#and like. the actual argument is itself understandable and rooted in important things

[sylviii]

being a moderator in a small community of queer folks and having to be the one to fan the flames and keep folks happy during asinine disputes when people are being as uncharitable in their interpretations and making bad faith arguments is kind of like hitting yourself in the skull with an iron skillet 17000000 times

[woodchipp]

Looks like the OMORI subbreddit found me lmao. I was notified of it by an ask that seems to have disappeared (Tumblr being Tumblr, ig), so I'm including a screenshot of the ask here for posterity

Whether or not Omori's judgements are grounded in reality, they don't mean Sunny should kill himself.

I didn't say that. In fact, I wanted to emphasize how absurd it is that Sunny's irrational and suicidal self-loathing makes this much sense.

The game's failure to provide solid evidence against the arguments Omori makes is a fault of the writing itself, not Sunny.

His arc is about him coming to grip with what he has done, not where he grows to be a good person. Sunny being a good friend or something isn't really important to whether he should live or die.

We don’t really get to see if Sunny really changes beyond getting the words alone out. Because that’s not the point of the game. The entirety of the game’s narrative is about finding the courage to take the first step toward real healing; it is about the act of grasping what is real, to face in the direction of reality and therefore pain, suffering, and loss, but also happiness, growth, and change. But we only get to see the initial act of facing in that direction. And that’s what makes the game so powerful, is that it explores a process that is often so overlooked or seen as just a vehicle to a different, better story. But as the saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. What we see is the first step, and barely that.

Why should I be invested in said arc if the game gives me no reason to root for him? That literally was the point of the post the OP linked.

Sunny feeling bad for the shitty thing he did just isn't worth getting invested into. It's a start, sure, but if he takes a roughly 25 hr game just to muster up the courage to confess to a crime, and he does so only for his own peace of mind, why should I want him to reach his peace of mind in the first place?

Mind you, this is not the same as "I want Sunny to kill himself." What I'm saying is "OMORI wants me to care about Sunny, but doesn't put in the effort to give him any sort of personality, so why should I care about whether he kills himself or not?"

I actually agree with the OG post on the claim that Sunny is an extremely passive character [...] it’s incredibly frustrating to watch, which is kinda the whole point.

"which is kinda the whole point" Never heard that one before.

I understand the point just fine. In this case, my issue is that the point is conveyed very poorly.

Sunny has lost the ability to externally express himself, and doesn’t know what to do.

He doesn't know what to do, but he can run circles around his bestie while the latter's having a breakdown just fine! weeeeeeeee

Or so it would seem. The entire point of Headspace, as far as narrative function goes, is to demonstrate that Sunny in fact is taking very active internal steps to enact real change

Source?

Headspace was literally constructed to prevent any sort of change. it isn't shown significantly changing over the course of the game either.

Whether you believe spirit Mari or the backstage trio of Kel, Aubrey, and Hero were real or just a manifestation of Sunny’s mind,

The Backstage trio definitely isn't real, though.

they nevertheless demonstrate a significant overhaul taking place within Sunny and therefore a significant amount of character development!

Source? Any examples?

What is that even supposed to mean? What, should I consider Omori randomly seeing whatever that black-and-white apparition of Mari is supposed to be at North Lake solid character development?

I've previously explained why Headspace doesn't really matter much and why Backstage makes no sense story-wise, but it seems like I'll have to reiterate.

I'm not going to care about Sunny just because of what he thinks or says (and he doesn't even say much lol). What defines you are your actions. Sure, Sunny can say he'll miss his friends and dream about them all he wants, but if his love for them isn't backed up by what he does over the course of the game, I won't be inclined to believe in it.

Likewise, Backstage doesn't demonstrate character development to me. It's just Sunny shoving words of comfort he wants to hear at the moment into his friends' mouths, which is what Headspace was. The only thing that's different is the sprites.

What's the point of having your character trying to kick an addiction and framing said addiction as a bad thing only to have the character indulge in that addiction once again and frame it as a good thing at the end of the story?

By the way, I love that the comment's rebuttal to my first gripe - that Sunny doesn't do anything in real life that counts as actual character development - is basically "he changes on the inside!", which misses the point that he doesn't do anything substantial in real life. peak

The tragic irony of it all was that a depiction of someone suffering terribly was criticized for not being a “model” depiction of said suffering - as though there’s some kind of standard unit of measurement for that. I think in similar fashion, Sunny takes a lot of heat by players precisely because his situation is so extreme.

I love when people make no attempt to actually engage with what I'm trying to say and instead create an entirely different argument in their head because it'd be easier to argue against.

I'm not criticizing Sunny because his situation is extreme. I just don't like him because the game doesn't give you much of a reason to and because his actions towards the people we're supposed to see as his closest friends throughout the story paint him as very unpleasant at best. That's all there is to it.

Also, I've never seen The Whale. Looking it up on TVTropes, though...

lol. lmao, even. rofl, if you will

Let’s be honest here: even if you struggle with some kind of mental health issue, you probably won’t - hopefully won’t - really be able to understand what Sunny is experiencing. That doesn’t make for a very relatable character!

Yes, because I've never committed manslaughter.

I'm not one to measure how good a character is by whether they're relatable or not. In fact, I despise the notion that a character must be relatable in order to be well-written. However, in this case, I need to ask - if Sunny isn't supposed to be relatable, what is he supposed to be? Again, why should I care about him?

Unlike Charlie, who is apparently nice to people even when they treat him like dirt, Sunny doesn't have any notable character traits besides his mental illness. We're repeatedly told he's nice and supportive, but he's never shown doing anything substantial for his friends other than being "the baby of the group" before Mari's death, nor do we see him trying to be supportive to them after it.

Sunny makes no indication that his friends must accept his apology or that he expects their forgiveness,

but the secret ending shows that he did in fact forgive himself.

And everyone he hurt by letting them believe in Basil's lie are glossed over, but hey, who gives a shit about these people, right?

Aubrey’s reaction and her pushing Basil into the lake is a great example of this; a very similar scenario plays out, only potential tragedy is avoided. Does that still make Aubrey a killer? Is she solely to blame for the push, even if it was fully intentional?

"Is she solely to blame for the push, even if it was fully intentional?" Yes. What kind of question is this?

What about her upbringing

"Her upbringing" can only excuse so much. At some point, a Freudian Excuse stops being an excuse, and Aubrey pushing Basil into the lake was that point. The game doesn't bother delving into her upbringing much either, so, again, why should I care?

and, not nearly mentioned as much, Basil’s own continued choice to keep the truth hidden and allow people like Aubrey to remain in unnecessary pain and suffering?

Aubrey didn't even know the truth when she attacked Basil, though. She just flipped out at him for no reason.

It's easy for the player to grow attached to the main character because they're playing as them. Summing up Sunny's character traits as, in the critique's own words, "#relatable traits," is unbelievably disingenuous. Sunny isn't just "depressed and quiet." He is a traumatised child who is borderline neurotic and suicidal.

Okay. Aside from him being traumatized and being the protagonist, why should I care about him? These are not enough.

Trauma does not constitute one's personality - it informs it. I've said as such in the post the OP linked, and yet everyone seems to omit it in their rebuttals to my arguments. Convenient!

Sunny obviously cares about being forgiven by his friends, that's kind of the reason why he lied in the first place?

Oh yeah, he cares!

In the sense that he was more concerned with losing his friends' love than what they might think and/or feel about the truth, which is why he went along with Basil's lie. He cares only in terms of how it affects him.

It's more so... you know, that Omori was wrong and that Sunny's friends will forgive him and love him regardless? 

...The whole point of the true ending is that there is no definitive answer to whether they forgive him or not.

I'm kind of starting to doubt whether the people lambasting me for not understanding the game actually understand it themselves.

Oh, but of course

It’s not that Sunny didn’t go through a “legitimate character arc”; it’s that he went through an unconventional character arc

that post calls sunny an empty husk of a character yet refuses to analyze him or read into any of his actions beyond complete surface level and instead opts to demonize him at every opportunity. complete media literacy failure in understanding show don't tell. wild.

Anyone who can spend 70% of a game in the depths of a single character's complex, ever-changing psyche and then say that character is a husk concerns me

His development is certainly nuanced, but to say it’s nonexistent you would have to play with a blindfold. 

If I'm being honest, the more OMORI fans insist on the writing being too Unconventional™/Nuanced™/Complex™/Symbolic™ for people to understand and that everyone who has problems with it is lacking media literacy, the less believable and more obnoxiously pretentious they sound.

Also the words of encouragement Sunny receives during the Omori boss fight are all in-line with the characterisation of his friends and the overall narrative of the game, something the author of that critique happily omits.

That... wasn't even the problem I was talking about?

"There's just a problem with this, though - Sunny's friends offered him their support without the knowledge of how Mari actually died. They were convinced that Sunny is struggling with Mari's suicide, not that he's wrestling with well-earned guilt over committing manslaughter. We don't know whether they would've supported him all the same if they knew the truth, and the game doesn't provide an answer either since the group's reactions to Sunny's confession are left ambiguous." "Simply put, Sunny is twisting his friends' words, taking them out of context to make himself feel better. The support Sunny received is built on a lie."

I don't think anyone in that comment thread took the time to actually read my post. Unsurprising.

”Every character in Omori is an empty husk, because I’ve never played the game!”

I've seen this refrain pretty frequently. The funniest thing about this is that I was a fan of the game myself until I scrutinized its writing a tad closer than I used to and consequently realized how dogshit it is.

Well, whatever. I've said what I wanted to say.

[transmutationisms]

HI really love your thoughts on stuff. do you think succession - as a tv show with a script - makes all of its negative statements negatively or positively? this is something im having trouble with, specially with shiv and the overwhelming misogyny. i understand its quite literally real life. but they know the importance of media as a statement that defines real life - its sort of meta, but the whole thing with whether or not calling mencken, knowing it would affect politics, is something that can reflect on the show itself. i dont think i fully agree with what they do to shiv in the way they portray the misogyny. it feels like a "and thats how it will always be" more than "thats how its been". idk. maybe I just hate misogyny and cant stand to see that. but everything is a statement. what do u think?

well in general i agree that, yeah, the show is more interested in satire and criticism than offering any kind of imaginative solution or alternative. so, if you want to watch something that suggests alternatives to logan-style misogyny (& i'd understand why) then i think you're going to be dissatisfied with this show. like, obviously even with logan gone, his influence still haunts the company and the family, and anyway the broader structures of capitalism and its use / exploitation of women were always much larger than logan alone. all of this also applies to how roman and kendall (& to a lesser extent connor) are punished for failing to live up to standards of masculinity; logan feminised kendall to punish him for business failures and derided roman for what he saw as a more innate femininity that made roman disgusting to him.

i actually think gender is a strong suit for the show. it's very deeply interested in how they each relate to standards of bourgeois masculinity and femininity, and how these strictures are confining and punishing (often literally, as logan used them as tools of his abuse). for shiv she lived up to some of logan's femands for an heir (her emotional repression, flashes of killer instinct) but was ultimately always doomed by the fact that logan saw her as permanently being his little girl, denied a body (bc this was less disgusting to him than thinking of her as a woman) and never the right fit for his corporate mould, even when she was trying her hardest to fit it. roman and kendall ofc pick up on this and the way her gender can be used in itself to lock her out of the upper echelons of power (a walking pair of teats, all the men got together in man club). but ultimately this is a dissection of misogyny and masculinity, not a suggestion for escape.

i have mixed feelings about the sort of ethical argument here. it is fair to say that succession has a fundamentally conservative ethos in the sense that the satire and snark angle is uninterested in offering solutions or imagining alternatives. it's grounded in exploring capitalism, fascism, the resulting gender politics, &c, and to the extent that it challenges these things, it's by portraying them as worthy of mockery. it's not a leftist political treatise. but like, i think there's a can of worms to open here in terms of asking how revolutionary a television show is capable of being simple by virtue of the medium. like, even if the content is radical internally, does is matter that the form is still one embedded in capitalist production, ie, that the show is a commodity on the same market? i identify the root of misogyny within the capitalist mode of production; how far is something made within these parameters capable of going in offering any kind of alternative? and also, do we care? like, am i watching tv because i'm looking for radical politics? again, this doesn't negate the critique of succession's critique. but i do think it's a bit... trite? to ask tv to be some kind of moral guide---particularly on a show where the premise is such that any 'challenge' to misogyny would still be constrained within the bourgeois world the characters inhabit.

[rollercoasterwords]

ok here's the essay re: "realisitc?? they're literally wizards!!"

upon further reflection (25 min voicenote 2 twin, 1 conversation w 2 friends) i think i have. managed 2 organize + articulate my thoughts.

obligatory disclaimer: this literally does not matter i'm talking about hp fanfiction in 2023 this is not a serious issue beyond being like. kind of annoying. unfortunately i just enjoy writing abt stupid fandom discourse hopefully going back 2 school will cure me of the incessant need 2 write essays for fun but who knows. anyway me writing this essay is not me saying this is a huge or important issue i just like 2 talk <3

anyway! the ~discourse~ i've been noticing in the marauders fandom, which from my pov has had sort of an uptick recently (although who knows if that's objectively true--maybe i've just stumbled across more of it. from where i'm sitting, though, it seems like it's become more of a hot topic in recent months) generally goes as follows:

person a: omg ugh i hate that in [x fic] [x character] has/is/does [x flaw] :(

person b: oh well [x character] having/being/doing [x flaw] makes the story more realistic

person a: UM they're literally wizards at a magic school lol....who cares if it's realistic....

and the reason this both interests + annoys me is that i think. giving person a the benefit of the doubt + assuming they aren't being purposely obtuse (bc in that case we're just talking abt trolls), it demonstrates such a gap in understanding. bc the thing person a is fighting w that response is literally a strawman

the strawman:

saying "um they're literally wizards" is only a "gotcha" moment if it's pointing out an inconsistency in person b's thinking. it is only pointing out an inconsistency if, when person b says "it makes it more realistic," we take that to mean that person b is saying "a story is better if it more closely matches our own reality." in that case, saying "they're wizards!!!" points out an inconsistency, bc obviously characters being wizards does not match reality. gotcha!!!

the problem is that that isn't what person b is saying. so by responding "they're wizards" as if that's some sort of "gotcha" moment, person a is misinterpreting person b's argument, constructing a strawman that nobody is actually arguing, and then tearing down that strawman with a pithy little sarcastic comment that positions them as soooo much more reasonable than person b.

so what is person b actually saying?

the problem is that saying "[x character] having [x flaw] makes a story more realistic" is not an argument about the story being better, it's an explanation for why someone would write the story that way.

another disclaimer - some "person b"s in this situation might, in fact, be using "it's more realistic" to try and argue that a story being more realistic makes the story better; however, that is not a position i'm going to be defending here. i think any argument that roots itself in a so-called "objective" measure of what makes a piece of art better or worse is a non-starter, and in that case i think person b and person a are perhaps both misguided in different ways.

but what's happening from person b's pov is - person a asks "why would anyone write [x character] with [x flaw]?" person b tries to answer that question by explaining: well, it makes the story more realistic. the implication here is -- a story being more realistic is a personal preference that some people are going to prefer; people write + read stories for different reasons. this is the reason that i enjoy the story, personally. that's it!

and the thing is, "realistic" in the context of a fantasy story does not mean "matches real life exactly." in the context of fantasy, "realistic" refers, in my mind, to two things:

1. cohesive internal logic

even within a fantasy universe, there are going to be structured societies, rules, laws of natures, etc. what makes a fantasy story more realistic is not how closely it adheres to real-life structures + rules, but how closely it adheres to its own established structures + rules - its own internal logic.

for example: in my fantasy world, fairies can fly but mermaids can't. then, suddenly, without explanation, i write a scene where a mermaid can fly. this makes the story less realistic, in that it breaks from its own internal logic, and stretches the limits of readers' abilities to suspend their disbelief. like - we've already sort of "agreed" to suspend disbelief about fairies + mermaids existing, because that's just the established norm of the story, but as readers we are still looking to follow some internal logic. oftentimes, when people are complaining about fantasy stories being more or less realistic, they are referring to the story's own internal logic.

this means if someone is writing hp fanfic set in a canon universe, working in the established canon universe where certain biases + flaws exist, it makes the fic more realistic to adhere to that internal logic. obviously, a fic writer can choose to change that internal logic and say, for example, "in my story the wizarding world doesn't have homophobia, and that's an established societal norm that is part of the story's internal logic." that's fine! it's just a matter of personal choice whether that's the story that somebody wants to write or not, y'know?

2. reflection on real life

the other aspect of "realism" that i think people are referring to when they talk about a fantasy story being more or less "realistic" is the ways in which that story does reflect actual reality. like--fantasy stories don't exist in a vaccuum. many writers use fantasy stories to reflect realities from actual life; things like prejudice or oppression or war, etc. placing these real-life issues into a fantastical setting allows a new lens through which to think about them, pushing us to examine them from different angles.

for example - take k.a. applegate's animorphs series. it is, in many ways, completely unrealistic, in that it's about kids who can turn into animals fighting off an alien invasion. but k.a. applegate wrote the books to demonstrate the utter horror and devastation of war, and much of the subject matter reflects real-life wartime situations. a kid who only hears about war through the news or through action movies where there's a clear good guy and bad guy, a clear right and wrong, might find it easy to disregard the horror. but when applegate took those real-life situations and placed them into the fantastical setting of animorphs, she's providing an age-appropriate way for children to understand that no, war is not an action movie, it's a horror story.

this is why "realism" in fantasy matters to people. some writers are using fantasy not as pure escapism, but as a way to explore real-life issues through a different lens, one that may allow people to empathize with an issue in a way they normally don't. obviously, some people are just writing fantasy for fun escapism -- and that's fine! there's space for both types of stories to exist simultaneously; what doesn't make sense is assuming that just because somebody engages with media differently from you, there must be something wrong with it.

anyway. the conclusion to all this i suppose is that i think if you genuinely do not understand why someone would write a character a certain way, rather than assuming the worst or assuming there's no good reason it's generally better to like. actually ask and listen to the answer people are giving u + try to understand where they're coming from. not everyone is going to want to read the same types of stories, and somebody writing a character w certain flaws shouldn't feel like a personal attack, bc fandom is a self-curated experience where u literally don't need 2 read or write anything u don't want to. The End

[j-saying]

masterpost (2/2):

@batrogers

#Important#antisemitism#the context of Israel matters#history#people can behave badly for good reasons#it doesn't make their behaviour RIGHT#but it does mean you have to account for those reasons#when you're judging how to move forward#Israel/Palestine#recent history#I have a bachelors degree#that included this region and time period#which is why I'm so fucking impatient with the discourse on this site#it's all so short-sighted

@bicycles-bees-bisexuals

#antisemitism#this is not discourse it is basic facts#there is so much nuance in everything and people just ignore it for black and white comparisons

@myalchod

#antisemitism#if your i/p activism fails to account for this then what the fuck is it even worth?#you do no one any favours with regurgitating ahistorical claims#this is not said to excuse anything#it’s said because it needs to be acknowledged

@ladypolaris

#fucking thank you!#people love to conveniently forget that jews in the diaspora aren’t guaranteed safety in their home countries#that’s literally the entire reason israel exists#this is not discourse it is basic facts#antisemitism

@chocolatepot

#I really think a major part of goyish leftist westerners' inability to comprehend that shit's complicated#comes from the idea that generational trauma is something that only happens to good people we all agree are oppressed#and many of them don't even quite think there's real antisemitism at all in the world#(based on an argument the night before I wrote these tags)#so instead of going 'wowee that sounds like a harsh thing to deal with. I can see how it would warp people into hyperaggressive defense'#'maybe we should include this in our discussions to show we understand that it's a factor'#they accuse you of defending/minimizing Israel's actions or trying to distract from them#I'm sorry but if you're neither Jewish nor Palestinian you are in fact the privileged person who needs to listen at least briefly#gobsmacked that so many people who normally have a decent understanding of privilege don't grasp this#israel/palestine#antisemitism

@novafigura

#this.#i/p#antisemitism#also. there is no question that the state of israel’s founding created a backlash in the region.#but the antisemitism itself is old and has very deep roots.#(hence such a *terrifying* backlash in otherwise totally uninvolved countries.)#we live in a post-creation of the state of Israel world. that means a lot of things; this post is one of them.

@azriellaveraon

#fun fact! i personally know a few jews who fled to america from iran#went to synagogue with some jewish ethiopian refugees too#these events happened withing my lifetime!#im only 27!

@zahari097

#our history goes back over 3500 years with concrete archaeological historical and genetic proof that we all came from the levant#in fact the amount of evidence you have to ignore or flat out deny in order to pretend we all came from poland or w/e is staggering#claiming that we “made up” all of these artifacts and historical records in order to get a tiny piece of land is also insane#but of course those greedy (((zionists))) would craft intricate lies to get their grubby little hands on some land!!#it's arabs who are cosplaying indigeneity when they're literally the colonizers

@hmsharmony

#stop applying a western lens challenge#actually learn our history before trying to invalidate our fears#(or maybe just yknow listen to us and trust we know what we’re saying like you rightly would with any other historically oppressed group)#issues: antisemitism

@jacensolodjo

#israel#it's as if you forget the whole never again thing and why the jews might need somewhere to flee to#after 2000+ years of being murdered and driven from places for being jews#Am I Queue-ing Myself Jaina?

@likethecities

#I feel the need to remind people that#like it or not#a major Jewish and Israeli presence in the ME is not going to change#they cannot be inflicting violence and destruction on their neighbors constantly#but any long term goal for peace that does not include a Jewish nation is not one they can survive in#and if they can’t survive they will keep fighting

@jewish-sideblog

#Mass migration is *always* about push factors not pull factors.#virtually no one voluntarily leaves their country of birth because they want to live in a different country.#you have to leave behind your home and your friends and your family and your language and everything that you hold dear#people don’t do that unless they’re at risk of losing everything or unless they’ve already lost everything

Oh my god, once again reminding people that Jews in the SWANA region being scared of being murdered if Israel is dismantled are not comparable to white Americans and Canadians being scared of indigenous sovereignty. The entire world, and that includes Muslim countries, has a very very long history of violently expelling and brutally murdering its Jewish communities; Israel itself has many, many refugees and descendents of refugees from other countries in Asia and Africa, countries that do not want those people back.

The comparison to white North Americans is absurd, cruel, and ahistorical; the claim that Jewish people lived in happiness and peace and safety in SWANA countries before Israel's founding is a complete fabrication and blatant victim blaming. Many of the countries surrounding Israel and throughout the SWANA region have Jewish populations that can literally be counted on one hand and that isn't because people just abandoned their homes and friends and communities to move to Israel for funsies, it's because many of them were brutally murdered or expelled from their homes, with the rest fleeing out of fear for when they would be next.

I am saying this as a Native person who is 100% in favor of indigenous sovereignty in my home country and who is fully against the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government. If you cannot acknowledge how antisemitism is still very much alive and an active danger to Jewish people all across the world and how many people fled to Israel specifically to escape violence, then you really cannot have any sort of meaningful conversation about Israel.

[idkimnotreal]

so anyways i’m getting into sports now, but i’m neurodivergent so there’s some things i don’t get...

like, fighting over teams. national teams i do understand, it comes from nationalism; even though we don’t choose our countries of birth, it’s the root of deep feelings and emotions for many. and we are all after all citizens of our own nations, so in a way we contribute at least a tiny part to everything that makes it what it is, including sports. so we’re entitled to a good performance from our national teams.

not private clubs, though. most of us aren’t in any way connected to clubs except if we buy membership or the equivalent. as opposed to national teams, private clubs are almost always chosen by their supporters; after all, each city or state or province has at least 2 prominent/equal teams most of the time. but these teams don’t really represent any value or belief. they’re just colors and symbols. and money which buys players if they’re the highest bidder. most players don’t even relate to the private clubs they play for in any way. 

(obviously there are some exceptions, such as messi’s friend luis suárez who chose to play for the southern brazilian team grêmio - my childhood team - because it’s close culturally and geographically to his own country, uruguay, and grêmio is certainly a very decent end of career for any international player; but what does it mean when cr7 decides to play for an arab team??? so it seems arbitrary, at times it means something, other times it doesn’t mean anything at all)

so what i don’t get really are heated arguments over teams because it’s literally so arbitrary. it seems to be part of everything else neurotypical about people, such as religion, in which logic and truth don’t really matter as much as social cohesion. so people don’t really pretend to believe in something as much as they care to make it real because it’s real for everyone else and thus important. and the autistic brain lacks the mechanism to do that naturally.

(like i can get behind money because it represents the right to resources in general and impacts the real world but anything else seems so illogical. like mostly everything else people make up)

summing up, 1) private clubs don’t really mean anything other than money which is not a value by itself and 2) the choice between clubs is always meaningless despite emotional connections to a particular team, because those connections also spring up from arbitrary factors like one’s parents or friends (because they chose that team previously, but why???).

not that i can’t get into it. i just don’t see myself being being a diehard fan of any team in the future, because being my dad’s team or something is not a strong enough link for me to support anything. my dad is a bolsonaro voter and that doesn’t mean i need to be a fascist. alas.

(my point was actually more like “team x fans are all braindead” which makes 0 sense for me because supporting a team means literally nothing as they don’t represent any values, which is opposite to politics, where personal offenses might make sense. same thing in world of warcraft like pretending all horde players or something have a personal values flaw like choosing the horde means anything at all other than monsters look cool which is too little to draw from. things like that)

[meichenxi]

Hey! I hope you feel better soon

We haven't had a good long linguistics rant from you in a while!! How about you tell us about your favourite lingustical feature or occurrence in a language? Something like a weird grammatical feature or how a language changed

If this doesn't trigger any rant you have stored feel free to educate on any topic you can spontaneously think of, I'd love to hear it :D

ALRIGHT KARO, let's go!! This is a continuation of the other ask I answered recently, and is the second part in a series about linguistic complexity. I suggest you check that one out first for this to properly make sense! (I don't know how to link but uh. it's the post behind this on my blog)

Summary of previous points: the complexity of a language has nothing to do with the 'complexity' of the people that speak it; complexity is really bloody hard to measure; some linguists in an attempt to be not racist argue that 'all languages are equally complex', but this doesn't really seem to be the case, and also still equates cognitive ability with complexity of language which is just...not how things work; arguing languages have different amounts of complexity has literally nothing to do with the cognitive abilities of those who speak it.

Ok. Chinese.

Normally when we look at complexity we like to look at things like number of verb classes, noun classes, and so on. But Chinese doesn't really do any of this.

So what do Chinese and languages like Chinese do that is so challenging to the equicomplexity hypothesis, the idea that all languages are equally complex? I’ll start by talking about some of the common properties of isolating languages - and these properties are often actually used as examples of why these languages are as complex, just in different ways. Oh Melissa, I hear you ask in wide-eyed admiration/curiousity. What are they? By isolating languages, I mean languages that tend to have monosyllabic words, little to no conjugation, particles instead of verb or noun endings, and so on: so languages like Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai and many others in East and South East Asia.

Here’s a list of funky things in isolating languages that may or may not make a language more complex than linguists don't really know what to do with:

Classifiers

Chengyu and 4-word expressions

Verb reduplication, serialisation and resultative verbs

'Lexical verbosity' = complex compounding and word forming strategies

Pragmatics

Syntax

I'll talk about the first two briefly, but I don't have space for all. For clarity of signposting my argument: many linguists use these as explanations of why languages like Chinese are as complex, but I'm going to demonstrate afterwards why the situation is a bit more complicated than that. You could even say it's...complex.

1) Classifiers

You know about classifiers in Chinese, but what you may be interested to learn is that almost all isolating languages in South East Asia use them, and many in fact borrow from each other. The tonal, isolating languages in South East Asia have historically had a lot of contact through intense trade and migration, and as such share a lot of properties. Some classifiers just have to go with the noun: 一只狗，一条河 etc. First of all, if we're defining complexity as 'the added stuff you have to remember when you learn it' (my professors hate me), it's clear that these are added complexity in exactly the same way gender is. Why is it X, and not Y? Well, you can give vague answers ('it's sort of...ribbony' or 'it's kinda...flat'), but more often than not you choose the classifier based on the vibe. Which is something you just have to remember.

Secondly, many classifiers actually have the added ability to modify the type of noun they're describing. These are familiar too in languages like English: a herd of cattle versus a head of cattle. So we have 一枝花 which is a flower but on a stem ('a stem of flower'), but also 一朵花 which is a flower but without the stem (think like...'a blob of flower'). Similarly with clouds - you could have a 一朵云 'blob of cloud' (like a nice, fluffy cloud in a children's book), but you could also have 一片云 which is like a huge, straight flat cloud like the sea...and so on. These 'measure words' do more than measure: they add additional information that the noun itself does not give.

Already we're beginning to see the outline of the problem. Grammatical complexity is...well, grammatical. We count the stuff which languages require you to express, not the optional stuff - and that's grammar. The difference between better and best is clearly grammatical, as is go and went. But what about between 'a blob of cloud' versus 'a plain of cloud'? Is that grammatical? Well, maybe: you do have to include a measure word when you say there's one of it, and in many Chinese languages that are not Mandarin you have to include them every single time you use a possessive: my pair of shoes, my blob of flower etc. But you don't always have to include one specific classifier - there are multiple options, all of which are grammatical. So should we include classifiers as part of the grammar? Or part of the vocabulary (the 'lexicon')?

Err. Next?

2) Chengyu and 4-character expressions + 4) Lexical verbosity

This might seem a bit weird: these are obviously parts of the vocab! What's weirder, though, is that many isolating languages have chengyu, not just Chinese. And if you don't use them, many native speakers surveys suggest you don't sound native. This links to point number 4, which is lexical verbosity. 'Lexical verbosity' means a language has the ability to express things creativity, in many different manners, all of which may have a slightly different nuance. The kind of thing you love to read and analyse and hate to translate.

But it is important. If we look at the systems that make up the grand total of a language, vocabulary is obviously one of them: a language with 1 million root forms is clearly more 'complex', if all else is exactly the same, than a language with 500,000. Without even getting into the whole debacle about 'what even is a word', a language that has multiple registers (dialect, regional, literary, official etc) that all interact is always going to be more complex than one that doesn't, just because there's more of it. More rules, more words, more stuff.

Similarly, something that is the backbone of modern Chinese 'grammar' and yet you may never have thought of as such is is compound words. We don't tend to traditionally teach this as grammar, and I don't have time to give a masterclass on it now, but let me assure you that compounding - across the world's language - is hugely varied. Some languages let you make anything a compound; some only allow noun+noun compounds (so no 'blackbird', as black is an adjective); some only allow head+head compound (so no 'sabretooth', because a sabretooth is a type of tiger, not tooth); some only allow compounds one way ('ring finger' but not 'finger ring': though English does allow the other way around in some other words), and so on.

You'll have heard time and time again that 'Chinese is an isolating language, and isolating languages like monosyllabic words'. Well. Sort of. You will also have noticed yourself that actually most modern Chinese words are disyllabic: 学习，工作，休息，吃饭 and so on. This is radically different to Classical Chinese, where the majority were genuinely one syllable. But many Chinese speakers still have access to the words in the compounds, and so they can be manipulated on a character-by-character basis: most adults will be able to look at 学习 and understand that 学 and 习 both exist as separate words: 开学，学生，复习，练习 and so on.

I'm going to sort of have to ask you to take my word on it as I don't have time to prove how unique it is, but the ability that Chinese has to turn literally anything into a compound is staggering. It's insane. It's...oh god I'm tearing up slightly it's just a LOT guys ok. It's a lot. There are 20000000 synonyms for anything you could ever want, all with slightly different nuances, because unlike many other languages, Chinese allows compounds where the two bits of the compound mean, largely speaking, very similar things. So yes, you have compounds like 开学 which is the shortened version of 开始学习, or ones with an object like 吃饭 or 睡觉, but you also have compounds like 工作 where both 工 and 作 kind of...mean 'to work'...and 休息 where both 休 and 息 mean 'to rest'...and so on. So you can have 感 and 情 and 爱 and 心 but also 感情 and 情感 and 爱情 and 情爱 and 心情 and 心爱 and 爱心 and so on, and they all mean different things. And don't even get me started on resultative verbs: 学到，学会，学好，学完， and so on...

What is all of this, if not complex? It's not grammatical - except that the process of compound forming, that allows for so many different compounds, is grammatical. We can't make the difference between学会，学好 and 学完 anywhere near as easily in English, and in Chinese you do sort of have to add the end bit. So...do we count this under complexity? And if not, we should probably count it elsewhere? Because it's kind of insane. And learners have to use it, much like the example I gave of English prepositions, and it takes them a bloody long time. But then where?

Ok. I haven't had a chance to talk about everything, but you get the picture: there are things in Chinese that, unlike European languages, do not neatly fit into the 'grammar' versus 'vocabulary' boxes we have built for ourselves, because as a language it just works very differently to the ones we've used as models. (Though some of the problems, in fact, are similar: German is also very adept at compounding.) But as interesting as that difference is, the goal of typology as a sub-discipline of linguistics is to talk about and research the types of linguistic diversity around the world, so we can't stop there by acknowledging our models don't fit. We have to go further. We have to stop, and think: What does this mean for the models that we have built?

This is where we get into theoretically rather boggy ground. We weren't before?? No, like marsh of the dead boggy. Linguists don't know it...they go round, for miles and miles and miles....

Because unfortunately there isn't a clear answer. If we dismiss these things as 'lexical' and therefore irrelevant to the grammar, that is a) ignoring their grammatical function, b) ignoring the fact that the lexicon is also a system that needs to be learnt, and has often very clear rules on word-building that are also 'grammatical', and c) essentially playing a game of theoretical pass-the-parcel. It's your problem, not mine: it's in the lexicon, not the grammar. Blah blah blah. Because whoever's problem it is, we still have to account for this complexity somehow when we want to compare literally any languages that are substantially different at all.

On the other side of things, however, if we argue that 'Chinese is as complex as Abkhaz, because it makes up for a lack of complexity in Y by all this complexity in X' (and therefore all languages = equally complex), this ignores the fact that compounding and irregular verbs belong to two very different systems. The kind of mistake you make when you use the wrong classifier intuitively seems to be on another level of 'wrongness' to the kind where you conjugate a verb in the wrong way. One is 'wrong'. The other is just 'not what we say'. It's the same as the use of prepositions in English: some are obviously wrong (I don't sleep 'at my bed') but some are just weird, and for many there are multiple options ('at the weekend', 'on the weekend'). Is saying 'I am on the town' the same level of wrongness as saying 'I goed to the shops'? Intuitively we might want to say the second is a 'worse' mistake. In which case, what are they exactly? They're both 'grammar', but totally different systems. And where do you draw the line?

Here's the thing about the equicomplexity argument. As established, it stems from a nice ideological background that nevertheless conflates cognition and linguistic complexity. Once you realise that no, the two are completely separate, you're under no theoretical or ideological compulsion to have languages be equally complex at all. Why should they be at all? Some languages just have more stuff in them: some have loads of vowels, and loads of consonants, and some have loads of grammar. Others have less. They all do basically the same job. Why is that a big deal?

Where the argument comes into its biggest problem, though, is that if a language like Chinese is already as complex as a language like Abkhaz...what happens when we meet Classical Chinese?

Classical Chinese. An eldritch behemoth lurking with tendrils of grass-style calligraphy belching perfect prose just behind the horizon.

Let's look at Modern Chinese for a moment. It has some particles: six or so, depending on how you count them. You could include these as being critical to the grammar, and they are.

A common dictionary of Classical Chinese particles lists 694.

To be fair, a lot of these survive as verbs, nouns and so on. Classical Chinese was very verb-schmerb when it came to functional categories, and most nouns can be verbs, and vice versa. It's all just about the vibe. But still. Six hundred and ninety four.

Some of these are optional - they're the nice 'omggg' equivalent of the modern tone particles at the end of a sentence. Some of them are smushed versions of two different particles, like 啦. Some of these, however, really do seem to have very grammatical features. Of these 694, 17 are listed as meaning ‘subsequent to and later than X’, and 8 indicate imposition of a stress upon the word they precede or follow. Some are syntactic: there are, for instance, 8 different particles solely for the purpose of fronting information: 'the man saw he'. That is very much a grammatical role, in every sense of the word.

The copula system ('to be') is also huuuuuuugely complex. I could write a whole other post about this, but I'll just say for now that the copula in Classical Chinese could be specific to degrees of logical preciseness that would make the biggest Lojban-loving computer programmer weep into his Star Trek blanket. As in, the system of positive copulas distinguishes between 6 different polar-positive copulas (A is B), 2 insistent positive (A is B), 19 restricted positive (A is only B), and 15 of common inclusion (A is like B). Some other copulas can make such distinctions as ‘A becomes or acts as B’, ‘A would be B’, ‘may A not be B?’ and so on. Copulas may also be used in a sort of causal way (not 'casual'), creating very specific relationships like ‘A does not merely because of B’ or ‘A is not Y such that B is X’.

WHEW. And all we have in modern Chinese is 是。

I think we can see that this is a little more complex. So saying 'Modern Chinese is as complex as Abkhaz, just in a different way' leaves no space for Classical Chinese to be even more complex...so....where does that leave us?

Uhhhhhh. Errrrrr.

(Don't worry, that's basically where the entire linguistics community is at too.)

The thing is, all these weird and wacky things that Classical Chinese is able to do are all optional. This is where the problem is. Our understanding of complexity, if you hark back to my last post so many moons ago, is that it's the description of what a language requires you to do. We equate that with grammar because in most of the languages we're familiar with, you can't just pick and choose whether to conjugate a verb or use a tense. If you are talking in third person, the verb has to change. It just...does. You can't not do it if you feel like it. There's not such thing as 'poetic license' - except in languages like Classical Chinese, well. There sort of is.

The problem both modern Chinese and Classical Chinese shows us to a different extent is that some languages are capable of highly grammatical things, but with a degree of optionality we would not expect. Classical Chinese can accurately stipulate to the Nth degree what, exactly, the grammatical relationship between two agents are in a way that is undoubtedly and even aggressively logical. But...it doesn't have to. As anybody who has tried anything with Classical Chinese knows, reading things without context is an absolute fucking nightmare. As a language it has the ability to also say something like 臣臣 which in context means 'when a minister acts as a minister'...but literally just means...minister minister. Go figure. It doesn't have to do any of these myriad complex things it's capable of at all.

So...what does this mean? What does all of this mean, for the question of whether all languages are equally complex?

Whilst I agree that the situation with Classical Chinese is fully batshit insane, the fact is most isolating languages are more like Modern Chinese: they don't do all of this stuff. And whilst classifiers and compounds are challenging, they're not quite the same as the strict binary correct/incorrect of many systems. I'm also just not convinced that languages need to be equally complex. However.

HOWEVER. In this essay/rant/lecture (?), I've raised more questions than I've answered. That's deliberate. I both think that a) the type of complexity Chinese shows is not 'enough' to work as a 'trade off' compared to languages like Abkhaz, and b) that this 'grammatical verbosity' and optionality of grammatical structures is something we don't know how to deal with at all. These are two beliefs that can co-exist. Classical Chinese especially is a huge challenge to current understandings of complexity, whichever side of the equicomplexity argument you stand on.

Because where do you place optionality in all of this? Choice? If a certain structure can express something grammatical, but you don't have to include it - is that more complex, or less so? Where do we rank optional features in our understanding of grammar? It's a totally new dimension, and adds a richness to our understanding that we simply wouldn't have got if we hadn't looked at isolating languages. This, right here, is the point of typology: to inform theory, and challenge it.

What do we do with this sort of complexity at all?

I don't know. And I don't think many professional linguists do either.

- meichenxi out

[ranjxtul]

oh my god this is gonna live rent free in my head forever.

i wanna add on that with this interpretation it’s particularly important that *madeline* is the one who made the program. in this version, she succeeds unlike any Usher at creating something. Remember Camille’s little monologue about how Ushers don’t make anything good/at all? That’s true for Roderick and *his* kids. They are so alike him in that they became extremely corrupt and and much worse off as a person with money. Madeline who’s posed to be the greediest character on the show is obviously corrupted by money to some extent but she’s in some way the most humane of the Ushers. Here comes in the key fact that she is a woman (albeit a white woman which is a whole other piece of commentary in of itself. From the beginning she knows she’s on an unequal playing field in the world because she’s a queer women so her calculation and manipulation from the beginning are much more organic and intentional. Roderick’s feeds off his sister, imitating her until Verna’s deal because he’s scared and after the deal he still doesn’t really know who he is outside of money. His greed and apathy is much more shallowly rooted (not to downplay how actually fucking tragic his plight is, i mean it’s less deeply rooted beyond himself and his children) than Madeline’s is as hers comes from how she reckoned with her marginality. She’s still an awful person and a white feminist considering how we see her in present day and how corrupt she is, but this sets her aside from the other Ushers. Thus, it sets her aside in Verna’s eyes because because Verna is fate/death. She’s also clearly attracted to Madeline when they meet which I think is a manifestation of the seeming subjectivity death can take but also Verna’s sympathy for Madeline’s plight and villain origin story so to speak. To me, I also think Madeline is hesitant about the deal and of course I’m sure it is a lot to do with facing consequences but also, she is being given everything she ever wanted and she’s wise enough to know everything comes with a price. She’s also the only Usher who ever loved Lenore (imo). Roderick is appreciative sure, but as soon as she turns on Fredrick, he sends Arthur. Madeline permits which isn’t great, but i think every interaction we see with her and Lenore is so tender and kind in a way we never see her. I think much like at the beginning, she’s aware of how awful she is and doesn’t want Lenore to be the same. By the time she met most of Roderick’s kids, money’s insidious roots had taken hold and Fredrick and Tammy would be too young to remember anything good. Before money, Madeline is angry and bitter and rightfully so, but that doesn’t change with power. A reality I think that makes her miserable. No matter how powerful and wealthy she is, she can’t escape the plight of being a queer woman. Lenore is a fresh start and i think she wants to protect Lenore from the systems that hurt her so her love and efforts to care become intentional like everything else about her. Then it becomes real. Protecting someone like that is the most genuinely loving thing to do. Obviously here is room for a conversation on how Lenore is a girl of color and Madeline is definitely ignorant on POC experience but thinks she understands, because she is a shitty person. That’s not my argument. My argument is that she’s the most humane because she genuinely loves and that’s why Verna lets a piece of her legacy (the AI, fittingly) live on when much like Roderick and his kids, because his children are so like him because of their capitalistic greed loose their humanity and isn’t the whole point of their deaths to prove how shallow and immaterial money really is? If they aren’t ‘human’ by the end, the money they leave behind aren’t a legacy. They’re an investment or a warning. Madeline is still awful, but because Madeline is the most humane, Verna allows the AI to be her legacy. An AI that is supposedly scarily accurate in matching human personality that it picked up on Lenore’s sense of compassion and justice to send ‘NEVERMORE.’ that’s so close to being human…

There is something poetic to me about how Madeline's AI only being able to text "nevermore" is interpreted as her failing, but it could have been working perfectly

Because Lenore was so intent on breaking the cycle of abuse that she didn't care about the money or the image. She didn't want to indulge. She called the cops not even knowing her dad was dead. She was willing to face the wrath of the Pym Reaper just so make sure her mom was okay. Her legacy helped pull more and more people out of abuse just because of a single phone call and some conviction

So of course her artificial conscience would say "nevermore"

[makeste]

About Deku: a criticism that i had seen used againts him is that he never morally struggle about his decisions and that he always does the right think, do you think that this is a flaw of the story, or just people having different personal tastes regarding the main characther.

for me, I definitely wouldn’t call it a flaw, if only because it’s completely intentional. the main character always saving the day in the end and never wavering from their convictions (which are almost always admirable) is a part of the genre. pick just about any other mc in shounen -- Luffy, Naruto, Goku, etc. -- and you’ll find the same.

now, that’s not to say that the criticism isn’t valid. but the thing is, to me it’s like criticizing horror for being too scary, or criticizing comedy for not taking things seriously enough. shounen mcs are supposed to have those idealistic convictions. they’re supposed to have strong morals. it’s a part of the genre. it’s a feature of the genre, in fact. it’s one of the reasons why people gravitate to these stories, because it’s comforting and dependable.

these mcs aren’t perfect, of course, but they almost always have strong, incorruptible moral cores, even if that sometimes makes them a bit less relatable. because the thing is, they don’t necessarily need to be relatable to everyone, but what they do need is to be someone that the average person will root for to succeed. not necessarily role models, but someone who the average person will side with and support. hence why the strong moral backbone is so important. shounen mcs are supposed to reflect all of those shounen virtues like hope and courage and determination and justice and empathy and compassion. all that heroic shit. they have to embody that. it kind of comes with the territory.

and it’s fine to dislike that, because a lot of people see it as overly preachy and unrealistic and boring to a degree, and that’s understandable. it is predictable, and that predictability can be a double-edged sword. it’s familiar and reassuring, but it can also be dull and lacking in suspense, and there isn’t always a way around that. and this does mean that the mc won’t always necessarily be the most complex or interesting character in the series. they tend to be characters you look up to and admire, as opposed to characters you relate to personally. which is fine of course, but it’s a big reason why mcs often rank second or third in popularity polls, because the characters that are the most popular tend to have a bit more moral complexity. but again, that’s just part of the genre though. it’s not the mc’s job to be relatable; their job is simply to be someone that we can root for.

so to get back to your question, as I said, I don’t think this is a flaw of the story, because to me that would imply a mistake in the writing, which this isn’t. it’s very deliberate, and anyone who’s read or watched enough shounen knows that this is par for the course. so while you might disagree about whether or not it should be, imo that becomes more of a general argument against the genre itself than against BnHA or Deku’s character in particular.

and for what it’s worth, while I do understand the criticisms against him, for me at least, Deku is a very interesting character. like, just speaking from a strictly personal and totally subjective standpoint, I like him. I find him interesting. I find his personality, character, and story interesting. I find his struggles interesting. and he does have them, even if they’re not always of the “right vs wrong” variety. just because you know the right thing to do doesn’t mean it’s always easy. just because you ultimately wind up making the best decision doesn’t mean that the struggle is meaningless or boring, at least not to me. Deku often finds himself in situations where there is no easy way out. that’s interesting!! even if he does figure out a solution in the end, that doesn’t make the conflict any less interesting while it is going on. it’s just that it’s more of a “how is he gonna manage to get out of this one” suspense than a “will he make it out” suspense. that to me is the interesting part. when you’re reading about Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot solving a mystery, there’s never any doubt of whether they’ll solve it, because that’s not the focus of the story. the story is about how they will solve it. you’re not supposed to doubt whether the mc in shounen will succeed in the end, because it’s never been about that. the question isn’t will they. the question is how.

and I personally find the how of Deku’s story to be fascinating. this is a young boy who’s had heroic ambitions all his life, but who sometimes questions his own worthiness to fulfill them. he has a power that might be the world’s best hope against the strongest evil the world has ever known, but he’s inexperienced and has trouble controlling that power. he has an admirable need to save and protect others, but that same need makes him reckless, and occasionally puts him at great risk. he has a tendency to be short-sighted, and to make decisions that save others in the short term, but make things more difficult in the long term (take the current status of his arms, for instance -- using them against Tomura was a gamble that didn’t pay off, and in doing so he may have damaged them beyond repair).

and even though it’s the job of a shounen mc to bring all of the other characters together, this is the one thing he still hasn’t personally grasped yet, as he’s still stuck in the “I can’t put anyone else at risk so I’ll just have to do it all alone” stage of his development, and is going to need help in order to finally progress to the “everyone else is aware of the risks and prepared to make those sacrifices just like me, so I’m going to have to trust them and let them help me because it will take all of us in order to succeed” final, Enlightened stage. this is shaping up to perhaps be his greatest personal challenge, and it’s something that for my part I find very compelling. all of these flaws are compelling to me, actually. I don’t know if they count as “real” flaws to everyone or not, but frankly I don’t care. they’re interesting to me, and I could read about that shit all day.

and so for me personally, it doesn’t matter as much whether he’s morally conflicted or suffers too much from What A Good Person syndrome or whatever lol. because so far at least, that hasn’t affected my fondness for him at all. there are plenty of other things I find relatable about him, and the struggles he does go through have plenty of weight to me. ymmv! but to me he is extremely likable, and I enjoy reading about him, and I’m invested in his story and want him to succeed. and those are all of the character metrics I care about. I think that objectively, he’s a good shounen mc, and subjectively, he’s interesting and I like him. and I don’t really have a good, clever/punchy way to end this meta lol, so I guess I’ll just leave it at that.

[mueritos]

so glad people are realizing these ideas of “rationality” or “logical arguments” (whether this applies to any sort of “discourse” but here I mean on the topic of transmedicalism”) are all rooted in white supremacy and the patriarchy. And I don’t mean using logic to discuss glucose cells or bouyancy, im talking about the concept that we must approach complex human issues in the most rational way possible to remove all biases. Transmeds like Kevin Garrage and Blaire Racist like to parade themselves as The Most Logical Trans people, even though all of their content is emotionally charged reactionary content that’s mostly seen in conservative spaces, and to make it worse, the content they make spreads harmful misinformation about marginalized communities.

Patricia Hill Collins’ “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought” sums up this violent separation of understanding and advocating for your own community in spaces of knowledge and discussion. I highly recommend reading her paper, because while she focuses on the self-knowledge of Black woman, a LOT of what she speaks about can be applied to other marginalized groups. BIPOC in fields of academia and discourse are forced to produce thought and knowledge under a system that advocates for knowledge by and for the dominant group (White/cis/het/abled-bodied/etc), therefore, when many marginalized people enter academic spaces with the goal of studying their community, they’re forced to separate themselves from their community to “reduce bias”, reduce the radicalization of their thought so as not to provoke the established dominant group’s structure of knowledge and thought, and also reducing the radicalization of their knowledge in order to even get published/funding. Collins writes it here best: “Since researchers have widely differing values, experiences, and emotions, genuine science is thought to be unattainable unless all human characteristics except rationality are eliminated from the research process”, and here “Emotion indicates that a speaker believes in the validity of an argument. Consider Ntozake Shange’s description of one of the goals of her work: ‘Our [Western] society allows people to be absolutely neurotic and totally out of touch with their feelings and everyone else’s feelings, and yet be very respectable. This, to me, is a travesty. . . I’m trying to change the idea of seeing emotions and intellect as distant faculties’.”

Transmedicalism is rooted in the idea that there is a sort of irrationality related to being trans. That there MUST be a logical reason for the way someone’s gender is the way it is, and if it is not the way transmedicalism dictates it should be, then it is wrong. Gender in itself is inherently irrational, it is a social construct upheld by white supremacy, the patriarchy, and colonization. Nothing about gender makes sense, we have all been socialized to believe it should be this way due to Western society pushing these ideals of what a man and a woman should be. Even globally you cannot find the exact same ideals or manurisms that we typically associate with men and women in the West.

Transmedicalism serves a purpose, and that is to take something that is as confusing and weird of questioning your gender and being transgender and reduce it down to something understandable. This is why you see the common experience of younger trans people or trans people who are just starting transitioning to fall into the transmed blackhole. The truth is, personal experiences with gender, with life, with society, with the self are all credible. Feelings and emotions DO have their place in academia and in life, and the idea that they don’t just contributes to the violent idea that we do not belong in these spaces of study. We are taught that our identities must be accommodated to the dominant culture, because if we truly let trans people exist as freely as we should, it would cause the dominant group’s power to begin to crumble. It’s also important to mention that even if feelings were disregarded when it comes to letting trans expression be free, trans people have existed for CENTURIES in nearly ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD and have been documented throughout history with complex gender structures, expression, and spiritual values (Two-Spirit, los Muxes, etc). History in itself is a fact, and by disregarding the historical identity of trans folks by assuming dysphoria is a byproduct of transness when it actually is a byproduct of colonization is further colonizing trans identities.

As trans people, we simply do not owe anyone an explanation for why we exist and why we do the things we do or why we express ourselves a certain why and why we use these words to describe our experience, etc and etc. Your experience is credible. Your feelings are credible. Your transness is real, and somebody else’s transness will never take away from your own. You do not owe cis people validation, you do not need to make your transness palatable to cis people, and you are not an embarrassment to the trans community for expressing your gender in a way transmeds do not understand. You are not the reason why transphobia exists, your transness is not ugly, weird, unnatural....

Your transness is your own, and that is what makes it wonderful. To transmeds: Kill the colonizer in your brain.

[raayllum]

(I'm asking a question again, sorry) We know there's is a few years time skip between TTM and S4, meaning Rayllum's separate is longer than they together right? Aaron said that people don't need to read TTM to watch S4. For me, seems like a lot of people in this fandom didn't truly understand Rayla's decision at the end of TTM. So how dose Wonderstorm handle this? I mean they have to tell people Rayla's lie and leaving, solve her self-worth issues and have to make sure audience understand it.

The timeskip period hasn’t been confirmed. It could be anywhere from 3 months to 6 years. We don’t know. I’m personally betting on 6 months to a year. But Rayllum being separated for longer than they were ‘together’ (2.5 months in terms of knowing each other, 1.5 months of dating) doesn’t really matter. It’s sad, yes, but it would have no bearing on the strength of their connection; that shit is Forever. He jumped off a mountain for her and she considers him family. End of story.

The only people I saw who didn't understand her decision at the end of TTM were people not understanding the way grief works in TDP thematically as a whole, which at this point just means they're missing a key part of the show and it is too late. They can be left by the wayside. It's not the show or the crew's responsibility to change itself to address fandom misunderstandings or discourse, so I honestly wouldn't even take that into account. But, in terms of how to communicate what happened in TTM to the audience, let me take you on an extremely self indulgent walk through of how Wonderstorm could achieve all these things pretty easily

The short form:

4x01: lots of political stuff with ezran, establishes that rayla left and callum is presumably looking for her. we don’t see rayla at all

4x02: rayla alone style episode, maybe interspersed with like, vague xadian politics (including some janaya?)

4x03: callum searching, and some claudia / aaravos / viren stuff on the rise

4x04: ends with rayllum seeing each other for the first time

4x05: fallout / hashing a lot of things out. something keeps them side by side (shared goal concerning the dark mage trio, maybe?)

4x08: rayla dips again at a last ditch effort to protect him, but callum’s completely burned through his anger at this point

4x09: full reunion / reconciliation, aaravos gets out of the mirror?

The long (self indulgent) form:

4x01 / 4x02 — Could open with narration of Callum explaining what's happened a bit since s3 in order to parallel s2, and that Rayla is gone / he misses her and is likely but not necessarily looking for her. Another easy (indulgent) way to demonstrate this would be to have a cute and brief happy Rayllum scene in Katolis, only for Callum to wake up and for it to be a memory / dream.

4x02 - 4x06 — plenty of time for the searching to take place, can have Callum or Rayla explaining to others along their journey why they're separated / that they miss each other. If Rayla has continued to isolate herself, her deteriorating mental state will be pretty clear from that alone.

4x04 - 4x07 — ample time for a reunion. I’m personally putting my money on 4x04 ending on a cliffhanger where they see each other again for the first time, as the 4th episode of every season has always been really important for their relationship, with 4x05 being the actual reunion / initial fallout. A lot of what happened can also come out in their argument, pretty naturally through dialogue: “You left me!” “I had to, I couldn’t risk you—” “Oh but you can risk yourself?” as well as the root of where Rayla’s decisions are coming from.

Additionally, Rayla’s decision isn’t surprising to anyone who knows her; it’s the same stunt she’s pulled over and over again throughout s1-s3 with flinging herself first and foremost into danger. More precisely, it was what she did in 2x07, 3x08, and 3x09, all in ways that heavily involved Callum and his devotion/concern for her. Understanding what a character does doesn’t mean it’s right, or that the audience has to agree with it, but simply knowing and engaging with why they’re doing it. 

(Aka yes, I’m at the point where I believe that the only people who can’t understand her decision in TTM are acting in bad faith / likely haven’t been through a lot of grief in their lives. Which again, grief is arguably one of the main themes of the show. You don’t have to know / have experienced grief to understand that. But if they don’t understand that, they probably don’t understand the show and its characters very well.)

Season four is not going to be enough time to wrap up, at that point, four seasons of self worth issues. I’m not expecting it to. What I am expecting / hoping from season four is to see the turning point in Rayla’s journey with self worth. The moment when she realizes she has to choose to stay, and choose life / a life with Callum (possibly in order to also save him, as well), and that she’s worthy of those things. That it’s not always her responsibility and that it’s certainly not her responsibility to do things alone, and that she hasn’t / won’t lose all the people she loves purely because they love her and she loves them. 

4x07 - 4x09 but likely 4x09 for that turning point.

[balanceoflightanddark]

THIS. All of this. Legend of Korra TRIES to take a "sophisticated" look on these issues, but never really commits to any of them and goes for a bullshit "both sides" argument. While it is important to look at stuff like this from multiple angles and viewpoints, eventually you do need to take a stand and determine which side has a stronger argument. Cause ultimately these issues can't exactly be addressed if you can't find a compromise between two completely incompatible sides.

Especially when the narrative completely misrepresents the villains' point of view. @prying-pandora666 already talked about Amon in detail so I'm not really gonna cover ground like that. But in the case of the other villains...Unalaq is demonized to be some crazed eco-terrorist who's actions do more harm to the planet than it fixes. While eco-terrorists do exist, environmentalists typically AREN'T violent lunatics. Which is kind of an important distinction to make (which they obviously don't). Same thing with him advocating for the preservation of spiritual sites, since the creators don't seem to understand that those places in the real world are important pieces of a people's identity. And how disturbing those sites is essentially erasing their culture.

Zaheer...geeze. Anarchy is NOT about completely destroying the establishment and killing as many people as possible. It's about drawing attention to unfair systems and working to give power back to the people. Zaheer on the other hand doesn't strike me as some crusader for the people. He strikes me as some tryhard murderer and nihilist who thinks the world sucks and uses that as justification for causing the Earth Kingdom to descend into chaos where thousands of innocents will suffer. Zaheer is many things, but Hobie from Spider-Verse he isn't. I know they tried to make him sympathetic, but considering what he did to Korra and how many people suffered because of him...I honestly have more sympathy for the rest of the Red Lotus than him.

Kuvira...I'll admit I do like her. Genuinely. Hell, when I was younger, I was sort of rooting for her since she was actually doing something compared to the heroes who did jack to help out with the struggling Earth Kingdom. But...yeah. She hasn't aged well. Turning her into a fascist completely destroyed the attempts to make her look good and makes her "redemption" look completely asinine. While I get what they were going for and in some regard do like the idea behind her, how she was handled was horrible.

As for Varrick...I hate his guts. Like genuinely hate his guts. Yet for some reason we're supposed to like him.

The thing that bothers me though is that Kuvira and Varrick are supposed to be sympathetic despite being the most...well, "American" of the villains. They're more indicative of the status quo, and anyone else are just parodies of those who they're supposed to represent. Which...does fit in with the centrist belief that "the system isn't wrong. It's the people in charge who cause the problems. Not the system itself". Problem is, that belief doesn't solve the problems that led to Amons or Zaheers or Unalaqs. Especially when they've been dumbed down like they are here.

They tried so hard to be more mature and smart than ATLA...but in the end they're more childish and dumb.

On the Disconnect Between ATLA and LOK: Or Why Reactionary Centrism Ruins Everything

I’ve made it no secret that I’m no fan of LOK’s writing for a number of reasons. But today I want to focus on only one issue: its politics.

I am baffled as to why LOK is seen as being the more “woke” story. Just because the protagonist is a buff brown woman with a female love interest (only implied until the comics, really)? This is such an incredibly shallow reading focusing only on aesthetics and ignores the actual content and philosophies LOK espouses.

But let’s not get into religion, iconography, the effects of colonialism and westernization etc, or we’ll be here forever.

Instead let’s just focus on the politics.

The Forge

Part of the disconnect between ATLA and LOK are the cultural conditions in the USA when both were made. The forge from whence they came was quite different.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

ATLA criticized imperialism.

If this show had been made during the height of Manifest Destiny, or during our super fun times illegally annexing territories (like Hawaii), it would’ve likely struggled to tell its story as well as it did. It would’ve been far more controversial and likely would’ve needed to take a more “centrist” approach, making it seem like imperialism isn’t “all that bad”.

It might have even come out and said that it isn’t imperialism itself that is the problem, but that Sozin to Ozai were big mean dictators that did it the wrong way!

But because ATLA came out in the 2000s—during a time in which the world had widely come around to thinking imperialism is kinda some super villain schtick—it was easy for the story to focus on the perspective of the victims of such campaigns and tell it from this point of view.

We don’t get long segments of feeling sorry for Ozai, now do we? The closest we get is Azula, who herself serves as a victim of this war that has consumed her childhood and deprived her of a safe, loving environment in which to grow and develop, instead having been groomed into a living weapon for her father and nation’s war machine.

So now let’s compare this to LOK.

The Legend of Korra

What does the first season of LOK cover? Collectivism, social activism, civil disobedience escalating to acts of violent defiance against the state.

What was going on in the USA in 2012 when LOK came out?

Occupy Wallstreet.

Socialism vs capitalism, the 99% versus the 1%, civil rights and equality; these are all issues we are still grappling with today. They’re highly politicized and divisive. There is no universal agreement about them.

And so LOK had no “safe” villain or “evil” ideology to combat. Instead it had a complicated and widely divisive topic to tackle that was contentious then and continues to be today.

As a result? Too much time is wasted equivocating.

Both Sides Are The Same! (But Not Really)

We get some soft worldbuilding early on in Book 1 of LOK showing how the infrastructure of this city is built to benefit benders and box out non-benders, but this is never given real focus. We SEE how the trains and police are dominated by earth/metal benders, we SEE how factory jobs employ lightning benders, while non-benders live in the slums which subject them to violence. But none of this is ever the focus or the point.

Almost as if the show is afraid to make a real critique from the perspective of the working class or an oppressed minority group.

Instead the story quickly falls off a cliffside as every tired old pejorative thrown at communists is recycled for Amon.

His sympathetic backstory is a complete fabrication meant to hide that he is actually part of the oppressor class.

They pretend to be the powerless oppressed group, and yet have the funding of the richest industrialist in the city?

The rich industrialist is a member of this supposedly oppressed class but really he’s just a secret villain looking to change the world for his own personal reasons and not to protect his fellow nonbenders (these same accusations are thrown at Jewish people re: Marxism).

There are no sincere attempts to communicate their grievances sympathetically or build a coalition or garner public support. Instead The Equalists only use violence, fear, and other oppressive silencing tactics.

The desire to make everyone equal by “stealing” people’s individuality. (The old “make everyone equal heights by cutting tall people’s legs down” chestnut).

And more!

This is kinda bonkers propaganda if you’re looking at it from a left-wing perspective, right?

And it seems weirdly incoherent if you’re trying to look at it from a right-wing perspective, especially with Tarrlok standing in as the villain “on the other side”.

But it makes PERFECT sense as an enlightened centrist horseshoe-theory piece that can’t commit to either side and has to warp and undermine its own story to fit a “both sides are wrong” message. Heck, it’s so heavy handed it even made Amon and Tarrlok brothers!

This is the problem that plagues all of LOK.

Look at the other villains too!

Amon: Civil Rights Activist or Bad Faith Opportunist?

Amon

Pretends to be: A civil rights activist for an oppressed minority group.

Is actually: A bad faith actor whipping up a small or non-issue into a much bigger one and convincing people to turn on each other for his own personal gain/revenge. Once defeated, the problem disappears.

Electing a non-bender somehow makes everyone happy and the problem is never addressed again. Just like electing Obama ended racism! Oh wait…

Unalaq: Spiritual Environmentalist or Environmental Satanist?

Unalaq

Pretends to be: A spiritualist concerned about the environment and the spirits. Basically Al Gore meets Tenzin Gyatso but willing to start a civil war over it.

Is actually: An occultist weirdo who wants to fuse with LITERALLY SATAN and usher in 10,000 years of darkness or something, and willing to start a war over it.

In an attempt to make a spiritual foil for Korra, who struggled with the spiritual parts of being the Avatar, the story took a weird turn and made a choice widely regarded as “fanfiction on crack” by having Unalaq aspire to become “The Dark Avatar”.

But it’s okay, you see, because while Unalaq’s criticisms of waning spirituality and lack of protection of holy sites could be seen as a knock against environmentalism, by the end Korra recognizes that Unalaq had a point and that the spirit portals should be left open.

So why exactly did Unalaq want to be the Dark Avatar and usher in an era of darkness? How was that supposed to resolve the problem he presented and Korra ended up agreeing with?

It doesn’t, and once again we are left with a contradictory centrist message of “protecting the environment is good but you should be suspicious of anyone that actually advocates for it”.

Also thanks for demystifying the origin of the Avatar and ruining the original lore for where bending came from with your Prometheus/Christian allegory. Ugh.

Zaheer: Spiritual Guru Fighting Against Modernity or A Charismatic Dummy Who Learned Everything About Anarchy From a Prager U Coloring Book

Zaheer

Pretends to be: An anarchist seeking to bring down oppressive regimes, therefor resetting the world to a more egalitarian time

Is actually: An idiot who doesn’t even know the difference between an ancom and an ancap and has no coherent ideology. He just wants chaos, I guess, which isn’t whah anarchy or anything is about.

Perhaps realizing they messed up so badly with Unalaq that even the creators were unhappy with the results, they attempted the spiritual foil idea again with Zaheer.

This time they actually had a writing staff which makes this season the agreed upon best of LOK.

But the tip-toeing around making any actual criticisms and falling back on the “both sides are bad” cop-out are only exacerbated by how uninformed and nonsensical Zaheer’s actions are. Not unlike Amon, he takes none of the steps an actual activist would take. He never even speaks to the people of Ba Sing Se to find out what they need or want. He just kills their leader, announces it, refuses to elaborate, then bounces and lets the city tear itself apart in the power vacuum.

It’s an entertaining spectacle! Just like his later torture of Korra is visceral. But none of it has any real substance to support it and so the horrific acts he commits feel like senseless edgelord tantrums.

Even Bolin knows it. Once Zaheer is defeated, Bolin shoves a sock in his mouth, therefor cementing Bolin as my favorite of the Krew for all time.

Kuvira: Literal Nazi or Literal Nazi but she didn’t mean it!

Kuvira

Pretends to be: A fascist, putting people in labor camps and uses the equivalent of an atom bomb to crush her enemies under heel in the name of unifying the continent under her control.

Is actually: All of those things but she had good intentions! She just went too far! Give her a slap on the wrists because her and Korra aren’t so different, you see!

Perhaps the most bizarre writing choice was to make the fascist the only truly sympathetic villain of this series. The reasons become quite clear, however, when we recognize one thing.

Yes, she’s styled after the Nazis.

Yes, her actions in modern day are more reminiscent of Russia.

But who is the only nation to have ever used a weapon of mass destruction on the level of the atom bomb? The USA.

And here is where the unwillingness to make a bold criticism or take a hard controversial stance is the most apparent.

Kuvira acts like a fascist and has a lot of Nazi-vibes, but she is also a grim reminder of the USA’s own imperial history. Of our flippant use of a horrifying technology that still continues to have consequences for the descendants of the victims even today. It is one of the worst violations of human rights and decency in history. And the USA is the only nation to have ever actually used one.

So if you ever feel it’s weird that Kuvira was arguably the worst of the villains but got off with only house arrest and a happy ending with hugs from her family? You’re not alone. Kuvira has to be “not that bad” or else you’re critiquing the USA itself. And that is a level of controversy this franchise doesn’t seem interested in dipping it’s toes into.

It’s the reason they equivocate and justify by having the Earth Prince step down and choose democracy. This isn’t an East Asian ideal. This wouldn’t have been a popular or virtuous choice in that time period. Many would’ve regarded it as tyranny of the majority, or a disorganized chaos without a consistent central authority.

It’s only seen as the perfect solution in the Democratic West. So you see, it’s not so bad, because at least we have democracy! We aren’t as bad as Kuvira who really isn’t all that bad either! Or so the narrative tries to apologize for itself.

And this is even more apparent with everyone’s problematic fav!

Varrick: How Elon Musk Wants Us To View Him vs What Elon Musk Wishes He Was

Varrick!

Is presented as: A quirky, funny, Tony Stark-esque genius who made a mistake and deserves a redemption!

Is actually: A war-profiteer willing to escalate tensions and shed the blood of his own people with no remorse to make money. Also he builds the equivalent of the atom bomb for Kuvira and her allegorical Nazis. But he gets a happy ending with a weirdly westernized wedding anyway!

Isn’t it telling that the villain who is written to be the most loveable and sympathetic is, in fact, the capitalist industrialist?

And not like that yucky evil industrialist Hiroshi Sato funding the Equalists and their civil rights movement.

No, no! Varrick is the good kind of industrialist! The kind that is non-political and mostly cares about money and inventions! After all, he only built a weapon of mass destruction for the Nazis, not the civil rights protestors!

Which brings us to…

Our Civilized Poverty vs their Savage Poverty!

And hey, that’s fair because look at the differences between Republic City and Ba Sing Se!

Sure, both had destitute populations starving and without proper shelter due to the disconnected elite leaders who didn’t care about their plight.

But the homeless people of Republic City are presented as jolly and helpful and never state a single grievance even as they live in a tent city underground! Everyone knows that democratic poverty is better! Therefor Sato was totally unjustified in funding an equality movement!

The poor people of BSS, on the other hand, are victims of that mean old non-democratic Earth Queen and later of the power vacuum left by her assassination, therefor their plight is ACTUALLY horrific. Kuvira may have been bad but she and Varrick are justified because of the unAmerican conditions!

Looking at it this way, so many of LOK’s problems fall into place. It perhaps serves as lesson in not tackling complex problems with the intention of a clean solution unless you’re willing to take a controversial stance and stick to your convictions.

I don’t think the creators intended to make a libertarian criticism of every social movement and apologia for capitalism and fascism. It’s just a sad reflection of what is and isn’t controversial in our current society. Divorced from actual morality or perspective.

What a waste.

This Post Brought To You By: Viewers Like You! (or: Check out this thing I made)

All that said, if you want a well-written and more adult take on the ATLA universe, check out the Kyoshi and Yangchen novels! F. C. Yee doesn’t pull any punches and perfectly balanced the darker, more visceral elements an adult story can have, with expert worldbuilding and humanized characters that feel believable even when they’re in fantastical situations.

Or if you want more ATLA instead, kindly check out @book4air: A project creating a pseudo Book 4 using both the official comics and original materials, fully dubbed, orchestrated, and partially animated by industry pros who happen to be fans!

Some comics are getting rewrites too, so whether you love the comics and want a fresh take, or hate the comics and want a change, we are doing our best to make this accessible for everyone including people with disabilities who may not be able to enjoy the originals.

Check out our first episode here!

If you can afford to, consider supporting us on Patreon! Every episode is expensive to produce and we are a bunch of broke artists. Some which don’t even have consistent or reliable housing. Any little bit helps.

If you can’t, no worries! You can still help by spreading the word so our videos can overcome the YouTube algorithm.

With all my love for this franchise and its fandom, I hope you all continue to enjoy your favs regardless of my criticisms.

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Hey you said you don’t agree

as it is

For DE!McGonagall but you can make it work with some changes?

The post anon is referencing.

You take my words much too seriously. I really meant "as it is" as filler, though I suppose there is something to be said.

In the most tautological statement I can make: If I believed McGonagall was a Death Eater then I'd believe McGonagall was a Death Eater.

Given the source material we have, I don't.

But let's get into it.

Why Don't I Think McGonagall's a Death Eater?

The livejournal OP makes very valid arguments, cites canon very well, and makes a very convincing argument for why McGonagall is a Death Eater (and correctly predicts that Snape, in fact, was a double agent for Dumbledore).

However, there are other explanations for the arguments they cite.

Namely, the wizarding world is culturally full of assholes and the society itself, even characters meant to be 'good', is prejudiced against muggleborns and muggles.

That, and the Order itself is completely incompetent, not just McGonagall.

The Wizarding World is Not Supportive of Muggleborns or Muggles

The Wizarding World seems to be divided into three camps. Those who blow up muggleborns, those who quietly tolerate them, and then those who say they support them but wouldn't invite them over for dinner.

We see hints of rampant unemployment in the muggleborn population. We see near universal derision of muggles and muggleborns in general.

Most of the good characters, Harry's friends and associates, fall into this third category.

We have the Weasleys.

Arthur treats muggles much like white people treat black culture, he appropriates the aspects he finds neat and completely fails to understand muggles in the slightest. Molly turns on Hermione and accuses her of being a scarlet woman in a manner that feels very much like, if Hermione were not an uppity muggleborn, she would not be derided in such a manner.

Ron makes quite a few statements throughout the series about Harry's muggle relatives and that they're "the wrong sort of muggle" or just that they're being muggle in general makes them lesser.

Harry picks up on this and starts saying similar things himself. In trying to go to Hogsmeade he notes to McGonagall that his relatives are muggles, they just don't get it, you know?

My point being, Minerva says derisive things about muggles throughout the series. When Dumbledore leaves Harry on the Dursley's doorstep she's appalled, as she views them as "the worst kind of muggle" and heavily implies that she thinks any muggle is not suited to raising Harry Potter.

The OP argues that this is an odd thing for one of the "good" characters to say.

I argue that all the "good" characters say as much, at least, the ones who grew up or assimilated into the wizarding world culture. Minerva McGonagall is far from alone in her derision of muggles.

McGonagall Sure Does a Whole Lot of Nothing

OP argues that, for a character that's a part of the Order, McGonagall takes damningly little action throughout the series.

Snape is always the one acting on some order of Dumbledore. He interacts with Quirrell and saves Harry's life in first year, he gives Harry the occlumency lessons, and later he assists Dumbledore's suicide, aids Draco in infiltrating the castle, and does a whole bunch of behind the scenes work on Dumbledore's orders.

What the hell does McGonagall do?

She teaches her classes, is very upset about Umbridge for a while, and then in the Deathly Hallows enables the children's rebellion.

One explanation for this is that McGonagall is suspiciously incompetent. She is actively sabotaging Order operations while also maintaining her cover. McGonagall is a Death Eater spy.

However, once again, there are other explanations.

First, Dumbledore trusts no one. The reason Snape is the only one to do anything is because Snape is bound by oath and crippling guilt to Harry Potter (and thus Dumbledore himself).

If Dumbledore lets McGonagall peek behind the curtain, do any real task, then he loses control. McGonagall will likely be appalled at Harry Potter's inevitable fate and his ongoing child abuse. She could very well defect and leave the Order.

Dumbledore, ultimately, cannot trust Minerva just as he can't trust any Order member besides Severus Snape.

Minerva does no work because Dumbledore doesn't give her any.

Second, the Order in general is incompetent. None of them do any task of any middling importance ever. The most important thing most of them get up to is trying and failing to babysit a teenage Harry Potter.

Remember, Dumbledore did not sanction the raid on the Department of Mysteries, that was Sirius yelling "CHAAAAAARGE!"

Once again, McGonagall doesn't stand out. If McGonagall's a spy because she doesn't do anything then the entire Order works for Voldemort, with the exception of Snape. (That would actually be a hilarious AU).

As for Minerva's hands off teaching, remember that despite all appearances the Wizarding World is not a modern western nation, they have a different view of education than we do.

Among the staff, Minerva is not alone in being hands off, Slughorn alone is the one to interact with the children and take an extra step to prepare them for their futures.

If Harry's getting into fights in the hallways, is not prepared for his future, then that's Harry's problem. McGonagall's there to teach.

And as it is she does play favorites with Harry, in that she purchases him a broom, allows him to play quidditch early, and is often very fond of him, Ron, and Hermione.

Remember Lupin, he was Harry's favorite professor, and despite Harry's perception Lupin was extremely hands off.

She Wears Green

This one would actually convince me were it not for the others. JKR loves her color coded characters. Green is the color of limes, close to lemons, which we all know means EVIL.

McGonagall wearing green could very well have been JKR's hint she's not a good character.

However, after all's said and done, JKR also likes her villains very noticeable and obvious. Voldemort is flatly evil, she doesn't want you admiring him in the least, every villain is similarly unabashedly bad.

It's obvious who you should root for and who you should hate.

McGonagall, were she a Death Eater, would be far too nuanced. This nuance, after all, was what ultimately signaled that Snape was secretly good.

Deathly Hallows

And there's the fact that by the end of the series, the cat's out of the bag. Voldemort was fully in control, and while McGonagall could have been stationed in Hogwarts as a spy, she did a whole lot of nothing there.

She enabled the children rebelling against Voldemort and she does not report Snape's suspicious actions to Tom. (And Snape does take actions which a competent Minerva would note as suspicious).

And given she helps lead the battle against Voldemort, leading the school children at that, I think it's safe to say that there's maintaining your cover and then there's not having a cover at all because you're not a Death Eater.

TL;DR

Minerva McGonagall is not a Death Eater

But You Didn't Answer the Question!

Right, what would convince me she was.

Well, Deathly Hallows would have had to sell me on it. We'd either need an undeniable reveal, a la Snape, or we'd need something bad to happen to Snape much earlier (as McGonagall rats him out to Tom).

Of course, this would lead very AU places as Harry would never discover he's a horcrux. Or else, McGonagall would find out via Snape, tell Tom, and then we get into that whole AU.

Point being, Deathly Hallows would have had to be much different.

[rose-icosahedron]

did you know that jews don’t try and convert people? in fact if you tell a rabbi you want to convert you will need to insist multiple times, and acknowledge the fact that you are joining a minority group and know what that entails.

now that I have your attention I want to talk to you about Judaism. most people know that Judaism exists as a religion but they don't know much and often think they know a lot of stuff that isn't true so I'm gonna bust a few common myths for you if you care to read on.

1: judiasm doesn't put any focus on the afterlife most people assume that jews like many other religions belief in an afterlife that you must do good in life to get into. while judisam does have an afterlife, it isn't in the primary teachings like Christianity. 

2: jews do things because of tradition. most of the practices are carried on for tradition, you follow it because its what your ancestors did. and what you ancestors died or were inslaved or discriminated apon for. while yeas supposedly god did say those rules originally.

3: you don’t need to believe in god to be a jew. aka, tons of jews are atheists jewishness is just as much a cultural identity as it is a religion, and some smaller groups exist within it such as ashkenazi and sephardic which have their own foods, practices, and yes, actual ethnicities that you can sometimes tell by looking at them. its a religion, but its also a cultural and ethnic identity.

4: hannuka isnt an important holiday historically with modern press and times you would get the impression its our big festival holiday, however its not. its only a big deal because of Chrismas. the important jewish festival meal is the passover or pesach seder, a ritual meal during spring celebrating the jews escape from Egypt.

5: jews argue about the meanings of things. its a whole deal, along with our holy text we copy and reprint a text many times the size of rabbi’s arguing about the meanings of lines. at passover seder we read the old arguments of rabbi’s about the passover story and add in our own arguments. if you ask your rabbi for advice on something and then argue with him based on your reading or understanding of the text you will probably be rewarded.

a lot of people think jews are just “old christans” and that chrisantiy is just a better/newer version of an older religion. its not. its just not. they are different religions with a shared root, and a lot of the above misconceptions are because of that.

I’m open to talk about my jewishness and what i know about the religion and ashkenazi jews, but I have one final fact.

take a minute and take a guess at what percent of the world’s population is jewish? what about California(hint, its the state with the highest proportion of all the usa)? save your answer in your mind, then read on.

less than one percent of the world is jewish (<1%), and only three percent of California(3%). 

let that sink in.

everyone knows about jews. well everyone’s heard about them. but in all honesty people don’t know much. jews have been a minority that gets picked on for almost all of our existence. almost all jewish holidays can be summarized as “they tried to kill us, they failed, lets eat.”(passover, purim, and chanuka are all prime examples).  Golems, a old piece of jewish folklore are made to protect jews from discrimination(specifically a thing called blood libel in the original tale). discrimination on us is the majority of our history

please, give one of the smallest, oldest, most well known minorities a chance to represent itself.

goyim(non-jews) are encouraged to re-blog, and ask polite, genuine questions.

(also, last thing to clear up, just because someone is a jew, that doesn't mean they have a political opinion about Israel, it is not appropriate to ask about it unless they openly talk about world politics or assume an opinion based on the fact they are jewish)

[kopikokun]

Beach Day Blues༄ l.dh

↳ Out on a day trip to the beach with your boyfriend and his friends, you’re anticipating a fun time filled with sunny memories and sand filled swimsuits. What you’re not expecting is the cold shoulder from your usually happy-go-lucky boyfriend, but you’re going to get to the root of this issue, even if it’ll kill you.

pairing: lee donghyuck x reader ft. yuta, mark & jaehyun

content: fluff, beach day, reverse comfort fic, jealousy fic, very mildly suggestive ending

word count: 2053 words

Request 36: Haechan + “I need a hug.” (42) + “You’re cute when you’re angry.” (47) + “You own my heart.” (59) + Jealousy

← BACK TO NAVI.

— 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝.

Perhaps you’re being delusional. Perhaps you’re just dehydrated or, maybe, you rationalise, the scalding rays of the evening Sun have burned not only your skin but your brain cells too (if there were any to begin with). Maybe all of this is just in your head and you’re overthinking it.

    “Hey,” someone hisses, “is it just me or is Donghyuck giving you the cold shoulder?”

    At the question, or rather observation, your head swivels an almost sharp 90 degrees to stare Yuta straight in the eyes. “So, it wasn’t just me thinking that!”

    Yuta chuckles. “Yeah, he definitely seems off…” He peers at Donghyuck discreetly from beneath his sunglasses before turning back towards you. “Did you guys get into a fight or something?”

    “A fight? No way!” You pause, suddenly doubting yourself. “At least, I don’t think so…”

    Though you’re confident in your verdict of innocence regarding a fight, Yuta’s question prompts you to briefly run through the events of the day. To preface things, you, your boyfriend, Donghyuck, and a few of your friends—namely, Yuta, Jaehyun and Mark—had decided around half a month ago to clear up one day in advance for a ‘beach day’ this week. The idea had sprung after someone had brought up how nice and sunny the weather had been lately, and everyone just unanimously came to the conclusion that sunny weather equals beach day.

     You had begun packing for this trip a few days ahead to the surprise of everyone including yourself, which is a testament to your overwhelming excitement, because you rarely--if ever--pack that early for just a single day trip. But who can blame you? This would be your first official trip with Donghyuck. No, you should rephrase that. This would be your first official trip with Donghyuck as your boyfriend. You’ve been on plenty of trips before when you two were just ‘friends’, but now--and maybe this is the romanticist in you which you’ve successfully kept stored away up until recently speaking--it just feels different. You’re sure someone out there can relate, because you’ve never been one to obsess over something as feeble as a label, yet this trip has had your stomach in knots for ages.

  The packing process had gone smoothly--neither you nor Donghyuck had forgotten anything--and so had the car ride over. As far as you can recall, your day at the beach so far has gone without a hitch too. You’d had a little picnic, dipped in the oddly warm sea, played some beach volleyball (badly) and gotten some icecream afterward. No fights, no issues, no nothing.

   Maybe, you think, he found out I was involved in that little switch up with the sea water. You don’t entertain the idea for too long though immediately casting it away, because you know Donghyuck would never be the type to get so upset over a prank.

    So, why the attitude?

    You gaze at Donghyuck’s back, hoping that this mystery might just unravel itself if you stare long enough.

    “Huh…” Yuta’s voice tears you from your zealous staring competition with Donghyuck’s shoulders. “Then I wonder what’s up…”

    You sigh. You know you should confront him and have a mature conversation about what’s bothering him, but that’s so much easier said than done. Maybe this is God’s way of punishing you for ridiculing all those scenes in cheesy teen flicks where the couple would experience a major fall-out because of poor communication. During said scenes, you’d be pulling your hair out, internally screaming at the couple to just freaking talk already, yet now that you’ve been presented this obstacle for you to overcome yourself, you’re erring on the side of caution.

    Come on, you reason, I’ve been friends with Donghyuck for over half-a-decade and we’ve gotten into our fair share of arguments during those five years. What’s so different about now?

    Yeah, you’re right. You find yourself agreeing with your own thoughts, physically nodding along like you’re speaking to someone. Yuta raises a concerned eyebrow at you. Nothing’s different compared to then. You’re doing it again. He’s just my boyfriend, and that’s just a label. Stop. Obsessing. Over. Labels.

    Admittedly, it’s a bit embarrassing having to psyche yourself up to do this, but that’s not what’s important right now. What’s important is that little pep-talk, no matter how laughable it sounded, has gotten you to stand and saunter to Donghyuck with utmost confidence. In hindsight, you should’ve said something to Yuta beforehand instead of just springing from your seat and marching away. The thought hadn’t crossed your mind though, as it was obviously preoccupied with something arguably much more important than giving him the luxury of context.

    You decide not to be too transparent about your feelings at first as you take a seat beside Donghyuck on the sand, leaning your head on his shoulder, hoping that all of this was really just your imagination getting the best of you. You silently plead that he’ll perhaps treat you like he normally would, giving you a little peck on the cheek or at least wrapping his arm around your waist. Unfortunately, your hopes are smothered just as quickly as they arise because Donghyuck doesn’t even bat an eye at you, continuing to chat with Jaehyun and flat-out ignoring your presence. Still optimistic for a reaction, you leave a chaste kiss to his bare shoulder, just to let him know that “Hey, I’m here!”, but to no avail. Infuriatingly, he doesn’t even flinch. All he does is drone on to Jaehyun about something you couldn’t care less about.

    You huff. Audibly. A last ditch effort in vying for Donghyuck’s attention. It goes just as well as your previous attempts. You cross your arms, glaring at the side of Donghyuck’s stubborn little head, hoping to bore a deep hole through his brain. Maybe then he’ll finally take notice of you. Sensing the undeniable tensity in the air, Jaehyun clears his throat awkwardly, offering Donghyuck some lame excuse about needing to take a piss, before shuffling away. Well, at least someone knows how to take a hint.

    With Jaehyun’s departure, you’re left alone with Donghyuck. Usually, he’d be leaping to drown you in affection the second you two had privacy--or even if you two didn’t, to be frank--but all he does now is fiddle with the strings of his swimming shorts absentmindedly.

    “What’s wrong, Hyuck?” you finally ask, desperate to break this frustratingly suffocating silence. “Is something wrong?”

    Finally, after what seems like centuries, Donghyuck acknowledges your existence, though the look he gives you is not a pleasant one. In fact, it’s one of agitation. His tongue prods at his inner cheek before he says, tone bitter, “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

    Evidently taken aback, you crease your eyebrows at him. “I… Did I do something wrong, babe?”

    “Oh, come on,” he scoffs, scornful amusement overtaking his normally amiable features. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know. You can just come out and say it.”

    “Say what, Hyuck?”

    “How much more you’re into Mark than into me,” Donghyuck says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

    You can’t help but laugh, simply bewildered as to how on Earth he came to this conclusion. “I’m into who now?”

    “Mark,” Donghyuck rolls his eyes, “don’t have to pretend like you’re surprised.”

  “I’m not into--” you sigh, a smile of disbelief tugging at your lips. “Okay, tell me why you think I’m into Mark.”

    “I don’t think. I know,” Donghyuck argues and you scoff, “but it’s obvious. And I have proof. Take when we were playing volleyball for instance. The whole time, you kept eyeing Mark up and laughing at his jokes. All of them. Even the weird ones that nobody gets.”

    You snort. “Baby… I wasn’t ‘eyeing Mark up’, I was watching him just in case he missed the ball. And about the joke thing, to his credit, some of them were actually pretty funny! But, as for the the rest--and don’t tell Mark I said this--I felt kinda bad nobody else laughed at them, so I just laughed along with him. Trust me, I’ve been in his shoes before and it sucks. Not all of us are born as naturally as funny as you, Hyuck.” You’re a little remorseful that you’re essentially dissing Mark, but you’re sure he’d understand. Your relationship’s on the line here.

    Donghyuck harrumphs, but you can tell by the slight quirk of his lip that he’s a little tickled by you poking fun at Mark and he’s totally been swayed by your compliment.

    “Okay, fine that explains that, but how about when we went swimming just now? Why did you and Mark keep exchanging funny looks?”

    “That?” You giggle. “You know how your drink was mysteriously replaced by seawater?”

    “Yeah,” he trails off, his suspicion growing by the second.

    “Who do you think that was?”

    Donghyuck groans. “Wait, that was you? Seriously? That was mean, babe.”

  “Aww, I know, Hyuck. I’m sorry,” you coo. Your hand inches its way closer to his as you attempt to intertwine your fingers together.

    Donghyuck rejects your endeavour of fondness. “Nu-uh, no way. I’m not done with you yet.”

    “Oh my God, Hyuck, there’s more?” you complain, though there’s a tint of amusement in your voice.

    “Yes, there’s more, and you won’t be able to worm your way out of this one either,” he says smugly, as if it’d be a good thing if you in fact, couldn’t worm your way out of his next accusation. “How about when we went to get ice cream and you kept sliding up next to him?”

    You pout. “I just wanted to try the watermelon popsicle he got.”

    Donghyuck blinks at you, his once irritated expression dissolving. He seems dumbfounded as you hold his gaze, your mirthful smile never faltering. He turns away from you. “Oh, well… then whatever. I guess you aren’t into Mark.”

    “Hyuck,” you say, hand crawling up his arm, “were you jealous?”

    “Well, yeah, obviously,” he deadpans, still refusing to meet your gaze.

    You giggle. “You’re cute when you’re angry.”

    His cold facade is immediately abandoned at your teasing intonation, and just like that, your cheery Hyuck is back. “Baby,” he whines, readjusting himself so he’s facing you head-on, “don’t tease me. I couldn’t help but be jealous, you know?”

    “And why is that?”

    Donghyuck purses his lips. “Why? What do you mean why?” He gestures up and down, eyes sweeping over you. “Look how pretty you are! What am I supposed to do when you look this good all the time? It’s unfair, really, that you’re this pretty.”

    A blistering heat, one that is much hotter than the Sun, gathers in your cheeks. “Oh really now, Hyuck?”

    “Yes, really,” he says, genuity seeping into his every word. “Literally, everyday I’m surprised you’re even real.” You grin bashfully and Donghyuck pounds his fist to his chest dramatically like he’s been shot. “See! You’re only smiling and I’m already having heart palpitations at just twenty years old.”

    “Okay, okay, Hyuck. You can stop hyping me up now,” you chuckle. You’re beyond glad that your boyfriend has returned to his spirited self, but you know you should address what just happened seriously, just in case. “But hey, I’m sorry that I made you feel that way. Looking back, it definitely could’ve been misinterpreted as flirting and I would never want you to have any reason to feel insecure about our relationship because you own my heart, Hyuck.”

    “Aw, babe, you can be really cheesy when you want to be,” says Donghyuck, pinching your cheeks. He plays what you said off casually, but you know that deep down, it resonates with him, and he honestly appreciates your sincerity. “Come here, I need a hug.”

    “Right now? There are people around, Hyuck.”

    “But you look so good right now. I can’t resist.”

    “I don’t know, Hyuck…” You smile demurely.

    “Alright, then what about,” Donghyuck reaches to tuck your hair behind your ear, whispering, “we ditch the beach day and go cuddle in the car? My skin’s burning, anyway.”

    You grin. “They’re gonna notice that we went missing, you know?”

    “So?” Donghyuck challenges, leaning in to place a short but telling kiss on the juncture which connects your ear and your jaw. “Even better. I want them to know.”

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: As a beginner in Classics I love your Classicist themed posts. I find your caption perfect posts a lot to think upon. I suppose it’s been more than a few years since you read Classics at Cambridge but my question is do you still bother to read any Classic texts and if so what are you currently reading?

I don’t know whether to be flattered or get depressed by your (sincere) remarks. Thank you so much for reminding me how old I must come across as my youngish Millennial bones are already starting to creak from all my sins of past sport injuries and physical exertions. I’m reminded of what J.R.R Tolkien wrote, “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” I know the feeling (sigh).

But pay heed, dear follower, to what Menander said of old age, Τίμα το γήρας, ου γαρ έρχεται μόνον (respect old age, for it does not come alone). Presumably he means we all carry baggage. One hopes that will be wisdom which is often in the form of experience, suffering, and regret. So I’m not ready to trade in my high heels and hiking boots for a walking stick and granny glasses just yet.

To answer your question, yes, I still to read Classical literature and poetry in their original text alongside trustworthy translations. Every day in fact. 

I learned Latin when I was around 8 or 9 years old and Greek came later - my father and grandfather are Classicists - and so it would be hard to shake it off even if I tried.

So why ‘bother’ to read Classics? There are several reasons. First, the Classics are the Swiss Army knife to unpick my understanding other European languages that I grew up with learning. Second, it increases my cultural literacy out of which you can form informed aesthetic judgements about any art form from art, music, and literature. Third, Classical history is our shared history which is so important to fathom one’s roots and traditions. Fourth, spending time with the Classics - poetry, myth, literature, history - inspires moral insight and virtue. Fifth, grappling with classical literature informs the mind by developing intellectual discipline, reason, and logic.

And finally, and perhaps one I find especially important, is that engaging with Classical literature, poetry, or history, is incredibly humbling; for the classical world first codified the great virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, loyalty, sacrifice, and courage. These are qualities that we all painfully fall short of in our every day lives and yet we still aspire to such heights.

I’m quite eclectic in my reading. I don’t really have a method other than what my mood happens to be. I have my trusty battered note book and pen and I sit my arse down to translate passages wherever I can carve out a place to think. It’s my answer to staving off premature dementia when I really get old because quite frankly I’m useless at Soduku. We spend so much time staring at screens and passively texting that we don’t allow ourselves to slow down and think that physically writing gives you that luxury of slow motion time and space. In writing things out you are taking the time to reflect on thoughts behind the written word.

I do make a point of reading Homer’s The Odyssey every year because it’s just one of my favourite stories of all time. Herodotus and Thucydides were authors I used to read almost every day when I was in the military and especially when I went out to war in Afghanistan. Not so much these days. Of the Greek poets, I still read Euripides for weighty stuff and Aristophanes for toilet humour. Aeschylus, Archilochus and Alcman, Sappho, Hesiod, and Mimnermus, Anacreon, Simonides, and others I read sporadically.

I read more Latin than Greek if I am honest. From Seneca, Caesar, Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus, Livy, Apuleius, Virgil, Ovid, the younger Pliny to Augustine (yes, that Saint Augustine of Hippo). Again, there is no method. I pull out a copy from my book shelves and put it in my tote bag when I know I’m going on a plane trip for work reasons.

At the moment I am spending time with Horace. More precisely, his famous odes.

Of all the Greek and Latin poets, I feel spiritually comfortable with Horace. He praises a simple life of moderation in a much gentler tone than other Roman writers. Although Horace’s odes were written in imitation of Greek writers like Sappho, I like his take on friendship, love, alcohol, Roman politics and poetry itself. With the arguable exception of Virgil, there is no more celebrated Roman poet than Horace. His Odes set a fashion among English speakers that come to bear on poets to this day. His Ars Poetica, a rumination on the art of poetry in the form of a letter, is one of the seminal works of literary criticism. Ben Jonson, Pope, Auden, and Frost are but a few of the major poets of the English language who owe a debt to the Roman.

We owe to Horace the phrases, “carpe diem” or “seize the day” and the “golden mean” for his beloved moderation. Victorian poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, of Ancient Mariner fame, praised the odes in verse and Wilfred Owen’s great World War I poem, Dulce et Decorum est, is a response to Horace’s oft-quoted belief that it is “sweet and fitting” to die for one’s country.

Unlike many poets, Horace lived a full life. And not always a happy one. Horace was born in Venusia, a small town in southern Italy, to a formerly enslaved mother. He was fortunate to have been the recipient of intense parental direction. His father spent a comparable fortune on his education, sending him to Rome to study. He later studied in Athens amidst the Stoics and Epicurean philosophers, immersing himself in Greek poetry. While led a life of scholarly idyll in Athens, a revolution came to Rome. Julius Caesar was murdered, and Horace fatefully lined up behind Brutus in the conflicts that would ensue. His learning enabled him to become a commander during the Battle of Philippi, but Horace saw his forces routed by those of Octavian and Mark Antony, another stop on the former’s road to becoming Emperor Augustus.

When he returned to Italy, Horace found that his family’s estate had been expropriated by Rome, and Horace was, according to his writings, left destitute. In 39 B.C., after Augustus granted amnesty, Horace became a secretary in the Roman treasury by buying the position of questor's scribe. In 38, Horace met and became the client of the artists' patron Maecenas, a close lieutenant to Augustus, who provided Horace with a villa in the Sabine Hills. From there he began to write his satires. Horace became the major lyric Latin poet of the era of the Augustus age. He is famed for his Odes as well as his caustic satires, and his book on writing, the Ars Poetica. His life and career were owed to Augustus, who was close to his patron, Maecenas. From this lofty, if tenuous, position, Horace became the voice of the new Roman Empire. When Horace died at age 59, he left his estate to Augustus and was buried near the tomb of his patron Maecenas.

Horace’s simple diction and exquisite arrangement give the odes an inevitable quality; the expression makes familiar thoughts new. While the language of the odes may be simple, their structure is complex. The odes can be seen as rhetorical arguments with a kind of logic that leads the reader to sometimes unexpected places. His odes speak of a love of the countryside that dedicates a farmer to his ancestral lands; exposes the ambition that drives one man to Olympic glory, another to political acclaim, and a third to wealth; the greed that compels the merchant to brave dangerous seas again and again rather than live modestly but safely; and even the tensions between the sexes that are at the root of the odes about relationships with women.

What I like then about Horace is his sense of moderation and he shows the gap between what we think we want and what we actually need. Horace has a preference for the small and simple over the grandiose. He’s all for independence and self-reliance.

If there is one thing I would nit pick Horace upon is his flippancy to the value of the religious and spiritual. The gods are often on his lips, but, in defiance of much contemporary feeling, he absolutely denied an afterlife - which as a Christian I would disagree with. So inevitably “gather ye rosebuds while ye may” is an ever recurrent theme, though Horace insists on a Golden Mean of moderation - deploring excess and always refusing, deprecating, dissuading.

All in all he champions the quiet life, a prayer I think many men and women pray to the gods to grant them when they are caught in the open Aegean, and a dark cloud has blotted out the moon, and the sailors no longer have the bright stars to guide them. A quiet life is the prayer of Thrace when madness leads to war. A quiet life is the prayer of the Medes when fighting with painted quivers: a commodity, Grosphus, that cannot be bought by jewels or purple or gold? For no riches, no consul’s lictor, can move on the disorders of an unhappy mind and the anxieties that flutter around coffered ceilings.

Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt (they change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea.)

Part of Horace’s persona - lack of political ambition, satisfaction with his life, gratitude for his land, and pride in his craft and the recognition it wins him - is an expression of an intricate web of awareness of place. Reading Horace will centre you and get you to focus on what is most important in life. In Horace’s discussion of what people in his society value, and where they place their energy and time, we can find something familiar. Horace brings his reader to the question - what do we value?  

Much like many of our own societies, Rome was bustling with trade and commerce, ambition, and an area of vast, diverse civilisation. People there faced similar decisions as we do today, in what we pursue and why. As many of us debate our place and purpose in our world, our poet reassures us all. We have been coursing through Mondays for thousands of years. Horace beckons us: take a brief moment from the day’s busy hours. Stretch a little, close your eyes while facing the warm sun, and hear the birds and the quiet stream. The mind that is happy for the present should refuse to worry about what is further ahead; it should dilute bitter things with a mild smile.

I would encourage anyone to read these treasures in translations. For you though, as a budding Classicist, read the texts in Latin and Greek if you can. Wrestle with the word. The struggle is its own reward. Whether one reads from the original or from a worthy translation, the moral virtue (one hopes) is wisdom and enlightenment.

Pulvis et umbra sumus

(We are but dust and shadow.)

Thanks for your question.