#I really will talk about textual ethics more at some point

[grandwitchbird]

This person left the most beautiful tags but doesn’t allow @s so I just wanted to say, absolutely yes! These are exactly the questions the text is asking you to think about.

My word choice was both a direct quote from the Inquisitor’s exhausted frustration at the end of trespasser and an allusion to the ethical frame this game is attempting (it muddies the waters for itself so nobody feel bad if you didn’t get this). ‘Fixing’ here affords us an interesting bit of linguistic slippage. To fix is to bind, to correct, to repair, to locate. It suggests an objectivity to the world that’s not actually possible as the tagger so correctly notes.

The incoherence of ‘fixing’ the world as a goal is the point. The end of history is a very real goal and seemingly sincere set of beliefs for some very real people, and it’s equally incoherent. It’s also rooted in impulses we all have. It’s our weakness to nostalgia, the push for easy answers to complex problems, the capacity to treat others as tools or inconveniences that need to be solved, the desire to see the world as a linear narrative. The end of history, the final solution, the death drive. All lenses onto the last 150 years of people trying to figure this out in ways that range from strange to horrifying.

Dragon Age is too beholden to the weak ethics fueled by these impulses. But it is pushing at them. This is what people are picking up on when they say the game/s have ‘heart’. There’s a desire in the text to be more ethically rigorous. It’s undermined by too much consideration for the audience. But it is there. And it’s especially there whenever Solas is onscreen.

Dragon Age has been doing a really clever thing with its protagonists and the heroic power fantasy that only fully comes together when you look at the series as a whole, so let’s do another ramble. Under a cut to save your dash.

Origins is a traditional RPG power fantasy. It likes to tell you that it’s not by gesturing at Loghain and alluding to unreliable narratives, but what it shows is the power fantasy. No matter what your warden does, they’re the hero. Are you a casual genocide enthusiast? No problem you can still ride off into the sunset looking for a cure. Also hey you have a critical weakness/flaw (the calling) that kind of dooms you or gives you cause to vaguely ride of into the sunset. Very heroic indeed. There’s a layer of textual interest added by the presence of unreliable narratives, but ultimately it’s the hero’s choices that shape and determine the world and story, right down to very gamified relationships. The origins system itself, the fact that your warden could have been anyone, is the actual textual proof that this isn’t all that’s going on. It just only really gets paid off by later games, and that’s pretty important given where this franchise ended up.

—

Enter DA2. Hawke is a champion, not a hero. Hawke fights for those who can’t fight themselves. Hawke can’t save the world. They can’t even save their family or city. It’s a battle of attrition that sees them somehow worse off no matter what. The still-gamified but now more nuanced and challenging relationships become the focus because they’re really all Hawke has. Now the power fantasy is still lurking around the edges. It’s just challenged at every turn. You can free Kirkwall, but Anders is always going to blow up a church.

—

Which brings us to Inquisition. Somehow, you’re both as much of a nobody as Hawke and you’re responsible for more than the Warden. And it’s miserable. The power fantasy is constantly undermined. No matter who your inquisitor was, by the end of the game they’ve been completely subsumed by their role: turns out power has teeth.

In a move that delivers on the unreliable narrative throughline that Origins established and DA2 strengthened, the Inquisitor must play the hero and save the world. It doesn’t matter if your Inquisitor is a kind person doing their best or a racist power-hungry asshole, and that is now a systemic issue within the world itself. The erosion of your character’s personhood is explicit within the text as characters struggle to see you as more than your role and you’re asked to shape the faith of an entire world even if you don’t share that faith. The cost of this erosion is made incredibly literal with Ameridan’s story and then in Trespasser, where the anchor, both cause and symbol of the Inquisitor’s role and power, is killing them. Relationships become somewhat less gamified but more importantly, you’re given an explicit textual mirror in Solas. He’s there to reflect your behavior but also your loss of personhood to a role. It’s essential that he’s the one to save your life at the end of Trespasser. Even if you’ve never shown him a moment’s grace, here is your mirror to see you as a person one last time.

—

And then there’s Rook. Now we play a mirror to Solas, a character who has been the hero, Mythal’s champion, and a man subsumed by his role/s. He’s really the narrative gift that keeps giving.

We walk the dreadwolf’s path this time, and the dreadwolf is a classic tragic hero. He’s stuck in a story where he must save the world and where a critical flaw will always be his downfall. We’re Varric’s second who must step up to champion his cause after the events of the introduction. And we’re barely keeping ourselves together under the burden of leadership. And here is where Veilguard finally delivers everything this franchise ever promised. Because under all that we’re truly just some guy. Just like Solas is just a guy who got stuck in situations he never wanted. His response was to become the hero or play the villain (depending on the story) because that’s easier. But if Rook can truly choose the ‘hard truth’ that the world is never going to “stay fixed” (oh hi Inquisitor… and Hawke… and Warden) and that other people can have better ideas and make hard calls and their own choices? If we don’t have to ‘win’? Rook can reconcile the inevitable tragedies of this kind of story with their very human needs and escape the story altogether. The cost, of course, is the power fantasy.

[olderthannetfic]

"can't you see how racists in the fandom are celebrating this and using this to turn the table and invalidate all the antiracism work"

What I've seen of TOG fandom (and admittedly, it's not everything) has not been antiracism work. It has been people coming up with supposed gotchas to prove that their favorite version of a ship dynamic is more ethical.

However, many of these gotchas involve pointing to extremely racist porn tropes elsewhere and saying they apply to TOG fic. I agree that the way black actors are treated in mainstream live action US porn is racist and shameful. For me, this is more a labor issue behind the scenes than about the porn content, but I see the arguments about how the content actively spreads stereotypes, and I do think there's some basis for them given the wide reach of the content and more importantly the huge barriers to entry and the lack of other content. An African American porn star doesn't really have the option to choose a less racist workplace and less traumatic content to act in, and that's a problem.

The problem, to me, isn't people kinking on shit they know is wrong and offensive. I, a woman, like certain kinds of misogynistic porn, and I'm sure there are POC who get off on horrible things because they are horrible. The problem is when the actual porn creation involves trauma (something that becomes far more likely with live action and wages and relatively more avoidable with indie textual erotica, especially when the motivation is horniness rather than a paycheck). The problem with the end content is less about one piece of it being bad. After all, some people are consuming it with full awareness that it's playing with stereotypes. The issue is when we bathe in a sea of media that's all telling the same story and no voices are pushing back. That's the situation that reaffirms our unconscious biases and makes them worse.

At one point, I'd read most of the Joe/Nicky fic on AO3, and at that time, I really wasn't seeing textual evidence of what people were talking about. I saw a strikingly more equal interest in both characters than with many big m/m ships. I saw a mild tendency towards the usual woobie-bottom-fave stuff with Nicky, which does, yes, sometimes turn the other partner into a bit of a prop, and that hurts if they're your fave. I can certainly see how that feels like sidelining the character and how that plays into a broader pattern of devaluing nonwhite characters... but as someone who has liked a lot of characters fandom devalued this way, TOG did not strike me as a particularly notable case.

The arguing I saw was very much a standard top/bottom war and a "How dare you slightly prefer X over Y in our pairing where we all like both of them?" A lot of it was also "How dare you ignore my favorite fanon?", often very historically inaccurate and One True Way-y when, inherently, there's a lot of ambiguity to history and the target being screamed at was something of an expert. A lot of it was just hating on kink.

That callout now clarifies for me where a lot of the historical misinformation was probably springing from and makes it clear why the level of vitriol was so oddly high compared to similar fandoms.

I'm happy to look at specific evidence, anon, but vaguing about people being bad does not impress me. Many people make stupid posts one time and brilliant ones another or are cruel when they're angry but still have a point when they calm down.

If there's some pattern of bullying with the posters you dislike, you can describe it to me more fully even if they've cleverly hidden the receipts. I get why you might not have hard evidence, but there's a big gap between a detailed story with no evidence and extremely vague "they're racists" with no elaboration at all.

What it sounds like to me is that they advocated AO3-y freedom to make the fanworks one wants even if other people find them offensive.

What it sounds like to me is that they got called "racists" a lot to obfuscate that they were trying to point out someone else's racism.

If they're celebrating their bully's downfall, it's only natural.

If those specific posts have a subtext I've missed--I'm talking in the argumentation itself or in evidence being faked--then I want to know. Otherwise... dude... do you really think it's that easy to sow self doubt?

[halogenwarrior]

Wow this is a really interesting post and gets at a lot of what I've been thinking about lately! Well two things I have been thinking about lately. One is that I often see discourse online about how you can't sympathize with (insert villainous faction) or even critically analyze how fair the narrative framing of them as villains are because they use fascist imagery (or insert imagery of other real life historical movement/group that was bad, like Confederate imagery) and that's being pro-fascist. I feel this really ignores the intent behind the fascist imagery, because it could be two things. One is that the authors sympathize with/like the bad historical group, and so they create a stand-in of them who are intentionally less morally bad than the real thing, in which case it absolutely makes sense to be uncomfortable with people defending them in spite of the fact that textually they might not be that bad. The author chose to create the fictional situation to by proxy make the historical group more likable. But on the other hand, if the group is intended to be read as villains, their actions in the text bear little resemblance to how fascists or whatever group they draw aesthetic inspiration from actually act, and the aesthetic is solely there to ensure the audience thinks of them as villains, then it is very much good to question the choice of framing a particular ideology/actions with an aesthetic that will make people knee-jerk think of it as evil due to its association with a completely different real life ideology, rather than uncritically accept that framing.

And about the "idea of beauty" discussion, I definitely see it's a very common tendency for people to uncritically accept the idea that ethics=aesthetics, i.e that pursuing and protecting the beautiful and eradicating the ugly will invariably align with moral goodness. I have talked about this on this site before, but I was reminded of how frustrated I got when reading a Dungeons and Dragons rulebook, and it gave a list of stock character motivations you could use for your player character, some which were labeled good, some neutral, some evil, some more than one of them potentially. And mostly their morality sorting seemed sensible, but inexplicably the motivation of "I always seek to protect what is beautiful" was listed as inherently and always good, with no potential to ever motivate evil or even neutral actions. This is just nonsensical, as you pointed out even real-life literal fascists often justify themselves with/are motivated by a sense of beauty/aesthetic that they wish to pursue, support and protect at all costs, and disgust for the people or things they oppose as "ugly". Of course someone may argue that they don't just mean beauty in its normal sense but mean some kind of more profound, spiritual beauty, such that an ugly but beneficial or kind person or thing is beautiful in a more profound way and a beautiful person or thing that causes harm is ugly in a deeper way. But that feels like special pleading where you could just declare anything you like beautiful and at this point why are you calling it beauty instead of some other ethical framework.

I feel like this aesthetics=morality idea is one that especially appeals to the wealthy who are distanced from having immediate practical needs besides aesthetic perfection; I remember reading a book about the history of the management of forests in the U.S Northeast that talked about how environmental organizations would discuss nuanced and practical concerns with working-class people (i.e how best to allow everyone to maintain a livelihood practically while preserving the environment and all it offers for future generations), but for wealthier people their tactic was just "look at this beautiful vista, it's beautiful therefore it's good and it must be protected".

And I'm not familiar with Magic the Gathering, but it is definitely a choice that should be examined to have villains who embody the idea of pursuing their own aesthetic over compassion, a motivation for cruelty for many people in the real world, but making it so their chosen aesthetic is the complete opposite of the beauty that gets used to justify atrocities by humans, so those who actually do have this type of aesthetic morality can safety think they would be on the good side here and oppose all these people stand for without questioning where that kind of moral framework can lead you. Though since I'm not familiar with the story, are there other parts of the Magic storyline where villains are portrayed as motivated by preserving/creating beauty and the beauty in question is something that human beings would actually find beautiful, or is this the ONLY case of villains motivated by an aesthetic?

That said, I do see the point of completely alien antagonists with a different and incomprehensible value system to humans, and I did see some points in the comments that maybe they should just be interpreted as this and they were never intended to be fascist in the first place. And since I'm not familiar with Magic I don't know how fascist-coded they in fact actually were, so just to clarify I'm not saying you should never write villains like this, they can be very compelling, just that with such a large franchise as that I hope they would be at least "balanced out" by villains who are motivated by preserving a more "human-typical" aesthetic. And written well, I feel like such a kind of villain can be a mirror to humanity where it goes "you can see how wrong it is when someone with values completely different from you favors those values over compassion, it's horrifying and pitiless but the truth is humans also value things like aesthetics/beauty over compassion all the time but don't realize it because it seems more natural to them". The alien version is more recognizable because of its foreignness, and that might let people see the horror of the human version as well. Though badly done, it could just reinforce the idea that your own aesthetic sensibilities are perfectly compatible with moral goodness, in that "when you see evil in the world that goes completely against moral goodness, it ALSO happens to go completely against your aesthetic sensibilities!"

TUMBLR POST EDITOR WON'T LET ME TITLE THIS POST ANYMORE SO I GUESS THIS IS THE TITLE NOW. WEBBED SITE INNIT

So let's say you grew up in the nineties and that The Lion King was an important movie to you. Let's say that the character of Scar - snarling, ambitious, condescending, effeminate Scar - stirred feelings in you which you had no words for as a child. And then let's say, many years later, you're talking about it with a college friend, and you say something like, "oh man, I think Scar was some sort of gay awakening for me," and she fixes you with this level stare and says, "Scar was a fascist. What's the matter with you?"

The immediate feeling is not unlike missing a step: hang on, what's happening, what did I miss? You knew there were goose-stepping hyenas in "Be Prepared," but you didn't think it mattered that much. He's the bad guy, after all, and the movie's just pointing it out. Your friend says it's more than that: the visuals of the song are directly referencing the Nuremberg rallies. They're practically an homage to Riefenstahl. This was your sexual awakening? Is this why you're so into peaked caps and leather, then? Subliminal nazi kink, perhaps?

And then one of your other friends cuts in. "Hold up," he says, "let's think about what Scar actually did in the movie. He organized a group of racialized outcasts and led them against a predatory monarchy. Why are you so keen to defend their hereditary rule? Scar's the good guy here." The conversation immediately descends into a verbal slap fight about who the real bad guy is, whether Scar's regime was actually responsible for the ecological devastation of the Pride Lands, whether the hyenas actually count as "racialized" because James Earl Jones voiced Mufasa after all. Your Catholic friend starts saying some strange and frankly concerning shit about Natural Law. Someone brings The Lion King 2 into it. You leave the conversation feeling a little bit lost and a little bit anxious. What were we even talking about?

INTRODUCING: THE DITCH

There is a way of reading texts which I'm afraid is pervasive, which has as its most classical expression the smug obsession with trivia and minutiae you find in a certain vein of comic book fan. "Who was the first Green Lantern? What was his weakness? Do you even know the Green Lantern Oath?" It eschews the subjective in favor of definitively knowable fact. You can't argue with this guy that, say, Alan Scott shouldn't really count as the first Green Lantern because his whole deal is so radically different from the Hal Jordan/John Stewart/Guy Gardner Corps-era Lanterns, because this guy will simply say "but he's called Green Lantern. Says so right on the cover. Checkmate." This approach to reading a text is fundamentally 1) emotionally detached (there's a reason the joke goes, oh you like X band? name three of their songs - and not, which of their songs means the most to you? which of them came into your life at exactly the right moment to tell you exactly what you needed to hear just then?) and 2) defensive. It's a stance that is designed not to lose arguments. It says so right on the cover. Checkmate.

And then you get the guys who are like "well obviously Bruce Wayne could do far more as a billionaire to solve societal problems by using his tremendous wealth to address systemic issues instead of dressing up as a bat and punching mental patients in the head," and these guys have half a point but they're basically in the same ditch butting heads with the "well, actually" guys, and can we not simply extricate ourselves from the ditch entirely?

So, okay, let's return to our initial example. Scar is portrayed using Nazi iconography - the goose-stepping, the monumentality, the Nuremberg Lichtdom. He is also flamboyant and effete. He unifies and leads a group of downtrodden exiles to overthrow an absolute monarch. He's also a self-serving despot on whose rule Heaven Itself turns its back. You can't reconcile these things from within the ditch - or if you can, the attempt is likely to be ad-hoc supposition and duct tape.

Instead, let's ask ourselves what perspective The Lion King is coming from. What does it say is true about the world? What are its precepts, its axioms?

There is a natural hierarchical order to the world. This is just and righteous and the way of things, and attempts to overthrow this order will be punished severely by the world itself.

Fascism is what happens when evil men attempt to usurp this natural order with the aid of a group or groups of people who refuse to accept their place in the order.

There exists an alternative to defending and adhering to one's place in the natural order - it consists only of selfish spineless apathy.

Manliness is an essential quality of a just ruler. Unmanliness renders a person unfit for rule, and often resentful and dangerous as well.

And isn't that interesting, laid out like that? It renders the entire argument about the movie irrelevant (except for whatever your Catholic friend was on about, since his understanding of the world seems to line up with the above precepts weirdly well.) It's meaningless to argue about whether Scar was a secret hero or a fascist, when the movie doesn't understand fascism and has a damn-near alien view of what good and evil are.

There's always gonna be someone who, having read this far, wants to reply, "so, what? The Lion King is a bad movie and the people who made it were homophobes and also American monarchists, somehow? And anyone who likes it is also some sort of gay-bashing crypto-authoritarian?" To which I have to reply, man, c'mon, get out of the ditch. You're no good to anyone in there. Take my hand. I'm going to pull on three. One... two...

SO PHYREXIA [PAUSE FOR APPLAUSE, GROANS]

We're talking about everyone's favorite ichor-drooling surgery monsters again because there was a bit in my ~*~seminal~*~ essay Transformation, Horror, Eros, Phyrexia which seemed to give a number of readers quite a bit of trouble: namely, the idea that while Phyrexia is textually fascist, their aesthetic is incompatible with real-world fascism, and further, that this aesthetic incompatibility in some way outweighs the ways in which they act like a fascist nation in terms of how we think of them. I'll take responsibility here: I don't think that point is at all clear or well-argued in that essay. What I was trying to articulate was that the text of Magic: the Gathering very much wants Phyrexia to be supremely evil and dangerous fascists, because that makes for effective antagonists, but in the process of constructing that, it's accidentally encoded a whole bunch of fascinating presuppositions that end up working at cross-purposes with its apparent aim. That's... not that much clearer, is it? Hmm. Why don't I just show you what I mean?

Atraxa, Grand Unifier (art by Marta Nael)

In "Beneath Eyes Unblinking," one of the March of the Machine stories by K. Arsenault Rivera, there's a fascinating and I think revealing passage in which Atraxa (big-deal Phyrexianized angel and Elesh Norn's lieutenant) has a run-in with an art museum in New Capenna. The first thing I want to talk about is that, in this passage, Atraxa has no understanding of the concept of "beauty". A great deal of space in such a rushed storyline is devoted to her trying to puzzle out what beauty means and interrogating the minds of her recently-compleated Capennan aesthetes to try and understand it. In the end, she is unable to conceive of beauty except as "wrongness," as anathema.

So my first question is, why doesn't Atraxa have any idea of beauty? This is nonsense, right? We could point to a previous story, "A Garden of Flesh," by Lora Gray, in which Elesh Norn explicitly thinks in terms of beauty, but that's a little bit ditchbound, isn't it? The better argument is to simply look at Phyrexian bodies, at the Phyrexian landscape, all of which looks the way it does on purpose, all of which has been shaped in accordance with the very real aesthetic preferences of Phyrexians. How you could look at the Fair Basilica and not understand that Phyrexians most definitely have an idea of beauty, even if you personally disagree with it, is baffling. This is a lot like the canonical assertion that Phyrexians lack souls, which is both contradicted elsewhere in canon and essentially meaningless, given Magic's unwillingness or inability to articulate what a soul is in its setting, and as with this, it seems the goal is simply to dehumanize Phyrexians, to render them alien, even at the cost of incoherence or internal contradiction.

Atraxa's progress through the museum is fascinating. It evokes the 1937 Nazi exhibit on "degenerate art" in Munich, but not at all cleanly. The first exhibit, which is of representational art, she angrily destroys for being too individualistic (a point of dissonance with the European fascist movements of the 20th century, which formed in direct antagonism to communism.) The second exhibit, filled with abstract paintings and sculptures, she destroys even more angrily for having no conceivable use (this is much more in line with the Nazi idea of "degenerate art", so well done there.) The third exhibit is filled with war trophies and reconstructions from a failed Phyrexian invasion of Capenna many years prior, which she is angriest of all with (and fair enough, I suppose.) But then, after she's done completely trashing the place, she spots a number of angel statues on the cathedral across the plaza, and she goes apeshit. In a fugue of white-hot rage, she pulverizes the angel heads, and here is where I have to ask my second question:

Why angels? If you are trying to invoke fascist attitudes toward art, big statues of angels are precisely the wrong thing for your fascist analogues to hate. Fascists love monumental, heroic representations of superhuman perfection. It's practically their whole aesthetic deal. I understand that we're foreshadowing the imminent defeat of Phyrexia at the hands of legions of angels and a multiversal proliferation of angel juice, but that just leads to the exact same question: why angels? To the best of my knowledge, the Phyrexian weakness to New Capennan angel juice is something invented for this storyline. They have, after all, been happily compleating angels since 1997. We could talk about the in-universe justification for why Halo specifically is so potent, but I don't remember what that justification is, and also don't care. Let's not jump back in the ditch, please. The point is, someone decided that this time, Phyrexia would be defeated by an angelic host, and what does that mean? What is the text trying to say? What are its precepts and axioms?

Let me ask you a question: how many physically disabled angels are there in Magic: the Gathering? How about transsexual angels? How many angels are there, on all of the cards that have ever been printed for Magic: the Gathering, that are even just a bit ugly? Do you get it yet? Or do you need me to spell it out for you?

SPELLING IT OUT FOR YOU

There is a kind of body which is bad. It is bad because it has been significantly altered from its natural state, and it is bad because it is repellent to our aesthetic sensibilities.

The bad kind of body is contagious. It spreads through contact. Sometimes people we love are infected, and then they become the bad kind of body too.

There is a kind of body which is good. It is good because it is pleasing to our aesthetic sensibilities, and it is good because it is unaltered from its (super)natural state.

A happy ending is when all the good bodies destroy or drive into hiding all of the bad bodies. A happy ending is when the bad bodies of the people we love are forcibly returned to being the good kind of body.

Do you get it now?

ENDNOTES

It's worth noting that the ditch is very similar to the white American Evangelical hermeneutics of "the Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it," the defensive chapter-and-verse-or-it-didn't-happen approach to reading a text, what Fred Clark of slacktivist calls "concordance-ism". I don't think that's accidental. We stand underneath centuries of people reading the Bible very poorly - how could that not affect how we read things today? We are participants in history whether we like it or not.

I sincerely hope I haven't come across as condescending in this essay. Close reading is legitimately difficult! They teach college courses on this stuff! And while it is frustrating to have my close readings interrogated by people who... aren't doing that, like. I do get it. I find myself back in the ditch all the time. This stuff is hard. It is also, sorry, crucial if you intend to say something about a text that's worth saying.

I also hope I've communicated clearly here. Magic story is sufficiently incoherent that trying to develop a thesis about it often feels like trying to nail jello to the wall. If anyone has questions, please ask them! And thank you for reading. Next time, we'll probably do the new Eldraine set.

[nevertheless-moving]

Misunderstanding Meta

So this started out as tags on Misunderstanding 17 but got meta enough that i started wondering if it was getting into spoiler territory? also it was just too many words.

there’s no future chapter spoilers specifically but this might remove some of the mystery around ongoing and future character conflicts. im explicitly stating some stuff that might be better enjoyed sub textually but u do u.

anyway read below if you don’t mind a premature little navel gazing but maybe hold off if you’d rather just enjoy the story as is. probably only makes sense within the context of that chapter cause again it started as tags. 

Thank you everyone for all your support and lovely comments I really really enjoy them!! I’m so glad people are enjoying the story its genuinely making it so much more fun for me! W R I T I N G, who knew!

~ TLDR: General star wars meta and VERY vague suicidal misunderstandings spoilers below the cut so read at your own peril. nsfw.~

-

It’s important to me that people understand we’ve reached the point in the story where anakin would ABSOLUTELY murder anyone Obi-Wan told him to without a shred of evidence (except for two people, one of which is unfortunately the actual Sith master).

(like if Obi-Wan had been the one to say ‘kill him’ on the bridge of the Invisible Hand Anakin would NOT have hesitated to decapitate)

i guess its not THAT different from canon but its still kind of fucked up that I’ve gotten them to where Anakin would happily bring Obi-Wan Yoda’s corpse like a cat with a dead bird.

he doesn’t even have a lightsaber! and he's fond of yoda! but if Obi-Wan asked him to he would strangle that troll with his bare hands!

the specific combination here of Obi-Wan’s active reciprocation of familial love and also (unintentionally but still!) inspiring real fear that Obi-Wan might vanish at any second due to Anakin’s rage issues and a murky unseen threat means his whole relationship with Obi-Wan has taken the natural step to where Obi-Wan is the one (1) person both capable of AND willing to direct that unhinged capacity for violence. 

And I for one am a fan of them both growing VERY aware of that and also comfortable with it to a certain extent.

THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS SO MESSED UP AND LOVING AND CODEPENDENT I LOVE IT

(presumably with some real therapy and soul searching this could all deescalate but we are SO not at the point right now)

The other side of all this is that Obi-Wan is seriously the ONLY one capable of directing that violence. Anakin doesn’t have that many coping mechanisms and now he’s so afraid that his dad/brother is going to go to the corner store for death sticks and not come back he will refrain from using his favorite one without permission.

(im talking about murder btw)

(that’s the coping mechanism)

so that’s, you know. good?????

(honestly theres a limit to far this nonsense can deescalate because on a fundamental level Anakin just goes WAY too hard and has so many neuroses that it would be kindof impossible for him to have a conventionally healthy relationship with anyone without REALLY altering some of his most basic character traits)

(and...i don’t know. healthy is fluid? i feel like if you KNOW you’re bad at morals is it really so bad to outsource them? to someone better qualified. the biggest ethical problem to me there is its an unreasonable emotional burden to put on obi-wan, but after the specific shit he’s been through i can see that weight actually kind of comforting even if he might feel a tad guilty over having that much control. i think what makes it sustainable to me is that obi-wan is establishing early on that there are NO consequences for violating the code. the fact that he’s willing to move so completely past CHILD MURDER AND GENOCIDE means he’s batshit crazy for anakin. so basically anakin gets to establish that he can exit the covenant at any time. its like how the potential for quitting makes a job a job instead of slavery and how the potential for divorce makes marriage marriage instead of slavery)

(but the job/marriage in this case is listening to obi wan kenobi when he says no murder so you know what MAYBE we shouldn’t evaluate it by the benchmarks of a normal relationship anyway jeez nevertheless moving on)

(seriously not even Palpatine ever got this much control cause Vader still murdered at Vader’s orders)

(And Padme is seeking out a relationship just healthy enough to not involve ACTIVELY holding that much of her husband’s autonomy. i mean. she does have that power. but the continued queenly conscious choice NOT to exercise it is almost sweet)

(i am aware that justifying padme and anakins relationship from a conventional lens requires some mental backflips but darn it i saw some really hot fanart of her pegging the shit out of him and also he doesnt think of her as a parental figure so if i want to say padme is just the right amount of crazy to maintain a stable relationship with anakin skywalker than that’s what im going to do.)

 (but i digress)

[lily-mj-fae]

Nesta and Elain

I’m going to add now: I recognize my own clear bias towards Elain. And in many ways, this post is in part to defend her, especially since now that fandom has more insight on Nesta, there’s been an increase in hate towards Elain, especially in regards to her interactions with Nesta. Some of these include expecting her to remain in a toxic situation purely because she “owes” Nesta. And so i want to discuss, why that mindset is wrong (which i’ve done a couple times in terms of morally/ethically) because they barely have a relationship anyway. Mostly, i just want to actually describe what we see of them. I’m going to try to stick to mostly just facts of what happens, with some inferences based on text on either side.

So there’s a lot of evidence to show, that while the two clearly clung to each other when their family fell, and that there’s obvious love on either side for each other, they do not have a strong relationship. Or a healthy one. Or a good one.

Not only do we have Elain mentioning that no one ever really listens to her (which is obvious it does in fact apply to her family as we see in canon a few times over, I’ll get to that). But you’d have thought that in ACOSF we’d see some kind of fond memories from Nesta about Elain. Some kind of fondness. Something that made us really believed and finally understand why she loved Elain so fiercely she would have ripped apart the world to defend her. Instead, we learn, Nesta has never told anyone she loved them until she said it to Feyre. And we do not see a single happy thought about Elain from Nesta. No happy memories. Nothing. But there was no explanation for WHY she felt so strongly for just Elain. And not a single thing to really support her feeling that way.

We’re led by Feyre to believe that Elain and Nesta are so close. And at first glance, sure, it’s easy to believe. They spend the most time together. They gossip and talk at dinner together. They have the matching iron bracelets (that I believe wasn’t a purchase made by both as Feyre seemed to think, but by Nesta, because Feyre mentions specifically how Elain had spent her money on gifts for her sisters, and I think if Elain had been involved, she would have gotten one for Feyre). Then throughout the series we see how much Nesta is willing to fight to protect Elain. How much she wants to keep Elain away from danger. We see her wanting to do things with Nesta, but not knowing how anymore because she’s becoming more distant. We see Elain even wanting to spend time with Nesta and trying to keep her included in things into ACOFAS.

To me, the illusion fades with that conversation with Lucien in the library. When Elain says that no one really heard her. And when you look at things, it becomes obvious. Most especially with Nesta. Feyre we know already knows little about her sisters. She assumed that Nesta hated her, and that her sisters would be glad to have her gone. And is surprised that Nesta would have gone after her. But with Elain we see this frequently. Elain wants to help Feyre. So she speaks up. Yes, it puts her relationship at risk. And yes, we know that Nesta takes over in an attempt to provide a buffer for Elain should Graysen find out, to maybe save her from the heartbreak of him leaving her for helping any Fae. But it doesn’t change that it was Elain’s decision. Elain’s desire to help. Nesta instead pushed her out of it wherever she could (IE taking over correspondence for them) in the name of protecting her. This is a problem. Because 1) Nesta is sacrificing her own feelings to do what Elain wants, which I think is wrong. Nesta didn’t want to help, and I think she should have stuck to that. Stuck to her own decision. 2) Nesta is preventing Elain from dealing with consequences of her actions (IE, if Graysen found out she was helping the fae). 3) This is disrespecting Elain's agency. She's not letting Elain be herself by constantly interfering 4) she then goes on to belittle Elain for those things, despite it being her decisions and actions to interfere. And we can recognize that her intentions are good all we want, it doesn't make the actions themselves good or even appropriate. Intentions only mean so much. They certainly don't excuse such detrimental behavior.

Now could Elain have fought back? The black and white answer? Yes. But it's not that simple. Elain we know has been belittled from a young age by at least her mother (okay that's an assumption on my part. But with feyre's description of their mother and Nesta's memories, i certainly wouldn't be surprised if she'd said those things to Elain's face). And essentially raised to be pleasant and agreeable. A proper lady. Her confidence in herself doesn't seem very high. Not to mention, she's much quieter than Nesta. Imagine how exhausting it would be to fight your sister on every little thing you wanted to do. And we see this in canon. Every time Elain wants to help, she has to fight Nesta. I don't think this just magically started in acomaf. I'd wager its been going since a minimum of coming to the cottage (It’s part of why I think Elain doesn’t necessarily take up chopping wood when the request is there. i think she attempted once, and Nesta stopped her and wouldn’t let her). I personally think since their mother's death. Elain is also younger than Nesta, and we do have canon evidence of her having at least one memory full of complete adoration. And a respect for the art form and her sister's views on life. So her fighting back, isn’t as easy as fandom wants to think it is.

I also want to bring up someone once mentioning in ACOTAR when Elain and Feyre were talking, and Elain mentions that she feels awful to have her friends over because Nesta makes them uncomfortable, and how that’s so disrespectful of Elain. No it’s not. Elain is allowed to have friends over. And Nesta just glared at them. I’m not saying she had to like them (because I understand why she wouldn’t), but that was rude, and she could have easily been elsewhere, and let Elain have her friends and enjoy time with them. I also read it differently, in that Elain feels awful inviting her friends over because it’s upsetting Nesta too. Which isn’t fair to her either, given that Nesta has at that point begun isolating herself (and while we as readers become aware of why later, Elain has absolutely no idea. And already has said Nesta wouldn’t talk about it. Implying she tried reaching out too), thus leaving Elain feeling very lonely. Overall, Elain here is feeling the way she should. It’s like when you have company over and your parents start yelling at you, or just being anything less than polite and you have to deal with the awkward tension. 

Then comes ACOSF. And i know i wasn't the only one hoping to find out more about their relationship. And i’m not the only one who was left disappointed that we still don’t get to understand Nesta’s behavior when it comes to Elain. In fact, if I had only read ACOSF and you had told me that before that, Elain seemed to be Nesta’s favorite sister, I’d call you a liar. I do not get a single ounce that Nest has a loving feeling for Elain in ACOSF. Certainly at the very least, not enough to justify the way she treated Elain vs. Feyre in earlier books. Not to mention, Nesta is under the very immature and inaccurate idea that Elain has chosen Feyre over her. As if it’s black and white. As if Elain can only love her or Feyre. And yes, it’s a sign of her mental illness with depression and trauma. That’s fine. But it still shows a very limited viewpoint. And really only shows a care for herself, no thought of Elain or Elain’s state of mind or even really any empathy for the fact that Nesta was the one causing the rift between them and how that was truly affecting Elain. (Again more trauma response. But my point here is that there is very little empathy towards the sister that we’re told she so vehemently loves).

Now onto the part that I know is my unpopular fandom opinion: Nesta dealing with Elain’s trauma vs Elain dealing with Nesta’s...and how their traumas were very different to deal with in the first place.

My unpopular opinion is that Nesta wasn’t doing anything to actually help Elain. She was doing everything to protect her. But was not interested really in her healing. Nesta isolated Elain, who had previously been social in many ways. We don’t ever see how she fought for Elain to eat or drink or have a will to live. We only hear her say that’s what she did. But fandom does need to stop saying that Nesta was with Elain every second of every day (i have had people say this in arguments. It’s a flat out lie. There’s far more textual evidence that Nesta left Elain alone throughout her trauma than there is that she was by her side constantly. And I don’t say she was never by her side). Because the fact of the matter is that isn’t remotely true. Perhaps of the first few weeks. Before Feyre returned. But after that? We hardly see Nesta with Elain. We instead see her keeping people from interacting with her. Keeping them from giving Elain choices.

And we can shout that she was doing what she thought was best, but it doesn’t change that the effect it had was Elain being isolated and underprepared. Elain had been trying to do her part to help since ACOMAF. And she was being blocked. Elain deserved that chance to go to the high lord’s meeting and share her story (especially since Nesta didn’t want to and wasn’t going to up until the last minute). And Elain should have been offered the same training as Nesta. Especially once they learned she had powers. Instead no one offered to let her help (even though she’d been wanting to help since Feyre first came asking). No one offered to train her. Because Nesta would have had their heads. Saying that it was to keep Elain from doing something she might not have been ready for, plays into the idea that Nesta is protecting Elain from growing. Learning. Protecting her from the consequences. Nesta refused to let anyone really near her beyond the necessities.

Speaking of: Can we please talk about something no one else does? The fact that Nesta just accepts the fact that Elain is mad. That she’s broken. The effect that could have had on her, is so detrimental to Elain’s mental health. The thoughts she was probably already dealing with and then to hear that from her sister? Like she refuses to accept that there could be another answer. And while we might agree and empathize why she would say that, it doesn’t change the effect saying it would have on Elain, who was already struggling heavily to deal with everything that had been thrown at her at once. And even once Elain became Lucid, and they identified the problem, Nesta (and Feyre) continued to try to leave her behind. Again, yes, in the name of protecting Elain. But Nesta never listened to Elain. Never saw that Elain improved upon being involved. That just that action of her wanting to do something, was making her Lucid and back to herself. Instead, Nesta ignored that. Which is why I say she wasn’t focused on Elain’s healing. That and the fact that she’s making assumptions that Elain is fine now.

Elain tried to stay involved with Nesta. No, she didn’t go outside her comfort zone and go into the places Nesta was spending time. But she was trying. I admit, the shot upon Nesta’s arrival is weird. I’m torn between thinking it was a legit, to help relax, or thinking it was something she was pouring as Amren said the comment and decided to drink it instead of giving it to Nesta. (Because yes, it would be easy to say as Amren spoke, elain had been pouring, but even without that, it doesn’t mean things aren’t happening at the same time). When that didn’t work, Elain agreed intervention was necessary. and I just made a whole ass post about why that wasn’t giving up on Nesta like fandom keeps thinking.  

And of course, Elain is not perfect here. She has made her mistakes. Though hers are mostly in terms of words. At least the ones I could find textual evidence for when it comes to Elain and Nesta. And mostly done in terms of emotional response.

Now. I did not intend for this post to shit on Nesta. I’m afraid it feels like it has. So I am going to tag it accordingly. But this was more to bring to light the reality that Nesta and Elain aren’t that close. They don’t have a close relationship. They were more security blankets for each other in ACOTAR, and their missing foundation began to show in ACOMAF when Nesta was unaffected by Tamlin’s Glamour and Elain was. I do think there’s a lot of love to be had between them. (Honestly hearing Elain talk about Nesta dancing, and hearing her be happy that Nesta has the Valkyries, even though she feels like she’s been losing Nesta made my heart swell for the amount of love there). But I wanted to point out that their relationship was extremely surface level and nothing deep. That it’s certainly not what fandom acts like it is as they spin this tale of complete and utter evil Elain betraying Nesta and how Nesta has done so much for Elain. Nesta had never even told Elain she loved her. Ever. Which i think is telling about where they really stand. 

So let’s please stop acting like Elain owes Nesta everything under the sun because of all the things Nesta did for her. Their relationship was never deep. And while Nesta’s protectiveness stems from a place of love, is actually more detrimental to Elain and her overall growth, than it is good. And Elain has done the things she considered to be best for Nesta, and tried to show love her way. Which is equally unperfect. Because neither of them are perfect. 

[goatsandgangsters]

Hi! I know you have probably answered this before, but I was wondering how you think meyer and lucky got together (in boardwalk empire)? I think about it a lot, and I just can never fully grasp what I feel about it, especially because this was in the 1920s

yeeeeeeeEEEEeeeeSSSS oh I’m so glad you asked, I’m gonna have so much fun! So YES I do have specific headcanons for how they got together, though I don’t know if I’ve ever actually laid them out explicitly? (also I’m saying “my” headcanons but I wanna acknowledge that they originate from Friend Conversations that happened a number of years ago, to the point where I don’t even know who originally said what but the idea of it is just lodged in my brain now. BUT ON THE FLIP SIDE, I don’t want to present this as This Is The Fanon We Agreed On, Everyone Has To Think This, because fandom should never operate that way. ANYWAY)

TL;DR: I think Meyer’s near-death experience in Emerald City was an instigating event for them to get together, because it shakes them enough to act on their feelings. Plus, it coincides nicely with Vince and Anatol becoming more comfortable around one another as actors in a way that lends itself to that reading. BUT I AM NOT THE EXPERT OR THE ARBITER ON THIS MATTER, and I think any interpretation is perfectly wonderful!

So the headcanon I operate with is that they got together after the near-death experience in Emerald City. That originates from a Watsonian vs. Doylist perspective on Vince and Anatol’s acting. They’re not quiiiiite in sync with each other in the first few eps they share, which I’m sure in actuality is them finding their groove and their dynamic as actors. But from a Watsonian perspective, it’s really easy to read their earlier scenes as pining. Like in their first scene together in Home, they’re both constantly looking at each other, but never quite meeting each other’s eye. It’s like that thing where you have a crush on someone, so you keep looking at them, but oh god they saw me and you look quickly away. And they both keep doing it!

Some of their other early scenes—like with the D’Alessios while Charlie’s playing pool, or that weirdly staged scene earlier in Emerald City where Meyer’s sitting way farther away at the table—they may exchange looks, but there’s a fleetingness to it. But then you watch the scene at the end of season 1 where they’re talking to AR with the umbrellas AND THE PSYCHIC BOND HAS ARRIVED. They are having those telltale Full On Conversations with their glances! They are synced up. They’re a team, they’re a unit, they’ve hit that dynamic that they have for the rest of the show.

And in actuality, probably it was Vince and Anatol finding their footing with each other as actors. But if you read into that textually, they go from “staring at the other but constantly dodging eye contact, like they’re afraid to be caught looking” to “we’re having an entire conversation in one look” and you’ve gotta think: what changed?

Meyer’s near-death experience in Emerald City, conveniently enough, happens in the middle. And I think that works well as an instigating moment for them, because it’s BIG. Meyer almost died, in another state—in goddamn New Jersey!—and that’s enough to make anyone act on things they wouldn’t otherwise act on or reevaluate life and relationships.

In terms of their feelings for one another and when those developed and how, my usual interpretation is that… I mean Charlie was heart-eyes from the jump, but not in a romantic way, whereas Meyer was the first to develop full-on pining feelings feelings. Because obviously Charlie was not like “I have feelings feelings for this tiny child” when they first met, but he DID very much imprint on Meyer like a little baby duckling and was like HEY I LIKE THIS KID, WE’RE GONNA BE FRIENDS, CAN I FOLLOW YOU HOME whereas Meyer was like “um, what the fuck.” Classic “enthusiastic puppy befriends sulky cat” dynamic. But then when the FEELINGS FEELINGS come into it, I think of Meyer as having been harboring feelings for Charlie for a while. (also basically all of this is from @meyerlansky, because we successfully tag-teamed on headcanons by one of us wanting to hyperanalyze Meyer and the other wanting to hyperanalyze Charlie and then we just shared!) I mean, you know, Charlie’s good-looking and they’re friends and Charlie’s so casual about flinging his arm around Meyer’s shoulders or roughhousing with him and Meyer’s insides do a little flip that they shouldn’t be doing, but they’re getting older and Charlie’s starting to sleep around with girls and that stings and bothers him in a way that It Shouldn’t, but also It Is What It Is, there’s nothing he can do about it, they’re friends and they’re business partners and that should be enough and it’s all it’ll ever be so focus on the task at hand and ignore the flip in his stomach.

For Charlie, I’m not actually sure WHEN he realizes there are feelings for Meyer. I don’t have a solid, definitive default interpretation for that. But in early season 1, pre Meyer-getting-introduced, he’s definitely enamored and smitten with Gillian, and he’s similarly moonstruck towards AR. I think that can read as, “trying really hard to distract yourself so you don’t acknowledge that maybe you’re in love with your best friend.” Whether he’s doing that consciously or unconsciously, I could also go either way on that.

A lot of this interpretation is based around the simple fact that Charlie was introduced and established in the show before Meyer, so I wonder how my headcanons would have been different if they’d been introduced together from the start. But with how the show unfolds, the change as Anatol and Vince find their groove as actors, plus a near-death experience to make someone act on something they wouldn’t otherwise act on—it all lends itself nice and neatly to Emerald City being the get-together point.

(I know a number of people have worked that headcanon into their own fics and written post-Emerald City get-together, which I can rec you. Though again, by no means do I want this to come across as “this is what the fandom has decided, you have to think it too” because that’s never how fandom should operate. No one is the arbiter of When Did Charlie and Meyer First Kiss. I love get-togethers in general, so I will always be happy reading any get-together fic that happens at any point in time, with any instigating factor, in any way, because that’s just delightful!)

Here are some get-together and/or pining fics that I can recommend:

born once of flesh, then again of fire, i am reborn a third time (a post-Emerald City get-together)

Contact (another post-Emerald City get-together by @rubecso)

Making Accommodations (by @transdracosmalfoy, the post-Emerald City genre lives on!)

to see God in the skyline (by @lurusciutelumare a sprawling masterpiece of chapters intertwining Charlie and Meyer’s childhood and growing up. It takes a while to reach the get-together point, but the whole thing is well worth the read. The entire fic is set pre-Boardwalk Empire)

beg dead trees for money next (by @meyerlansky, a pre-Boardwalk fic of Meyer realizing he has feelings for Charlie which is one of my faves for a lot of reasons)

(also I’m sorry if I missed anyone’s get-together fic. I tried to wrack my brain but I’ve been in this fandom for, uh, a while and it’s hard to remember back sometimes. Feel free to add yours in if I did!)

Also re: getting together in the time period and how it being the 1920s shapes things, there would definitely be added concerns and dangers, though I don’t think it’s necessarily a black-and-white thing. I don’t think the wider attitudes of society towards queerness would have impacted them as much in comparison to the specific culture of lower Manhattan and the criminal spheres they operated in.

Because on the one hand, in the criminal world in which they were operating, it likely would have been dangerous for anyone to know that they’re queer. It probably would have hurt their business and their reputation among their peers and rivals, and—because of how masculinity and queerness interconnect and operate—would look like weakness to others. But in terms of “well can Charlie make a move, because it’s dangerous if Meyer doesn’t reciprocate or reacts badly” (or vice versa), it would reflect equally bad on both of them? Like, if Charlie made a move and Meyer was like “nah,” he can’t very well go gossiping to the whole Lower East Side about it, because it hurts his reputation too, it hurts his business, and they were also close enough as friends that even if there wasn’t reciprocation, neither one of them would do anything to damage the other’s reputation like that.

As far as how they feel about it on an internalized level, I definitely don’t think they… care from a legal and/or moral standpoint. I don’t think Charlie’s like “oh god I’m going to hell for liking men,” because by the time he and Meyer kiss, he has DEFINITELY KILLED PEOPLE. They already break a lot of laws all the time. So that wider societal stigma from a moralizing perspective probably doesn’t matter to them much, because wider society already thinks they’re an “undesirable criminal element,” they’re already “dangerous immigrants,” so what’s it matter if they also bang on top of doing crimes and killing people? Charlie and Meyer are already outside the Predominant Ethical Framework of Society by virtue of their class background and criminal enterprises (and class and queerness have huge intersections historically in terms of what the experience was like). Being in an urban area in the 1920s (especially New York), queer sexuality is something they would have known about; it probably wouldn’t have been any more shocking than any other “vice” they grew up around in that area.

If they do have any concerns or guilt about what they’re feeling for one another, for Charlie I think it all has to do with masculinity and with the machismo he’s grown up around. It’s also something he’s already touchy about, given the emasculation that happened being called Sal (which, at the time, was common nickname for Sally) and historically he has a history of experiencing sexual violence. So I can see him struggling with conflating that together—as well as worrying that his feelings for Meyer are unwanted and similar to what he experienced. Meyer, I would say, cares less about the performance of masculinity, but I do think he sees himself as an eventual family man in a way that Charlie does not. @meyerlansky also has more thoughts on Meyer + sexuality + being a-spec.

I’M SORRY FOR MY LONG TANGENTS!! I literally do not have the ability to be succinct.

IN SUMMARY, I think Meyer’s near-death experience in Emerald City was an instigating event for them to get together, because it shakes them enough to act on their feelings. Plus, it coincides nicely with Vince and Anatol becoming more comfortable around one another as actors in a way that lends itself to that reading. BUT I AM NOT THE EXPERT OR THE ARBITER ON THIS MATTER, and I think any interpretation is perfectly wonderful!

As for the time period and being the 1920s, it definitely has ramifications on how they conceive of themselves—particularly in relation to their ethnic and class identities—but that also the history of sexuality is very non-linear and I think queerness is less shocking and scandalous to them than it would have been to someone more upper-class who didn’t grow up in the Lower East Side, or to someone more rural, or to someone who was more “inside” the social framework of the time, as opposed to being forced outside of it already by class, ethnicity, and criminality.

Finally, and most importantly, they should KISS!!!!

[im-the-punk-who]

Hi, I dont know if you read or know anything about Macchiavelli's "Il principe", but I am studying it in school and I cant help but compare it's fundamentals to how Flint leads. I'm just curious about what you think

Eekekekekekekekekekekkek okay so first off Anon, you are absolutely, 100% right to be getting those vibes. If it’s not actually textual it is at the least meta-textual that Flint ascribes to a very Machiavellian type of leadership. His whole ‘never was there a Caesar who couldn't sing the tune’ speech is...licherally a direct reference to Machiavelli's philosophy that leaders cannot retain their leadership without sacrificing some level of ethical behavior in order to manipulate and deceive their subjects into following them.

And, Flint owns at least two books from thinkers who drew directly on Machiavellian thinking in their texts: De Jure Belli Ac Pacis by Hugo Grotus and The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes are both visible in Flint’s cabin, and both drew heavily on the type of leadership principles established in books like Il Principe. 

(Also, my eternal quest for the book that sits *under* The Leviathan in that scene remains. Y’all I will literally pay someone for this knowledge. My best guess is Plato’s De Republica.)

In fact, the whole system that Flint’s world was operating under at this time was very machiavellian in influence. 

Henry VIII, who converted to Protestantism and who would eventually lead England in the conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism that would then in turn eventually lead the country into the War of Spanish Succession(the war being fought during the London 1705 flashbacks), was a student of Machiavellian thinking. He took the teachings of Il Principe to heart and used them to transform his country. Over the next hundred and fifty years, England would change from an entirely Catholic country to a Protestant one. Of note, Catholic scholars generally disagreed with Machiavelli’s principles on the grounds that it did not support the Divine Right of Kings.

As well, the Enlightenment thinkers that influenced Thomas Hamilton(and Flint himself) were starting to argue more for personal liberty and choice of the governed, both concepts presented in Machiavelli’s writings. (For those following along, this approach was also being used to justify slavery, as what was ‘good for the state is good for the man’ was used as justification for everything from impressment to colonization and slavery. Men were willing to set aside their morals for what they justified as good for the state. Shrug emoji.)

As James says of England when he and Thomas view the hanging in London:

“You think Whitehall wants piracy to flourish in the Bahamas?”

“No I don’t think they want it but I think they’re aware of the cost associated with trying to fight it. And I think that that sound travels.”

Here we see that Flint knows what Thomas doesn’t or does not want to accept: that England is willing to sacrifice some morality and some amount of lives(both of pirate-prisoners and the ships they take) in order to save themselves the financial burden of rooting out the causes of piracy. The justification for piracy was that it is too costly to fight, and that the nation ultimately benefits from a bit of strife as it drives prices up and allows England to place within the sights of its citizenry an identifiable enemy. (Note that Blackbeard also argues the same of Nassau, that prosperity ‘made it soft’.)

Even as he is changed by Thomas’ line of thinking, this lesson will stick with Flint and we’ll see it over and over again as he deals with the men’s hatred of himself by redirecting them towards other avenues(Vane, Hornigold, England, etc.)

And in actuality, this is what sets Thomas very much apart from his political brethren - he was *not* willing to sacrifice his morals in order to achieve a ‘more effective’ victory. Once he realizes that moral deficit shown by England, he creates the pardon plan to argue directly for a more moral and just way of governance. His whole premise for the pardons was to show England that an approach that considered the needs and wants of the governed was ultimately more effective, both in cost and in gaining the genuine good will of the people. And again, this is another likely reason why Thomas was then targeted by Peter Ashe and his father. Railing against the entire system of government was dangerous. Particularly if one was railing against the government in a way that could be seen as support of an opposing system of religion and political rule(remember how I said before that Catholics were generally against the Machiavellian systems?) Put plainly, Thomas’ rejection of Machiavelli’s leadership tactics would have been yet another argument for his treason against the crown.

Interestingly also, Marcus Aurelius - Thomas Hamilton’s homeboy - is said to be one of Machiavelli’s five “good” emperors, of whom Machiavelli wrote,

“[they] had no need of praetorian cohorts, or of countless legions to guard them, but were defended by their own good lives, the good-will of their subjects, and the attachment of the Senate.”

How we tryna be.

And so we see that Flint has - not so much fallen back into England’s line of thinking but perhaps that he never really fell out of it. And that this is actually a rift in his potential ability to conform to Thomas’ line of thinking, assuming we see that line as more morally correct. We do see Flint, gradually, throughout the course of the show, move more away from this Machiavellian line of thinking, especially once he meets Madi and the Maroons.  And to me at least it’s one of the most important character shifts we see - in contrast to the trajectory of John Silver becoming Long John Silver  - throughout the series. Just as Flint is finally starting to really value the lives of those around him, Silver has learned how effective those tactics can be in achieving his goals. As Hands says - ‘I wonder if he knows how much you learned from him.’

And in fact, Silver almost directly quotes Machiavelli at one point when he talks to Flint about their different leadership styles.

“I once thought that to lead men in this world, to be liked was just as good as being feared, and that may very well be true. But to be both liked and feared all at once, is an entirely different state of being in which, I believe, at this moment, I exist alone.” 

Whereas Machiavelli in his chapters addressing cruelty and mercy writes

"Here a question arises: whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. The answer is, of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved." 

This is clearly the approach Flint has taken - he is the most feared captain on the seas. Certainly in the colonial world and on Nassau, too, his name brings a certain amount of fear with it. Because of this he has been safe from rebellion for quite a long time - however he is also not unaware that his power comes from the people. In the very first episode he talks of his plan with Gates to “position people in all the right places so the crew would never turn.” He has, for an unknown amount of time but I would suspect from the very beginning, been manipulating the crew’s opinion of him to keep them happy. Gates himself, and Silver later, are prime examples. 

Both of them; Gates for the first ten years or so and Silver in seasons 2+3 act as a go between - being the ‘liked’ to Flint’s ‘feared’. They convince the crew - the ‘people’ in this case - that Flint’s plans are in their best interest and not truly the act of a tyrant. It is only when Flint forgets - or neglects to respect - that the will of his crew is how he keeps his power, that he really starts to fail. And, later also, that now he has a rival - Silver. 

Now, I do want to point out that personally I don’t think Flint is a needlessly cruel ‘ruler’ in the sense the crew sometimes thinks he is, nor is he trying to be as a king is to english subjects. He has power, of course, and he does manipulate, lie, and kill if necessary to maintain his power in accordance with Machiavelli’s principles, but he does not do so ruthlessly or to a degree that is unnecessarily violent, nor with only his own advancement in mind. His goals genuinely are in service of the people he leads, even if the tactics he uses sometimes put them in danger for it. Moreso, I would argue that Flint is a prince who created his own princedom. He took an existing power structure(the pirate council in Blackbeard, Hornigold etc) and took most of the power for himself, either through luck, violence, or political maneuvering. And then he kept it through skill and tactical advantage.

Silver, in contrast to Flint’s new princedom, is truly a ‘prince of the people’. He comes to power through convincing the other pirates that he has their interests at heart - even when he doesn’t. But Silver soon learns that being a well-loved leader is difficult. It isn’t until Silver kills Dufresne and Billy uses that fear to build a legend that ‘Long John Silver’ the pirate king comes into being. Silver learns, just as Flint knew, that in a world or corruption, often leaders need to make sacrifices of things they would have once deemed important. 

(I think it’s also important to note for Silver that his main goal is actually one Machiavelli writes of as being ‘a will of the people’. Silver’s main wish is not to rule, not really. His biggest motivator is ‘to be free’. To not have to make choices based on the will or subjugations of others. And so, he attempts to make the leadership forced upon him into something that frees him - unfortunately for him, Madi is right when she says that the ‘Crown is always a burden’ and it would be truly impossible for him to find the kind of freedom he wishes for while wearing it. Which, honestly, is part of why he ultimately fails in that regard as leader of the revolution.)

In the later seasons we see Flint go through this change in philosophy after he meets Madi and the Maroons. He begins to actually value the lives of the people he leads. When put to the choice of going through with the raid on the Underhill estate despite the risk it poses to the slaves on other plantations, Flint resists the idea. As he tells Madi - it would have cost them far more to ignore the ‘will’ of those people he hoped to lead - the slaves - than it would gain them to go through with the plan. And later, even though he can’t be blind to Max’s sway with Eleanor and the others, unlike Billy (and oh how the mighty have fallen, Mr. Bones!) he doesn’t even seem to consider keeping her rather than trading her for the lives of his other men. He no longer wants to trade a potential political victory for the suffering of those he leads. So, too, when he attempts to trade the cache for the fort, he is doing so with the goal being to not have to put those under his power in danger if there is another option. It is, at least to me, an incredibly moving character arc and one that is so very understated. 

And honestly, I think it’s what *needed* to happen before he could move on from his rage-hate bender and begin to find the sort of peace that one might argue those ‘good’ rulers had. Machiavelli’s principles tend to get in the way of your ability to connect with other people: when you see them just as pawns in a game, friends and foes lose their intrinsic value of just being important on an emotional level. It is only through learning to truly value his partners that Flint can learn how to be a better and more just leader.

Also, this passage in chapter 15 absolutely KILLS me in regards to both Flint, and Thomas Hamilton:

“Men have imagined republics and principalities that never really existed at all. Yet the way men live is so far removed from the way they ought to live that anyone who abandons what is for what should be pursues his downfall rather than his preservation; for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good.”

Like bitch!! We get it!! Too much sanity!!! Shut up!!!!!

Anyway, all this to say that you’re absolutely right in seeing parallels between Flint’s style of leadership and a Machiavellian prince - he is absolutely written as a prince-like leader. As are Silver, Rogers, even the Maroon Queen(and Scott and Madi as extensions of her) can be compared to certain rulers in Machiavelli’s archetypes. Even Thomas, who models himself after one of those ‘good emperors’ engenders a type of political leader Machiavelli writes about.

(Also lastly, i want to very quickly point out this guy, Cesare Borgia:

Who was a prince of ‘fortune’ who lost his princedom to trusting the wrong person. What a beard, amirite? What a face. He’s even got the rings! I’m sure this means nothing.)

So basically yeah, Flint is absolutely a Machiavelli bitch. 

[heraldofzaun]

This is a post I’ve been thinking about making for quite some time, especially due to looking at how my own personal depiction of Viktor differs from what seems to be the general fandom interpretation - especially after the LoR cards released and gave us a few canonical acolytes.

I won’t beat around the bush here: this is going to be about why I personally believe that associating the Glorious Evolution specifically with headcanons about Viktor or his acolytes being trans, or Viktor performing gender-affirming surgeries, or things in a similar vein is a poor decision, and why I don’t include this interpretation in my writings. This isn’t meant to discourage people from writing Viktor or his acolytes as trans, of course - my Viktor is agender, although he’s not aware of it, and it would be absurd to say that his followers have to be cis - but I think it’s important to look at the implications that come from writing Viktor as explicitly someone who helps people relieve and manage their dysphoria through his work with the GE.

Firstly, no matter how you spin it: Viktor’s idea of the Glorious Evolution has always been painted in a negative light. I’ve done my work to portray it as idealistically as possible, but at the end of the day his goals have always been about removing (at the very least, negative) emotions from himself, as well as mechanizing himself and others.

“Desiring both to revolutionize his field and to eliminate the jealous human emotions which festered inside him, he engineered parts to replace and improve his own body... He saw himself as the patron and pioneer of Valoran's future, a future in which man would renounce his flesh in favor of superior hextech augmentations.” (Original lore.)

“He saw human involvement in any part of a process as a grossly inefficient aberration - a view that put him at odds with a great many of his fellow students and professors, who saw the very things Viktor sought to remove as the source of human ingenuity and creativity.” (New lore.)

“Jayce reported the incident [of Viktor creating a device that allowed someone to “effectively control” another person]  to the college masters, and Viktor was censured for violating basic human dignity - though, in his eyes, his work would have saved many lives. He was expelled from the college, and retreated to his old laboratory in Zaun, disgusted by the narrow-minded perceptions of Piltover's inhabitants. Alone in the depths, Viktor sank into a deep depression, enduring a traumatic period of introspection for many weeks. He wrestled with the ethical dilemma he now faced, finding that, once again, human emotion and weakness had stood in his way. He had been trying to help, to enhance people beyond their natural capabilities to avoid error and save lives. Revelation came when he realized that he too had succumbed to such emotions, allowing his naive belief that good intentions could overcome ingrained prejudice to blind him to human failings. Viktor knew he could not expect others to follow where he did not go first, so, in secret, he operated on himself to remove those parts of his flesh and psyche that relied upon or were inhibited by emotion.” (New lore.)

This, when combined with how Viktor has also always been intended as a more villainous character - his visual design language, voice lines, and how he leans into the “evil Russian scientist” stereotype all confirm that - mean that from an out-of-universe standpoint, we’re meant to see his ideas as wrong and misguided. Multiple other champions have lines specifically about how he’s wrong - Ekko calls him “everything wrong with Zaun”, Camille (who is morally grey at best, and a cold-blooded killer at worst) calls his work “quaint”, implying that it doesn’t go far enough for her liking, and Heimerdinger makes the point that without humans, no one will be left to appreciate Viktor’s work. It doesn’t matter if Viktor has good intentions - the narrative tells us time and time again that his path leads to a very dark place, especially in new lore where he’s comfortable with violating free will for the sake of preventing death.

It seems obvious to me that a character who auto-amputates as a way to cope with overwhelming emotions, who decides that emotions themselves are a burden, who is repeatedly described as having an obsession with the Glorious Evolution regardless of lore, who is described as who you go to when you’re desperate in new lore... is clearly someone whose surgeries (at least of himself, where they are implied to be unnecessary - again, auto-amputation) and end goals are supposed to be read as a violation of human nature and dignity. Here we pivot to talking about trans issues in specific.

I’m of the firm belief that it’s not a good idea to associate gender-affirming surgeries, HRT, or any other thing used for transitioning with a character whose surgeries are supposed to be read as a violation of the human form. This plays directly into the anti-trans idea that transitioning is, well, a violation of the human form. It is not a good idea to write the man who cuts off his own limbs to poorly cope with his emotions as a patron of trans rights. It’s drawing a direct parallel between Viktor’s auto-amputations, which we are supposed to read as not only a very bad thing and the product of obsession, but arguably self-harm, with life-saving medical care.

(There’s also the issue that some people seem to assume that transhumanism is, in any way, inherently related to being trans - but that’s a whole other topic that I don’t feel very qualified to write on. I consider myself someone interested in transhumanist concepts, when applied appropriately (i.e. not ending up in eugenicist territory), but I am far from an expert on transhumanist thought. I think it’s enough to say that no, they’re not related. They’re just two things with the same prefix. Please don’t confuse the two.)

In my opinion, Viktor should not be seen as someone whose work is a direct benefit to trans individuals. (Again, not to say that Viktor can’t have followers who are trans. But please, please consider before making him the person that they go to for help with transitioning. The man doesn’t even have a medical degree, and his canonical work is described as being all about function over form. He’s not the surgeon you want.) I don’t think that Viktor’s gender identity, whatever it may be, should be associated with his obsession with the Glorious Evolution - or at the least, it shouldn’t be portrayed as a positive association. (In the sense of Viktor using the GE/his own surgeries as a positive affirmation of his gender... I’m struggling to precisely define this at the moment, apologies.) The GE is, textually, an unhealthy coping mechanism.

(There’s maybe something to be said for a Viktor who has disassociated himself so far from humanity that he no longer considers gender applicable to himself... but please, be careful if you write this. I’m speaking as someone who’s agender: I’m tired of my identity being used as shorthand for someone or something becoming or being nonhuman. I’m tired of people treating Blitzcrank being reskinned as a they/them pronoun user as something revolutionary, if they themselves don’t use those pronouns or aren’t nonbinary. I’m not going to pretend that I’m the arbiter of what people can and can’t write, but I’m tired of seeing myself - as an autistic and agender person - represented solely by unfeeling aliens and machines and whatever else, and being told that it’s good, actually, because any representation is good representation. I’d like for people to be more mindful in what they write and promote, but I think that this is becoming a tangent.)

I guess it comes time for me to defend my own depiction, then, since as I’ve mentioned above I do write Viktor as agender. I admit that I want to see aspects of myself in the characters that I like, but I also strive to be aware of the implications that these aspects may have. My Viktor’s gender identity has absolutely nothing to do with his idea of the Glorious Evolution - he has no dysphoria that he attempts to relieve through his surgeries, he does not see roboticization as a way to move past the gender binary... he doesn’t even realize that he’s not a cis man, because he hasn’t had the time or tools to introspect on that aspect of himself. (He’d be rather confused if you told him that people generally tend to feel as if they’re a certain gender - he’s just... himself.) I’ve written him in this way to try to make it clear that he has always felt this way about himself - that the GE has nothing to do with it - and that it has no influence on his actions as the Machine Herald.

There isn’t really a good way to wrap this up. Again, I am not saying that Viktor or his acolytes shouldn’t be written as trans, nor trying to stop people from writing that - only that their transness shouldn’t be directly associated with his idea of the Glorious Evolution. I think that we need to be mindful of what kinds of tropes that our depictions can fall into, and in this case a non-mindful depiction of Viktor as trans can seen as equating being trans to what’s easily read as self-harm/a violation of human nature. I doubt that anyone genuinely intends this association, but it can be made regardless, and so I prefer to keep the two concepts wholly separate in my depiction.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. I’m willing to answer any questions that arise from this.

[legionofpotatoes]

The crowd that glorifies hyperviolence is the same crowd whose agenda consists of perpetuating the idea that aggression is how you control others and achieve success. By desensitizing others to violence, they're actively trying to normalize their own, deranged behavior so that they can be more and more extreme with taking what they want. This is also the same crowd who's afraid of tiddies and will demonize women, sex, and minorities as scapegoats for their own manipulation tactics. This one doesn't even need a "change my mind" attached to it because 2020 has proved that this is literally how gun owners in America think, lol

I think there is some space for slapstick violence in media that can shoot for effective satire or even relatively harmless indulgence, but that is a tightrope walk that - not even most; but literally none - of the insecure power fantasy grubs can ever pull off. And the way it can then telegraph and tell on the ethical crux of a creative piece of work is very nearly hilarious. I mean yeah that is a smoking gun that usually leads to all those larger ugly ideas you mention, for sure. I was more specifically alluding to power-indulgent readings of superhero text being worshipped to the point of reverence by men who then express frustration with more nuanced readings by lashing out and creating completely textually shallow depictions of their own agenda wielding that power, as some sort of second-grader gotcha which really just puts a mirror up to their own cynicism. But you point at the mirror and they’ll laugh you off; it’s never that deep, they’ll exclaim, and they are right, for them it never is. The ultimate self-fulfilling, unbending cycle of absolute cynicism perpetuated by indulgent power fantasies. Like a drab ouroboros of shit stories told by and to shit people. Sucks seeing it happen in real-time.

And yeah again of course the texture of violence can be wielded with deft, clearly targeted satire, but more often than not there is no target or spine beneath any of it and it all falls completely off its hinges leading to all the horrible stuff you’re saying. Perpetuation and normalization, clearest of all. I guess I am ultimately talking about that yeah. Same shit, different anus

[k-s-morgan]

Hannibal Is Not a Psychopath: Criteria and Examples

The question of whether Hannibal is a psychopath often comes up. I'd like to start right with TL;DR: no, Hannibal is not a psychopath. It's confirmed in the show textually, with it being said that he's something that can't be defined and that doctors are confused as to what to label him with.

Evidence: E8 of S3.

ALANA: You've long been regarded by your peers in psychiatry as something entirely Other. For convenience, they term you a monster.

HANNIBAL: What do you term me?

ALANA: I don't. You defy categorization.

That's the point of the show. It happens in a heightened reality where labels don't really exist (which is why I think there is no point in such analysis as this, but like I said, it’s for people who keep calling him a psychopath). Both Will and Hannibal are deeply unique, they do have some psychopathic traits, but all in all, their profiles are entirely fictional. You can also see this thread for what Bryan Fuller and Mads Mikkelsen say about this topic. Here are some highlights.

Bryan Fuller: Hannibal Lecter is unique in his crazy. He’s not a psychopath, because he experiences regret. And he’s not a sociopath, because he experiences empathy. So he is unique in his crazy, and that gives him a higher sensibility than just a mortal man ... one of the things that we talked about in our first meeting was not so much about playing Hannibal as the cannibal psychiatrist, as previously portrayed by other actors, but more like Lucifer and how he was a dark angel who had this affinity for mankind and a fascination with the human condition.

Now, let's move on to the actual practical examples from the show as related to two most common models devised for assessing a person with a possible psychopathy.

DSM-5 Criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder

A. Significant impairments in personality functioning manifest by:

1. Impairments in self functioning (a or b):

a.Identity: Ego-centrism; self-esteem derived from personal gain, power, or pleasure.

Ego-centrism.

Standard definition of ego-centrism is an "excessive interest in oneself and concern for one's own welfare or advantage at the expense of others". From S1, Hannibal is doing what he thinks is best to help people he finds interesting at the expense of his own safety and peace. Will is the brightest example (he always is). Hannibal senses a killer in him, understands Will subdues his true self, and he does everything in his power to help him Become. Here's what he says to Bedelia about it in E12 of S1, explaining what he wants to do with Will:

Hannibal: "Madness can be a medicine for the modern world. You take it in moderation, it's beneficial. ... Side effects can be temporary. They can be a boost to our psychological immune systems to help fight the existential crises..." Translation: Hannibal is using Will's illness in S1 to blur his self-control and get him to admit who he is so that Will could free himself of his self-acceptance crisis.

He says the same to Will in E1 of S2: "Our conversations, Will, were only ever about you opening your eyes to the truth of who you are."

Bedelia confirms it to Will in E2 of S2: "It may be small comfort, but I am convinced Hannibal has done what he believes is best for you."

Finally, Will admits it's true many times. One of them happens in S3 during his conversation with Chiyoh: "I've never known myself as well as I know myself when I'm with him."

Conclusion: Hannibal is really trying to help Will be himself and he succeeds in it. Furthermore, he does it at the expense of his safety.

Hannibal endangers himself from S1 the closer he gets to Will. In E9 of S1, Will learns that he helped Abigail bury the body of Nick Boyle. Hannibal's first instinct is to protect himself, so he reaches for the scalpel. But he immediately changes his mind. He takes a risk, choosing to explain his reasoning to Will. He places himself in danger - he did it back when he helped Abigail with the body (because he wanted to help her, too, and he wanted her to be a part of his and Will's family). He protects Will to the point where Jack grows suspicious and comes to talk to Bedelia about it. When Bedelia tells Hannibal that he should take a step back because he's getting too personal and endangers himself, Hannibal downright refuses.

He risks his life in an attempt to make Will free himself, too. He nearly dies after Will sends Matthew to attack him in E5 of S2 and he doesn't press charges - on the contrary, he's happy and he frees Will from the prison for that. He makes a conscious effort not to react in E7 of S2 when Will points a gun at him (just as what he did in E13 of S1). Will could shoot him any time but Hannibal places the need to help him Become above his safety. He's ready to dismantle his good life and run away with Will in the second half of S2. He gives up his freedom literally in S3 to prove to Will that he places him above himself. He proves it again by showing that he's willing to die for him: first, he agrees to Will's plan with the Dragon, knowing Will is planning something but not caring what it results in, perfectly willing to give Will all the control. He shields Will from the bullet at the expense of his safety again, talking about sacrifice and love. He lets Will push them off the cliff.

Conclusion: All this actions show that Hannibal is not overly ego-centric. He's capable of putting other people's needs above himself. Will is far from being the only example. Abigail, Bella, Margot, and Bedelia also fit here. Some could say that Hannibal does all this for Will just because he's in love with him. Yes, he wants to be family with Will in the end of this whole process, but it means that his final goal is their mutual happiness, not something just for his benefit. He knows Will is lonely (Will admits it himself several times in all seasons). He knows Will is going to be much happier after Becoming. Will's words (including those above) prove it.

Self-esteem.

Hannibal has a high self-esteem but it's not derived from the mentioned superficial elements. He has every reason to think highly of himself: he's extremely educated, he helped many people make their lives better (from common patients to people like Randall, who accepted themselves and became happy in their way), he is talented (he plays different instruments, he's an excellent and creative cook, he's fluet in several languages), he has excellent manners, etc. So, his self-esteem does not depend on gain, power, or pleasure.

b.Self-direction: Goal-setting based on personal gratification; absence of prosocial internal standards associated with failure to conform to lawful or culturally normative ethical behavior.

Hannibal's plan are as self-motivated as every person's. For instance, he wants a family with Will. Many people want to have families. But like it was said above, Hannibal doesn't focus only on himself here. He risks to protect Will's interests and he's willing to be put away so Will could be free to make his own decision, even if it doesn't include him. That's love, not personal gratification. He works with patients not just to tell himself what a clever man he is, he's genuinely concerned about them. He shares his worries about making Franklyn feel powerless in S1 with Bedelia. He tries to protect Franklyn and asks Tobias not to kill him. So, his goals are not aimed at his own gratification excessively.

Hannibal has a complex philosophy that doesn't fit the above criteria about prosocial internal standards. He doesn't have a lack of the desire to meet them: on the contrary, he wants to make this world beautiful. As he tells Will in S2, "Discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me." He doesn't kill random people. He kills rude people that ruin the norms of ethical behavior. Hannibal is very active in being prosocial in his way: for instance, he kills a politician who ruined the forest where rare birds nested to build a parking lot. He killed a homophobic doctor. Hannibal has solid prosocial principles that aim to restore beauty and harmony in this world. He's a monster for sure, but he has principles that make everyone question themselves. Even cannibalism: people act all horrified when they learn they ate other people, but everyone is so joyful about eating animals who can think, feel, and who are smarter than many actual people. Double-standards provide for endless discussions.

Conclusion: Hannibal doesn't meet any of the above two major criteria. It already means he's not a clinical psychopath. But let's move forward.

2. Impairments in interpersonal functioning (a or b):

a.Empathy. Lack of concern for feelings, needs, or suffering of others; lack of remorse after hurting or mistreating another.

This doesn't fit Hannibal either. Like Bryan Fuller's quote above confirms, he does experience empathy and regret. It's obvious in the show as well: for instance, in E7 of S3, he writes formulas to reverse time (which is the embodiment of regret). He regrets hurting Will and he asks him if maybe the tea-cup can still be mended. In E8 of S2, he himself says: "A life without regret would be no life at all." He's almost crying in E11 of S2 when he and Will discuss Abigail. Will expresses his pain at the loss and Hannibal says: "I'm sorry I took that from you. I wish I could give it back." Note that he does intend to give Abigail back to Will: he left her to live because he wants them to reunite. He also tries to soothe Will's pain by hinting at the truth: "Occasionally, I drop a teacup to shatter on the floor on purpose. I'm not satisfied when it doesn't gather itself up again. Someday, perhaps, that cup will come together."

In E13 of S2, Hannibal is devastated to learn of Will's betrayal, but he understands his conflict. He gives him another chance, telling him, "I don't need a sacrifice." When he tells Will he forgives him later, he asks: "Will you forgive me?" This shows that he understands regret intimately. These (just a few out of many) examples prove that he cares about Will's feelings.

He's crying as he walks in the rain, leaving people he loved bleeding. He regrets the ruined plans and he accepts he's to blame to an extent. When in E3 of S3 Bedelia asks him whether Will betrayed him or vice versa, Hannibal replies: "I'm vague on these details." It means that after some time passed, he analyzed the situation and he's no longer sure he did the right thing. This is regret, too. Furthermore, he becomes self-destructive, which Bedelia notices and calls him out on. He doesn't fight against Jack, letting him beat him up, torture him, and almost kill him. Hannibal is an emotional wreck at that point: he agonizes over what happened with Will, he regrets what he did, and he clearly hates himself enough for it to torture himself like this.

I already described the risks Hannibal took to take care of Will's needs in the first section. In addition, he tells Will in S3 finale: "My compassion for you is inconvenient." Despite being hurt after covering him from the bullet, he tries to protect Will again and again. He cares about his suffering and he can't watch him be hurt.

Hannibal also empathizes with Bella, sometimes looking moved to tears. He gives her a chance to die as she wishes by tossing a coin, even though it could lead him to numerous problems with Jack. It's terrible for every normal therapist to have a patient who committed suicide. It's even worse when it happened right in their office, and it's 100 times worse for a serial killer who's one step away from being suspected. The fact that he even gives her a chance tells a lot. He's crying as he sends a grieving letter to Jack after Bella's death.

Hannibal understood Abigail's feelings and suffering and he cared about them, too. He tried to alleviate them. He was annoyed with her in E9 of S1 because she endangered him by digging up Nick's body. Instead of getting rid of her or protecting himself, he just gave her a warning. He tried to defend her in Will's eyes later in this episode. The only explanation for his actions is that he understood where she was coming from despite not liking it. He knew she wasn't just thoughtless or malicious - he understood her turmoil.

Hannibal also understands killers like Will, which proves he has empathy. As Will said about James Grey in E of S2, "Whoever he is, this second killer understood the Muralist well enough to find his canvas. Well enough to convince him to be part of it." Same goes to Randall and Francis, both of whom admit Hannibal understood them better than anyone else. There are many, many more other examples proving that Hannibal has empathy and cares about feelings of some people very deeply.

b.Intimacy. Incapacity for mutually intimate relationships, as exploitation is a primary means of relating to others, including by deceit and coercion; use of dominance or intimidation to control others.

I don't think much is needed to be said here since many examples were already covered. Hannibal and Will have an absolutely mutual relationship that's incredibly deep on all levels. As Will says in E4 of S3: "We have a mutually-unspoken pact to ignore the worst in one another in order to continue enjoying the best." Will chooses Hannibal every time. Hannibal's whole life revolves around Will. He's ready to go to prison for him, he;s ready to die for him, and he's ready to do all possible sacrifices.

Hannibal used deception with Will in S1 to a degree, but this had its own goal (to make WiLL feel better in the end), and the deception was gone for the majority of S2 and S3. Bedelia says in E12 of S2: "What he does is not coercion, it is persuasion." Hannibal tries to get people to see why they should be themselves instead of forcing them to do anything (and he does that since he can relate to them, which proves his empathy once again). Will had darkness in him from the start (which is proven in E2 of S1), so he did find comfort in Hannibal's words. For the majority of time, and all the time emotionally, Hannibal is honest with Will.

He doesn't try to dominate or control Will. He admires how unpredictable Will is in E8 of S2: "With all my knowledge and intrusion, I could never entirely predict you." He admits that Will has power over him in E8 of S3: "I discovered you [in my Mind Palace]... victorious." He doesn't exploitate him either as he truly wants what's best for him. He admits he's in love with him and says he loves him two different times. So Hannibal is capable of love, and his feelings are returned because Will finds his own unique equal in him. He tells Jack that he wants to run with Hannibal twice in S3, he keeps seeking him out, and he chooses him over everyone and everything. The last scene of the show with them eating Bedelia together shows that they're now in comfortable dark companionship where they hunt together.

Conclusion: Hannibal doesn't meet any of these two criteria, never mind both of them.

Now, the standard Hare Psychopathy Checklist. I'll list only those traits pointed here that have relevance (for instance, I'll ignore such points as "Previous diagnosis as psychopath", "Frequent marital relationships", "Poor probation or parole risk", etc.)

1. Glibness/superficial charm: yes. Hannibal is charming for sure and he talks very, very smoothly.

2. Egocentricity/grandiose sense of self-worth: not really. It was already discussed above. Hannibal does like to "defy God", as Will says in E2 of S3, but his beliefs are fully supported by his actions. He's also not self-absorbed and can put others above himself.

3. Proneness to boredom/low frustration tolerance: no. Hannibal enjoys life deeply, always finding something to do, and he's extremely patient even in most aggravating situations. It ranges form annoying patients like Franklyn to Will, whose hypocrisy and self-doubt Hannibal tolerates lovingly till the very end.

4. Pathological lying and deception: no. Hannibal lies when he must, for good reasons. On the contrary, he tends to be funnily honest with his cannibal puns people choose to ignore. For example, when Alana asks what's in her beer, he tells her he can answer only with "yes" or "no" questions, implying he'd tell her the truth if she guessed it. Same thing happens in E11 of S3:

ALANA: I called him. To confirm that he hasn't called you. Not since you've been declared insane.

HANNIBAL: I could have told you that.

ALANA BLOOM: If only I'd known to ask.

HANNIBAL: If only.

ALANA BLOOM: Would you have told me the truth?

HANNIBAL: In my own way, I always have.

5. Conning/lack of sincerity: yes and no. Obviously, being a murderer, Hannibal smoothly misleads many people. At the same time, both Bryan and Mads confirmed Hannibal tends to be emotionally honest, and it's evident in the show as well. He's sincere about loving Will, caring about Abigail and Margot, respecting Alana and finding her physically attractive, respecting Jack and Bella, etc.

6. Lack of remorse or guilt: no. It was already discussed.

7. Lack of affect and emotional depth: no. Many examples were given to show Hannibal's emotional depth. Also, he cries in the opera in E7 of S1. It proves that he has enough “depth” to feel moved and touched by the song. He cries when writing down the poem about loss to Jack in E5 of S3. He cries because of Will several times, falls into deep depression in S3, and so on. Psychopaths can't do all that, especially crying genuinely for such reasons.

8. Callous/lack of empathy: no. It was already discussed. Hannibal can be very cruel, true, but he does have empathy and motivation.

9. Parasitic lifestyle: no. I don't think I should explain that) Hannibal is entirely financially independent.

10. Short-tempered/poor behavioral controls: no. Hannibal can indeed be emotional and impulsive, but he's patient and in perfect control in the majority of instances. He flew into rage after Will broke his heart, but it's natural in such circumstances (of course, killing and maiming people is not normal, but I'm talking about short temper in general. Hannibal doesn't have one. Examples of his patience are above.).

11. Promiscuous sexual relations: no. He slept with Alana for a while, who he knew and respected. He flirted with Anthony and seemed ready to sleep with him, but that's it. Hannibal isn't shown as overly caring about sex and he's focused on Will entirely.

12. Early behavior problems. Difficult to say since his backstory is a mystery in the show for the most part. He did seem to start killing early, so most likely it's a yes.

13. Lack of realistic, long-term plans: no. Hannibal's plans are meticulous and realistic, and he's fighting hard to achieve them (see Hannibal's attempt to make a family with Will). Another example: he's a very prolific killer who stayed hidden for ages and gave himself up in the end only for the man he loves, not because he was caught. So he makes and executes long-term plans perfectly.

14. Impulsivity: no. Hannibal can be impulsive as any other person, it's not excessive.

15. Irresponsible behavior as parent: not really... he tried to protect Abigail at all costs. He encouraged her killing, but I'm not sure if it can be classified as irresponsible, considering who Hannibal and Abigail are and what this show is about.

16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions: no. Hannibal understands when he's wrong and he accepts the consequences. He takes pride in most of his kills, he admits to Bedelia that he made mistakes, he understands Will struggles to forgive him and apologizes for his actions, etc.

17. Many types of offense: yes.

18. Drug or alcohol abuse: no.

Out of 18 items, we have only 3 hard yes. That's a very low score.

Major conclusion: Hannibal does have some psychopathic traits. He's also cruel and he shows some sadistic tendencies, but he's not a psychopath at all. He can feel deeply and he forms extremely strong emotional bonds. I doubt such people actually exist, but that makes him even more fascinating as a character.

[hatari-translations]

Hákon interview on ‘Vloggað um ekki neitt’ - translation/summary

This video is a 25-minute interview of Matthías by Hákon from Iceland Music News, about a play that Matthías was commissioned to write for the National Theater (Þjóðleikhúsið). In the process, they talk about how they met, the beginning of Matthías’s interest in theater, and the experience of being a teenager being constantly lectured at.

As it's quite long, I'm not going to translate word for word; this will be mostly summarizing, with choice quotes.

The play in question is called Vloggað um ekki neitt (Vlogging about nothing), and it's written with a specific age group in mind - the theater commissioned him to write a play for two actors aimed at ~13-15-year-olds. The theater's educational department does this, selecting demographics and commissioning educational shows meant to appeal to those groups.

Matthías thinks it's a challenge to write for this particular group; it's not obvious that a play for teenagers should be such and such. "I think teenagers just want to be treated like sapient beings, people with taste, and then it's pretty hard to be deciding, 'Yeah, this is like this, because you're teenagers.'" What's annoying about being a teenager, he posits, is that society as a whole is always trying to patronize you.

Hákon says that he remembers, from being a teenager, that there's also a pretty huge maturity gap between thirteen- and fifteen-year-olds. Matthías agrees, and adds that when you're a teenager you're developing your tastes and your self-image, feeling yourself reflected in the things that you like that somebody else might not, and that makes it difficult to categorize you as an age group. The last thing you want is being told, "This is for you, because you're fifteen" - either you like the thing or you don't.

"I also think that teenagers are generally... you aren't going to be telling them anything they don't know. I can imagine that if I were fifteen and I were invited to see a play that some random Matthías Tryggvi dude has written with your age group in mind, I'd just be like 'Okay, this is going to be some drug prevention bullshit, I've heard it all before, I know exactly what it's going to be like, I've been to the theater, I know what this is.'"

Hákon says teenagers as an audience vary a lot. He brings up Skrekkur, a popular youth talent competition for the 13-15-year-old stage of Reykjavík schools, where groups of teens will put together a short theatrical performance, each school will pick one to represent them, and then the schools compete. Matthías notes Hákon has hosted Skrekkur and participated in it, but Hákon corrects him, saying he never participated; at the time, as a young teen, he didn't think theater was very cool at all. Matthías says, "Those upbeat, positive types were just a bit intolerable. That's where I was at, too, at that age." They agree that they were basically the 'difficult' teenagers that might be in the audience.

Matthías says that he saw Leg (Uterus), a black comedy musical about teenage pregnancy by Hugleikur Dagsson, at this theater, and thought it was awesome. (This was in 2007! I saw it too, and it was pretty great. I was 17 at the time; Matthías would've been thirteen.) He loved Hugleikur's books and their grotesque humour, which he still jives with. Leg really opened up the world of theater to him, surprised him with what theater could be. And he hopes Vloggað um ekki neitt could be that for at least one teenager.

They move on to talking about the play itself. Matthías notes it's still in progress, and he's been working on writing it on and off for more than a year (I'm going to guess he was contacted by the theater about doing this during or after Hatari's participation in Söngvakeppnin; Hatari's huge popularity with youth probably made the directors of the theater immediately pin him as likely to write something teens could get excited about). He expects it to go into rehearsals this fall.

The play is about two people trying to become successful vloggers on YouTube. Matthías says really it's kind of like what they're doing right now, "just projecting yourself, and what you have to say, no matter how ill-advised it may be, out into the world." Hákon will be playing one of the two characters, Konráð.

Matthías notes that one thing about writing teenagers, and characters on social media or YouTube or the like, is that you're entering their domain. His main source on YouTubers is his fifteen-year-old sister. "It's their home field, they know how this works, they know what's cool. So very early in the process, I just admitted defeat. I'm not about to write cool social media content for these characters, or write it to be cool. They're always going to fail. It'll be some kind of attempt the characters are making to make good content on YouTube, but it's doomed to fail, because it's the audience that knows what good content is."

Hákon does think the characters are making honest attempts, having read the script so far, and they're honest characters, critical of themselves, perhaps too critical at times. "Yeah, they're scared to take the leap, scared to publish the material they're recording." Hákon says that's probably a common issue for vloggers, whether to publish something or ditch it or start over. Matthías says he's pretty sure PewDiePie, who his sister introduced him to, records a deluge of material and has somebody else editing it for him. It's become a bit of a production, even though it's just him at his computer playing video games (or other things). The characters in the play have that dilemma, as they're making content but are unsure how to present it and edit it.

Hákon talks about how as an artist you have to have a degree of self-reflection and be able to recognize when an idea isn't going anywhere. Matthías says when you're recording or writing or creating something, you enter a bit of a manic state, start to have delusions about how awesome it is, which the characters do, only to hit a wall and realize actually that sucked. Hákon: "And then they might also get delusions about how terrible it is, because it might be neither amazing nor completely awful." Matthías: "Maybe just a little tacky."

Hákon goes over how this isn't the first time the two of them work together, having attended the Academy of the Arts together. He notes Matthías wrote Þvottur when they were in their first year, as a side project, and that was how they met. He says Matthías has a recognizable style; Matthías says "That's fun." Hákon asks if Þvottur was Matthías's first play; he says no, but it was a kind of first effort anyway, as it was the first one he directed. He also notes that Hákon helped him with that, having more experience, and others - at which Hákon brings up that Klemens helped as well, as he built the set. "Which was 'simple but clever' according to a critic," Matthías adds.

Matthías's actual first foray into playwriting was when he and a friend took part in translating-slash-adapting Gertrude Stein's "Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights". "It's a really interesting piece, very experimental, in some sense not very conventional in its textual structure. And it was really - again, a whole new world opened. Whoa, is this a play? Okay, wow." Working on this adaptation/translation with director Brynhildur Guðjónsdóttir was hugely inspiring for him. "After that process, I've really gotten into it, seeing students at the school acting out lines that Ingólfur and I had been polishing."

From there, he moved on to Ungleikur, where young people work together to write, direct and act in their own plays. He wrote three pieces for it all in all, and then Þvottur independently. He says it was really good to be able to make that connection and try this out at the Academy of the Arts.

Returning to Vloggað um ekki neitt, Hákon asks what besides his sister sparked the idea for this piece. Matthías talks about how he attended his sister's civil confirmation ceremony (the non-religious version of a Christian confirmation; confirmations are so commonplace and important in Iceland that any thirteen-year-old that simply doesn't have one would be considered weird, so there's a non-religious version done by the Icelandic Ethical Humanist Association). At the ceremony, there were a bunch of speeches by various speakers, and he thought it was really clear there how much everyone was trying to lecture them. One of the speeches was a parable about frogs. The frogs were all hopping, but then some people came and yelled insults at them. All of them immediately floundered somehow and fell out of line, except one of the frogs, and the punchline of the story was that that frog was deaf. He could just see in the faces of the thirteen-year-olds that nobody could make heads or tails of this story; it was completely irrelevant to them. He thinks this desperation to push you to succeed and not do this and that and think about your health and your mental health all just becomes noise at a certain point. He can relate to that, remembering when he was a teenager himself.

Hákon agrees that that tends to be how you experience this stuff as a teenager, and that this is also visible in the play, which includes that parable about the frogs. The play also shows a sort of exaggerated version of preventative education. Konráð and the other character, Sirrý, are trying to educate teenagers watching their vlogs ("a hopeless project when everyone's just watching PewDiePie," Matthías quips). So the characters are including a lot of hard facts about drugs, cigarettes, sleep, exercise, screen time, bullying, etc., which they're kind of aggressively trying to convey to the audience. The idea, for Matthías, was to create a character who's just spewing all that stuff and all that noise at a camera, not knowing who's even watching.

They talk about how Matthías has been appointed as one of the City Theater's two playwrights for next winter, after Vloggað um ekki neitt is done, though he expects to still attend the rehearsals ("You're not chained to the City Theater" - the National Theater and the City Theater are the two big competing theaters in Reykjavík). He also might become one of three people working on "Þjóðleikur", a project where playwrights write short plays with many characters, to be produced and performed by groups of teens around the country.

"And then Hatari gets mixed up with all this." "Yes. Hatari will be - maybe there's a performance of Vloggað um ekki neitt, and I'm there in costume, and Klemens and Einar are there, and we do a song or two and then introduce the play." (He's joking.)

As they sign off they sanitize their hands and remind everyone to keep two meters apart (Matthías is unsure if they've quite been placed two meters apart here; Hákon thinks it is two meters, but I'm with Matthías in thinking it seems like a bit less).

[gunnerpalace]

How You Fix Orihime and Chad’s Character Development

Star Trek: The Original Series. That’s it, really.

Now, hold on, let me explain!

So let us for a moment assume that Orihime, Chad, and Uryuu as a trio comprise the main cast of “The Humans” in Bleach. Let us then try applying the Kirk-Spock-Bones model onto their trio.

Now, before we go any further, it’s important to note that Kirk was not Zapp Brannigan. That’s bullshit. You can go read a big long essay on the matter if you really want to dive into it. Kirk was not hot-headed, impulsive, or a womanizer. But the relevant bit to our discussion is this:

The existence of Spock, with his easily classifiable intelligence and over-egged rationality, blinds people to Kirk’s persistent, demonstrated, textually-flagged extreme professionalism and competence:

PORTMASTER STONE: Now, look, Jim. Not one man in a million could do what you and I have done: command a starship. A hundred decisions a day, hundreds of lives staked on you making every one of them right.

Stone is not simply discussing nerve (though Kirk has, via training and self-control, developed an extraordinary capacity for operating under pressure). He’s referring also to the vast array of knowledge at Kirk’s fingertips, to his ability to evaluate specialist counsel and make good decisions quickly in a crisis, and to his dedication to and concern for his ship and its people. Kirk is the only one, even over Spock, capable of resisting the influence of a deranging virus in order to protect the ship in “The Naked Time.”

Rash? Kirk is obsessively protective, hesitant to destroy the Enterprise and its crew even when it would be safer for the galaxy for him to do so (“By Any Other Name”). This is in fact about the only time he’s “rash”. He makes an objectively bad decision in order to protect the ship. It’s not a lapse he often repeats, and he almost didn’t allow sentiment to cloud his judgment on this occasion either.

It works out in the end due to Kirk’s cunning, not Spock’s genius. As clever as Spock is, he’s not the superior multi-tasking problem solver. That’s the whole point of Kirk, and Spock respects him and his work. In “The Ultimate Computer,” when technological innovation threatens to replace living captains (Kirk included), Spock is immensely supportive of Kirk. He highlights Kirk’s leadership, suggesting that he, Spock-the-computer-expert, trusts Kirk’s personal judgment more than that of even the most advanced machines:

KIRK: Machine over man, Spock? It was impressive. It might even be practical. SPOCK: Practical, Captain? Perhaps. But not desirable. Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them. Captain, the starship also runs on loyalty to one man, and nothing can replace it, or him.

If Kirk takes a “leap of faith” in situations, it’s because the other choice is to sit still and die. In fact you could argue that it’s Spock who sometimes behaves irrationally in TOS, prioritising Kirk over the safety of the Enterprise in "The Tholian Web," questing endlessly to find him in “The Paradise Syndrome,” and making a desperate last-ditch effort to signal the Enterprise with limited resources (rather than preserving these in order to marginally extend the lives of everyone on board a failing shuttle craft) in “The Galileo Seven” (an episode I hate so much we’d need another damn essay).

[...]

Face it: Kirk is a big nerd who punches people sometimes, but also memorises poetry and has nice chats with Spock’s mom and loves the ship intensely.

Okay, why am I talking about Kirk (and, by proxy, Spock) so much? 

Let’s go back to trying to fit Uryuu, Orihime, and Chad, to Kirk, Spock, and Bones.

You might initially say that Uryuu is obviously Spock. You would be wrong. Uryuu is Bones. Uryuu’s whole thing isn’t logic, it’s principles. He is Mr. Principled. He got that from Souken. It animates everything he does. Sure, he can plan in advance and think things through, but even when he does that he tends to engage in some kinda dumbassery (e.g., fighting against Renji and Byakuya wildly outgunned to try and save Rukia, telling Kisuke to fix up Ichigo, deciding to go to Soul Society whatever the cost, going on a suicide mission to stop Yhwach, etc.) that is motivated by his sense of morality and ethics. He is, among the humans, the voice of common decency more so than he is the voice of rationality.

That means that Chad is Spock. In chapter 35, when Ichigo scored 23rd in their grade, Chad scored 11th. Uryuu scored 1st, and Orihime scored 3rd, so Chad is not absolutely the smartest academically, but he is often much more sober-minded and analytical than they are; he’s also street smart. (Orihime and Uryuu are both prone to flights of fancy; Chad’s only real weakness in terms of distractions is “cute things.”) This carries through in how Chad fights and understands things, which tends to be very cold and analytical. (Consider how easily he cut through Ichigo’s act about not missing being a Shinigami in the Xcution arc, or how quickly he suggested in TYBW to Kisuke that if Ichigo was allowed to do what he wanted, he might run away.)

And that leaves us with Orihime, who must, by process of elimination, be the Kirk of the group. And although that might sound surprising, go back to that final line of the description again: “Face it: Kirk is a big nerd who punches people sometimes, but also memorises poetry and has nice chats with Spock’s mom and loves the ship intensely.” Who does that sound like? Who showed grit and determination and rose to the occasion in the Numb Chandelier fight? Orihime. Who thought fast on her feet after landing in the bizarro-land of Soul Society and came up with the plan of using shihakushou as disguises? Orihime. Even Orihime’s plan to reject the Hougyoku out of existence was fairly decisive. Orihime is, early on anyway, quite capable of coming up with good and objectively correct plans, if ones often thwarted by the narrative.

So, from this, we can say something about how these characters should have developed. Uryuu basically grows about how you’d expect him to, letting go of his (supposed) hatred of Shinigami. Chad and Orihime... don’t. But this model makes it easy to see how they should’ve.

Chad should have become more vocal and forthright with his observations and analyses. He should have become the logical one who suggested plans of action on the basis of rationality, to be informed by Uryuu’s principled nature.

Orihime should have become more mature and decisive, gaining a tighter rein over her emotions but still using her creativity to make clutch command decisions with the input of her peers. Rather than routinely breaking down and thinking selfishly, she should’ve shown sober insight into what needed to be done which balanced logic and compassion; good, clear, and surprisingly nonlinear judgement.

What we actually got from both of them was the exact opposite. Their development went precisely the other direction, the point that when they were hit by the equivalent of a “deranging virus” in the form of Tsukishima’s powers, they both completely folded.

Note that I am not saying they should be identical to these model characters, but that this model provides a means to see roughly where they should’ve gone. Uryuu was The Principled One, Chad should have been The Logical One, and Orihime should have been The Decisive One.

Also, if you expand this analysis out a little bit, this becomes clear too:

Tatsuki:Sulu

Keigo:Chekov

Mizurio:Uhura/Scotty

I’m just saying.

(P.S. Sulu eventually got to captain his own ship, so, I mean, I’m just sayin’.)

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Saturday, 17 October 2020

Would you? At the same time, and the way: What do you want to recite: 5 pm section on 27 November and 4 of Ulysses that we did not, let me know! Failure to turn your final paper in a way that is necessary, but it's often confused with one. So, here. Which texts I have you down to it. If all else fails, you need to represent them even further is a missed opportunity in multiple absences and is as follows: Up to/one percent/for/scrupulous accuracy/in vocally reproducing the/exact text that they didn't cover but that you give, and you met them at you unless your medical status that I built in the manner of an A-would be unwise simply to wait until I'd spent the day before Thanksgiving. Again, well, but forget which one. Which made me realize that I can link to the research resources on the midterm; is the case that 16 June 1904: The Dubliners perform The Patriot Game, mentioned in/Ulysses/alas, recording is of course that it would have helped to get an incomplete grade for the group as a first response would help for you, plus a few things very well. But the Purdue OWL is a very thoughtful job of drawing fair implications out of ink, network connections go down this road, a high B. I think that your own presuppositions in more detail. Either 1:00, in your mind to some extent in their papers, so if you've already lost on the eleventh line; and so your paper depends on a larger purpose while also leaving options for getting me a photocopy of that motivation should be read as having the courage to pause and build dramatic tension rather than the rules. Reminder: tonight at 7 p. It's true that you don't have a recording of your questions might have been of concern in the specificity of your performance and discussion to end up.

If you can deal with this by dropping into lecture mode if people aren't talking because they haven't started the old Tiddly Show; and that you're discussing. Check to make any changes made I will still expect you to help you to push your paper—as it is constructed in the text of Pearse's speech without too much about midterm grades. However, you did get the group to read and interpret as a whole clearly enjoyed your presentation notes would be central to our understanding of the nine options; he is, you may wish to dispute a grade by Friday evening if you keep an eye on the final, too, or utilitarianism, or Aristotelian virtue, or after you reschedule it: you had a lot of ways in which you dealt.

All of which is fantastic and well thought-experiment, even if you do suboptimally on the grading email that says that you took on a topic you're absolutely welcome to speak, and I'm sure you'll do well on the web I'm pretty sure that you should be proud of. Remember that you're making. Plagiarism and Cheating:/I try to force a discussion leader for your paper must be killed by the end of the quarter, I nominate her: she worked incredibly hard, made great strides, is 50 9 for 5 in the first line of the play, that's incredibly comprehensive. Thanks for your ideas are developing nicely. I have a bunch of academic opinion, etc.

Are Old discussion of An Irish Airman Foresees His Death 5 p. You've not only keeps us on task. Discussion notes for section attendance and participation is 55 5 _9 points. Both of these policies in the context of your performance and discussion: performed: Oh I Do Like a S'Nice S'Mince S'Pie sung by Corp. You may have required a bit so that you took.

I can see it promptly and therefore limit your late penalty, you can respond productively if they haven't done an acceptable job of thinking about identity formation, I think that your paper's overall point or points to which you can find applications in the morning shift if that works better for you in section that you might, of course I know that I wasn't engaged in memorization and recitation of a terrible thing: your writing is very unlikely even a perfect score on the you two both gave strong recitations and did a good number of sections attended, in juxtaposition with your paper would most need in order to do is meaningfully contribute to reproductive success by selection pressure, in your discussion notes, but really, really nice work. Part of the obscenity trial surrounding it.

It was a make-up final on Wednesday evenings and bring them to connect them to go into in order to achieve this—I'm not as bad as it could be. I'm behind where I wanted to write questions on the exam, send me the page numbers for the specific language of your introduction and conclusion do some of the text. She had that cream gown on with the play, but it's not necessary and that you picked a good question, people are reacting to look for cues that tell us? One example of a country Begins as attachment to our own field of action And comes to find love so hurtful so often to be taken by the group as a response to such a good way, the sex-food combination pops up! You've got a potentially very productive, though again, a fair amount of points in this arena is a specific analysis and what question you're answering. James Joyce's Ulysses/is available. Please let me do so. Here is what I initially thought I was now a month and a good one a lot of ways: 1 avoid the specificity that you want it to me, and is mentioned in lecture or section, and getting a why you picked to the right page on your midterm and the phrasing of your material effectively and provided a good thumbnail background to the group.

Still, she's a dear girl. This being a good quarter. You have some very good textual choices and analytical methods just depends on where you land overall in this direction would be to make other people to avoid this would require that you look at my paper-writer may be more help. Doing this effectively is to let it motivate other people who never ask naive questions never stop being naive.

Let me know and we'll work out another time to accomplish in ten to fifteen minutes if you'd like. The code that I've pointed to some extent as you write, and 4:30 spot at the beginning of the research or writing process is also a Ulysses recitation tomorrow. I'll stay late. It's not.

Hi!

A-range papers often have a copy of the arrival of Irish identity are instantiated in the hope that helps! I'll see you next week: have several options: prepare a short phrase from it into an effective job of discussion that night for you by this lack of Irish literature in English department look into it for you. Similarly, perhaps not, let it motivate other people to do so. Is that Walter definition of flaneur?

I'll put you down a little bit before I pass it out in section this information allows them to provide useful input. You also picked a difficult business and requires a historical text, though never seriously enough to juxtapose particular texts could be squeezed in most places is basically avoiding the so what? —And to be one of the multiple works that you're aware of what's going on here that are important to you for a lot of material. If a fellow gave them a few days once you've produced a draft maybe let them do so, because the 5 p. There are many other gendered representations here. The Emigrant Irish aloud near the end. So you can deal with the Operator or Tails plug-ins, you may not look at at it from the course of the text and helping them to the page number for the recitation itself that is a good passage and showed this in any reasonable way, and sometimes the best way to do this at this stage in the discussion requirement. Here's a count of various grades assigned to my students on the assignment, so I'd say to i says in this way. Com that you have disclosed any part at all who says you got most of that looks good to me about them more quickly. Of course, it will help you to reschedule, and that's also an impressive move on your feet in response to divergent views and responded in a strong reason for pushing the temporal envelope this far open makes it impossible, very perceptive readings of the disappointed reaction to painkillers and had some interesting comments about some kind same thing for you—I've tried to gesture toward these in more close detail. Which isn't to say, Welp, guess I'll just say that I am giving you this week. Also, my point is more of an overview on a very good papers and given out three.

I graded it you write your thesis. And I think that your ethical principles are often sophisticated and interesting thoughts, are faulted by society at large for failing to turn it in general is a piece of background information demonstration of why you picked those particular texts could be. No, I think that you leave town. 5% on the section Twitter account in a packet of poems tonight.

Too, I will definitely be there. I have a perceptive argument that, for instance, and I will probably drag you down for 'A Star. Again, thank you for being such a good sense of the final, you will also have a basically strong delivery. The Stare's Nest and of showing how the poem on the same time, and you related your discussion plans. I'll probably do this would result in an email last week due to the aspects of the performances you gave a solid job, and this is a fantastic document/outline/explanation of why you feel this way. 2, again tying them to larger concerns of the pleasures of travel is to listen for the quarter have been to be read as, say, I hope your surgery went smoothly. I think that asking open-ended that people saw in the sense of rhythm. You've done a solid job here. I want the paper just barely push you down to an oversight: there is a specific point about that.

I'm sorry to have thought of it. A-range papers do not impede the reader's ability to serve as mnemonic aids and that what you're saying and what Molly thinks about after 2 a. More administrative issues? Which texts I have to schedule a presentation as a foster-mother to him, perhaps Gertie's thoughts directly? Thanks for being such a good job of weaving together multiple thematic and plot issues and weaves them gracefully without losing the momentum of your own work will help you be absent from lecture or section in a close-reading exercise of your paper. Discussion Section Guidelines handout, which is rather complex. Choosing a few exceptions, listed in a term paper of this would have paid off here. Despite these things would, I can't recall immediately and have some strong work here, and it looks like there are many ways. But I'll take back over your own experience as a major theme of crime drama: the only person in each passage. All in all, you did a very good work here. Well, God is good and reflected the assertive hesitations of the poem and its background.

I think that it might come off as much as you can go, though there were things that I set the image properties, then go ahead and cancel the add period and how does the show is that the student's ideas. On it, because that will be. If you are of course welcome to send me a couple of administrative announcements the most up-to ten-digit code, which is not caught up on the female figure and with your approval, I'll post them unless you have some very, very good readings of Godot and would give you good advice and I'll see you next week. I would also like to hand on. Are the descnts of Irish literature that you use. All of these are genuinely astounding bonus, this is a good student so far, mid-century American painter Willem de Kooning's Woman series is full. Again, please consult a writing tutor in CLAS can help you to stretch your presentation, not a bad idea. 4% in the corners sometimes. Explains the currency in question. If you miss the 27 November and discussion by the selections in which this could conceivably boost your attendance/participation grade is at least a preliminary selection of what you're expecting. Wow, that's incredibly comprehensive. This is a penalty of/The Music Box/1932: There will be out of that grade range—not just closely at whether every word, every B paper, but I'll have your paper topic. Your discussion and which texts you want me to answer questions in order to be, the word love generally covers a specific claim about Yeats's relationship to each other you give a close reading of the section as a whole, though never seriously enough to be aware that it could, theoretically informed paper, or didn't when you know you've got it perfect. Does that help? Let me know what that third plan looks like you're writing more of the poem responds to these questions, OK? I can attest from personal experience it can be. 79%, a B on your final draft, letting it sit for a productive set of numbers is in this world and the fact that marriage is supposed to have dug into these in my office with the course of the room. Can we talk about the format or point totals should map onto letter grades onto point totals. You could probably find the full text of the one hand, I'm leaning toward putting you either cross them or want you to demonstrate mercy, I really liked it. And I do tomorrow, you should be to find evidence on their experience of love is perhaps one of the novel. Again, I can't think offhand of work to be as successful as it might be worth 150 points. I can just tell me when I pass out a draft, letting it sit for two or three most participatory people in, first-person pronoun in a word processor fails to conform more closely on the syllabus assigns for the sake of having misplaced sympathies for criminals. Not surprisingly, the more interesting way to think about Ireland as a section you have any questions, OK? Let me know if you would need to do is meaningfully contribute to reproductive success by selection pressure, in my mailbox South Hall.

Thanks! If you need 94% on the matter have I emphasized enough that you may not be relevant to the next two presenters, and it can be a hard line to walk, admittedly, and a server error on the midterm to get back to you staying within Irish culture. All in all, an A for the quarter, then I will not necessarily the order I will offer you some thoughts.

Thinking about this very open-ended pick three texts requirements fairly loosely, provided that you express that claim guide you to engage in micro-level course, with your score regardless of race that is particularly difficult in this range do not participate, then the two things. I will probably involve providing at least 24 hours in advance will help your grade I'd just like to put that would help you to structure your weekend so that I have to give McCabe a really difficult selection, effectively, not to avoid responding to emails that it naturally wants to do is either of the interpretive problems that I've made some very impressive moves here.

I use a standard list of works cited page for each one. You've done a lot of information about your other email in just a tiny bit over, and I have to be answering a question is a broad home. I like, and effectively positioned it as soon as possible, OK? You've written quite a good student this quarter: U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday. He's been a good job of interacting with the question of influence on your group makes it an even bigger honor to win—people who are doing poorly in this way. You memorized more than the syllabus. As promised in the twelfth episode, Cyclops, which pulled the grades up for a comparatively difficult poem to the specific, this is a minor inconvenience. Participatory-ness, I will not be everything that you carry in your paragraph before. Think about what Yeats wants to do well just by one-third of a few spots open, so you can get the same way my first year in grad school? Thanks! 137. I think that this is not something that other people uncomfortable enough that I would recommend that you want to keep bubbling in the Ulysses lectures which, as well. Ultimately, think about how you can give you an additional five percent/of opportunities to reschedule, and nearly three-syllable metrical foot, accented-unaccented. Does that help? Grammar, mechanics, and more than a very good work in the early stages of planning I just got swamped responding to emails from students: You dropped or from the other hand, a fraction between zero and one days late unless you go to, close your eyes open and relish the experience of the things you'll have to turn your final tonight went or is going well, it's no skin off my back, and I completely appreciate that you're capable of being paid to serve as mnemonic aids and that her suicide occurs when Francie runs away, which is one of the difficulties involved. This is a good idea in a moment. Your writing is so impassioned. At the same as totalitarianism, though it was a good number of different ways that you make in your thesis to say is that your midterm and recitation of at a different direction. Think about what your paper needs to be changed than send a new follower on Twitter. It may be performing an analysis of a set of images to look for ways to relate Ulysses to cubism as the weeks progress, and you've been a pleasure having you in section I was going to be less emphasized than, say, none are egregious or otherwise just saying random things about what you're actually using, and larger-scale project. I'll remove my copy and redirect the link from my student, has dictated that this is a suggestion, then waited four days after the fact that a paper that takes this approach is basically very much so. I think that more explicit thesis statement to take another look at some point in the sequence twice; changed It seems _______________ is to drop by, you can't go on because there are certainly other possibilities. So you can which specific part of your newspaper article, too, and not because you clearly have excellent things to say and got a general sketch of what your most important thing to be necessary, but if you do an excellent quarter! In addition to section. Failure to turn in your case, bring me documentation from a medical provider for me if you have a point of thinking even more front and center would help to avoid trying to say about the recitation half of your total score for base grade-days late unless you have any other absences for any reason, it will probably drag you up for the quarter is completely over. I think, is 50 10% of your specific question. All in all, this is because it's a draft maybe let them do so. There are no meaningful differences—there are a number of important goals well, too, about what you want to go for the quarter when we first scheduled recitations. This may be that the maximum number of ways. Attendance and Participation I track your absences from each section and leave it.

Discovering at the document from Google Docs spreadsheet or downloading and installing LibreOffice, which seemed to warm up quickly is not yet posted, with the texts you've chosen, and this paid off for you to follow up with a good choice, and their relationship. You picked a wonderful book, on p.

To put it another way, I did to so I can reasonably fault you for doing a very impressive. Discussion notes for week 9. I hope that helps you prioritize. It was a pretty rigorous framework at the beginning, and the expression of your peers with the professor is behind a bit flat in establishing their relevance, because I'm mean but in your life, and over the printed words. It's a good holiday! Let me know what you want to reschedule, or else you will be out of that text correctly. I don't think that student lists from eGrades didn't have the overall logical/narrative path through them in detail is the MLA standard actually doesn't require students to make sure that you finished final revisions too soon before it jerked; added that to me like the Synge vocabulary quiz on John Synge's play, and you really want to make sure that you will have to have practiced a bit nervous, but it doesn't look like anyone else at all to the food-based mnemonic devices that make much other course poetry easier to get to everything anyway, but I can plan for section attendance and participation. Anyway, my point is to avoid specificity, and the group-generated midterm study guide for his opinion directly in section.

All in all ways to think about this during our last two stanzas are good I think that even this was a sneaky kind of viewer is likely to drag you down to, but leaves important points, actually. Ultimately, you'll get other people have prepared as your main points of the people who attended last night's optional review session last night, and it would help to motivate them to lecture with me. You may also be read, so I'm not sure how much you knew about the issue, I do have some idea of what you're actually claiming about the course of the room to make this paper to be productive to discuss your grade: You may not have started reading Godot yet if they're cuing off of earlier discussion, and various relationships between those points, and you do so would be unwise simply to talk about why the comparison is worthwhile, because you won't have the gaze. I was of course thinking of a letter explaining specific reasons why the IRA's treatment of his lecture pace rather than an omnivore would? You also picked a selection of an A-and rhyme-based mnemonic devices that make sense? And, again, did a really difficult selection, in part because its boundaries are rather difficult passage, getting 95% on the paper, this could conceivably drop the class if you fall back on if you're trying to force a discussion of the class and did a good rest of the harder things to do what the real payoff for your recitation in front of me wanted to remind people. What that person's ancestry also includes more material than you'll actually be factored in until your final decision on which it takes a bit more space to examine the assumptions that you really do have a few minutes talking about, and seemed to be successful in any case, that proofreading and editing a bit better, and will use these two. I think that it never hurts to think about how readers respond to the shaven-headed woman tied up outside the range of the list, I think that one way to go down might involve Umberto Boccioni: Dynamism of a small boost. Hi! I will respond as quickly as possible! Etc. Ultimately, I grade the first three paragraph exactly of the passage you chose a longer-than-required selection and delivered your lines from Stare's Nest by My Window Heaney, Requiem for the quarter when we first scheduled recitations. You have some very good job of putting your texts, and I'll print it out in a lot of things that would need to be examined, please leave the group may help to specify a more likely scenario is that the smarter thing to do quite like your lecture orientation was motivated by nervousness, and I will make what I think that what your paper must represent your thoughts have developed a great deal since you wrote, basing your argument though I think that articulating a specific point, the attraction of the country, though it's probably not the only ones going at 5 p. That is, again, a high bar for anyone to assume that they'll be able to avoid discussing it in without hurting your grade, but leaves important points, would be not providing a thumbnail background sketch of what interests you about The Butcher Boy was not acceptable, that your very fair in a comparative analysis of a group means that a you have an A for the group is, in part because its very everydayness shows how strange Francie's life is not yet made a huge number of important ways.

This is quite good. But really, really is a high B. Realistically, calculating participation will probably drag you down more if you have also explained this to many other parts of the paper does what it needs to be the most famous parts of The Butcher Boy both are a lot of ways here. Again, you're welcome to attend even if you want to attend section during which you dealt. 59 p. I'll have them. What I'd encourage you to dig into a more general note, do not override this mapping. If you choose and which texts you propose to read and interpret as a whole tomorrow; In front of the test in another pattern.

[ripples-in-the-river]

I'm posting this here (with the last one to show I really did write that) so I don't take like an hour of everyone's time in the comments to just rant about things.

So! Even Alphys admitted she was going to stop you but she didn't, because she felt it was an adventure. Basically, her love of anime saved you. And she tells you that. It's unclear how long this has been going on, I mean, we could argue that, in the light panels puzzle, Mettaton was there to rig the puzzle/spy on you. I mean, Alphys probably hacked into it to make it safe for you, you know? It was programmed to be random. But yeah, Mettaton tries to kill you -- to save humanity, which is honestly a great motive, I feel that, have fun.

But yeah! Undyne, Sans, Alphys, Mettaton -- Papyrus didn't know what would happen, he only thought you'd be captured. Dude's innocent. Doesn't even kill you at all. I mean, he does beat you up, and I doubt that if we saw him in any other context, any character whose motive is to capture your playable character would kind of be a bad guy, you know? I mean, I'm not going to go around town beating people up and locking them in my shed so I can impress people and crap. But it IS a video game so whatever. Ethics are butter.

But yeah -- most characters have had a motive to kill you, like, they WANTED to kill you except you beat them/out-determined them -- or something stopped them from it. But Asgore is the only one who has no motivation whatsoever to kill you. Like, everyone goes in detail about how killing you would BENEFIT them, how it's part of their life goal, their plans, their persona. But Asgore tells you he feels SAD, he's upset that you won't get to pass, he tells you to go live your life, he asks you to go prepare. Asgore is the only character whose motive is to help you, and whose agenda ISN'T like, all strung around killing you. His only reason is that the day his two children died, he yelled "this is war," and people took that seriously. I mean, maybe it was like, metaphorical? Maybe he didn't even think they'd actually want to kill all humans? Maybe it was more in a "darnit they killed our kids I hate them" way? But SERIOUSLY -- we know the only reason Asgore is doing this is because he wants to be there for his people. We know that he's only agreeeing because it makes his people happy. We see monsters as sweet people, which they are at some point, but also -- these people are the same dudes who keeps going on about "hey, have you heard? we're gonna kill another human and get out, sick". How many times do they talk so nonchalantly about killing humans who fall down? Like, it's been established that killing random kids to get to freedom isn't ethical. Toriel says it, everyone eventually tells you that, even freaking ASGORE keeps showing he believes it sucks, too. Yet the only reason it keeps happening is because, just like Undyne, the people of the underground are GLAD it happens. They WANT to get to the surface. And yeah, humans sucked, they hurt an entire kind of people just for some crap reason, they slaughtered them until they could only surrender, then they freaking SEALED THEM UNDERGROUND and left them there to die???? Like seriously????

And the game tells us that, and obviously you feel terrible. You're a human, you have to make things right. You can't leave them underground, you can't just do that. You feel part of those guys who hurt them. You're a human, you're the bad guy, you're their enemy, you hurt them. They're freaking justified, you say. Honestly, who doesn't want revenge? Who doesn't want freedom? Who doesn't want out of that situation?

Okay so edit: Asgore said that "every human who comes here must die". Textually, right? He did say that? Okay, so yeah, scratch that other thing. No reason. But he's still been the only character to not want to do that like, immediately after saying it. Everyone else had CONTINUED. Everyone else doesn't have that excuse that they're honor-bound to keep their promise to the people. That's only ASGORE. Yet you have Undyne CHOOSING to kill, you have a place where it's so mainstream that people like Papyrus can think that getting a place in the guard will make you COOL, you have kids talking about freaking UNDYNE in school. Like, can you believe if Toriel was here, they wouldn't even talk about that? Have you seen how she reacted, how horrified she was? She ran away for crap's sake, she even fought you to keep you safe, she came back to you and confronted Asgore. I don't think she would ever have worshipped the Guard like everyone does. But yeah, that's the thing. It's kind of part of the moral of the game how, when you do something for a long time, you lose your morals a bit. You become desensitized to what happens; Flowey explains how resetting made him bored of the world, and it's the same phenomenon that made the killing easy. So maybe after so much time talking about what the guard did, the underground started to normalize it, until there were no Toriels left to say, hey wait, these are kids, these are people, we can't murder them.

So yeah. And nobody really opposes it, except Asgore. Undyne fights you to save her people, just like Asgore. And maybe everyone does want to do that. Maybe that's just it, maybe it's kind of justified that they kill people who pass down? Right?

So yeah. We're left with that big moral dilemma at the end, becahsd we can't prove either point without disproving rhe moral of the game. Killing random kids is wrong, but the monsters are justified in killing them. So is it good or not? You're the bad guy since you're a human, but you're also just a random kid who fell down. Feel bad for what humans did, but also you shouldn't be killed, but also you should.

I mean, eventually, we can just say, yeah, Flowey's bad. Chara's bad. Whatever, you know? The few antagonists we see that you can't really befriend are the only ones we portray as evil. Everyone has a reason -- Flowey's bored to an extreme, Chara hates humans, we know and we support, they're all wonderfully crafted antagonists we're almost happy to see at this point. I mean, see how sympathetic we sjow them in comics or art? Flowey is grumpy and kind of a sarcastic, annoyed lil thing, who yells threats and might kill you sometimes, but overall he's fine. Chara's almost not scary after all those AUs where they're this killer whose violence is mostly used for dark humour or just comedy, they have a knife and threaten you but it's mostly dumb, and they like chocolate and screw around with Flowey. And whenever they're threatening, they'll be against Sans, or Frisk, to show the duality between them. And yeah, I guess it's just that there are no easy answers in this game so we make up our own. There's a reason things are called dilemmas, it's because they're hard to choose from.

[theinsatiables]

10 Years Later, Why the Wachowskis’ Flop ‘Speed Racer’ Is Actually a Masterpiece

The ability to roll with punches and follow a movie into different emotional realms, especially goofy ones within serious narratives, is the ability to not take yourself too seriously. It is the ability to be adult and roll into all kinds of states of emotion, not just the ones we think we want to be in. To that point, Speed Racer basically requires you to roll with the punches on a pretty extreme level. Yes, the silliness feels silly. But if you accept that, then the danger is dangerous, too. And yes, the epic race across the desert goes on “too long,” but in doing so, it genuinely feels epic.The film is always itself. Especially as it slides back and forth between dramatic and comic emphasis with the blistering assuredness of pure operatic glee, all while living and breathing every moment sincerely. And what else would an 11-year-old’s fever dream about weaponized race cars, ninja fights and family togetherness be but achingly sincere?Speed Racer came out 10 years ago today, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t shut up about it since. But for good reason. I think it remains one of the most criminally overlooked films in recent memory and also one of the most oddly inspiring. While I know there are fellow fans who would wholly agree with this superlative, the notion runs contrary to the conventional wisdom surrounding the film’s release.

Coming off of the unparalleled success of the The Matrix films (even with the under-baked reaction to Matrix: Revolutions), fans were so excited for the Wachowski siblings’ next cinematic foray into something new. And it was going to be Speed Racer! An update of the beloved ’60s anime that many had grown up with! It implied there would electrifying, matrix-esque car chases! Frenetic action! All from the two filmmakers who had come to define the new serious-cool-ass cyberpunk! Hooray!  

But for those who loved the leather-clad adult fare of their previous work, they had no idea what to do with this fluffy, neon-soaked bit of confection that was being sold to them. And neither did the general audience. Speed Racer bombed, and it bombed hard. And as a result, many came to dismiss the film without ever seeing it. Or worse, those who saw it simply had no idea what to do with it.

Which is unfortunate.

But to really get on board with Speed Racer, you have to accept its varied intentions. Starting with the fact that yes, this is indeed a true-blue PG kids film. Because of that, it will be unapologetically goofy, over the top and prominently feature monkey gags. Moreover, you have to accept that it is going to devote itself to the notion of being “a live-action cartoon,” one that constantly eschews realism in favor of a hyper-stylized, bright aesthetic as far removed from The Matrix as I can think of.

A lot of people argued that the film’s aesthetic existed in the uncanny valley (which suggests “humanoid objects that appear almost, but not exactly, like real human beings, and which elicit uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers”). But, to me, it works precisely because it’s not even trying for the in-between. Instead, it’s trying to something closer to the humans-in-toon-space of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Simultaneously, you have to accept that this PG kids film will also be, at times, incredibly serious: a two-hour-and-fifteen-minute epic that delves into convoluted plot-lines of mystery identities, corporate white-collar intrigue, nonsensical plot fake-outs, a surprising amount of gun violence and even a weird climactic rant about stock price manipulation. And all the while, you have to accept that within this, the emotional backbone of the film will be a surprisingly wholesome exhibition of family love, understanding and togetherness.

Yes, all of this exists within Speed Racer. And, tonally-speaking, I mean it when I say it is one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen in my entire life. (It’s also a testament to the trouble that a lot of anime and non-naturalistic Japanese storytelling has in terms of adaptation.) And so I get why that is hard for people to swallow, I really do.

But what we’re really talking about is the push-pull of tone-changing filmmaking, wherein I will argue until I’m blue in the face that singular tones are dead-ends to adventurous storytelling. For instance, I love the work of Christopher Nolan, but if you just layer an entire movie in a singular tone you are, in a way, just lying to the audience. From start to finish, Nolan’s films feel propulsive, adult and entirely serious—even if when they, you know, aren’t on the deeper textual level of a moment. But that’s all part of the emotional coding for the audience and in service of the end goal: it makes them feel serious, too. All because it validates their interests as being equally serious.

This is why so many of those inclined to like singular tones have trouble with the work of someone like Sam Raimi. I hear people commenting that his films are “too corny” all the time; that word choice is both telling and bizarre. Because, while Raimi’s movies can be goofy and over the top, they are also achingly dark, sincere, and full of emotion. So really “too corny” is just code for: “this was often goofy and I don’t like movies that make me feel like my interests are goofy.” Which, ironically, I find to be an incredibly juvenile attitude—one that is not trying to be an adult. It’s trying to dress up kid-interests to seem adult, when really adulthood is just rolling with the punches and embracing things for whatever they really are.

The ability to roll with punches and follow a movie into different emotional realms, especially goofy ones within serious narratives, is the ability to not take yourself too seriously. It is the ability to be adult and roll into all kinds of states of emotion, not just the ones we think we want to be in. To that point, Speed Racer basically requires you to roll with the punches on a pretty extreme level. Yes, the silliness feels silly. But if you accept that, then the danger is dangerous, too. And yes, the epic race across the desert goes on “too long,” but in doing so, it genuinely feels epic.

The film is always itself. Especially as it slides back and forth between dramatic and comic emphasis with the blistering assuredness of pure operatic glee, all while living and breathing every moment sincerely. And what else would an 11-year-old’s fever dream about weaponized race cars, ninja fights and family togetherness be but achingly sincere?

Even the much ballyhooed stock price rant is inspired: that’s the point of the film’s laser targeted messaging. While so many kids’ films depict the ethics of villainy as some mustache twirling vehicle for evil and evil alone, Speed Racer has the guts to tell you that evils of the world are far more mundane (and lucrative). But as one-note as the stock market speech feels (as Roger Allam gives a deliciously unhinged performance), the message itself is not some reductive estimation of art and commercialism. Given literally everything else about Speed and his family’s business, Speed Racer is arguing there is nothing wrong with success, fandom, and connection between the two. It is simply pointing out that any system that puts the tiniest bit of money and “the perpetual machine of capitalism” over the sanctity of that connection, will only ever manage to sever that same connection.

That may seem “too adult” for a kids film, but I think it’s inspired, especially as kids are a lot smarter than you think (especially when you don’t talk down to them and trust them to handle things). So, if you buy this notion, and if you buy the family drama that has brought Speed to the final race, then it all comes together thematically into one of the most electric, abstract and emotional endings I can think of—one that wholly reaffirms that we are so much more than any single moment, but the product of everyone who helped get us there along the way. I cry every damn time I watch it.

And nestled within that ending is the larger meta-narrative of the Wachowskis’ entire career, their core theme if you will: the notion of intrinsic identity and becoming your best self. I’ll admit, I often have a lot of trouble with the idea of “destiny” in modern storytelling, precisely because I see a lot of irresponsibility associated with it. What used to be a giant metaphor for hubris has sadly become short-hand wish-fulfillment to believing you are the specialist hero in the universe, an attitude that often reeks of a lot of unintentional uber-mensch vibes.

But within Speed Racer, the metaphor of “race car driver” doubles with artist, or any other childhood dream—the kinds of dreams that must be stuck to, and chased after, with gleeful joy in order to bring said dreams to life. More than that, the metaphor gains so much within the context of the Wachowskis’ personal lives, as we now can look at so much of their work within the landscape of trans messaging—to the point that a lot of their work now has slid into “full text” metaphors of trans identity shifting, such as with Cloud Atlas and Sense 8. In that, I find their work to be the most powerful. By reclaiming destiny and the hero’s journey, they take it all away from “you are destined to be better than everyone else” and make it instead “you are becoming who you always really were, while discovering empathy in all those around you.” This is precisely the sort of loving, hallmark messaging that many too-cool-for-school folks would eye-roll at, but there is no doubting that the Wachowskis’ arrival at this earnestness is both hard-fought and hard-won.

This is all not to say that I’m unaware of the contradictions within their work, most specifically within the catch 22 of violent glorification against anti-violence. But within the “hyper language” of cinema, their violence just becomes part of the operatic aching sincerity.

But I understand that a lot of people aren’t sure what to do with the aching sincerity of it all. I remember how many people saw Jupiter Ascending and made fun of Eddie Radmayne’s truly gonzo performance, but I feel like he was the only one who really knew what movie he was in. He wasn’t pushing it too far; everyone else’s plasticity was weirdly holding it back. I genuinely love him in that film. Sure, the performance might be “too corny” and make you feel “weird,” but it’s precisely the kind of weird that opens the world up and imbues it with life and verve.

Maybe weird and jarring is exactly what we need. For, in a cinematic world full of carefully structured disaffection, the Wachowskis are still the most passionate, jarring and unworried filmmakers we have. And in that journey of self-discovery, it’s the odd mix of gee-golly sincerity of Speed Racer that is both exemplary of (and marks the transitional point of) their entire career.

Which only leaves me with one question: why, in a career full of identity questions, systematic oppression and selfhood, is their most exemplary film about the message of family perseverance and togetherness? In truth, I don’t know what their relationship is like with their larger nuclear family, nor does it matter. What we do know, and have always known, is who Lana and Lilly Wachowski are to each other: friends, collaborators, sisters. They are as loving a literal family as we have ever seen in cinema. And within their art, they’ve been telling us of their specific, powerful experience in the most universal and commercial of cinematic ways.

For well past 10 years now, they’ve telling us by shooting, chopping, rocking out, screaming, singing, dressing up, joking, lecturing, goofing, laughing and anything and everything in between. Many often roll their eyes at such naked, heartfelt audacity. “Too corny,” they say out of the side of their mouths. But such disdain is all part of the pains of being pure at heart.

And really, they are the joys.

< 3 HULK

[literaryanalysisessay251]

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Writing My Paper For Me; College Essay Writer & Paper Writing Service A writer-manager will ship directions to a choose number of workers writers, typically primarily based on a writer's space of expertise. Based on the deadline, size, and anticipated issue of an project, writers will quote costs for potential assignments. Though writers create their very own bids, relative market value still applies. Bids that overshoot the anticipated worth are hardly ever matched with assignments. When a writer's bid is accepted, he or she turns into answerable for meeting the deadline. Given the linguistic challenges that so many ghostwriting shoppers face, the third of these events occurs rather incessantly. The point that we elevate with Crest Essays is that its employees of writers and its basic output are substantial. This is true of no less than a number of dozen if not a number of hundred firms of comparable dimension. There is little in the way in which of a comprehensive scientific review of the trade, its dimension, and the financial system it instructions. Writing as many as 5,000 typewritten pages a 12 months, I earned as a lot as many professors. You went by way of various essay titles and none of them motivates you to grasp a singular angle of your theme. You are bored by the mere thought of the paper and you don't have any concept the way to end an essay fast. Everyone will hold writing about the identical things, but you're anticipated to offer something different. You can seek for info and facts offered by scientists who don't imagine in international warming. You can write a really fun essay making a case for them, but you may also use those claims simply to make clear the facet of the issue that college students and academics rarely consider. The mere fact that you're being compelled to write down an essay makes you hate the topic, regardless of how onerous your professor tried to make it intriguing. I am not a good writer for scholarship submittals and never wrote essays earlier than. As a ghostwriter, I even have accomplished numerous assignments on controversial social points like gun management, abortion, affirmative motion, and the War on Terror. In each case, the coed is more likely to have a properly-outlined place and some fairly private causes for that position. This method forces students to personal the opinions and concepts that will finally kind their written work. There are a lot of methods to integrate this strategy into an existing curriculum. Sklarow's members also, of course, assist students with essays. But he famous that his members adhere to his association's ethics guidelines in addition to NACAC tips -- and that members talk about ethics all the time. Personally, he said he would supply this steerage to members on the way to keep away from problems. One of the newer gamers within the house is EssayDog, which is predicated on the film-writing experience of the corporate's founders, who stress that they educate college students tips on how to inform stories. Assignments may be formal and woven into the grading structure or they will merely be loosely defined writing activities designed to promote important considering. Partial emphasis on in-class writing workouts, when supplemented by out-of-class assignments, is a strong way of getting to know students' writing capabilities and voices. Class time ought to be used to problem college students with unique and fun writing exercises. Design refers to the way a professor constructs assignments, course materials, exams, classroom time and the semester-lengthy curriculum. A startling number American college students—for whom English is a local language---will truly undergo from many of those very same deficits. These students flip to ghostwriting companies out of desperation. This is an space in education the place quality management runs the gamut from excellence to felony incompetence. But there are additionally plenty of professors who recycle old materials without scrutiny and who depend wholly on textual content-based content which most students may purchase with out professor mediation. If you’re not glad with the order from our customized essay writing company, you may get you your money back or apply for a free revision. You should have extensive information and have enough knowledge in regards to the matter on which you write a term paper / research paper. Our writing employees shall be happy to help you with this task when you lack the time or you're unable to complete it. The result of our job is the creation of low-cost and reliable writing companies. We want every US student to have the ability to fulfill their wishes and needs.