#I mean in everything but especially in sv??? which is a story about a single dude changing the entire events of a narrative

[adjit]

"that's not what they act like in canon!" is often a fair criticism of fanworks, but sometimes an author is exploring post canon and the possible growth directions of the characters, or how an AU changes the characters and their trajectories, or how one character being different affects the characters around them

and frankly if you as a reader still need to gain the reading comprehension to understand that idea, you are not in a position to be criticizing someone else's work

[charmanderxerneas]

God actually completely unrelated to my last rant, i just have pokemon on the brain because its all over my dash right now and I wanna be a complainy bitch. Ive said this before I’ll say it again:

POKEMON FANS ARE WHINEY FUCKING CRYBABIES GAHHHH

Pokemon fans seriously only judge things based on nostalgia, all the games that were around when they were ten years old are “great, best pokemon game” and all the new switch games are “fucking garbage and I hate what gamefreaks doing to the series”

Newsflash from someone whos played every single gen of pokemon: The games quality is the same as when you were a kid. Swsh, scarlet violet, new pokemon games are fucking great. Especially story wise. Just because the models arent fuckin as realistic as you want them (Shitty complaint to me because 1) they look fine. Literally it all looks fine. The pokemon are well animated and full of personality. 2) If it was way realistic it might not look like it fits in the pokemon world which is a little cartoony, would hurt the playing experience, 3) It might also hurt the gameplay, impacting its loading time and also would force them to spend way more time texturing in the grand scheme of things: completely unnecessary details when they could focus on more important things, 4) older pokemon games werent that realistic but you dont complain about their charming graphics now do you, i could go on) doesnt mean theyre bad games.

Remakes are a good thing. So long as theyre still making new original games, which they are, theres nothing bad about remaking s game so a new generation of kids can play it. Really annoys me how hypocritical everyone was like “They should make games like when I was a kid” but then they remake diamond and pearl and everyones like “waaa its shit now” when the only change is Visual? If an artstyle change is enough to make you throw a fit: you’re a toddler, sorry. Grow up. I’m glad they have two remakes (legends doing something new and exciting for fans who want more added to their remakes and also remakes like bdsp that are very accurate to the original games for people who dont want major changes) because its the best of both worlds and should make everyone happy. If pokemon fans didnt complain about everything.

It’s good to complain about some things, I get being mad that gamefreak is forced to rush out their games for example. But that doesnt mean the games are bad, in fact theyre great for what time they had to work on them. Yes they could be better but that doesnt mean theyre anywhere near bad.

If i see one more pokemon fan complain like “im glad theyre not remaking gen 5 because theyd fuck it up” or “swsh/bdsp/sv is shit and garbage and pokemon isnt good anymore, unlike when I was a ten year old” im gonna scream and rip my hair out and throw barrels at you like im donkey kong

[uncontrollablesphere]

Living Dex Quest 2018—202?

I suddenly became possessed with the urge to record my progress like a week ago and wrote this in one day. Anyway, here's the goals, methods, hurdles, and current state of my living dex.

Goal

Obtain every single Pokémon of every stage and major form and put them in a single game (ultra sun or moon). Originally this goal was meant to update for each successive generation, but of course SwSh threw a wrench in that when it became the new standard to exclude certain Pokémon from being able to be transferred to certain games. I don’t want to pay for Pokémon home indefinitely, especially when I know it will eventually have its support cut just like bank, so I’ll just have gen 1-7 in a gen 7 game and gen 8 regional dex can stay in SwSh. Not sure I’ll do gen 9, I don’t even own SV and have no plans to.

Never really cared about the pokedex until I saw someone post a video of their living dex on here years ago, and a 5+ year quest was started. I really, really wanted to do it by playing a game from each gen and transferring Pokémon upwards in order to also have a complete regional dex in each game, thereby getting shiny charms where possible, but this is tedious and only practical if you have every game already. I used to.

Dealing with theft

In 2020, my progress was hindered when FRLG, DPPt, HGSS, XY, SUMO, USUM, two Nintendo ds, and more were stolen from me by my former roommate when I moved (everything listed above having a nearly or complete regional living dex on it as well as several long gone event exclusive mythical Pokémon). Five generations, hundreds of dollars, and those priceless mythical Pokémon, unobtainable in any game, lost instantly. To say this was demoralizing would be an understatement. I was slow to unpack my things after the move, so I was still finding out about new things that were stolen months after the fact. I was constantly reminded of a new “loss” every couple of weeks, as I was trying to get over it. I did not play Pokémon again for months, and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to try again.

I got a second wind when I realized I had another option apart from buying back FRLG and HGSS and replaying all four: get the majority of gen I and II pokemon from Pokémon colosseum and XD, which luckily were among the games that were spared. This didn’t solve the mythical Pokémon problem, but it was a lot cheaper and more appetizing than playing the same games again (I only had to buy a gamecube/gba cable). Of course it did mean a lot of time spent transferring Pokémon to RSE and breeding since you can’t really catch multiples of most Pokémon in colosseum/XD, but it was different enough from what I’d been doing before to be fresh and exciting, plus I’d never actually beaten those games before! I got to do something I thought I’d never care to do, get the Mount Battle Ho oh (can’t be nicknamed unfortunately), and catch Shadow Lugia as possibly the most badass instances of each of those Pokémon (imo).

Of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Pokémon colosseum extra disc containing jirachi, as a rare opportunity to get jirachi outside of an event. That disc is expensive nowadays and I don’t own it, and iirc jirachi was already available by that time in Pokémon go, so I figured it was overkill to get the disc. More on that later.

There are of course several Pokémon found in FRLG that I could not obtain between Colosseum, XD, Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, but only one is exclusive to a single game…

So I did actually have to buy back Leaf Green, but I didn’t want to do a full play through twice to get both omanyte and kabuto, so I looked up how to speedrun it and did that for the first time ever. I won’t bore you with the details but it was casual as far as speedruns go, but I still completed the main story in only 16 hours, a record for me. In order to trade with RSE the game couldn’t stop at the credits so I had to do some of the sevii islands stuff, and that wasn’t too bad.

With gen I-III taken care of, it was time to start buying back games. I started with XY because I hadn’t replayed them the first time I completed their dex and hadn’t actually completed them since they came out, so it seemed like the most fun at the time. I wasn’t too enthused though because I didn’t find the games memorable, but to my surprise and delight they were actually really fun the second time around, perhaps in part due to my relatively new habit of planning teams ahead of time and sticking to pokemon I’ve never used before. I actually battled in set mode for once, and didn’t struggle too much. I’d still count them as the weakest in the core series outside SV perhaps which I haven’t played, but they’re fun enough that I actually have another play through planned just for fun soon. When it came time to play the opposite game for version exclusives, I lucked out: the copy of X I bought was already mostly complete, only one badge missing and with a (fairly balanced) team. One of them was even the fossil mon I hadn’t picked in Y, so I didn’t need to restart the game until it was time to get the third starter. I completed the game and got attached to the three Pokémon on that person’s team I hadn’t used before, a Slowbro named Meiklejohn, a Farfetch’d named Wilson, and an Aurorus named Hull, so they’ll be coming with me on my living dex quest, even though I already had a farfetch’d and slowbro.

But the real highlight of XY is of course…

The Vivillon Quest

As a kid I was never able to use GTS or anything because ds games required a WEP key to connect to wifi and my home wifi didn’t have that. I tried so many times to get it to work without understanding why it didn’t that I just assumed the 3ds wouldn’t connect either and so I never used online services with Pokémon except at friends’ houses. Anyway, at the time I was working on gen VI dex I was living in a rural area with no wifi or data, and the closest place to me with free wifi was a hotel a five minute drive away. So I drove to the parking lot of said hotel, tried connecting to their wifi, and lo and behold, not only did it work, but to that day (and this day as well) people are still on the gen VI GTS trading vivillons!

There are 20 patterns and each (aside from two event exclusives) are only obtainable in certain regions. It is possible to choose which region your 3ds is set to to a certain extent (limited by what overall region your 3ds is, IE JP, PAL, US, etc) but after that it’s one pattern per game. Manipulating this would be tedious and feel like cheating to me, plus I wouldn’t be able to get all the patterns this way anyway, so I caught ~30 scatterbug and evolved them into the not-at-all-uncommon High Plains pattern, then over the course of a week or two I drove to the hotel every night to scour the GTS for the patterns I needed.

Unfortunately most people putting their vivillons in GTS would specify which pattern they wanted in return and as I said, my native pattern is not uncommon. There’d be nothing stopping me from ignoring people’s requests and trading anyway, but I tried to respect their requests as id like others to respect mine (for the record, many, many people traded me their elegant patterns against my will, but whatever). In a few cases I did have to ignore those requests though as certain patterns were extremely rare and I was desperate lol.

A few I got off of the GTS, by trading with online passerby and frantically hovering over my vivillon box to try to communicate what I wanted, which was actually successful a few times. The last two (four) vivillon I got, sandstorm and I believe archipelago (as well as the two event patterns) i got due to tremendously lucky timing: I was playing close to international butterfly day (or something) and someone on reddit did/does a yearly vivillon giveaway on that day, taking requests for what patterns you need. Iirc they did do the 3ds region selection thing to get certain patterns which is not ideal but I feel like as long as they’re technically legitimate and I still had to trade for them, I’m satisfied with that. I did also accept a pokeball and fancy vivillon from them with the knowledge that they were cloned from legitimate event vivillon. Of course I’d rather have non-clones versions of those and I’m still not sure whether I’ll even transfer them upward, but it’s nice to have them anyway. I have no doubt that Pokémon go will eventually feature those two patterns and I won’t be able to transfer those back to USUM, so perhaps the clones can be my stand-ins.

The vivillon side quest may sound tedious but it was actually really fun and exciting, I loved interacting with what few (surprisingly many) people still cared about vivillon in 2021 when I did this, and it increased my appreciation tenfold for a Pokémon I never really cared for before. While it won’t be part of my living dex itself as it’s probably a clone, I even got a shiny savannah vivillon from one generous stranger! I’m thinking of using this in my next play through of X if I decide I want compound eyes for its ability.

Unfortunately for aspiring living dex collectors everywhere (or maybe just me), Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon each have an additional pokemon that is not available in the (story-wise) objectively superior games, Sun and Moon. Blacephalon and Stakataka. This is sad for me not just because I’d rather replay SUMO, but because I’d rather OWN SUMO. There’s no getting around it though (except maybe GTS, which ironically I didn’t think of) so I sucked it up and bought both of the “ultra” versions. I did have to play through to the post game of each to obtain the new ultra beasts, and I believe I spread these out between play throughs of other games to preserve my sanity.

A special little quirk of gen VII is that there is a lycanroc form that evolves from an event exclusive rockruff, BUT the evolution into this form is determined by rockruff’s ability. The nice thing about this is that people are wonderful and have bred many many more rockruffs with this ability and distribute them freely on GTS. This is actually an event pokemon I had myself back in the day, so it was a huge relief that people were so generous with their special rockruffs. In return, I bred a few extras of my own and sent them back out into the GTS wilds.

Another fun (real) little quirk of gen VII is the QR scanner. To this day, you can still obtain the mythical Pokémon Magearna by scanning the correct QR code, specific to your 3DS region! As well as, um, a partner cap pikachu, if you want it. Since my living dex is staying in USUM and I’m collecting all major form differences, I guess…I should include that…

Next up was gen IV, and I was a little bitter about having to play USUM instead of SUMO, so against my better judgment I bought platinum instead of Diamond or Pearl, even though BOTH Diamond and Pearl are necessary up to this point to get certain version exclusives. Joke’s on me; I had to replay all three anyway, at least up to the point that glameow and stunky became available. For this reason there was about a two year gap between my platinum and pearl playthroughs. I also played Diamond somewhere in the middle there; a friend of mine (hi Ryan) very generously gave me his copy of Diamond so I didn’t have to buy back that one.

At this point I had redone pretty much all of gen I, II, and IV, and luckily my gen III and V games were not stolen from me, so all that was left to have another complete natdex (aside from mythicals) was to play the poke transfer lab minigame to send ~490 Pokémon to Black 2. *strained smile* Fun!

Mythicals

Most mythical Pokémon can only be obtained through rare distribution events. Not being able to access Nintendo WFC as a kid, I missed most of these. However, for the 20th anniversary of the series, there was a lovely year-long string of distributions for every single mythical that existed at the time, straight into my copies of X and Y that would get stolen four years later *grumble grumble*

Luckily there are a few exceptions; mythicals that can be obtained in a core series game or a side game, at the time of their introduction or years later. Mew (my Pokémon ranch, pokeball plus), Celebi (crystal virtual console), jirachi (colosseum bonus disc), deoxys (ORAS), manaphy (pokemon ranger, BDSP, LA), darkrai (LA), Shaymin (LA), Arceus (LA), keldeo (SwSh), magearna (SUMO), etc. With the exception of magearna, all pokemon introduced after gen III are only currently available in games in gen VIII and above, meaning I won’t be able to have an actually for reals complete living dex in USUM with EVERY mythical without cheating or trading with someone very, very generous. To compensate, I’m allowing myself to just get whatever I can in USUM and other mythicals can be in SwSh with my gen VIII regional dex. Most mythicals are obtainable in Pokémon Go which I still actively play (pretty much exclusively for mythicals), and I do have every mythical that’s been released in Pogo in that game.

I’d like to have as many as possible in USUM though, so I did look into the above methods as well as some less salubrious methods. For mew, I mentioned above that you can get it in my Pokémon ranch (if you deposit 999 Pokémon in the game), but the Wii eshop has shut down, making it impossible to download ranch without homebrewing my Wii. Another option for mew that I thought was viable up until about a week ago is using the mew glitch in Pokémon blue virtual console and transferring it up through Pokémon bank. Seeing as it requires no external hardware and it is a very easy to perform glitch that I have done before, I would consider this mew legit. However, pokemon bank doesn’t, as it apparently checks both the OT and trainer id of any mew you attempt to transfer and will block it if it’s not correct. Soft-resetting for the correct trainer id is lower chances than soft resetting for a shiny and I don’t have the time for that. I don’t think I’d want to do it even if I did. There’s also glitches that can be used to change your trainer ID or the ID of a specific Pokémon, but that kind of manipulation does seem illegitimate to me and I’d rather not. So I’ll just live with my Pokémon Go mew.

Pokémon Ranger games can also send a manaphy egg — one per Pokémon ranger game, NOT one per save file — to a gen IV game. I already did that with my own copy (stolen) and the alternative is buying an unopened copy online. Again, I’m not trying to spend more money on this project than I need to, so I’ll just count the BDSP manaphy.

I also recently found out that some people have made an alternative to Nintendo WFC for Pokémon DS games, including online trading as well as running old event distributions. With a 3DS it is possible to connect DS games to wifi without a WEP key, so I checked that out and was able to get Keldeo, Meloetta, Genesect, Victini, and Darkrai. These Pokémon are pretty much indistinguishable from their original legitimate counterparts except for the fact that I know otherwise, so again I’m not sure if I’ll transfer these upwards. I do have all of those Pokémon in Pogo and SwSh through legitimate means, so they could be stand-ins, like with my clone vivillons. I’ll have to think about it.

The only mythicals I don’t have in any game are volcanion and marshadow, which I’m just now realizing as I fact check this post apparently had three SwSh distributions each that flew over my head. More than likely they’ll eventually be available in Pogo, so I’m not stressing too much over that one.

Vivillon Quest…2!

As mentioned before, I have no doubts that pokeball and fancy vivillon will eventually appear in Pokémon go since all 18 other patterns are now available in it, but I suspect they’ll only be available after every other pattern has been obtained. I know some people have already done that, but perhaps there will be a special research story or somesuch with acquiring forms as a task. Maybe the fancy form will even be released as part of the staggered release of gen IX pokemon, since fancy vivillon are the native pattern of Paldea regardless of your game’s region (no I will not buy SV just for vivillon).

In Pokémon Go you acquire scatterbugs by acquiring multiples of postcards from each pattern’s region. Because pogo gameplay is centered around tedium and repetition (erm, I mean cooperation and engagement) they decided that scatterbug would take 25 candy to evolve into spewpa, which takes 100 candy to evolve into vivillon. Those numbers are analogous to the 125 candies it takes to fully evolve any starter Pokémon, which are actually generally good in battle. As a comparison, caterpie, another early game worm Pokémon, takes a total of 62 candies to fully evolve into butterfree. For the unaware, the only ways to get scatterbug candy are 1) Catching more scatterbug* (three candies per, 6 if using pinap berry), 2) traveling with scatterbug as your buddy (1 candy per kilometer); and converting rare candies to scatterbug candies. In order to fully evolve a vivillon of every form, you need a grand total of 2250 candies (2500 if the event patterns are given to us as scatterbugs).

*Scatterbug is not found in the wild. Currently the only method of encountering it is through postcards obtained in gifts from friends, which you can only receive one gift from each friend per day, and you have to receive a minimum of 3 postcards from a region before encountering that region’s scatterbug. After those first three, successive scatterbugs for the same region require 9 postcards, then 15. Vivillon is not particularly strong. There is no reason for this except to force engagement. It’s not fun. After almost a year, I have only 504 scatterbug candies. I’ve decided to take a break from actively working on this, though I do passively collect more scatterbug candy from my buddy.

Anyway, I just found out 3DS online is being cut off in April (excluding pokemon bank) so I lost all interest in all of that and spent this last weekend scouring reddit for friend safari codes in XY. TO BE CONTINUED

[dukeofonions]

A Lack of Criticism and the Upcoming Video

Putting this under a cut because it gets long.

Something I’ve noticed about the Sanders Sides series is that no one ever seems to criticize the content itself. Whenever a new video is released, it’s immediately showered in praise and adored by the fan base. Especially when it’s been a long break in between content and we’ve all been desperate for a video. We’re caught in the rush of having something new that we immediately latch onto it and this thing has now become the most sacred thing in the fandom.

Now this isn’t always the case, I know some people found Logic vs Passion (I am not typing that monster of an acronym out) to be lower quality. It seemed rushed, the jokes weren’t as funny, no one seemed to really be in character. Which I agreed with the first time around, and it was a shame because it was the first episode to give Logan and Roman the spotlight, and I was so excited for two of my favorite characters to finally get their own episode. Only to not enjoy it as much as I’d wanted to. 

Besides that, other notable criticisms were about Selfishness vs Selflessness which pertained to the questionable lesson that we learned, but this seemed to be intentional on the writers’ part and left the fandom to debate among themselves while we waited for the second part to arrive. Really, the most negativity wrought by that episode was the beginning of the fandom’s “Unsympathetic Patton” debacle. 

Which, didn’t have much to do with the episode itself, as it became more of a fandom thing. 

What I’m getting at is no one ever criticizes the videos directly. The story, dialogue, effects, none of that is ever looked into or critiqued. And as someone who loves to self review movies, books, music, etc. I find this odd because there is a lot of good and bad to be found within the show. In this case, I’d say the good outweighs the bad, and while I enjoy this series a lot, if someone who hadn’t seen it before asked me to describe it this is what I would say: “It’s a bit corny, sometimes the morals can be very on the nose, the humor is kinda cringey and not every joke lands. But overall it’s a good show that has helped me through a lot of things and I love the characters in it. It’s definitely not for everyone, but I would recommend checking it out.”

That is my honest opinion on the series as a whole right there, and if we wanted to go deeper, I have other issues with it as well, which I’ll most likely go into in another post because that’s not what this one is about.

Look, I adore Sanders Sides, but I’d be lying if I said it was flawless. And sometimes, I feel like the fandom is afraid of saying anything negative about the show directly. 

Why?

Because they think if we criticize something Thomas and co. worked so hard on, then we’re not being grateful for the content we’ve received and thus, rendering their hard work to nothing. So instead, we lavish each video with praise and give unconditional support to the creators. Even if the episode was sub par, the majority of the fandom will give it a 10/10 each time just because it’s something Thomas made. 

And I understand why, Thomas is great. He’s someone I look up to and aspire to be like. He’s pretty down to earth and he does his best to include his fan base in everything he does as much as he can. He tries to put out content that everyone can enjoy and gain something from and he’s clearly passionate about what he does, and I respect all that as a fellow creator. 

That being said, criticizing his work isn’t the same as hating on him or any of the team involved making the videos. I know they all work hard, and the evolution of his content and how far he’s come is amazing! The quality of the videos (as far as production and editing go) has greatly improved from the stuff of his early days and he deserves all the support he’s gotten. 

But the fandom seems to be so afraid of having anything negative reach him that they’ll go to drastic measures to make sure any negativity is dealt with and silenced, which in turn makes many others afraid to voice any opinion that differs from the norm, and no one is taking time to stop and think: “Hey, maybe silencing others who don’t agree with us isn’t right and is actually harming people in the fandom.”

This happened recently when Thomas’ newest video “Playing A Video Game Until It’s All You Think About” was released and a few people expressed that they did not think it was that good. 

It felt empty, wasn’t as funny as his other videos, and what most people had an issue with: It was basically a 10 minute advertisement. 

And I agreed with all of these criticisms, and I won’t lie for me part of this came from waiting for the new Sanders Sides, only to get a video that just left me feeling empty at the end. Which usually doesn’t happen after I watch one of Thomas’ videos, I’m never left feeling indifferent or disappointed, but this video was (in my opinion) a serious let down. Especially when there was so much they could have done with it in terms of how they worked the video game into the plot, but that’s a post for another time. 

After people expressed these thoughts, as usual, others were quick to shut the negativity down. Some defended the video while calling out those who had been voicing these things while others simply carried on as usual and showered the video with praise, and not even a day after the video was released, talk about it altogether died out.  So now we’re at a point where the long awaited Sanders Sides is closer than ever to being released, and thus we get to the point of this post: What’s going to happen if this video drops, and it ends up not being the grand masterpiece we’ve all been hyping it up to be?

I keep seeing people (in response to the long wait) saying that this video will be good because it’s taken so long to make. And as we all know, time=quality, right?

Well, not exactly... 

Yes, taking time to work on something can help, but it isn’t what ultimately determines the overall quality of the product. 

There are dozens of factors that go into making something, and time is only one of them. There are Youtubers who produce great content every single day, and some who produce not-so-great content weekly. It all depends on the person(s) working on the content, resources, and time. 

Yes, we’ve been waiting almost 10 months for this video, but does that mean that entire time has been dedicated to this one episode? No! We got other videos in between that time, heck, Thomas didn’t even start filming until after December had passed. Most of the time taken for this video has gone into the animation that will be featured in the video. That’s it. 

If that were to be absent, then I’m pretty sure we would have had this video by now. Not saying they shouldn’t have included the animation, but it’s clear that the wait between videos has become longer since they started adding gimmicks in each episode, and that’s fine if they want to do that! 

I personally don’t think it’s necessary, as the series got along just fine in the beginning with nothing but the dialogue between the characters to carry it, but that’s just my opinion. 

Now, say the video drops, a majority of the fandom loves it, I will most likely love it, but what if despite this, we find this video is not a top tier Sanders Sides video, and it wasn’t what we’d all been hoping for. 

It could be anti-climatic, the jokes may not be as funny, it simply may not live up to the standards that its predecessor, Selfishness vs Selflessness, set before it. 

In my opinion, SVS is one of, if not the best Sanders Sides episode. It had drama, humor, it raised the stakes, Deceit was in it! 

Because of this, it’s only natural that people expect part two to be just as good if not better, but as I’ve noticed with a lot of sequels or “Part Twos” is that sometimes, they just aren’t as good as the original. 

They’re not always bad per se, but they can’t hold a candle to the original, and I believe it’s possible that this could be the case with this next episode. 

And if it is, how will the fandom react?

Well, if we’re lucky this episode will blow any expectations out of the water and will be even better than SVS Part One.

But what’s most likely to happen is that everyone will love it, we’ll start trending on Tumblr, and the fandom will blow up as fan art, theories, edits, and all that comes with it are massed produced by the fandom. 

You know what else could happen? People could be disappointed by the video. It may not live up to everyone’s expectations, and that’s okay.

It should be okay. 

No matter what happens, people should be allowed to feel however they want when this episode does finally drop. If people love it, let them love it. If people don’t like it, then please I beg you...

Let them.

All I’m asking is that we as a fandom, stop policing how people are supposed to feel about content. Obviously, if someone is just being a troll and hating for no reason that isn’t okay. But if that’s the case, just ignore them and move on. 

But if someone has legitimate complaints or critiques, then they should have the freedom to express that without being afraid of receiving backlash from the fandom.  This fandom claims to be the most wholesome, but how can that be when there are people who are afraid of voicing an opinion?  

[raminfarhangi]

A Place To Grow by Daniel Greenberg - some comments

Dear Daniel,

I just read A Place to Grow, and I keep thinking about it, so much that I almost couldn't sleep last night. I feel a drive to share these thoughts with you and anyone who may be interested.

I think that this is the most important book you wrote, and I urge every neophyte to put it second on their list after Free At Last. This is partly biased something irrational : I have now been reading, talking, writing, practicing and breathing the concept so much for the past 3 years that anything I read from you provokes still more resonance with my views. It could be that if I read some Greenberg I already read 2 years ago, I would react similarly.

Now, some more rational reasons to explain my enthusiasm.

It starts with the introduction of the book. Here you are, having spent more than 50 years designing and actively living within a revolutionary culture, with the intention to deliver your very best effort at explaining it. The founding idea is dead simple, the framework somewhat more complicated but technically possible to explain, and the complex ramifications of it all leading to how it feels to live the Sudbury experience plainly impossible to convey. Indeed, even after having experiencing sight for more than 50 years, it's impossible to explain what red and blue is all about to the blind, isn't it ? I love the challenge, and the humility to accept the limits.

I like how accessible the book is. Expressing what's in your mind seems always more inspiring and useful to me when you use simple arguments that anyone can visualize within their mind, relate to their own experience and challenge themselves to think differently. Some of your previous writings - a small part of it, fortunately - were hard to access and it was difficult to understand what you expected the reader to take out from it, for example in The Meaning of Education or the middle part of Worlds in Creation. I'm not interested in books targeted to purely abstract thinkers because this is simply not the way I function, and I'm quite sure that a great majority of people can't make any use of tens of pages of abstraction. In A Place to Grow, every single paragraph gracefully touches the mind of the reader and opens it up to reflection. I have rarely been so inspired.

I really enjoyed reading every part of this book and I think that almost everything serves to reinforce the message, except for Aspects of Creating and Replicating a New Educational Model. I didn't understand what that was doing here.

The part I enjoyed the most is where you focus on the roots and the core of the model. I was very intrigued with the title The Culture of Sudbury Valley School, and didn't expect such deep exploration of the essence. It makes sense to explain the counter-natural fiction that holds the culture together. Wide disbelief in the fiction leads to the self-destruction of the culture, so talking about the fiction reinforces the message of what the culture is all about. I was already convinced that Sudbury is best explained by focusing on the essential message “children are treated fully as free individuals”. With SVS press, I found you to be exremely effective at reinforcing this message mainly through these 3 means :

explanation of how we're not kidding and how radical we are in pursuing this idea in real life

stories and testimonies from students, staff, parents, alumni

providing a historical perspective

A quick digression : The History of conventional mass schooling is a powerful way to help realize that we're passive victims of inertia. I don't think that anyone wants to consciously and actively continue being a victim, so once you grasp the idea, it logically leads you to open up to alternatives. I'm glad that you added it as an appendix to the French translation of Free at Last. I thought that Ken Robinson and John Taylor Gatto were quite good at it, but this article was more compelling than anything else I heard or read on this topic. And I'm glad Mimsy added the article about alumni. These 2 articles helped to powerfully complete this introduction to SVS for the French audience… I have to admit that after all this, my article was somewhat superfluous, and if I had known that these 2 articles would be there, I'm not sure I would have found it that useful to add it. Anyway, what's done is done.

Most of your synthesis of the History of individualism was new to me, and I enjoyed reading it as well. When I visited SVS in Octobre 2015, I remember the chat we had about it… well… in fact, you delivered me a spiel about it, which I didn't get a chance to react to, and I also had a chat with Scott, who reinforced the message, and at some point, I got the gist of it. A Place to Grow now makes it crystal clear how SVS is an American Immersion School, because only America can be considered, in your view, as an area where the individual is truly sacred.

The Founding Fathers, the two sentences of the Declaration of Independence, the immigrants from various cultures who came with a desire to break with their pasts and start fresh on a "new" land : the USA is the only country that truly functions as a liberal democracy because of this ideal marriage between three components : a Declaration which so purely expresses the ideal, political leaders who honestly wish to pursue it, and the melting pot of people who were already condemned to agree on the idea of individual independence and tolerance of other subcultures. No other country has ever experienced this, and in every other country, even today, and especially in Europe, the needs of the community are more valued than the respect of the individual. You can see it in the founding principles of these countries, in how their institutions work, and in the spirit of the people which is still filled with the burden of their medieval past. This is not exactly how you say it, and feel free to correct what you feel is an exaggeration.

I would now like to detail why I deeply disagree with this view.

The founding principles of the French Revolution establish individual freedom as radically as the Declaration of Independence

The Preamble of Declaration of Independence starts with "We", a word that you omitted to comment, and that quite clearly refers to the will of a community to unite around something. If "We" exists, it means a clear separation from "Them" (like the British Empire), and therefore assuming that other ways can be possible and tolerable outside of the USA. The writers could have chosen "these truths are to be held self-evident, that…" instead of "We…". The French were even more radical by instituting these "truths" as being universal and saying, in the intro of their Declaration, that any other way of governing a country necessarily leads to corruption.

By adopting this Declaration and later voting the beheading of the king, guilty of treason, the National Assembly provoked the upheaval of the loyalists and knowingly challenged the authority of the British and the Austro-Prussian crowns. They set themselves up for War in which the enemy was everywhere inside and around the new Nation. In the 1790's context, the price to pay for promoting individual freedom was all-out war until full capitulation of the enemy inside, and conversion of the enemy outside. People of this geography and this time didn't see any other way for this new world to emerge and survive through time.

"Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" was first thought by Robespierre as the slogan to write on the chests and flags of the soldiers of the National Guard. It was made extremely clear in the revolutionary Declaration that Liberté and Egalité meants individual freedom and equal rights. There is absolutely no room for interpretation for these words. Fraternité was more blurry and has varied through time, so it necessarily needs to be contextualized, just like happiness has several meanings and needs to be contextualized.

In the 1790's context, Fraternité certainly did not mean preeminence of the community over the individual as you seem to think it is, just like We doesn't mean that at all in the Declaration of Independence. The origin of Fraternité can be traced back to the Serment du Jeu de Paume, when the elected representatives of the people swore an oath to stick together until the will of the people would be heard. As forces grew to oppose the progress of the French Revolution, Fraternité meant more and more that people needed to unite to defend the new ideals of individual freedom. For example, in 1793, the Commune of Paris ordained to write "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité ou la mort" on walls everywhere around the city, meaning that it was even worth dying in their name and killing traitors. These were inevitably violent times for those who tried to pursue the nearly impossible task to terminate the old cast system and establish a New World order.

Today, Fraternité means something quite different than "we'll prevail together or die fighting". The way it's written in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration has to do with the quality of relationships between people. It has absolutely no value in my eyes. It's impossible to technically institutionalize Fraternité. We can only say "how nice would it be if we were all nice to each other, wouldn't it ?". It's wishful thinking, and still clearly not the idea that community dominates the individual.

Back to the Revolution and its violence. Were these people putting their lives at stake to defend some abstract ideals ? Certainly not in France, nor in the US nor anywhere else where it happened. The driving force behind all this motivation is to end some severe economic injustice. What the bourgeois were fighting for back then was free enterprise, free market, private property, fair taxes… In 1789 France, they faced a king who announced that France was in a debt crisis, and that neither the nobility nor the clergy was going to pay for it, so people would just need to work a bit harder for France's survival. This could not be tolerated anymore. A new equilibrium was established through violence, and this implosion was the opportunity for the bourgeois to take power and start-up a Nation from scratch, with principles that were dear to all these self-made men.

It was a major leap towards equality between all human beings, but it was only the beginning. There were still tons of contradictions to resolve.

Slavery, institutionalized sexism, colonisation and in fact any use of violence or oppression is indeed contradictory with the democratic ideals

You mention how absurd it was for Napoleon to conquer Europe to convert the other countries to the new French way of seeing the world. Indeed, invading the enemy in the name of freedom makes neither more nor less sense than spreading democracy with bombing a country "preventively". You were a bit quick here to give France the monopoly of absurdity. We could give many examples of such offensive/imperialist actions from the great Western powers throughout History, which were presented as necessary for the survival and continuity of these powers, for destroying evil and always making the world a better place.

In our so-called modern democracies, the head of the armies can talk to millions through the mainstream media at will, and manipulate the people and their representatives into thinking that he is fighting just wars, justified by sacrosanct values. Even though it's technically a democracy, with a voting system that should make decisions as fair and wise as possible, some elected heads managed to spread ignorance and rule as dictators. This is one of the imperfections of democracy, famously considered the least worse form of government since Churchill. Recently, W. Bush did it with Irak, Sarkozy did it with Lybia, Holland with Syria, etc. surfing on a wave of fear that they generated with their own words, to supposedly protect the freedom of the American or the French people.

A majority of people and representatives thought that it was fair to fight these wars. I don't. I think that these were bad decisions and brought still more instability and danger to the world. A majority of people also felt recently that Trump would be a good President and "America First" a reasonable slogan… do you think that by "America", he means "the founding principles, framework and culture of a liberal democracy" ? I don't know yet what to think of it when democracy self-destroys through democratic procedures...

You also mention that slavery was maintained despite "all Men are born equal". The British and French empires ruling distant colonies who aspired for independence was also maintained with the use of force. Institutionalized discrimination of women and gay people are also contradictory with the ideals. These are all rather obvious contradictions with the Declaration, and it took some time for people of these days to resolve these contradictions all around the western world. How is America so special and unique in its progress towards the ideals ? I don't see it. I see different countries moving at different paces towards the same goal.

Contradictions that Europe currently face doesn't mean preeminence of the community ; it's part of the usual struggle for individual freedom

Authorities in Holland and Bavaria closed down De Kampanje and Sudbury School Munich. In our view, it's clearly undemocratic and disrespectful of our freedom to educate children however we want. In their view, they're doing us irresponsible parents a favor by stopping us from mistreating our children. To them, our approach plainly means denying children's fundamental right to be educated and become effective adults in the modern world. To them, Sudbury means children growing into dependent, incapable adults to be later taken care of by the community at large (because there are governmental structures and financing schemes in Europe, just like in the US, to take care of the sick and the dependent). The Law allows judges in these countries to bring death to the schools they see as insufficiently educating children towards their freedom, and they think that they used this power wisely.

We both know it doesn't make any sense ; the commonsense of the enemy is obviously the opposite of our commonsense. The difference between the US and these European countries is their interpretation of individual freedom, not the fact that they believe in the preeminence of the community. On education laws, we agree that these countries are clearly less advanced democracies. The State doesn't fully trust parents with their educational choices, which by the way disrespects article 26.3 of the Universal Declaration, but the State would argue that they are an authority to prevent parents from disrespecting article 26.1. As always, more contradiction, more struggle… leading to more debate and more progress. The situation in Holland has now changed and Sudbury School Harderwijk is doing just fine. They went from being enemies to friends with the government. It seems to always go towards more individual freedom, not less. You can't judge a whole country of being collectivist or autocratic by the fact that a panicky and ignorant bureaucrat closed down a school. When there's unfair use of power in a country that wishes to be democratic, I see opportunity for open struggle and progress.

France is very different from its neighbors on education Laws and their practice ; you can't consider all European countries the same way. For example, in Germany, homeschooling is illegal, while in France, it is legal. In Germany, you have to obtain the authorization of the government to open a school (Sudbury School Munich worked on obtaining it for 8 years) while in France, it's as easy as starting up a company. You need 4 signatures that you obtain automatically if you were never identified by authorities as a criminal or a danger to kids, and the government doesn't judge your educational approach a priori. As far as the administrative process is concerned, it took me 2 days to open Ecole Dynamique, just by lack of time during the first day to visit the 4 administrators from whom I needed a signature. 8 years in Bavaria ; 2 days in Paris. In France, there are now 31 schools which self-identify as democratic, all rather radical since none of them offers the smorgasbord/Summerhillian approach ; a minimal curriculum isn't even suggested to students ; they have a say in all matters that concern the school. Apart from some uncomfortable conversations with a couple inspectors, all these schools are doing fine today.

The people who wrote the French Code of Education certainly had some interest in protecting freedom of education this way, and they knew that it would be jeopardized if they gave the government the authority to decide on the life and death of private and family education initiatives. This is ultimately matters for the court to decide, and needless to say that you must do something very wrong for a court to close down a school or seperate kids from their parents. Germans do this more easily because there are still some education Laws dating from the 3rd Reich, one of the most anti-democratic initiatives in History.

Education laws in Europe are rather diverse, and it seems like France is the European country where freedom of education is the most highly protected. People are not necessarily aware of this and think that we live under a sovietic administration, but these are plainly false popular beliefs.

Contradictions that are common to all "democratic countries" are what matter most in the end, and we share the same goal of resolving these contradictions

Both the USA and France have democratic processes to write and enforce rules that protect individual rights. I don't think, however, that this is enough to call these countries "democratic" as a whole. Think of the pain we have in determining whether a school is "democratic", and how radical we are about it to protect the meaning of this word. Our expectations should be just as high when it comes to designate a country or society as "democratic". During my 3 years as a student at Cornell and the several other trips I took to the US, I was far from feeling the atmosphere that reigns in a Sudbury school. And the atmosphere in France is even farther from this, because people are generally a lot more risk-averse, depressed and pessimistic here.

Almost all the other organizations of both countries (schools, companies, public services, etc.) are autocratically run. Just as people take freedom for granted in society at large, they take obedience for granted in the organizations they experience in their daily lives. I don't think that a whole country can be truly called a liberal democracy until you feel the spirit and culture of it almost everywhere you go, until people take charge of their own lives and stop blindly obeying to a stream of instructions from age 3 to 65. It's not only about how the State is run ; it's also about how other organizations and communities are run throughout the country. People still mostly experience autocracy and behave like cogs, and whether we like it or not, we are revolutionaries who are (peacefully) proposing to overthrow these autocracies and establish a new order based on self-responsibility. We are not actively trying to change the world, but our views are logical, sensible, attractive and therefore world changing.

I'll try to summarize the point I have been trying to make here. As a slogan for what Sudbury is all about, you chose to call it an "American Immersion School". By "American", you refer to the concept, framework and culture of liberal democracy. I don't understand the purpose and I find it confusing to equate a philosophical ideal with a specific geography, and for all the reasons I mentioned, I find it inaccurate to do so.

On a more personal note, I don't see myself as having founded an American school. This doesn't resonate at all with what I think Ecole Dynamique is about. I don't see what some specific Nations have to do with what we're doing. I didn't create neither a French nor an American school. I founded a fully democratic school, with the purpose of protecting its students individual freedom. Its address is in Paris, and that's the only thing that's French about it.

Exploring further contradictions

I would like to end my comments by opening 2 further questions I have been thinking about for a while, and that I'm still struggling with. Maybe you took an interest in these questions at some point, and I would be glad to read some essays you may have written about them.

First : In the context a free market economy, there are various things that can happen that challenge fully letting the invisible hand do the job. For the sake of discussion, let's consider an impossible extreme scenario : one person ends up owning 100% of the capital of a country. He is the boss of it all, hires and fires whoever he wants, and therefore distributes revenue as he wishes. Even if the principles and frameworks remain intact to make and enforce Law, can we still call this place a liberal democracy if all business is run by a tyrant ? To make it more realistic, let's imagine that business is not run by one but 10 000 mini tyrants who own it all and enslave the rest of the population. A large part of our western societies look like this to me. The solution is obvious to me : boycott. I'm not going to take any part in contributing to these organization. I don't buy their products and I will not cooperate with them in any way, except if they wish to obtain some expertise on radically transforming their organization and transfer ownership and power to the employees.

Second : Freedom to buy what you wish is something people seem to value a lot. I don't care. I just need a roof, reasonable temperature and food, and I wear the same clothes everyday, but it seems that I'm an anomaly. People generally have a desire to go out there in the market and in the mall and spend money on what they wish. We see children aspiring to this very early on, as soon as we generally consider them to be people in Sudbury schools. They want their own money so that parents stop having control over what they get themselves. They want a bank account, a smartphone and unbounded access to everything in the market. However, as you mention it in your book, they are excluded from the job market until age 16, which we both agree is extremely late when we know what a young person is capable of physically and intellectually. If children are discriminated from access to work and therefore to revenue, shouldn't we correct this situation by simply giving them a part of our adult revenue, which came with our adult privilege of access to the job market ? I think that this is one of the key aspects of adult domination, and that there's a simple solution out of it. Just give them a monthly revenue, similar to yours once you paid all the necessary bills, so they can enjoy buying whatever they want without asking for permission, and live their own experience as a more or less responsible consumer. I would be glad to hear your views on this.

Thanks for taking the time to read these rather long comments. Let's see it as 2 years of correspondence condensed into a single shot. It seems like I needed some time for these thoughts to mature enough.

PS : I recently read Child Rearing as well. Very enjoyable as well. Lovely and rather unsurprising to see how Marjorie and I got to the same conclusions. Giving birth at home (in a country where epidural is the norm, and only a few hundred babies are born at home each year) ; nursing on demand ; letting him move around, eat, sleep however/whenever he wants. It all makes sense.

[seanmeverett]

Diary of a Madman, Page 47

11,700 people peering inside, you’re one of the chosen.

I. This Week’s Analyses [fountainhead]

Hackers Now Stealing Your Cell Number & Money [The Mission, featured]: how to protect yourself from this new form of identity theft.

Animal Rights in the Age of Superintelligence [Ben Chapman]: what happens when the human becomes the pet?

China’s Rising Space Ambitions [Landing Attempts]: say what you will about China, but we can’t argue with the speed at which their “startup” is gaining market share.

Video Explaining Biologic Intelligence [The Mission]: we open the kimono a bit deeper, including a one-page overview.

Watch Out for a Crypto Crash [fountainhead]: how much is intrinsic value for the store of value and how much is plain ole human emotion (greed, FOMO)? Also, a new currency on the block that I’ll be investing in.

How To Commercialize Your Invention [fountainhead]: accelerators and marketing channels, and value props, oh my.

Exclusive: Self-Driving Simulator Trade Study [fountainhead]: complete with a 17-page deck, you get early access into what’s going on behind the scenes in the Big Tech world.

Future of Energy Trends Report [fountainhead]: a summary of results from Bloomberg’s study as well as a comparison to our Personal Power Station Thesis.

Amazon & Wal-Mart Playing Different M&A Games [fountainhead]: by now you’ve heard of the new acquisitions, but the question is why and where they’re headed.

Everything is connected.

II. HomePods = Apple TV Surround Sound + Siri

Last week Apple announced the things. And so tech reporters fell all over themselves to publish a single story for every tiny announcement because pageviews. And then analysts dissected everything because something new and fun to cover that’s easy.

But I’ve yet to see anyone cover the single most obvious Trojan Horse into the home, unless I completely missed some of the dark internet corners.

HomePod is a speaker for the home. Apple also makes a little black box that streams video to big TVs. Maybe we should link the two and have a surround sound system for the home.

Then I’m not comparing a $350 speaker to an Alexa or portable bluetooth speaker, which means it’s more expensive. Instead, consumers are comparing it to overly priced and horribly sounding (plus wired connectivity) 5.1 channel surround sound speakers.

Apple says it will automatically detect other HomePods and map the sound accordingly. Plus we all know they’re getting into original video content with their new Apps program through Apple Music, plus Dre documentaries. So what gives?

My guess says they’re far too early in dev to talk about any other use cases. That’s because the speaker won’t launch until Christmas (hopefully). But if AirPods are any indication, it’s going to be spring before this thing is out. Story Line: Apple becomes just like every other tech company. Early announcements, missed deadlines, etc.

But if you want my Product Management and Product Marketing take, from the very first moment they should have marketed:

Apple Music (sound) = AirPods + Apple Watch

Apple Music (video) = AppleTV + HomePod

Seems pretty obvious when you lay the strategy out as a simple equation, no?

Siri is secondary to the whole kit n kaboodle. People are still self-conscious about talking into their phone with willy nilly commands outside of the safety of their own home. You don’t see people on subway trains or walking through the city yelling, “Okay Google” or “Hey Siri”.

Voice assistants are not an anchor feature. They’re a background nice to have that most people are “meh” about. All we need to say on the matter of Voice was said last Christmas.

III. Newsworthy News

Biologic Intelligence: multi-dimensional universe discovered in brain networks. It’s right in front of smart people’s noses, write about it, and yet still they miss it. IEEE Spectrum gets it. Finally, the limits of AI is the headline of MIT Tech Review. Sound familiar? We own the IP for the answer.

AI: somebody raised $100M for some sleepy Enterprise math equations. Their differentiator? The founder isn’t a researcher but wants to make money. Isn’t that the point of every startup? Have fun closing support tickets automatically at scale. R&D funding comparing countries to companies.

Philosophy: manifestation is real.

Self-Driving: airbags, Land Rover & Lyft join the fray. Apple doesn’t say car, they say autonomous product.

Aerospace: if you’re just getting into tech, start here.

Space: instantaneous messaging, like we’ve talked about for quite some time. Facebook’s future roadmap involves theoretical physicists. They just don’t know it yet. Get educated by the WEF, they’re our friends.

Robotics: humanoids taking over your household. HomePods + Siri are just a trojan horse.

Illustration: if I was serious about it, this would be my setup.

AR: stop lights on the upcoming iPhone for mapping 3D worlds. Also, haven’t seen a single person wearing Snap Spectacles across country, in SV or NYC. The laser tech powering that upcoming iPhone.

Investing: incentives are how you program humanity, at large. Repatriation could lift a lot of bots for quite some time.

China: count me in, and better close that AI + Robotics capital quickly US startups. We’re fans of the folks at Huawei.

Health: Harvard gets it, especially when it comes to the future of real-time health optimization during interstellar travel and space mining.

Media: The Mission crossed 300,000 subs (just on Medium), putting it at the same level as The Economist, which had a 173-year head start. Also making it the 8600th most popular website in the US. To put into perspective, Fortune is ranked #732. The Mission has only been in existence for a few years.

Energy: it can only be borrowed.

“Self-driving is a solved problem.”

This is the single biggest myth in all of tech right now.

— Sean

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Humanizing Tech is a premium technological think tank for building humanity’s future. It covers Biologic Intelligence, autonomous robotics, self-learning AI, superhuman augmentation, personal hedge funds, editable DNA, SAAS space platforms, personal power stations, and video as an app. This newsletter is a peek inside the Editor’s mind.

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