#alternatively: R Has No Sense of Consequence

[fandomrouletteburrito]

You know what? Im going to vent about how annoyed I am abt bsd atm and put it in the tags bcuz I also want to debate it. I enjoy bsd but I am struggling to understand what exactly Asagiri is trying to do here esp when this arc is so long that the arc itself has mini arcs in it.

If anyone reads this I would love, LOVE to discuss this because I am yanking my hair in frusteration

I am putting it under a cut so that ppl who dont want to see criticism abt bsd dont have to see it

Am i being an asshole? Yes

Am i going to warn ppl before hand and remind them that they can curate their internet experience by simply not reading something that is going to criticize something they love? And the block button exists for a reason???????Also yes

That being said i dont often go off about things i dont like about media i enjoy because well i understand everything i like has pros and cons

Also i still read bsd bcuz there r other things i DO like about it

Anywayssss

The thing that is bothering me about bsd is that I dont think I can tell what any character is doing EVER. Perhaps thats just my taste and I like having some idea of whats going to happen.

The characters arcs are excellent, their actions make sense for the personalities that they have yes.

The problem i do have w bsd is that the characters are apparently constantly always somehow predicting whats going on

How in the goddamn world do you expect me to believe that Fyodor let Dazai see him kill someone through touch so that Dazai would come up w a plan like Mersault? Fyodor didn’t expect Dazai to catch him at the end of the whole virus thing so like how is that enough time for him to find a way to kill that guard by just touching his hand? Why do that unless you planned the Mersault fake death from the start?

I forget but didn’t the Hunting Dogs get Mushitaro to bring up Dazai’s crimes to get Dazai into Mersault? Was this all to get Dazai away from the agency? Extremely likely but that tells me Fyodor planned to fake his death from the star(again) WHICH IN TURN MEANS HE HAD TO HAVE FKING KNOWN SO MUCH AHEAD OF TIME which only makes sense if he had access to some type of future telling ability because some characters actions WERE random eg: below

If Gogol randomly decided to break Fyodor out of Mersault with his race against death game, how can Fyodor expect to be killed by a vampire to become Bram??? How does this make sense if he did not know that Gogol would plan this at all?

There is the panel of Fyodor fallin through the Mersault room correctly as he says its time to escape so maybe he knew Gogol would that? HOW if Gogol just came up with that plan without any of Fyodor’s input?? Alright then maybe he was acting so Dazai won’t catch on but even then how was he expecting to die so that he can become Bram?? What was his alternate plan?

Alright maybe he simply predicted Gogol to do that which I think is a bit sad for Gogol since I think his whole character arc is about how he doesn’t want to be shackled by anything and I would argue being manipulated by someone is a shackle

Criticism 2: the fact absolutely no one of importance has died in bsd manga except for in the light novels(i am including Odasaku in this) please PLEASE correct me if I missed a death

Im not counting Fukuchi as dead because jury’s still out on that given the whole thing w God!Fukuchi/Amenogozen

Esp as we have Dead Apple where whats his names ability outlived him and i think also in 55 minutes

Because well, how do you expect me to take any of the stakes in this manga seriously if no one of name dies ever, I would not have this issue if death wasnt faked out as many times as it has

Maybe Bram will actually stay dead but I doubt it

The fact Kunikida was killed this chapter just tells me that yet again, death is not a serious consequence in this manga. Esp as the book has not been used yet. Even fking HP Lovecraft is alive ffs.

If Kunikida stays dead I will HAPPILY eat my words and state that Asagiri is a master writer for fooling my reading of bsd that well.( i am obviously not saying only my interpretation of bsd is correct so pls dont come at me)

Criticism 3: why didn’t Dazai literally just kill off Fyodor w Chuuya once they got Sigma to get the info from Fyodor

I understand thats a much more author did that because thats what the writing needed and characters are only as intelligent as the story needs so … fineeeee thats on me

Criticism 4: the whole Amenogozen thing about how the war isn’t real

How can Fyodor fake the sign on the wall unless he knew what sign meant world ending to Fukuchi???

Not sure if this is a criticism but if Chuuya was sent by Mori…how did Fyodor expect him to show up? Unless Fyodor and Mori discussed that earlier together in which case Mori is doing an excellent job at pretending like he’s not inleague with Fyodor

This plan of Fyodor’s to become Bram is just so batshit insane and so reliant on people doing random things at the right time eg: Gogol and the death game, Chuuya not being used to kill Fyodor in any form, Sigma not waking up in time to warn the agency, Dazai not fking shooting Fyodor w a gun

Imagine if Gogol’s poison succeeded then well ig Fyodor would just stay in his body since he injected the poison in his own veins which hey doesn’t that mean there was no risk of Fyodor dying in that game? I am likely wrong but it is kinda funny

Unrelated but wow tumblr does NOT want to make writing this on mobile easy bruh

I think the reason I’m so frusterated with this is that bsd is so unpredictable that for me it feels like its going beyond the suspension of disbelief i have

Its breaking the intelligence scale that they set with Fyodor, Dazai and Ranpo that it feels too much to believe

My other issue is I dont know what the whole long term thing w BSD is, and I am a bit tired of that. That might be my personal taste where I like to know what kind of ending or long term things I hope to see in a series but this is a bit too absured for me which might be the point

If anyone reads this entire nonsensical essay you have my respect

[oxyvisualanalysis-fa23]

Discussion leader presentation 

AHA - Take On Me:

Take on Me by Aha is centred around the singer's interest to woo a romantic interest and persuade him to accept him as her lover. The title of the song, “Take on Me” signifies his plea for her to take a chance on him. Although his love for her is genuine, he struggles with shyness and therefore it is difficult for him to express his feelings to this particular woman. Interestingly, the lady also appears somewhat hesitant or reserved in her response to his advances, occasionally displaying shyness herself. Nevertheless, the singer is determined to win her affection while the opportunity is present. Consequently, most of the song revolves around his earnest appeal for her to embrace his love and be open to the affection he is offering.

The music video for "Take On Me" is known for its distinctive combination of live-action and pencil-sketch animation, which creates a unique visual style. It tells a story of a woman who enters a comic book world and interacts with the animated protagonist, all while blending with the real world. The video effectively blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, as the characters move between the two worlds. This creates a sense of wonder and excitement, making it a memorable visual experience.

We're talking away

I don't know what I'm to say

I'll say it anyway

Today is another day to find you

Shyin' away

Oh, I'll be comin' for your love, okay

These first lyrics capture a sense of longing, determination, and hope in the pursuit of romantic love. The singer is willing to take a chance and make an effort to win the affection of someone they are interested in, even if it means overcoming uncertainty.

Ferdinand de Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics"

Although not directly related to A-ha's "Take On Me" music video, some parallels can be drawn. The video features live-action and animation, signifying different realities. This shift in signs, akin to Saussure's theory, underscores the arbitrary relationship between signifiers and signifieds. The woman's transition from reality to the animated world signifies a deliberate change in meaning, reflecting her desire for adventure and escape. Boundaries between these realms blur, reflecting Saussure's idea of combining and blending signs to add depth to the narrative. Though Saussure's work pertains to language, its concepts can be applied to analyze the video's narrative structure and the interplay between signs and meanings, enriching the viewer's experience.

Roland Barthes' "Mythologies" 

The video employs semiotics, playing with signs and symbols by juxtaposing real-world live-action and animated comic book sequences. These shifts influence how viewers interpret the narrative, reflecting the manipulation of signs and symbols akin to Barthes' concepts.

In "Mythologies," Barthes delves into the construction of myths through signification. In the video, the comic book becomes a mythological element, symbolizing an alternate reality. The use of signs and symbols in the video's narrative serves as a modern form of myth making. Furthermore, Barthes' exploration of consumer culture's role in creating myths around everyday objects finds resonance in the video. The comic book becomes a culturally significant symbol for the characters.

Peter Gabriel- Sledgehammer

Music Video: Peter Gabriel - "Sledgehammer"

"Sledgehammer" is a song by British musician Peter Gabriel, released in 1986. The music video for this song is known for its innovative use of stop-motion animation. The video was directed by Stephen R. Johnson features a variety of surreal and imaginative scenes, often involving unconventional and whimsical imagery.

Similar to A-ha's "Take On Me," the "Sledgehammer" video undergoes a striking visual transformation. In "Take On Me," the transformation occurs between live-action and comic book animation, while in "Sledgehammer," it involves stop-motion animation and claymation. Both videos use these visual shifts to create an otherworldly and fantastical atmosphere.Both videos play with the concept of narrative, taking viewers on a journey that blurs the lines between reality and imagination.

"Take On Me" features a love story that transcends the boundaries of a comic book, while "Sledgehammer" explores a surreal dream-like narrative filled with unconventional and symbolic elements.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 

The video features a significant transformation of the characters between two worlds. How does this theme of transformation relate to the concept of self-identity? What can we learn from the characters' experiences of changing their reality and appearance to find love and connection?

Take On Me" uses metaphors such as the transition from the comic book world to reality. Do they challenge or reinforce prevailing social norms and expectations regarding love and adventure, and how do these interpretations resonate with today's audiences?

Take On Me" is an iconic '80s song. Why do you think music from this era, including "Take On Me," continues to resonate with audiences across different age groups? How does it capture the spirit and emotions of its time while remaining timeless?

[teacherintransition]

High School

Wait …what?

Wasn’t that like forty years ago?

I graduated from high school in 1984. Even at the tender age of eighteen, I was into transitioning. I transitioned to college life, fatherhood, marriage, career, multiple fatherhood, home ownership, parenting kids through college, middle age, retirement (current teacher in transition), world and country traveler to …uh, now! High school? That thirty nine years, three sons, one wife, eight dogs, two diplomas, a mortgage and four grandchildren ago. WTF? Why does it matter so much? It’s such a brief period in our lives yet it carries such tremendous, emotional baggage. Some of it I get; if you married your high school sweetheart or were an athletic or academic superstar. I wasn’t. I carried books home five times …literally five times in four years. By the beginning of my junior year, I had quit all athletics and committed myself to the high Art of being a sophomoric, immature, n’er do well class clown. I engaged in nothing socially redeeming while in high school and played a PG-13/R rated “Animal House” or more likely a “Dazed and Confused” homage. Fun times, but not glorious.

Three members of the Great Quadrumvirate celebrated their 40th high school reunion last week. (They are a year or two older than me) They did all the usual: salute to fallen classmates; attended the high school football game, gave out cheesy awards; took pics and drank just enough to remind them that they are no longer eighteen. I myself never attended my 10th, 20th, 25th or 30th reunions and I’m certain I won’t go next year to our 40th. I dunno why. I did create an alternative soirée: The Low Class, No Class Anti-reunion for the 20th, 25th. The real deal just didn’t appeal to me. I literally talk to three people from those years (five if you count my wife and twin brother) Several classmates are persona non gratia and other close friends have moved on from this realm. But even with all that, the feelings and emotions of that era sneak back into my psyche. I’m at a loss.

Why is it that these four years can be so idyllic and emotionally crippling at the same time? Some guys can never grow past it, some guys don’t survive it, some …me …have been past it for decades. Life changed quickly and dramatically for me and I became insta-adult. That circumstance and disappearance of my friends probably has a place into why I got past it so quickly; yet the memories can be quite vivid. All leading back to the conundrum …why the powerful emotional bond?

I taught junior high and high school for thirty years and looking back, perhaps the answer is a bit clear. Putting aside the obvious situations of high school sweethearts and special friends …there was/is a dreamlike sense of being stronger than reality. It is the last time we are safe from the struggles of the real world, the last time we are protected from consequence, and the last time we are free to dream without the encumbrance of the reality. We could be anything. Every student athlete was sure they were going pro; every bookworm was going to be a writer; we were all going to be rich and marry beautiful people! It was all ripe for the taking. Disappointment and discouragement were foreign languages. We could dream anything. We had a classmate who was going to design Rock album covers …and he did, for our junior year book. He was gonna do it! I was going to photograph for National Geographic, I had a helluva 35mm SLR rig …it was gonna happen! My brother was going to be a truck driver, several buddies were going to be rock stars. We planned with unrestricted vigor and had very, very little understanding of how tragedy, failure and disappointment were and are regular features of living.

I’m not implying at all that life since then has been less than wonderful; I’ve had a great life thus far and will go forward making dreams come true; but I have wisdom now. I like wisdom, I still like being a smart ass, but do I want to relive those years? No, well, …no, not not at all. But sometimes, that mindset of magic possibilities creeps back in and you think, maybe …why not? I can still dream …can’t I ?

Just for a moment, I was back at school

And felt that old familiar pain

And as I turned to make my way back home

The snow turned into rain*

*Fogleberg, Dan; “Same Old Lang Syne;” The Innocent Age; Full Moon Records; November, 1980

[ayankun]

AoS S4 (Agents of Hydra pod specifically) is hitting so right this time around 🥰

Not that it isn't normally something I love a lot, but I'm in a good spot right now to be over-analyzing folks' psychologies and interior motivations, and watching all these excellent performers perform excellent character writing is just blowing my mind.

And, like, I understand that the LMD/Framework storyline felt to some like a "a dream all along" kind of cop-out, but personally I can't get over the level of attention and care the writers put into asking the question, "at a certain level of complexity, is there a difference between a simulation and the real thing?" And all these characters go into this storyline with different starting points and interact with this question differently, and we get a nice big conversation on the topic with no spoon-fed answers.

Mace's story is amazing, and Framework Ward and Trip are actually so good.

Especially Framework!Ward being ACTUAL, ALGORITHMICALLY-CORRECT Ward, just with different inputs producing a different output, existing as a foil to the Doctor to show that all these Framework personalities belong to the real underlying person -- they're not AI-generated fictions, I mean -- and amount to alternate timeline versions of themselves.

So on the topic of the Doctor, what a fun (fun is NOT the right word) example of toxic masculinity as a concept that doesn't exist in a vacuum but rather is an external oppressive force exerted onto its victims by those already in power. Fitz is a deeply deeply emotional guy, by nature, and in this timeline his nurturing environment forbade displays of, AND I QUOTE, "womanly sentiments," i.e., processing his emotions in a healthy way, and he becomes cruel and vicious as a direct consequence.

Even the real, generally well-adjusted Fitz is shown to strike out in anger, he throws stuff off desks and punches rocks when he's angry, right? In the Framework, the Doctor doesn't have ANY alternate methods for channeling this huge uncomfortable emotion. It's either Bottle It Up (exhibit A: when he sees his dad's body) or Hurt Whoever Hurt You x1000 (see: all the state-sanctioned torture, personally hunting Simmons down, etc.)

(And, it's like, I think Dad!Fitz is characterized as being that stiff-upper-lip person by nature. His worldview is informed by what makes instinctive sense to HIM, and maybe he wouldn't be as much of a negative impact in the world around him if he also had the capacity to see that other people ... are different!!! His son is different. The narrative here is explicitly that the Doctor is what Leopold Fitz would have become if the universe allowed his father undue influence over Fitz's own worldview -- if his father used his parental authority to hold Fitz accountable for adopting and perpetuating his toxic, one-size-fits-all worldview.)

Which, I think -- I think -- is the problem. Thee capital P problem. People in authority trying to put people in black-and-white boxes, no matter what, even when that isn't going to work.

Daisy and Aida talked around this point, Aida the bad parent saying "I'm just giving them what they want" and Daisy the childhood trauma victim saying "sometimes what people want isn't right for them." (I know that Daisy saying this is also meant to be her reflecting on her post-S3 journey of self-distruction, and her getting to this point is a major milestone in her recovery but)

This conversation leads to the reveal of Aida's true goal -- self-determination. Her own "childhood" trauma has led her to this point. She was L I T E R A L L Y programmed to behave according to Radcliffe's personal worldview (side note: chief among his desires is to prolong and enhance life; you think Aida's NOT going to react badly when her own "life" is threatened???? She literally doesn't have another option than to preserve herself at all costs. She's mirror-verse Agnes, facing her own mortality not with Agnes' grace but with Radcliffe's ethically-unhinged stubbornness.)

Aida had a pad parent, who was blind to her needs (and/or deliberately chose not to meet them), and this is the result. #notallandroids

I got lost, but I think what I'm trying to say is something something cycles of generational trauma?

[cursezoroark]

I think of my paragon future AU as in the Final Good Ending. Aka Mona doesn’t reset and loses their role as interceptor permanently somehow idk. They get to live a life past 18 lol. I think in each run Mona loses their memories and sense of self but they have “hunches” on key stuff. Imagine a rlly deep gut feeling that feels so certain but u have no clue how u know that. HOWEVER, just cause Mona creates a new timeline doesnt mean they come back the same way. Each run is different to how they react, small chances and nitpicks can change a personality :] and viewpoints. And Decisions.

Personal timeline:

Failed Run (incomplete) —> paragon (complete) —> renegade (complete)

- paragon run is complete separate from Renegade, they are alternative timelines and not chronologically following each other. However, they seemingly exchange knowledge to each other in Zeight Arc, so Renegade has more knowledge and access to information in their alt timeline. While Paragon is only aware of the consequences that follow in the other. Seemingly, Renegade is already wired with pre-made decisions, but not all of them. It was a chance and a half that they would fulfill their role, so Mona (R) made some personal choices in that timeline. I kind of want to wait for more content of Renegade path before I can make a solid judgement of how Renegade works here, so this is just a flimsy hc

[joly-and-the-satellites]

So uhm College AU? Grantaire running against Enjolras as President of the student government just to piss him off but Grantaire actually wins and he panics because "this wasn't part of the plan Bossuet stop laughing!" And he ends up asking sour Enj for help.

((Hopefully this is alright, anon!!))

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. It was just a joke, for the love of god - just a harmless, playful little jest to get Enjolras’ attention, and maybe rile him up a bit. It was Grantaire’s favorite pastime, after all; and something he was rather skilled at, if he said so himself. The point stood, regardless of his talent: running against Enjolras for the position of Student Government President was nothing more than a joke. Hell, he’d even treated it as one - he wasn’t serious in the slightest, never dressed the part, was never on time, didn’t put up any posters asking for the votes of the other students… whereas, predictably, Enjolras was taking it all in stride with a certain solemnity; the exact opposite of Grantaire’s approach. He was clearly doing all he could to secure the position for himself - which was more than any of the other runners were doing by a mile. There was never a doubt in R’s mind that he would win by a landslide come election time; which was the deciding factor in whether or not he’d run against him. Enjolras already had it, as far as he was concerned. Which was why, when it had been announced that Grantaire had been named President, he’d choked on his drink to the point of scaring Joly into thinking he’d somehow managed to drown himself. Now, Grantaire was sitting on the edge of his bed, wine bottle in hand, wide-eyed, and struggling to fully grasp the situation. It was absolutely ridiculous.  Sure, he was sociable with others, got into less altercations, and was generally more laid-back and involved in things outside of politics than Enjolras; but that hardly meant he was President material! He was a far cry from it! He was no problem-solver, nor was he well-informed on the concerns and questions of the student body, as a whole or as segments; and he didn’t even understand what it all entailed! Did he have powers? Could he actually do anything with his title? Was he suddenly going to flooded with questions from other students? Would it give him any leeway if he turned an essay in a few hours past due? Grantaire ran a hand through his already unkempt hair, and took a swig from his bottle. “I cannot believe,” he started, only to be cut off by a snort from Bossuet, who sat next to him. He shot him a disbelieving glance - the other had a hand over his mouth to hide a mirthful grin, but his eyes were shining with laughter he was barely holding back. “I cannot believe - they elected me! What the fuck!?” Grantaire groaned in sorrow. He was nowhere near drunk enough for this. Bossuet broke into honest laughter then, shaking his head and wiping at his eye as if he’d teared up. R gaped at him, lowering the bottle to the floor before he turned to face him. How could he laugh!? This was an absolute disaster! “This wasn’t part of the plan, Bossuet!” He protested; this time, Bossuet snorted. Joly, who was at the desk typing up a paper on his laptop, snickered under his breath this time. Grantaire whipped around to face his other friend with a look of shock. Joly cast an innocent glance over his shoulder before he went back to typing, but his shoulders were shaking with silent laughter. Grantaire couldn’t believe this betrayal from his own best friends! It was treason! Dissent in the ranks! “Stop laughing!” R said, exasperation clear in his voice. “Alright, alright - I’m sorry!” Bossuet grinned, holding up his hands in surrender. It was exceedingly obvious, Grantaire decided, that he was not at all sorry. “It’s just… you were kind of asking for this, ‘Taire.” R was sure he was gawking at him; but he could safely say that his confusion was perfectly reasonable. There was no logical explanation for why R had won the election - but that hardly mattered now. Now, he was stuck with the aftermath; and more importantly, how he was to deal with it. He had responsibilities now that he wasn’t even aware of, he was sure, and he’d feel a bit stupid if he were to ask a staff member what his own job was supposed to entail. But he couldn’t travel through time, and he couldn’t call it off, or pass the job along to someone else– Grantaire grabbed his bottle from the floor again. “This is insane,” he groused. Joly leaned back in his chair with his arm slung over the armrest, the wood creaking faintly. He raised an eyebrow at Grantaire, seemingly doing all he could to withhold a smile. “He isn’t wrong, R. You knew the risk you were taking,” he informed him, a little giggle slipping out between his words. “Maybe you should just call Enjolras, admit that you don’t know what you’re doing, and ask for his help.” Grantaire choked on the wine he was gulping down at that suggestion - Bossuet, ever helpful, whacked him squarely between the shoulders. Grantaire ended up coughing. “For a doctor, you’re causing your patients a lot of problems,” Bossuet teased as R finally caught his breath, grabbing a half-emptied water bottle sitting on the bedside table instead. Joly shrugged a shoulder playfully, turning back to his laptop with a shake of his head. “I’m only saying - you need someone’s advice, R, and Enjolras would definitely be willing to help. Besides, he’s still a little bitter about the loss. Maybe this could gloss things over with him…?” Grantaire sighed heavily at that, dropping his head onto Bossuet’s shoulder for support; the other patted his shoulder sympathetically. Yet another downside to winning this horrendous election. Enjolras had suspected that Grantaire was only antagonizing him by running; and no doubt, he was probably more than just a bit upset about losing it to him in spite of his best effort. He had sent a short, too-formal ’Congratulations on the win.’ that morning, and he had not seen a single text or call since - apparently, neither had anyone else, with the exception of Combeferre and Courfeyrac. Grantaire liked to get him riled up, yes; but he didn’t like to make him angry, let alone upset. For all Enjolras was undoubtedly annoyed then, R knew he was at least a little morose about losing, and the knowledge was tearing him up a bit. He hadn’t intended to win; and never would he intend to cause him any dismay. But if he called now - admitted that it was all a joke gone wrong, that he had no idea what he was doing and couldn’t handle the duties of President on his own - Enjolras would be furious, and rightly so. Grantaire finally insisted, “I can’t call him.” Bossuet took a deep breath, leaning back on his hands - R followed the motion seamlessly, too distressed over the situation to bother with sitting back up. For all that their advice seemed impossible to follow through with, he was incredibly thankful for their presence here. He couldn’t ask for better friends than these two. “I agree with Joly-” “Thank you.” “-you really should call him. Whatever you think will happen, it won’t; I promise,” Bossuet assured him. “He might be a little annoyed, but he’s not going to hate you for asking for some advice. Just trust us on this one, alright…?” Grantaire glanced at his phone, which was sitting by his pillow; he had a handful of texts that he hadn’t yet responded to, almost all of which were concerning his position as President of Student Government… aside from some link to an undoubtedly ridiculous video Joly had sent him ten minutes ago. His head was suddenly filled with the thousand routes this scenario could follow. Enjolras might be furious. He might be annoyed. Maybe he’ll hang up. Maybe he’s blocked R. Maybe he won’t answer at all. Maybe… Bossuet nudged his shoulder lightly, as if hearing his doubts. Grantaire gave a heavy sigh, grabbing his phone as if sentencing himself to death as he shot Joly a rueful look. “I don’t understand why you’re always right.” Joly gave him a too-sweet smile, batting his eyelashes at R as he unlocked his phone. He pulled up his contact list - Apollo was the first name. He tapped the name, opening it up; but he just couldn’t bring himself to press the call button. His eyes wandered to the contact picture - one he’d snapped at a protest a year or so back, where Enjolras was holding a pride flag high over his head and above the crowd, his hair illuminated by the midday sun. God, he was stupid. Bossuet reached over, fast as lightning, and pressed the call button. R felt his heart stop as he scrambled to end the call, fumbling with the phone and almost dropping it. “Bossuet!” He screeched in horror, much to the amusement of the other two. Luckily, he hung up before anyone could answer - and he immediately shot the other a look of mock-annoyance before tackling him, almost throwing them both onto the floor. Bossuet pulled R’s hood up over his head and yanked the drawstrings shut with a laugh, pushing him back by the face. Temporarily blinded, Grantaire flailed to smack his hand away with a laugh, struggling to pull the hood loose and back from his face…… and his phone was playing Enjolras’ custom ringtone. Suddenly, the room was in dead silence, save from the phone’s tune. All of them swiveled to stare at it at once. Enjolras’ picture was on the screen - he was calling back. “… Joly, my love, text Bahorel, please.”“Why…?”“I need to know if R can legally kill me for this.”“Yes, probably.”“I’ll leave my lucky socks to you.”“Those socks are not lucky.”Grantaire was running on auto-pilot when he took the call; maybe he was a bit more drunk than he’d first believed. He held the phone up to his ear almost cautiously, glancing between the two as if they could offer him any help. Joly have a guilty smile, and Bossuet shrugged helplessly. “Hello? Grantaire, can you hear me?” Enjolras asked from the other end of the call. He didn’t sound upset, nor did he sound annoyed - but he was definitely on the fence of both. Grantaire cleared his throat nervously. “Uh… yes. Yes, I am hear you.” “You called me and hung up before I could answer,” Enjolras stated. “Butt dial,” Grantaire said quickly. “I sat on the button.” “Grantaire.”“Anyway, how were classes today? Anything interesting happen? Any essays? Projects?”“Grantaire.”“Yes?” He croaked. “Why did you call?”Silence overtook the call for a moment. Oh, no. How was he to explain this? He hadn’t had any time to think over what he would say, how he would ask, what he’d do if Enjolras didn’t take the request favorably–“Is something wrong?” The other asked, much more softly. Grantaire was so taken aback by the question that he couldn’t quite respond; he wasn’t even sure if he was breathing properly for a moment. “Are you alright? I can be over in five minutes, R, give or take-” “No! - no, it’s alright,  really, you don’t need to come over. I, uh… I’m perfectly fine. Nothing’s wrong. But I… might need help with something.” There was another break of awkwardly heavy silence, and Grantaire was suddenly very aware of Bossuet watching him in nervous anticipation. Enjolras sounded guarded when he next spoke, a certain edge to his words. “With what?”Grantaire took a deep breath to steel himself, feeling as if his face was burning. God, this was embarrassing - maybe he’d stop picking at him after this. (He knew he wouldn’t, but it seemed a sound solution.)“I… don’t think I can actually be President of Student Government, because I’ve got no idea what my responsibilities are and I didn’t intend to actually win or be taken seriously…?”Silence dragged out unbearably. It felt like seconds were crawling by at the pace of an elderly snail. R, for a moment, wished he would have just lied about it, or made something up on the fly. That would have been much easier than whatever hell he was about to unleash. “Unbelievable,” Enjolras said shortly. He didn’t sound furious; he wasn’t raising his voice. But then again, he didn’t need to. His tone said enough. He cringed. There was the fire and ice Grantaire was expecting. “You do know that any sort of election within the student body isn’t to be treated like a joke, correct? This was serious. I was serious.” Enjolras continued on. R ran a hand through his hair, shoulders slouching like a scolded puppy. “Yeah, I know. But… for what it’s worth, I didn’t think I had a chance in hell at winning. I was so sure you’d already won it,” he replied, hoping he wasn’t just feeding gasoline to the flames. Enjolras sighed sharply; Grantaire could almost imagine him rubbing at his temple to push back a headache. Wrong move on his part, apparently. “So what do you need to know?” Enjolras asked, his tone clipped and words short. Oh, you’ve put your foot in your mouth this time, Grantaire thought to himself bitterly.

“Well… I was really thinking that maybe you could just… help me do the right thing?” R started, trying not to sound too hopeful. Maybe if he took the right approach, Enjolras wouldn’t be so sour with him; maybe he’d convince him to help and patch things up between them a bit in the process. “You know better than I do what the other students need, I mean. You’re more in touch with what’s wrong, what’s unfair, what needs fixing; I just thought that… well, that you could help guide me along…?” The air was filled with the anticipation from his friends, and worry from himself; he could hear his heart drumming away as if caught between his ears, and could almost see Enjolras, sitting in his own room, phone in hand while he considered the request. Finally, he gave an annoyed huff. “Fine. But you had better not run against me next year, R.”Grantaire grimaced. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”“… I’ll be over soon. I’d rather talk in person than over the phone,” Enjolras announced. He sounded a bit aggravated, but nowhere near as incensed as he’d been before - really, he just sounded exhausted with the whole situation. R was hoping that was an improvement, if nothing else. “Have I ever told you that you’re the best person in the world, Apollo?” Enjolras immediately went back to his long-suffering, exasperated tone.“Please, don’t.”“No, really.”“R, I’m hanging up.”“Oh, come on! What will it take? Do I have to serenade you? Take you to a romantic dinner? I hear that the restaurant down on–hello? Enjolras?”“Did he hang up on you?” Joly cackled, already closing his laptop to leave. “No,” Grantaire argued childishly. “He lost service, that’s all.”

[baeddel]

Please. Please can you tell me what a baeddel is and why people (terfs?) used it in a derogatory manner on this website for a hot minute but now no one ever uses it at all

you asked for it, fucker

[2k words; philology and drama]

baeddel is an Old English word. i have no idea where it actually occurs in the Old English written corpus, but it occurs in a few placenames. its diminuitive form, baedling, is much better documented. it appears in the (untranslated) Canons of Theodore, a penitential handbook, a sort of guidebook for priests offering advice on what penances should be recommended for which sins. in a passage devoted to sexual transgressions it gives the penances suggested for a man who sleeps with a woman, a man who sleeps with another man, and then a man who sleeps with a baedling. so you have this construction of a baedling as something other than a man or a woman. and then it gives the penance for a baedling who sleeps with another baedling (a ludicrous one-year fast). then, by way of an explaination, Theodore delivers us one of the most enigmatic phrases in the Old English corpus: "for she is soft, like an adulturess."

the -ling suffix in baedling is masculine. but Theodore uses feminine pronouns and suffixes to describe baedlings. as we said, it's also used separately from male and female. but it's also used separately from their words for intersex and it never appears in this context. all of this means that you have this word that denotes a subject who is, as Christopher Monk put it, "of problematic gender." interested historians have typically interpreted it as referring to some category of homosexual male, such as Wayne R. Dines in his two-volume Encyclopedia of Homosexuality who discusses it in the context of an Old English glossary which works a bit like an Old English-Latin dictionary, giving Old English words and their Latin counterparts. the Latin words the Anglo-Saxon lexicographer chose to correspond with baedling were effeminatus and mollis, and Lang concludes that it refers to an "effeminate homosexual" (pg 60, Anglo Saxon). this same glossary gives as an Old English synonym the word waepenwifstere which literally means "woman with a penis," and which Dines gives the approximate translation (hold on tight) male wife.

R. D. Fulk, a philologist and medievalist, made a separate analysis of the term in his study on the Canons of Theodore 'Male Homoeroticism in the Old English Canons of Theodore', collected in Sex and Sexuality in Medieval England, 2004. he analysed it as a 'sexual category' (sexual as in sexuality), owing to the context of sexual transgressions in the Canons. he decides that it refers to a man who bottoms in sexual relationships with another man. i don't have the article on hand so i'm not sure what his reasoning was, but this seems obviously inadequate given what we know from the glossary described by Dines. Latin has a word for bottom, pathica, and the lexicographer did not use this in their translation, preferring words that emphasized the baedling's femininity like effeminatus, and doesn't address the sexual context at all. Dines, however, only reading this glossary, seems to decide that it refers to a type of male homosexual too hastily, considering the Canons explicitly treat them separately. both Dines and Fulk immediately reduce the baedling to a subcategory of homosexual when neither of the sources to hand actually do so themselves.

by now it should be obvious why, seven or so years ago, we interpreted it as an equivalent to trans woman. I mean come on - a woman with a penis! these days I tend to add a bit of a caution to this understanding, which is that trans woman is the translation of baedling which seems most adequate to us, just as baedling was the translation of effeminatus that seemed most adequate to our lexicographer. but the term cannot translate perfectly; its sense was derived from some minimal context; a legal context, a doctrinal context, and so forth... the way Anglo-Saxons understood sex/gender is complicated but it has been argued that they had a 'one sex model' and didn't regard men and women as biologically separate types, which is obviously quite different from the sexual model accepted today; in any case they didn't have access to the karyotype and so on. the basic categories they used to understand gender and sexuality were different from ours. in particular, Hirschfield et al. should be understood as a particularly revolutionary moment in the genealogy of transsexuality; the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft essentially invented the concept of the 'sex change', the 'transition', conceived as a biological passage from one sex to the other. even in other contexts where (forgive me) #girlslikeus changed their bodies in some way, like the castration of the priestesses of Cybele, or those belonging to the various historical societies which we believe used premarin for feminization [disputed; see this post], there is no record that they were ever considered men at any stage or had some kind of male biology that preceded their 'gender identity.' the concept of the trans woman requires the minimal context of the coercive assignment at birth and its subsequent (civil and bio-technological) rejection. i have never encountered evidence that this has ever been true in any previous society. nonetheless, these societies still had gendered relations, and essentially wherever we find these gendered relations we also find some subject which is omitted or for whom it has been necessary to note exceptions. what is of chief interest to us is not so much that there was such a subject here or there in history (and whatever propagandistic uses this fact might have), but understanding why these regularities exist.

a very parsimonious explanation is that gender is a biological reality, and there is some particular biological subject which a whole host of words have been conjured to denote. if this were the case then we would expect that, no matter what gender/sexual system we encounter in a given society, it will inevitably find some linguistic expression. if, like me, you find this idea revolting, then you should busy yourself trying to come up with an alternative explanation which is not just plausible, but more plausible. my best guesses are outside the scope of this answer...

anyway, all of this must be very interesting to the five or six people invested in the confluence of philology and gender studies. but why on earth did it become so widely used, in so many strange and unusual contexts, in the 2010s? we're very sorry, but yes, it's our fault. you see apart from all of this, there is also a little piece of information which goes along with the word baeddel, which is that it's the root of the Modern English word bad. by way of, no less, the word baedan, 'to defile'. how this defiled historical subject came to bear responsibility for everything bad to English-speakers doesn't seem to be known from linguistic evidence. however, it makes for a very pithy little remark on transmisogyny. my dear friend [REDACTED] made a playful little post making this point and, good Lord, had we only known...

it went like this. its such a funny little idea that we all start changing our urls to include the word baeddel. in those days it was common to make puns with your url (we always did halloween and christmas ones); i was baeddelaire, a play on the French poet Baudelaire. while we all still had these urls a series of events which everyone would like to forget happened, and we became Enemies of Everyone in the Whole World. because of the url thing people started to call us "the baeddels." then there was "a cult" called "the baeddels" and so forth. this cult had various infamies attatched to it and a constellation of indefensible political positions. ultimately we faced a metric fucking shit ton of harassment, including, for some of my friends, really serious and bad irl harassment that had long-term bad awful consequences relating to stable housing and physical safety and i basically never want to talk about that part of my life ever again. and i never have to, because i've come to realize that for most people, when they use the word baeddel, they don't know about that stuff. it doesn't mean that anymore.

so what does it mean? you'll see it in a few contexts. TERFs do use it, as you guessed. i am not quite sure what they really mean by it and how it differs from other TERF barbs. i think being a baeddel invovles being politically active or at least having a political consciousness, but in a way thats distinct from just any 'TRA' or trans activist. so perhaps 'militant' trans women, but perhaps also just any trans woman with any opinions at all. how this was transmitted from tumblr/west coast tranny drama to TERF vocabulary i have no idea. but you will also find - or, could have found a few years ago - i would say 'copycat' groups who didn't know us or what we believed but heard the rumours, and established their own (generously) organizations (usually facebook groups) dedicated to putting those principles into practice. they considered themselves trans lesbian separatists and did things like doxx and harass trans women who dated cafabs. if you don't know about this, yes, there really were such groups. they mostly collapsed and disappeared because they were evildoers who based their ideology on a caricature. i knew a black trans woman who was treated very badly by one of these groups, for predictable reasons. so long-time readers: if you see people talking about their bad experiences with 'baeddels', you can't necessarily relate it to the 2014 context and assume they're carrying around old baggage. there are other dreams in the nightmare.

the most common way you'll see it today, in my experience, is in this form: people will say that it was a "slur" for trans women. they might bring up that it's the root of the word bad, and they might even think that you shouldn't use the word bad because of it, or that you shouldn't use the word baeddel because it's a slur. all of this is a silly game of internet telephone and not worth addressing. except to say that it's by no means clear that baeddel, or baedling, were slurs, or even insulting at all. while Theodore doesn't provide us with a description of how we can have sex with a baedling without sinning, and it may be the case that any sexual relations with a baedling was considered sinful, sexuality-based transgressions were not taken all that seriously in those days. there was a period where homosexuality within the Church was almost sanctioned, and it wasn't until much later that homosexuality became so harshly proscribed, to the extent that it was thought to represent a threat to society, etc. and as i mentioned, there are places in England named after baedlings. there is a little parish near Kent which is called Badlesmere, Baeddel's Lake, which was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Domesday Book (as having a lord, a handful of villagers and a few slaves; perhaps only one or two households). it's not unheard of, but i just don't know very many places called Faggot Town or some such. it's possible that baedlings had some role in Anglo-Saxon society which we are not aware of; it could even have been a prestigious one, as it was in other societies. there is just no evidence other than a couple of passing references in the literature and we'll probably never have a complete picture.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Title: Flowers for Algernon

Author: Samuel R. Delany

Rating: 2/5 stars

"If I had been born a dog," he says, "I would be very content with my life. If I had been born a cat, I would be a very, very good cat." This sentence has an odd quality, and it's hard for me to express exactly why.

In a nutshell, though, it's a kind of overblown rhetoric. It takes a commonplace about dogs, and adds "if I had been born a dog" -- as if to suggest that "I would be very content with my life" is some sort of consequence of becoming a dog, like being born a cat is being born a cat. But that's not how dogs work. You can be very content with your life as a dog, but you can't be content as a dog. When Delany says that if he had been born a dog, he would be "very content with his life," he must actually be thinking about, say, the feeling of being in his apartment in Manhattan or the feeling of eating a bagel or the feeling of making eye contact with his girlfriend (or a dog, or a cat). "I would be very content" describes not only a kind of "state of being," but also a kind of "state of being while aware of being a state of being." But this state of awareness isn't the same thing as the state of being aware of being in one of those three things.

For instance, if you're a person in the sense that I use the term "person," and you're very content with your life as a dog, as Delany's protagonist is, then you're also aware that you're being a dog while content. If you're aware of being a dog while being happy as a dog, well, that means you're not actually a dog, that the state of being aware of being a dog has nothing to do with the state of being dog.

Delany is very skillful at setting up this kind of "I would be if I were actually a dog" line, and I appreciate it, but I keep wanting to ask him, "But are you?"

I would be more likely to be impressed by Delany's skill if he weren't so... doglike in other ways? He seems to want to take the ordinary and make it novel and dramatic, but in a boring way. For instance, Delany's protagonist gets his "miracle cure" for his disability, while I was reading this book, and at first I was like, "cool, new cure for a condition I have," but then it turned out that the cure was not novel or interesting but boring, and what really mattered about this cure was not that it was cool but that it was "miracle," and the miracle aspect, while important, was not interesting. Delany's hero does have a dramatic twist, but it's less than meets the eye, and it was too easy for me to see that it was dramatic before it became dramatic. There are a number of Delany book-long sequences that feel to me like they need to be cut down to make the story less boring, and while Delany doesn't tell these cut-outs in advance so I could have done the cuttings, they would have taken care of the issue. (The book-length story "The Scholomance" doesn't have these problems and I would happily read it uncut.)

Delany also likes to throw in big bits of "world building" about his book's alternate history, but they're not fun world building, just dull. The world building, as far as it goes, explains that the protagonist and his father are involved with a world government project to put people with Down syndrome in "homes" rather than allowing them to live out their lives as they might. For instance, Delany tells you all about how when the protagonist is born, the local hospital is very proud of being the first place to do an operation on a baby with a chromosomal abnormality, and they call the baby "Sammy," but the whole thing just makes me feel annoyed. Why did they think he'd need to know about this?

I'm not saying there was no appeal to this book on its own terms. The alternate history is just so strange -- if "the ordinary" is "I am a person, in my apartment in Manhattan, eating a bagel in the morning," what is "the miracle"? Delany says: "it is an ordinary day; I am living the life of a normal man.... But I do not, by any means, have to think of the life of a normal man; that is an alien thing to me. I see them, I see them, but I don't have to think of them." How the devil is he supposed to do this? I mean, the life of a normal man, as stated, is "the ordinary," not "the novel and dramatic." The appeal of a book must be there even if you don't know where you are in the story, whether it's "Sammy's life as a person" or Delany's "Sammy's life in the ordinary world, as his father knows him."

And, of course, it's the "ordinary" world that matters. This is very clear in the first part of the book, which is basically a flashback to the life of the "normal" version of Delany's character, before he became a dog. We spend a lot of time with Delany, before this point, and it's not always clear whether we're looking at the ordinary version of him, his father, the psychiatrist, or some combination. But in the ordinary world, Delany "was not content with his life" -- not that he was not content, which was just the normal thing to be; but Delany wanted something, and this is what he was missing. (There's a sort of comic strip to make this point, but I don't feel like describing it right now.)

The main theme of this part of the book is "not content with the ordinary," which is fine, except, well, Delany does a very poor job of depicting a life that is not "the ordinary." Delany's "character" and his family move back and forth between his "ordinary life" and his "ordinary" family, but this just doesn't seem to be a happy or comfortable place for them -- it's an unnatural arrangement, a place for unhappy people. The psychiatrist, for instance, is "not content" with his ordinary family because they don't know how to deal with "that kind of thing," which seems to consist of, say, the fact that this psychiatrist -- or his father -- had the misfortune to become a dog after living a long and ordinary life as a person. His ordinary life wasn't enough for him, so he's moving into some other life -- and what is it? It's being a dog. But if you've already been happy as a person, the transition from person to dog (which for Delany means the "miracle cure") can't possibly be pleasant. Which

[deadpatrol]

*thinks about Robot Tubbo*  *thinks about Robot Tubbo* *thinks about Robot Tubbo* *thinks about R--

Anyway here’s me rambling for 1.4k words about My Favorite Thing Ever: Robot Tubbo (aka Tubbot).

God do I love the implications of robot Tubbo. He's all about logic and sound decision making for the greater good of everyone without really considering the individual emotional repercussions and doesn’t know how to deal with his emotions. I Especially love what that means for Tommy post-doomsday. Between Sam Nook and Tubbo, Tommy's only friends are robots!!! God!!! He trusts and cares for robots more than "real" people!!! The trauma of being hurt by people leading to distrust! The idea that he likes people who have some level of emotional detachment from him, because Dream was EXTREMELY emotionally attached to Tommy, and so was Wilbur! And they always hurt Tommy in the end! So better to love something that can't quite love him back. Just... the concept of Tommy "lover of unloveable things" Innit. And then eventually Tubbo (and Sam Nook too, of course), developing an actual strong emotional attachment and love for Tommy because of his unending love for them..... I’m so normal. And the mental image of robot Tubbo and resurrected robot Jack Manifold alone in Snowchester immediately post Doomsday, before Ranboo and Tubbo really got close, is everything to be. Just two robots building nukes out in the snow. The temperature is constantly, like -20° but Tubbo and Jack don't mind cause they cant feel it! And of COURSE they're alright after working with nuclear radiation with no prior institutional knowledge of protective gear that hasn't been invented yet. There's no fear of radiation positioning because they're robots! PLUS!!! The idea that Tubbo was the one who built the robot body for Jack after he crawled his way out of hell? Beloved. Absolutely beloved. Tubbo helped Jack adjust to living life in a new robot body, you cant change my mind. Just. Robot Tubbo who loves bees and flowers and nature and goes on rants about the environment... is so powerful. Also. Robot Tubbo goes by he/it and no one can convince me otherwise. Cause he went by it/its for forever and was like "this is okay" and then Tommy came along like "hey, can I interest you in some he/him?" And Tubbo was just like. "That's stupid, there's no difference because I'll respond either way, but alright." And then eventually he realizes he likes it and he's just like, "oh." And Tubbo as a companion robot drives me a whole other kind of feral. Because if he was built as a machine to be in service to people and fulfil their needs, then of course when Tommy shows up like "hey! I like you! Lets be friends!" Tubbo is gonna process that as "Tommy has requested friendship of me. The requirements of friendship are pretty easy to fulfill. I can spend time, give gifts, express verbal and physical affection. Easy. No problem. So yes, I can be your friend." If Ranboo was the one to propose, then same deal! Tubbo is fulfilling a request of service from a person! Its his whole purpose! Along the way he probably develops more sentience and free will, but at the end of the day, its in his nature to want to provide things for people. I just love! President Robot Tubbo! Being put in a position where he has to make hard calls on moral quandaries! Does he put everyone in his country in danger by defying Dream, a mistake that has been shown again and again to have disastrous and deadly consequences? Or does he exile Tommy? The answer is obvious, save the most amount of people possible. People who hesitate over the trolley problem are fools. Of COURSE Tubbo is gonna pull the lever. It just makes logical sense. It's an easy, simple answer. Or it should be. But exiling Tommy goes against everything he's been built for. And it feels WRONG, somehow. He doesn't want to hurt anybody, he wasn't built for it. But there is no alternative. And when it comes down to it, it has to be the many over the few. Because that's just the correct logical answer, isn't it? Okay okay hear me out. Robot Tubbo with no emotions. He's friends with Tommy cause Tommy is just Like That and Special and The Main Character, but he doesn't really have any emotional attachment. Then Jack Manifold the ghost comes around like "hey, can you help make me a robot body?" And Tubbo agrees. While they're working to build Jack's body, Jack requests something equivalent to a human nervous system to simulate neurotransmitters and chemicals and emotions and all that stuff I learned about in IB Psych and then immediately forgot. And Tubbo's like "why 🤨" and Jack's like "cause I like emotions?? They're nice?" So Tubbo's like whatever, sure, I'm down for a challenge. And the two of them design a code or a system or something (i may be a sci-fi nerd but know nothing about coding or robotics, lol) to replicate human emotions. Yay! Jack Manifold gets his robot body and he's like "awesome, works great, thanks tubs." And things are the same for a while after that. But in the back of his head Tubbo is always like. "Hmm. Wonder what that's like? Jack wanted it enough to put a lot of work and time into creating a whole new system just to do something that serves no other purpose. So it must be... something." And maybe he's sitting with Tommy and/or Ranboo and/or Michael and he thinks to himself like "i wonder what makes it different? I wonder what they feel when they spend time with me that makes them want to keep me around." And so he installs it in himself, just to try it out, and for a while he's just like "this? Is no big deal. I don't see what all the hype is about." But then he's sitting with Tommy or something and Tommy smiles and says something like "I love you, Tubs-o. I'm glad to have you around. I don't know what I would do without you." And its just. Too much. Just electric rush straight to the heart. The swell of affection is immediate and overwhelming and system breaking. Like. He just is like "I already would have died for you, but right now I feel like I AM." And he's like turn it OFF right now immediately holy shit get that out of my head. And so he flips it off like "COOL. Now I know what that's like. It's BAD. Fun, dangerous experiment. Not doing that again." But. But. Of course he keeps thinking about it and he's with Ranboo and Michael and he's like.... what if.... i turned it on again... just for a sec? And he does and of course its the same thing. He turns it on and he tenses and waits for it to be too much, but its just sort of.... normal. He's just sitting with Ranboo while Michael sleeps, maybe curled up by the fire because its damn cold and he doesn't want Ranboo to freeze or something. And he just feels kinda warm and fuzzy and floaty. And its not bad per se, but it kinda muddles his thoughts and that's weird and not ideal. And then Ranboo gives him a gentle little head bonk and is like "I love you." And its startling just how quickly Tubbo just short circuits and freezes and lights up all at once. And he's just like "I am once again turning off the electric hell juice." Before he turns to Ranboo and says "god, is that really what you feel like all the time? Emotions are awful, how do you deal with that all the time?" And Ranboo's like? What do you mean? So Tubbo explains the whole thing, and Ranboo pulls away to give him the stern-serious look like "Tubbo. You're just jumping right into the deep end. You gotta take it slow. It’s a whole new experience. I mean, I'm thrilled that you thought of me and wanted to know what it feels like, but 1) you don’t have to, I married you because love you just the way you are, and 2) if you really want to try it out, lets start you with something easier and less intense... like just sitting in a field and watching some clouds or something."

I’ve never seen anyone else post anything about robot Tubbo, but I hold him so close to my heart.

[hopeshoodie]

So I’m obsessed with the dynamic between my obscure OC Bellamy and Shannon, a character who was in a mobile app for five out of thirty days, and I’m going to make that everyone else’s problem.

General headcanons about their relationship:

Shannons’ whole /thing/ is being a freewheeling, highballing, successful poker player. There’s no way in hell she doesn’t have a super awesome instagram profile. Tons of travel photos, photos of insane meals, photos of her on yachts and shit. Conversely, Ami is very much Not That Person, and doesn’t particularly like being in photos. His business social media is bigger/more active than any personal social media, and he definitely lurks on tumblr or reddit more than facebook/instagram/snapchat. Consequently, he doesn’t show up on a lot of her social media (instead he’s usually behind the camera- when there’s a lot of really nice candid shots of Shannon you know he’s on the trip). 

Shannon doesn’t like pickles and Bellamy loves them, so she gives him the side pickle whenever they’re at a restaurant 

They’re not going to get married and stay together forever in canon, but in the many AUs I’ve thought about for them maybe in one they DO get married. Even then, they get a bigger house (at Ami’s insistence, Shannon would prefer a condo) and they have separate bedrooms on different floors. They both just need space sometimes. They still alternate between sleeping together and apart in the different rooms. Whenever they do, Ami would grab his phone charger and drag a blanket in and say “sleepover!!” despite them literally doing it every other day. 

Shannon was the one who wanted to get nasty in the villa and Bellamy said not in front of the cameras

Neither of them want kids, or are particularly in need of a pet (Ami romanticizes the idea of having one but doesn’t really particularly want one). If they did get married, they wouldn’t have kids ever. Which would be a bummer, because in the canon universe where Shannon and Ami break up, he ends up marrying a different OC and becoming an amazing father.

Shannon’s a really perceptive person and usually is really aware of her surroundings, so jumpscaring her is really hard. But when she is startled, she shrieks really loud. So Ami takes every possible opportunity to hide and jump out at her. Most of the time her spidey senses pick up that it’s too quiet, or there’s a knife on the counter like he was cutting something and stopped midway through in a way he wouldn’t do unless he heard keys in the lock, but every now and then he’ll catch her. It’s a game between the two of them that lasts for their entire relationship.

Shannon is the first one he ever has told about some spicey fetishes, and she’s more than happy to indulge them. Bellamy wasn’t a virgin, but he’d never had an ongoing, robust intimate relationship with anyone where they explored that. 

They both want the same thing in life, which is to say not a whole lot. They’re both monogamous, and want to get married but are skittish about all that ~marriage~ entails. Shannon wants to get married for the wedding, having a big glamorous party that she’s always wanted, and also for the status of saying ‘my husband’, but has a distaste for the monotonous. Ami wants to get married because he wants her to commit, because he feels like he’ll stop worrying about her leaving if they’re legally bound to each other. So admittedly, neither of them have very mature reasons for getting married. 

Angst makes my brain juice go brrrrr so~

He falls in love with her faster and harder than she does. He’s never had a proper relationship before, and she clearly has, so he’s much more hesitant to initiate intimacy because he’s anxious he won’t measure up. He ends up holding back for a bit, then falling even harder when he realizes it’s safe to be wholly vulnerable. 

Regardless, Shannon loves him because she’s never felt like a partner could match her wits- that her partner is some equally interesting and observant. A lot of her relationships feel like her indulging other people, but with Ami, they had a rapport before she decided to be romantic with him. 

Once they leave the villa, their relationship develops in three very distinct phases- honeymoon, intimacy, drifting apart. 

When they first leave the villa, for like a week after, neither of them reaches out to the other. They’re both orienting to being home, and a little nervous to be the first one to reach out. Shannon eventually does, and they try to video chat/phone call, but there’s this gut feeling that they’re slipping backwards and long distance is dulling the passion they had in the villa. So Shannon is like ‘let’s go on a proper holiday, just the two of us.’ And they spend 3-4 months just travelling, going all over, and it’s even better than the villa. The sexy time is ~insane~ and Ami gains a lot of confidence because he realizes it wasn’t just a ‘well you’re the best of the people in the villa’ thing, it’s a genuine connection. They do a lot of bougie shit, but the majority is just also ‘let’s go two towns over and see new things and stay in a tiny B&B or hostel’. And they just… are so in love. Shannon starts thinking this could be the one. It’s the second time in her life she actually had that thought. 

But eventually Bellamy wants to go back to work and they’re both a little burnt out. They go home but with this newfound understanding of each other. They’re staying over at the other’s place every other week or so. With everything settling down, they start getting really vulnerable and talking about their pasts, their families, their hopes. This is the closest they have to a ‘normal’ relationship, and it lasts like 5ish months. They’re still not great at texting every day or doing long distance (when they’re with each other they’re With Each Other but then when they’re alone it’s like life as usual prior to the villa), but they live close enough where it’s not intolerable. They finally talk about the future.

At some point Shannon starts travelling for work again. The ‘every other week’ starts becoming once a month. Ami is fine with it- he’s proud of his girl. And ultimately he still feels like she’s /his/ girl. He knew it was too soon, but he definitely started planning and designing their engagement ring around month 8. They face time periodically during these month long breaks, and Ami doesn’t really even consider them breaks. This goes on for awhile, and then the below ficlet happens. 

They break up (it’s more of the fact that Ami feels like she’s not prioritizing their relationship even though he has an equal hand in their non-communication than it is her cheating). He’s just fucking sad, not really angry. And that’s where the 1 year reunion finds them- relatively freshly broken up and working through a lot of unprocessed feelings. 

Ami doesn’t even want to go to the reunion, but one of his friends from the villa basically picks him up and drives him to it. He’s glad they do, because being so intense with Shannon made him forget that other people cared about him, but it still SUCKS to see her again.

And I’m gonna follow up with a fic because I want my children to hurt each other :) 

[whatudottu]

I’m having some thoughts on universal translators, and though I know absolutely nothing about programming or generalised tech, I might as well share- I have a language headcanon in the drafts.

Also, while this is mostly in reference to Ben 10 (mainly for the brief mention of R&D), the actual translation programming can actually apply to Transformers too, considering that they’re most likely built into a Cybertronian.

I, in making this, wanted to have a balance of sci-fi and sci-fantasy (ben 10 is already heavily sci-fantasy, try as i might to star trek the shit out of its logic), so in that sense, I decided upon two types of translators;

Full translators - native language to foreign language through speech alone; does not require understanding of the foreign language, but can have cultural misunderstandings and translation errors.

Full translators are simple, take what you say and (with delay or no, depending on how much coin you can spend) translate it for others to hear. And by being audio based, this translator can work two-way.

This doesn’t matter the price, the translation will always be yours and yours alone, the price only really affects how you hear it. The cheap alternative is simple, an earpiece or some other suitable listening device (depending on of course your biology and whatever the shape of your ear is). More expensive devices uses a one-way thought reader that provides the translation to the mind already. It looks the same as an earpiece, but it just skips the audio prompt and conveys meaning.

And again, full translators translate EVERYTHING you say, and while things may be semantically correct, native speakers of your chosen foreign language can notice something off with your speech. Plus, not all words have direct translation, and across the universe there are some concepts that don’t even have words in other cultures, so translations can be conflated with confusing words or words that don’t quite sound right in the sentence that you are trying to speak.

And that leads us right along to the second translator type;

Semi translators - native language to foreign language with foreign language thoughts and native language speech (i.e. thoughts marked as ‘intended speech’ with vocal imput); prevents cultural misunderstandings and translation errors, but an understanding of the foreign language is required.

Semi translators - I’m not a fan of the name but I’m the worst at making them - are used by individuals who physically cannot pronounce the foreign language they want to speak in (someone with vocal chords speaking a language with striation). Semi translators are typically a one-way translator - mainly due to the thought reading required - so even if the foreign language thoughts were not required for more accurate translations, a new speaker would still need to learn to listen.

Galvan’s have produced a lot of intergalactic tech used by the wider universe - and I think they have made some translation tech canonically - so why not be the ones to make semi translators a real thing?

R&D’s first attempts at making the semi translators initially lacked a line distinguishing intended speech and stray thoughts. A particularly detailed screenplay of a subject’s thought process was identified and consequently translated through, and while the subject was given points for creativity, researchers found the need for an intended speech market; why not use speech itself as the marker?

Taking the one-way thought receiver of the full translators and flipping it, again in the form of a wearable headset (of some form or another), the receiver has a proximity noise sensor that activates the mind-reading. This is far more sci-fantasy that I’m used to talking about (and far more programming shenanigans than i have any knowledge on to actually make a thing hypothetically possible), but essentially galvan smart and yada yada monkey thought translator a la Cloudy and the Chance of Meatballs, the foreign language thoughts are converted to sound thanks to the audial trigger of native language speech.

Of course if you’re a Cybertronian you can skip a few steps. It’s probably a median between full and semi translators that has its route in a Cybertronian’s processor; foreign words enter an audial and - if the planet has global network or some form of internet - words are translated on the fly. It’s prone to errors and misunderstandings - Ultra Magnus’ “What’s a ‘kilt’?” comes to mind - but unlike full translators, they have the opportunity to quickly fact check a word they don’t understand.

And uh… I think that’s it?

well for ben 10 there’s magic- skips all the steps and goes straight to ‘i mean to say this, and this has a certain meaning’

Keep an eye out for my alien language headcanon post- it’s fully drafted and is waiting on a good release time.

[ginkgomoon]

Hello there! I hope everything is going well with you. (・∀・)

I have some questions. In CH 30 & 32 the Time Observer mentioned about the "price being too heavy/dear" & he mentioned that he never expected for Victor to choose that method to prevent the crisis. I was wondering what price is he talking about & what's "the method" he mentioned? & Victor collapsing in CH 32 was not from hitting the bullet I believe. What exactly happened there?

Also...I don't know the details but I think I saw it somewhere that Victor goes through different timelines & dimensions for 10000 years in the later part of the story...? I remember reading it in a R&S that every time he crosses a dimension he'd experience soul crushing pain... The mere thought of doing it for so long honestly made me feel traumatized. I was hoping you could give me some insights as to what exactly he was doing.

I hope I'm not bothering you with tons of questions & they made sense. Thanks a lot in advance! Have a good day! <3

Hello!!

Thank you, you too! :)

I hope I helped answered your questions here. It's quite long, so enjoy the read!

I did Victor’s Time Observer analysis and I’ll be heavily referencing that post to help answer this particular ask. Big thank you to @cheri-cheri and @ey8508 for help clarifying some of my thoughts concerning Victor this chapter! Spoilers down below! ⏱

“With great power comes great responsibility.” -The Peter Parker Principle

We all know Victor bears great power, but also with that comes great responsibility. He is the sole individual who has the will and power to alter time and space, however this develops drastic consequences to his health and to history- all for his love for MC.

Victor doesn’t care about this price- he is more concerned with whether he can prevent the death of the girl in every unpredictable future.

“The person who can save the world… is not me, but her. As for myself, I know my ending line and how much pain I can bear better than anyone. I would rather take such a risk.” -Chapter 35-36 Rumours and Secrets

Chapter 30-6

Victor is seen to be flanked by bodyguards on Adagio Street. Moments later, in a pure white space, we see the Time Observer addressing Victor.

I stood in the centre of the street, looking hesitantly around, but I was unable to spot that familiar figure.

In the dead of the night, from the distant horizon, there seemed to come the sound of a mechanical little violin.

In a boundless, pure white space, the music would be at time peaceful and solemn, and at others somber and mournful. After the final note, that pair of tightly-closed eyes opened.

The Time Observer looked at Victor, neither showing surprise.

That pale white hand brushed lightly over the violin strings, and his gravelly voice spoke up with the pluck of the string.

TO: “The natural rules of operations no longer supply. This world… in memory is a turbulent past and in imagination, there is no serene future. She should have stayed in that world. Her return was a mistake.”

Victor: “If you’re still here that means we still have a chance.”

TO: “A chance that comes at such a heavy cost. Is it really worth it? You will soon understand, in some things, you are doomed to helplessness. Try with all your might, and yet, it remains out of reach.”

Victor: “I won’t let her die again. No matter when."

This will foreshadow future events such as in Chapter 32, where Victor shows a demonstration of this.

Chapter 32-6

Amidst the scattering glass shards, I saw a number of bullets flying towards me.

Only one thought ran through my mind.

Am I going to die?

Chapter 32-8

In the darkness, a crack suddenly splits open, and a blinding light appears, obscuring my sight. My heartbeat practically came to a standstill, the pain I expected never came. The blinding light disappeared, instantaneously replaced by darkness.

Time seemed to pause for a second.

The pitch black bullets, the fractured glass, the car in mid-air…

And then it fell all heavily to the ground.

And in this moment, Victor challenged “fate”, or rather, the “natural rules of operations”, stated by the Time Observer.

I reached out and grabbed the black clothing fluttering before me. Even my voice was trembling.

MC: “Victor…”

I looked in a daze at the man before me, at those fierce eyes beneath his wind-blown hair.

He was looking back at me, as if trying to etch me into his eyes with his deep gaze. But there was another emotion hidden within as well.

After confirming he was unharmed, I let out a sigh, then looked anxiously into his eyes.

MC: “What are you doing here?”

Victor: “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

But this time, his voice was flat.

MC: “I’m sorry… but I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m not unaware of the danger… I must simply stay and stop them.”

I hastily wanted to get Victor out of danger, but his feet were planted firmly. I looked up, to get a look at his expression.

His voice was steady, stopping me in my tracks.

Victor: “I see.”

MC: “You really believe I can stop them?”

Victor: “I said before, even if you don't trust yourself, always trust me. I won’t do anything I'm not sure I can handle. Go what you think needs to be done.”

He patted the back of my head lightly, with a hint of tremor in his voice. He didn’t ask me or stop me, as if he already knew the choice I’d made.

So, while the STF agents and runaway Evolvers were battling, MC was literally going to die at that moment. But Victor enters- using his Evol to stop time, ultimately stopping the bullets and MC’s death.

I whirled around, hoping to catch sight of him.

MC: “Victor!”

I wanted to tell him I’d done it, that I really had prevented this crisis.

A faint worry floated up in my chest. What about Victor?

Medic: “Someone, come quick! There’s another person here!”

I turned and hurried to the end of the bridge.

I then quickly found him.

Ringed by a crowd of people, there he was, the person I would recognise anywhere.

It was…

I halted my steps for a moment, then ran to him without hesitation.

I broke into a panic.

Chapter 32-10

Victor… What happened to him??

I pushed the crowd aside and frantically ran to him.

His face was pallid, eyes squeezed shut, his hair plastered messily to his forehead with sweat. I grasped his hand, unable to believe how icy cold it felt to the touch.

MC: "How could you… Why did you…”

Just then, those eyes shut with pain cracked open. He pursed his lips and then coughed violently, blood started trickling out. Even like that, he still chuckled weakly.

Victor: “I used to think… that your problem was that you thought you could control fate all by yourself. Stubborn, self-reliant, in over your head. Whenever anyone tried to tell you anything, no matter what they said, it was always in one ear and out the other.”

Although it sounded a little weak, his voice was unusually calm, and didn’t really even pause or halt. Almost if, if he stopped, he wouldn't be able to start again.

Victor: “But I really did learn a little something from you. You are the thing unto yourself, so only know the best what your values and decisions should be. No one can guide you. And just like I can’t hold you back, you also can’t change this decision that I’ve made. Don’t ask why, this time, just let me say my piece.”

His voice grew weaker, but he managed to lift his right hand and place it over mine.

I clasped his hand, and a feeling of suspense and dread came over me like I'd never felt before.

MC: “I know… I know… You don’t have to say more.”

He was afraid of something, but not because his life was slipping away. It was more like… something would happen.

Victor closed his eyes, completely exhausted. I squeezed his hand tighter, as if trying to hang on to those remnants of warmth.

You have to make it through this.

A man standing by the riverside swiped his hand through the fog, swiped his hand through the fog, stirring it up into an erratic vortex.

Zero: “Did he actually…”

TO: Like I said before, he is the most suitable candidate.”

Zero: “But he refused to help us open the Door of Return.”

TO: “Perhaps it’s only temporary, and he’ll change his mind. I didn’t imagine he’d choose this method for preventing this crisis. Too bad… the price was so dear.”

After Victor saves MC from death, she finds him on the ground- pale and in terrible pain. Throughout Victor’s time with MC, we slowly see the influence he has on her- and the influence she has on him. He tells her that while she shoulders everything on her own and never listens to anyone, she did teach him things in the process. With her love and kindness, she strives to defy “nature's course” and saves worlds. Literally.

You were correct, Victor didn’t suffer injuries from the bullets because he stopped them just in time but Victor is overusing his Evol, and it’s gradually taking a toll on his body. Even back before MC crossed over to the Winter World, Victor was trying to find other alternative ways for MC to live and not sacrifice herself. Unfortunately, there were none. He did also suffer immense pain whenever he time traveled, especially when it led to his time travel pocket watch cracking and breaking in the end.

Victor would normally be practical and very principled in how he executes his plans, but this time around, it was him. This- he- was the plan. That's it. This is similar to how Victor opened a time rift to send MC away in Chapter 18- to somewhere and sometime in space. He waited for her to come back with the help of the Time Observers to confirm her safety. Only someone with his powerful Evol could do that, otherwise they’d risk losing consciousness in the “Time Rift”.

Additionally, he held onto that hope that MC could and would be saved in the end, like how he tried to find her for 17 years after the orphanage incident, not knowing whether she was dead or alive. Victor wants to wield that control, denying “helplessness” and “winning all the bets” he had with MC prior to her “death” in Chapter 18. Victor stated that if she couldn’t trust herself, then she should trust him and his decisions to protect her. Even if it’s detrimental to his health. Life-threatening, even. Because in the end, Victor knows he will always win. He just does.

And since he knows that he won’t be able to stop MC from doing what she wants, we now see him fully embracing then acting upon it. He accepts that she’s her own person and he has grown to have so much faith in her, seeing how she successfully survived Winter World then coming back home safe. It’s almost like- “okay. It’s you and me against the world”.

On the sidelines, Time observer and ZERO both observe, surprised that Victor will pay such a high price to avoid MC’s death from occurring- with the risk of his own. Could they have lost their most powerful time Evolver from this incident?

Though, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Time Observers think that Victor would be so foolish to use his Evol up to the point where it would actually kill him just to save MC. It's literally in their name- “Observers''- they haven’t and aren’t even allowed to actively participate in the events that happened in Loveland, let alone the different histories and worlds that existed, other than claiming to “correct it” by influencing other people who can. They don’t appear to have this kind of empathy in understanding Victor and why he wants to save MC’s life, or how important she is to him.

“You misunderstand. We never alter, we are correctors of history. We want you to join us, your power’s scope of influence has already surpassed the dimension of this current world. Before you are rejected by it…”

Victor: “I will not leave this world.”

“Even if you’ve seen the future of what is all to pass?”

Victor: “No matter what happens, the person I’m seeking for is right here.” -Black Curtain: Chapter 6

Also taken from my Time Observer Analysis-

Since Victor’s Evol is strong and has the capability to do more than “observe” like the Time Observers, he is the one who is deemed the most suitable and more responsible for “grasping the time in the past and the future”. Ever since STF found out about Victor’s Evol, they wanted him to cooperate with them too. Every time he stops time, certain surrounding energy and space changes.

The organisation also entertains the idea of fate, and how things should be refused to be changed. Since they have “seen the future of how the world ends”, they want Victor to cooperate with them in making it stop. Nobody can rewrite the ending among them, except him. Victor refuses to join because he doesn’t adhere to this idea.

“QUEEN’s return has brought unexpected consequences; the entire collapse of the world is ahead of schedule. The world’s line has come to an end, no matter through time or space, we can no longer interfere in this world.” Was there a difference in letting each world go to the end alone to close all the world lines in the future directly? Although we found a breakthrough, this situation really caused us a lot of headaches: she who should not have survived and she should not have been sent to other worlds. As a result, it would seriously interfere and disrupt the timeline. No one had done it before, and no one except Victor could do it.

In disbelief, we weighed it and threw the olive branch- as long as he is willing to cooperate, we will help him find her. As decisive as he was to refuse a few times before, this time he had promised me without thinking. And for a moment, I didn’t know if his decisiveness was good or bad. -Chapter 33-34 Rumours and Secrets

Victor "travelling ten-thousand years in the future" was mentioned in his Chapter 35-36 Rumours and Secrets. The Space and Time Administration (who the Time Observers were under) could "repair his abilities", after he stopped the bullets from hitting MC. He would have to stay there for the Space and Time Administration's time duration of ten-thousand years. Victor accepts. (BIG THANKS TO @cheri-cheri FOR CORRECTING ME LAST MINUTE WITH THIS ONE, YOU AMAZING HUMAN!!)

[fatehbaz]

How ought we to live with creatures whose bodies, forms, and functions are alien to our own? [...] [H]ow are we “to relate, to write, to sense, and to make intelligible that which is beyond [us]?” [...]

[C]entralizing nonhuman animals often raises more questions than answers [...]. Among a number of conceptual difficulties, attempts to dismantle assumed species hierarchies often reify others. [...] [T]he vast majority of animal studies texts prioritize organisms that are “big like us” [...]. As a consequence, [...] many of the frameworks driving much of the work in animal studies employ -- and reinforce -- violent logics of biopower in spite of themselves, recasting some lives as sacred while others are rendered killable all over again [...].

-------

More-than-human geographies that look beyond animals and their bodies have attempted to short-circuit some of these conceptual difficulties [...]. Actor Network Theory, Non-Representational Theory, Object-Oriented Ontology and an attendant collection of Deleuzian-inspired [...] terms -- assemblage, dispositif, milieu, emergence, event, flat ontologies, and sites -- have all risen to combat essentialisms [...]. From within this literature, ‘encounters’ have recently joined the lexicon [...]. But while attempts to include crustaceans within established frameworks of ethics and care may call an end to the kinds of [inhumane laboratory] experiments described [...] they do little to overturn the system of hierarchization and anthropocentric norms that guide scientific research on animals in the first place. Demonstrating the [lobster’s] experience [or apparent inexperience] of pain in these instances only re-codifies the lobsters’ role as experimental research subject whose bodies can be used and discarded in order to advance [...] understanding of neurological functions [...].

While the growing animal studies literature has attempted to move beyond the stark and often limited question of suffering, sites of ethical and political significance are similarly relegated to the spaces‘of and between human and animal bodies. By reframing the conditions of ethical consideration around measures of reciprocity, response, or other emotional tissue, this growing literature draws the lines of difference and species hierarchies in new ways. Consider, for example [...] in Hank Davis and Diane Balfour’s edited volume on animals and affect in the laboratory, The Inevitable Bond [...], [a] chapter on cephalopods, the only invertebrates featured in the volume, describes how octopuses spit on researchers, thwart experiments, or engage in theft, deceit and other disruptive actions (Davis and Balfour, 1992). While each of these reconfigurations of ethical relations highlights the active role that nonhumans play in our development of social life, they all maintain a focus on the animal body, its capacities, or the immediate site of interaction with human bodies. Within those sites, animals must express a capacity to connect with humans or actively fulfill requirements for participation in the extended moral community. Ethics, here, [...] come to matter by marking out similarities with difference. Even when radical dissimilarities between human and nonhuman animals provoke the reconstitution of relations, they do so only in so far as an animal’s capacity to connect with humans can be rendered apparent. [...]

-------

In the 1990s, as the [US] DoD struggled to develop strategies and tactics capable of anticipating post-Cold War ‘respatializations’ of war, they turned to biological life as a means of “enhancing capacities”(Gregory, 2010; Joenniemi, 2008). Being able to understand -- and hopefully reproduce -- qualities like smallness of stature, flight, certain material structures like spider silk, or the ability to navigate surf zone environments produced new systems of valorization for basic research on insects, bats, spiders, lobsters, and other animals. [...] Here, the DoD endows the active potential of nonhuman life and the constitution of more-than-human assemblages with value beyond measure; in lauding the capacities of lobsters and spiders, its strategic plans already overturn conventional hierarchies of life -- at least in the moment. Lobsters and other forms of biological life matter to the U.S. military for their ability to perform what humans cannot [...]. Like drones, the DoD’s growing menagerie of robots -- which now includes dogs, fish, and hummingbirds among many others -- can execute both commands and enemies of the state [...].

The more-than-human encounters these innovations produce do little to shake such hierarhchies of life. [...] It reveals the re-militarization of university science and the redistribution of warfare across not only the social, but also the biological milieu as “life itself” and more-than-human collaboratives become sites of strategic engagement [...].

-------

Rather than figuring lobster and other nonhuman animal bodies as the key site upon which to transform ethical relations and dismember the ‘conceit of anthropocentrism’, we might instead reconsider how and where we compose ethical relations altogether. [...]

Haraway and Bennett both posit the “contact zone” and the encounter as an opening in thought [...]. The uncertainty of standing within “trackless territory” fosters a capacity to respond, to be affected, to develop a sensitivity toward the world and the conditions that constitute it. Bennett insists that such an absence of a restricted framework for thought will “enable us to consult nonhumans more closely, or to listen and respond more carefully to their outbreaks, objections, testimonies, and propositions.” [...] [S]uch an ethics of the encounter finds its grounding in the capacity to affect and be affected by others, to create joyful encounters, and to expand (or stifle) joyful passions. In assessing our lives as they are lived with nonhumans, others have similarly [...] [drawn] attention to more-than-human encounters as a means of generating alternative ways of being and engaging the world. [...] What Popke and Valentine indicate and Bennett worries over are the geographical dimensions of the encounter: where and how one might locate its spatial limits to decide who and what are included within it.

-------

Elizabeth R. Johnson. “Of lobsters, laboratories, and war: animal studies and the temporality of more-than-human encounters.” Environment and Planning D. 2017.

[hoseas-angry-ghost]

YES YES YES I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR UR THEORIES

Hello anon! I am very surprised anyone wants to hear my chutney but here's my Strange Man Hot Take with some hopefully interesting info for curious parties:

To be honest, R* included so much misdirection around the Strange Man's identity (especially in RDR1) that I'm not *totally* convinced they're married to any one idea. RDR2 also complicated things by introducing new religions into Red Dead's world (Voodoo, Old Norse, etc.): he's no longer limited to just Christian / Western interpretations, as in RDR1, and it's possible R* might try to syncretise him with figures from other faiths (they did place Bayall Edge in Bayou Nwa, where most of the Voodoo stuff is).

At the same time, though, I think RDR2 actually narrowed things down somewhat in terms of the direction R* chose to take his character, and what we were shown of that. There's still a level of misdirection in RDR2, but IMO, it almost comes off as half-hearted in comparison to what was basically trolling in RDR1 -- it seems like they were a lot more focused on playing the "bad news" angle the second time round.

Based on what we know, and on the balance of things, I'm not convinced that the Strange Man is necessarily meant to be any one thing or figure, but I do think he's meant to fulfil some type of Satanic role within Red Dead's world, either in main or in part.

I won't compare and dissect other theories or anything, I just thought I'd list off some things that people might find interesting:

Armadillo. The deal between the Strange Man and Herbert Moon seems to be a pretty textbook Faustian bargain: Moon is offered earthly rewards ("happiness or two generations"), and although the price was (tellingly?) never specified, it seems like the recent Blood Money update for RDO all but confirmed that the cost was probably his soul. Although it's left ambiguous what Moon actually chose, the Armadillo curse was possibly an unforeseen (for Moon) consequence of the deal's terms, which would fit with similar tales of the devil or demon in question taking liberties with their end of the bargain.

In the files, there's some great audio of Moon off the shits and straight-up saying "I've made a deal with the devil, and I will never truly die!" It's possible this was cut for its own reasons (too overt?), but as a lot of stuff was apparently cut from Armadillo, I'm guessing it was either cut when Arthur in New Austin got cut, or it was part of something that R* didn't have time to implement in the epilogue. Either way, if it's not actually in the game then it's not technically canon, but it is an indication of what R* was thinking during development.

There's a lot of audio from the Armadillo townsfolk in general about devils and "devil curses," but the only thing I know of that definitely made it into the game is a line from the town crier ("Devil has the town in his hand").

There's audio of the Armadillo bartender saying "I heard the Tillworths made a deal with the devil to keep from gettin' sick! I don't wanna die any more than the next man, but ain't no safety worth a man's soul." Possibly idle gossip, but given Moon, possibly not.

RDO seemed to flirt with the idea of soul-selling a little bit with Old Man Jones' line "Well, this is America, so anything can be bought -- even souls," but then RDO pretty much just came right out and said it with Bluewater John in the Blood Money update. Bluewater John also apparently made a deal, almost definitely with the Strange Man (given the Moon deal and how close Bayall Edge is to all the drama); he was based on blues musician Robert Johnson and the myth that he sold his soul to the devil for mastery of the guitar. It's basically a rehash of the Moon deal, except it's... not subtle in its dialogue about deals, devils and souls.

"I GAVE EVERYTHING FOR ART, AND I LEARNED TOO MUCH AND NOTHING AT ALL" written on the wall at Bayall Edge also sounds like a reference to another one of these deals to me ("everything" being their soul, and "I learned too much and nothing at all" the foolishness of accepting eternal damnation for temporary knowledge). I think Bayall Edge might have originally belonged to a painter who struck a deal with the Strange Man for artistic skill, but then the Strange Man slowly possessed him or something -- which could be why some of the landscapes depict RDR1's I Know You locations, and why the writings on the wall kind of look like they deteriorate in quality. The puddle of blood at the foot of the portrait might also be linked to this somehow (whose is it?).

It's the deal-making for souls that really pushed the "devil" theory over the edge for me, because I can't think of whose wheelhouse that would be in except a devil's, or someone similarly malevolent.

Alternative name. The Strange Man's character model is called cs_mysteriousstranger in RDR2, and he's referred to as "the mysterious stranger" at least once in RDR1's in-game text. This could be a reference to The Mysterious Stranger, written by Mark Twain between 1897-1908, in which the stranger is a supernatural being called Satan. (At the end of the last version written, he tells the protagonist that nothing really exists and their lives are just a dream.)

Bayall Edge. Bayall Edge was possibly based on a Louisiana urban myth called the Devil's Toy Box, which is "described as a shack. From the outside, it is unappealing and average. ...The inside of the shack consists of floor-to-ceiling mirrors, including the walls. No one can last more than five minutes in this room. ...According to the legend, if you stood inside this mirror-room alone for too long, supposedly the devil would show up and steal your soul." The Strange Man does show up in the mirror eventually, and it's kind of curious that the paintings that change depending on your Honour act as metaphorical mirrors. This was also cut, but in the files, Arthur's drawing of the interior of Bayall Edge is unusually sloppy, like his faculties were impaired or something.

"Awful, fascinating and seductive". John writes this about Bayall Edge after the portrait is finished, and I think that's as good a description of something like the / a devil as any, but "seductive" is a big red flag for me, because it's such an odd choice of word and, from a Christian perspective, it's so loaded with connotations of evil and sin and temptation.

I Know You. Some have pointed out that I Know You in RDR1 resembles the Temptation of Christ, as it also takes place in three separate locations in the desert, and John is given moral tests in which he must choose between higher virtue or worldly vice. John is also, in a weird way, a kind of Christ-like figure in that he ultimately sacrifices his life for others. I do think the "temptation" in these encounters is very surreptitious but very much there ("Or rob her yourself" -- excuse me??), but they may also be operating on a Biblical definition of the word, i.e. a test or trial with the free choice of committing sin.

RDR1 dialogue. I don't want to get *too* much into this because I feel like we're all just getting punked in RDR1, but I think the Strange Man's dialogue broadly fits with something like a "devil" interpretation, or at least doesn't contradict it.

I'm thinking particularly of lines like "Damn you!" / "Yes, many have" (which would work metaphorically but also literally, given that the devil was thrown from heaven by God and his angels), and "I hope my boy turns out just like you" (of all the leading theories, I think Satan is the only figure who's popularly conceptualised as having a son, or prophesied to have a son -- God obviously had a son, but that ship kinda sailed).

I think the "accountant" line refers to Honour (which even uses an invisible numerical system), and how John's fate depends on the number of both good and bad acts he's committed throughout his life, and how these weigh against each other. If the Strange Man likes to collect souls, then he would have a vested interest in auditing you and seeing if your accounts are in the black or the red, as it were (and providing you with opportunities to push yourself further into the latter...), because if you're bankrupt, you're his.

Blind Man Cassidy. Interestingly, Cassidy seems to distinguish between "Death" and the Strange Man, implying that he's something else beyond his understanding: in one of Arthur's fortunes, after his TB diagnosis, he says "the man with no nose [Death] is coming for you," but in one of John's fortunes, he says "Two strangers seek thee: one from this world, perhaps one from another. One brings hatred; I'm not so sure what the other brings."

Arthur's cut dialogue. In the files, there's audio of Arthur having the exact same conversation with Herbert Moon as John in the epilogue, asking about the Strange Man picture because he "just seemed familiar". I think it's interesting that, like John, Arthur also would have apparently recognised the Strange Man despite (presumably) never seeing him before. Given how strong a theme morality is in Red Dead -- and how much both John and Arthur struggle with it -- my theory is that they find the Strange Man vaguely familiar because they're both familiar with the evil within themselves, or the potential for evil; and likewise, the Strange Man "knows" John because he embodies evil in some sense, so is aware of John's worst sins (like his involvement at Blackwater), or possibly even all of his sins (which would be, like, a lot).

Honourable mention: There's such a greater emphasis on conspiracies, myths, etc. in RDR2 that I half-wonder if the Strange Man's RDR2 incarnation was partly inspired by Hat Man (~excuse the link~ but often it's hard to find good sources for the kind of weird shit R* includes in their games).

ANYWAY, this got a little long but I hope someone found all this at least passably interesting. Thanks again for letting me ramble about the video game man, anon!

[route22ny]

By Timothy Snyder

Published Jan. 9, 2021 - Updated Jan. 10, 2021, 10:12 a.m. ET

When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. 6 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version.

Even when he won, in 2016, he insisted that the election was fraudulent — that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. In 2020, in the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R. Biden in the polls, he spent months claiming that the presidential election would be rigged and signaling that he would not accept the results if they did not favor him. He wrongly claimed on Election Day that he had won and then steadily hardened his rhetoric: With time, his victory became a historic landslide and the various conspiracies that denied it ever more sophisticated and implausible.

People believed him, which is not at all surprising. It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense of their own previous choices. Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace. Aware of these risks and others, the framers of the Constitution instituted a system of checks and balances. The point was not simply to ensure that no one branch of government dominated the others but also to anchor in institutions different points of view.

In this sense, the responsibility for Trump’s push to overturn an election must be shared by a very large number of Republican members of Congress. Rather than contradict Trump from the beginning, they allowed his electoral fiction to flourish. They had different reasons for doing so. One group of Republicans is concerned above all with gaming the system to maintain power, taking full advantage of constitutional obscurities, gerrymandering and dark money to win elections with a minority of motivated voters. They have no interest in the collapse of the peculiar form of representation that allows their minority party disproportionate control of government. The most important among them, Mitch McConnell, indulged Trump’s lie while making no comment on its consequences.

Yet other Republicans saw the situation differently: They might actually break the system and have power without democracy. The split between these two groups, the gamers and the breakers, became sharply visible on Dec. 30, when Senator Josh Hawley announced that he would support Trump’s challenge by questioning the validity of the electoral votes on Jan. 6. Ted Cruz then promised his own support, joined by about 10 other senators. More than a hundred Republican representatives took the same position. For many, this seemed like nothing more than a show: challenges to states’ electoral votes would force delays and floor votes but would not affect the outcome.

Yet for Congress to traduce its basic functions had a price. An elected institution that opposes elections is inviting its own overthrow. Members of Congress who sustained the president’s lie, despite the available and unambiguous evidence, betrayed their constitutional mission. Making his fictions the basis of congressional action gave them flesh. Now Trump could demand that senators and congressmen bow to his will. He could place personal responsibility upon Mike Pence, in charge of the formal proceedings, to pervert them. And on Jan. 6, he directed his followers to exert pressure on these elected representatives, which they proceeded to do: storming the Capitol building, searching for people to punish, ransacking the place.

Of course this did make a kind of sense: If the election really had been stolen, as senators and congressmen were themselves suggesting, then how could Congress be allowed to move forward? For some Republicans, the invasion of the Capitol must have been a shock, or even a lesson. For the breakers, however, it may have been a taste of the future. Afterward, eight senators and more than 100 representatives voted for the lie that had forced them to flee their chambers.

Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions. Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around, and the era of Trump — like the era of Vladimir Putin in Russia — is one of the decline of local news. Social media is no substitute: It supercharges the mental habits by which we seek emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction between what feels true and what actually is true.

Post-truth wears away the rule of law and invites a regime of myth. These last four years, scholars have discussed the legitimacy and value of invoking fascism in reference to Trumpian propaganda. One comfortable position has been to label any such effort as a direct comparison and then to treat such comparisons as taboo. More productively, the philosopher Jason Stanley has treated fascism as a phenomenon, as a series of patterns that can be observed not only in interwar Europe but beyond it.

My own view is that greater knowledge of the past, fascist or otherwise, allows us to notice and conceptualize elements of the present that we might otherwise disregard and to think more broadly about future possibilities. It was clear to me in October that Trump’s behavior presaged a coup, and I said so in print; this is not because the present repeats the past, but because the past enlightens the present.

Like historical fascist leaders, Trump has presented himself as the single source of truth. His use of the term “fake news” echoed the Nazi smear Lügenpresse (“lying press”); like the Nazis, he referred to reporters as “enemies of the people.” Like Adolf Hitler, he came to power at a moment when the conventional press had taken a beating; the financial crisis of 2008 did to American newspapers what the Great Depression did to German ones. The Nazis thought that they could use radio to replace the old pluralism of the newspaper; Trump tried to do the same with Twitter.

Thanks to technological capacity and personal talent, Donald Trump lied at a pace perhaps unmatched by any other leader in history. For the most part these were small lies, and their main effect was cumulative. To believe in all of them was to accept the authority of a single man, because to believe in all of them was to disbelieve everything else. Once such personal authority was established, the president could treat everyone else as the liars; he even had the power to turn someone from a trusted adviser into a dishonest scoundrel with a single tweet. Yet so long as he was unable to enforce some truly big lie, some fantasy that created an alternative reality where people could live and die, his pre-fascism fell short of the thing itself.

Some of his lies were, admittedly, medium-size: that he was a successful businessman; that Russia did not support him in 2016; that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Such medium-size lies were the standard fare of aspiring authoritarians in the 21st century. In Poland the right-wing party built a martyrdom cult around assigning blame to political rivals for an airplane crash that killed the nation’s president. Hungary’s Viktor Orban blames a vanishingly small number of Muslim refugees for his country’s problems. But such claims were not quite big lies; they stretched but did not rend what Hannah Arendt called “the fabric of factuality.”

One historical big lie discussed by Arendt is Joseph Stalin’s explanation of starvation in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-33. The state had collectivized agriculture, then applied a series of punitive measures to Ukraine that ensured millions would die. Yet the official line was that the starving were provocateurs, agents of Western powers who hated socialism so much they were killing themselves. A still grander fiction, in Arendt’s account, is Hitlerian anti-Semitism: the claims that Jews ran the world, Jews were responsible for ideas that poisoned German minds, Jews stabbed Germany in the back during the First World War. Intriguingly, Arendt thought big lies work only in lonely minds; their coherence substitutes for experience and companionship.

In November 2020, reaching millions of lonely minds through social media, Trump told a lie that was dangerously ambitious: that he had won an election that in fact he had lost. This lie was big in every pertinent respect: not as big as “Jews run the world,” but big enough. The significance of the matter at hand was great: the right to rule the most powerful country in the world and the efficacy and trustworthiness of its succession procedures. The level of mendacity was profound. The claim was not only wrong, but it was also made in bad faith, amid unreliable sources. It challenged not just evidence but logic: Just how could (and why would) an election have been rigged against a Republican president but not against Republican senators and representatives? Trump had to speak, absurdly, of a “Rigged (for President) Election.”

The force of a big lie resides in its demand that many other things must be believed or disbelieved. To make sense of a world in which the 2020 presidential election was stolen requires distrust not only of reporters and of experts but also of local, state and federal government institutions, from poll workers to elected officials, Homeland Security and all the way to the Supreme Court. It brings with it, of necessity, a conspiracy theory: Imagine all the people who must have been in on such a plot and all the people who would have had to work on the cover-up.

Trump’s electoral fiction floats free of verifiable reality. It is defended not so much by facts as by claims that someone else has made some claims. The sensibility is that something must be wrong because I feel it to be wrong, and I know others feel the same way. When political leaders such as Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan spoke like this, what they meant was: You believe my lies, which compels me to repeat them. Social media provides an infinity of apparent evidence for any conviction, especially one seemingly held by a president.

On the surface, a conspiracy theory makes its victim look strong: It sees Trump as resisting the Democrats, the Republicans, the Deep State, the pedophiles, the Satanists. More profoundly, however, it inverts the position of the strong and the weak. Trump’s focus on alleged “irregularities” and “contested states” comes down to cities where Black people live and vote. At bottom, the fantasy of fraud is that of a crime committed by Black people against white people.

It’s not just that electoral fraud by African-Americans against Donald Trump never happened. It is that it is the very opposite of what happened, in 2020 and in every American election. As always, Black people waited longer than others to vote and were more likely to have their votes challenged. They were more likely to be suffering or dying from Covid-19, and less likely to be able to take time away from work. The historical protection of their right to vote has been removed by the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, and states have rushed to pass measures of a kind that historically reduce voting by the poor and communities of color.

The claim that Trump was denied a win by fraud is a big lie not just because it mauls logic, misdescribes the present and demands belief in a conspiracy. It is a big lie, fundamentally, because it reverses the moral field of American politics and the basic structure of American history.

When Senator Ted Cruz announced his intention to challenge the Electoral College vote, he invoked the Compromise of 1877, which resolved the presidential election of 1876. Commentators pointed out that this was no relevant precedent, since back then there really were serious voter irregularities and there really was a stalemate in Congress. For African-Americans, however, the seemingly gratuitous reference led somewhere else. The Compromise of 1877 — in which Rutherford B. Hayes would have the presidency, provided that he withdrew federal power from the South — was the very arrangement whereby African-Americans were driven from voting booths for the better part of a century. It was effectively the end of Reconstruction, the beginning of segregation, legal discrimination and Jim Crow. It is the original sin of American history in the post-slavery era, our closest brush with fascism so far.

If the reference seemed distant when Ted Cruz and 10 senatorial colleagues released their statement on Jan. 2, it was brought very close four days later, when Confederate flags were paraded through the Capitol.

Some things have changed since 1877, of course. Back then, it was the Republicans, or many of them, who supported racial equality; it was the Democrats, the party of the South, who wanted apartheid. It was the Democrats, back then, who called African-Americans’ votes fraudulent, and the Republicans who wanted them counted. This is now reversed. In the past half century, since the Civil Rights Act, Republicans have become a predominantly white party interested — as Trump openly declared — in keeping the number of voters, and particularly the number of Black voters, as low as possible. Yet the common thread remains. Watching white supremacists among the people storming the Capitol, it was easy to yield to the feeling that something pure had been violated. It might be better to see the episode as part of a long American argument about who deserves representation.

The Democrats, today, have become a coalition, one that does better than Republicans with female and nonwhite voters and collects votes from both labor unions and the college-educated. Yet it’s not quite right to contrast this coalition with a monolithic Republican Party. Right now, the Republican Party is a coalition of two types of people: those who would game the system (most of the politicians, some of the voters) and those who dream of breaking it (a few of the politicians, many of the voters). In January 2021, this was visible as the difference between those Republicans who defended the present system on the grounds that it favored them and those who tried to upend it.

In the four decades since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have overcome the tension between the gamers and the breakers by governing in opposition to government, or by calling elections a revolution (the Tea Party), or by claiming to oppose elites. The breakers, in this arrangement, provide cover for the gamers, putting forth an ideology that distracts from the basic reality that government under Republicans is not made smaller but simply diverted to serve a handful of interests.

At first, Trump seemed like a threat to this balance. His lack of experience in politics and his open racism made him a very uncomfortable figure for the party; his habit of continually telling lies was initially found by prominent Republicans to be uncouth. Yet after he won the presidency, his particular skills as a breaker seemed to create a tremendous opportunity for the gamers. Led by the gamer in chief, McConnell, they secured hundreds of federal judges and tax cuts for the rich.

Trump was unlike other breakers in that he seemed to have no ideology. His objection to institutions was that they might constrain him personally. He intended to break the system to serve himself — and this is partly why he has failed. Trump is a charismatic politician and inspires devotion not only among voters but among a surprising number of lawmakers, but he has no vision that is greater than himself or what his admirers project upon him. In this respect his pre-fascism fell short of fascism: His vision never went further than a mirror. He arrived at a truly big lie not from any view of the world but from the reality that he might lose something.

Yet Trump never prepared a decisive blow. He lacked the support of the military, some of whose leaders he had alienated. (No true fascist would have made the mistake he did there, which was to openly love foreign dictators; supporters convinced that the enemy was at home might not mind, but those sworn to protect from enemies abroad did.) Trump’s secret police force, the men carrying out snatch operations in Portland, was violent but also small and ludicrous. Social media proved to be a blunt weapon: Trump could announce his intentions on Twitter, and white supremacists could plan their invasion of the Capitol on Facebook or Gab. But the president, for all his lawsuits and entreaties and threats to public officials, could not engineer a situation that ended with the right people doing the wrong thing. Trump could make some voters believe that he had won the 2020 election, but he was unable to bring institutions along with his big lie. And he could bring his supporters to Washington and send them on a rampage in the Capitol, but none appeared to have any very clear idea of how this was to work or what their presence would accomplish. It is hard to think of a comparable insurrectionary moment, when a building of great significance was seized, that involved so much milling around.

The lie outlasts the liar. The idea that Germany lost the First World War in 1918 because of a Jewish “stab in the back” was 15 years old when Hitler came to power. How will Trump’s myth of victimhood function in American life 15 years from now? And to whose benefit?

On Jan. 7, Trump called for a peaceful transition of power, implicitly conceding that his putsch had failed. Even then, though, he repeated and even amplified his electoral fiction: It was now a sacred cause for which people had sacrificed. Trump’s imagined stab in the back will live on chiefly thanks to its endorsement by members of Congress. In November and December 2020, Republicans repeated it, giving it a life it would not otherwise have had. In retrospect, it now seems as though the last shaky compromise between the gamers and the breakers was the idea that Trump should have every chance to prove that wrong had been done to him. That position implicitly endorsed the big lie for Trump supporters who were inclined to believe it. It failed to restrain Trump, whose big lie only grew bigger.

The breakers and the gamers then saw a different world ahead, where the big lie was either a treasure to be had or a danger to be avoided. The breakers had no choice but to rush to be first to claim to believe in it. Because the breakers Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz must compete to claim the brimstone and bile, the gamers were forced to reveal their own hand, and the division within the Republican coalition became visible on Jan. 6. The invasion of the Capitol only reinforced this division. To be sure, a few senators withdrew their objections, but Cruz and Hawley moved forward anyway, along with six other senators. More than 100 representatives doubled down on the big lie. Some, like Matt Gaetz, even added their own flourishes, such as the claim that the mob was led not by Trump’s supporters but by his opponents.

Trump is, for now, the martyr in chief, the high priest of the big lie. He is the leader of the breakers, at least in the minds of his supporters. By now, the gamers do not want Trump around. Discredited in his last weeks, he is useless; shorn of the obligations of the presidency, he will become embarrassing again, much as he was in 2015. Unable to provide cover for their gamesmanship, he will be irrelevant to their daily purposes. But the breakers have an even stronger reason to see Trump disappear: It is impossible to inherit from someone who is still around. Seizing Trump’s big lie might appear to be a gesture of support. In fact it expresses a wish for his political death. Transforming the myth from one about Trump to one about the nation will be easier when he is out of the way.

As Cruz and Hawley may learn, to tell the big lie is to be owned by it. Just because you have sold your soul does not mean that you have driven a hard bargain. Hawley shies from no level of hypocrisy; the son of a banker, educated at Stanford University and Yale Law School, he denounces elites. Insofar as Cruz was thought to have a principle, it was that of states’ rights, which Trump’s calls to action brazenly violated. A joint statement Cruz issued about the senators’ challenge to the vote nicely captured the post-truth aspect of the whole: It never alleged that there was fraud, only that there were allegations of fraud. Allegations of allegations, allegations all the way down.

The big lie requires commitment. When Republican gamers do not exhibit enough of that, Republican breakers call them “RINOs”: Republicans in name only. This term once suggested a lack of ideological commitment. It now means an unwillingness to throw away an election. The gamers, in response, close ranks around the Constitution and speak of principles and traditions. The breakers must all know (with the possible exception of the Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville) that they are participating in a sham, but they will have an audience of tens of millions who do not.

If Trump remains present in American political life, he will surely repeat his big lie incessantly. Hawley and Cruz and the other breakers share responsibility for where this leads. Cruz and Hawley seem to be running for president. Yet what does it mean to be a candidate for office and denounce voting? If you claim that the other side has cheated, and your supporters believe you, they will expect you to cheat yourself. By defending Trump’s big lie on Jan. 6, they set a precedent: A Republican presidential candidate who loses an election should be appointed anyway by Congress. Republicans in the future, at least breaker candidates for president, will presumably have a Plan A, to win and win, and a Plan B, to lose and win. No fraud is necessary; only allegations that there are allegations of fraud. Truth is to be replaced by spectacle, facts by faith.

Trump’s coup attempt of 2020-21, like other failed coup attempts, is a warning for those who care about the rule of law and a lesson for those who do not. His pre-fascism revealed a possibility for American politics. For a coup to work in 2024, the breakers will require something that Trump never quite had: an angry minority, organized for nationwide violence, ready to add intimidation to an election. Four years of amplifying a big lie just might get them this. To claim that the other side stole an election is to promise to steal one yourself. It is also to claim that the other side deserves to be punished.

Informed observers inside and outside government agree that right-wing white supremacism is the greatest terrorist threat to the United States. Gun sales in 2020 hit an astonishing high. History shows that political violence follows when prominent leaders of major political parties openly embrace paranoia.

Our big lie is typically American, wrapped in our odd electoral system, depending upon our particular traditions of racism. Yet our big lie is also structurally fascist, with its extreme mendacity, its conspiratorial thinking, its reversal of perpetrators and victims and its implication that the world is divided into us and them. To keep it going for four years courts terrorism and assassination.

When that violence comes, the breakers will have to react. If they embrace it, they become the fascist faction. The Republican Party will be divided, at least for a time. One can of course imagine a dismal reunification: A breaker candidate loses a narrow presidential election in November 2024 and cries fraud, the Republicans win both houses of Congress and rioters in the street, educated by four years of the big lie, demand what they see as justice. Would the gamers stand on principle if those were the circumstances of Jan. 6, 2025?

To be sure, this moment is also a chance. It is possible that a divided Republican Party might better serve American democracy; that the gamers, separated from the breakers, might start to think of policy as a way to win elections. It is very likely that the Biden-Harris administration will have an easier first few months than expected; perhaps obstructionism will give way, at least among a few Republicans and for a short time, to a moment of self-questioning. Politicians who want Trumpism to end have a simple way forward: Tell the truth about the election.

America will not survive the big lie just because a liar is separated from power. It will need a thoughtful repluralization of media and a commitment to facts as a public good. The racism structured into every aspect of the coup attempt is a call to heed our own history. Serious attention to the past helps us to see risks but also suggests future possibility. We cannot be a democratic republic if we tell lies about race, big or small. Democracy is not about minimizing the vote nor ignoring it, neither a matter of gaming nor of breaking a system, but of accepting the equality of others, heeding their voices and counting their votes.

Timothy Snyder is the Levin professor of history at Yale University and the author of histories of political atrocity including “Bloodlands” and “Black Earth,” as well as the book “On Tyranny,” on America’s turn toward authoritarianism. His most recent book is “Our Malady,” a memoir of his own near-fatal illness reflecting on the relationship between health and freedom.

***

Essay copied & pasted here in its entirety for the benefit of those stuck behind the paywall. Follow the link for the accompanying photos and captions.

[paperanddice]

The final member of Cassian's Champions, Uthelyn was unfairly given the epithet "the mad" for her unnerving laugh and habit of drawing out fights so she could more enjoy inflicting pain and injury on her target. This was no result of mental illness; she was simply a cruel, violent person who's tendencies had been allowed by her well off family long after they should have been curtailed. When she was finally faced with consequences for actions after she stabbed another teenager, she lashed out at those who tried to stop her and wound up becoming a wandering adventurer to find those who would better appreciate her abilities.

So long as she reigned in her desire to harm others and pointed the results at the "right" targets, Uthelyn's skills were praised and paid for, and she found her way into Cassian d'Cheveran's adventuring party, where he was more than happy to make use of her merciless cruelty. As with the rest of the party, she had no regrets or hesitations in cutting down the families whose familial treasures they stole, and when the curse drove Cassian's Champions deeper into the Sword Barrow Uthelyn met her match in an overwhelming swarm of undead guardians. She was cut down, only to return as a cackling murderer stalking the barrow for intruders who she'd be allowed to kill.

Originally from the 4e Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale. This post came out a week ago on my Patreon. If you want to get access to all my monster conversions early, as well as a spot on the Paper and Dice Discord server, consider backing me there!

5th Edition

Uthelyn the Mad Medium undead (half-elf), chaotic evil Armor Class 16 (studded leather) Hit Points 91 (14d8 + 28) Speed 30 ft. Str 13 (+1) Dex 18 (+4) Con 14 (+2) Int 12 (+1) Wis 13 (+1) Cha 18 (+4) Saving Throws Str +4, Dex +7, Cha +7 Skills Acrobatics +6, Perception +4 Damage Resistances necrotic, poison, psychic Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 14 Languages Common, Elvish Challenge 5 (1800 XP) Crossbow Expert. Uthalyn doesn't have disadvantage on ranged attack rolls with her hand crossbow while within 5 feet of a hostile creature. Maniacal Laughter. Any creature that starts its turn within 5 feet of Uthalyn must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or be frightened until the end of its next turn. On a successful saving throw, the creature is immune to Uthalyn's Maniacal Laughter for 24 hours. Natural Explorer. Difficult terrain doesn't cost Uthalyn extra movement. Actions Multiattack. Uthalyn makes three attacks; two with her shortsword and one with her hand crossbow. Alternatively, Uthalyn can make two attacks with her hand crossbow. Cursed Shortsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d6+4) piercing damage plus 3 (1d6) necrotic damage. Cursed Hand Crossbow. Ranged Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, range 30/120 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d6+4) piercing damage plus 3 (1d6) necrotic damage.

13th Age

Uthelyn the Mad 4th level spoiler [undead] Initiative: +9 Vulnerability: Holy Short Sword +9 vs. AC - 10 damage Natural Even Hit: Uthelyn can make a maniacal laughter attack as a free action. Natural Odd Hit or Miss: Uthalyn can pop free from the target. [Special Trigger] C: Maniacal Laughter +9 vs. MD (all nearby enemies) - The target takes a cumulative -1 penalty to attack rolls (save ends) Natural 18+: Uthelyn gains a fear aura against the target (hard save ends, 16+). Fear Aura: While engaged with Uthelyn, if the target has 18 hp or fewer, it’s dazed and does not add the escalation die to its attacks. R: Crossbow Shot +9 vs. AC (one nearby enemy, or a far away enemy at -2 Atk) - 12 damage Ghostly Escape: 1/battle, if Uthelyn would be stuck or stunned, she ends the effect, pops free from all enemies, and gains resist damage 18+ until the end of her next turn. Mad Laughter: If a nearby enemy attacks Uthelyn and rolls a natural 1-5, she can make a maniacal laughter attack as a free action. Resist Negative Energy 14+. AC 18 PD 16 MD 16 HP 58