#It does make sense because it just means I've impacted the illness in general which means heightened symptoms in general

[oliverniko]

Chronic illness can be amusing sometimes, I've been in a fluctuating fibromyalgia flare for a little over a week now (peaked on Sunday) and doing art today when my body couldn't handle it has badly affected my bladder pain of all things. Like worse migraine from art I can get, but bladder? 😂

[whetstonefires]

so the op of that anti-voting post DMed me just now, transcript follows:

slash-dot-com

even if all democratic systems were inherently always going to be "inadequate" i think our american democracy is severely flawed in glaring ways, its just literally antiquated and i think there are much better democratic systems. our voting system is not representative of the people either, which almost everybody admits, i'm not saying theres some nefarious mastermind behind it, but it is a design flaw, whether the flaw was made on purpose or on mistake. its easy to quit american democracy because it doesnt even seem to Want you to participate, like from so many factors its difficult to engage with it in any meaningful way

whetstonefires

yeah it's not a fantastic system

it's just also pretty pointless to try to punish it for that by leaving it in the hands of people who hate you

it won't get its feelings hurt and try to woo us back

i used to be really mad about how stupid and ugly it is but the more history i've studied and the older i've gotten the more it's been like, oh human society is a clown show always

slash-dot-com

but for several election cycles the popular vote nor the general will of the people have even impacted the people who are elected, the people who hate us are in power because the system is designed to benefit them

whetstonefires

i mean?? biden did in fact defeat trump, and the democrats did make gains in congress in both the last two cycles

slash-dot-com

my vote in my state genuinely does not matter in federal elections, in local elections yeah sometimes it does, but there needs to be an overhaul on our democracy and its election process so its more reflective of the people. currently its so broken that voting legit doesnt change anything

biden sucks

whetstonefires

he sucks less than trump tho????

like to a screamingly significant extent

slash-dot-com

i'm trying to make a more general and large scale point than one single election cycle and sitting president

whetstonefires

and i've made my counter point which is that not voting is not a constructive response to the problem

slash-dot-com

doing other things than voting is just as effective if not more so than voting, so not voting in a broken democracy isn't nonconstructive

whetstonefires

and in fact the broad tendency of idealists and leftists to be disengaged from the political process because it's dirty and inadequate, especially at the local level, is the *cause* of many of the systemic problems

doing other things can be constructive, but not voting is a non-action

and advocating against voting is a *harmful* action

so it's not constructive

the other things and the voting are independent of one another

slash-dot-com

thats just really ill conceived, i'm honestly just surprised by that response, you should really think more deeply about this. i'm not sure what you think this way of thinking and approaching politics is accomplishing

and then i couldn't send anything else (it was going to be a ?? because that didn't really follow naturally but before they said that i'd been typing a bit listing all the voting-related activism that it made sense to dip on due to alienation from the process, because energy and funding better spent elsewhere etc, but opposing voting itself was not in the same category) because they blocked me, which is just rude. you started this conversation man!

also i can't figure out how to make tumblr let me block them back.

so i made a post about it lmao.

i still don't know what positive good they think arguing against voting is supposed to achieve. like why is that a good use of energy.

[rayssyscourse]

I actually can also explain how endogenic systems can exist scientifically.

The theory that systems form initially because of splitting is obsolete in favor of the Theory of Structural Dissociation, which is where the brain exists as multiple parts before integrating in later childhood. Trauma then is supposed to keep these parts from integrating. Full respect though if you don't like this theory, but as the current running theory for how DID develops, it actually perfectly explains why neurological endogenic systems might happen.

There isn't really any reason why something other than trauma might disrupt personality integration. There isn't enough research about what that "something" might be and it could be multiple things, but given how endogenic systems are disproportionately autistic or have other childhood disorders, that could potentially do it. That also would explain why many endogenic systems say they feel as if they cannot integrate, because their brain just was never wired for it.

Even then it makes sense that if endogenic splitting does happen, it wouldn't be as mentally taxing. Endogenic systems rarely experience amnesia unless they have later in life trauma and not every system experiences the brain trying to keep it hidden. Hell, I've seen OSDD systems handle splitting like it's a typical thing. Even if it did happen for endogenic systems, it wouldn't be "for no reason", there is a reason, that reason is just something other than trauma.

I don't know if a brain scan would really prove anything. There just aren't enough samples or data, and while there was an MRI study I see cited about MRI scans with DID, those scans were different because of trauma and dissociation's general impact on your brain. What a system looks like under a brain scan is very under-researched. There was talk of an MRI scan of tulpamancers a few years back? But I don't know if anything came of it.

(Also of course endogenic is too big of an umbrella term and this is just neurological origins. There have been several studies on created systems and "talk to an entity in your brain until it talks back" isn't really anything groundbreaking - you can pop "tulpamancy" into Google scholar to see these. Same with people communicating with spirits and what not, the difference between a spiritual-based system and a spirit host is usually just degree of self-autonomy and even then it's a grey line. "System" just means more than one entity in one physical body and by god is there a lot that falls under it.)

Ooh this is quite interesting. Tbh I don't have any groundbreaking opinions or arguments here since you're basically just telling me some information, but I really appreciate the education!

I am not super familiar with the theory of structural dissociation--I'll do some of my own research on that to hopefully understand better, but if you or anyone else has any resources on it, please do let me know! I keep a lot of ongoing system related studies and stuff bookmarked because there's a lot of active research and things changing since we still don't know much about systemhood/plurality, so I'm always happy to have more stuff to check out or keep tabs on, lol.

Assuming the structural dissociation thing is correct--and take this with the understanding that I still have yet to do a lot of research on it--I'd be interested to see more info on what things besides trauma could disrupt integration, and how that might look similar or different neurologically from traumagenic splitting. I think what you said about disproportionate levels of certain illnesses in endogenic systems is really interesting and could definitely be a potential cause.

That also makes me wonder, if the personality is unintegrated from birth, I wonder how the formation of new alters later in life (in both endo and traumagenic systems) looks, and if the amount of integration/disruption could influence things like frequent splitting or polyfragmentation, etc.

I'd be interested to see, like, widespread surveys done on endo and traumagenic systems alike, just to see the statistics of comorbidity, possible causes of splitting, frequency of splitting, etc. In fact, sometimes I think about putting out a poll or something online just for my own amateur-psychologist brain to have something to go off of, lmao. Obviously sampling bias would make it super unofficial, but it would be interesting nonetheless.

Anyways, sorry I kinda just started rambling there lol. None of that was meant as a challenge or attack to you, I'm just posing questions I think would be interesting to see answered. I appreciate the information, and thank you for giving me some new topics to research!!

Have a lovely evening <3

[butwhatifidothis]

Hoo boy if this ain't a doozy.

To start with: it's been some time but I don't think I've linked to Cap'n's fic before. Going through my older posts I have yet to find any that do. If anyone does find anything like that, I will immediately delete it.

But, yes. I'd only gone over the fic due to seeing how influential it was in the fandom, and I had continued going over the fic due to the various problematic elements OP listed out.

And, well, yes, that does very much include how Byleth, as she is presented as a mixed-race person, is portrayed in this fic. And I say this with no ill-meaning directed towards Cap'n as a person, since I'm pretty sure he wrote pretty much everything problematic in this fic due to ignorance and not malice; reading Byleth's character arc in his fic was genuinely extremely uncomfortable for me, as a mixed-race person. Here's a doc that breaks down why that is in a more detailed fashion than my critique does.

Off of that: the main issue I see with Raxis doing this with Reyna is that he seems to take deliberate actions to spread his critiques around as far as possible. He makes his pinned post on Tumblr a table of contents for his critique of Reyna's fic (which includes links to the fic he's critiquing, the series the fic is in, and her AO3 profile - these links also appear in his critique of the first chapter), he keeps bringing it up on his Twitter, he brings it up on the public Edelgang discord. It's not that it's wrong of him to vent or rant about things he doesn't like, so much as it is... kinda weird that he's doing it to a fic that has such minimal impact or influence regarding anything in the fandom, and doing so on at least three different platforms.

This isn't like Cap'n's fic, which was known to some degree to large portions of the fandom, or was taken as meta. Reyna's fic that Raxis is critiquing isn't touted out as required reading, no one is recommending it to VA's, it's incredibly new and was released during a low-point in 3H's general fandom activity, and it involves crossing over with a title fewer people in the general FE fandom (and especially 3H fandom specifically) have played. The only reason he'd likely even know the fic exists at all is because of Reyna's other much more popular fic... which as OP stated didn't seem to have had the same impact as Cap'n's did, and if it did then it'd make sense for him to critique that one instead of the no-name-nothing fic.

So honestly? It really comes off as Raxis targeting an easy fic to try and get attention. Especially when his spork has something like this passage in it:

(and to make clear, yes, I am still not blocked by him, despite what he's said in the Edelgang discord)

Bringing up my name in a completely unrelated fic for basically no reason but to bring me up... it's just very strange, in my opinion.

There's also the fact that Raxis has a history of both having it to where people harass others directly off of the posts he makes of them, and of harassing people himself. He's bragged about driving users off of Tumblr, and the people who used to send a shit ton of anons like this to us

are the exact same people who would go on to do similar things to Reyna's new fic, hours after he'd make his spork - down to copy-pasting his words verbatim again:

And while yes, Raxis can't exactly mind control everyone who reads his posts into not harassing people, he also, well. Has a history of this sort of thing happening with him, and one that has been made known by those affected by it for quite some times now. Given that, from my reading of his spork, his only real main gripes are that Reyna writes Edelgard poorly in a fic that no one but him cares about (in a way relating to "meta" that is), it just seems like it's... uncalled for? For him to so continuously go on about this fic on so many different platforms, especially when considering said history he has regarding harassment

Edit: Referring to OP saying I would delete certain parts of my critique: yes, that's entirely correct. I was asked if I would and I said yes, which was relayed to people who said they had contact with Cap'n, but no one was ever told which parts I should edit/remove. I said that I would delete everything if given the chance to speak with Cap'n and discuss with him all of the more problematic elements of his fic - not the strikes against canon, but all of the racism, sexism, homophobia, victim-blaming, etc. that was unintentionally being presented in a harmful way. Again, I was never given this chance to go through with this.

I am still willing to do this, by the way. But nothing has ever happened yet

It's okay if butwhatifidothis risks leading people to harass Captain Flash by going over his fic but it's not okay if Raxis does the same to reynaattheend?

Okay I feel like I want to get one thing out of the way before I go into this.

BWIIDT agreed to remove parts of the old reviews that were particularly rude or offensive if they were pointed out to her, something that was literally promised to the MODS of the Edelstan discord server (who claimed to have a direct line of communication to Cap).

So the guy literally had a chance to air his grievances with the posts and have the parts he didn’t like removed within reason, and we never got any examples of things to ask her to remove. So either she’s not as rude as people make her out to be, or they never actually cared about her critiques and haven’t bothered reading them, even when handed the literal opportunity to edit things out they didn’t like.

Additionally BWIIDT has said that she would be willing to remove all the postings completely if the guy would just hear her criticisms and learn from them, so he could better handle the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in his fic. Of which there is a lot.

I don’t know how you could possibly compromise more without just straight up being a door mat and pretending like this white man never had any issues with the way he wrote race and women.

Anyway as for why I view these as two completely different situations that are not really comparable IMO:

1) Cap’s fic is/was at the time literally being shoved at people. We were told to read it to “understand canon better”.

This isn’t just me saying this. I remember around the time before/slightly after BWIIDT started giving her criticisms of the fic I was seeing it getting recommended to a bunch of people. There were people on various social media sites complaining about the Edel crowd shoving the fic down their throats. I had it recommended to me on some different platforms, etc.

And that’s not just fans of the fics’ perception. Cap himself has stated that he views the fic as meta commentary on the game/discussion of canon, not just a fun little fic he did. And he’s happy people view it as essential for understanding canon.

As far as I’m aware, Reyna’s fic has never had that sort of culture around it, nor has she wanted it to have that kind of impact on fandom. I’m pretty sure she’s even explicitly stated that she KNOWS it’s not always aligned with canon and she doesn’t care, because it’s just a fun little project for her.

2) As far as I’m aware, BWIIDT never linked to Cap’s fic? I don’t even think she gave the title of it at first, it’s just that most people figured out what fic she was talking about BECAUSE of the aforementioned it getting shoved down everyone’s throats. But I wasn’t really following her in the beginning so I don’t remember, I’m sure she can reblog this posting if she wants and further clarify.

Raxy has literally been linking to Reyna’s fic on every posting and spelling out the full name of the fics and the author. Given his followers’ propensity for harassment (which he claims to not support) he really should have known better. He wasn’t “risking” sending her harassment it was basically a foregone conclusion.

He definitely should have taken all of the links down and stopped linking or naming the author or fic after it became clear people were literally going and harassing her, using his posts and material to throw at her. But as far as I’m aware he hasn’t done ANY of that.

3) I know from talking with BWIIDT since Raxy started harassing everyone here that she wasn’t going to bother with Cap’s fic originally, but then the annoying fans shoving it down people’s throats + she noticed a lot of very problematic handling of race that she wanted to talk about in greater depth = her discussing the fic at length.

I haven’t read through Raxy’s criticisms, but I feel like there’s a BIG difference between a woman of color pointing out the problems regarding race and gender in a fic (written by a white man) that’s being recommended to everyone as ESSENTIAL FOR UNDERSTANDING THE GAME vs. Some Guy Who Doesn’t Like A Random Fic

Additionally, I don’t really feel like it’s my place to tell her to shut up because, uh, it just feels kind of gross to tell her to just not be mad about the way the white guy is butchering the biracial experience when she’s a biracial woman and I’m not? Which again, very different from telling a 35 year old cishet white guy who is acting like a dick about anime chess to be less of a dick about anime chess.

4) And again, I also know for a fact that BWIIDT is just interested in critiquing/venting about the fic, and would be willing to stop making postings about it if Cap actually bothered to read the critiques and learn from the mistakes he’s made regarding the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in his fic.

But like, he keeps doubling down on it insisting that because he grew up next to a reservation and he has one queer woman doing his beta reading there could never be any problems with his handling of any of these sensitive topics, so he doesn’t need to listen to any of us ever, and people are still touting it as essential for understanding canon, and he’s still okay with that, sooooooo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s VERY different from what Raxy is doing, which is basically just calling Reyna’s fics “cringe” and “not canon” from the snippets I’ve seen. He’s also blasting them over LITERALLY every social media platform he has for some godforsaken reason. Which like. If your goal was just to critique the fic why are you posting that shut EVERYWHERE?

5) I really don’t think Raxy is that bothered by the criticisms of Cap’s fic. He harasses people regardless of if they’ve talked about Cap or his fic, and after his aborted attempt to drum up harassment against BWIIDT on GameFaqs he came to Tumblr and started begging her to “do his fic next”

Like honestly I don’t even know what goes on in that guy’s head. Weird ass behavior. I really don’t care what he has going on, it’d just be nice if he’d act like the 35 year old he actually is and quit being so petty and childish.

Even if you think what BWIIDT did with Cap’s fic is wrong, why would it EVER be acceptable to drag an uninvolved third party into the mix and bash their fic and send them harassment as “retaliation”? Reina has nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even have fucking social media accounts outside of AO3. I know because I literally left her a comment to warn her about this clown and she told me.

What BWIIDT has done with Cap’s fic is admittedly a bit of a grey area, but ultimately I fall on the side of “whatever” with it because of the notoriety and influence on fandom fans of the fic desperately want it to have, and because of just how problematic elements of it are for various communities.

I mean you can’t go reccing a fic as essential for understanding the game and shoving it down the entire fandoms’ collective throat and then expect it to be treated like a 14 year old’s silly self insert fic when the people you told to read it critique it with the gravitas you assigned to it.

If you wanna critique BWIIDT for what she did with Cap’s fic, or critique me or anyone else for interacting with her, or you just think my logic is stupid and you want to critique that, then that’s… fine? I’m an adult, I’m a person, I know there’s places I can grow. But I’m sick of people acting like it’s okay to be a shitty person just because you got your feelings hurt once, so now it’s okay to go making it everyone else’s problem. And I don’t know if it was your intention to defend the guy with this ask anon, but it’s definitely happened too damn much with this guy and the Edelgard fandom as a whole.

That was another thing that really fucked me off in that conversation with the Edelstan server mods. I had one of them acting like I run fucking Reddit and I’m somehow responsible for some trolls calling Edelgard fans Nazis four fucking years ago. You can bet your ass I would get crucified if I tried to shit talk some random ass Edeleth fic and tried to justify it with “but it’s ok cuz some Edelgard fans were mean to me once :(“. There’s a reason why the fic being touted as essential for understanding canon is the one getting critiques and not any of the THOUSANDS of other Edeleth fics in existence. Because no one fucking cares about fanfics when they aren’t getting shoved down your throat and touted as “essential”.

I mean fuck dude, I got called a fake queer and an r-slur and intentionally triggered with genocide bullshit and had people talking about killing me. Am I going around harassing random fic authors over it? No, cuz I’m a grown ass fucking adult and I know how to act like it, and I know that 99% of the people who write/have written Edeleth fics had absolutely nothing to do with that.

So if you’re justifying going after Reyna with “but BWIIDT was mean to Cap!” Then knock it off, Reyna has literally nothing to do with this and you’re being shitty by trying to drag her into it. If you just did this to spork a fic, then you’re currently being a dick over a fanfic for no reason and clearly it’s leading to the author being harassed.

@butwhatifidothis if you wanna add onto this feel free.

[scripttorture]

Hello! I have a few questions related to your most recent post and the definition of torture. You said:

"A trained person who was never tortured will always out perform someone whose training involved torture."

According to everything else I have seen on your blog, this makes sense - the mental and physical trauma from being tortured have lasting effects which make certain tasks more difficult.

However, this seems to juxtapose certain tropes I've seen in US military training advertisements. For example, "Hell Week" in the Navy SEAL training seems like it would be torture if it was forced upon someone (like if the soldiers didn't sign up for it and didn't have the option to quit.). *Hell Week is when soldiers are training continuously for 5 days in freezing, wet conditions, with little more than 4 hours of sleep for the entire week, under insane amounts of physical and mental stress.

- If someone chose to be tested both mentally and physically, I feel like it wouldn't be torture. However, if the same exact conditions were forced upon someone else (testing their mental and physical limits without their consent or understanding), does your quote above mean that the person who did not have a choice would not reap the benefits of the training/testing? Or would the Navy SEALs be better soldiers if they didn't have to go through 'torturous conditions' during Hell Week, regardless of their choice to do so?

(I used Hell Week as an example, but I meant this question generally. I'm trying to figure out how to best train an elite soldier and avoid any harmful torture apologia tropes, while also making sure that they are able to handle insanely challenging situations)

- My other question has more to do with the definition of torture that you quoted from the UN in one of your master posts. If someone is being seriously injured (pulled fingernails, whipping, starvation etc), but not for the purposes of interrogation, punishment, or intimidation, is that still torture, or is that just abuse? And, regardless of what we call it, would the effects be the same as if it were torture for any of the three motives above?

Sorry if this is long and hard to understand, I can clarify if needed!

It’s not the longest I’ve gotten and it’s perfectly clear, duck*. :) Honestly this is a difficult topic with a lot of nuance, it’s better to take a longer and more thoughtful approach.

 From the stand point of the legal definition and what we study/understand as torture any consensual activity, however extreme, is not torture.

 But here’s where it gets interesting: consent and our attitude to an activity actually changes our response to pain. It may even change how much pain we feel.

 I’m going to take a slightly different example to yours. There are a lot of cultures globally that have practiced scarification, ritual cutting to deliberately form scars. And this can be done for a lot of reasons: membership of a family or clan, coming of age, traditional medicine, religion, you get the idea.

 A lot of people in these cultures describe their scars as incredibly important and the process of getting them as a moving, deep and positive process.

 This does not mean they wouldn’t be traumatised if they were attacked by someone with a knife.

 Being able to approach something painful and see it as positive really changes our perspective. It makes trauma and mental illness a lot less likely. And being able to back out, even if it’s just for a little while to take a breather, seems to make us able to withstand more pain then we would have otherwise.

 The simplest and most famous experiment that dealt with this relationship between our mindset and pain asked people to keep their hands in ice cold water. They timed how long people could do it when they were told to stay silent and how long they could do it when they were allowed to swear. If they swore they could hold their hands under for longer. An average of forty seconds longer.

 Looking back over O’Mara (Why Torture Doesn’t Work, a very good intro to how pain works and what it does to the brain) the way he describes it as by thinking of the experience of pain as a collection of three things. There’s the physical sensation itself, the nerves firing. But there’s also an affective component, how we feel emotionally about the experience and a cognitive component, how we think about it.

 Did you ever play that game as a kid where you stuff as many chilis as possible in your mouth to see who would spit them out first? I… might have done. And from what I remember it hurts an awful lot. But those memories to me are mostly about messing about with my friends, I remember trying to be stubborn about it and I remember us laughing at each other.

 This is a completely different experience to someone being held down and having chili stuff up their nose. But the difference isn’t necessarily in the physical damage done or the physical sensation of pain. It’s in the other components, the emotional response and the rationalisation.

 I also had a filling drilled in my tooth without painkillers as a kid. I don’t know how common this is in the West? It happened in Saudi. Honestly my biggest memory of it is the language barrier between myself and the dentist.

 These are anecdotes obviously but I’m trying to show that you probably also have experiences in your own life that back up the experiments too. The way we think about a painful experience really does make a huge amount of difference. And that means consent matters enormously.

 These soldiers are going into this experience knowing what to expect, how long it will last and that they can stop at any time. That makes a huge amount of difference. Those same factors have drastically increased the time volunteers will spend in solitary confinement for research. I’m pretty sure if I dug even a little I’d find pain studies with similar findings.

 Here’s the flip side: the physical factors are still in play.

 Sleep is an important physiological process that’s essential to normal functioning. Studies on consensual sleep deprivation have shown massive negative impacts on memory along with a host of other things that you can read about here.

 Let’s take a non torture example. A student who stays up all night cramming for an exam is not going to develop the symptoms of trauma that a torture survivors who was sleep deprived would. But the effect sleep deprivation has on memory is due to sleep playing an essential role in preserving memory (and learning more generally.) So they’re both likely to have difficulty remembering things in days just before and just after sleep deprivation. They’re also both more likely to have false memories and catch a bad cold.

 As a result of this memory impairment I question the educational value of anything involving sleep deprivation: you can’t learn while messing up the processes that let your brain remember things.

 There have been cases in the UK of people dying during training for the armed forces. Because while consent makes a huge difference, mindset makes a huge difference- our bodies still have limits. We can choose to push ourselves past those limits and, whatever our motivation or feelings, it can do real harm.

 Personally? I’m unsure of the benefit of these kinds of exercises. As in I’m unsure there is a benefit. Learning is going to be shot, chances of injury are going to be a lot higher- I don’t see anything that could be improved by these sorts of exercises.

 Anecdotally people do report feeling like a closer unit after going through these sorts of routines. That might be the benefit: moral and unit cohesion, possibly self-esteem too.

 If you’re making up something for your story I think it’d be helpful for me to mention a little statistical effect that gets used to justify punishment pretty regularly. Get some dice out if you’ve got them and roll one. Let’s say the number represents performance in some kind of test (because effort and learning matter but our performance also varies because of things we can’t control.) A roll of 1 gets punished, a roll of 6 gets praised.

 Now after you roll that first 1 statistically speaking the chances are your next roll will be better. And if you roll a 6 then statistically speaking the chances are your next roll will be worse. People observe this effect in real life and they often conclude that there’s no point in praising someone but that punishment leads to improvement. Really it’s just a statistical effect, after a particularly, noticeably bad day the chances are things will be better next and vice versa.

 This effect can make it difficult for people to recognise overall, long term progress. Which is the kind of progress you should be paying attention to when designing a training program.

 If you want good performance from people, whatever the metric, the most efficient thing to do is ensure that those people are; well fed, have access to clean water, get plenty of sleep, have breaks and have access to medical treatment when they need it.

 I’d say the main things to keep in mind when designing this fictional training regime are:

Being honest about the effects you describe, ie if they’re spending long periods without shelter are they at risk from exposure? If they’re standing in cold water are they going to get hypothermia?

Remember that even if something is damaging or causes lasting trauma it would not necessarily prevent someone from doing their job. Torture survivors have serious, lasting symptoms but many of them still work.

 I think I’m going to leave that there because I’m not an expert in militaries or training people. And keep in mind that I am a pacifist, read this with my biases in mind.

 Getting to the second question, there is a little more to the UN definition then that. The primary factor is still who the abuser is. For it to be torture (legally speaking) the abuser has to be (or be ordered by) an on-duty government employee, part of a group that controls territory (ie an occupying force). Some countries also count international organised criminal gangs in this definition.

 It’s also important to note that torture can be targetted at someone other then the victim. So if the police arrest the brother of a political opponent and beat him in order to intimidate the politician, that is still torture.

 Basically there are a lot of factors in the legal definition of torture and it’s that way by design. The hope is that you end up with a framework that captures as much government abuse as possible.

 But it also means that there’s a pretty high barrier when it comes to proving torture. Which means that things which are legally torture can be prosecuted as assault, bodily harm or equivalents to these, because it’s easier to get a conviction for those charges.

 Technically you are correct: if abuse done by a government official doesn’t have one of the four motivations in the legal definition (attempts to obtain information, forcing a confession, intimidation or punishment) then it doesn’t meet the definition.

 However in practice I’ve not heard of a case failing because of the motive.

 I’m not a lawyer and I’m not an expert in international law. I won’t say it’s never happened. But it’s much more common for cases to fail for other reasons. Off the top of my head I’d say the most common reason is difficulty proving the abuse took place.

 The most common types of torture today are ‘clean’, a term we use to indicate that they don’t leave obvious marks. If someone turns up with fingernails torn out or the skin of their back lacerated by a whip that is clear physical evidence of abuse. Nothing else causes similar injuries. But if someone turns up at a doctor’s with swollen feet or reddened skin, if they’ve lost a lot of weight or they’re so tired they’re struggling to stand… Well all of those things can be caused by common tortures. But they can also be caused by common illnesses.

 A lot of the deaths from torture today are similarly hard to prove. Beatings and stress positions ultimately cause death by kidney failure. Which can mean that prosecutors are asked to prove a victim didn’t have an underlying health condition. Or take drugs.

 Honestly my instinct is that the motive is the easiest thing to prove. It’s often harder to bring charges against people in positions of authority, regardless of the country we’re talking about. Bringing those charges, proving abuse took place and proving it was done by the person in question, those are usually the tricky parts.

 The difference between torture and abuse is scale. Torture is industrial scale abuse.

 The law doesn’t define that scale but that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about abuse from organised authority. Abusers might have dozens of victims. Torturers have thousands, tens of thousands.

 If you want to explore a different motivation in your story, something outside the legal framework, consider the scale at which this abuse is taking place. Consider how organised it is. If it’s organised and large scale, with multiple abusers, with no prior relationship between the abuser and victims then torture will probably be a better model then abuse. If it’s smaller scale with a more personal relationship and if it isn’t supported by a legal framework/organisation then abuse might be a better model.

 For victims and survivors the difference isn’t so much about the symptoms they personally experience as the… side effect of that scale. Abuse victims are often very isolated and may not know anyone who has had a similar experience. Torture implies a community of survivors and possibly generational trauma. There are also effects to do with access to support, access to medical care and how likely it is that someone will be believed.

 Torture survivors are often systematically disenfranchised in a way that abuse victims are not. Torture survivors are often forced to leave their home country. Anecdotally, based on what I’ve seen globally over the last few years, I think that struggling to get citizenship is increasingly an issue for torture survivors. And without citizenship there’s difficulty finding legal work, getting accommodation, accessing medical care, accessing the legal system etc.

 I do not know whether torture survivors are more or less likely to be believed by their community compared to survivors of abuse. I do not think any one has attempted a comparative study. I do know that the prevalence of clean torture means that many torture survivors are not believed and this puts up a further barrier, making it harder to access medical treatment and bring charges.

 Rejali’s book was published in 2009, so things may have changed a tad. At the time he was writing the average wait for a torture survivor to see a specialist doctor was about 10 years.

 Abuse is to torture what murder is to genocide. And there are difference on a wider social scale as a result.

 I mention all that because I feel it’s relevant but the impression I get is you’re mostly interested in the long term symptoms? In which case, yes the legal definition makes very little difference. The physical injuries caused by particular kinds of abuse don’t change depending on whether it’s a private individual or a police officer holding the Taser.

 The lasting psychological symptoms are not particular to torture; they’re what the human brain does when traumatised. The same symptoms can manifest in people who witness traumatic events but weren’t actually hurt themselves. They can manifest in people who were injured in accidents and they manifest in people who were neglected or abused. Hell, I have a couple of them, though no where near the severity a torture survivors would experience. A sufficient amount of stress is enough for these symptoms to start developing in anybody.

 You can find the general list of symptoms here. There’s also a post specifically about memory problems over here.

 The pattern I describe; that these symptoms are a list of possibilities not ‘every torture victim will get all of these’ holds true for trauma survivors generally. Anecdotally there is some variability with chronic pain being reported more often with some kinds of abuse. That might be because it can have physical causes, psychological causes or a mix of the two.

 Whether it’s torture or abuse there isn’t any way to predict a survivor’s symptoms in advance. Much of the advice I have about writing torture survivors and their symptoms holds true for trauma survivors generally. Which is why I’ll still take a crack at some questions that aren’t about torture.

 Pick the symptoms that you feel fit the character and serve the story. We can’t predict symptoms and that means that there’s no reason why you shouldn’t pick the things that appeal to you.

 And I think I’m going to leave it there. I hope that helps :)

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

*This is a weird English endearment. I had someone ask if this was me trying not to swear. 

[mostly-mundane-atla]

@paragonrobits @veryever alright, here we go. Technically-not-swears to give your writing a punch that "oh spirits" does not.

@terulakimban, @mikaslilworld, and @589ish were asking for this too so I'll mention them so that they're sure to see it.

Adjectives:

Misbegotten. Implying that someone is of questionable parentage is generally seen as in poor taste at best or incredibly insulting, vulgar "fighting words" at worst.

Cursed. Implying something or someone has done something deserving of a curse and have all the bad luck and unpleasantness that comes with it. Probably the most mild example here.

Damned. Considered more severe and material than "cursed" and often refers to a spiritual sentence or a fated misfortune. Whether or not this is an actual swear can depend on the person and the circumstance.

Poxy. This one is a little spicy because while on the surface it's just referring to illnesses like smallpox, cow pox, or chicken pox, historically, it referred to what English speakers euphemistically referred to as "the French pox" aka syphilis.

Nouns:

Animals. Referring to someone as an animal, especially one associated with unsavory personality traits (snakes and rats come to mind as a prime example), is often considered insulting and even dehumanizing. Note that asses and jackasses are actual animals and how off-limits those words are entirely depends on context

Witch. Often used in place of "bitch" becsuse it rhymes and can be used just as insultingly.

Scum. Refers to just about any icky substance that won't go away

Son of a ____. Insulting one's parentage is again in poor taste or straight up fighting words. The blank can be filled by anything: animals, unpleasant or unwanted things, people of any profession considered disgusting or demeaning. Have fun with it.

Inupiat words:

Honestly, if a fantasy version of Inupiat live in this world (and given two characters from this fantasy culture are named after Inupiat villages in Alaska, specifically, I'm going to specify Inupiat and will appreciate it if folks don't generalize it as Inuit) it only makes sense for Inupiat words to be used in other parts of the world. Influence and cultural exchange doesn't have to be a one way street where the "more advanced" only affect the "less advanced" and indigenous languages have always left traces behind.

Inupiat culture, and therefore language, is very matter of fact. Euphemisms aren't really used because no topic is really considered "too dirty" to talk about with any particular group. Insults are a way of showing love and familiarity. Offense is mainly conveyed through tone and context.

The phrase "anak niģiiñ" (anak meaning "poop," niģi meaning "eat," and -iñ being a suffix which in this case makes a verb a command aimed at one person) has been suggested as an Inupiat translation for the English phrase "eat shit." The words themselves are not bad words as you may think of them; the insult comes instead from how they're used to express anger at and disdain toward the person. Lots of words can be used this way, including any of the words for hell or for things I've alluded to on this post already.

If you're worried about this coming off as appropriative or insensitive, you may be lacking some cultural context for this to feel at home. Feel free to read through my "eskimo on main" tag for inspo on that. I'm willing to answer any other questions you may have as well, though be warned, I'm not exactly the quickest at responding.

Getting Creative - Basic Mode - Curses and Oaths:

We call bad words curses because at one point, they were exactly that. You were cursing someone and that was the greatest offense of it. Common curses include wishing death, illness, or injury on someone, sometimes milder but still unpleasant or uncomfortable experiences to befall them, and more rarely things like natural disasters. In a fantasy universe with fantastical abilities and animals, there are plenty of opportunities to customize this format into something exclusive to the Avatar verse.

An oath, in this sense, is a literal swear. English speakers may be familiar with "I swear on my mother's grave" or the more serious "for the love of god" being said when one is confronted. Here the offense comes from something sacred being invoked so flippantly. I think this is what people are trying to go for with "oh spirits" but it falls short for a few reasons. It doesn't invoke any one thing specifically. Anything can be a spirit and a spirit can take the form of anything. Are you invoking spirits of gentle breezes or torrential downpours? Of tadpoles or lions? Saying something like "by Koh's stolen faces!" or "lightning strike me down!" will make more of an impact than "Oh spirits" ever will.

Getting Creative - Advanced Mode - In-Universe Reference as Self-Censoring:

This one can be a little difficult to figure out, but it's probably my favorite one. Basically, you come up with, say, a historical incident or a bit of media that the people in-universe would know about because of its vulgarity. You don't have to explain it, because the whole point is that the audience doesn't know, just the characters. And you have the character's reference it to suggest vulgarity without having to spell any of it out. Allow me to provide an example:

"And then, well, let's just say I recited the last verse of The Earth Kingdom's Ode to the Firelord, almost word for word."

"The Kyoshi version?"

"The Omashu version!"

"And you got away with it?!?!"

Like most of them, this relies on the other character's reaction to sell it. It's loads of fun once you get it figured out because it feels like you got away with a lot when it's functionally just gibberish.

[reading-writing-revolution]

This is truly magnificent analysis. It's a bit of a long read, but it is ABSOLUTELY magically clarifying. I'll include my thoughts in a follow-up because this is perfectly in line with something I've been thinking about for a while.

Buckle up, this one is a bit of a roller coaster.

Let’s talk population density.

Do you know the population density of the zip code you live in?

What about the population density of where you spent your formative years?

That’s a bit of a rhetorical question, because I’m guessing the answer is no. I certainly didn’t, so I’d be impressed and surprised if I asked someone this question in casual conversation and they rattled off the number to me.

I’d never thought about population density until I traveled to India in 2018. We flew into Mumbai which has a population density of 75,000 people per sq. mi. To give you some perspective, NYC has 27,000 per sq. mi. (post originally said 10,431people but that is per sq. km. not mi.) and as most of my friends are familiar with King of The Hammers, in Johnson Valley, when Hammertown doesn’t exist, it has a population density of 15.2 people per sq. mi.

Mumbai has the highest population density of any city in the world, and until you’ve experienced it, it’s hard to describe. If you have ever been in the first 10 rows of a sold-out standing room only concert, that is as close as I can relate to how people move through the streets of Mumbai. There is literally no such thing as personal space. Not for you, not for your vehicle. I think one of the most fascinating things our entire group realized in Mumbai is whatever you do, do NOT stop. Merge in, merge out, but sudden stops cause pile ups of humans, vehicles, etc. Everything is in fluid motion, when you step into the stream you go with the current, when you need to leave the stream you move to the edges and hop out. What was also interesting was the lack of rage or frustration we saw, and the lack of accidents! I don’t think I saw two people yell at each other the entire time we were there. Same with car accidents, I saw one slight bumper brush. Nothing worth stopping over, as every car had marks from similar encounters.

You would think with so much closeness fights would break out often, accidents would be on every corner. But something strange happens. There is no space for the individual in that type of population density. If you wanted to stop and be mad or outraged, you would literally be trampled. So you move with the flow, or you step outside of it. One person cannot go against the current and be successful, individual needs simply cannot matter for society to function in that type of population density. This is different from NYC where you do see individuals disagree on street corners. Because even as dense as NYC is there is room for the individual. Even our most densely populated cities are nothing compared to other countries. America has space and the individual has rights.

When this country was founded the population density of even our biggest cities was a fraction of large cities in Europe. Which is why our constitution so heavily outlines the liberties and freedoms of the individual compared to places like England where their population density even today is 10 times that of the United States as a whole.

Ever since news of the pandemic broke I’ve found myself fascinated with population density in the US. This fascination started because it seemed obvious to me that the transmission of COVID would happen far faster in our highest population density areas of the country. Wikipedia has a list of cities by population density. Here’s how the top 20 most dense cities breaks down: 9 in New Jersey (NYC metro area),4 in CA (LA metro area), 3 in NY (NYC metro area), 2 in Florida (Miami metro area), 1 in Mass (Boston metro area), and 1 in Kentucky (Louisville). Except for Kentucky these population dense areas directly correlate to the highest areas of infection in the country.

But my fascination with population density didn’t stop at the pandemic. I wanted to understand population densities of different areas. I started looking up places I’d lived and visited that felt both dense and sparse population wise. It should come as no surprise that cities are always the most dense and rural areas are always the most sparse.

Then as the mask debate started unfolding in my newsfeed, I found myself loosely assigning a population density to people as they made their stance on masks known. Those that lived in higher population densities were usually more for masks than those who lived in less population dense areas.

Again, this made sense. Those that live in cities encounter more people in a day going about their routine. If they live in high-density housing, they share elevators, stairwells, mailrooms, lobbies, etc. The needs of the individual matter less the higher the density, so fighting the mask goes against the stream. You can do it, but it’s not easy.

Those I know that live more rural were less inclined to want to wear masks. I’ve found a general rule of thumb in casual conversation is if you can walk to your nearest market (even if it’s a gas station or 7/11), you understand the need for a mask. If you MUST drive to your nearest market, you likely don’t have to encounter many people in a day if you choose not to, and masks feel like just another unnecessary restriction imposed by the government. The individual has more freedoms and rejects government oversight more the lower the population density.

At some point this year I saw some people sharing an image of the US broken up by red states (Republican) vs. blue states (Democrat), compared to a map of COVID cases. At the time, the blue states almost directly correlated to where the highest COVID outbreaks were happening. The conclusion those sharing this map were trying to draw was that COVID was political and made up by the political leaders of blue states. It was largely those living in unaffected areas sharing this map and drawing these conclusions.

What I took from these images was that the higher the density the more likely an area was to be run by Democrats. Which lead me down a rabbit hole. Apparently, someone named Dave Troy noticed the same thing, and wrote an interesting article based on the 2012 election between Obama and Romney. 98% of the 50 most dense counties voted Obama. 98% of the 50 least dense counties voted Romney.

And this Dave guy sounds like someone I would enjoy having a discussion with. Because this data drew him to the same question I had. Where is the crossover point in population density between those that vote Republican vs. those that vote Democrat? The data says that at about 800 people per sq. mi. people switch from voting primarily Republican to voting primarily Democrat. Below 800 people per sq. mi. there is a 66% chance that you voted Republican in 2012. The data doesn’t appear much different in the following years.

So why does this matter? Because how you were raised and how you live has a huge impact on what matters to you from your politicians and your government.

Those I know that grew up in less dense areas had to be self-reliant. When calling 911 means you’re likely waiting 20 minutes or longer for police, an ambulance, or a fire truck. You have to be able to defend yourself, handle your own first aid, and rely on your neighbors to help in critical emergency situations. When I tell people in Southern California that where I grew up had volunteer firefighters and EMTs they don’t believe me.

The more rural you are, the less you rely on government entities for your day-to-day needs. The most rural have well water, septic systems, take their trash to the dump, if it snows, they have a vehicle that can plow, and the truly rural use propane for power and heat. They are not reliant on most services provided by the public utilities. They use guns as tools to protect their animals and their family from prey and from vermin. They do not really encounter homeless people, as even the poorest can usually find a shack to live out of and require a vehicle to get around. These people in less dense areas do not depend on the government to solve their problems. They’d prefer government stay out of their lives completely. Less taxes, less oversight, less being told what to do. To the rural, it seems like every time the government interferes in their life, they lose another freedom, and their quality of life diminishes.

Those I know that grew up in more dense areas are used to calling 911 to handle emergencies. Their streets are swept in the summer and plowed in the winter. Their trash is picked up on the same day weekly. They don’t have space for cars and tools, so they tend to take public transportation or walk. They call someone when something breaks that requires tools they don’t own. They are used to encountering the homeless on the streets as part of their daily life. The truly poor and homeless usually end up in cities as the services to help the sick, mentally ill and the poorest among us are more available in dense areas. So the wealthy interact with the poor in cities far more than they do in rural areas. Those in higher density areas are willing to pay for government services because they are a regular part of their daily lives and make life more manageable. Without these services, the quality of life they know would not exist.

This got me thinking about some research I did a few years ago, when I learned that the average American only lives 18 miles from their mother. Those in NY and PA only live on average 8 miles from their mothers. From Kentucky to Louisiana the average is 6 miles. Less than 20% of Americans live more than a few hours drive from mom. The further you move from home depends greatly on your education and income. For the most part, the wealthier you are, the more you can pay for child and elder care, making it easier to travel further from home. Also, the more educated, the more likely you are to travel to utilize your education in a specialized career field.

So what does this have to do with population density? Most Americans never leave the population density we were raised in. Why does this matter? Because that means most Americans can’t understand or relate to the needs of those that live in population densities that differ from their own.

My friends that have been raised in cities see guns primarily as a source of violence. My friends that live rurally see guns as a necessary tool for their way of life. My friends that have been raised rurally don’t understand the need for taxes and government services, where they come from you take care of your own problems. My friends that live in cities, could not imagine a life without public utilities and governmental oversight of social problems.

Neither are wrong. Their needs and perspective are just vastly different.

I also realized that I’m probably in a small percentage of the American population. I have spent the last 20 years living more than 2500 miles from my closest family members, which puts me into the 20% category plus I was raised and lived in both high density population areas and low density population areas throughout my life.

Here’s my life by population density:

Age: 0-10 Zip: 14613 Pop Dens: 7323.5 people per sq. mi.

Age: 11-18 Zip: 14468 Pop Dens: 345 people per sq. mi.

Age: 18-22 Zip: 14850 Pop Dens: 5,722 people per sq. mi.

Age: 25-32 Zip: 92606 Pop Dens: 4,913 people per sq. mi.

Age: 33-43 Zip: 91773/91750 Pop Dens 2,163/1245 people per sq. mi.

I went to inner city schools as a young child. I was upset that my mother could not put my hair in corn rows with the pretty beads like my friends wore. I learned civil rights songs taught to me by our bi-racial music teacher and came home and sang them for my disapproving father who was raised in Shinglehouse, PA with a population density of 26.5 people per sq. mi.

Then at the age of 11 my family moved out of the city and into the country. We lived on 20+ acres of land and the population was 98% white. I didn’t walk to school anymore, heck, we didn’t really walk to our neighbor’s house because country roads don’t have sidewalks.

Then I went away to college for 4 years where I lived part of that time on the 11th floor of a tower, with a shared elevator, lobby, and I didn’t own a car. I walked everywhere, took the bus or would grab a ride from my few friends with cars if it wasn’t feasible to take public transportation.

After college I moved to Southern California. I spent my first 10 years as an adult mostly living in condos and townhomes in wealthier higher density areas, where I would say the majority leaned slightly left, but there was a fiscally conservative undertone. But I spent most weekends taking my Jeep to lower population density areas to live a life more closely to what I had on the farm growing up. Less government oversights. No one ticketing my Jeep for a few stickers as a commercial vehicle, etc.

Currently, I live in Los Angeles County, one of the highest populations in the country. But I live in one of the lowest density zip codes within that county. We have horse property and rodeos, and one of the only country bars in Southern California. Our population is almost completely split down the middle between left and right. I don’t have a sidewalk but a half a mile down the road they do. I can walk to the 7/11 and the subway around the corner but need to drive to the closest grocery store.

I’ve come to realize that just about every polarizing debate I see my friends having; I can see both sides of the argument. And I’m starting to suspect it’s because I’ve lived in both their worlds. I can relate and understand their needs and where they are coming from because I’ve experienced each of their way of life to a certain extent. Most in this country are raised one way and live that way for life. And how we want to live really comes down to the population density in which we have existed.

I truly believe our population density experience matters more to our political views than education, income, race, gender or sexuality.

As a society we are so wrapped up in left vs. right. Liberal vs. conservative. We figure out which we identify with and lump every social/political issue we agree with into “our” category, and everyone we disagree with into “their” category. I don’t see this really helping us hear each other any better. It more results in people trying to prove why they are right.

Since I’ve started considering people’s population density experiences in life (if I know them and have a reasonable idea) I have found a new filter with which to view information that is far more conducive to understanding their point of view than the filters we currently use.

Mark Twain once wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

And while I think there’s some truth to that, travel in Mark Twain’s day and age is different than how we travel today. For instance, when I go to Baja, I like to stay in the small towns and eat at the local restaurants. But I have many friends that only go to all inclusive resorts, or stay in tourist areas, never venturing outside of the luxury they are there to enjoy. They don’t spend time in the rural areas seeing what life is really like. Traveling with ULTRA4 and for off road has kept me outside of most tourist areas. Where there’s only one place to stay and you have to explore local eating options. Seeing the countryside and how people live both in US and in Europe. I prefer to travel this way.

Many of us with the means to travel prefer to vacation how we live. The more rural we live day to day, the less spending a week in NYC sounds like fun. But going camping in the woods likely appeals to us. And those that live in cities, tend to not choose wilderness adventures for their downtime. The travel to help us see how other people live that existed in Twain’s time doesn’t really happen in our service oriented society where restaurants and hotels are abundant most places. We can eat at the same restaurants and sleep at the same hotels from one side of the country to the other. We’ve stopped getting outside of our own bubbles even when we travel.

I don’t know what we can do that would expose us to other ways of life like travel in Twain’s age did. But we probably need to figure it out to stop the divide from separating this country further.

From the beginning of 1900s through the Vietnam War between 7 and 9 percent of Americans were in military service. Today less than 0.5% of Americans serve in the military. That was one way that we used to expose Americans to life outside of what they grew up with. College is another way, but as costs have risen, more students continue to live at home and attend community colleges or local universities vs. leaving home to experience a different way of life between 18 and 22.

I find myself thinking about kids who go off to the army or away to college. They are forced outside their comfort zones. Some thrive there, some don’t. But they learn a different way of existing, at least for a little while. The type of travel Mark Twain is talking about. Part of me wonders if we shouldn’t offer some sort of service requirement for our youth between say 18 and 20 that requires them to get involved in something to help the country, away from where they were raised, military or civil service. If they were raised in a city, working on rural projects. If they were raised rurally, working on urban projects. Just to have a frame of reference for how diverse this country truly is and how different our needs are based on that diversity. But this is a topic for another day. You’ve already been too kind reading this far.

I don’t have the answers. But I’m glad I’ve finally put down some of the thoughts I’ve had floating around in my head regarding population density. Kudos to those of you that stuck it out.

If you’re like me and are curious about your own population density experiences, I’ve included a link in the comments where you can throw in zip codes and see what your exposure has been.

https://medium.com/@davetroy/is-population-density-the-key-to-understanding-voting-behavior-191acc302a2b

[qqueenofhades]

so i've seen lots of art where aziraphale is cupping crowley's face as he kisses him, and that has given me a lot of emotions, and i was wondering if you could write a little something based off of that? only if you feel like it, i'm sure you're super busy!! thank you so much

Okay I’m sure you wanted something passionate and tender and post-apocalypnot with them, and that was originally what I was intending to give you, but then my voracious need for Nanny/Gardener Shenanigans took over and this was the result. They’re idiots and I hate them.

It has been six months since Nanny Ashtoreth and Brother Francis joined Ambassador Dowling’s official London residence, and things are going… well, they’re going. Young Warlock, aged five, is generally pleased with his new caretakers, though the first time he refused to take a bath and threw a temper tantrum in the corridor while the Finnish Trade Minister decorously pretended to have gone temporarily deaf, he was taken firmly in hand and instructed never to do that again. Nanny sounds softly Scottish most of the time, but there was something in her voice just then which made an Impact upon the youngster. Warlock had the unaccountable feeling that if he did in fact repeat the spectacle, he would be eaten alive in his bed by a swarm of eldritch horrors, all of whom looked like the former US Vice President. He has never done it again.

The Dowlings are thus also very pleased with the corrective influence that Mrs Ashtoreth (is she a Mrs? They’ve never thought to ask, aside from a vague sense that she may be married to the gardener) has exerted upon their son, at least when they’re around. Thaddeus Dowling is constantly off doing important manly things with important manly men, Harriet Dowling is presently off on one of her passive-aggressive visits to America to see her parents, and Warlock, as usual, has been left with the help. He wanders out to the garden in search of Nanny, so they can play Hide and Seek The Great Hellbeast. (Nanny’s games are odd, he is vaguely aware of that, but they have fun. Usually.)

Instead, what meets young Warlock’s eyes is the sight of Brother Francis leaning on a spade and trying to look like a seasoned man of the earth. Nanny is regarding him with one exquisitely plucked eyebrow arched, as she says, “Angel, you really don’t know the first thing about gardening, do you?”

Warlock stops short. They have not seen him, and he wriggles behind the gazebo, peering out with heart pounding. Nanny sounds strangely like a middle-aged English man, of which he has met countless thanks to his dad’s job, and she is inspecting Francis’s valiant attempt to plant begonias with the look said men usually get when asked to comment on what HM Loyal Opposition did yesterday. She – he? – shakes her head, causing her elegantly marcelled red curls to swing in a way that momentarily distracts Brother Francis completely. “There’s no way you’re shouting at these enough.”

“I’m the nice one.” Brother Francis also sounds distinctly unlike himself. Rather than his usual hayseed drawl, he is speaking like another middle-aged English man, and a considerably prim and fussy one at that. “Besides, I’m not actually gardening, my dear, you know that. Do you think the boy is asleep yet? We could go pop off and have a bit of tea in the shade.”

Nanny glances around, but manages not to notice Warlock. Then she says, in a darkly significant sort of voice, “How do you think it’s going?”

“You’re the one who spends the most time with him,” Brother Francis says, putting down the spade and any pretense of actually doing anything significant with it. He removes his hat as well, and – Warlock isn’t certain what, but something happens to his face, with its bushy sideburns and buck teeth. He resembles someone else altogether. A nice sort of fellow, but a stranger. “I suppose we must allow that the Antichrist will seem quite normal at first.”

Nanny considers that, tapping her fingers on her arm. Then she says, “Got a commendation yesterday. Apparently they thought that once he met the former US Vice President, he was entirely set for being evil.”

(Aha, Warlock thinks. Knew there was something dodgy about Hallibubbleton.)

“I don’t think so,” Brother Francis clucks. “Gabriel seems equally convinced that it would have had the opposite effect, but in reverse. I just – Crowley, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Course it’s a good idea.” Nanny – Crowley? This is all very strange – seems miffed that not-Brother Francis would even ask. “We went over this, remember?”

“Yes, well.” Brother Francis offers up a weak-chinned smile. “I mean, you do seem to be rather good with him, you know. Very nice.”

This has a surprising reaction that takes Warlock quite aback. Crowley grabs the hapless gardener by the frock, pulling him sharply against her. “Aziraphale,” she growls. “What have I told you about that? I am not nice! I am influencing him to be EVIL! And you’re supposed to be influencing him to be GOOD! There is nothing NICE about any of it! Or me!”

Aziraphale looks less alarmed than you would think. Warlock gets a sudden suspicion about what might be going on here. Absolutely none of what they’re saying makes any sense to him, but he knows when adults want to sneak off and start kissing, which looks set to break out at any moment (disgusting). Apparently they are in fact married, though he still doesn’t know why they’re calling each other these funny names and arguing about this. To make sure things don’t get any more out of hand, he steps out from behind the gazebo. “What’s an Antichrist?”

Crowley and Aziraphale, if that is who they are, freeze on the spot. They exchange a look of pure terror only achievable to a pair of morons who have been caught red-handed and have no idea what to do now, and Crowley does apparently the only thing that occurs to her. She jerks hold of her husband and kisses him – to Warlock’s vast chagrin, this being the one thing he was trying to avoid. This goes on just long enough for Aziraphale’s hand to float up, seemingly of its own volition, to cup her face, until Crowley pulls back. “I have told you, you auld daftie,” she informs the stunned not-a-gardener, once more speaking in her Scottish caretaker-of-children voice, “not to drink before lunch, don’t you remember? You come out with all sort of nonsense when you do.”

Aziraphale utters a sound like a bladder that has been stepped on. Crowley – no, it’s just Nanny, and Warlock is already curiously hazy on remembering everything he just heard – adjusts her curls and puts back on her hat, clearing her throat. “Young man,” she says sternly, heels leaving sharp imprints in the turf as she strides toward Warlock. “What have I told you about eavesdropping?”

“That I should be bad and do what I want, because one day I’m gonna rule the whole world and know everything,” Warlock pipes up helpfully. “Wasn’t it?”

Nanny gets the look of someone who has once more played herself. Brother Francis still has not recovered, but manages to shoot her a silent HA.

“Yes, well,” Nanny says feebly. “Come along.”

She takes hold of Warlock’s hand and marches him off, leaving one angel in considerable distress behind her. Aziraphale’s brain is currently making a sound like a fork in a garbage disposal, as that is an extremely literal hell of a way to have your first kiss with someone you’ve been unconsciously and then consciously pining after for six thousand years, and his fingers can still sense their inadvertent curl around Crowley’s cheek. That was – that was – that was –

Well, Aziraphale thinks at last, picking up the spade, even as his hands continue trembling. At least Crowley didn’t mean it. It was just to cover up their apparently ill-chosen moment to discuss the Plan. That was all. It’s fine. And as long as Warlock is struck with a convenient bout of amnesia, no harm done.

They are absolutely nailing this.

[titoist]

watched seinfeld on my lonesome for the first time in around 2 years, on a whim, eating dinner while doing so. it had a big impact on me, when i was a tad younger. &...it was nice! but, of course, i may be biased, as i generally have not really consumed media for rest & relaxation in months & i feel that my instincts for it have totally atrophied - anything that isn't horrible will seem, to me, subjectively, pretty good. i laughed harder at the performance of the actor for newman than i have at any show in the last few years, i think. but there also existed this strange sense of... casual cynicalness to it i can't pinpoint - which, while watching, really sharply pricked at me! at least, once or twice... it's the firsts episode of season 7 - inwhere george & jerry make a pact to "grow up" & get married, with the hope of finally ridding themselves of what they perceive to be childish behavior they haven't grown out of... rejecting women for silly little things, being pessimistic, selfish, cruel & unfair, lonely, etc.... george perceives their mutual agreement as being a tacit pact to marry, while jerry thinks nothing of it. the central conflict is that jerry immediately goes back on his resolution, whereas george takes the foolhardy & comically ill-advised choice to impulsively propose to his ex-girlfriend, who says yes. when george finds out jerry broke the pact, he realizes that he does not really feel any love for his fiancee... instead, seemingly having gotten a kick out of jerry's approval. hilarity ensues. thought: it seems to accept & propagate the pop culture norm of "annoying bitch wife" in a way that i found unpleasant - or, rather, maybe it's not how they portrayed george's fiancee... i feel it's just generally the image of love that's presented. kramer and jerry talk amongst one-another how marriage & love is a self-imposed prison, having to wake up to the same woman every day, to sleep with her every night, to be forced to spend time with her, to have to take her considerations into account.... it's enough to make jerry reconsider the whole "love" thing entirely, and the central bit is that george doesn't realize the folly of his love sooner - since, now... well, buddy, he's "trapped" with it. & it seems unpleasant, to me, personally, to entertain the "ol' ball and chain!" conception of love in the way that it's done here - a robotic, unthinking pop culture cliche. love shouldn't hurt, it shouldn't be painful, nor should it feel tantamount to torture. i don't think i ever, ever understood it... because, to me, personally, spending time with those i've loved is the closest i've ever gotten to a heaven on earth. watching it produced a weird feeling of embarrassment, like i was being humiliated by my old-fashioned conservative parents' anachronistic beliefs. i was tempted to say, as a continuation, that i get this feeling... that, the more we just unthinkingly surrender to these media tropes & depictions, it will, conversely, reduce our own capacity to love & to be human. but i'm not completely sure it's that serious - upon reflection, i feel it's much more likely i was just quote unquote Wigged Out by a depiction of love that struck me as obnoxiously mean-spirited, & i'm simply attempting to justify it with a scrawl that is... ostensibly sensical, but really over-reactive. hrrmmm. it could, certainly, be that the episode was in actuality making fun of the exact mindset that it, to me, seemed to totally & unconditionally reflect... and i'm just too dumb and/or tired and/or other likeminded adjectives to have fully processed it. that might be interesting, though. i've always perceived Seinfeld to sort of... purposefully be a show about terrible people, a la "it's always sunny in philadelphia". but it feels like... where IASIP frames its horribleness as uniquely disgusting and inhuman, Seinfeld seems to portray that these banal habits are all extremely normal & commonplace, an exhibition of casual cruelty. & maybe that - that idea of casual cruelty - is actually what is, to me, viscerally discomforting