#because even with our desires to justify bad things. a genocide is a lot for someone to justify

[mars-ipan]

you guys ever think about the milgram shock experiments? i think about the milgram shock experiments a lot. they feel kinda relevant right now for some reason. hm

[imhaitusncarnate]

I have very mixed feelings on that aot ending

Ok so the politics of Attack on Titan have been discussed by a lot of people, some of whom have a very surface- level understanding of the story. I would like to start by giving my disclaimer that Attack on Tiatan ABSOLUTELY isn’t fascist, its anti racism, anti bigotry and anti discrimination themes are extremely apparent in it’s examination of the Eldians inside Marley, and fascist views held by characters such as Gabi are explicitly condemned in the text and made clear to be misguided and false. 

I would now like to draw everyone’s attention to the openings of seasons 1 and 2. 

Images like these combined with lyrics like these:

You pigs who sneer at our will to step over corpses and march onwards Enjoy the peace of livestock false prosperity "freedom" of the dying wolves that hunger

We dedicate and sacrifice our hearts

And also the use of german lyrics:

Sie sind das Essen und Wir sind die Jaeger! (they are the food and we are the hunters)

O, mein Freund! Jetzt hier ist ein Sieg. Dies ist der erste Glorie. O, mein Freund! Feiern wir diesen Sieg, für den nächsten Kampf!

(O, my friend! Now, here is a victory. This is the first glory. O, my friend! Let us celebrate this victory for the next battle!)

This is the stuff that lead me to believe that this is a deliberate use of fascist imagery. If the show just wanted to go for a militaristic vibe for the aesthetic of it, references this explicit to fascist propaganda and the use of German lyrics was not necessary. Also, lines like this:

And plenty of evidence that things were not what they seemed it the world of aot and that the overly simplistic view of good vs evil (humans vs the titans) was incorrect led me to believe that Attack on Titan was a deliberate deconstruction. That it was putting the audience into the mindset of the fascists to pull the rug from under their feet later. And I was right. Sort of.

As the story progresses, the world becomes a more and more complex political landscape and we are led to believe that this black and white mentality is wrong. We are also informed that the people who can transform into titans, the Eldians, are an opressed minority, explicitly paralleled to the Jews during nazi Germany, from their living in internment camps, to them being called devils, to their armbands, to a large number of them (our heroes) being confined in an island with walls circling them, which is revealed by Isayama to be Madagascar. The island that the nazis originally meant to confine the Jewish population in before arriving at the conclusion that that would be too costly, and that genocide was preferable. 

This is the first of the story’s mixed metaphors. While the show’s heart is in the right place, being sympathetic to the Eldians and showing their plight under marleyan opression and persecution, there is one problem. The reason for the opression of the Eldians is because the world is afraid of their power, as they are a race with the ability to transform into titans. There is, therefore, a tangible, justification for their internment. The Jews were not in any conceivable way a danger to anyone, they were simply scapegoated for the complex socioeconomic problems of Germany in the time period. Also, if we take a look at those openings again, we observe that the Eldians (our main characters) who wish to free themselves from their shackles are framed as fascists. So... what is that saying?

 The idea, as I see it, is that the story is condemning fanaticism in general, as a biproduct of a militaristic black and white worldview. The monstrous titans that our (framed as fascist) heroes fight against are revealed to be human, just like them.

The same is the case for the Eldian “devils” that the Marleyans fight against. Gabi, the character who is most fanatically against Eldians (despite being an Eldian herself) is comfronted with the humanity of the people she hates once she gets to know them.

Again, Isayama’s heart is on the right place here, trying to condemn bigotry, however the explicit referencing of history is the imagery is kind of misplaced, for the reasons I previously mentioned. Now let’s have a look at Eren Yeager.

Eren starts the story as a kind of messed up kid. He kills the human traffickers who kidnapped Mikasa while screaming:

I mean, in this case he is certainly justified, but his rage and anger are definitely not normal for a child his age.

This is Eren. He can’t stand injustice when he sees it. And injustice is what happens to him when the titans attack. His already fiery attitude and mindset is what leads him to this declaration of revenge:

That side of Eren is visible throughout the story and it’s foreshadowing for what he will later become

Eren, however, is a natural product of his environment. Ravaged by socioconomic inequality, with the rich living in the centre of the walls and the poor living in the outskirts, constantly under the threat of the titans and unable to obtain any kind of freedom, Eren’s philosophy of the need to be strong to overcome one’s enemies makes sense. The mantra “the strong prey on the weak”, that he ends up teaching Mikasa (another allusion to fascist ideology) is a biproduct of the world he lives in. He does not know of the political intricasies outside the walls. All he knows is he must kill the titans.

Eren’s titan is described as the “manifestation of humanity’s rage. It is huge and monstrous, and could be seen as a metaphor for vengeful hatred in general. Keep that in mind, it’s relevant for the ending.

This manufactured and false black and white worldview shapes him as a character, and it’s what eventually, after the arrival at the much desired ocean, leads him to this:

“Will we finally be free?”

In the continuation of the story, Eren falls toward the dark side more and more, to the point of committing atrocities and war crimes that are explicitly framed as being similar to what he suffered as a child (see his actions in Liberio). He even acknowledges that, telling Reiner, the person who committed said war crimes against him, that he essentially has no hard feelings and understands that the two of them are similar, doing what “needs to be done”. The character of Gabi, who, after what happens in Liberio, becomes obsessed with revenge against the Eldian “devils” is meant to be a foil for Eren, and his obsession with killing the titans after what happened to him. 

Extremely interesting is the way in which certain ideas and images are flipped in the later seasons. Namely, in season 4, we see a character who idolizes Mikasa and supports Eren’s plans in a scene where she spouts the same mantra of “the strong prey on the weak” and says that Mikasa saving her is what showed her that only with strength she can defeat her enemies. Mikasa tells her to shut up, and she proceeds to do the salute, that has been so glamorized by the show’s openings thus far. Now, it is done by a person from a military faction with a fanatic worldview. The direction doesn’t glamorize it at all. It is a nuanced, almost masterful deconstruction. 

Levi, who has always looked for reasons for why his comrades had t die, justifying their heroism and convincing himself that their deaths were not pointless, ends up here:

At this point, I was in love with Attack on Titan. From here, it only figures that Eren ends up attempting a genocide of the people outside the walls. He has essentally become what he hated the most, and he’s a natural result of the world that created him. Despite his noble intentions, he has turned into a monster. Mikasa, the prerson who loved him the most, completes her character arc by killing him, thus rejecting her blind devotion to him and being free, while at the same time continuing to love the person he once was. It’s a sad and tragic ending, painting Eren as a tragic character and making a pretty strong political point, despite having a few mixed metaphors.

And then, chapter 139 came out...

And Eren apparently pulled a Lelouch. This is a “I purposfully turned myself into a monster to save the world and make my friends into heroes for killing me” kind of thing. It is important to state that the manga makes it clear that Eren would have trampled the world even if they didn’t stop him, because of his urge to be free. However, that urge, that fighting spirit, end up being a good thing. The death of our heroes in battle apparently wasn’t pointless after all. They say goodbye with a salute

The Yeagerists, who were previously framed as fanatics, end up in charge of the government

It is important to state that the real event, the catalyst of the ending, is that killing Eren, who has turned himself literally into the manifestation of humanity’s rage (which has now, through the intricacies of the story, taken the political meaning of hatred and intergenerational trauma), eliminates the power of the titans. The titans are no more. This, in of itself, is good, and in keeping with the spirit of the political commentary thus far. However, the war, is still not over, and Eren’s mantra ends up being correct

So the only way for the war to end is one of the races to be wiped out? 

Also, despite Eren’s genocide being wrong, it is, in the end, justified, as a necessary evil by the story. An Ozymandias kind of moment in which the ends justify the means, but Eren himself has to die, because his crime was too great for him not to suffer punishment. Essentially, this chapter undoes all of the insightful commentary the story had made so far, by proving the ideology of its main character right. Story- wise this isn’t a bad ending, but if we take into account the political references the series has made, and its desire to explicitly tie itself with such imagery makes the ending leave a really bad taste in my mouth. What it essentally says, is that, yes, bigotry and racism are bad, yes, blind hatred is bad, but the general idea of might makes right and the impossibility of reconciliation are true. Armin, who has, throughuout the story, been Eren’s opposite, in terms of looking for peaceful solutions to conflict is rendered meaningless in the end, because him alongside with the other characters were all playing into Eren’s plans. The hearts of our main characters as recruits were in the right place, their fighting spirit admirable, and the overall worldview we are presented with in the beginning of the story remains more or less unchallenged. 

So where does that leave this imagery?

The conclusion is that one must think very carefully before including allegory in their work. I am not accusing Isayama for fascism, and I appreciate the efforts at deconstructing it throughout the story. However, in the end he did an oops I accidentally justified the mentality I was trying to condemn. I still like Attack on Titan, I believe it has artistic value and is overall a pretty good anime, I even agree with its politics to an extent. However, it is very important to critically examine the things we like, and see where they may have gone south. And this ending is that for me.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I had two things from the latest Bugle episode that I wanted to quote on Tumblr, and on the podcast they occurred within seconds of each other, going from the fun opening pre-episode bit to the top story. But it still felt wrong to put both of them in one post, as there will now be some hard mood whiplash as I transition from one to the next. I thought the most reasonable way to write about both things from one episode would be to split them into two posts, but the latter be a reblog of the former. Together, but clearly different things.

I feel like I can't write about the cute parts of this Bugle episode without acknowledging the ridiculously difficult line Andy Zaltzman managed to walk immediately after that. In 16 years worth of Bugle episodes, plus listening to lots of his other stuff, I think this might be the most personal/human I've ever heard Andy Zaltzman get (even including those days when he was really into 24 like a shockingly normal person). After sixteen years of hearing Andy only ever refer to his own Jewishness to make a joke about how bad he is at following the religion, it hits extra hard to hear him decide something has made him want to mention how it affects his identity without it being a joke.

Top story this week: And the world is fucked, still. I will admit, as I hinted at last week, and also on my radio show, I don’t think I’ve ever found it harder to write comedy than in the last couple of weeks. We’re now ten days on from the terrorist atrocities in Israel. Ten days in which the world’s shrinking supplies of optimism have officially reached critically endangered level. I think there’s a secret vial of optimism somewhere in a secret laboratory, it’s either in Siberia or Texas, I’m not sure, just in case optimism needs to be artificially released back into human circulation, so all is not lost. But it’s even now, harder to feel hopeful about the future of optimism as a mental state, and that shows where the world, and our species is right now. It remains a horrendous time of terrible suffering, loss, and tragedy, where the idea of comedy seems at once futile and inappropriate. So I don’t know quite how to address this story. It’s the second week we’ve tried to look at it. All I can say, and I’ll just get this out of the way. Due to my background, I do have an opinion on it: I’m Jewish, I’m human, I’m related to people, and I’m from Planet Earth. I’m a veteran of both the 20th and 21st Centuries, and therefore of both the second and third millenniums. As a result of these facts that have shaped my identity, I’ve developed over the course of my life a distinct aversion to all of the following in no particular order of dispreference: terrorism, anti-Semitism, discrimination in general, murder, war, oppression, intolerance, cycles of violence and revenge, people being driven from their homes, human rights atrocities, humanitarian catastrophes – especially the more avoidable ones, and intractable political disputes left in the hands of leaderships that appear to have no desire to act in the true interests of the people the purport to represent. Oh, and genocide. Oh, and another one: the looming threat of a major global conflict breaking out. Just not my bags. And I also have an aversion to people celebrating, glorifying, and justifying any of those things for any reason. Also not my bag. I prefer peace, and I prefer sport. I prefer everything, to be honest.

What a fucking episode, to have to go straight from that first monologue to that second one. They dealt with it about as well as they could in the discussion that followed, I think, in a situation where nothing can deal with that well.

I've got nothing to add to that. I don't generally talk about massive topical issues as they happen on this blog, because I'm not qualified to do so, and no one should get their news (or opinion-based editorials about the news) from a fucking Tumblr blog, or from any social media, or for that matter from a comedy podcast. I'll post about it when there's news about who Stewart Lee might be sleeping with or what Richard Ayoade said about a terrible book or who Nish Kumar's talking shit about now, because that's the sort of news that my British comedy blog is qualified to have an opinion about. Not global horrors.

But my real-life sport that's popular in Muslim communities means a number of people I care about dearly have family in Palestine and my heart has broken every time I've heard from them lately, and I wouldn't need to know anyone personally affected to be horrified, and I hope everyone is finding reputable news sources to consume informed and accurate and important discussions about this.

That's all I've got, listening to that Bugle episode has left me pretty emotionally drained, and me being emotionally drained is the least of anyone's problems, and sorry for making this post all about myself but like I said I'm not qualified to talk about anything besides myself when it comes to this, I'm going to go listen to Nish Kumar talk some shit now to relax. It's a hell of a thing when Nish Kumar's what you listen to to relax.

The Bugle's been going for sixteen years, as of October 15, 2023. I like that date, because it's only two days after my birthday. I enjoy that around my birthday every year, The Bugle also has a little birthday celebration. And they do. On their very first birthday, in October 2008, they had cake in the studio in England where Andy Zaltzman was and in New York where John Oliver was and they celebrated their project surviving for a year and it was really sweet. And every since then, they do something like that. Last year, they marked the big fifteenth anniversary with a tour of live shows, and a special John and Andy reunion episode that made me laugh so hard I had tears in my eyes while listening to it on a bus, prompting me to pull my mask up and hat down to hide my reaction, but it wasn't quite enough to avoid getting a few strange looks.

No big tour this year, but Andy Zaltzman did write a special In The Bin section with some nice callbacks, that I transcribed for the Bugle fans on Tumblr who might not be following the current version of the podcast but enjoy references to the original:

Andy Zaltzman: As always, a section of this podcast is going straight in the bin. This week: a special Bugle sixteenth birthday commemorative section. At sixteen now, The Bugle can start voting in some parts of the world, including, crucially, Ecuador, and the Channel Island of Sark. So that’s very exciting, that we can now vote in those parts of the world. Anuvab Pal: It’s time to rig some elections in Ecuador, that’s what I’m thinking. Andy Zaltman: Look, Bugles, if you want an election near you rigged, just email us and we will do what we can. The Bugle can now buy cigarettes, although obviously it wouldn’t want to; if a podcast starts coughing and spluttering it’s not a great listen. It also means that The Bugle is, depending on where you listen to it, now legally allowed to consent to, um, uh, be played at the same time as another podcast, also over the age of sixteen, I think. Sadly, the minimum age for marriage in the UK was recently raised from sixteen to eighteen, so the planned wedding between The Bugle and the 2001-born TV drama series 24 will not be happening yet. Bit of an age gap, but it would have been fascinating to see Jack Bauer’s comedic take on the week’s global news, and to see what storylines they came up with for The Bugle. Could the Los Angeles counter-terrorist unit stop The Bugle’s Machiavellian scheme to establish a professional four-day cricket championship in California before it was too late? I, personally, would have watched that repeatedly. Also, The Bugle can, at the age of sixteen, and this is not a moment too soon, now go and get a proper job. It can also change its name, legally, and from what I’ve heard, from sources close to The Bugle, it is considering a change of name, at this point, at age sixteen. Amongst the possibilities: The Barak Obama Interview Show – apparently there are certain legal issues with that; Zaltor the Merciless Dispenses Wise Judgement to His Adoring Yet Fearful Subjects – I can see that working; Bible Studies with Mildred and Herbit – bit of a mix-up; Andy Zaltzman’s Fashion, Style, and Romance Tipscast – let me live my dream; Tonight Last Week – I’m not sure that’ll work; and Two Celebrities Phone it in and Take the Cash – I mean you have to adapt to the changing podcast market. Or, uh, Hot Rod and Dragster Ride Again. All those are possibilities, but that section is in the bin.

I think I said "Aww..." out loud about three times during that part. The little references! To Hot Rod and Dragster, that time in 2011 when Chris Skinner made a brief joke about those being fun nicknames for Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver and it was meant to be immediately forgotten, but the fans addressed emails to those names for years. The little reminder of how John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman spent the first few years of The Bugle really into the TV show 24, which sounded especially weird coming from Andy because he never likes anything that isn't sport or the music of Boney M, it's so rare to hear him be a normal person who gets excited about a mainstream thing in popular culture, to the point where he first started referencing 24 I thought he was being ironic, but eventually it became clear that he had actually binged every episode and just wanted to talk about it. And obviously he also threw in a reference to that show Week Last Tonight or whatever. Small references to Bugle history in the 2023 anniversary section.

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Villain Motivation and the Banality of Evil

Motivation in Fact and Fiction

As you know by now, I am a huge true crime fan. I've read books by FBI profilers and crime historians, am addicted to the Investigation Discovery channel, and have even attended a semester of my local police departments "citizens police academy". This is a professional as well as a personal interest, given that I am currently outlining a mystery WIP set in an alternate version of our world. Thus, I want to understand crime investigation, different types of evidence, and, of course, motive. It's this last one—the motivation behind a villain's acts—that many authors, not just those who write mystery—concern themselves with. And, after examining hundreds of real-life crimes, I'm here to tell you that it's not that important.

Ok, it's a little important, in that a villain needs a motive, but it's not important that it be extremely groundbreaking, or extremely relatable, or extremely anything. Motives tend to be common place, not extreme, no matter how shocking the other aspects of a crime.

For example, the excellent book The Father of Forensics: The Groundbreaking Cases of Sir Bernard Spilsbury and the Beginnings of Modern CSI, which I raved about previously, contains a number of sensational cases where the bodies were either hideously mutilated or, conversely, found without any scratch on them. To add intrigue to injury, the murders happened in the early days of forensics, when procedures for dealing with evidence were still being worked out and when more modern investigative tools like AFIS, DNA testing, and psychological profiling were still decades away. Every case was fascinating in its details and in its eventual solution. Almost every case had, as a motive, either money or getting out of an unwanted relationship. That was it. The oddities of the bodies were the killers' attempts at not being caught, but the reasons for there being bodies in the first place were as average as could be.

In fact, the three main motives, according to Lt. Joe Kenda, of ID channel fame, are money, revenge, and sex. The more headline-catching serial-killer crimes happen, it seems, due to a desire for power or a thrill. I would say these five motives sum up most murders, maybe even most crimes. Once you cut away the mystery and the gore, all you're left with are some pretty average human desires: money/stuff, vengeance/justice, sex, power/control, and thrill/excitement. When people talk about the banality of evil, this is what they mean.

Take the motive of "money". We're all familiar with the idea, in real and fictional crime, of robbing banks or killing someone for their life insurance. Writers seem to find this an acceptable plot point: villain wants a lot of money and thus does very bad things. Yet, if you watch enough crime TV, you will know that real murders happen for sums as low as $400 or even $40. There was an episode of Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda where a man was shot and almost killed over an argument about 25 cents!

It also needn't be money, but material possessions. In one of the citizen's police academy classes, we learned about a local case where three teenagers broke into a man's house and stole, among other things, his corncob pipe. This pipe was the item he was most upset about, and often discussed in subsequent weeks. So the man lured one of the teenagers out to the woods and shot him execution-style. He was planning to do the same to the other two, and blame the whole crime on his teenaged lover. So that was one life ruined—and it would have been three others, had he not been caught—with the motive of revenge for a lost corncob pipe!

The Gap Between Good and Evil

I thus wonder why it is that we, as writers, tend to overlook such commonplace motivations. There's an unspoken assumption that the motivation of a villain must scale with their actions, so while sub-bosses or henchmen might get away with being in it for the money or the thrill, the Big Bad needs a more exciting or deep motivation. There's also a more recent idea being bandied about in internet circles that the villain should think he's the hero. I think both of these concepts are flawed, but let's take them one at a time.

Although I personally love "True Believer" villains that really do believe they are doing what is right, I don't think it's fair to say that all villains must be this way. After all, a great many real-life villains don't think they're doing something good; they just don't care. They want what they want and do what they can to get it without worrying about morality. I think the reason that this second sort of villain--the thrill-killer, the evil sorcerer, the bully--get a bad rap is that people (both readers and writers), don't understand evil. Yes, a villain who only desires evil is unrealistic, because, in fact, it's impossible to desire evil. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

In the Catholic tradition, we hold that evil doesn't exist; it has no metaphysical reality. Evil is a privation, or absence, of good, similar to how a shadow doesn't exist, but is a privation, or absence, of light. Thus, a person cannot desire evil in and of itself, because they would be desiring nothing. Every evil act is done because someone is desiring something good, but disproportionately, or in a way that removes part of the good from that thing. Again, look at the five motives for murder. Each of those is a good, in and of themselves, but none justifies violating another person.

And thus we come to the other assumption about villains, that their actions must scale with their motives. I think, in fact, the opposite tends to make a more interesting villain. The motive can be something small--wanting revenge for some slight, or a peaceful life, or to be like everyone else. These might even be the same goods that the hero desires. What makes the villain villainous, and what can make them even more interesting, is what they are willing to do to fulfill these desires. Who or what are they willing to throw away? What rules are they willing to break? That distance, between what they want and how they get it is what separates them from the hero.

Types of Villains

This principle, that a villain must desire a good, but desire it disproportionately, can work for any type of villain.

Take the True Believer types: those that believe they are doing what's right. In this category, I would put people like Thanos (Avengers: Infinity War), as well as A.I.s like Agent Smith (The Matrix), VIKI (iRobot), and the Terminators (Terminator... obviously). Thanos is widely lauded as one of Marvel's best villains because he really does think he's doing the right thing. He is willing to throw away half of all sapient beings, plus the one person who he actually cares about, in order to save the other half. What he wants--peace and prosperity--is understandable, but while the gap between that and his genocidal actions is mathematically non-existent, it is morally huge. Similarly, the three A.I.s I mentioned are trying to save either robot-kind or human-kind, but are willing to murder thousands or even billions of humans in order to do it. Essentially, these villains are doing the classic Utilitarian trolley problem, but on a massive scale. They think they are the heroes, and truly do desire a good outcome, but the actions taken to bring that about are inexcusably evil.

Similar to the True Believers are a type of villain I will call the Desperate. These people are also trying to bring about good, but know that what they are doing is wrong. Mr. Freeze (Batman) is a classic example, as he commits crimes to get money and technology to save his wife. Actually, there are a whole slew of villains, mostly in anime and JRPGs, whose entire motivation is to save or resurrect a dead wife or girlfriend. They're trying to save someone they love, but they rarely brand themselves as saviors or heroes; Desperate types hold no such illusions. Sebastian, in my own series, is such a villain, in that he is willing to betray his friends and ally himself to bad people in order to save Chiaroscuro and make up for his past sins. He's willing to do evil that good may come of it, and actually uses the "I'm a bad person anyway" excuse as a justification for his actions.

On the flip side are those who don't care about whether or not they're doing good, which I will divide into three types: Dark Lords, Thrill Killers, and Egoists.

Dark Lords, obviously, include literal Dark Lords, such as Sauron and Voldemort, but I'm also going to throw in your average serial killer into this category. Why? Because they all want the same thing: power. The books I've read by FBI profilers chronicle the most gruesome crimes with motives ranging from rage to lust, but there is an ever present need of the killers to control, whether that's controlling their victims, the situation, or the police and firefighters (in the case of arsonists). Control is related to power, and power, in and of itself, is a good. This, in fact, is why it's wrong for these villains to take away the power or freedom of their victims. While a True Believer like Thanos sought balance, Dark Lords seek an imbalance, and want everything for themselves in an attempt to prove to themselves that they are more powerful, and thus better, than everyone else. These types of villains are, sadly, very realistic, but don't lend themselves to stories requiring a strong interpersonal conflict between hero and villain. They tend to act as a force of nature the hero must work against--whether in a fantasy against a Dark Lord or in a thriller against a serial murderer--and thus don't do much in the way of interpersonal conflict.

Better, in my opinion, are the Thrill Killer types, who see the world as a game, and are willing to do whatever it takes to have fun. Example of this are The Joker (Batman) and Mr. Sato (Ajin). Though The Joker is a bank-robbing thug, he's mostly in it for the laughs, and cares very deeply about whether or not things are funny. That doesn't make him any less abusive or violent, but the gap between his humor and his barbarity is what make him an interesting character. Mr. Sato, similarly, sees the world like one huge videogame, in which he has been given extra lives. Fun and games are a normal and natural good, but his villainy stems from what he is willing to do in this "game". Mr. Sato has absolutely no concern for human life, even his own, and kills hundreds of people (including himself, on multiple occasions!). The interest in this type of villain comes from watching their crazy schemes and then trying to figure out how the hero can possibly beat them. These villains are similar to Dark Lords in that they are something like a force of nature, but different in that the hero usually has to face off against them personally, outwit them, and deal with them as an individual person.

Finally, there are those who want something personally good, but have no regard for others. Technically, this could also describe Dark Lords and Thrill Killers, but here I mean really personal, as in specific to that person. Rather than something big like power or a crazy thrill, they tend to desire the utterly ordinary. Take the robot in Ex Machina. I'm not sure everyone would classify her as a villain, though she certainly did some evil things (it's up to interpretation whether she understands good and evil, though). What was her motivation? She wanted to go watch a crowd. She was, essentially, created to gather information, so that's what she went to go do. It makes sense that that's what she wants, but it doesn't justify what she did to the main character (even if he was kind of a doofus). Or Rezo the Red Priest (Slayers), who, in my opinion, has one of the best motivations of any villain ever. He was born blind and wanted to see. That's a totally understandable motivation. But he's willing to sacrifice the entire world to a demon lord in order to get that wish. Now that is a heckofa gap between a good desire and an evil action! And yet, is it really all that different from the sort of selfishness present in a man who would murder three teenagers over a corncob pipe? Real evil motivations are banal, and real evil actions are completely disproportionate to those motivations. Art, in the case of these last villains, is simply imitating life.

Asking What the Villains Want

Obviously, there are a million different ways of combining these villain type and motivations. Some villains want money so they can save a dying loved one. Some villains desire revenge because they truly believe they have been wronged. A Thrill Killer might find excitement in killing criminals. There is no one right way to write a villain, and there is no one motivation that is the only interesting kind. To anyone trying to write a villain, I suggest reading about or watching shows on real life criminals, from the Big Bads like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao to famous killers like Jack the Ripper and Ted Bundy to run of the mill criminals in your local newspaper. People don't become mass murderers or even petty thieves for no reason, but they also don't just do evil because it's the evil thing to do. Even the most gruesome atrocities were rooted in the desire for misplaced revenge, or disproportionate control, or a false belief in some so-called greater good. Then, I suggest reading and watching your favorite stories and asking what makes these villains tick. Is it the same as in real life? Is it different? What makes a great villain so great? You'll may just find that it's simply a matter of proportion.

[serialreblogger]

You want to talk more about the bigotry in Harry Potter? Go ahead! I've actually heard stuff like that before, but have yet to do much research on it personally and it's been a while since I read it, so I'm interested.

WELL

Before we begin I should start with a disclaimer: this analysis will be dedicated to examining as many bigoted aspects of Harry Potter’s writing as I can think of, so--while I personally am more or less comfortable balancing critical evaluation with enjoyment of a piece, and strongly advocate developing your own abilities to do the same--I know not everyone is comfortable reading/enjoying a story once they realize its flaws, and again, while I think it’s very important to acknowledge the flaws in culturally impactful stories like Harry Potter, I also know for some people the series is really really important for personal reasons and whatnot. 

So! If you’re one of those people, and you have trouble balancing critical engagement with enjoyment, please feel free to skip this analysis (at least for the time being). Self-care is important, and it’s okay to find your own balance between educating yourself and protecting yourself.

On another note, this is gonna be limited strictly to morally squicky things to do with Rowling’s writing and the narrative itself. Bad stuff characters do won’t be talked about unless it’s affirmed by the narrative (held up as morally justified), and plot holes, unrealistic social structures, etc. will not be addressed (it is, after all, a kid’s series, especially in the first few books. Quidditch doesn’t have to make sense). This is strictly about how Rowling’s personal biases and bigotry impacted the story and writing of Harry Potter.

Sketch Thing #1: Quirrell! I don’t see a lot of people talking about Quirrell and racism, but I feel like it’s a definite thing? Quirinus Quirrell is a white man who wears a turban, gifted to him by an “African prince” (what country? where? I couldn’t find a plausible specific when I was researching it for a fic. If there’s a country which has current/recent royalty that might benevolently interact with someone, and also a current/recent culture where turbans of the appropriate style are common, I couldn’t find it). Of course, it wasn’t actually given to him by an African prince in canon, but it’s still an unfortunate explanation.

More importantly, ALL the latent Islamophobia/xenophobia in the significance of the turban. Like, look at it.

“Man wears turban, smells like weird spices, turns out to be concealing an evil second face under the turban” really sounds like something A Bit Not Good, you know? If you wanted to stoke the flames of fear about foreignness, it would be hard to do it better than to tell children about a strange man who’s hiding something horrible underneath a turban.

Also, Quirrell’s stutter being faked to make you think he was trustworthy is a very ableist trope, and an unfortunately common one. “Disability isn’t actually real, just a trick to make you accommodate and trust them” is not a great message, and it’s delivered way too often by mass media. (Check out season 1 of the Flash for another popular example.)

Sketch Thing #2: The goblins. Much more commonly talked about, in my experience, which is good! The more awareness we have about the messages we’re getting from our popular media, the better, in my view. 

For those who haven’t encountered this bit of analysis before: the goblins in Harry Potter reek of antisemitic stereotypes. Large ears, small eyes, crooked noses, green/gray skin, lust for money, control of the banks, and a resentful desire to overthrow the Good British Government? Very reminiscent of wwii propaganda posters, and in general the hateful rhetoric directed towards Jewish people by other European groups from time immemorial. 

I’m also extremely uncomfortable with how goblin culture is handled by Rowling in general. Like, the goblins were a people that were capable of using magic, but prohibited by the British government from owning wands. That was never addressed. They also had a different culture around ownership, which is why Griphook claimed that the sword of Gryffindor belonged rightfully to the goblins--a gift isn’t passed down to descendants upon death, but instead reverts to the maker. This cultural miscommunication is glossed over, despite the fact that it sounds like Griphook’s voicing a very real, legitimate grievance.

To be honest, apart from the antisemitism, the way Goblin culture is treated by the narrative in Harry Potter is very uncomfortably reminiscent to me of how First Nations were treated by English settlers in North America, before the genocide really got started. The Goblins even have a history of “rebellions,” which both raises the question of why another species is ruling them to begin with, and more significantly, is eerily reminiscent of the Red River Rebellion in Canada (which, for the record, wasn’t actually a rebellion--it was Metis people fighting against the Canadian government when it tried to claim the land that legally, rightfully belonged to the Metis. But that’s another story)

In sum: I Don’t Like the implications of how Rowling treats the goblins.

Sketch Thing #3: Muggles. Ok because we’re all “muggles” (presumably) and because I’m white, talking about this might rapidly degenerate into thinly-veiled “reverse racism” discourse, so please y’all correct me if I stray into that kind of colossal stupidity. However, I am not comfortable with the way non-magical humans are treated by Rowling’s narrative.

The whole premise of Harry Potter is that Evil Wizards Want To Hurt The Muggles, right? Except that it’s not. Voldemort’s goal is to subjugate the inferior humans, rule over non-magical people as the rightful overlords, but that’s hardly mentioned by the narrative. Instead, it focuses on the (also egregious and uncomfortably metaphorical) “blood purism” of wizarding culture, and how wizards would be persecuted for their heritage.

But muggles, actual muggles, are arguably the ones who stand to lose the most to Voldemort, and they’re never notified of their danger. We, the muggles reading it, don’t even really register that we’re the collateral damage in this narrative. Because throughout the series, muggles are set up as laughingstocks. Even the kindest, most muggle-friendly wizards are more obsessed with non-magical people as a curiosity than actually able to relate to them as people. 

I dunno, friends, I’m just uncomfortable with the level of dehumanization that’s assigned to non-magical humans. (Like, there’s not even a non-offensive term for them in canon. There’s “muggle,” which is humorously indulgent at best and actively insulting at worst, and there’s “squib,” which is literally the word for a firework that fails to spark.) It’s not like “muggles” are actually a real people group that can be oppressed, and like I said this kind of analysis sounds a bit like the whining of “reverse racism” advocates where the powerful majority complains about being insulted, but... it kind of also reeks of ableism. People that are not able to do a certain cool, useful thing (use magic) are inherently inferior, funny at best and disposable at worst. They suffer and die every day from things that can easily be cured with magic, but magic-users don’t bother to help them, and even when they’re actively attacked the tragedy of hundreds dying is barely mourned by the narrative. 

It gives me bad vibes. I don’t Love It. It sounds uncomfortably like Rowling’s saying “people that are unable to access this common skill are inherently inferior,” and that really does sound like ableism to me. 

Either way, there’s something icky about consigning an entire group of people to the role of “funny clumsy stupid,” regardless of any real-world connections there may or may not be to that people group. Don’t teach children that a single genetic characteristic can impact someone’s personhood, or make them inherently less worthy of being taken seriously. Just, like... don’t do that.

Sketch Thing #4: The house elves. Everyone knows about the house elves, I think. The implications of “they’re slaves but they like it” and the only person who sees it as an issue having her campaign turned into a joke by the narrative (“S.P.E.W.”? Really? It might as well stand for “Stupidly Pleading for Expendable Workers”) are pretty clear.

Sketch Thing #5: Azkaban. Are we gonna talk about how wizarding prison involves literal psychological torture, to the point where prisoners (who are at least sometimes there wrongly, hence the plot of book 3) almost universally go “insane”? This is sort of touched on by the narrative--“dementors are bad and we shouldn’t be using them” was a strongly delivered message, but it was less “because torturing people, even bad people, is not a great policy” and more “because dementors are by their natures monstrous and impossible to fully control.” 

“This humanoid species is monstrous and impossible to control” is, once again, a very concerning message to deliver, and it doesn’t actually address the real issue of “prison torture is bad, actually.” Please, let’s not normalize the idea that prison is inherently horrific. Of course, prison as it exists in North America and Britain is, indeed, inherently horrific and often involves torture (solitary confinement, anyone?), but like--that’s a bad thing, y’all, it’s deeply dysfunctional and fundamentally unjust. Don’t normalize it.

Sketch Thing #6: Werewolves. Because Rowling explicitly stated that lycanthropy in her series is a metaphor for “blood-borne diseases like HIV/AIDS”. The linked article says it better than I could:

Rowling lumps HIV and AIDS in with other blood-borne illnesses, which ignores their uniquely devastating history. And Lupin’s story is by no stretch a thorough or helpful examination of the illness. Nor is its translation as an allegory easily understood, beyond the serious stigma that Rowling mentioned.

That Lupin is a danger to others could not more clearly support an attitude of justifiable fear toward him, one that is an abject disservice to those actually struggling with a disease that does not make them feral with rage.

This definitely ties into homophobia, given how deeply the queer community has been affected by HIV/AIDS. Saying a character with a condition that makes him an active threat to those around him is “a metaphor for AIDS” is deeply, deeply distressing, both for its implications about queer people and their safety for the general population, and for the way it specifically perpetuates the false belief that having HIV/AIDS makes a person dangerous.

Sketch Thing #7: Blood Ties. This isn’t, like, inherently sketch, but (especially for those of us with complicated relationships to our birth families) it can rub a lot of people the wrong way. Rowling talks a big talk about the folly of “blood purism,” but she also upholds the idea that blood and blood relations are magically significant. 

Personally, I’m very uncomfortable with the fact that Harry was left with an abusive family for his entire childhood, and it was justified because they were his “blood relatives.” I’ve had this argument with ultra-conservative family friends who genuinely believe it’s a parent’s right to abuse their child, and while I don’t think that’s what Rowling is saying, I do feel uncomfortable with the degree of importance she places on blood family. I’m uncomfortable with the narrative’s confirmation that it is acceptable (even necessary) to compromise on boundaries and allow the continuation of abuse because “it’s better for a child to be raised by their Real Family” than it is to risk them to the care of an unrelated parent.

Genetic relations aren’t half as important as Rowling tells us. For people with a bad birth family, this can be a damaging message to internalize, so I’ll reiterate: it’s a pretty thought, the love in blood, but it’s ultimately false. The family you build is more real, more powerful and more valid than any family you were assigned to by an accident of genes.

I can think of one or two more things, but they’re all a lot more debatable than what I have here--as it is, you might not agree with everything I’ve said. That’s cool! I’m certainly not trying to start a fight. We all have the right to read and interpret things for ourselves, and to disagree with each other. And again, I’m not trying to ruin Harry Potter. It’s honestly, as a series, not worse in terms of latent bigotry than most other books of its time, and better than many. It’s just more popular, with a much bigger impact and many more people analyzing it. I do think it’s important to critically evaluate the media that shapes one’s culture, and to acknowledge its shortcomings (and the ways it can be genuinely harmful to people, especially when it’s as culturally powerful as Harry Potter). But that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t enjoy it for what it was meant to be: a fun, creative, engaging story, with amazing characters, complex plots, heroism and inspiration for more than one generation of people. 

Enjoy Harry Potter. It is, in my opinion, a good series, worth reading and re-reading for enjoyment, even for nourishment. It’s also flawed. These things can both be true.

[liveinink]

So pretty much ever since we met the Bright Queen people have had different interpretations of her words and motivations. And different interpretations of the Dynasty and how it functions. Now from what I’ve seen, most people seem pretty pro-Dynasty and opposed to the Empire, but even then there are statements like, “I know the Bright Queen wants to murder everyone in the Empire, but...” And here’s the thing, I truly don’t think she does. I personally think that is a misinterpretation of her stated intentions, though very understandable. And it’s backed up by what some of the Nein seem to think of her, which doesn’t help. I’ve also seen a few people more seriously call the Bright Queen a genocidal zealot, which I feel is a wild misinterpretation personally that is not at all backed up by canon, but I can’t really tell people they’re wrong (though personally I think that specifically is). I’m not here to say that my interpretation is absolutely right and others are absolutely wrong. I’ve just had this on my mind for a while and I’m going to share my personal analysis. Essay under the cut.

First, though I have addressed this myself before, as have others, I feel it’s important to address the “slavery” issue here. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the Kryn practice slavery, and at this point if it existed the Nein would have noticed it. The only indication the Nein had that slavery was practiced in Xhorhas was in Yasha’s description of the Kryn. A description that Ashley stated on Talks was deliberately exaggerated to make Xhorhas sound worse than it is so that the Nein wouldn’t want to go there. Also, it was not entirely reliable information to begin with. Yasha said herself she had never interacted with the Kryn, she only knew stories. And as we’ve seen, there are a lot of false horror stories about the Kryn circulating the world. The Nein assumed, based on little to no evidence, that slavery was a practice and that’s how they came to their very poor decision to disguise the humans as slaves. Despite seeing humans freely living and working in Asarius, including one in the government building. And they, luckily, never actually used the word “slave” to describe the humans, so the Dynasty members they interacted with weren’t condoning slavery. They were clearly confused by the humans’ attire, but otherwise they were given no explanation of what was happening with the humans outside of them being “help” of a sort. And the pair of orcs in Asarius and Lythir’s reactions don’t speak to slavery being condoned by the Dynasty, they speak to a few individuals being jerks to humans. And on that point, the discrimination towards humans that we’ve seen in Xhorhas, which has actually been relatively rare, seems more about individual biases and general mistrust of humans due to their tensions with the Empire. It doesn’t seem like there is a lot of systemic racism in the Dynasty from what we’ve seen so far.

Now to the Bright Queen specifically. When we first met the Bright Queen, she welcomed strangers into her throne room, ready to reward them for service to her people. Obviously events spiraled, but that still says something about her. She’s willingly to hold an audience with random mercenaries at pretty much a moment’s notice just because a trusted individual said they’d been helpful and they wanted to see her. There’s a war, on top of everything she must have to regularly deal with given the relics of the Calamity scarring the land, and just the general responsibilities of running a nation. She must have more important things do to. And yet she accepted the Mighty Nein’s request to see her. Then, after being given the Beacon, she asks the Nein if they have any questions she can answer. Again, she did not have to do that personally. She did not have to be nearly as generous or forgiving towards them as she was, but that’s a point that will reemerge later.

Now, here’s where people start to have a problem. Leylas says that the Kryn will not stop attacking the Empire until they leave “an equal or more share of blood” and she tells the Nein to warn anyone they care about to leave the Empire. Now first hearing that, it’s alarming. Sounds bloodthirsty. But with everything we know about her, and the benefit of hindsight, given other statements she has made and the actions of her soldiers, I don’t think this is a bloodthirsty statement. I think it’s more to the point that, as Leylas later explained, if there can not be peace until one side can no longer retaliate, then the Dynasty needs to do enough damage to the Empire’s armies that the Empire can no longer pose a threat. That will be a lot of blood. And I think there’s also an implicit statement that the Bright Queen cannot promise there will be no collateral damage. Civilians can be injured or killed in war, and it’s not always intentional. We know the Dynasty doesn’t want to slaughter civilians because we’ve seen evidence of it: Felderwin. If I’m remembering correctly, nobody died in the attack on Felderwin, and the only people injured were guards. There was damage to the buildings, but it could have been so much worse. The Kryn could have razed the whole town if they wanted. It was small and poorly defended, and doing extra damage would not hinder their goals. But they didn’t. They went, fought the guards, found what they came for (sort of), took it, and left. Even if my memory of this event is not perfect, I do know for certain that that attack could have been so much worse. It wasn’t. Which, to me, speaks to how the Kryn operate.

Also, if the Bright Queen’s statements here were purely about revenge, then I’ll say this: I’ll let it slide. Because even if she was wrapped up in ideas of vengeance in that moment, she clearly hasn’t acted on them, and given her other statements and actions, I don’t think she truly intends to. Her people have been wronged by the Empire. If she wants a moment to fantasize about revenge, I’m inclined to let her have.

Now I will say this before moving on, the torture of Yeza is bad. Undeniably. But I don’t think it can be any example of the Kryn being evil. They’re just not perfect. You know, like people. And unfortunately, people misguidedly think it can be effective to torture other people for information. Moving on to the Bright Queen’s speech about the cycle of violence. I think a lot of people, including members of the Nein, heard what they feared/expected rather than what was actually said here. And as a side note, expectations based on Empire propaganda and general association with what the races of Xhorhas have been made out to be in fantasy of the past (and present) is a factor here. But let’s look at what was actually said:

Beau: Being of the Empire, what we can for sure tell you is that they do not take kindly to being bested or embarrassed and they will retaliate with the full force of everything they've been working towards.

BQ: If I am correct in my beliefs, this is retaliation for our retaliation.

Beau: Yes, it's a lot of retaliation.

BQ: This will continue until one side cannot retaliate and we hope with a swift enough and well-planned plot laid out with this information, perhaps we can keep them from being able to retaliate for some time.

...

Beau: We can help you break the cycle.

BQ: The cycle cannot be broken until there is nothing living. All we can do is our best to keep it slow.

Jester: Why can't the cycle be broken?

BQ: Because life is pain for many. Jealousy, strife. Some need to conquer. There will always be those that will do whatever it takes to get one over the man or woman or otherwise to their left and right.

Caduceus: Talking about yourself or the Empire right now?

BQ: I'm talking about anything that draws breath. And it is our duty to acknowledge that and try to keep those base designs at bay. But one cannot bow down when others do not show that same will of understanding or else they will lie slaughtered.

Personally, I understand, but I don’t really understand exactly how this got misconstrued, because to me it seems obvious. Leylas explains her views quite clearly, and not a single one of them is “everyone in the Empire needs to die.” No, this is an explanation of the world and “human” nature as she has observed it in the last 1200 years. First, due to her experiences with the Empire, she does not believe peace can be achieved through, well, peaceful means. She clearly doesn’t expect that the Empire will be willing to put down their arms, so the only other means of ending the war is ensuring that they cannot retaliate anymore. And note that she never says, “and once they’re weak we’re going to wipe them out,” no. The implication, as I see it, is that they want to incapacitate the army, then enjoy a time of peace for as long as they can make it last. Because Leylas so clearly explains their cultural philosophy toward violence. First, it’s inevitable as long as people live. People. Anyone. She clarifies that herself. “Anything that draws breath.” Not Empire people specifically, all people. And while in the previous conversation about the Empire she noted that propaganda may have corrupted the minds of those in the Empire, she admitted that they probably were not all lost causes. She just expressed that what they had been taught would likely make the general public hostile towards the Kryn.

Secondly, the Kryn believe that violence is bad. Simply put, but that is the simple version of what she said. It’s unavoidable, but people should try to avoid it. To “keep those base designs at bay.” But someone will always have a reason they feel is justified to incite violence. And the Kryn can’t simply not defend themselves. But they do their best to keep the cycle of violence slow. Even while having to acknowledge the desires for aggression within themselves, and trying to not give in to them. Leylas does not exclude herself or her people from this. She knows the Kryn too are imperfect people.

I remember once coming across a post that offered some very interesting analysis on the Dynasty as a society built for peace rather than war, and I wish I could remember more about it. Sadly I can’t, but there is some evidence to suggest that. I’m not going to risk stealing someone else’s ideas by writing about it here, though. What I will say, is that the Dynasty, for all people are worried about it being a rigid caste system, which I see where the worry comes from, it certainly has that potential, we haven’t actually seen that yet, so I couldn’t say for certain that’s true; the Dynasty is a meritocracy. Arguably a theocracy as well, though they demonstrably practice religious freedom. But their leaders are all selected for reward because of their proven merit and service to society. The Dynasty has numerous times proven that it rewards for service. Not the kind of loyalty that Dwendal demands, but services rendered to the people. Like the Nein closing the Abyssal rifts, and giving warning of Empire attacks. They are consistently rewarded for their good deeds towards the Dynasty. They are actually treated with great generosity, especially considering they are not technically citizens of Xhorhas. Unless the Bright Queen considers them to be at this point, but I don’t know. They certainly weren’t when they started, but they’ve been treated well since the beginning, much to their own surprise.

The Mighty Nein have actually been treated remarkably well by the Dynasty in every interaction they’ve had with them (the higher ranking members at the very least). The worst things that have happened to them are nearly being arrested for (by Lythir’s perception) attacking Kryn soldiers, and being scried on. Which let’s be honest, the scrying is invasive and not great, but also understandable. The Nein have been treated well from their first encounters with Lady Olios, to the Bright Queen, to every interaction they’ve had with Essek and everything he’s given them (yes they owe him favors but let’s be real he’s done a lot for them), right up to them panicking about being arrested for failure and instead being rewarded for what they did do and being thanked for the warning of the Laughing Hand. The Bright Queen even offered reassurance that they did their best and there was nothing more they could do with the Laughing Hand.

The Nein’s disturbance that the Bright Queen didn’t seem to take their warning about Obann, the Angel of Irons, etc. seriously I think was not totally correct. I think it was less that she didn’t take it seriously and more like “Oh, another Calamity horror is plaguing my land? Okay, adding that to the list of things to take care of, on top of preexisting Calamity horrors, war with the Empire, etc.” Also, she’s been a ruler for a long time. She probably has a pretty good poker face, and part of her role is likely appearing to be in control so her citizens can be reassured that everything will be alright.  

And to top off this analysis with a cherry (for now at least), the Bright Queen was receptive to communication with a Tal’Dorei official, trusted the Nein’s word, and called off attacks on the enemy capital so as to not inadvertently aid cultists of Tharizdun. She seems to have her priorities straight. We’ll have to wait now to see how she acts when the Nein next speak to her.

That’s as much as I think I have in me for now. In conclusion: I love drow, and I will defend the Dynasty with everything in me.

[theredhairedmonkey]

A few people had some feedback for my meta on Claudia here. Instead of reblogging the meta over and over again, I’d rather address the arguments raised by @silverspetz​ here and @atreefullofstars​ here.

So... neither of these posts seem all that enthusiastic with either (1) my treatment of Dark Magic nor (2) my assessment of Claudia. I’ll do my best to break down both of these arguments as well as possible.

From @silverspetz​:

I don’t really believe in the “power corrupts” thing in the first place, but even if I did it wouldn’t change the fact that primal magic users also have elevated power and the only reason you can give for why dark magic would be more tempting is because it makes things “too” easy. If you were actually honest with this argument you would be insisting that the true evil is that magic exists at all and not just that dark magic is arbitrarily “too powerful”. 

Let's break down these forms of magic. For Primal Magic, in order to take full advantage of all that it can offer you, a mage has to have an arcanum (or an uber-rare Primal Stone). An arcanum requires a deep, fundamental understanding of the Primal Source, and far more so; there’s a reason only a rare few elves even become mages, and why even sky mages can’t automatically learn to grow mage wings. There’s a lot of internal mental discipline and legwork that’s involved--the reason why Lujanne can cast spells, but Runaan and Rayla can’t. While Callum is an exception, canonically it usually takes years if not decades to master this kind of magic.

Dark Magic doesn’t require any of this. If you have the materials and the incantation words, that’s enough. No deep understanding or internal channeling of magic is required. That’s what makes it so easy. And this is canon; this is what Aaron and Justin describe as the difference between Primal and Dark Magic when it comes to ease.

But being easy does not in of itself make Dark Magic bad. It’s why it’s tempting (Callum catches on to this, even when Viren and Claudia do not). The fact that there is no limit to what you can do with Dark Magic, combined with the fact that everything you could ever need or want could just be a single spell away is what makes this dangerous. Again, unlike Primal Magic, Dark Magic is characterized as unlimited power. That’s what makes this a toxic combination.

Primal Magic simply doesn’t operate this way. It’s a naturally occuring phenomenon that can be tapped into. There are limits as to what can be done; Primal Energy needs to be nearby, and many spells, such as aspiro and mage wings, are limited by what the mage can physically exert.

The Primal Mages that we’ve seen demonstrate a separate issue with Primal Magic, but I’ll talk about that below. 

Sure, it is nice that you at least admit that Xadia probably exiled humans to preserve the status quo, but you are still insisting that dark magic is the only kind with inherently corrupting influence and acting as if being born with an inherent power isn’t already playing life at easy mode. You don’t ask the question “how long before elves decide to do the easy thing instead of the right thing” even though they have already done far worse things than any dark mage on the show. It is all so very reminicent of all the arguments you hear from the majority whenever a minority tries to assert itself. “No, you can’t fight oppression your way, that’s wrong and bad. Do it on our terms”. The show’s thesis is basically that “reverse racism” is worse than actual racism, and the fandom largely agrees. You can save your “is dark magic too powerful” concerns until humanity as a whole has been given even a modicum of the power they actually deserve.

The show definitely doesn’t pull its punches when it comes to dragons and elves. Sol Regem quite nearly wipes out a city, while the ethnic cleansing of humans had been compared to the Trail of Tears by the show’s creators. And the thing is, there are issues with the way elven mages and dragons use their magic, even though that’s beyond the scope of my meta on Claudia. But just because a group is oppressed or marginalized doesn’t mean any attempt to gain, as you say, a “modicum of the power they actually deserve” is justified. In fact, that’s all very reminiscent of real-life formerly oppressed groups who either gained that “modicum of power” through exploiting others or taking advantage of their newfound power to settle the score with their former oppressors, which just perpetuates a cycle of hatred and violence...which kinda sounds like the point the first three seasons of the show was trying to push!

To your question “how long before elves decide to do the easy thing instead of the right thing,” we already have an answer. There is an elf who isn’t bothered by questions of doing the right thing.

Who only really cares about increasing his own power in the quickest way possible, regardless of who he harms, corrupts or kills along the way.

And it’s this guy:

In spite of mastering all six Primal Sources, he still turns to Dark Magic as a means to get what he wants. Which does give us the answer to your question--when an elven doesn’t care about the right thing, merely the easy thing, they too turn to Dark Magic. That’s the corrupting influence of this branch of magic. Aaravos should have had all the power he needed, but he wanted more.

And what does he do with his power once he has it? He eclipses the Sun Nexus, creating perpetual night over Lux Auera and quite possibly wiping out the city. That should drive home what “unlimited power” means with regard to Dark Magic--you can quite possibly destroy Primal Sources at will. You can’t do that with Primal Magic.

But Primal Mages, at least who we’ve seen, don’t particularly care to bolster their own power over the lives of others because, honestly, they’re kinda indifferent to them. And that’s their flaw--not power-lust, but apathy to the plight or struggles of people.

Keep in mind, they’re not unkind or callous toward others. Lujanne, for instance, is nice and will help Team Zym...when they ask her to. It’s why she simultaneously tells the group that “dark forces are pursuing you” while still being willing to show Callum around and letting the team drag their heals. Rayla was quite indignant at that (”I thought you were on my side!”). 

Or, she helps Ez get to Xadia because Soren asks her to, then wanders off to fuck around with other humans, while a war for the future of the world is fought. 

Ibis is similar--he suggests to Callum that the group simply leaves with Zym rather than make their stand, thus giving Viren the opportunity to gain power. He helps out in finding dragons to fight alongside them, but we never see him take part in the battle itself. Just like Lujanne, he helps the group with their goals but doesn’t engage directly with any threats.

The differences between Dark and Primal Mages are similar to the Sith and the Jedi in the Prequel Trilogy. The Sith are power-hungry, perhaps beginning their fall to the Dark Side out of a goal to protect their loved ones or a similar aim before being corrupted by their desire for power and domination. The Jedi, however, are “keepers of the peace,” and will get involved when that peace is disrupted...and turn a blind eye to slavery on worlds like Tatooine. They’ll preserve the status quo, but don’t do much else, which is why the Separatist Crisis was started in the first place; countless worlds were irate that the Republic, and by extension, the Jedi Council, ignored their problems and struggles.

Primal Mages are the Jedi in this situation. From what we could ascertain, they didn’t do much of anything to help the humans before they were desperate enough to turn to Dark Magic.  The fact that a human learning an arcanum was so surprising just shows how little anyone tried to help humanity before dismissing them as a lost cause. 

This is also why Callum is such a standout example of a mage. He rejects the temptation of Dark Magic while also deciding to stay and fight to defend Zym. He’s chosen who he wants to be, and he’s not going to make the same mistakes that mages from either camp have made.

Primal Magic has its flaws, but to say that Dark Magic and Primal Magic both represent power and share the same temptations misses the larger point.

As for Claudia supposedly being “selfish”, yeah, this is where you are absolutely being dishonest to demonize Claudia. Soren was not willing to accept his condition. It was blatantly obvious that he was just having a breakdown and trying to find silver-linings whereever he could. Even his first poem was basically him lamenting his new situation. And he was very obviously happy when Claudia fixed his spine. 

You would have a point had Claudia actually obtained Soren’s consent. The fact that she didn’t even bother to ask his permission violated his agency. Even after she was done, Soren never found out what it cost for him to be healed. 

All of this is extremely problematic. It’s not a small thing that medical practitioners seek out consent from their patients, even when the treatment is painless, simple, and safe. The autonomy that people have over their own bodies is of utmost importance, something that can’t be dismissed with a simple “Oh well he was unhappy anyway, he would have said yes if I asked.”

I think that, deep down, even now, Claudia is a good person. She thinks what she’s choosing to do with her magic is ultimately the right thing. It’s just that, in her mind, other people don’t get to choose.

 So forgive me if I think that meta about primal magic you plan to write is going to be a bunch of drivel that admits elves wen’t too far in commiting genocide but ultimately doesn’t see how being born with the power to crush armies might make you at least as tempted to solve all your problems with sheer force as the ability to turn chains into snakes.

Hopefully, the little that I wrote about Primal Magic assuaged your worries somewhat. There’s a lot more to write about this form of magic, most of which can’t fit here.

And it’s not like creatures with Primal Magic never use sheer force to try and solve their problems (that’s exactly what Sol Regem attempts to do). But when you look at what you can do with Primal Magic versus what you can do with Dark Magic, the former simply doesn’t compare. This isn’t an apples to apples comparison in terms of raw power.

For @atreefullofstars​:

And miss me with “dark magic is easy and dark mages don’t sacrifice anything so everything they do is selfish.” Yeah, characters in the show–the ones who already don’t like dark magic–have said that a few times. But what’s shown on screen is dark mages collapsing, falling ill, panting, and turning corpselike and clearly unhealthy from using it, when nothing like that happens to primal mages. What is “Claudia doesn’t lose anything other than a streak of black hair” supposed to mean? She didn’t make a magical trade, her hair color for Soren’s spine; if that were the case she wouldn’t have needed the deer. She did something so difficult, that put so much physical strain on her body, that it turned some of her hair white. When that happens in real life, there are physiological consequences way beyond hair color; the hair is just a clear visual representation of how badly that strained her body.

Lets set aside whether Dark Mages never sacrifice anything for their magic (Ziard, for instance, sacrificed his life to save Elarion; Callum fell into a coma). What I’m talking about is in this particular case--Claudia momentarily collapses from using a lot of Dark Magic...then proceeds to get back up again and is none the worse for wear in the next scene. That’s all I’m trying to say. Claudia does not “sacrifice her own well-being” to save her brother when there are no long-term side effects to her other than that one streak (it’s not from the physical strain either; stress-induced grayness doesn’t just come up in one spot and it certainly doesn’t friggin turn already black hair white!).

The streak isn’t supposed to visually represent the strain on her body that was clearly temporary. It visually represents how Dark Magic is slowly starting to change Claudia. One might say it’s corrupting her.

And if that just isn’t enough, if she should have to give up more because she’s supposedly being selfish, well, it’s still more than primal mages sacrifice. What did Callum sacrifice to save Rayla? What did it cost him, what did he lose? Is it selfish that he used his magic to rescue her from falling, because he loves her and doesn’t want his life to change by losing her? What did he give up when he cast Fulminus to selfishly override Ibis’s objections to teaching him? What did it cost him to cast Aspiro and blow Zym up into the air to block out the sun, saving him and Rayla? Every primal spell in the show is “selfish” when you view it through a lens determined to show it that way, and not one of them has a cost. Every good deed anyone has EVER done could be construed as selfish because it made them feel good to do it; even if it was difficult or uncomfortable, they were obviously still satisfying some other principle they value more and getting net benefit.

I think you’re missing the point if you think that the issue with Dark Magic is that it doesn’t come with enough personal sacrifice. Me arguing that Claudia didn’t sacrifice her well-being for Soren isn’t me arguing that she should have.

But as for whether primal mages are selfish...Callum quite nearly falls to his death in a long-shot attempt to save Rayla. And keep in mind, he isn’t trying to save an idea of her, or the portrait of a perfect relationship, or something that he simply desires for himself. He’s trying to save her. And unlike with Claudia, it doesn’t come at anyone else’s expense--just, potentially, himself. 

Before that, he puts himself between Zym/Rayla and scores of enhanced soldiers. He risks his life just to protect them. Before that, he crushes a moon opal to learn the truth about Rayla’s parents, so she can feel free to make her own choice (and this was the epitome of selflessness; he didn’t attempt to convince her to leave with them. If she wanted to stay, fight and die, Callum was willing to accept that. Think about that when you say that every primal spell in the show is somehow selfish).

And before that, he uses Fulminis to get Ibis’s attention so he could learn magic...so that he could protect Zym and his friends from Viren’s army. Throughout all of Season 3, Callum does magic primarily to help others and never just for himself. It doesn’t come at the expense of anyone else’s life or anyone’s agency. That’s the difference between Callum and Claudia--to reduce all of that to just “well any choice is selfish when you think about it” is just pure nihilism.

[hammerheadandsickle]

Is supporting Hong Kong protestors bad? I don't understand.

first off i wanna say that just because i am critical/not supportive of the current state of hong kong protests doesn’t mean i think every hong kong protester has bad intentions. if the people are facing police brutality, it is right to rebel, but the biggest problem comes from how decentralized and leaderless it is. 

with this decentralization and lack of leadership (and short/longterm goals) comes an issue of whose interests these protests serve. and some groups of people in these protests have waved american/british flags and engaged in severe anti-Blackness through their denouncing of BLM protests, and even if these groups are a minority, the fact that these things PLUS their calls for hong kong to not just be separate from mainland china but to actually reform as a british colony have not been severely denounced by the majority, PLUS these actions have now gained the protests material support from US politicians (both republican and democrat), shows the interests that these protests are now serving: US imperialists. 

and though i feel it should be self-evident why imperialism is bad i’ll still justify my complete condemnation of it: imperialism is the endless, destructive expansion of capitalism which is the root of all social evils that we’re told are separate issues: slavery, war, genocide, oppression, environmental destruction, and mass exploitation. US imperialism continued the imperialist aggression after WWII that britain started, now aided with nuclear arms and ownership of most mass production. now the US gets to determine the way of the world, and to maintain that power not only is exploitation but propaganda, which is where china comes in.

mainland china used to strictly adhere to mao’s word, a marxist-leninist line, but has since become revisionist and allowed trade and markets with imperialist powers. however, even though china isn’t strictly communist anymore, the US still benefits from painting china with red scare prop as an evil communist dystopia, especially in relation to hong kong. obviously as china is revisionist it’s far from perfect but the US has more blood on its hands than any other country in history INCLUDING CHINA. we get to be comfortable in our homes here and only see contradictions in situations like healthcare and police brutality, meanwhile our products are made by proletariat in foreign countries, as well as those incarcerated within our own country, who we will never see with our own eyes in our lives who are paid pennies an hour, and our economy is bolstered by a roided-out military complex that bombs the shit out of, or aids in bombing the shit out of, innocent people in other countries for their resources. 

i’m sorry for getting off track there and probably most people reading this already understand that context but i still feel like i needed to give it.

TLDR people have the right to rebel but hong kong protests thus far have only served imperial interests

TWO LAST THINGS I WILL SAY ON THE MATTER:

1. a movement is not necessarily defined by its supporters, but i find it interesting that a huge amount of support for hong kong comes from both otherwise “apolitical” and reactionary voices. obviously there are a lot of progressives passively sharing mainstream propaganda regarding hong kong out of a general desire to do good combined with an ignorance to the entire context, but the loudest voices here seem to be people who are anti-communist (and see china as communist so they think china = bad) and don’t actually care about the liberation of masses as a whole from oppressive police states, but only care about “freeing” people from “oppressive authoritarian regimes” (aka states that oppose US imperialism) and “giving” them “freedom” (aka re-placing them into US imperialist control) which also serves imperialist interests. you don’t have to love or even support china to be critical of the hong kong protests

2. THIS MAY SEEM HYPOCRITICAL AT THE END OF THIS ENTIRE POST BUT i don’t talk often about the going-ons in mainland china or hong kong because not only am i not chinese or from china or in china, but i am an american in the US, meaning i am literally within imperialism. if i focus my energy towards constantly politically analyzing or getting involved in not just matters in china but foreign matters in general, i am wasting my time because the most power and influence i will have on any political matter will always be on that within the US. how can i change the current state of imperialism in relation to hong kong if i’m literally doing nothing to change it as someone who literally lives within it?

anyways that was long and probably made no sense. if you wanna hear more about this perspective from people who are actually good at talking about it, i’ll link some stuff here

https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1j7jRyFodtBKmj4Jiff0KukBMxM6P8vqZm8AvRhydcvc/mobilebasic

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1kXq1jmfwvgpv225DaxRa7?si=5OG-n8FnS4CzhBbil4JGCw

(also read mao xx)

[phroyd]

A Little Late,  but, ... whatever! - Phroyd

There is this rare thing that will happen in the universe on June 19, when Mercury and Mars oppose Pluto on the same day. According to VICE senior astrologer Annabel Gat, this means we’ll be susceptible to a lot of fighting, power struggles, and generally catastrophic energy—and it could be the worst so far this year, if we're not prepared.

“There are going to be lots of fights breaking out, huge egos, jealousy. It’s going to be all the treacherous drama in Game of Thrones, multiplied by 20. Just imagine everything is extremely confrontational,” Gat says. “Mercury rules the mind and communication, and it’s all about negotiating. Mars is all about taking action, and it’s also the planet of war. Pluto can do both those things to an even higher degree...It’s an overwhelming energy.” In other words: If Mars is a fist-to-fist bar fight, Pluto is the astrological equivalent of nuclear warfare.

Adding to that, emotions have been building through last week and into the full moon Monday: hopes have been dashed, and people have been paranoid or too trusting, she says. Jupiter’s square to Neptune, compounded by Mercury opposing Saturn, brought heaps of rejection and gloomy energy on Sunday. June 19 brings a critical climax with “the moon in Capricorn opposing Mars and Mercury and meeting with Pluto, making emotions especially heightened.”

Rather than sit back and fall victim to whatever pandemonium awaits, or worse—relive those last few episodes of GOT—I asked Gat for tips for all of us on how to prepare for this terrible cosmic weather.

1. Be on high alert during rush hour

Whether you’re on a train or bus, or driving during the morning rush, be aware that the aggressive energy around you could lead to higher-than-usual tension. Think: road rage, people snapping at each other. “The commute is time when people’s tempers are set off very easily,” Gat says.

Along those lines, leaving early will do you some good. If you’re not in a rush, you’re less likely to be the person on edge and you won’t have to worry about delays from the chaos around you. If you have the option to work from home, this would be a great day for that!

2. Avoid your usual caffeine fix

This is a day to calm yourself down, not psych yourself up. “Do your best to stay chill during everyday interactions—that [could] mean swapping out your coffee for chamomile tea,” Gat says. (That said, if you’re a person who is cranky without caffeine, leave enough time to brew a cup so you start your day on the right foot!)

If you want to take that a step further surround yourself with calming scents, like lavender—if you can’t burn a candle, perfume works. This wouldn’t be a bad week to try some meditation, or learn some breathing exercises (one called “resonant breathing,” which has been recommended to veterans and survivors of genocides and natural disasters, takes just a few minutes to learn).

3. Hang out in threes

Having a third party present can be useful for keeping things in check when tempers flare. “When you’re arguing with someone, what they’ll say to you will be different based on whether you’re alone or if a teacher, parent, or boss is watching,” Gat says. “Make sure someone is watching.”

Just make sure that third party is someone who will make things better, not worse. “The best way to deal with Pluto problems is to bring in...an unbiased third party who can help mediate. The worst way to deal with Pluto problems is to cheat on someone or have secrets,” she says. And if no one else is around, “ask yourself what you would do if a parent that you really respect, or your hero, was in the room.”

4. Turn your revenge fantasy into a success fantasy

If you’re feeling an impulse to get back at someone on June 19, remember that revenge is almost always better in your imagination. If you can’t shake the impulse, however, lean toward a healthier version of it.

When they say, “‘Success is the best revenge,’ there’s still a lot of ego behind it,” Gat says. “But it’s a better place to lean into than, ‘I’m going to ruin your life.’” So if you’re feeling fixated with the day’s “relentless energy,” consider channeling that energy toward your own passions and healthy obsessions; tackle some research and let that energy propel you in the direction you’re going with those things.

5. Pick your battles, or at least delay them

It’s generally good practice to pick your fights, but we all have those moments when things that have been building up to be released. Wednesday is not the day for that. If you can’t hold back, save it for Thursday at least—then if you’re still moved to say something, you won’t be as relentless about it.

“Whenever you see Pluto, you always have to worry. Opposition means we can’t avoid things anymore. Mercury has a mouth, and Mars wants to pick fights,” Gat says. You may find you will be “clinging to your ego, refusing to surrender to change. The worst qualities in people can come out—jealousy, obsession, possessiveness and manipulation.”

6. Give yourself permission to be a little fake, just for a day

“Be smart about the battles you pick. You might have to be fake-nice to someone,” Gat says. So you may have to tell a little white lie, or smile at someone even if it’s through gritted teeth. This “might be really inauthentic for you on any other day, but [on June 19] you have to do the right thing in terms of your own sanity, and to keep everyone else safe, too,” she says.

If you can’t bring yourself to pretend, try to practice some compassionate communication. Remember: everyone has the capacity to blow up, even if you’re the most laid-back person you know. “No one is safe from this—we all have the capacity to blow up at each other,” Gat says. “It’s all about learning patience, being able to breath through things, and not acting on impulse.”

7. Write down your amazing comebacks, then maybe burn them

Carry a notebook around or have your phone handy to jot things down privately before saying something out loud that you may regret—especially with comebacks that feel justified in the moment. “Mercury is the planet of the mind and it’s currently in Cancer, which is a sign we think of as being really intuitive, but it doesn’t know the best way to ask for what it wants because has been in opposition with Saturn, the planet of restriction, this month,” Gat says. That means “there have been a lot of blocks around communication, and we haven’t been feeling as heard as we usually do,” and if we’ve been carrying something around in our minds we’ll want to just say them.

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But the energy is very impulsive, so if you are going to give someone a piece of your mind, you may as well do it after you’ve thoroughly thought your perspective over (and when the astrological weather is more conducive for problem solving). Then, if you revisit those written thoughts another day, you may find they’re more harsh than you intended. You can also get a lot off your chest by unleashing all your anger out in a letter—and then safely burning it or ripping it up, Gat says.

8. Remember that your intentions don’t always translate

When it comes to communication, we often get hung up on the intentions behind our messages instead of the way they are received. Gat reminds us that during this intense day, lashing out for any reason—even in self-defense—isn’t going to produce desirable results.

“Mars is the planet of action and of war, and Cancer is the sign of the crab, which has a hard shell as its armor. Mars in Cancer has a lot to do with protection and safety, so when it’s opposing the planet of the underworld, Pluto, we really feel we have to protect ourselves,” she says. We may lash out, thinking we’re defending ourselves, not realizing it’s also offensive. We lash out for our own safety but it may not be solving any problems or getting you the closure or result you desire.”

9. Pre-empt miscommunications in bed by setting ground rules

If you don’t already have a safe word with your partner(s), Gat advises that you set them now. Establishing boundaries in advance gives you both the tools to avoid crossing them during sex. She notes that, “if you haven’t been getting what you want in bed due to not knowing how to ask, you will definitely reach your breaking point and will feel pushed to figure out how to request what you have been craving.”

10. Take your anger out on inanimate objects

Sometimes anger just needs an outlet. Luckily, those outlets exist. You could try renting a rage room, or if you have something you can safely smash with a hammer or an isolated place you can go to do some primal screaming, this is the day to do it, Gat says. “Anger has a real place in the world [and] in our lives. But let’s not get into silly fights on the commute, or destroy a relationship over ego.”

In the book "Trauma and the Body,” somatic psychologist Pat Ogden cites a technique where you push against a wall with all your might to release aggression. But if all else fails, a traditional punching bag could work, too.

11. Look for happy, productive endings

“Pluto is the planet of death and transformation and Mars rules knives and swords,” Gat says. “It’s all about severing things, so things are getting cut off.” This could mean an extremely dramatic urge to quit your job, or breakup with lovers or friends; but instead of having a soul-crushing confrontation, why not save it for a calmer day and purge your belongings instead? Get rid of stuff you no longer need, or in Gat’s words, “use the energy of endings for your benefit.

If you’ve thought it over and you really are ready to say goodbye to a person or situation, however, watch out for manipulations and power plays. “If you dump someone on this day in the hopes that they’ll try to win you back because you are testing them, you won’t be in luck!”

The good news is, Mercury only opposes Pluto once a year, and Mars only opposes it once every two years. But Gat warns we are also approaching eclipse season, which will “bring even more shocks and shake ups, as secrets are revealed and changes in power take place,” so there is more turbulence to come (hello, Mercury retrograde on July 7!).

Phroyd

[communistvashoth]

Look, i'm not saying i dont see the parallells between illuminati/reptilian conspiracies and historical antisemitism. But the idea of a shadowy, corrupt group controlling the government is a common thread in a lot of fringe theories, and calling it a reference to Jews throws me so far under the bus you wouldn't fucking believe it

I’ve decided to write a pretty long response to this, and i hope you’ll read the whole thing. I promise, I have no desire to throw you under any buses.

(pertaining to this)

I'm sorry you feel unfairly piled on; I dont know who you are, but I doubt you deserve that, most people don’t. it's sadly common in more progressive communities, and the internet in general, for people to respond to mistakes and miscommunications with rigid condemnation and some sort of "excommunication". if that's what you're going through, that probably is unfair, and you're justified in feeling frustrated. it also, just generally, really sucks to be told that something you did or said may have been insensitive or harmful. most people dont mean to do that sort of thing, and when we're told something we did was racist, sexist, anti-semitic, homophobic, etc. it often feels like we are being labeled a racist, a sexist, an anti-semite, a homophobe, etc. that feels really shitty, because those are shitty things to be, so being called that feels like being called a bad person. its vitally important, though, that we remember that those words are primarily adjectives. everybody does things that are racist, sexist, anti-semitic, homophobic, etc. sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that we are those things. 

we don’t become racists, sexists, anti-semites, homophobes, etc. until we are confronted with harm we caused accidentally and, instead of hearing that, addressing it, changing for the better, and moving on, we become defensive, double-down, and resent the people we’ve harmed for having the audacity to make us feel guilty. 

in this instance, i’m afraid there are more than just parallels, and the anti-semitism is more than historical. many of those fringe conspiracy theories don’t just share the concept of a secret, evil cabal running the world and destroying western culture/white people/free speech/whatever ridiculous thing, they share specifically the idea that there is a secret, evil cabal of jewish people running the world and destroying western culture/white people/free speech/whatever thing. they seem like ridiculous garbage that only nutcases believe in, but when actually investigated and dissected, many of those theories are based in the same bigotries as the blood libels going back as far as the 11th century. the fact of the matter is, most if not all of those such conspiracy theories are not similar to anti-semitism, they are anti-semitism, and they are not historical, they are happening now, and they are motivating anti-semitic violence now. I mean, just look at Qanon and the “white genocide” conspiracy theory. and if you’re not very familiar with those, then you should count yourself very, very lucky that they aren’t things that demand your attention. 

I am sorry for how you are feeling; i know from experience that it feels really shitty to be told you’ve harmed someone when you didnt mean to, and i know what it’s like to be subjected to overreactions about it, and how shitty that is. assuming you are the OP of the post i commented on, i don’t think you meant to harm anyone, you were just making a joke that was, admittedly, funny, and if anyone is saying you’re a raging anti-semite, or evil, or irredeemable, or anything like that, that’s definitely an out-of-proportion response to one post. I hope that you can recognise when people are overreacting or taking out their own unhappiness out on you, and i hope that you can fortify and feel some comfort in the knowledge that they are wrong, and you dont deserve to be treated like that. but i also hope that your feelings of being thrown under the bus don’t harden you to genuine criticism. i don’t doubt it hurts, and you are definitely justified in feeling that a lot of that hurt is unwarranted, but being told you’ve done something harmful will never be painless. counterintuitively, it’s actually a sort of a silver lining to all this; that bad feeling, that unpleasant niggle of guilt, it means that you care when you harm people by accident. but as much as those feelings suck, and as much as it super, super sucks to be dogpiled by internet assholes, we can’t use those bad feelings to insulate ourselves from our mistakes. 

it hurts, but it doesn’t justify ignoring the harm we do to others; being called a racist has never hurt a white person as much as racism harms people of colour. being told we’ve done something anti-semitic is hard, but trying to navigate through increasingly common murky double-speak and covert dog-whistles as a jewish person is harder. they don’t deserve that, but it’s an unavoidable part of their lives. if we care about them, if we want to help them, if we want to help lay the bricks for a new world where they won’t have to suffer that, we have to shoulder that burden with them. sometimes that means examining our language, learning about unpleasant history and its modern forms, and letting a joke go by the wayside when it sounds uncomfortably like a dog-whistle, even if that isn’t how we meant it.

if it helps at all, you’re not alone in this. you’re not alone in your feelings, and you’re not alone in this experience. in fact, if you’re still feeling shitty/frustrated/unheard, i’d be happy to chat with you off anon (altho maybe not immediately, it’s getting late). I’ve also done things that were anti-semitic without meaning to and had to confront that, and i struggle with all sorts of learned prejudices that i want to be better about. If you need to vent about this, if you need someone you can just word-vomit at without worrying about hurting someone’s feelings, i am here, and i am absolutely willing to listen. 

and even if none of this affects you -although i dont believe it to be the case, it’s totally possible you’re coming to this discussion in bad faith; anon means i dont even know for sure who you are, so i can’t exactly check- i hope you will read it, as long as it is. and even if you don’t, or do and dismiss it, maybe it will reach someone else.

i hope you, anon-who-might-be-OP, feel better; i hope you feel heard. i hope you find your way to peace and understanding with this.

i hope any jewish people who were affected by this situation feel better; i hope you feel heard. i hope you find your way to peace and healing with this.

[script-a-world]

Is it honestly actually possible that bad people run most of the galaxy or several galaxies? Or at least even just an entire planet? It's done in sci fi a lot. However in real life that obviously has never happened. I'm not sure how to well, begin, create the circumstances that will give them that kind of vast power and not be defeated before. Even if they are the good guys, still, can't see how they can run everything either.

Bina: Totally possible since “bad” is relative depending on you who ask. If they have a believable facade of being “good” (or if they ARE doing good....... to just the right people (such as, politicians or powerful allies who will back them up)), and if they have a lot of supporters who think they’re the good guys, then it’s super feasible that they can take control of the majority of the galaxy with very little opposition.

Heck they can even get away with people just not thinking badly of them. They don’t necessarily need supporters who think they’re the right people to have in charge. Having people be neutral towards them can also be also good enough for them to take control without anyone complaining. All they need is people not caring. People supporting them is bonus, but apathy from the common man also goes a long long way in helping bad people come into power. 

In the end it’s all about controlling their narrative and their own publicity. They can be totally truly evil, but if they cover their tracks with enough propaganda and efforts to appear like they’re doing nothing wrong, or even that they’re doing things for the benefit of the people (or that they’re beneficial for powerful people who have more sway than the average person and can thus override the wills and desires of the common people), then the baddies can take power and the common man would either take no issue with it or be unable to do anything about it. 

Tex: The thing about leadership is that morality doesn't really calculate into it - they're two separate areas with very little overlap, especially if a leader is a successful one. The longevity of a leader's reign has more to do with their bureaucratic competency, organizational skills, competency to set and achieve certain goals that benefit those whom they rule (in some form), and ability to manipulate people. And, I hate to break it to you, but both "good" and "bad" people are manipulative, just for different reasons.

Al Capone is a classic example of how "bad" people can do good things that legitimately benefit others. He was a gangster that directly or indirectly had a hand in killing a great deal of people - but he was incredibly influential in making sure milk had expirations dates, among other things (Atlas Obscura). It could be argued that running bootleg alcohol at all was a good thing, given that a significant portion of the US population did exactly the same thing (to various degrees) during Prohibition. Is profiting off civil disobedience in such a manner against the mores of altruism? Murder or no murder, Capone straddles the line of "good" and "bad", depending on your point of view.

Martin Luther King, Jr, while on the surface might look like a paragon of virtue, did purposefully break laws with specific goals in mind - while his civil disobedience resulted in drastically fewer deaths than Capone's, he did still break the law. There are some schools of thought that believe adherence to the law is virtuous, and thus moral (and thus, "good"). Is MLK virtuous in this regard? Does his position as a minister of his faith grant him more morality than the average person, who isn't an official representative of a codified set of beliefs?

Both MLK and Capone caused immense upheaval in their respective eras and societies. Is this necessarily good? Is upheaval - change - bad? I'm sure there are proponents regarding both of them that can see the advantages and disadvantages of their respective actions. One is classically referred to as a "bad" person, and the other a "good" person. Why? And through whose lens are these judgements being made? Is the perspective itself moral?

Let me bring some fictional examples into this.

Emperor Palpatine, of Star Wars, is coded to be a distillation of evil - the evil, a scourge upon the galaxy. And yet, when he rose to power and declared himself emperor of a new empire, he was lauded as an incredible unifier. General evil-doer he may be, but his grip upon his own galaxy was ironclad, and his background as a senator and then chancellor shows that he was canny, able to organize his political agenda in influential ways that effected significant change upon the political and even economic landscapes of the respective eras of his life.

He was respected - yes, even by the Jedi - for his affable demeanour and bureaucratic acumen. His death, depending on the canon you subscribe to, did not end the vast reach of his influence, with post-mortem orders that were followed with the same fervent veneration as in life. Palpatine's opinion was trusted, and regardless of his moral compass, trust is still something that needs earning. What perceptions his followers are predisposed to, well- that's certainly another topic.

Aragorn II, son of Arathorn, of Lord of the Rings fame, ruled over the reunited kingdom of Arnor and Gondor after the war against Sauron. He is typically coded as the exact opposite of someone like Palpatine - generous, compassionate, wise. A unifier that began an unequivocal era of peace. However, his death toll is proportionally similar to Palpatine's during the war that secured his place upon the throne, and he had eschewed his responsibility as blood heir to the throne for a great deal of his life, a time during which there was famine, suffering, and death from Sauron's own influence. Are his reasons for obscuring his identity and being a Ranger good enough to justify the expansion of Sauron's reign through his relative inaction, his non-acceptance of leadership? Does the end of the war justify the means that Aragorn took to get there?

Is Aragorn more moral, more good than Palpatine, because his reign was brought about through total bloodshed? Palpatine's was wrought through the genocide of the Jedi, and yet his own reign brought a stability to his empire. It can be argued that the inaction on Aragorn's part, and the action on Palptine's part, during their respective wars pre-coronation, were a manipulation of the masses. They both chose to guise themselves for who they really were - the son of Arathorn II and the Lord descendant of Bane's line - only to unveil themselves at an opportune moment hastened on by their own actions to claim, and unify, these warring factions.

All four of these individuals, be the real or fictional, share something in common - the ability to be a successful leader. Their morality did not, in the end, impede them from swaying the masses to their opinions and leveraging the influence that they had - through argument, through force, through lineage - to assemble under a common goal. They all enacted dramatic, sweeping changes upon the society in which they lived, and utilized the power granted to them through their public's opinion to direct society in a direction that they wanted. They were good leaders, but that doesn't mean they had to be good people. 

Saphira: In my novel, I am working with two different rulers. One is an Empress and the other a Tyrant. I'll see what I can glean from each of these two to provide more context in a fictional setting.

The Empress has a positive perspective from her people, as he is backed by her Goddess and her long family line of rule. She has  well developed court, council and structure set by both the Goddess and generations of Empresses before her. (Yes, it's an all female-ruling lineage because they're Elephants and the species is largely Matriarchal, but I digress.) She uses generations of Faith-based morality and ideology  to cultivate the values and perspectives of her subjects. Her choices are just because the Goddess has told her to do it, and our Goddess is Benevolent for all. Behold, she has given us life and freedom beyond our bestial origins. She makes her decisions and rules her people using rigid methods and strict guidelines to keep the common life consistent and rational. Whether she is aware of it or not, it is not so much the faith or the prestige of her rule that is powerful, but that selfsame consistency and rationality of her people.

What I mean is this: because the way of life is consistent, it feels rational. Any good or bad that she does is ruled by the same beliefs as those before her. That makes it easy for her subjects to accept her decisions because it makes sense in the context of their everyday lives. Of course she is going to hoard all the 'non-essential' food in storehouses for the war, because we, the entirety of our people, have been preparing for the war that dominates over other races since our inception. Of course we will put finances into the arts, because we are the great race that will take over the planet and arts show how sophisticated and glorious we are. All of the laws that control, govern and guide her people tether to the same principles, and that makes her powerful. There is minimal resistance, because to resist is to change their daily life and core philosophies.

The Tyrant, on the other hand, has by definition stolen the power for himself by force, and that leaves him with a radically different set of tools to stay in power and rule his territories.

First is the Legacy. The narrative of his glorious victory, his noble war that dominated over the nations to protect the underdogs, helps give him some positive influence, but force is force. He is still dealing with those who will be able to mentally reject or object to his power. He could have taken one of two simple routes: A. Quell or crush any rebellion, or B. Wield that rebellion and outcry as a tool for positive change. A sometimes needs to be done, but his ideal is B. This helps create a positive influence over the territories to help reinforce his Coming to Power Narrative, and also fixes problems in the nation that allows him to turn his focus to other problems. Fun stuff.

His true power is that he is cheating. He is using his arcane ability (which won him the war in the first place) to A. live far longer than anyone has any right to, and B. give the overall impression that he can snap his enemies with the thought of snapping a matchstick. This makes his greatest tools Benevolence and Fear. Or, rather, Love and Fear. This gives the people two reasons to hesitate against him: "I don't want to because he does a decent job most of the time," followed by "also I just like being alive in general." 

Where he lacks in 'legitimate rule' with a long lineage, he has made  up for in a single, long lifespan. The current generation has never lived outside of his rule. Their parents were under his rule. Their great grandparents were under his rule. This also introduces a fear of change, and the fear of change is the greatest tool of all. If there is no great and colossal reason why something should be different (like, I dunno, a lot of people dying) then things tend to stay as they are.  

So what it comes down to are three factors, for staying in power. 

1. The populace thinking it's honestly not that bad, or it could be worse. 

2. Fear of change, or that this thing that claims to be better, isn't. 

3. The consequences of change are too dire. This person can murder me, my family and if they die the economy dies with them.

The moral strength of the character may be a direct influence over these factors. That moral compass might be completely irrelevant. That depends on the characters you want to write and what the narrative needs to present your ideas xor experience. Either way, it's how the ruler handles these factors, ether with skill or great lacking, that determines the strength and distance of their power. 

Constablewrites: Cracked just had an article about this from the perspective of the citizens: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-normal-people-allow-evil-rulers-to-thrive/ It's got some good links to sources discussing real-world regimes and historical examples.  

[kingfubuki92]

RWBY Volume 6: The Concept of Trust, Futility, Anger, and Justifications

It honestly astounds me how many opinions have been formed after the last few episodes of RWBY, both because it means the show generated enough critical thinking to cause the formation of such opinions, and the variety of opinions I’ve come across.

RWBYQ is in the right and Ozpin is the devil

Ozpin is a sympathetic man who did nothing wrong and RWBYQ are insensitive jerks

Salem isn’t a bad guy and was dealt a shit hand by the gods

Salem is a manipulative monster and the gods can’t be held to human standards

Qrow is justified in punching Ozpin

Qrow is an absolute monster for hitting Oscar, a child.

Thing is, it seems a lot of people are unable to grasp the bigger picture. That picture being: they all have a point.

Lets start with arguably the simplest topic.

Morality of the Gods and culpability of Salem

This is arguably the easiest topic in that both sides are ultimately at fault, but both sides have reasons for their actions. Salem did manipulate people but all to gain Ozma back at first. Thing is though, Salem has the emotional maturity of a child. To quote the Fridge section on Tv Tropes:

Salem's Start of Darkness is more than just Love Makes You Evil. As the archtypical Girl in the Tower, she had probably been raised with very minimal social experience, while being waited on hand and foot. A nice guy finally breaks her out...and then dies. Of course she wouldn't have the emotional maturity to handle it, nor would she probably have anyone else to help her through this difficult time.

Salem doesn't even seem to consider Together in Death with Ozma until after such a choice is denied to her. She wanted things to be the way she chose and would settle for nothing else, much like how a child will throw a tantrum if not given what they wanted.

After failing to kill herself in the God of Darkness' domain, Salem seemed perfectly content with hiding herself in a small woodland cottage, scaring anyone away from confronting her. She effectively returned herself to her former conditions of being alone, but this time of her own volition and in a place of her own design, much like how an angry child would run to their room and desire to be alone. Its only when Ozma returns does she leave the cottage, for she had been given what she wanted. And when Ozma tried to leave with her daughters, she responded by lashing out in a rage and wanting to see Ozma burn, much like a child would get angry when someone takes their toy and start to hold a grudge.

She couldn’t handle Ozma’s death because she’d never had to experience something like that before. After trying and failing to die only to be made into a being of infinite life with a thirst for destruction, she kept to herself, and only became a false god when she finally had Ozma back. Now this behavior doesn’t excuse her actions, it makes them understandable. Salem was unable to grow up properly, and its very likely she would not have grown this way had she grown up properly.

As for the Gods, they did kill everyone and treat us more like an experiment, but its similar to how we would treat an Ant Farm. We don’t care for the feelings of the ants. To quote Father from FMA Brotherhood:

“When you notice an insect on the ground, do you stop to consider it a fool? The life of an insect is so beneath you that it would be a waste of your time to even consider judging it. That would be an accurate summation of my feelings towards you humans.”

This doesn’t excuse their actions however. Just because they are above us doesn’t make their actions alright, for they slaughtered all of humanity in an act of rage, even when not all were guilty. The brother gods may be our creators, but they are not our judge, jury, and executioner. They are not like YHWH. They are more akin to the Greek Pantheon. To us, their actions and behavior is monstrous. To themselves, its no different than putting down a dog.

Next, the most harmful topic

The Pain of Qrow and the harm to Oscar

I will not defend Child Abusers, but I don’t consider Qrow one. To start off, Qrow I feel sorry for in all this.

Qrow is someone already heavily mentally unbalanced to begin with, his alcoholism being a coping method for his shitty life. To have the one person he felt truly knew him, made him feel he was worth something, reveal that everything they've fought for, the lives he's had to see fade, ultimately meant nothing, he would understandably be pissed.

That doesn't mean he is completely justified though. His disregarding Oscar and only focusing on Ozpin is a clear sign of him unraveling, as is his much larger reliance on his flask after. Qrow is in danger of breaking permanently. One of the only pillars in his life (Ozpin, Yang, and Ruby) has shattered before him in his eyes. And a table can't stand upright on only two legs, each one cracking already. The past month itself has been hell for Qrow too, his sister and Leonardo betraying him, nearly dying thanks to Tyrian and being forced to relive something from his past in a dream, generally feeling aimless without Ozpin to lead them against Salem, and learning most of his friends in Mistral were murdered.

Just remember the opening, of the Grimm Claws dragging Qrow down after he goes for his flask. Qrow may very well be raising a death flag, and not out of being killed by the Grimm, but being too broken to bother fighting back.

That isn’t to say I don’t feel just as sorry for Oscar. Oscar didn’t ask for the pain, as it was Ozpin/Ozma who deserved their ire. However, as cruel as it may sound, Oscar isn’t a child anymore.

At this point, the moment Oscar began to fight alongside the others, he unofficially began to follow their path of being a huntsman. Something he acknowledged when fighting Hazel.

“Did she know the risk of being a Huntress? She made a choice! A choice to put others before herself! So do I.”

Oscar may be 14, but he isn't really a child anymore. He's an unofficial huntsman like RWBY now. And while yes, they can still be abused like Weiss is by Jacques, they aren't children anymore. They're growing up faster than most kids their age, so to treat Oscar as if he's a defenseless child, when we've seen him fight Grimm like the Manticore on his own, is disrespectful.

He didn't ask for any of this. The fact he's still with the group rather than wanting to go home, shows he is committed. He isn't Ozpin, Oscar is doing this because he feels he has too.

Next, the biggest of all the topics:

Ozpin v. RWBYQ

This right here is the biggest point of contention in the FNDM at the moment. However, in my opinion, both are right, and both are wrong.

Yes Ozma had a very tragic past, yes he is locked in a situation he does not like in the slightest, yes he has been forced by the gods to either make Remnant a Utopia or let it face genocide again, yes he is sympathetic.

BUT, a sympathetic backstory doesn't excuse the fact he has been doing all this with no long term plan, and that as far as we know, his war with Salem amounts to a massive game of keep away. He took a Grimm magnet onto a civilian transport, without telling the others, knowing they’d object for the sake of traveling faster, and that in turn put all the passengers in danger, got Dee killed, and required more than half of the Argus Limited to crash, when he could have easily told them this, and they could have found another way. He told them no more lies and half truths, and did it anyway. He may have trust issues, but he can’t expect people to trust him if he is not willing to give trust. He has had numerous people die under his watch as they believed they could either make a difference or stop Salem, when really, he thinks there is no way.

​But that doesn't mean there truly isn't. We, as an audience, know that Jinn could easily have used the Exact Words trope, meaning only Ozma specifically couldn't, not that she couldn't be destroyed period. Even without this knowledge though, Ozma must not give up. By admitting he has no plan and retreating into Oscar's mind, he has given up. He needs to be proactive again though. When he was the father, he pulled himself together and fought the Grimm himself, built the cane Ozpin and Oscar would use, and left plans for his next self. But when said next self learned Salem can't be destroyed, he fell into a rut. That's what Ozma is in right now, a rut. But a kick in the pants like this is what he needs to get out of it. Jinn can't answer the future, so if a way to destroy Salem doesn't exist now, he can still find one. He just can't give up.

​Yes, RWBY and Qrow have a right to be mad at Ozpin for leading them into a war that in their eyes is unwinnable, yes they are tired of Ozpin's lies in general, yes Qrow has just learnt the one person who made him feel like he had worth was ultimately leading him aimlessly leading him to spiral out of stability, yes they are somewhat justified. They are also heavily stressed out, Yang suffering from PTSD, Blake being tormented by visions of Adam, Weiss having to face returning to an abusive home she just escaped from, and Qrow has had to deal with all the shit I listed above.

BUT, they must realize that Ozma, and by extension Ozpin, was never this infallible leader. He's human like the rest of them, and can make mistakes. His past may not excuse his secret keeping, but it does paint him in a more understandable light, that of a man so broken by his experiences, he can't do anything else but keep Salem away. They may be under the belief this war is unwinnable, but they can't turn back now, after all they been through, the people they've lost like Pyrrha and Penny, they've come too far to give up. They need to realize, for all his mistakes, Ozpin is still on their side, and they don't have to follow him, but work with him.

And there is still hope of that. It's only natural after learning all this information, that humanity has faced genocide, that the gods are assholes, that Salem can't be stopped, that Ozpin has been leading them to think she could be stopped, that they would accentuate the negative. Especially while dealing with their own hangups, and having just learned all this in rapid succession. Given time to calm down however, they can more easily go through the information and think more rationally. Ruby, Weiss, and Blake themselves never tore into Ozpin, only Yang did. The three of them only looked at him in frustration. They need to simply calm down and realize, even if they don't like what Ozpin has done, they still need to work with him, and not give up hope on stopping Salem. Even if she can't be killed, they can still find a way to stop her.

While I’m happy that the episodes are getting people to talk and form opinions, I’m not necessarily happy that people are picking sides. And that these are intent on whitewashing one side while demonizing the other.

This situation is not black and white, nor is it light and dark. Its gray and grey. The characters, even Salem, are human, and not to sound misanthropic, but humans are beings of chaos, contradiction, and most importantly, emotion. We are ruled by it, and it can both help us, and destroy us. Even the Gods are just as human as their creations. That’s why they are more like the Greek Gods than YHWH, as they are human in all but status.

I only hope this post can shed some light on the subject and have people realize that this conflict has no demons and angels, just humans. We don’t have to like the actions they do, but to demonize them or glorify them is just wrong.

[cometsweepandleonidsfly]

David Sims: “ As a fan of the TV show, I felt battered into submission. This season has been the same story over and over again: a lot of tin-eared writing trying to justify some of the most drastic story developments imaginable, as quickly as possible....[T]ime and time again in recent years, Benioff and Weiss have opted for grand cinematic gestures over granular world building, and Drogon burning the Throne to sludge was their last big mic drop.

Spencer Kornhaber: The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones gave us one of the most dramatic reversals in TV history, with the once-good queen going genocidal. The finale gave us yet another historic reversal, in that this drama turned into a sitcom. Not a slick HBO sitcom either, but a cheapo network affair, or maybe even a webisode of outtakes from one. Tonally odd, logically strained, and emotionally thin, “The Iron Throne” felt like the first draft of a finale.

When Dany torched King’s Landing last week, viewers were incensed, but I’d argue it was less because the onetime hero went bad than because it wasn’t clearwhy she did. Long-simmering madness? Sudden emotional break? Tough-minded strategy? A desire to implement an innovative new city grid? The answer to this would seem to help answer some of the show’s most fundamental inquiries about might and right, little people and greater goods, noble nature and cruel nurture. Thrones has been shaky quality-wise for some time now, but surely the show would be competent enough to hinge the finale around the mystery of Dany’s decision.

Nope. The first parts of the episode loaded up on ponderous scenes of the characters whose horror at the razing of King’s Landing had been made plenty clear during the course of the razing. Tyrion speculated a bit to Jon about what had happened—Dany truly believed she was out to save the world and could thus justify any means on the way to messianic ends—but it was, truly, just speculation. When Jon and Dany met up, he raged at her, and she gave some tyrannical talk knowing what “the good world” would need (shades of “I alone can fix it,” no?). But whether her total firebombing was premeditated, tactical, or a tantrum remained unclear. Whether she was always this deranged or just now became so determines what story Thrones was telling all along, and Benioff and Weiss have left it to be argued about in Facebook threads.

The Dany speechifying that we did get in this episode was, notably, not in the common tongue. Though conducted in Dothraki and Valaryian and not German, her victory rally was clearly meant to evoke Hitler in Triumph of the Will. It also visually recalled the white-cloaked Saruman rallying the orc armies in The Two Towers, another queasy echo. People talk about George R. R. Martin “subverting” Tolkien, but on the diciest element of Lord of the Rings—the capacity for it to be seen as a racist allegory, with Sauron’s horde of exotic brutes bearing down on an idyllic kingdom—this episode simply took the subtext and made it text. With the Northmen sitting out the march, the Dothraki and Unsullied were cast as bloodthirsty others eager to massacre a continent. Given all the baggage around Dany’s white-savior narrative from the start, going so heavy on the hooting and barking was a telling sign of the clumsiness to come.

Jon’s kiss-and-kill with Dany led to the one moment of sharp emotion—terror—I felt over the course of this bizarrely inert episode. That emotion came not from the assassination itself but rather from the suspense about what Drogon would do about it. For the dragon to roast the slayer of his mother would have been a fittingly awful but logical turn. Instead, Drogon turned his geyser toward the Iron Throne. Whether Aegon’s thousand swords were just a coincidental casualty of a dragon’s mourning or, rather, the chosen target of a beast with a higher purpose—R’hllor take the wheel?—is another key thing fans will be left to argue about.

Then came the epilogue, a parade of oofs. David, you say you were satisfied by where this finale moved all its game pieces, and if I step back … well, no, I’m not satisfied with Arya showing a sudden new interest in seafaring, but maybe I can be argued into it. What I can’t budge on is the parody-worthy crumminess of the execution. Take the council that decides the fate of Westeros. It appears that various lords gathered to force a confrontation with the Unsullied about the prisoners Tyrion and Jon Snow and the status of King’s Landing. But then one of those prisoners suggests they pick a ruler for the realm. They then … do just that. Right there and then. Huh?

It really undoes much of what we’ve learned about Westeros as a land of ruthlessly competing interests to see a group of far-flung factions unanimously agree to give the crown to the literal opposite of a “people person.” Yes, the council is dominated by protagonist types whom we know to be good-hearted and tired of war. But surely someone—hello, new prince of Dorne! What’s up, noted screamer Robin Arryn?—would make more of a case for another candidate than poor Edmure Tully did. Rather than hashing out the intrigue of it all as Thrones once would have done, we got Sam bringing up the concept of democracy and getting laughed down. The joke relied on the worst kind of anachronistic humor—breaking the fourth wall that had been so carefully mortared up over all these years—and much of the rest of the episode would coast on similarly wack moments.

It’s “nice” to see beloved characters ride off into various sunsets, but I balk at the notion that these endings even count as fan service. What true fan of Thronesthinks this show existed to deliver wish fulfillment? I’m not saying I wanted everyone to get gobbled up by a rogue zombie flank in the show’s final moments. Yet rather than honoring the complication and tough rules that made Thrones’ world so strangely lovable, Benioff and Weiss waved a wand and zapped away tension and consequence. You see this, for example, in the baffling arc of Bronn over the course of Season 8. What was the point of having him nearly kill Jaime and Tyrion if he was going to just be yada-yadaed onto the small council at the end?

One thing I can’t complain about: the hint that clean water will soon be coming to Westeros. Hopefully, someone will use it to give Ghost a bath. As the doggy and his dad rode north of the Wall with a band of men, women, and children, the message seemed to be that where death once ruled, life could begin. Winter Is Leaving. It’d seem like a hopeful takeaway for our own world, except that it’s not clear, even now, exactly how and why the realm of Thrones arrived at this happy outcome.

Lenika Cruz: Do I have answers? Who do you think I am—Bran the Broken? Before I get into this episode, I need to acknowledge how unfortunate it is that Tyrion decided to give the new ruler of the Six Kingdoms a name as horrifyingly ableist as Bran the Broken. You could, of course, argue that the moniker was intended as a reclamation of a slur or as a poignant callback to Season 1’s “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things,” when Tyrion and Bran first bonded. But given the “parade of oofs” this finale provided—including the troubling optics of Dany’s big speech—it’s hard to make excuses for the show.

Now that we’ve gotten our “the real Game of Thrones/Iron Throne/Song of Ice and Fire was the friends we made along the way” jokes out of our system, where to begin? I basically agree with Spencer’s scorched-earth take on “The Iron Throne.” I was already expecting the finale to be a disappointment, but I didn’t foresee the tonal and narrative whiplash that I experienced here. At one point during the small-council meeting, my mind stopped processing the dialogue because I was in such disbelief about the several enormous things that had happened within the span of 15 minutes: Jon stabs Dany. Instead of roasting Jon, Drogon symbolically melts the Iron Throne and carries the limp body of his mother off in his talons. A conclave of lords and ladies of Westeros is convened, and Tyrion is brought before them in chains, and they know Dany was murdered, and Tyrion argues for an entirely new system of government while being held prisoner by the Master of War of the person he just conspired to assassinate. Excuse me? (The way that Grey Worm huffed, “Make your choice, then,” at those assembled reminded me of an impatient father waiting for his children to pick which ice-cream flavor they want.)

David, Spencer—of the three of us, I’ve been the most stubborn about thinking this final season is bad and holding that badness against the show. I don’t fault viewers who’ve become inured to the shoddy writing and plotting, and who’ve been grading each episode on a curve as a result. But I personally haven’t been able to get into a mind-set where I can watch an episode and enjoy it for everything except stuff like pacing issues, rushed character development, tonal dissonance, the lack of attention to detail, unexplained reversals, and weak dialogue. All of those problems absolutely make the show less enjoyable for me, and I haven’t learned to compartmentalize them—even though I know how hard it must have been for Benioff and Weiss to piece together an airtight final act solely from Martin’s book notes.

...Much like with last week’s episode, I can actually see myself being on board with many of the plot points in the finale—if only they had been built up to properly and given the right sort of connective tissue. For all the episode’s earnest exhortations about the power of stories, “The Iron Throne” itself didn’t do much to model that value.

For example, I can’t be the only one who was let down, and at a loss for a larger takeaway, after seeing a high-stakes contest between two ambitious female rulers devolve after both became unhinged and got themselves killed. After all the intense discussion about gender politics that Thrones has spurred, and after seeing characters such as Sansa, Brienne, Cersei, Daenerys, and Yara reshape the patriarchal structures of Westeros, we’ve ended up with a male ruler (who once said, “I will never be lord of anything”) installed on the charismatic recommendation of another man and served by a small council composed almost entirely of … men.

Perhaps there’s no deeper meaning to any of this. Or perhaps this state of affairs is a commentary on the frustrating realities of incrementalism. I am, of course, beyond pleased that Sansa Stark has at least become the Queen in the North—a title that she, frankly, deserved from the beginning. But I haven’t forgotten that this show only recently had her articulate the silver lining of being raped and tortured. Nor am I waving away the fact that Brienne spent some of her last moments on-screen writing a fond tribute to a man who betrayed her and all but undid his entire character arc in one swoop. My sense is that the show’s writers didn’t think about Thrones resetting to the rule of men much at all, and that they were instead relishing having a gaggle of former misfits sitting on the small council. See? the show seemed to cry. Change!

At times, Thrones gestured more clearly to the ways in which the story was going a more circular route; this was especially true of the Starks. Jon headed up to Castle Black and became a kind of successor to Mance Rayder—someone leading not because of his last name or bloodline but because of the loyalty he’s earned. Arya’s seafaring didn’t feel out of character to me—it fit with her sense of adventure and reminded me of her voyage across the Narrow Sea to Braavos all those years ago. Sansa became Queen in the North in a scene that recalled the debut of “Dark Sansa” in the Vale, but that felt like a true acknowledgment of how much her character has transformed. I’ll admit, the crosscutting of the scenes showing the Starks finding their own, separate ways forward was beautifully done. It made me wish the episode as a whole had been more cohesive, less rushed, and more emotionally resonant.

Spencer, I think you smartly diagnosed so many of the big-picture problems with the finale—the sitcommy feel, the yada-yadaing of major points, the many attempts at fan service. So rather than elaborate even more, I’ll end this review by saying something sort of obvious: Viewers are perfectly entitled to feel about the ending of Game of Thrones however they want to. After eight seasons, they have earned the right to be as wrathful or blissed-out on this finale as they want; it’s been a long and stressful ride for us all. I’m genuinely happy that there are folks who don’t feel as though the hours and hours they’ve devoted to this show have been wasted. I know there are many others who wish they could say the same thing.” 

[dreamofcentipedes]

Love and Death in Avengers: Infinity War

So I finally watched Infinity War, with half of it spoiled already for me by the world’s collective inability to keep their mouths shut :) Regardless of that, I still liked it A LOT and the Russos prove just how awesome they are yet again. 

We all knew Infinity War would be focused on death - it’s in Thanos’ name (a contraction of the Ancient Greek word for Death, Thanatos) - but when watching it I was struck by there was just as much focus on love in this film, and especially on how the two intermingle. To save others from suffering my fate, I’ll explore this under the cut. This will obviously contain spoilers.

In the comics, Thanos’ motivation for his various genocides is not to ‘balance’ the universe as in the movie but to win the love of the personification of Death. You can see suggestions of this in Thanos’ first cinematic appearance at the end of the first Avengers, when his goon tells him that to challenge earth would be to court death. This, for Thanos, is obviously a good thing, which is why we get that toothy grin. 

But the Russos took Thanos in a different direction than Whedon had in mind - perhaps because Hela, goddess of death, had already been killed in Ragnarok - or perhaps as part of the MCU’s general project of rationalising a lot of the mysticism of the comics. Either way, ingrained in Thanos’ character is the absurd fusion of love and death, and this is present in the film as well.

The purpose of Thanos’ mass murdering is to preserve life. Lamenting the loss of his home planet, he sets out to save all the others by killing half their populations. As he explains to Gamora, after his doling of death on her home planet, the quality of life of the survivors has drastically increased. So it is a kind of love and benevolence that motivates Thanos, but it’s one completely inseparable with the very kind of death that he is trying to prevent. The intermingling is a core component of his ends-justify-the-means philosophy, only, of course, we are meant to question it and challenge it. How can we believe that this death will lead to superior life when the love it strives for is so intertwined with death?

Thanos’ sacrifice of Gamora is the most explicit example of this, but it is not just our villain, but our heroes, too, who fall into Thanos’ ideological trap. When the question of whether to kill Vision crops up, Steve rejects such a mercenary way of thinking to Vision’s own objections. But in the end, Vision must be destroyed by his own lover at his request. The sacrifice is paralleled earlier in the movie when Quill summons the strength to pull the trigger on his lover, Gamora, (as of this movie, no less) to which Thanos responds: “I like you”. He is watching the Avengers step into his own territory. Both sides are resorting to terrible extremes to save the universe from the other - and both watch love melange with death.

Another consistent feature of the movie is Thanos putting friends at risk to elicit information out of the heroes. This happens with Thor & Loki, Nebula & Gamora, and Tony & Strange. Here love leads to the death on an even greater scale. As Thanos’ influence increases, they become extremely difficult to separate - whether you sacrifice love for the greater good or not, the end result is still death: both Quill and Wanda’s attempts fail. Just as how, at the end of the movie, despite all the efforts of our countless heroes, the end result is just that - death.

We see tension over this from the beginning with Pepper’s concerns for Tony’s well-being, and Peter merging the macrocosm with the microcosm - “How can I be a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man if there is no neighbourhood?” - that we see in the hard choices the Avengers and Thanos come to make. Gamora’s reluctant love of Thanos is mingled with her hatred of him for what he did to her people; she gained a father by losing a mother.

But why this theme? Why merge love and death? It’s an idea with a long-standing history: Freud interpreted the human subconsciousness as driven by the twin desires of Eros, Love, linked also with Life, and, you guessed it, Thanatos, Death. If these forces lie at the heart of our psychologies, then it is long past time that the superhero genre explored it more searchingly - after all, it has always been concerned with beating up the bad guys to save the innocents. And when pushed to the possibility of Armageddon, a possibility that happens in almost every superhero movie but can only be felt really effectively in this one, it’s only fitting to see how existing internal contradictions should come to the fore under such immense pressure as the Apocalypse warrants.

Thanos rationalises his actions when talking with Gamora by claiming that you cannot have infinite life in a finite universe. So the Infinity War is Thanos’ war on this infinity - to cut the world, and indeed the ever-growing cast of the Avengers, back down to size. This is very much his movie, to the extent that is even his victory, and when the text after the end credits would usually state the return of the titular hero(es), instead it’s “Thanos will return”. He watches a sunset, the birth of a new day, on the ashes of countless deaths. The lines have been blurred indeed. 

[primrose-path-of-dalliance]

Lotor’s end (?) in s6

i gave in to my terrible impulses and wrote a three-part essay about lotor. it's literally >9k and i ignored all of my other projects for this for over a week. rip.

in these three posts, i talk a lot about lotor from a sympathetic pov. so if that's something that makes your fandom experience uncomfortable, go ahead and ignore this post because it's not for you. stay healthy, and i can only promise you that i hold lotor accountable for every shitty thing he's done (especially when it comes to withholding info from allura because seriously, what bullshit). on the other hand, if you are a person who hates lotor as a piece of evil garbage because ???? fandom and purity culture thought it would be a great idea to hate him without looking very hard at the work the writers put in to make him more complex than the actual pure evil bastard zarkon himself that we already have... i challenge you to read on. do it. i dare you. (at the very least so you might hate him with a better understanding of why.)

so tl;dr: this is the "in this essay i will" meme followed through, if i started talking about how lotor's not a pure evil bastard and is instead the perfect example of a protagonist gone sour through 10,000 years of poor coping choices, oppression, and a lot of actual resentment, as well as a neat talk at the end where i break down lotor's breakdown.

toc 1: i shake out some salt and talk about the altean colony | 2: i question why people keep insisting lotor was "evil all along" | 3: i talk about my favorite parts of lotor’s breakdown

i take a lot of my knowledge and inspiration from @radioactivesupersonic, who writes some awesome meta. (seriously, thank you clockie. you are amazing.) so while i might specifically cite posts of his throughout these three posts, expect his ideas to be everywhere lol. please check him out if you have the time, he's much better at this meta thing than me. (for safety purposes, i'm gonna disclaim: i did not consult with him on anything. so while i synthesize with a lot of his stuff, my thoughts are not necessarily his and i take full responsibility for that shit.)

anyway, i don't make meta posts a lot nor have any good idea of what a good structure for one would be. so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"even after season 6, you still like lotor?"

fuck yeah my pal.

"but why? he's clearly terrible and evil! he killed thousands of alteans and said he was going to conquer the universe, destroy voltron forever, etc.!"

i mean, yeah. but i'm gonna soapbox for a second.

number one: nothing precludes me or anyone else from loving the shit out of an evil character. we're not personally invested in the story in the sense that we have real stakes involved. they're fictional characters, and we are the audience. nothing they've done has any bearing on our reality (barring general patterns that can be established by media as a whole) and therefore it's not our moral responsibility to throw down terrible judgment on a person who isn't real, even if they've done horrible shit.

i'm not saying one can't acknowledge or dislike a character who's a bad person. lotor himself has done terrible things, and if you could not give less of a fuck about him, that's highkey your prerogative and i champion your freedom to have your personal preferences.

but we're not the characters who live in that world. we're spectators to a fictional story, and one thing that means is that we have no obligation to anyone to personally hate a villain, no matter what they've done because put simply, nothing they've done is real. no one has ever been harmed by a singular fictional villain.

the purpose of the villain and their actions is not to be hated by the audience, but to help tell a story. hopefully, they're also helping to paint a picture of the variety of people, perspective, and experience in a respectful manner.

there's a strong trend in fandom now toward purity culture, where we're expected to hate anything that isn't perfect, and that's such a goddamn lie. nothing is perfect. nothing ever will be. we can't reasonably expect that level of performance from content creators.

and what does "perfect" even mean? social justice is an extremely nuanced topic, colored by individual perspective on what's right or good. there's never going to be an ideal piece of media that hits every spot perfectly because there are an infinite number of spots, and what they are changes in importance with every person.

so when it comes to storytelling, we need to focus more on what's practically possible. what's practically admirable. for me, ideally, that's "what have they accomplished? is this story illustrating the richness of human (or alien) experience? and how?"

this includes villains.

number two: i don't believe lotor is a villain in the sense that he's Evil or even necessarily irredeemable. from a personal perspective, i'll direct you to this post (link), which basically sums up my view on forgiving people who've done bad things. but from the third-party perspective as well, lotor isn't someone to find reprehensible or evil—at least, not to the level a lot of other people seem to be compelled to. let's break this down into more questions.

"lotor has killed people for his own personal gain! abused countless alteans, who already experienced a genocide!"

(allura is right there with you guys.)

yes, he did. i don't deny his crimes a single bit. the personal gain point may be arguable, but it still doesn't really make it better.

firstly: this is also addressed to those people who are stalwartly defending lotor's goodness by saying that romelle must have been lying. i haven't read any of the posts myself and only heard some of the points secondhand, and that is because the theory sounds like a load of bollocks (link).

this isn't something out of character for lotor, as much as i might want to believe so. it's really, really not, and i fully acknowledge that. we already know that lotor will do anything to survive if he finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place. that was what happened to narti.

lotor does have good morals. he has an absolute shit ton of them that, honestly, i don't know how to explain in detail without making this post twice as long as it's already going to be. he cares about individual life. he campaigns for conservation. he values people's cultures and would much rather work alongside them than dominate them. he's not cruel or sadistic like many of his peers in the galra empire, and he favors those who are discriminated against. and no, i don't believe any of these were an act. i can point to word of god for the most supportive proof—that "part of Lotor, a portion of Lotor, maybe all of Lotor, is coming from a very genuine place" (link).

(if you want deeper explanations about why these conclusions are accurate, please check out my #voltron meta tag and @radioactivesupersonic. especially him.)

but as it's been established, lotor is willing to break his morals if he feels he's faced with an ultimatum: survive, or die. victory or death.

"but that's a galra chant! he said it during the trials at oriande, and he was unworthy because of it. doesn't that prove he's really selfish at heart and will destroy anything if it means he gets what he wants?"

no. and also another no.

those two links go to really good arguments against that line of thinking. but let me sum it up: lotor has lived 10,000 years with an abusive father in an empire that considers his half-galra status lesser and despises his altean blood especially, and spent much of that in disgraced exile.

"victory or death," to him, doesn't mean that it would be better to die than to accept a loss, as when it's used by his galra peers; it means that he has to win, or else he is left to the mercies of his foes. and none of his foes have ever been merciful. he can never trust that one will ever be.

survival is lotor's most important victory in an empire that has been either apathetic to his existence or outright antagonistic. it represents his entire struggle of living—that he has to stay alive in order to win, and to a lesser extent, that staying alive in his universe is winning.

of course, lotor has larger motivations than merely surviving that he will protect just as ruthlessly. from a general perspective, one can hardly blame him for that. surviving isn't exactly living and being happy, especially in a universe that oppresses people like him, and he wants an escape from the corner he always seems to find himself boxed in. to a slightly lesser extent, he wants to create an escape for the countless societies oppressed under the empire as well. that's where his desire for infinite quintessence comes from.

"so you're telling me that he felt trapped in a corner and forced to break his supposed morals to use countless numbers of his own people as a fuel source. how the hell does that make sense? what trapped him? didn't he have other options? and how does this justify what he did?"

i'm not claiming that lotor was justified in any way. that is a fair grievance for people to have, and frankly, what he did was horrible and ugly and made victims of an already fragile colony, including romelle and her family. understanding the 'why' of what someone did is, shockingly, not the same as justifying them. (and i don't believe people look for the 'why' enough, when understanding the 'why' is an important step toward preventing the 'what'.)

maybe lotor had other options. there's not a lot of exposition that happens in this show, in-story or in interviews or otherwise. there isn't enough information about the canonical process of quintessence collection, or about quintessence in general, to say for certain if lotor could have done something less egregious in his treatment of the altean colony.

either way, he had to harvest quintessence. the likely possibility as to why? the galra empire was limiting his resources, both because he was an exile and because he knew they (particularly haggar) might be watching, and he couldn't let them piece together his plans to usurp power. he needed quintessence in which he controlled every part of the creation process, and he needed to hide as much of how he was using it as possible. the easiest way to do that was for him to get his own source.

contrary to that assertion, i don't believe lotor first created the altean colony with the intention to use them as a quintessence farm. i believe he genuinely cared about preserving what was left of altea, similar to how he cares about preserving culture in general. this would be consistent with his previous characterization as well as lm and jds's assurances that he was coming from a genuine place. most importantly, even according to romelle's story, the second colony is never depicted as an idea lotor conceived from the start. it came much later, after the first colony was well-established.

it's likely that lotor originally had other sources of quintessence, since throk mentioned his possession of multiple colonies in s3e1, or that he hadn't yet come up with his plans in their entirety. maybe haggar or zarkon caught wind of certain plots and thwarted them, destroying his sources in the process. (we certainly get the impression in s3 and s4 that lotor coming up with rebellious plots isn't a new thing to either of them.) maybe his ambitions and travels gradually revealed themselves to need more quintessence than he'd expected. purchasing quintessence from any suppliers would have required an income, a relatively time-consuming and unreliable endeavor that might not have gotten him much in exchange. any quintessence supplies he might have acquired using his identity, if he could acquire any, would almost certainly have been monitored—how much he took, where he received them—to the point where use of them would be incredibly risky. he might have also morally disliked using empire-produced quintessence, since they would've been harvested using empire methods (i.e. "caring about colonies whomst?"). at least with his methods, he would know he wasn't destroying them without regard. either way, whatever previous sources of quintessence he had became too limited an amount for his operations. he needed more.

i get a strong impression that people don't understand what he could be using quintessence for. but we see it everywhere in the empire, in voltron, and in the castle of lions—it's the primary energy source of vld's world that powers machines, fuels ships, assists in experimentation, heals injuries, even prolongs life. nothing else compares. lotor wouldn't have needed it personally for the latter purpose, but one can't exactly travel the universe on an empty tank. without quintessence, he would've essentially been dead in the water. additionally, considering that the quintessence shows up in places not explicitly related to lotor, the fact that we see galra soldiers accompanying lotor on the altean colony when we know he was in exile, and the amount of resources he must have been supplying to the colony in secret, it's also possible he was using it to bribe people into doing things for him and staying silent. it probably would've been effective; it's described as an especially powerful form of quintessence, and he was the only source.

anyway, lotor needed quintessence he could control entirely without having to fear discovery and subsequent destruction. the altean colony was his only colony that he could be reasonably certain the empire would never find. and in true lotor fashion, the first defense he asserted was that he saved what was left of altea from the empire, despite the horrendous crimes he was committing, and could now stop his quintessence farming with his access to the quintessence field. technically, we don't even know whether all of the alteans taken to the second colony are dead (link). the man romelle saw there was still in the tank, as many others must have been.

lotor might have been planning to eventually heal them by using the quintessence field. of course, even if that's true, lotor still took away years of their lives, lied to them and their families, and drained them to near-death. the experience must have been traumatizing. and who knows how well they would be able to recover, if at all. it's little comfort.

(editing, i feel compelled to plug this analysis by @radioactivesupersonic of lotor's arc and relationship with allura as a vampire story because it's interesting as hell, pounds out what i've just said further, and is something i read prior to writing this up so i may have unconsciously stolen from it. (i can only promise that i completely forgot about it until i went looking for all my links rip.))

nevertheless, lotor's first priority for the altean colony was always to preserve them—even if he eventually, essentially started treating them as a renewable resource with his farming's effects on the survival of his people and culture as environmental impacts. make of that what you will.

"if lotor is such a decent person who loves altea and wants to end the galra empire, why didn't he team up with voltron from the beginning? he was around before season 3! why didn't he show up earlier?"

that, my friend, is a good question i've puzzled over too. i have an answer.

number one: lotor has been in the habit of effectively working on his lonesome for about the past 10,000 years and canonically displays a wealth of paranoia and trust issues. teamwork isn't usually the first idea that comes to mind to someone like lotor.

number two: we get a very dramatic hint toward this in the climax of s6 (can't wait until we reach that part!), as well as during his invasion of puig in s3, but i believe lotor didn't have much confidence in voltron's capabilities during the period of s1 and s2 or for some time afterwards. he's a very cautious and careful player, learned from millennia of working against the interests and conventions of an extremely powerful empire.

and if we all remember correctly, voltron lost 10,000 years ago. granted, alfor sent the lions away rather than risk zarkon gaining control of the black lion, but it was still him and the other paladins against zarkon. victory should've been within reach, and yet they lost. so 10,000 years later, voltron appears to have returned, and none of those fears have been assuaged. who are these random newcomers to pilot the lions, and how could they possibly succeed where the original paladins didn't, when they don't even have the might of armies behind them? zarkon could still retake control of the black lion. additionally, lotor's own feelings towards voltron (and symbolically, king alfor) as a savior are extremely complicated. (you cannot believe how excited i am to talk about that. just wait.) he's not going to risk everything he's worked for on a wild card he's incredibly unsure will manage to make a dent. it would even make zarkon stronger if they lost, and therefore his father, one of the people he most wants to avoid the attention of, would be coming after them in a frenzy.

even after the s2 finale where voltron critically injured zarkon, he finds them insufficient. they create the coalition, yet he can essentially retake puig in the span of an hour with a team of five attackers.

clearly, they still weren’t well-equipped enough to stand against the galra empire. it would be in lotor's best interests to avoid voltron like the plague unless he was certain they wouldn't be crushed. so he did just that.

i suspect that before the voltron coalition grew into its own, lotor was planning to independently start a coup of some kind. it would've been pretty easy with unlimited quintessence. but after he was declared an enemy of the empire to be killed on sight, when voltron had gained significant strength and organized rebellion against the empire alongside liberated planets became a genuine and effective possibility, he joins them—right after their surprise attack liberates a full third of the empire and shocks the galra off his trail. the coalition was finally a basket he felt secure putting some of his eggs into.

(part 2)

[myinazeaanazazi]

my villain pet peeve and Infinity War

So, I saw Avengers: Infinity War last Friday and I’ve been reminded once again why I dislike most villains.

Spoilers ahead.

Now, watching Infinity War started sucky. Because they kill Loki before the Title even shows up on screen. That made me a bit mad for multiple reasons.

I only saw Thor: Ragnarok once, so I had no idea that the after credit scene was “Thanos shows up”... I mean, I knew when I watched the movie, but only because I watched one of those ‘prepare for infinity war’ videos on youtube. So, right off the bat: Continuity.

Now, controversial opinion: Why not put that not-even-five-minute scene at the end of Ragnarok? I mean, Marvel wouldn’t have had to hire Tom Hiddleston for Infinity War, which could have saved them money, I guess? More importantly, it would have helped with continuity, because I can promise you I would have remembered Thanos offing Loki. Also, there would have been the additional tension of ‘Do Loki and Thor live?’ Plus, I would have loved to see the spaceship destroyed and not being thrown into a pre-destroyed spaceship.

It kinda deadened me to the following deaths. Like, we killed a dude in the first five minutes. I expect copious amounts of blood flow... and didn’t get any. Like, people, uh, died, but it was Loki, nothing, nothing, nothing, Gamora, nothing, EVERYONE... and without blood.

This makes the fact that we get little to no reaction to the people dying another problem I have. Like, Thor sheds a single tear ... and Star-Lord punches Thanos because he killed Gamora ... Thanos cries one single tear ... and that is all the emotional reaction we see the characters have to the deaths. Sorry, but that doesn’t exactly move me ... which might be a failure on my part.

Then there is the fact that there are a few character points that irk me.

Scarlet Witch and her inability to prioritize. Seriously, your boyfriend is begging, begging you to kill him because it’s the only way to prevent genocide and you choose smoochies over the universe? I get that she’s lost a whole lot of shit over the course of her life and doesn’t want to lose any more people, but Vision has ... knowledge and thinks about things. He’s arguably the mentally most skilled of the bunch and still smoochies top genocide? Cause I’ve seen a review where someone actually called Wanda decisive and I was screaming at my monitor that “NO! She literally waits until the very last fucking second to kill her boyfriend, that is NOT decisive at all!” Plus, wouldn’t it have been so much more devastating (read: interesting and having emotion-potential) for her to a) realize when they get to Wakanda (cause they would’ve gone there anyway) and b) make Thanos have more power and make him less likable if he’d turned back time for more than 2 minutes? and having Scarlet Witch realize that she even though she killed her boyfriend and has been struggling with that for more than fifteen seconds, that sacrifice was for naught? I mean, she disappears a minute later, so there is no emotion there ... Plus, that stupid stupid stupid scene that was all about Scarlet Witch and Vision being a couple? After we’ve last seen them in civil war and we hadn’t even had confirmation that they’re together, did we have to spend ten fucking minutes on them being all lovey and in an established relationshps? I realize, partly that’s me being not all that interested in Scarlet Witch, a character that showed up 2 movies ago, who has been nothing but that antagonist that joins the team late in the game and whose powers we don’t even actually know a lot about, because nobody has spent time developing her. There has been no movie about her, nothing. She’s been a side character for 2 movies. Nobody gave either Hawkeye or Black Widow a truly impactful role in the last few movies, and we know so much more about them than we know about Scarlet Witch. Mostly, I just hate that she’s nothing more than a plot-device and everyone treats her like she’s the second coming.

Star-Lord punching Thanos, because EMOTIONS. I was sitting in my theater when they almost pull off the glove and telling Star-Lord not to fucking punch him. Yes, it was predictable as fuck and dear God did I want to see Thanos besting the heroes after the took off the glove, but nooooo, Star-Lord had to be ~overwhelmed by his emotions~ after finding out that Gamora is dead, and hit Thanos in that one moment when they could have succeeded. I was so angry at the little twat.

Dr. Strange giving up the Time Stone after explicitly stating that he’s definitely going to sacrifice everyone to keep the stone safe, he gives up the stone to Thanos. Like, dude. Really? I thought you understood priorities.

Dr. Strange’s last words are something along the lines of “Sorry Tony, this was the only way.”, which ruins the whole thing. He looks at 14 Million possible futures. And of course, there is ONE future where they win. He couldn’t have said, like, seventy-five? Like, ALL the stars have to align to win. 75 out of 14 Million is still not a snowball’s chance in hell if you’re talking probabilities and it would have sounded less ... you know ... farfetched. Now, that’s not my biggest problem, because that doesn’t take you out of the movie in the very last moment of the movie. You only remember that later when thinking about it. Which I greatly prefer to having them shove the fact that the whole movie was pointless because of course they’re gonna win, because Dr Strange has put everything he can into motion and he knows they’re gonna win.

Now, Thanos. Thanos, Thanos, Thanos. Let’s summarize what I remember about Thanos pre-Infinity War: In the Avengers after-credit scene, Buffy/Angel-Wesley tells us/Thanos that fighting Earth’s mightiest heroes would be a great way to ‘court Death’. Now, me, a person who hasn’t read the comics, I went on the internet and did a little bit of research (not a lot^^) and found out that Thanos is in love with the anthropomorphic personalization of Death and wants to court her via killing as many people as he can, as gifts to her. Which felt like a cool thing. So I was a bit disappointed that they dropped that angle entirely. Which we find out when we find out that Thanos wants to bring balance to the galaxy.

And that means I have to downgrade Thanos from villain-status to antagonist-status. Imagine my disappointment when instead of Buffy’s “the First Evil”, I got “The Initiative”. Now, both are kinda scary concepts and valid and stuff, but one of them bit off more than they could chew while the other just ran out of people they could manipulate. Plus, one’s embodied by Nathan Fillion in my head and the other by ... Marc Blucas. I had to google that because while Riley was a character on Buffy for 31 episodes and Caleb only for 5, one of them made much more of an impression than the other.

My problem with Thanos as we see him in Infinity War is that he’s misguided. JUST misguided. And I despise misguided villains because most of them aren’t done very well. I understand the desire for villains outside of run-off-the-mill bloodthirsty insanity, but in my head, Thanos is just a person who uses the wrong ends to achieve the same goal as our heroes. Saving the universe. Granted, the heroes’ need to save the universe only arises because Thanos wants to save the universe, but the goal is the same.

I’m not saying that the end justifies the means, but the Thanos we got to know during that movie (that feels inappropriately titled, because, really, shouldn’t it be called ‘Thanos’?) sees his way as the only viable way after experiencing Titan’s downfall. Therein lies my problem. We see Titan lying in ruins. True, there could have been any number of reasons for that, but operating on what we know is Thanos’s level of knowledge, Titan was destroyed because of overpopulation and no way they devised of countering the overpopulation helped. The rationale that killing people, aka Thanos’s way, is the only one that works is sound. Which makes him the hero of the story. You know, the one that makes the hard choices. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Sure, a nice side-effect, he feels, is that people are going to thank him once they realize that what he’s done is great, but that’s not his main objective.

Thanos is too human for my taste. In a bad way. Red Skull was human once, but the way we see him in Captain America dehumanizes him while making him a villain. A goofy villain, sure, but a villain nonetheless.

This is my first problem.

The second one is speculation based on what I know about books and movies and stuff. Namely that after that scene with baby Gamora looking all disappointed in Thanos, the logical way this is going to continue is Thanos is going to realize that he made a mistake and will want to make amends and put everything to rights. And that would really suck because if you want to make Thanos into a hero, don’t market him as a villain.

Redeeming villains has its time and place, sure, but not fast. Please, let there be character development first...and please don’t do that in a superhero universe when you’ve built the guy up for the past ten years.

I mean, I get that there’s other ways to go with the story. I really hope I’m wrong, but ...

My third problem is not with Thanos himself but with our heroes, who, although they should have learned that just punching people isn’t any kind of solution, that’s the only way they even think about solving their problem. Like, I would have expected at least someone to be like “He’s talking about saving the universe. Shouldn’t we, like, try and convince him that killing people is not the solution?”, and then maybe someone to say “Don’t you think there are any number of people who tried that?”, but as far as I can tell, there is nobody who’s ever stood up to Thanos with anything other than violence. I’m not a pacifist, I actually like action movies and the violence in them. Like, from a distance. But nobody ever even talks about a different solution. We have time to establish that Scarlet Witch and Vision are in a sex-having relationship, but we don’t have time for that?

I also don’t know what Thanos can do with the Infinity gauntlet, because nobody says what all that entails. Yeah, he can manipulate reality, but what does that mean? We only ever see him do shit that temporarily affects shit, so ... what? As The Film Theorists pointed out, Thanos could have just doubled everything except the population, but can the gauntlet do that? Other people pointed out that the people aren’t actually dead, just sucked into the soul stone, so is that whole “doubling shit” even an option?

My biggest problem is that I can’t really root against Thanos. Especially when none of our heroes even tried talking to Thanos. Like, sure, they don’t get the chance, but they don’t even consider the option of not waging war. They don’t ever try to find a solution. Sure, he kills people by the billion, but he doesn’t do that for his own gains (as a proper villain should, in my mind) but for the good of the universe. I fucking hate that. Like, Voldemort and Umbridge and Ultron and .... others I can’t think of right now, are actually malicious. Not just ... goal-oriented.

Well, not true. My biggest problem is that all of what I just listed detracts from the good things about infinity war.

Like, the story is actually quite good. The characters fit together well. The chemistry between the characters is great. The banter is great. The visual effects are great. Everything but what I listed is outstanding in my mind.