#and then they're being entirely unrealistic because you wouldn't do that

[narrator-navigator-storyteller]

"why are you so paranoid" well you see i wanted to live

"why don't you trust people" well you see i wanted to live

"why do you assume the worst whenever someone acts differently" well you see,

[ckret2]

What's your stance on Ford as a person? Honestly, I believe that for thr majority of canon he is a bad person. But I believe he grew. Still not great though XD

(Love him anyways obvs)

I disagree entirely! I think he's equally as good a person as any of the other main cast.*

*Except Mabel, who, as we all know, is always right about everything.**

(**This is a lighthearted joke. For the love of god, I don't want Mabel discourse in my inbox.)

His biggest sins in the show:

After telling his brother that he was thinking about changing their shared life plans, and then discovering that his brother had gone to the high school that night for no good reason and gone to the science fair for no good reason and messed around near Ford's science project for no good reason and broke it and didn't tell Ford about it... Ford believed Stan did it intentionally and held a grudge for it. You know what, it WOULD be pretty damn hard to believe it was an accident.

Hilariously ill-equipped to cope with Fiddleford's mental health. A guy who responds to "I have anxiety" with "have you tried yoga, it helps me" isn't a bad person, he's clueless. "Character cheerfully enacts a bad idea while a loved one in the background goes NO PLEASE DON'T DO THAT" describes half the episodes of Gravity Falls.

Was successfully manipulated by a professional manipulator into believing his best friend wished him ill. Man, what a terrible person Ford is for being manipulated by a manipulator and saying cruel things to somebody he'd been genuinely convinced was trying to harm him.

??? Didn't say thanks to a guy he was still mad at after the guy fixed a problem he himself had caused. This is a solitary example of stubborn bad etiquette, jesus christ. There's half a dozen different reasons why it makes perfect sense Ford wasn't in the right mindset to feel grateful, this is not something worth indicting his entire character over.

He had high ambitions, which everyone seems to lambast him for, but high ambitions that wouldn't have required doing anybody harm! (Until the professional manipulator started manipulating him into harming the people around him, but we are going to demonstrate some reading comprehension and not blame Ford's underlying morality as a person for things he never would've done if not for Bill's bullying, con artistry, and outright lies.) Like, what is it that he wanted to do with his life? Use his talents to get rich and famous? Shit, that's exactly what Stan wanted to do with his life. It's what Dipper fantasizes about doing with his life. Even Mabel, who thinks about her long-term future the least, dreams big with her art & performances and is already making big money off cheap-ass commissions. What terrible people they all are, for—let me check my notes here—uhhh... unrealistically fantasizing about achieving success in life by doing the things they're good at.

When their dad accuses Stan of lying as a child, Ford puts his entire summer on the line to defend Stan even though he knows Stan is a habitual liar and has no reason to believe Stan is telling the truth this time.

When his new college roommate he barely even knows gets laughed at for proposing an outlandish scientific theory, his first emotion is outrage at this injustice and he drops everything to convince his already-despondent roommate that he was right and help him prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

When he moves to a new town, he tries again and again to befriend his new neighbors, and fails not because he's rude or a jerk, but because he's awkward as hell, tells terrible jokes, and sucks at identifying phoenixes.

When Fiddleford gets hurt around him, he cares about it, feels guilty about putting him in that position, doesn't want it to happen again, and tries his best to help even though he's bad at helping.

When he gets kidnapped by a weird holiday folklore creature, he concludes without even thinking about it that he's now in charge of protecting and rescuing the kidnapped kids. Yeah, then he immediately starts hollering at the folklore creature for trying to impose his religious beliefs on Ford and the kids—but like, Ford was right tho, he just had bad timing.

When he discovers that the Northwest family committed atrocities against their poorer neighbors a century ago, his first instinct is to march up to their house, find the first Northwest he can locate, and give them a piece of his mind for it. Like, this won't even FIX anything. He's just THAT OUTRAGED over the injustice.

When he sees what he thinks is a fortune telling fraud conning the people, he attempts to debunk her because he's mad to see someone cheating other people with lies—and when he can't debunk her, he just leaves her alone rather than harass her about it. Typically, if assholes think somebody's doing something wrong but don't have any proof of it and fail to get proof when they look, they decide they're right anyway and keep giving that person shit. Ford doesn't give her shit. That's the opposite of an asshole move.

When he discovers his Portal To Knowledge (And Fame & Fortune) is actually a Portal To Doom (But Still Possibly Fame & Fortune, Maybe Even Godly Power), he isn't tempted for a second to keep working on it anyway. There is no moment where Bill manages to tempt him. No matter what Bill offers, no matter how long Bill offers, never, at ANY point, does Ford have a SECOND of "but what if I did make a deal with the devil?" the way so many heroes in similar situations often do.

You ever notice that? So often moral moments in the show are presented as choices the characters make. Will or won't Dipper give Bill a "puppet" in exchange for knowledge. Will or won't Stan fight a pterodactyl to protect Mabel's pig. Will or won't Mabel hand Bipper the journal. Ford is never given a "will or won't he" moment over Bill's threats, offers of friendship, or offers of infinite power—he steamrolls straight past them without a second of consideration—because, to him, the selfish, cowardly, easy choice ISN'T EVEN AN OPTION. He doesn't even SEE it as making a choice because the possibility of doing the wrong thing is invisible. A character who wavers first before turning Bill down would look more noble for "overcoming" temptation—it's harder to notice just how much stronger Ford's moral compass must be to not even feel temptation in the first place.

Greed and pride never tempt him to join Bill's side. Exhaustion, despair, and fear never tempt him to give up. He bears up under weeks, possibly months of extreme sleep deprivation, physical torture, psychological torture, emotional torture, threats of death, threats of brainwashing, threats to his family. He doesn't hold up so that he can pat himself on the back for being a hero—if that was all it was he would've gone "screw it, this isn't worth it and nobody would know I'm the one who gave up" a week in—he does it because he simply knows it must be done and because he's so isolated (half because of Bill's influence!) that he believes he's the one who must do it, all alone.

Thinking he has to do it by himself isn't egotism or pride; it's helplessness. He thinks no one else stands a chance. He thinks he's alone.

And, when he discovers his Portal To Knowledge is a Portal To Doom, he immediately feels guilty. No trying to deny the situation to protect his ego. No shuffling the blame off to someone else. No "maybe the apocalypse could have a silver lining!" No locking the door and trying to ignore the problem. He blames himself for being fooled—he IMMEDIATELY takes full responsibility for his actions—and he CONTINUES to take responsibility FOR THE NEXT THIRTY YEARS.

He takes more responsibility than is even warranted—he treats himself like he's an idiot for believing in an APPARENT GOD who's been practicing manipulating humans for thousands of years and who had never given Ford reason to believe the portal was anything but what Bill said it was. He beats himself up to no end every single time his past with Bill comes up. He even keeps beating himself up thirty years later when he's shoving warning notes to future readers in Bill's evil unkillable book!

When he falls into the multiverse, he dedicates his entire life NOT to finding a way to rescue himself, but to finding a way to permanently stop the CHAOS GOD who's still at the threshold of destroying Ford's world and countless others. He makes himself a hated criminal in the process, just to stop Bill. He's ready to spend the rest of his life trying to protect a world he doesn't think he'll ever see again. He does it because, as he sees it, somebody has to stand in between the children and the obnoxious folklore cryptid menacing them, and he's the only adult in this damn cave with the skills and knowledge for the job.

When he gets home, he doesn't tell his family about Bill and his quest because he's afraid that doing so will get them involved and endanger them too—and because he's too deeply ashamed of himself and his mistakes to stand the thought of his family knowing about the horrible things he's done (AGAIN, WHILE BEING MANIPULATED BY THE GOD OF MANIPULATION).

He loves his great-niece and great-nephew the second he lays eyes on them; he nevertheless tries to steer away from them to keep them safe from Bill; and yet he caves to the very first temptation to emotionally bond with his great-nephew he gets, because in spite of his noble "keep them safe" intentions, he wants so so badly to be close to his family.

As pissed as he still is at Stan and even though neither of them can look at each other without hissing like cats, he still makes an attempt to start bridging their divide by inviting him to play DD&MD.

When the apocalypse happens, he immediately puts his life on the line to try to kill Bill.

And when he's captured, isn't fazed for a second by Bill's offers or threats... until his family is threatened. The exact thing he'd been trying to avoid & prevent from the very start.

And when he's reunited with Fiddleford, his immediate reaction is to point out that Fiddleford's well within his rights to hate him—which isn't a new revelation, it's not like Ford had to do any soul-searching to reach this conclusion, he'd concluded that 30 years ago the instant he realized Bill had played him and that he'd been lied to about Fiddleford.

And then he tries to kill Bill again.

And then he's ready to sacrifice his own life to kill Bill—and the only reason he doesn't is because he has a metal plate preventing him from making the sacrifice... but, Stan doesn't have a plate. If Ford hadn't had the metal plate, he would have gladly done the exact same thing Stan did—and he would have thought it was right for him and only him to make that sacrifice, because it's VERY clear he feels (and has felt from the start) that this is all his fault and he's obligated to fix it.

Over and over and over, these are Ford's two defining character traits: getting so pissed off at injustice that his common sense shuts off and he goes into terminator mode until he's righted this wrong as best he can, even when he can't actually do anything about it; and feeling like he's Atlas, weighed down with the full responsibility of fixing everything he's done wrong and made to believe that, for everyone else's sake, he has to do it all alone. Even when doing so puts himself in harm's way, even when he has to put his entire life on hold for it, even if it might cost him his life. Scrape off his awkward social skills, his loneliness, his nerdiness, his endless curiosity, his zealous love of the strange, his starry ambitions, his yearning for recognition and success—scrape his personality down to the bone and that's what you're left with. A man who believes in defending the exploited so strongly that it makes him a little stupid.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that you probably don't think Stan's fundamentally a bad person, and that you probably think that isn't even worth questioning. Stan's made a whole career out of swindling people, conning them out of as much money as he possibly can, stealing, lying, committing a long list of goofily-named crimes, and attempting douchy pick-up artistry on women; and to cap it all off, he held the safety of the entire universe hostage to demand a goddamn "thank you." Don't send me any "But he had reasons—" "But it was only to—" I don't need it, I don't want the essay, I'm not arguing that Stan's a bad guy, it's fine.

But. You can look at Stan's moments of cruelty and unkindness, his uncharitable thoughts, his character flaws, and think, "that doesn't define him. He's more than his cruelest moments and worst mistakes. He's imperfect, but he cares so much and his heart's in the right place, and beneath all the flaws his core is good."

And if you can't do the same for Ford, it's not because he's a worse person. It's because we got two seasons with Stan and five and a half episodes with Ford—and while we saw Stan yearning to fish with the kids or encouraging Mabel to whoop Pacifica's butt at minigolf or crying over a black and white period drama or punching zombies to save his family, we only saw Ford at the worst moments in his life and under the stress of a prolonged apocalyptic crisis—and, it so happens, all the moments he was pissed at the guy we spent two seasons learning to love.

Ford's got moments of cruelty and unkindness, uncharitable thoughts, and character flaws. But, at his core, he's a good person, and he always has been, and he still is.

[charswithbatsmybeloved]

"How could Edwin and Charles possibly spend 30+ years together and never once talk about their feelings???!? That's a bit unrealistic!" You say because you are a fool. Listen your father has lived like 50 years and hasn't expressed a single emotion since he was 10 and his father scolded him for being too wimpy and not man enough when he cried and now he adamantly refuses to acknowledge his own feelings despite feeling so deeply about so many small things so I expected the repressed queer male teenagers to go longer. If I was stuck in a perpetual state of being 15 I wouldn't touch my emotions with a 30 year pole either do you understand me. Do you hear what I'm saying. Men to this day have lifelong friendships built entirely on simple day to day conversations without a single emotion expressed between them and they are still perfectly willing to die for each other, Edwin and Charles are just built that way. They're just like me for real. Do you hear me. Do you hear what I'm saying.

[balkanradfem]

Debunking the 'males follow reason, women follow emotions' myth

A woman makes a rational demand to a male, he denies her. She gets frustrated and upset, he accuses her of being overly emotional, and the reason why women can't make good decisions. It's a situation we've seen repeat over and over again, and we've gotten convinced. After all, m*n don't get emotional, they make rational decisions, they don't have that annoying trait of having to cry or care too much, they just do what is right in any situation, while a woman could never stand in their place.

Historically, m*n have been making a lot of these, rational, non-emotional decisions, so let's analyze how they've been doing. Historically, a lot of m*n have both started, and fought in wars. According to them, this is a logical, hard factual decision they've made, and they're proud of it, wars are integral to humanity, we have to fight if we want peace, and so on. So rationally, what do wars achieve for humanity? Mass destruction, mass murder, terrorism, mass rape, mass famine, intense trauma, destruction of environment, destruction of animals, destruction of culture and property, sea of corpses. But, m*n have decided that this is reasonable, because to the country that's been doing it, it can bring new assets, colonization of land mass, new natural resources to exploit. Massive damage to one part of the population for the benefit of another part, this they say, is rational.

If you're a male, it's rational for you to cause damage to countless individuals if there is some sort of benefit to you in doing it. This is presented to us as a reasonable, human and rational thinking. They've not only indoctrinated us to believe this, but put this into their laws. They've created laws that allow them to commit murder under the circumstances of war. They've made sure to give themselves a way to commit murder to get what they want, and not be punished. Again, this is presented as inevitable, cold hard factual thinking.

I would argue that the emotions followed here are greed, sadism, pride, and deep sense of egotism. Deluding themselves into believing that the entire world is turning around their personal needs and wants, and any amount of damage made for this cause is irrelevant. This isn't rational thinking, this is selfish, valuing themselves to the point where other human lives have zero value to them; it's irrational. A woman who puts herself before others is immediately informed that she is objectively selfish, irrational, unrealistic, self-centered, and deserves any kind of harm going her way. M*n have been operating like this from the beginnng of human life, and expect to be praised as 'rational and objective', by these same women they call selfish for not acting as free servants for a second.

Let's look at another 'rational' concept males have created and developed: capitalism. Cold hard logic is – if you can exploit other people to the very maximum, and take the value of their labour for yourself, you should get to do it, and if you can't, work until your health gives out and you die in pain. Again, a group of people gets power to exploit another, resources are given to those with financial power; those who do not have it, have to fight to survive. We know at this point it's caused deaths, sicknesses, mental illness, hunger and low quality of life to the majority of the population, we also know it's caused massive environmental damage, to the point where the climate of the planet is threatened, and animals under mass extinction. Was this a logical move? Was it a normal, rational system to build? Yes according to m*n, because they get to use their financial power to rape women they wouldn't otherwise get to rape.

I would argue again, that the emotions followed in this case are selfishenss, cruelty and greed. When a woman tries to exploit people around her for her own benefit, she is called the worst slurs and names imaginable, and no punishment is too cruel to inflict on her. While m*n have been doing this for centuries and apparently we need to acknowledge that this is in fact, smart, rational and reasonable way to live, and also inevitable.

So let's see what women have been doing on earth at the same time while m*n were busy murdering people in wars and inventing financial systems that bring destruction; women were creating the human population. We were making sure that everyone alive gets to eat, drink, clean clothing, care. We were putting our labour and our minds in taking care of our family members, and fighting for our human rights whenever the situation, or the information we got allowed for it. We struggled to stand up to power-hungry m*n in our life who would exploit us, we studied and invented, we found our ways in every trade, every school, every cultural institution that did good to the planet, and we outpreformed m*n almost immediately after we got in. We gave our lives to make sure the human race isn't erased by the amount of murder and terrorism going on. We put our efforts into protecting the environment, we figured out medicine and then got destroyed for it, we lost countless of our own to murder, rape and torture, we tried to keep safe the ones who got hurt.

While m*n 'rational' and 'logical' thinking lead us closer to destruction, we've been fighting to preserve life.

Having the creatures in charge who believe themselves more rational, but function out of a place of empty pride, absolute ignorance, endless hunger for power, endless greed and insatiable sadism, is not a reasonable way to lead the civilization. In fact, it's been proven over and over again, that this causes low quality of life for everyone, creates practices that allow and support cruelty and destruction, and deals massive trauma and pain to the most of the living humans.

What is 'reasonable' to them, is for them to ignore everyone else's emotions, well being, safety, even the right to exist, and follow only their own. The reasoning they follow has nothing to do with being rational, it has to do with being selfish, proud, ignorant, and I can't stress this enough, being incredibly and utterly stupid. They're destroying the land they depend on to live, and feeling proud and rational to do so, while calling women stupid and selfish for wanting human rights.

It's been enough of this. A rational male has not been born or seen on this planet. We need to assume that every time a m*n says something, he has absolutely no clue what he's talking about, and is likely attempting to cause some damage for his own benefit – in all cases we will be right. We cannot let someone with a track record like this to be in the charge of decision making, nor should we respect their decisions. They couldn't even make laws that protect human lives. They couldn't even base their own accomplishments on the things they achieved – they had to take credit for our achievements over and over again. They are irrational, power hungry creatures that stop at nothing, humanity means nothing to them, human lives have no meaning to them. But they do to us.

We can make decision that make sense, specifically because we care about not destroying lives or the environment. We are capable of making the 'tough calls' because we will make the call that will not result in mass destruction! The only thing they keep holding over our head is that we don't have experience – but we can get it. And experience never helped them make less destructive, less stupid choices.

Male emotions are based on self-delusions. They refuse to see any consequence of their action, and play ignorant to the very end. Their empty pride, empty self-importance, empty confidence and empty arrogance is based on nothing but the lies they've told to themselves. Even slight factual analysis and statistics that come from male decisions, make their reasoning crumble into pieces.

Women's emotions are substantiated by facts. In every case when a woman has been told off for being emotional, she's getting gaslit and turned away from the cause of her emotion, which is always factual. It is reasonable to be upset at being treated as less than a human being. It is reasonable to care about the lives of other human beings. It is reasonable to care about the state of the world, state of the environment. It is reasonable to stand against destruction and loss of human lives. And yet we get told off for having the most substantiated, reasonable responses to male violence and terrorism.

And then there's one emotions males love to use to pretend they're not emotional: anger. It provides them with enough threat to stop women from analyzing and pointing out the failure of males, it works to protect them from the realization of how useless, harmful and destructive they've been. Making horrid, harmful and selfish decisions and exploding in anger if anyone comes close to pointing it out, coupled with blaming everyone else for having an emotional reaction to being harmed, is their primary 'reasonable' way of managing life. And this is what we have in charge on earth. A creature who causes damage, and then uses emotion to hide the damage they've done, while pretending to be an ignorant little baby, blissfully unaware of anything he does having any consequences.

We're done believing their lies.

[howtofightwrite]

Was reading through your torture tag and noticed a lot of stuff that was being said seemed to contradict things that were said on the scripttorture blog... do you have any suggestions on how to clear things up? Im not sure which things to trust

And you're asking us, because they've posted once in the last two years?

I'll admit, I have a fairly low opinion of them, and that's not directly their fault. For years, one of their fans, would regularly send some pretty incendiary asks our way. In fact, some of the less hostile ones were answered, and may be the posts you were looking at. Understandably, the ones simply accusing us of being torture apologists, demanding we redirect all our asks to their blog, or insisted that we should sit down and shut up, did not make the cut. With that in mind, please understand, I'm not going to go digging through their blog to refresh my memory, so some of this might be slightly skewed by the aforementioned deranged fan.

Look for the blog that does not constantly contradict or misrepresent their authoritative sources. Which is to say, if you actually pay attention to Shane O'Mara's work, it's basically what we've been saying all along.

If you're unfamiliar, O'Mara is a Neurologist who was (last I time I checked) working at Trinity College Dublin. He published a, frankly fascinating piece, called, Why Torture Doesn't Work, in which, he set about trying to answer why torture is an ineffective tool for intelligence gathering. O'Mara also had the misfortune of being the only expert who said anything close to the perspective Scripttorture wanted on torture.

An open secret about torture is that it is completely worthless for getting accurate information. This has been widely understood for centuries, if not millennia. O'Mara's question was, “why?”

It turns out, that the neurochemical trauma associated with torture, seriously interferes with your ability to accurately access information. For example: If you're being tortured, you can't tell your torturer where you planted the ticking bomb, because your brain literally can't access those memories.

Torture is evil. Yeah. No shit.

And, this is where ScriptTorture stops. “Torture is bad,” and Jack Bauer is an incredibly unrealistic fantasy, end of story.

Except, this is not the end of this.

Now, generally speaking, I don't blame anyone who wants to get off the ride here. Torture is an unpleasant subject, and wanting to stop at, “oh, it's evil,” is entirely reasonable... unless you want to write on the subject, or if you do political analysis and need to understand why people break out the torture implements.

More than that, this is where my academic background in political science actually comes into play. I'm not saying this as an Eagle Scout who had a couple overly enthusiastic hand to hand instructors when I was a kid. This is (part of) what I studied in college, and I have kept an eye on it since then.

If torture didn't work, you wouldn't see state-sponsored torture pop up repeatedly throughout history. It would not be one of the favorite tools of dictators and despots. However, because it does, and it is, simply saying, “it doesn't work,” isn't instructive or meaningful because it's clearly untrue. Someone is finding value in this, so it becomes important to understand what they are doing, and why they are doing it.

When you torture someone, the information they provide is basically madlibs of whatever leaked through their brain. They want the pain and stress to stop, and they'll say anything they can to make that happen. That often takes the form of what they think their torturer wants to hear. O'Mara's research does explain why they don't simply cough up the truth.

So, why do it?

Torture is a very labor intensive process. You (as an individual) can't, realistically, torture multiple victims at a time, and it is a very drawn out process. Some elements can be automated, your torturer doesn't need to be present at every moment, but they're going to spend hours, if not days, working on one victim. Worse, this is actually a technical profession. It's not like you can just pull in anyone off the street and get the results you want. (Though, technically, this doesn't seem to be as true, however, amateurs do have a shocking capacity to screw up torture. So, the point remains valid.)

The value of torture has almost nothing to do with the victim. It's about the message it sends to everyone else.

Torture is about mass coercion of the population. When you are the state (meaning, the government), and you torture someone, you are telling your citizens that you are willing to do the same to them, if they oppose you.

State-sponsored torture is specifically a tool to suppress political engagement. It is, quite literally, state-sponsored, domestic terrorism.

This even holds true in cases where the state employs torture to extract confessions from criminal suspects. The message sent into the general population is that dissent of any kind will not be tolerated, and that the state has the willingness and power to turn these tools on you if you draw their ire.

I get that this is outside of ScriptTorture's area of expertise, and in fairness, I probably would not have studied this with any intensity, if I hadn't taken multiple classes on revolutionary theory.

Torture from private organizations (which is to say, organized crime, and religious institutions, though cults and some other groups might fit this description as well), follows roughly similar patterns. These tend to do the same things, discouraging dissent, and establishing the organization as having power over the population (or community.) (The technical term would be to “establish capacity.” Which is to say, the organization's capacity to enforce its will. The same term applies to states, though in those cases, the state's capacity is often overestimated by its population. It's only when it starts to falter, for example through military defeats or serious civil unrest, that they really need the capacity boosting part of this equation.)

Zealotry or stupidity can create situations where you have a torturer (or, more likely, someone in a position of power ordering the torture) who believes that it is effectively compelling the truth from the victim. This (or amateurs) can easily lead into a distinct problem, which is that all of this has diminishing returns. Torture one person, and you send a loud, clear message. Torture ten, and all you've added to it is that you're willing to keep going. However, as you start stacking up the victims, you do start sending a new message to your enemies, that being, you're going to get to them sooner or later so it's in their best interest to respond now, mobilize and retaliate proactively, before you get to them. This means that a state which leans heavily on torture can easily instigate the civil unrest that exposes their limited capacity leading to a political death spiral. Alternately, if the state does have the capacity to put down the resulting unrest, it further reinforces their position (which does happen with depressing frequency in the real world.)

You're also going to create new enemies in the friends, family, and loved ones, of the people you tortured. This means that any organization that relies on extensive use of torture will, eventually, start tying a noose around its own neck. (Granted, there are a lot of social dynamics that I'm skimming over here, so it's not exactly as simple as “if the state tortures lots of people, it will result in increasing unrest.”)

If you want a partial citation for the above, you can (ironically) find it in a podcast interview with Shane O'Mara, when he explained why torture has been employed repeatedly through history. (Specifically I think it was episode 15 of Your Welcome, by Michael Malice. Though, I'm not 100% sure off hand.) Though that doesn't cover some of the more in depth elements I just discussed. Some of this is coming from a textbook on revolutionary theory I can't locate (it disappeared in a move a few years back.) Though that was more interested in the general structure of a state destabilizing into internecine conflict. Ironically, my preferred citation on torture, Fear up Harsh by Tony Lagouranis is mostly uninformative in this case, because his experiences were on the ground, rather than from a structural understanding of what his job was really doing. However, he does illustrate my comment about amateurs making even more of a mess, both through personal experiences with a few, and also through the eventual trajectory of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

But of course, torture is evil... again, no shit. Was that really a question? And, I'm apparently a torture apologist for having a structural understanding of why evil people do evil things. Cool. Evil people don't do evil things because they're evil, they do them because they gain some tangible benefit from those acts, and they do not care about the consequences to anyone else. If you ask someone, “why do people do this?” and their answer is, “it's simple; they're evil,” that person is lying. They may be lying to themselves, but they are lying to you.

Why do people use torture? It's a lot more complicated, and unpleasant, than you'd expect at a simple overview.

-Starke

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[sofoulandfairaday]

I actually do tend to put most of the Order we see in the photos around the same years, but my headcanon is that there were other older members but they all died by the time that photo was taken because they were trying to protect the younger kids. I like to imagine that Moody is the only surviving older Order member and he had to watch his peers die one by one and then had to watch as so many of those kids they died trying to protect were killed themselves

Soooo. I can see this working if well justified. There is a line that does justify it in canon, actually- "[...] look, I can’t promise no one’s going to get hurt, nobody can promise that, but we’re much better off than we were last time, you weren’t in the Order then, you don’t understand, last time we were outnumbered twenty to one by the Death Eaters and they were picking us off one by one...”

Voldemort would most likely send his Death Eaters after the best and strongest Order members first, even though they were more likely to take down many of his followers- it's not like he didn't have the numbers. BUT I'm afraid it's a little unrealistic. The weakest fighters in a fight to the death are those who get killed first even with protection.

Just for funsies, though, I'll give you my personal headcanon of the Order members' rough ages. I'm usually flexible if they're changed by a couple of years, but the generations should be kept.

This is the list of confirmed Order of the Phoenix members in the First Wizarding War:

Albus Dumbledore

Aberforth Dumbledore

Alastor Moody

Arabella Figg

Dedalus Diggle

Elphias Doge

Emmeline Vance

Mundungus Fletcher

Rubeus Hagrid

Sturgis Podmore

Severus Snape

Sirius Black

Remus Lupin

Peter Pettigrew (who turns spy for the Death Eaters in 1980)

All these people survive the war. Then we also have:

James Potter

Lily Evans Potter

Fabian Prewett

Gideon Prewett

Frank Longbottom

Alice Longbottom

Edgar Bones

Benji Fenwick

Caradoc Dearborn

Dorcas Meadowes

Marlene McKinnon

Now. The only girl confirmed to be one of Lily's classmates is Mary McDonald and she's not part of the Order (and I choose to believe that she wasn't; she sympathised, maybe, but I like the headcanon that she's so scarred by Mulciber and Avery's bullying - and that the event that Lily references to Severus is not the only time they use Dark Magic on her - that she wants nothing to do with the fight). I am maybe one of the two (2) people with a mild appreciation for BlackKinnon, and I don't mind Marlene as someone in the same age bracket as them (but I can also see her being older). She is murdered along her entire family, though, and it's unclear whether she was a mother, a sister, or a daughter. I will say that some of their Hogwarts years overlapped.

Dorcas I find way less likely. She was killed by Voldemort himself - the man wouldn't have bothered if she wasn't an Amelia Bones-level witch at least, which means she was mighty, which means she most likely wasn't twenty-one. I like to think that she was an Auror, or a Ministry high-ranking employee with sound principles that just would not bend to the infiltration of the DEs in the Ministry or to Barty Crouch Snr's ruthlessness.

Frank and Alice Longbottom are the same, to me. They're older than the Marauders, I would make them (just like Dorcas) around Bellatrix's age, maybe even older. That makes them around 30yrs old in 1981. Which means they would have had a full decade or more to become the most respected Aurors in the Wizarding World, so well known that what happened to them sparked major outrage, the kind that led to a manhunt for their torturers, and the sentencing of a pleading nineteen-year-old boy. (Of course, Barty jr was guilty, but they didn't know that, didn't know just how loyal to Voldemort he truly was. The Lestranges sentencing - an old wizarding family, a Lestrange had even been Minister for Magic - was clearly one sparked by public outrage. People were crying out for their blood.)

The Prewetts were Molly's older brothers, so they were way older than the Marauders. They were also killed by a group of Death Eaters led by Antonin Dolohov after what appears to have been a truly brutal fight, so nope. They weren't the Fred and George types of the Marauders Era (also. the Marauders were that!)

Edgar Bones had a wife and children and was considered to be one of the best of the era, so I doubt he was as young as the Fantastic Four. We really don't know enough about Caradoc Dearborn or Benji Fenwick to say, but I somehow doubt it.

Of those who survived.

We know that Albus, Aberforth, Moody, Elphias Doge, Mundungus, and Arabella Figg are all way older than the Marauders, and I've always pictured Dedalus Diggle as a middle aged man (but we only know he's tiny and excitable, so it could go either way). Sturgis Podmore's description fits someone that could have been in the Marauder's year or maybe slightly older, but still one of their peers.

So, really, the green-faced youths that fought with the Order were: the four Marauders, Lily, maybe Marlene and Emmeline Vance (who isn't even listed as fighting with them in the First War, only the second), and maybe Sturgis Podmore. On the side of the Death Eaters: Avery, Mulciber, Barty Crouch jr (who was two/three years younger than the Marauders!!!), Regulus Black and of course Severus Snape.

And, no. Evan Rosier's age is never disclosed, and since he brutally maims fucking Alastor Moody - possibly the greatest Auror ever - I'm inclined to believe that he was at least Bellatrix's age (so 8-9 years older than the Marauders). In my personal headcanon he's even a tad older - but no less cuntier for it. My boy serves as much cunt at 27 as he did at 17 (<3).

[cripplecharacters]

Hello! So, I'm afraid I may have fallen into A Trope, and I'm wondering if I need to change anything about this character.

I have three characters who are (nearly) identical homunculi (alchemically created humans). One of them is blind, because a lab accident resulted in him having to be "born" before he was ready, resulting in severely underdeveloped eyes, among a few other issues.

The thing I'm worried about is that I've given these homunculi enhanced senses as a result of them all having some dragon DNA. I wouldn't say it's to an extent that it negates the blind one's blindness, it's certainly not at Daredevil levels, but it does give him some options that your average blind person wouldn't have; in particular, the ability to identify people by smell (like how individuals would smell different from each other to a cat or dog, for example) and generally having better hearing than your average human, though again, it's not at a level I'd call "super-hearing," just slightly enhanced.

He does use a cane, and occasionally his brothers act as sighted guides, so he doesn't completely rely on his enhanced senses to navigate, nor would that be feasible if he tried.

I guess the jist of what I'm asking is, is a blind character with enhanced senses (as a species trait) okay if those senses aren't enhanced enough to actually "make up for" his blindness, or should I do away with that aspect of the species?

Hello!

The main problems with this trope are that it's often only the blind character with these enhanced senses and their enhanced senses end up negating their blindness and being used as a way to avoid actually portraying the character's blindness.

For example, a blind character that has highly enhanced senses and doesn't need to use a cane or a sighted guide or need any sort of accommodations. This trope also usually ends up implying (If not outright stating) that blind people have enhanced senses, which is a pretty common myth.

With how you've described your character, it sounds like the majority of this is avoided. I'd be hesitant to even group your concept in with this trope. It isn't just the blind character that has the enhanced senses and it sounds like you've done good with researching his blindness and showing how he deals with it.

Something worth noting is that even though the whole "blind people have enhanced senses" thing is a myth, a lot of blind people are more in tune with our other senses simply because we rely on them/use them more. With my level of vision loss, I can't usually see people approaching me unless they're coming from directly in front of me but I am able to identify friends and family (And even some of my profs) by the sound of their footsteps. Some of my friends also have pretty unique smells so I can even pick out a few of them by smell on occasion. This is all to say that it's not entirely unrealistic for your character to be able to identify somebody based on their smell, even without their enhanced senses.

I don't see anything wrong with this character but if you are still worried about the trope, there are a few things you can consider to avoid falling into it entirely:

Consider adding another blind character who isn't part of this species. Even just a blind side character that appears every so often or in passing can help show that the enhanced senses are a species-specific trait, not something to do with his blindness. I'm always a big fan of including multiple blind characters (And disabled characters in general) anyways.

Show the limits of his senses and explore the assistive technology he may use. Though his level of blindness isn't specified, his enhanced senses likely wouldn't help him with things such as technology, navigating the physical world around him, group conversations/social cues (Without relying on body language or facial expressions), etc. You mentioned that he uses a cane and his brothers as sighted guides but what other resources does he use?

Another thing to consider is what kinds of tricks and adjustments he's made in his own life, even without actual assistive technology. There are a lot of day-to-day things that are made difficult by blindness and unfortunately, a lot of solutions are either extremely expensive or don't exist yet so a lot of us have had to get creative. Something I do, for example, is put those raised stickers from the dollar store on the day side of my day/night pill organizer to differentiate between the two.

From what you've described so far, this seems like a really cool idea and I don't see any reason to remove their enhanced senses. I think it adds a lot to the characters and I'd love to see how they've been able to use their senses in regards to their blindness.

Cheers,

~ Mod Icarus

[waywardangel-wilds]

No one has ever asked me what I think Katniss and Peeta look like but I wanna write it down because I have a very distinct picture of them in my head. Let's start with my favorite, Kantiss:

She is slight and short in stature. You know those people who regardless of however much they might eat or weigh, always look small, not bony but just very thin? That's how I picture her, at least when she's a kid. Just all elbows. Maybe she fills out after she has kids, that shit permanently changes your body. She has a very sharp nose. It's distinct, not quite a roman nose and not quite a hooked nose, it's those noses with a bump? Do you know what I mean? Like a straight roman nose with a little bump on the bridge? You get it. Her hair is very long, I don't see her cutting it all that regularly. Her braid is thick, and nice and tight - it's the type of braid I always wanted to have as a kid, just one thick rope. Her hair doesn't fall out of it unless she's at home relaxing. Her skin is dotted with beauty marks just because I think that's adorable. Her eyebrows are her father's, so they're thick, dark, and generous but a nightmare to pluck haha. Her default expression is a frown, but at she ages she still manages to develop laugh lines. I think she has that great hair gene, so she has great eyelashes and hair on her forearms, and very hairy legs - no wonder waxing sucked pre-games lol. I think her eyes are somewhat upturned, like there's an angle to them which I think makes sense ethnically speaking. The Katniss in my imagination doesn't have a Cupid's bow. She also has larger front teeth haha, I have no idea why.

Peeta, to me, has always been someone I'd describe as healthy and hearty.

As Katniss says, he's got wavy ashy hair that falls across his forehead. Pale eyebrows and nearly invisible eyelashes. I don't know about ya'll but that communicates to me that this kid is pale, so so pale. He's got freckles on his arms and face, much thinner lips than Katniss with a defined Cupids bow, a straight nose, and almond shaped eyes I suppose. His eyes are a very normal blue but, of course, Katniss thinks they're the cats meow. He's got the wide shoulders and thicker arms from working his entire life, but also from being a younger version of his father build. I think that as he ages Peeta will look like his father, as would have all the other Mellark boys, just the large man frame that Mr. Mellark had. Only Peeta wouldn't be large and silent, he'd be large and talkative lol. I picture him at average height, as the book says, so around 5'10 during the events of the novel. I don't know if he grows taller or not. I'd have to know what Mr. Mellark's height was. I don't think he's cut or anything lol that's so unrealistic. He's got that nice frame of someone who's strong but doesn't look like he works at it a lot because he just doesn't. I bet he's also iron deficient, or at least he was based on what he says he was eating pre-games, so that must add to the paleness too lol. He's got nice straight teeth and a good smile - which makes sense with his whole TV persona.

I think Haymitch's assessment of them is accurate. They're attractive enough. They're not Finnick level, but they're in no way ugly. They definitely meet my personal beauty standards of what I consider pretty people, but keep in mind, I'm not exactly a mainstream media person.

anyway, send asks related to this if you'd like!

[tea-and-secrets]

my secret is that i don't think i have a future. i'm turning 18 in a month, maybe by the time you post this ask i will already be 18 for a while, but well, im not there yet. i just finished high school kicking and screaming, literally thought i wouldn't survive it to the point i was considering ending it all several times, but i finished it. now what? now i know i have to go to uni but i also know i won't be able to make it through. i barely scraped by with high school and now my mental health is at an all time low (thought 2021 was my worst year but life is full of surprises) and if college is harder than high school like people say it is, then i'm just royally fucked. it does not help that i don't know who i want to be in life. i'm bilingual and have language skills, but if i study for a translator job then it's just like-- who even needs it? i live in russia. my country is in shambles and so is its economy and relationship with other countries. russia does not need a fucking translator because everybody hates it and for good reason. i can't imagine any future for myself here. when i was a kid it all seemed so clear to me, i would grow up and live with my best friend and be happy and have a job i love. now whenever i think of being grown up my mind just comes up blank. my best friend has probably forgotten that we ever wanted to live together, or they just left the idea behind because it was so childish and unrealistic. i feel like i've been drifting away from them as well as my entire friend group for the past 2 years. i'm autistic, so i just don't see the world the same way they do. i used to love being aroace before i realized it's distancing me from my friends, because now they all have partners or they're yearning for partners or talking about all the sex they've had and i just have nothing to add to the conversation. i don't smoke or drink, so i guess now i'm just not as interesting to hang out with as when we were all 15 and sober. so yeah. i guess i just dont know what im going to do or what's going to happen to me. i've spent the last few years feeling more and more isolated and sinking into depression. if i get into college, i don't know what it's going to do to me, but it makes me fear for my life. if i don't get into it, then i dont know what im going to do at all. maybe my real secret is that i was put on this earth to draw gay people and not like, have a life and relationships. oh well.

.

[woodlaflababab]

hey! can i ask what your thoughts are on sokkaang? why do you ship them?:)

Oh my gosh. Okay, so funnily enough I literally gave a break down to someone yesterday. Sokkaang is my little rare pair gem that I hold close to my heart.

I did write this meta, but that doesn't cover even half my thoughts.

I'll give you the short version first in case you don't want to read my full ramblings:

Sokka is Aang's biggest protector. Aang. The Avatar. Sokka is a nonbender but he don't give a shit bc Aang still needs and deserves protection.

Aang is the biggest believer in Sokka. He thinks all his ideas are genuis, and unironically uses the stupid names he comes up with. He also brings fun to Sokka.

They're smart and wise seperately, but idiots together and I love that. I just think they'd make fantastic partners in all things.

Long Version:

So, I'm a sucker for protective tropes, right? And something that absolutely kills me about Sokka and Aang is that Sokka is a nonbender and Aang is literally the most powerful person on the planet, but it is Sokka who protects Aang. I've always been soft for Aang and more than anything I want good things for him. Too many people throw him at threats, too many people expect great things from him.

Sokka doesn't. He fights Hei Bai for Aang while everyone stands back. He realizes Aang needs them in the Bato episode. His plans to defeat the fire lord are always centered on helping Aang, giving Aang any advantage he can. At this point I'm just repeating my earlier meta BUT

Basically, when I realized this I was just like, "aw, cute friendship"

And then I remembered the fuckin "Toph writes a letter" plan. The two are fucking idiots together. It's hilarious that they affect eachother like this and it's not even like, unrealistic, because of what Aang does for Sokka.

Aang is Sokka's biggest supporter. He usually happily follows Sokka's ideas, he accepts the stupid names Sokka comes up with and uses them unironically. Aang belives Sokka to be a genuis, which means he doesn't question his ideas when they're stupid, he just trusts it's a genuis idea because of course it is, Sokka came up with it. And Sokka soaks that up like a sponge.

People talk about Aang bringing fun to Katara and like, 10/10 I love that, but I feel like it's not talked about as often just how much Sokka changes thanks to the brightness Aang brings. I'm paraphrasing someone elses meta here but I don't remember where I saw it but if you know it lmk, but Sokka literally goes from "You can't fight firebenders with fun" (to which Aang replies "You should try it sometime") to the finale where he gets rid of an entire crew by fucking around all amused at himself. He goes from the most sour character to the joke filled idiot we all know and love. I do believe a lot of that is thanks to Aang's influence.

So, yeah, cute friendship, blah blah, but then I was thinking about post-war them and I realized, despite zukaang being my favorite ship and loving kataang, there's no one I'd rather see travel around with Aang than Sokka. That's always been their dynamic, Aang with the purpose and Sokka with the maps and plans to get it done. I want Aang to be able to continue to rely on Sokka in tough spots, I want Sokka to continue experiencing the world and fun thanks to Aang.

I just don't see Sokka wanting to settle back down and take on the responsibility shoved onto him as a child. He fucking bloomed thanks to being on the road and getting true oppertunities to use his strengths and I want that for him.

And Aang is Not Good at the whole plans and stuff. Sokka is so good at filling the gaps in Aang's abilities and I don't want Aang to lose that. I don't want him to lose the person that says "I don't care if he's the avatar, I'm going to fight his battles with him." I feel like Aang would be lost in some ways without him.

Then I was thinking abt Aang's admiration and belief in Sokka and realized, it wouldn't take much to tip that into a crush, esp for Aang who falls so easily.

And Sokka, we have established, is attracted to people that could kick his ass without ever landing a blow. I can see Tall Aang being Sokka's surprise gay realization.

And I just think, if they were together romantically, it would be so drama free because it would be the epitome of a relationship built on friendship. They'd just be together. No bells or whistles. I feel liked they'd just be chill af about it. They'd love eachother and it'd be as simple as that.

Just, partners, in everything. I love them so much. I'm so alone in shipping this but I have so many sokkaang ideas and they will never not be dear to me. Also, tbh, it helps that Sokka is my favorite character after Aang ksndksnd

[gyrium]

i do really like choices-matter type video games and am a fan of character building rpgs as much as anyone else- but, particularly in the fantasy genre, i take umbrage with the expectation that that means i must shape an entire world through my character

i think for me it all mostly comes down to "i wish we could break a little bit more out of the kayfabe of party-based rpg story structure" but i feel like i need to dig into it a little more than that

first of all, i reject the idea that it's interesting that a single person becomes not only an influence on their party but major world factions, and/or on the outcome of all major events in a kingdom or war (or many of them), for no other reason than "it's a choices matter fantasy rpg". ignore the idea of whether or not it's realistic - it isn't - but i understand that's part of the fantasy

they often explain through this by making it about being a leader, which i think is a good choice and is the foundation for getting your players to get into the spirit of it, but often i feel like 'being a leader' is the only trait you really get to have in those games... which you barely get to engage with the underlying experience of being a leader, because that role simply exists so you can be in the situations where you can make a choice - not so you can experience the story of a character who has to make decisions

some games also make the mistake of starting the story before you are actually a leader, giving you a brief moment to express a character before that, and then you watch as that person is stripped away as they become The Leader and can only express that they're a complicated person maybe once or twice in throwaway lines that don't affect anything.

this actually wouldn't be a problem if, again, you could engage with the experience of being a leader, but these stories - despite being about playing a leader - don't actually want to be about leadership!

i dislike the feeling of companion questlines being these direct dioramas of a person's interior that only your character can engage with and, for some reason, be the only thing that can affect the outcome of incredibly important personal decisions. i love exploring characters' traumas and vulnerabilities as much as anyone else but i find this level of influence on other people jarring and very unrealistic to the point of it feeling unfit even for fantasy

to me i think the greatest appeal for a party in rpgs is that they are all forced to interact with each other for one reason or another, and these kinds of games should absolutely be spending the budget and story on playing that up and not just the characters as the player character can see them

ultimately, while i do think these games would be more fun if it was ACTUALLY willing to engage in what it means to be this highly influential person, i still find the idea tired. at the end of the day i do actually just want different stories, and to stop being responsible for all these damn kingdoms

[antianakin]

@theneutralmime

I imagine you could PROBABLY interpret it either way since, like you mention, they're not SUPER explicit about what the Jedi do or do not know about Anakin's past aside from Obi-Wan telling Ahsoka about it in TCW.

But I think it seems unrealistic to assume the Jedi DON'T know about Anakin's past. There's a lot of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's report to the Council we don't get to see and ten years of Anakin's apprenticeship that never gets explored. I find it pretty unlikely that Obi-Wan would know (either because Qui-Gon explained it at some point during TPM we don't get to see or because Anakin explains it post-TPM) and not pass that information along to at least the Council.

I think whether the Jedi treat everyone the same or make exceptions for special circumstances would likely vary based on the situation. For example, Anakin is clearly expected to follow the same rules and guidelines as any Jedi, he has to follow the Code, and he has clearly been taught the no attachments/possession rule. BUT, we do also see the Council be RELATIVELY lenient towards him when he pushes back against them during TCW in particular. He doesn't tend to get much more than a verbal slap on the wrist for things like making the entire Council wait for HOURS as he plays house with Padme instead of reporting to them when they call. Mace and Yoda both advise Obi-Wan to be more lenient towards him in AOTC, to let him make his own mistakes and learn from them. Yoda tells him in season 6 that it is his spontaneity that makes him different from other Jedi and that this is a strength, not a weakness. In that same arc, Yoda has a vision of sorts where he literally has to "save Anakin from falling." So I think you could argue that the Jedi ARE aware that Anakin's upbringing makes him different and that they DO make allowances for it where possible, but that they also expect him to follow the same general guidelines and rules as any other Jedi.

You could make the argument that this is how they handle everyone, we see them be fairly lenient towards Ahsoka, as well, right up until she gets accused of a serious crime and they can't just handle the issue internally. The Jedi ALWAYS make allowances for people, they ALWAYS make allowances for differences between their members that require different kinds of support rather than strict punishment and enforcement of uniformity. So you could say the Jedi DO treat him like everyone else because they treat EVERYONE individually since you never really know what specific kind of support each person is going to need, it's not necessarily always going to be the same and it's not going to be the same all the time even for the same person either. The Jedi adjust for EVERYONE and so while they might have to make slightly more or slightly different adjustments for Anakin than they've made for other initiates/padawans before him, they wouldn't be unused to the concept of making adjustments IN GENERAL. Ahsoka herself was raised by a loving family until she was brought to the Jedi and raised pretty normally among the Jedi, but we see them make adjustments for her, too. She's allowed to become a padawan earlier than usual due to her being advanced for her age. So this is just... what the Jedi DO.

[xxrainbowvibezxx]

(NRS isn't brave enough to give the women realistic figures. Look how long it took them to give Mileena a body that wasn't entirely fanservice. Tanya finally gets an athletic figure after 20 years and the fanbase hasn't forgiven her for it.)

I think I read somewhere that Edenians are directly descended from the Gods. So their physiology is different as a result, which could explain why Sindel's body post-twins is the way it is. Plus she's a trained gymnast and martial artist. I highly doubt that she'd allow herself to get out of shape, especially in the name of her sport.

I could see her body being a bit softer and curvier post-pregnancy, but not fully chubby per say. There's also the fact that she's Empress, which puts her directly in the spotlight for analysis by anyone, so she might be very careful to not present in a way that leaves her open to critique. Lord knows what Outworld and Edenian beauty standards are like.

(I have a HC that Sindel has a tendency to be mildly controlling, especially when it comes to herself. That woman 100% had some kind of disordered eating patterns when she was younger too, courtesy of her own mother. But she did try her best to break the cycle with her girls. )

Yeah, NRS only appeals to fan service. I'm glad they finally gave some of the women realistic bodies in Mk1. Like, Mileena looks more broad, Janet has visible muscle definition, and Tanya has an athletic figure. I wouldn't mind if they gave some of the girls' muscle definition or give some girls a more softer figure. I think it would make sense for some of the women to have muscles considering they're warriors and train. Especially the umgadi. For them being the castle guards, they're tiny. Tanya, khameleon, and Li Mei should have visible muscle given their job.

I think NRS's issue with doing that is the backlash. I remember when Janet Cage was announced, and mk Twitter went crazy saying she was Trans. If you headcanon her as Trans that's fine, but they were just being transphobic and saying shit because of her body. As if buff women don't exist. And I remember they were calling Tanya a man because of her features.

(On to Sindel)

I just feel like Sindel is one of the women who should have a softer, curvier figure. She is a thicker woman, and thick doesn't always mean skinny. That's just my headcanon for Sindel.

Your headcanon, I can see that. She was most likely raised with unrealistic body views and thought that she had to look a certain way to be considered appealing.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Harris and Legitimacy: Don't hate the player, hate the game.

A lot of this is inspired by comments made by people I respect, both in my personal life such as those made by a good friend over dinner who is an avowed leftist, as well as some public-ish figures like Justin Robert Young of Politics! Politics! Politics! and Jennifer Briney of Congressional Dish. Two thinkers I have immense respect for but I think have made some lame takes about Harris being "coronated."

Your problem with Kamala Harris is structural not personal.

Warning: This gets windy. It clocked in at about 3100 words and 7 pages in a Google doc.

TL/DR: We have a complexity and opacity problem when it comes to how elections work and I don't actually know what we should do or expect when a Presidential nominee drops out in July, but for all sorts of reasons a Primary "do over" is unrealistic and massively problematic. Which is why candidates who are likely to drop out in July because they're increasingly incapable of campaigning and deeply unpopular shouldn't run in the first place because once they run, there's actually no good way to stop them if they have an incumbency advantage. There's no "remove your candidate before its a problem" button under breakable glass, and I don't know how we'd build such a button into the system in a way that wouldn't feel more undemocratic.

I do not love the way that Harris became the nominee. However, I don’t love it not because I think it's wholly illegitimate or undemocratic. Her not having directly faced voters in a primary at the top of the ticket is not wholly undemocratic.

No, not because of the super lame excuse that she was on the ticket as VP.

That’s why she’s the legitimate nominee from a legal and party rules standpoint. Because party rules and election laws ensured that it couldn’t play out any other way.

At least not without Biden having dropped out much, much earlier.

The principle reason for this is actually fairly reasonable - if you accept our electoral machinery “as is” which I do not encourage you to do so but you go to war with the electoral process you have not the electoral process you want. We absolutely should debate reforms after this cycle because what Biden did was undemocratic and unconscionable - it's just that Kamala Harris should not be punished for accepting reality as it is rather than waving a wand and remaking the entire process to be more in keeping with what you or I or Ezra Klein would want.

The principal reason that it had to be Harris is that there is no ironclad, bad faith actor resistant mechanism to spin up a brand new primary election after one is already essentially complete. 

The reason for this is two fold. First is that because this is a state by state process rather than a national one, each state sets conditions for qualifying to be on the ballot and sets deadlines for fulfilling those conditions so there is adequate time to plan the election: recruit and train staff who run the voting sites, print ballots, make sure voting machines are working properly - and whatever else.

There are 50 Democratic Primaries, not 1 and Democratic Party rules can’t legally bind actual lawmakers

This is where it gets weird! Because we are told the parties are essentially NGOs - private clubs - that make their own rules for who gets to be a candidate or not and when primaries are even held. 

Which is true! 

Sort of. 

State elected officials are not beholden to the parties and its state governments who are actually operating the voting process itself. This how you get situations like New Hampshire very nearly not having its delegates seated at the convention because it held its primary election earlier than the position in the schedule dictated by the Democratic National Committee. 

So the Democratic National Committee attempted to force New Hampshire to vote later while New Hampshire has a state law mandating that it have the first primary election. Which the state technically has the right to do because the DNC is not actually a federal authority, it’s a private organization remember? But the DNC also threatened to refuse to allow New Hampshire’s votes to count since the DNC decides how to pick its candidates for President.

Now this story has a happy ending because New Hampshire’s delegates were seated, but only after the New Hampshire state Democratic Party (a legally autonomous but theoretically subordinate entity to the Democratic national party) held its own separate vote later in the election cycle which did count. Incidentally Joe Biden was the only one on the ballot. 

So technically because it felt it should have more authority than a state elected government, the Democratic National Party caused New Hampshire to run an election that didn’t actually count in an act of ill advised pettiness and micromanagement (and in what was widely assessed to be an attempt to minimize the chances of any of Biden’s challengers from getting any momentum by having the first few elections in states where Biden was unpopular with Democrats - see also the saga of Michigan & Uncommitted.)

Manufacturing Irregularity and Illegitimacy

Now I know what you’re saying, how does this anecdote help the argument that Harris’ candidacy isn’t undemocratic and illegitimate?

It sort of doesn’t, but I also want you to understand from a practical standpoint the problems that Biden caused by running again and then waiting practically until it was almost impossible for him to get his name off the ballot to drop out. The complexity and dubiousness of the primary process to begin with is why the only smooth and legally sound transition was to Harris.

The Democratic National Party could not force New Hampshire’s Republican controlled legislature to change its law requiring New Hampshire to hold its election first in any Presidential primary election. I am not defending the DNC’s attempt to threaten a state government into obeying its election calendar. I’m also not defending the New Hampshire legislature and its quest to go first come hell or highwater.

But do you think New Hampshire and other states would acquiesce to holding a “do over” primary for the Democrats? Do you think maybe they might engage in some legal chicanery? 

Let's say Republican controlled states refuse to allow a “do over” and the state parties hold privately funded and organized contests like New Hampshire did to get its delegates back. Might this provoke legal wrangling over whether the new nominee should be allowed ballot access to the general election? 

I’m not personally aware of any laws stating that the winner of a primary election in any particular state or nationally has to be the person who goes on the ballot for that party in the general election - that would be silly for a lot of reasons. Which is why Harris is able to become the new Democratic party nominee in the first place. Yet it's not inconceivable that some states might rush to try to change their election laws in the event of a more chaotic process. 

There were threats made and speculation of that happening even with Harris taking over as candidate. These threats ultimately don't seem to have manifested real world action, but don’t forget that in 2020 Trump went to court almost 80 times to dispute this or that aspect of the election process. It's now in our culture that the law is a tool you can wield to try to stop election results you don’t like or, failing that, poison the results so that while the election result may be honored legally, tens of millions of people wind up feeling like something was wrong.

Again, I am not defending our election methods, I am describing the context in which candidates are selected.

Trying to defend elections and voters against fraud

The second reason that there is no mechanism for a primary election “do over” is money. As I mentioned, the Democratic Party kinda, sorta jerked around New Hampshire voters and the state government. It engaged in a game of chicken wherein if New Hampshire’s Republican controlled legislature didn’t change its laws to delete the requirement that it go first in any Presidential Primary, then the delegates from that election wouldn’t be permitted to cast New Hampshire’s votes. Paid election workers had to be paid for their efforts, ballots had to be printed, voters had to vote. Time, effort, and money was expended for a contest that didn’t count.

Now imagine asking everyone to do it again.

What should have happened to the money the Biden - Harris campaign raised when Biden suspended his campaign is probably the critical question that I would pose to people who are cranky about Harris being “annointed.”

According to Forbes this is the scenario: 

Harris can use the money because she is part of the campaign. The VP can use the money if the President steps aside. There’s paperwork involved.

Now if being the VP should be disqualifying for automatically getting the money and the campaign machinery, this is absolutely a conversation we can have! 

Now worthwhile questions to ponder though are should this actually be disqualifying or should we care more about who the VP nominee is? Because we are technically voting both for a candidate and the person who will step in if, after winning, the President dies, is incapacitated, or resigns because of some sort of insurmountable scandal. All of which have historical precedents. Although it's possible Nixon will be the last President ever to resign because they committed what are empirically understood to be crimes and the general public was not okay with this.

If we think that the VP pick shouldn’t inherit the campaign operation and money if the Presidential nominee simply drops out rather than drops dead (and maybe not even then) then we do have to have the conversation of what happens to the money and the campaign operation? If the campaign has to be shut down and the balance of the money refunded to donors, then are we in effect handing the election to the opponent of the ex-nominee if this is a major party candidate we are talking about?

I think the argument made by many pundits in March of 2024 when Ezra Klein became the most prominent voice calling for Biden to drop out and the Dems to hold a modified Primary is that “no, the penalty from having to dismantle and rebuild the election machine around a new person is outweighed by lots of factors: 

The media taking to novelty and drama like catnip. 

The attention economy running wild. 

And what I think we can now describe as a “sugar high” that comes from replacing a certain to fail candidate with someone who, while not descended from heaven free of scandal or questionable policy stances and affectations, at least represents a different set of pros and cons and changes how we talk about the issues and candidates.

But that was also March. March!

Biden waited to drop out until July. When all of the Primaries had been held, all of the delegates awarded, and he was cruising to the nomination more or less solely on the basis that nobody who could give him a serious fight was willing to risk throwing down with the sitting President in a year where said President was up against Trump. If Mitt Romney was the Republican nominee, all bets are off. The Primary might have been a blood sport with Mitt Romney on the opposing side, but with Trump as the presumed nominee the risk aversion among Democrats was incredible and tragic to behold.

But it was also their risk to not take. You can’t just make people who could theoretically give the incumbent President a serious fight actually do it. And the rub is that I don’t know how to rejigger any sort of laws or formal Democratic party processes to make it so that running and losing is consequence free. 

I don’t know how to encourage more competitive elections when there’s an incumbent, other than a political culture that is A LOT thicker skinned and doesn’t gripe perpetually about being robbed when voters don’t do what they want. Why yes I am still irritated by a conversation with a friend who simultaneously thinks Harris is illegitimate because “nobody voted for her” but still to this day thinks it would be fine if a candidate won a primary with less than a majority because the liberals collectively had more votes overall but were splitting them too narrowly and that it was dirty pool for them to drop out and consolidate the vote.

Dropping out in July

So what do you do if the presumed nominee who (technically) won an (uncompetitive) primary in July?

In an ideal world the candidate should have seen the writing on the wall and never ran.

Failing that, they should have dropped out before the voting started.

But if they don’t?

There is no explicit mechanism to force someone out of the race before it’s started. There are all sorts of shenanigans that can be played with funding opponents, withholding funds, creating blacklists of people who aren’t allowed to work on campaigns if they work for person XYZ (ask AOC about the DNC kneecapping candidates who primary incumbents by trying to scare campaign staffers with “you’ll never work in this town again.” It was a whole thing.)

Despite the presumption of being dastardly oligarchs unaccountable to voters who just do what they want, the DNC actually can’t keep people from running as Democrats. Hell, RFK Jr. started as a Democrat. Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Manchin, and Krysten Sinema all have run as Democrats. Anybody can be a Democrat if they check the right box on a form. 

Same with the Republicans. The Republican establishment pulled every lever they had to try to stop Trump from being the nominee in 2016, but they didn’t have a big red button that says “you’re not a candidate anymore. Kick rocks” if that person can pull together the money, attention, and votes to be a viable candidate in the face of establishment opposition.

This is, incidentally, why the Dems originally wanted superdelegates: to override the voters if there were a Trumpian scenario where a candidate had less than a majority of the overall votes cast but the other candidates were splitting the opposition vote instead of consolidating around a candidate who would be palatable to the establishment, if not one of them.

Why Biden couldn’t give the money to someone else.

That Biden can’t give the money to another candidate, at least not in total, and has to donate it either to the national committee or refund it, is reasonably well discussed in the media. Why he couldn’t is less well discussed.

Because I haven’t seen it discussed, this is where I’m going to get very speculative.

I think it's a check against fraud. I think it may even be a check against the very thing people are accusing Biden and the Democrats of doing: pulling a fast one and changing candidates at the last minute. Except she was, for lack of a better word, Biden’s legal beneficiary should he decide he as an individual was out of the campaign.

But you could easily imagine a scenario much like the Dem 2020 Primary or the GOP 2016 Primary where, surprise! All the very popular but not popular enough candidates drop out and give not only their endorsements, but all of their money and campaign staff to their preferred candidate. We’d definitely be living in a different world if all the establishment Republicans had been able to transfer their cash and organizations to Mitt Romney.

I know a lot of people who may very well have walked away from electoralism entirely and never voted again if Klobuchar, Buttigieg et al. had been able to not just suspend their campaigns and clear the center left lane for Biden but also directly give him all of the money they’d raised.

Essentially what I’m talking about is longshots and badfaith candidates entering a race largely just to raise money, only to funnel it to another person late in the game.

Another possibility is out and out grifters. Which we already kind of know this happens, but in an exquisitely legal way that still sometimes manages to trip up otherwise very competent candidates who are taking advantage of their campaign donations to live a little more opulently and provide huge paydays for their friends and family. But as is, they have to spend the money and they have to spend it in ways that can be scrutinized by the Federal Electoral Commission. They can spend profligately but they have to save the receipts.

What they can’t do is just brazenly take the money and run.

Probably.

It’s not entirely clear to me to what degree if any there is a firewall between Trump’s re-election fund and Trump’s legal defense fund. There may be some sketchy legalese involved.

So by forcing Biden to either 1. Give the money to Harris. 2. Give the money to the DNC. 3. Refund the money; it keeps him somewhat above board and it minimizes the potential for an insincere grifter to fundraise, quit, and then use the money for whatever.

So where does that leave us?

I’m actually a bit at a loss for how to prevent another scenario like Biden dropping out in friggin’ July. This is if not literally than essentially unprecedented.

At the risk of repeating myself, ideally he should have never run again. I would hope that a future President facing dire prospects would not monopolize time and money this way or play stupid games with the lives of hundreds of millions of people. I would expect there would be pressure on such a hypothetical President not to do so. Yet I cannot rule out family and staffers with careers on the line gaslighting an increasingly out of touch or deeply arrogant President.

In an election year where until just two months ago now, both presumptive nominees of their Parties were the oldest candidates ever AND where one was nearly assassinated, we should take more care to scrutinize who is the VP pick. Because we are not just voting for President, we are voting for the backup President.

As for Harris inheriting all of this mess in July, I don’t love the circumstances, but at the same time I think we need to be much more introspective about Primaries - how they’re run, what they mean, the complicated dance between the national parties who technically have no direct legal authority over states and the states who can be coerced but not directly cowed by parties if the states feel like being obstreperous like New Hampshire. 

There’s all sorts of pain points that the Republicans may try to attack to sabotage the legally very smooth ascension of Harris to being the Presidential nominee, especially if it looks like she’s going to win. Those pain points and more would have been wielded against someone wholly separate from the Biden - Harris campaign as a legal matter. In the very best scenario, we are looking at an election where the Republicans will spend the next four years waving around their failed legal challenges like OJ Simpson’s bloody glove and creating a miasma of illegitimacy and rage around Harris’ presidency.

We have a complexity and an opacity problem when it comes to the election process. It's taken me too dang many words to explain up to this point in what I hope is plain enough English which makes it very prone to sabotage and very difficult for the average person to scrutinize carefully. And that is how you end up with a narrative in which Harris’ candidacy is undemocratic and illegitimate. But if it is, and I’m not actually saying it's not, then we should indict the system and ponder how to improve its ability to reliably serve up candidates who are selected democratically and are rich in legitimacy.

[deusvervewrites]

When you think about it, the current situation between the state of Jujutsu Kaisen and MHA are really similar. Both Shonen are reaching their end points, with MHA having one more arc to go and JJK having maybe two more. They’ll both end by end of year. Both fandoms are actively imploding: MHA fans are either writing fanfic to deal with Horikoshi’s questionable writing decisions (to be fair, he has to deal with Jump editors) or just coping. (Ask 1/2, I’m running out of space)

Jujutsu Kaisen fans are either coping extremely hard (search up lobotomy Kaisen for context) or just practically praying that Gege fixes the story. Both authors are trying to finish the story up fast. Gege is trying to finish so that they can write their idol manga (yes, really) and earlier, Horokoshi is done with the jump editors. The problems plaguing both manga are even similar, with Horokoshi’s villains being boring and him killing off to many people, and Gege’s villains… (ask 2/3) …Are also boring AF, with the equivalent of the HPSC or even Overhaul, (Kenjaku, who’s as immortal as AFO but actually smart), being replaced as BBEG by Sukuna, who STILL has not had his backstory explained. (And is as dull as AFO.) The only difference is that Gege has killed too many characters for us to care, while the stakes that Horokoshi has put up aren’t all that engaging. (And again, so many pacing issues.) Thankfully Gege seems to be back to writing well, but only after a THREE WEEK …Break. ( sorry, my last ask got sent in early.) With all that said, what do you think about both series? And what do you think either author could do to fix it? (So sorry that my asks are this long, this got longer than I expected, and I didn’t know Tumblr had a character cap) (Ask 3/4)

I never got into Jujutsu Kaisen. I have no idea what it's fandom is doing and I'm not really invested in finding out since I'm not reading that manga. However, I do know enough to weigh in on Sukuna. The reason I hate AFO being an idiotic cardboard cutout is because of how he was built up, and how MHA has other characters represent societal failings, but AFO doesn't. How AFO steals the screentime from the far more compelling Shigaraki.

However.

Sukuna, from my understanding, was always the main antagonist. After all, the series starts with him possessing the protagonist. Additionally, JJK takes many cues from Naruto--which makes sense, as they're both highly influenced by Hunter x Hunter. And Sukuna serves a very similar role to the Nine Tailed Fox in Naruto, but where Kurama eventually came around, Sukuna doesn't. All media is a conversation.

Like, Sukuna is the Evil Curse. Isn't he called The King of Evil Curses or something? Why wouldn't I assume he's the main antagonist, when he's introduced the way he is and given such weighty titles like that and remains a constant threat through the entire story?

I'm sure an actual JJK fan could give a more nuanced take on it though.

As for fixing MHA? You can't. And I'm fine with that. The problems I have with MHA are things that either have to have never happened (the OFA Kills Quirked Wielders bullshit) or needs a total rewrite (the HPSC not being a major antagonist before their destruction). However, Horikoshi already laid the groundwork for all of the things I want rewritten. I don't necessarily need to see Midoriya fight the HPSC to know that they're bad and that he's making a point about government seizing control of bodily autonomy being bad, or that celebrity culture leads to unsustainable pressure and putting people on unrealistic pedestals. Horikoshi has already made those points.

[nerves-nebula]

heyo, uh sorry for the super long message, and sorry this question is a little strange or somethin, you dont have to answer it, but youre like the only person i have seen on the internet comfortably talk about csa, and i wanted to just kinda say ive been debating including csa in one of my characters backstories but im nervous i will misrepresent it or something (i have experience with being sexually harrassed/coerced when i was a teenager but it wasnt drastic and i am not a victim of csa) and i guess i wanted advice. i don't want it to seem like its for cheap shock value, i do want to make it thematically relevant. the character, who i will call S for conveniance, was raised in isolation by their mother for their entire childhood and was abused and neglected, and S was raised to be "bait" for people to lure them in so their mother could eat them (uh. yeah cannibalism is here too. their backstory is already fucked up without the csa) i have a basic idea for how the csa starts, how it incorporates itself into the story and how S is affected by it, but i dont know, im nervous about including any of this because again, its a serious topic, and i want to portray it in a way that doesnt feel like its there just to make the reader disgusted. so if you have any pointers for me i'd appreciate that. again no big deal if you dont answer this

well it sounds like you've already made it thematically relevant with the whole "raised to be bait" thing so good job. I can absolutely see myself reading a story like that and thinking "this would be improved with csa but the author probably didnt wanna go there" cuz I can't imagine a situation in which a child is created for and frequently put in that kind of danger for the parents benefit that wouldn't somehow cross over into CSA or at least emotionally incestuous behavior.

it makes sense to be nervous when writing about it but without exact examples i can't really tell you if i think you're off base on anything. im not sure if any of the general pointers i COULD give would be very helpful on account of i'm not the end all be all of csa representation haha. my situation wasn't even that bad, i'm just inordinately fixated on it for some reason.

some people will tell you that under no circumstances should you write a graphic csa scene. this comes from an understandable place where in the past a lot of csa in media has been very uhhhh exploitative i guess? just for shock value, like you said here? which can be alienating and hurtful and rely on unrealistic tropes and spread misinformation and a lot of bad stuff. but i personally like when things get a bit graphic, its why i liked The Incest Diary so much. it really depends on the tone of the story and you're just gonna have to accept that you're not gonna please everyone.

as for less/non-graphic csa portrayals theres this article by this author Rene Denfeld which i really like and respect. i've read her books The Child Finder and The Butterfly Girl and i think they're both good examples of portraying explicitly that a child was raped, focusing on the childs inner world, and what its like to live with and cope with that trauma afterwards, all without anything very explicit.

as a side note, i don't think that "Trying to make the reader disgusted" is a bad reason to include it. i dont think you need a higher justification to write about csa other than "I Wanted To." that doesnt mean i always enjoy or agree with how ppl write about it but trying to evoke disgust isnt inherently bad because it is disgusting. I often evoke disgust with my art even when I don't mean to just because people are more sensitive to it than I am.

but being overly cautious about writing about csa, to the point that you don't even include it, means that most of the ppl writing about it will either be dickheads who don't care at all about being sensitive and victims of csa themselves and when those are the two main categories things get iffy and stressful and the survivors voices often get drowned out. im not gonna go into why cuz that'll take foreverrrrr. but my point is that I don't believe CSA is worse than like, death, or grief or murder or something. you can write about it if you wanna you dont need an excuse.