and i thought all that was fine, because it was a conversation where hiro was grappling with the information, and he was figuring it out along with the reader, and most importantly it was a conversation between him and the librarian computer program.

howeverrr later on we get a full rehash of all that, where hiro makes clear some stuff that was just implied for the reader, and hes literally just telling these important men whats up in this big long monologue. utterly worthless. i kept reading it and going YEAH, we KNOW, we know this we know this. and the important men barely interjected. it added basically nothing to our understanding of the situation, other than reframing it. but everything added was already an implicit thing, and didnt really need to be said again.

the resolution to the book was stellar, the last 30-40 pages, once hiro is onto the raft, were great. ultimately after reading and giving some time to digest it, i think it was a solidly great book with a few big drawbacks near the end, but which dont carry through and sully the ending.

[psychedelictrashpanda]

It’s been awhile, weird old blog with unspecified direction. How about more of me me me?

I finally did DMT again, and WOW. It’s been at least a full decade since the last time. I still didn’t quite “break through” enough to “meet the entities” again but mein GOTT was it healing. Speaking of God, we’ll get to that soon... But before smoking the dimitri, I was beginning to sustain a mania in slow motion with dissociatives again. Not to any extreme like I did with PCP long ago (btw, glancing at my Eyehategod poster, I realize that horror/metal fest when I was blasted on PCP the entire time was all the way back in 2013! It seems to much more recent, but the way these drugs interact with memory is very peculiar. or maybe it was the traumatizing effect of it and other things at the time that makes me block out and thus distort the time signature of the memory... I digress). And I don’t have the destructive tendencies I did in the past anyway, so I’ve never been apt to push it as far as I was when I was shooting up 3-meo-pcp and blacking out for days at a time. I mean, I did push it I suppose. For the main George Floyd protests I was loading up on a combination of things. Can’t even remember if that was my sober window between methadone detox and the suboxone I’m on now. But, I was combining bits of weird PCP offshoots with opiate offshoots (4-map iirc) and/or kratom with maybe a drop of benzo... straddling the line between going overboard and a “party dose” for lack of a better descriptor; between recreation and desperation. In retrospect, I was summoning the courage to act like my old self used to in these sorts of situations. That is, giving it my all, being novel about it, idk, summoning the spirit of Dr Gonzo I suppose (who, after reading his two books, was more slimey of a jerk than he’s presented in Hunter’s stories. well, I need to finish the Cockroach People book, he started getting into his attraction to underage girls as a young 20-something man himself and ugh, gross). My true wild & adventurous spirit has been hampered, weighed down with anxiety and depression and all manner of undiagnosed mental illness. Who knows if it’s more the drugs or the environmental factors that trigger drug use, but the spirit is tortured like Griffith in the torture dungeon, the heart is wrapped in a black grime guarded by the Beast of Darkness, the will is subordinated to authoritarian capitalist hegemony...

Where was I? Oh so I started suboxone for the second time in my life innnn... February I want to say. Last time I did it I was able to detox myself simply buying subs off the street, but I did it too quick. That’s been one problem, every time I detox rapidly it’s too harsh a push back into reality and I succumb to relapse less then a year into sobriety. The reason reality is harsh is the same reason my stance on anti depressants has been further cemented. I’ve articulated it better lately... Basically I believe it’s a weird solution to depression to force your chemical makeup into the right position to function properly in the same environment that caused it in the first place. “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” One of my conversations with a young college friend really illuminated why many don’t even consider this position. She was insistent there’s no cause of depression, you’re just born with a fucked up mind. Now sure, hereditary disposition is a thing, as a drug addicted child of an addict I should know. But for example she pointed to another friend with hard depression and was like “his life seems fine what explanation could there be?” But I put forth maybe his childhood of having to closet his homosexuality in a hard conservative family that had the possibility of disowning him if they knew about it contributed to that “natural chemical imbalance,” as it’s implied. YES, some people NEED it. But for the most part, it really seems to me to be what I’m gonna call the thyroid phenomenon. That is to say, a medical explanation for a small fraction of severely affected patients is used as a broad brush by the public to diagnose themselves. Forewarning: I am not fat shaming here, forgive the example. Dietary practices are a personal thing so my feelings are stronger as well. Anyway, it seems to me as soon as this thyroid malfunction became a hard biological explanation for obesity beyond the psychological, suddenly everyone was a candidate. It’s fine to think “maybe I have it” but when a growing and significant portion of the obese crowd started screaming they all had thyroid problems and can’t help themselves, when a teensy percentage actually do... well it sort of touches on the “addiction as a disease” narrative that’s never sat well with me. Addicts use the disease reasoning to skirt personal responsibility. I'm not denying it is a disease, but I believe calling it as such in the public discourse isn’t terribly constructive. (Okay, you’re seeing an opinion change in real time here... I changed my mind.) I was vehemently against the narrative, but I need to readjust to simply make people WARY of the narrative. As an addict, I could easily see myself using the excuse of it being a disease as a fatalist function; that is to say giving in, relinquishing personal control over my fate. Hereditary disposition, Rat Park, addiction as a disease... there’s also a severe lack of control it all conjures. Paradoxically, drugs can used to meticulously control your state of mind. I can’t control my desire to control myself?

God where was I going with this... Oh! God! May as well mention I’ve been warming up more and more to the spirit of monotheism beyond it’s structural and institutional dimensions. I could get deep into my recent past of not believing in the idea of a spirit, soul, etc. How the pendulum of my ideology swings between cold rationalism and loose spirituality, especially as I go through phases of rebellion against perceived oppressors. Growing up in a red state with a lot of Christian ideals, society around me was always telling me everything I seemed to like was the work of Satan. Naturally, I started reading into Satanism. I never self identified with occult-esque belief structures, except maybe chaos magick because it’s whole idea is to merge whatever practices work into something of your own, but I did staunchly identify as anti christian. Not a hard thing to do when you’re already a metal head, which definitely fueled the trajectory. Not to mention metal helped goad me into DXM use (thanks Velvet Cacoon ya bunch of goons), the first real psychedelic journeys I had. Because I never gave real consideration to myself having depression, I moulded my personal ideology around the symptoms it causes. Which is why for awhile after coming to terms with depression as a problem I probably have, I was only able to identify it in retrospect. I never felt it in real time because it was so old-coat to me, I adapted to it like an addict adapts to their drug of choice and ti becomes their world. So I would decide to skip social events, let my room get messy, watch only old comfort shows, etc... but only AFTER emerging from that state was I able to immediately look back and think “wait... I was doing all those things because I was depressed.” In the moment, it’s rationalized as “I don’t want to see these people for these reasons” or “I want to watch spongebob because it’s fun and an old favorite.” Rationalization, the concept of the west, serves as a detriment to the individual in a number of manners. This is one. I was a MASTER at rationalizing away my drug use. Statistically, more people die from this this and that, why be worried that I’m on this drug instead? Statistics quelled the perceived danger. It was also a formative tool in my skills of justification. I always felt I had to justify every action I took, but that’s getting back into family matters...

But why not bring that up? it’s a sore spot. I feel like the tables have flipped from my dad always saying “you all just think I’m an asshole!” to me thinking I’m the asshole. It’s too much to get into but I’ll touch on a couple important things... I’ve learned a major source of my anxiety is not being able to draw the boundaries between business and family and myself, because they’re not properly defined. When I’m told by my bossfather after explaining the distress I feel simply thinking about the family company, and he goes typically all-or-nothing when I touch on crucial issue and says “if you want out just tell me you want out”, I can’t separate between whether he’s saying it as a father or as a boss in the moment. He would say, “of course I just mean the company”, but where does company end and family begin? It’s also an intense pressure, maybe shame, simply typing this and thinking in the back of my head about someone who might read and think “what a spoiled brat, has a family company and blah blah.” But who put all that in my head? He says he’s changed from the days of putting immense pressure on me with the sort of sentiments that cause that shit in my head like always telling me how great I have it and all the opportunities, shit, I’m feeling it right now, the frustration and I can’t even identify these emotions. At least I am aware of them, that’s a huge milestone for me. But the only thing that’s changed is he sees me as a the broken mother fucker I am and treats me as such. Sometimes it’s nice, and sincere sympathy, other times his frustration with having to check his language all the time is palpable so it does no good to do so. The immense pressure, the intense urgency, the confusing complexity, all those market pressures haven’t changed. This is evident when we were driving somewhere and I suggested not worrying about the fastest route on the map because one minute isn’t a big deal and he insisted that one minute IS a big deal. Sweating one fucking minute indicates a mountain of reputational pressure. In a way, that one minute is putting business ahead of family, but I feel harsh saying it because as he’s pounded into my head the business is what allows the family to survive. Not to mention why put the crack head of the family above that one minute (not literal crack, but it was obvious as soon as he saw I was “fucking around” on ketamine he decided to not take me as seriously) Still, I’ve made my decision that survival reasoning is fucking bullshit already. He’s the one that wants a mansion and wants enough mailbox money for us not to have to worry ever again, so he’s the one deliberately creating the pressure. Maybe he hasn’t considered how hardened he’s become to those feelings after a lifetime in the street and in prison. I really feel for mom. She’s okay now, but her spirit... It’s part of the reason I can’t relax myself at home. He has always painted her as dead weight in the past, never getting a job, sitting watching TV, but he’s unable to connect the dots psychologically because we’re all layman that part of the reason she’s like that is because her actions have been demonized already so who the fuck she got to prove herself to? Same reason I fell into relapse sometimes. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t sort of deal. The damned if I don’t being the reputation of yourself you have to live with after getting sober. He says “don’t worry about it” but I couldn’t accept that because the reason he doesn’t trust me (never mind respect, that’s even further away) is informed by my past. I can’t complain that he never allowed me to contribute to a crucial decision like choosing the building for the dispensary, talking about whether we want a certain investor or not, etc, is because that’s not something to entrust to a druggie. I’ve always felt he let me play make-believe CEO and gave me an allowance for it, while telling me otherwise. He’d say “this is all for you” but he’s making the decisions that truly move mountains and then putting it on us. Which is why I have a hard time saying “I want out”, he can be a baby about things just as much as I am, and I fear he’d let his entrepreneurial drive be affected by my departure. Sigh, this is already getting to be a headache to think about... He’s tired. I’m tired.

There was also something I wanted to say regarding the role social constructs play in all this, but it’s getting long enough already. Suffice to say I’ve been getting into psychoanalysis lately and it’s scratching the right itch for knowledge and wisdom. I can see why Zizek is enamored with Lacan, and why it’s so important to mix it with Marxism. And not to toot my own horn, but what the hell... There are a lot of lofty ideas I’ve been coming across that are already parallel to ideas I’ve developed through my own life experience, and it makes me think I’m meant for this sort of stuff. If I’m lucky in my pursuits (not to put too much weight on the luck aspect), I’ll be a journalist of some sort. Articles, video essays, whatever. Need to rein in my indecisiveness and dispel FOMO tho.

Back to DMT. But not really. Earlier in the summer I got some straight Ketamine and it was also immensely healing. But it has a great abuse potential, especially for me, so it’s harder to “hang up the phone” after I get the message as TmK would say. It made me feel again, and start to understand what love is. Partly because it conjured all these lost feels I had for Kat. She’s great people though, I think I’d just stress her out too much. Idk. Whatever. My love life is a total mess. Anyway after I ran out I wanted more of course and stumbled on some DCK, a somewhat rare ketamine offshoot. Coupled with my increasing propensity to trip acid more than once a week, they started building on each other. I was happier and happier at home, but at work/fam was getting more and more distressed about my place in that whole show. In his show. Simply thinking about the company, especially after having read that article about procrastination and how much it resonated with me, caused me unnecessary levels of distress. Normally as quickly as I can feel that, my mind will tuck it away and bottle it up somewhere so I can go about my day. The problem with drugs is they cause you to act instead. So he was doing the usual “it’s so easy! you’ll have it made!” and I interrupted with this torrent of shit I’ve been holding back forever, and he would not yield on his “you didn’t let me finish...” Incidentally, has he really never picked up on every time I interrupt I already know what he’s talking about? I said as much, something like “it’s not the labor” and he keeps saying “no you’re not listening” as though a frivolous detail changed the main thrust of the fact he’s always trying to make it easier for me. I wish he could simply let me go off and have the strength to take it a little less seriously, but considering how often I take things personally I shouldn’t be surprised he does to. On top of this, his brother/my uncle was in the hospital for some serious shit. But another reason I picked this time is because I only feel safe even confronting him when non-involved parties are around. He doesn’t care that I don’t feel safe confronting him though, he says “don’t worry about me” so maybe I shouldn’t. I feel like such an asshole about it, but that feeling is conjured by the ideological structure he helped to create. Where does my shame end with him being the causation and start with my personal ideology? How much can a person create their own ideology, truly? It’s about as small a window as free will, I imagine.

SO after feeling awful for going off after having all this stuff build up in my mind, I felt awful and went home to drug up some more. Again, not recklessly to the extent I used to be. But I did a fat line of DCK while on a couple hits of LSD and a smidgen of Zolpidem (a wholly underrated substance). Everything was getting to me all at once. A perfect storm of my problems. All the while another doubt caused by ideology from without (society and family both) was making me think it’s all the drugs. But the developments I’ve made are huge strides, I’ve matured so much from it all. And I realized every time I do this, those developments are wiped clean because the validity of them is rendered null due to both the general social stigma of drugs and my history with them. And maybe that’s a major trigger fo rmy relapse in the past. I’m not suppose to be on drugs, but I dabble, have incredible experiences and make strides of maturity, but because it’s drugs the exact opposite effect is percieved from the outside; the experiences are simple chemical euphoria, the strides of maturity are false delusions. It triggers a sharp roll back down hill. I wish someone respected me for who I am, I feel so alone sometimes.

Drugs as an umbrella term, drugs as a vice for the worst dregs of society. There are so many problems in our world regarding drugs. I could write a book. But how much I’ve written here touches on another pressure I feel. IS it simply him again? When he asks “you’re gonna be gone in a few days right?” is that what’s making me feel like this is a waste of time? I’ve got to get out of here. It’s so hard though. I simply have to be strong. The strength is in me to take the massive cut to pay and benefits when I move. Maybe I’ll get a portion of my strugglers card back and shit heads like Blasey Shomas can’t simply say “why don’t you take care of yourself instead of daddy taking are of you?” anymore. Part of me wants to say he says that because he’s driven by his own emotions and not smart enough to directly debate my claims, his insults should hold no weight. Another part of me is truly trying to be... I don’t know a proper term for it without sounding egotistical, but “enlightened”? This is why monotheism is sounding more interesting to me. Jesus’ position about those dregs of society. I’ve always tried to be a trusting person, understanding of people’s struggles, the ideologies they function under that make them lash out or otherwise act the way they do, etc. I even changed my wording there from “I’ve always been” to “I’ve always tried to be.” Not so much for my usual reasons of dodging a committing claim (which I’m working on -- instead of “I think ___” just say what I believe to give the claim more sense of authority so as to be taken more seriously), but trying to be more humble. And not to think lowly and use myself as a punching bag like I used to... ugh, whatever. This post is messy enough.

So that night after having done DCK every day for a couple weeks and tripping every other night on acid, I was at my wits end on what to do, where to go next, everything. The outside world is crumbling, the inside world is lost. I finally whipped out that DMT I’ve had for a long while, something inside told me it was time. Oh duh it was the wits end part, I had no other chemical recourse. I sat in my bed with a foil sculpture loosely resembling a pipe, repeated to myself “it’s okay, just let it happen to you, it will be okay.” A part of me even had a small fear based on those rare reports of those interdimensional beings mentally raping some people, but I don’t know what to make of those experiences, seem like flukes. I took my three deep hits and set the pipe aside as soon as the rusb began and laid back. It wasn’t enough to break through, so I need to get a proper pipe, but it was enough for a “being” (which I am convinced is a part of your mind, not from another dimension or otherwise external source) to appear before me. At least I think. Whatever it was slowly came closer, reassuring me that I’d be okay. The most profound part was an overwhelming sense of all these puzzle pieces suddenly falling perfectly into place where they should be. As though the answers to all my struggles obvious and within me the whole time. For example as soon as I came back I adjusted my posture, as that’s something that I’ve been wanting to work on, and because I was reminded of that just now I adjusted my posture in my seat while writing this. I felt an overwhelming sense of forgiveness toward myself, I think. Amazingly, the inebriation I felt before the trip was largely dissolved, as though the stuff I was on somehow all lost it’s potency. The distresses melted away. At least, the power behind them was nulled. I’m still facing the same problems, but there’s a zen(?) quality to my thinking when they come up in my mind. No longer will a pin drop trigger everything I’m feeling all at once. When I came-to completely, I started BAWLING. In being overwhelmingly consoled by the trip, I became inconsolable. Tears of joy. Tears of healing. And that was the main takeaway. The loudest words of the experience were “Now the healing can truly begin.” At the same time, now the real work also begins. 

Balance is key

[five-rivers]

Glass Beetle

Based on a prompt by 2fruity4u for the Phic Phight! Might be sort of... fragmentary, in parts.

.

Danny frowned at his hand as it flickered in the evening's fading sunlight. He'd been having trouble with his invisibility lately. Nothing so obvious, for the most part, but both Sam and Tucker had noticed him 'blurring' or 'fading' around the edges this past week. He'd been able to correct himself so far, pull himself back into focus, so to speak, but, if that flicker was any sign, this was getting worse, not better.

He wondered if a new power was coming in. Sometimes his other powers acted weird when that happened. He hadn't noticed anything like that, though.

Either way, there wasn't all that much he could do about this. It wasn't as if he could just ask anyone what was wrong with his ghost powers.

Actually, that wasn't quite true. He did have a few ghostly allies. Sadly, they all lived (resided?) in lairs that took hours and hours to get to from the Fenton Portal. Lairs that also moved. He didn't really have the time to go find them.

Honestly, with all the schoolwork that had been heaped on him and his friends, he didn't have time to go do anything that wasn't absolutely necessary. Including sleep. He would give a lot to just be able to go to bed now, rather than whenever he finished his math homework. His extra math homework, assigned in lieu of detention. But, no, Skulker had to show up again, this time with ghostly hunting dogs, and completely waste Danny's afternoon.

But maybe that was the real reason he was having trouble with his invisibility. Exhaustion. And embarrassment. The two seemed to go hand in hand.

Just that week... Ugh, he didn't want to think about it.

He perched in a tree in the park, resting, and, inevitably, thought about it.

He really hated the people at his school sometimes. Dash for dumping glitter all over him and calling him a fairy... as if that insult wasn't so old it was fossilized... all the other people in his class for staring at him... Mrs. Hall for calling him out for 'disturbing the class'... the inevitable interruption of said class by ghosts... the detention... and everyone staring at him and giggling behind their hands.

Not to mention the toilet paper and what Dash and his cronies had done to his locker. Carrying his waterlogged books around and trying to explain to the teachers had been... painful.

In other words, the A-list had been in a bullying mood this week. No wonder he wanted to be invisible.

He sighed and drifted out of the tree. He had his breath back, as much as he had it as a ghost, and it was time to go home and do math.

Of course, to put a cherry on top of this already horrible week, he was immediately shot. He tumbled head over heels, and instinct took over. He went invisible, hard, erasing his light even in the infrared and ultraviolet parts of the spectrum, the chill of the power washing over him. He didn't know what had hit him, after all. A lot of ghost hunters had special goggles for seeing ghosts only transparent in the visible spectrum. Ghosts could often see through invisibility.

He reoriented himself, scanning the area for his attacker, one hand on the thermos.

Valerie. Very confused Valerie, judging by how she was whipping her head back and forth, scanning the ground and the skies.

Danny didn't want to deal with her. He hid himself behind a tree and went human in order to confuse any ectosignature tracing equipment she might have. He never knew what she'd get from Vlad, the jerk, but he probably wouldn't have included anything capable of tracking a half-ghost in human form.

He let out a breath as Valerie flew away. Now it was really time to get home.

He let go of his invisibility.

The cool feeling on his skin didn't go away. He looked down. Still invisible.

He let go of his invisibility.

Still, he only saw a faint outline of his limbs, visible only to his eyes.

Oh, this was going to be bad.

.

Danny had snuck into his house while invisible before, but usually he had a choice about it. He couldn't just walk through the walls, because his parents had coated most of the ground floor with something that blocked phasing a couple months ago (and was also a truly hideous orange), and he couldn't climb through his bedroom window because they had rigged it with a special anti-ghost alarm after noticing an ectoplasm stain on his windowsill.

He decided to go around to the back door, so no one would notice the front door opening and closing on its own. From there, he'd go to the lab and use the portal. Hours of flying and missing his math homework were preferable to being stuck invisible indefinitely. If only his parents had invented something to counteract invisibility... But, no, they were too focused on making things that hurt.

Yeah, maybe he was a bit bitter about that.

Okay, the coast was clear. Good. He padded down the back hall, unwilling to go ghost to fly. The security system was set to ignore him in human form, but sometimes it still picked up his ghost.

He turned the corner into the kitchen and froze as he heard the hateful beep of the Fenton Finder. His father's head snapped up, away from his plate of (unsanctioned by his diet) fudge.

"There is a ghost ten feet in front of you."

Jack leaped from his seat, and slammed the button to activate the Fenton Anti-Creep System. Lights strobed, some of them green with ectoenergy. Danny yelped and dodged a laser, then a laser sword, then a metal-backed cutout of his dad's face.

He ran.

By the time he got out of Fentonworks (the deathtrap) he was out of breath, slightly singed, and definitely bruised. He also felt, weirdly, more invisible.

He frowned. Was he diving deeper into invisibility without realizing it? Why? Because he'd been startled?

He turned to Sam's house.

.

"Okay," said Jazz, over the speaker on Sam's phone, after he had explained his current predicament. "It sounds like a confidence problem. Just, tell yourself you want to be seen- No. You have to want to be seen."

"I do want to be seen," said Danny. "I've been over this with Sam and Tucker. I don't want to be invisible."

"You know that," said Jazz, "but do you feel it?"

"Trust me," said Danny. "I feel it. Can you not get them out of the house for a bit so I can sneak in?"

"Afraid not," said Jazz. "They've put us on lockdown until they find, well, you. Or tomorrow morning."

Danny groaned. He'd already called them to say he was staying over at Tucker's. He'd wondered at the time why they were so happy about that.

.

He hadn't managed even a flicker of visibility by midnight. Even his transformation rings, usually blindingly bright, went unseen. Stuff he picked up turned invisible, too. Anything he wore turned invisible.

Also, the constant invisibility was draining him. Ghost powers took energy, especially when he was in human form. He was exhausted.

Maybe he would spend all his energy and wake up visible. He could hope. In the meantime, he'd sleep in one of the Manson's guest rooms.

.

He did not wake up visible. He woke up just as exhausted and unable to so much as see his own outline anymore. That was new. Before, he'd always been able to see himself while invisible.

He had to ask Sam to call Jazz, because he couldn't hold and see the phone at the same time.

"It should be safe to come home, now," said Jazz. "I turned off the security system, and Mom and Dad are off chasing ectopuses near the mall."

"Oh, good," said Danny, sluggishly transforming. "I'll be there in a few."

He took the same route in as before, but, this time, only Jazz was waiting for him in the kitchen.

Since he was a younger brother, he snuck up on her and poked the back of her neck. She jumped about a foot, and glared at a bit of air several inches above his eyes.

"Danny," she said, "would it kill you to take things seriously for once?"

"It already did," said Danny. "And, honestly, you sort of walked into that one."

Jazz rolled her eyes, and pushed open the door to the lab. "Do you want me to come with you?" she asked. "We can take the Specter Speeder."

"Better not," said Danny. "I should be fine. None of my enemies are going to be able to see me, after all."

"Well," said Jazz, as they stopped in front of the portal. She looked over a foot to his left as she said, "Be safe, Danny."

"I will," he said, and launched himself into the Ghost Zone.

.

"Your sister thought you had a what?" asked Frostbite, amused. He, also, wasn't looking quite where Danny was. In fact, Danny kept having to dodge out of the larger ghost's way.

"A confidence problem," said Danny. His voice sounded weirdly quiet, even to himself, and he wondered if his voice would also be affect by whatever this was.

The large ghost suppressed a toothy smile. "While your current condition may respond to your emotional state, great one, and your powers are linked to your emotions, they are not the cause."

"Then what is?"

"You have a parasite," said Frostbite.

Danny didn't say anything for a moment, half-convinced Frostbite was joking.

"A what?" he squeaked.

"A parasite. Don't be concerned, it is relatively harmless." Frostbite paused. "For ghosts. I have never heard of a human or half-ghost getting one."

That was comforting. Not. "What kind of parasite?" asked Danny. "What does it do? I mean, other than force you to be invisible."

"Well," said Frostbite. He turned to face the dizzying array of screens and other technology embedded in the icy wall of the cave. He brought up a image that made Danny blanch.

"It's that big?" he asked, one hand kneading his stomach, as if he could thereby force the many-legged thing out.

"Yes. Actually, it's a rather small example of this species. This must be its first breeding cycle."

Danny's eye twitched. "Breeding cycle?" he asked, feeling even sicker.

"Yes," said Frostbite. "The malaperas eraro is very sensitive to light during its breeding cycle, but they are also very weak ghosts, unable to become invisible for long periods of time. So they find a host and use their host's abilities. Once the breeding cycle is complete, all of the parasites will leave the host, and symptoms will stop almost immediately."

"And how long does this take, exactly?" asked Danny, voice cracking.

"Ah, it varies, great one," said Frostbite. "From the point that the ghost is unable to become visible, no longer than a week, depending on the strength of the host ghost."

"I can't be invisible for a week!" said Danny, alarmed. "I have school! My parents will notice I'm gone! I'm already exhausted from being invisible for this long. I can't take a week of this!"

"Ah, yes. The fatigue," said Frostbite. His eyes flicked from side to side. "That is, actually, the reason for the variable time. The malaperas eraro cannot finish breeding while the host is awake. It waits for the forced invisibility to drain the host and drop them into a sort of hibernation. It takes longer for stronger ghosts to reach that point."

"Oh," said Danny. "Great."

"We will be more than happy to have you stay with us while you recover. We will provide everything you need, and keep close track of your condition. This is more of an inconvenience to most ghosts than anything else. Similar to, say, the common cold or chicken pox for humans. It is difficult to be reinfected."

That was something, at least. He didn't want to do this again. "You're sure it will be safe for me? I mean, I'm not normal. Maybe we should just... take it out?" He mimed pulling, even though Frostbite couldn't see him.

"That is a matter to consider," agreed Frostbite. "Due to your unique physiology there may be... unforeseen complications. That is another reason for you to stay here, where we can monitor you. If it becomes necessary, we can remove the parasite, but doing so is an invasive and rather dangerous procedure."

Danny briefly considered flying to Clockwork, who could probably do something about the time problem, but exhaustion weighed heavily on his shoulders. "Okay. Fine, I guess. Just- Could you- If it isn't too much- take a message to my sister for me?"

.

The room was cozier and warmer than the norm for the Far Frozen, in deference to Danny's smaller stature and warm-blooded human form. There were also a number of nice, safe nooks and crannies that were attractive from a ghostly perspective, and a large number of paper-wrapped items.

"What?" asked Danny, leaning back into Frosbite's fluffy fur. On the way over, they had come to a compromise regarding how not to run Danny over. It involved Danny holding onto Frostbite (teenage pride required that he refuse Frostbite's offer to carry him) and Danny had enjoyed the contact more than he wanted to admit.

"Ah, gifts from your admirers, great one. We all wish for you to recover swiftly."

"So I don't freeze everyone again and leave quickly?" joked Danny.

Frostbite chuckled. "Nothing like that. We enjoy having you here, great one. It is an honor."

Danny hummed and let Frostbite guide him to the nest-like bed.

.

Danny felt like he was sleepwalking the past couple of... whatevers. Honestly, he didn't know how long he'd been in the Far Frozen anymore. It was all sort of blurring together, and Danny found it difficult to focus on anything.

Frostbite was doing another body-scan on him today, to check where the parasite was and what it was doing. Danny wasn't enthusiastic. The table for the scanner had been built for someone much larger than him and was distinctly uncomfortable.

Right now, Danny was sitting in a chair across the room, a blanket wrapped around him, waiting for Frostbite to wave him over. It was useful, he had found, to announce where he was going to be and then stay there. People wouldn't trip over him as much, if he was where he was expected to be.

"Alright, great one," said Frostbite. "We are ready to take your scan."

"Okay," mumbled Danny. He stood up, walked halfway to the table, and then collapsed under a wave of dizziness and fatigue.

"Great one?"

Danny only managed to make a pathetic sort of mewling sound. His vision was all grey around the edges, but he could still watch Frostbite grope along the floor, searching for him, and hissed when Frostbite bumped into him a little too roughly for comfort.

After that, Frostbite picked him up, and Danny stopped forcing his eyes open.

.

He woke up cocooned in sadly invisible blankets. There were voices. Deep, rhythmic ones. He sighed and tucked his chin down against his chest. He was safe here.

.

He woke up again, hungry and grumbling. He complained until he got food and went back to sleep.

.

When was the last time he opened his eyes? It was dark.

.

"... have finished?" said the voices.

"... reconsider the surgery..."

"... preparations..."

.

Danny woke up.

He could see his nose. Huh. He'd never really noticed how visible his nose was before he'd been stuck invisible. Really. It was right there.

He went back to sleep.

[kuroopaisen]

@kacchand (i couldn't tag your main but i wanted to make sure you saw this fdlkjfdlkj) 

hello dear! i’m sorry it took me so long to respond to this dflskjfdlkfdj i decided to answer your ask in a text post so i can link my thoughts to yours more easily! also, i know i'm going to Ramble, so i wanted to be able to keep it under a cut sdlkfjd

Hi rowan!! I've just finished the final chapter of aot and I just wanted to ask your opinion on it!

(SPOILERS THAT DEPICT MY UNDERSTANDING OF THE STORY'S MEANING AHEAD. READ ONLY IF YOU'VE FINISHED THE CHAPTER)

(FR )

(THERE'S STILL TIME TO BACK OUT)

(DO IT NOW. SPOILER ALERT)

I'd also like to ask a follow up question about it, because it seems that I've come to a different concl. from many of my friends and I'm feeling dumb abt how i feel w it.

first of all (and i say this as sincerely as possible, and if i'm coming off as condesending please let me know hh), please don't feel dumb because you've come to a different conclusion :(

we all read media at different levels (i’ve been told it’s ‘not that deep’ before fdljkfsdlkj) and identify different aspects in it, so the fact that you've had a different experience to some of your friends is absolutely not a reflection on your intelligence. and if anyone's making you feel that way, drop their @. i just want to talk :) furthermore, you’re not wrong for responding to something emotionally, especially if it really... makes you uncomfortable, you know? 

i'm from the PH & I've put off determining whether i'm comfy w the manga til the last chap,,,, but is it wrong that I can't shake the feeling that it's a justification of japanese expansionism and genocide? ik this manga has always been in the grey area, and that's what I love abt it! It often shows that no choice they make is absolutely good or bad, and does such a good job at showing you how each complex character came to that understanding (role of environment, etc...) but this last chapter felt too positive abt the rumbling? Like it was justified because paradis was able to advance and there wasn't much choice? idk.

that's totally valid! some of the best think pieces on the show i read mentioned that the concern with the narrative is less "is isayama a nazi sympathiser?" (he most likely isn't), but if he's a imperial japan apologist. and...

well, let's just say that my father is british, and when i was trying to say that colonisation was bad, using british india as an example, he said "well, we gave them railroads." it's... it's uncomfortable and gross and i think it encapsulates how countries with imperial pasts tend to talk about them; even if they don't officially endorse it, there's often a lot of talk about how "well colonialism was good for this country, actually--"

and if the manga felt like it was justifying japanese expansionism, then chances are it had elements that very much did point towards that. i've had a lot of trouble grappling with reiner, annie and bertolt, because they've existed in this grey area of 'victim of oppression' and 'war criminal'; and their existence raises the question of "do people who commit war crimes simply do what needs to be done?" and by victimising them it... it plays into the whole nuremberg defense of "i was just following orders". it's making you feel bad for the people committing said war crimes (and similarly with eren, and all the awful things he's done). but i'll get more into this point later dsfkjfd

i haven't read the last chapter yet (and don't worry about spoilers! i've been approaching aot from a very... specific perspective anyway, so i actually don't mind spoilers -- i read a bunch of analyses of the series before i'd even watched it hh), but... i think if it came off as too positive about, you know... an awful thing that happened, then it absolutely makes sense that you'd feel uncomfortable?

the modernisation narrative in general is one that always skeeves me out. it's one japanese imperialists use to justify the invasion of korea (and even those infamous tweets from the one account purported to be isayama talk about how the population of korea boomed under japanese imperial occupation, which... stop.)

it's also commonly invoked in cases of development. certain members of society (usually the poor), just 'had' to die for the good of the future. who gives a damn if they consent to that? they have to.

similarly, the 'we had no choice' narrative. that's... a concerning one that crops up time and again with history apologists, the argument that "oh if x country hadn't done y, then someone else would've!" or that acts of aggression were done as pre-emptive self-defence, which is so... ugh. i just. i just hate it.

It also feels really weird w the ymir and the whole loving fritz thing. i wish we got to see more of her thought process and what conclusion she came to that led her to destroying the power of the titans.

i... hate this so much. i get that abuse is complicated and victims often have multifaceted feelings towards their abusers, but... most people would focus on that in their story? the story would be about that? but instead, it's just... a thing in the history of the world and that's... icky.

also having the genesis of the titans come from a slave girl in love with her captor... there's many levels of ick to it and i highly doubt it was handled with the appropriate level of grace and sensitivity.

honestly, this might be one of the things that pissed me off the most because of how... contradictory her backstory was with That One Chapter (you know, instead of ymir crying because she wants to be free or because she’s been trapped she........ wants to see mikasa kiss eren’s decapitated head? i guess? what the fuck?) 

idk...I just think that context is sometimes everything. and i understand that media can portray incorrect things,,,, and that isayama likely didn't intend for it to become a global sensation, but i guess i'm just uncomfortable w the right wing nazis getting a comfort book ahaha.

i totally get that! even if attack on titan is meant to be anti-fascists, the fact of the matter is... a lot of fascists love it. and relate to it. which is... alarming. especially given just how popular aot is worldwide.

it’s hard because before the ending, attack on titan did feel like it was more grey; i remember saying that i wouldn’t know how to feel about it until the ending because the story was either saying “the military is corrupt and war is hell”, or it was saying “the military is corrupt and war is hell, but it is necessary.” 

still sorting out my thoughts, but yeah. I think i'm having a hard time understanding what they really accomplished with the rumbling and how they gave eren a sudden lelouch role and a lot of how they made it out to be a happy thing? perhaps I'm too biased to see it fully but to me it gives a "woah. eren was a hero. he saved us from destruction. those people needed to die for us to achieve this temporary peace and new start". i suppose the rumbling gave them a levelled playing ground?

OH MY GOOOOOD okay. i haven't finished code geass. but i really don't like lelouch. i mean... i think i just don't like characters that sacrifice other people for a purported 'greater good' (i could write an Essay about how much i hate erwin smith looking at him is enough to send me into an unhinged rage), but where i'm up to in the anime, i don't like the direction they're going with eren? i mean, i've never liked eren, but... that whole "martyr for the eldians" is just. ew. especially when you see several eldian characters disagree and resist him. 

why does this one guy get to make choices for everyone else? because he’s sPeCiAL? fuck off 

sorry for not being coherent. maybe i'm basing this too much on feelings ahaha. trust aot to finish it's scandalous run with a scandalous end.

no omg you're being perfectly coherent :( also, if anyone's making you feel bad or stupid for how you experience media, they’re... definitely not as smart as they think they are fdslskjfdlk. 

i'm of that mind that, while media consumption is in part an intellectual exercise, it is inherently very emotional; narrative media tries to make us feel as much as it makes us think. that’s what stories are for, you know? intellectual analysis is well and good but what’s the point of a story if it doesn’t make you feel anything?

that's to say, i don't believe there's such thing as basing your opinion too much on feelings :') especially since it's your personal experience with a piece of media; you don't owe anyone 'objectivity' (which is always a farce when it comes to this sort of thing) or 'logical analysis', because nobody's got any right to criticise you for engaging with media the 'wrong way'.

tl;dr I feel like the mood was too celebratory abt the rumbling, and didn't entail enough on the tragedy so much that it felt like a justification for genocide and expansionism. how do you feel abt it's ending and the message it leaves? is isayama responsible to give a morally correct answer to the cycle of hatred? you're not obligated to answer! and sorry for the rambling.

hhh yeah i guess that’s the thing at the end of the day... is isayama responsible for giving a “morally correct” answer? no, but the way the ending plays out is very telling. 

like armin thanking eren? mikasa’s e n t i r e character boiling down to being in love with a mass murderer no matter how poorly he’s treated her? and one could argue that kind of ending is supposed to be unsettling, supposed to hint that the cycle will just continue, but...

framing is everything. and it’s framed like a Good, Emotional Thing, Aren’t We So Grateful Eren Did All Those Awful Things 

YI think I would've been fine if we got to see more of Eren's or Yif you have a different perspective on how eren is being portrayed please do share! I just felt really yucky watching armin say "thanks for murdering all those people for us" with love,,, I suppose he was trying to make eren feel better. ach maybe I'm just overreacting. idk. im dumb ahaha . i'll send this in anyway cuz I'd love to hear your take!

HHHHHHH i just hate eren and i never got him. i felt bad for him in the beginning, but he's always been too... violent for me. there was a very short period of time in season 2 where i felt bad for him, but otherwise it’s just been... ugh. the main three have always been the weakest part of the series imo, so it’s really not surprising they’re part of the reason the ending was so. bad. 

and... well, that one infamous quote pretty much sums up my issue with armin. he's supposed to be the 'intelligent' one, but he's hopelessly devoted to a homicidal maniac with whom he has a very artificial, unbelievable bond with.

at the end of the day, the "thank you for becoming our monster" thing just makes it seem like attack on titan's core message is "war is horrible, but it is necessary." it feels like it's justifying massacre. and while fiction is fiction, and sometimes it's as simple as that, i think something as politically loaded as attack on titan needs to be looked at with a critical lens when discussing what it’s trying to say or what it means. 

do i think it makes someone a Bad Person for liking aot or being attached to it in some way? no, because that’s dumb, and what media someone likes =/= their Moral Goodness TM. ofc trends are a thing and certain pieces of media appeal to certain types of people, but it’s a false equivalency that misses the point. 

but by that same breath, nobody is wrong or stupid or has Less Valid Opinions just because what they took away from it makes them uncomfortable. 

i’m sorry this is So Long i have so many thoughts about this dskljfslkj 

but at the end of the day, 

levi sexy

[elenathehun]

Watching the Clone Wars, part 7

Well, this is a better batch of episodes than last time, solely due to not having to actually skip an episode because it was too awful to watch.  With that said, click on keep reading to see reviews of "Brain Invaders", "Grievous Intrigue", "The Deserter", "Lightsaber Lost", "The Mandalore Plot", "Voyage of Temptation", and "Duchess of Mandalore".

"Brain Invaders" (2x08)

I'd rate this as above-average.  I am not really into horror as a genre, as I previously noted, so I was pretty grossed out by the brain worms.  However, it was a pretty nice Ahsoka and Barriss episode, although I think it's a bit weird that four Jedi Knights/Masters are necessary to interrogate Poggle. 

Anyway, it's not an episode of The Clone Wars without some unexpected graphic clone violence.  I don't blame Ahsoka or Barris for killing poor Trap - I even think this was well-written and conveyed the desperation of their situation well - but good god, it was startling.  Also tense: that final approach to the medical station.

Not good: Kit Fisto entering a ship that's infested with brain worms with no PPE.  C'mon, man, I know your headtails are majestic, but keep it covered up!  Also not super great: Anakin and Ahsoka's little talk at then end.  A lot of their interaction just feels forced.  I honestly feel like this should have been a dialogue of some kind between Ahsoka and Barriss.

"Grievous Intrigue" (2x09)

Sort of a meh episode.  I understand Eeth Koth is a bit of a bad-ass in the comics, and that does sort of carry over in this episode, but mostly it just seems like a vehicle for various Jedi Masters to quip while crossing blades with this somewhat delightful murder-cyborg.  Obi-Wan gives a furious monologue to Grievous, which rings a bit hollow since the clone army has had precious little screen-time (at least relatively speaking) to exhibit their loyalty or spirit.

Shout-out to Cody and those 212th soldiers dog-piling Grievous.  If only you'd had a lightsaber, Cody, you probably could have killed him right then and there.  And if the writers let you and your fellows out of the background more often, Obi-Wan's speech would have rung more true at the time this episode aired.

"The Deserter" (2x10)

I struggled with accurately summarizing why this episode left me cold.  After all, the focus is split between Rex and the pursuit of Grievous, and I love most of the clone-centric episodes I've seen thus far.  But after some thought, I realized this episode felt like the culmination of a character arc that never actually occurred for Rex, at least on-screen.  After all, this episode is only the third time he's been promoted to something more than the token Clone Character Who Doesn't Die At The End - the previous two episodes I thought were legitimately Rex-centric were Season One's "Rookies" and "The Hidden Enemy".  We still barely know the guy, but in this episode we watch him wrestle with doubt about his role and reason for existence when faced with a fellow clone who's made radically different choices than he has, before triumphantly stating his place is with the army.  This feels like it would be a great episode, if only we were more attached to the character. Writers have to build-up to those kind of moments, or they ring false.

Anyway, is it just me or is Obi-Wan getting a little angry in this episode?

"Lightsaber Lost" (2x11)

I wasn't expecting much from this episode, but it was actually very good.  Aside from the annoying Cad Bane arc at the beginning of the season, the Ahsoka episodes have been improving a lot this season - possibly because she's been separated from Anakin for a lot of them.  Losing a lightsaber feels like the sort of problem a Padawan might face, and the solution feels like the sort of thing an impatient teenager would resort to.  Tera Sinube is a gem - I am always a sucker for the elderly teaching the next generation, and he does it so well!  The animation was well done too, especially in the chase scenes. 

I've been ragging on TCW for it's lack of interconnectivity between episodes and episode arcs, but this is a stand-alone episode done right: it focuses on what a secondary character (yes, I know she's supposed to be a main character, but she doesn't feel like it quite yet), allows them to learn a lesson that develops their characters in an organic way, and reverberates through future episodes (I hope!).

"The Mandalore Plot", "Voyage of Temptation", and "Duchess of Mandalore" (2x12 -2x14)

Oof.  So, this was the arc that actually made me quit watching TCW the first time around.  I am very lukewarm on Mandalorians in general, so that wasn't great.  But aside from that, and from the well-attested issue of everyone on Mandalore looking like a Storm Front fantasy, this arc exhibits the same structural writing defects the entire show has shown far - and honestly, life is too short to watch bad TV.  At this point, I know this main issue will never be corrected in the entire show run, so I can accept it and push through in the name of completionism and writing research, but at the time I wasn't active in fandom and it was enormously easy to just stop watching and move onto other, better, shows and books.

Now, I thought long and hard about how to review these episodes, but I think it's useful in this case to interview them as a singular block instead of individual episodes.  The story is largely cohesive, if a bit strained. It is essentially Palpatine's PT plot writ small: he wants to take over Mandalore (a reason is never really explicated in the actual story, so who knows why), and he's doing it by essentially creating a false war between the CIS proxies, Death Watch, and the Republic proxy, which is Duchess Satine.  If all goes according to plan, Satine will be shown as ineffectual and unable to rule her people, and the GAR can occupy Mandalore for reasons of "public safety".  This will inflame the Mandalorians, who aren't part of the Republic and don't want to be, and send them rushing in the arms of the CIS-allied Death Watch, starting a cycle of radicalization and violence which will end (at least from Palpatine's POV) with Mandalore firmly in his grasp, and all potential opposition killed in the Civil War he engineered.   

As enormously stupid as the whole plot sounds, it's a valid historical tactic for imperial powers looking to expand.  And that's lead us the the primary flaw of this story: The Jedi are the Bad Guys.  Just ignore the tangled mess of Mandalorian canon, retcons, and expanded universe, past and present - in the show itself, they are presented as a smaller, weaker neighbor-state, and the Jedi are acting as agents of an expansionary military power, interfering with their internal politics specifically for the purpose of a soft invasion.  And that's an interesting story!  But that story is deliberately obfuscated and hobbled because the writers and producers of TCW were and are ever-so-concerned with making the Jedi as sympathetic as possible, even in situations where they shouldn't be.

Part of that hobbling is Satine's character.  Satine is badly written, but she's badly written in a very specific way that has been common to most of the non-CIS political antagonists the show has presented thus far.  Satine's most interesting characteristic is that she doesn't want to involve Mandalore with the war - and who can blame her?  The Republic and the CIS have nothing to offer to her or her people.  The only thing that will happen is the exploitation of Mandalore's natural resources (at best) or the destruction of her people, caught between two Great Powers who obviously don't care for her people's struggle.  That's an interesting character, right?  A POV we haven't seen in this show so far, which has consistently been from the Jedi POV, which is pretty firmly in the CIS = monsters and Republic = assholes (but democratic assholes!) camp.

But it's a POV that is pretty uncomplimentary of the Jedi role in this war, which means Satine must be crippled by an obnoxious belief in pacifism, like the unlikably-written Lurmen in season one, and also weighted down by a personal connection to an avatar of the Republic, like Senator Farr and his "family friendship" with Padme overcoming the fact that his people are starving and getting no support from the Republic.  I have heard people argue that TCW, written as it was in the late 2000s, is reacting against the excesses of the War on Terror.  I am less than convinced, mostly because every single anti-war character is reduced to a flat caricature of an annoying pacifist that can be safely defeated by the ever-so-kind warrior monks in the space of an episode or two before being cast aside for the next adventure. 

Because Satine's motivations are poorly written, her actions don't make a lick of sense. In "The Mandalore Plot", she's clearly escorting Obi-Wan around under duress - but in "Voyage of Temptation", she's apparently going with the Senators willingly to the Coruscant, to essentially beg the Senate to not invade.  Why not write her as an unwilling "guest" of the Republic, invited without recourse to defend her people's sovereignty?  Well, that would show Obi-Wan in a very unflattering light, wouldn't it?  But in "Duchess of Mandalore" she's back to being a prisoner in everything but name, escaping custody to receive an unaltered copy of her dead minister's speech.  

Now, Obi-Wan helps her at that point...but it's clearly due to some poorly-written romantic feelings.  I am not interested in any Padme/Anakin parallels, mostly because I find it incredibly tedious and honestly not helpful in exploring Anakin's Leap into the Dark Side.  This story is a gigantic missed opportunity to show the Jedi (or at least, a representative of the Jedi) wrestle with their roles as avatars of the republic, when the republic is so obviously manufacturing a reason to invade Mandalore.  Palpatine is obviously orchestrating this whole thing, but he still (at this point in the show) requires the consent of the Senate to essentially annex more territory - and the Senate is perfectly happy to give him that consent, by the way.  There is a fantastic story on the Jedi side about the clash of ideals vs realities, and the writers totally side-stepped it.

But pulling the focus out a little further, that has actually been par for the course for most of the Obi-Wan stories of season 2.  He's been consistently more and more irritated about the war as the season has gone on, and made some off-hand comments about the ungratefulness of the Republic populace that, in the hands of a more competent writer, could have been a multi-season character arc about loss of faith in fallible human institutions, which would dovetail pretty well with his characterization in both RotS and ANH.  Instead, his character remains the static wise-cracking Good Guy; Satine is the Designated Love Interest, unable to develop along more interesting and independent lines; and this arc falls deeply flat as a result.  

They're not the only characters who are horribly underwritten.  I mean, here we are at the end of Season 2, and have we yet seen a sympathetic CIS character, or an accounting of how Palpatine was able to take advantage of already extant fractures in the Republic to create a shadowy cabal dedicated to tearing it apart?  No.  It's all war crimes and evil laughter so far.  The Good Guys always win (until they don't), the bad guys are always Very Bad, and there are no shades of gray in this massive galaxy.  Again, ignoring the complicated Mandalorian backstory, Death Watch is extremely under-baked as villains.  There could have been a fascinating interplay between Satine and Pre about their different visions for their people's future, but just as Satine is a flat Pacifist caricature, Pre is a dull Terrorist caricature.

I have to give a special mention to the horrible Love Confession of "Voyage of Temptation".  This is the episode where Satine is written most consistently as Peak Pacifist.  If she had instead been written as anti-war (but not necessarily a philosophical pacifist), her escape from Tal Merrik would have been a great inversion of that trope - and in fact, I thought it was at first, when she "confessed", and then had to make an annoyed face when Obi-Wan didn't immediately play along.  Instead, they played it straight, and I've never felt more simpatico with a villain than when Tal Merrik complained about their timing.  That fact that Satine's "pacifism" is then used as an excuse for Obi-Wan and Satine to hesitate to kill a terrorist, leading Anakin to kill him...like, c'mon.  I get it, the writers want to show his fall to the dark side, you gotta play the ominous theme music, but is this really a particularly evil act by Anakin?  I'm gonna be honest, if a cop or an armed civilian kills a mass shooter, no one is castigating them for doing so, but instead congratulating them for stopping a murderer from killing again.

Final note and the only one that explicitly addresses the Mandalorian elephant in the room: I hate the Darksaber.  Like, I know we all gave KJA shit for the original Darksaber novel, but the fact that Filoni (or Lucas?) repurposed the name for a SPECIAL MANDALORIAN LIGHTSABER fills me with intense rage.  They're fucking gun knights, you coward, stop inserting your weird Arthurian hard-on into my western samurai sci-fi pastiche.

And that's it for this batch of episodes.  Up next: Boba Fett makes his first appearance in our chronological viewing, and we return to Mandalore a second time, much to my sorrow. 

[whetstonefires]

Sephiroth, 1, 2, 5, 9, 12, 16, 20. I find your take on him so interesting! (And kind of sad too...)

Oh gosh this is so many! Haha okay, here goes.

1.Their physical weak spots

Huh. He’s programmed to be literally impossible to damage in the one actual fight in the Nibel flashback, the dragon. I theorize this might have been his first-level Limit? But of course you can’t use a Limit unless you’ve been injured first. (Apparently they reversed this in the Remake which is a major thematic change and I don’t like it? Anyway tho.)

So on one level his physical untouchability is part of his trademark and there’s a temptation to say ‘none’ and be done with it.

Normal human weak spots, I imagine, he’s not as alien as all that. The throat is the throat, I mean. His disinclination for wearing shirts may suggest an indifference to thoracic damage, but between his tendency to not get hit at all and the existence of healing magic that doesn’t necessarily mean much.

The vertical pupils which can dilate much further than normal would make him particularly vulnerable to flashbangs used in a dark or even dim environment. I assume Wutaian ninjas exploited the heck out of that. :D

2. Their emotional/moral weak spots

Abandonment issues was a big one, I think, and all the huge gaping vulnerabilities created by being a child with no one to love, or who loved you.

Thinking outside of Shinra’s standard pathways is a matter of some anxiety to him, in Crisis Core–his idea of resistance is ‘find my friend first and then oops fail to kill him they can’t prove it was on purpose’ and then later ‘turn down the assignment to find my friend and kill him.’ There’s just, a lot of emotional dependence on a toxic structure indicated by his behavior patterns.

I’m sure that was deliberately instilled, but it’s not that hard. His superpowers aren’t Superman scale self-sufficient until after he ‘dies’ once, and capitalism does what it does. He’s not much less dependent on the Company for survival than the average worker, and more so for identity.

Morally he was disadvantaged by being a corporate supersoldier with Hojo as his parent–the details of his upbringing have never been clarified but they sure didn’t put him anywhere outside Shinra enough for him to form external attachments, or even powerful internal personal ones prior to the rather shaky ones he managed with two peers sometime in adolescence, which leaves fairly few possibilities really.

Anyway morally he’s nothing but weaknesses, even before he got tangled up with The Thing From The Northern Crater and decided he was God and should consume all life. ^^;

5. Guilty pleasures 

You know, I don’t think even pre-evil Sephiroth did guilt much? Waste of energy, and (see above) he wasn’t socialized for it, it’s counterproductive in a soldier. The ‘guilt’ in guilty pleasure is really a species of shame though, and anyone with that much pride is vulnerable to the opposite, even if they weren’t exposed to someone like Hojo growing up….

You know, it was probably novels? He was a reader, and one of the most personal things we know about him from the OG is the deep impression left by Hojo’s furious rant about how inappropriate it was to use poetic expressions about magic. Even ‘magic’ was too sentimental for this domineering science twit.

So, every so often growing Sephiroth would get his hands on a piece of fiction, and the quality wasn’t necessarily great because it was whatever he could pick up in the break room or wherever, but he’d hole up out of sight and scarf it down. Even once he had his own living space and salary and could buy whatever books he wanted and store them, he’d pick up novels on the sly and get rid of them once he was done, like someone was going to catch him. One of the things he used to pick out of the ruins in Wutai during the looting was books.

He always felt a confusing mess of jealousy and scorn about Genesis’ Loveless thing. That he could just like it like that, constantly, right out in the open, where anyone could laugh at him. That nobody had ever taken it away.

Less tragically, I think sometimes he’d go home and watch bad TV. Whatever Midgar’s stupidest soap opera was. Sephiroth caught enough of the reruns to know most of the main plots. He had an opinion about who the father of Jaqueline’s baby should have turned out to be. He would never admit this.

9. Humiliating memories

Okay, as touched on above repeatedly, he grew up with Hojo, who loves breaking people down and laughing at them, so he’s probably got a lot of these.

The worst one is one time when he had a weak moment or an optimistic one, and asked out loud in words for something he really, really wanted, and Hojo said yes, and gave Sephiroth just enough time to get desperately excited and express gratitude before laughing at him and saying of course he was lying. Don’t be stupid.

That isn’t something important enough to bother with.

12. Grudges and vendettas 

‘Burning inside with violent anger’ isn’t there for no reason. From Nibelheim on these define him, and according to bonus materials of middling canon status he eventually sheds almost all identity elements but his grudges.

I think, based on the shape of his breakdown? That for most of his life he told himself that holding onto anger and pursuing grudges was a waste of time and energy. But that didn’t actually help him let any of it go, he just internalized and ignored things. Because he wasn’t actually not holding grudges, he was just reacting like someone who didn’t have any choices, and marinating in spite.

Spite against Hojo surfaces on the way up to the reactor in a way that says to me it’s a habit, almost a reflex. But it manifests in profound pettiness, and I think that’s the only way he normally felt he was permitted to act out against the people who really bothered him, though I’m also sure he channeled a lot of anger into unrelated killing. Natural thing to do when you’re a frustrated teenager who’s supposed to be killing people anyway.

By the time he did it in Nibelheim, it was an old habit.

The fact that he bothered to personally kill the Shinra President as his big debut says to me he was holding a grudge about his entire life against the person who commissioned him and declared the war and shaped the floating Midgar-world that defined his life. I think there were probably a lot of personal insults in there too, just because of the way Shinra Sr. seems to have conducted himself generally.

He’s a Donald Trump expy wouldn’t you.

Sephiroth is written as a much softer person in Crisis Core, almost absurdly so, but even there you can see him resenting Genesis and Angeal more than a little for abandoning him. It probably brought back his whole mess of feelings about Gast, who really did abandon him quite unforgivably but Sephiroth never knew the full circumstances, just that he was gone and later dead. There are signs he blamed Hojo, who doesn’t seem to have gloated openly about the murder even if he did make sure to inform the boy his favorite person was dead now.

And of course later on there’s Cloud, which doesn’t actually make that much sense until you loop in the retcon about Cloud throwing him into the reactor and cutting short his initial rampage. There’s the grudges he seems to have inherited from Jenova, against the Cetra.

It’s not out of the question that he killed Aerith the way he did in part because she was the thing Gast abandoned him for, as well as all the other less personal reasons. I sort of like to think so.

16. Dark secrets/’skeletons in the closet’

Of his own, as opposed to ‘about him’ that he found out about, I don’t think he really had many? He wasn’t much accustomed to privacy.

I think most of the worst things he did, as a human being rather than a transhuman monstrosity, were pretty unavoidably public; they were war crimes, and happened in front of some fraction of the rest of the army. He was praised for them.

There probably were a lot of dark things he never talked to anyone about, that weren’t really known, but except for outright humiliating childhood incidents like above he wasn’t particularly hiding them. He was just never in a position where it would have made any sense to him to bring them up.

Genesis wasn’t ever someone it was safe to be vulnerable around, and Angeal was uncomfortable with too much emotion, and besides they were fellow soldiers and it wasn’t like the things he didn’t talk about from the war were anything special, and he wasn’t going to complain about his childhood to them. And who else was there?

Dude needed so much therapy.

20. What-ifs/Alternate Timelines 

I go absolutely nuts with alternate timelines for Sephiroth. He’s so much fun to work with that way.

Lucretia and Vincent stole the baby and went on the run: Firo grew up kinda isolated in the woods with his parents but runs away at thirteen to fight Shinra because he’s so mad they had to leave Wutai because of the invasion. Parzival AU.

Ifalna recruited Sephiroth to her escape scheme and he wound up raising Aerith on the run, under the names Rith and Roth. Beloved Dust AU, that one’s actually online as you may very well know lol.

Vincent blew up the Nibelheim reactor with Hojo and Jenova in it when Sephiroth was six, and then later Midgar blew up as well and the Shinra world order collapsed, and the recently married Mrs. Strife adopted the weird lab kid. Later on Cloud pressures his big brother into starting an anti-bandit militia. Time Of General Strife AU.

Cute three-way blood brothers ceremony contaminates Genesis’ body with Sephiroth’s DNA and sets off his degeneration several years early, when they’re all teenagers and not nearly as famous, powerful, or fucked in the head. Brother and Brother AU.

And so on. ;}

[hecallsmehischild]

Recent Media Consumed

Books

A History of Christianity by Paul Johnson. Interesting story behind this choice. A friend remarked that Christianity had been spread by the sword, which I denied with a good bit of shock. She picked up this book to check herself, and soon after I decided it would be a good idea if I knew a bit more about the history of the Church, too. After reading this book, my understanding is that for most of its history, Christianity was not spread to non-Christians by the sword because Christianity was too busy shedding blood between its own sects to bother with non-Christians. After hearing about centuries and centuries of inter-sect horrors, I couldn’t help some dark humor, “Where did they even find the time and energy for anti-semitism?”. That aside, this was a very difficult book for me to process. This is the sort of book I struggle with because it is as dry as any high school history textbook and uses many words I’d never even heard of. Still, I really wanted to get some sort of starter picture of the situation, so I decided I would keep reading (listening on Audible) and glean as much as I could from the gist. I have definitely gleaned the gist and it is pretty depressing. Also, I found, there WERE periods when it was spread by the sword to non-Christians. Basically when Christianity and Politics mixed, the picture ain’t great. Christianity in power did some incredible things, but every page of its history is riddled with corruption and bloodshed too. I saw the roots of some dogmas I took for granted and it appalls and disheartens me. Funny enough, the end result of me reading this book is a deeper understanding of my desperate need for God’s grace, because there is NO way I can know with 100% certainty where the full and complete truth is at this point even if I was ready to conform every last aspect of my life to it, so there’s NO way I could “do all the right things” to earn grace, I just have to throw myself on God’s grace and mercy. This is a very painful and upsetting book to read, but I also think it is something most Christians should consider reading at some point. If we seek the truth as we claim, we must seek it as fully as we are capable in our lives, and the history of the church is not taught and examined nearly enough.

Blackout by Candace Owens. Approached with some caution. Listened while alternating between wincing and nodding. I think she makes some very good points, but I was having trouble pinpointing why I felt so uncomfortable with the decisive, often antagonistic tone she’d taken. But the more I listened to her describe black history, culture, and experience, the more I realized my discomfiture with her tone had to do with the fact that I was not her target audience, and realizing who was. At which point I laughed at myself. This is an interesting book, and while I do prefer reading Thomas Sowell’s calmer tone, I don’t regret this read. It’s another puzzle piece in a learning process.

The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden. Oh this was a dark and lovely dark fairytale romp. And as I read it, I felt like I was reading fanfiction. Like, a good emotionally invested fanfiction writer spun a new angle on old, dark Russian fairytales and spirits. Took me out of reality for a bit, which was exactly what I needed to regain perspective on reality. Though it was a little weird for me to read, too. Danced on the edge of my comfort level on some issues, but raised questions I also want to think about.

Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell. It is one of those kind of painful to read books. I’d already read Intellectuals and Race (which was a segment of THIS book that got expanded and extrapolated into its own book) though this book covers several other areas that intellectuals have had vast influence in (influence, he argues, that is disproportional to their understanding of the subject matter they opine on). I have about the same takeaway; be wary of those who feel they know enough to remove decision making from other peoples’ hands, becoming their caretakers and saviors.

Homestuck by Andrew Hussie. I did give it a real solid try, well over 800 pages of it. It’s an interesting idea, but it never really hooked me hard and I didn’t enjoy a lot of it. At this point I don’t think I want to finish it.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “trilogy” by Douglas Adams. So I re-read the whole thing (all five books of the trilogy), and while I enjoyed the satire and verbal romp of it all (seriously, Douglas Adams just… PLAYS with his words in such a way that you comprehend every shade of meaning he intended you to get) I was left emptier by the end, this time. I think I realized what a lighthearted tragedy (or dark comedy?) this series is. Nothing has any meaning by the end. Still, it is a fun romp to read.

On Deck

The Princess Bride by William Goldman.

Lectures by Bart Ehrman about the History of Early Christianity

Lectures by Jordan Peterson about Genesis and Psychology

The Animaniacs Reboot

24 - Season 6