#because fundamentally we will have very little in common if that is the case

[fogonsunday]

The only reason I don’t completely buy into the nature vs nurture argument of what makes someone more likely to cause harm is because I know someone who quite literally had a picture-perfect upbringing complete with friends, a loving family, and countless opportunities to succeed, and yet they are still far more likely to cause harm to me and others in our circle than I or our mutual friends are to cause harm to them

[longing-for-rain]

https://www.tumblr.com/atla-confessions/759438562978562048/zutara-and-azutara-both-agree-katara-would-have?source=share

Do a post on this please I don't have the energy

I see this sentiment a lot lately, and yes, it is frustrating. But I’m going to talk about it because it perfectly illustrates the way (kataang) fans take power away from Katara’s narrative and reduce her complexity as a result.

For those too tired to look at the OP (understandable) it’s an anon saying that both Zutara and Kazula would be problematic and harmful to Katara because the Fire Nation would never accept her, and that she and her family would always be in danger yada yada blah blah.

And honestly? I agree with that. It would be dangerous for Katara. But if you think that would stop Katara, you fundamentally don’t understand her character.

Do you really think Katara is some poor little damsel who needs to be protected at all costs and sent away to live a quiet life in the countryside? No; that’s never been Katara. Katara wants to fight and she has never backed down from a challenge. It’s who she is.

Katara is the girl who left her home to travel across a war-torn world to chase even a chance that she could play a part in ending the war. She’s constantly putting herself in dangerous situations because she follows her heart, she does what’s right even if it’s a risk to her safety. The Katara we know from ATLA is not some demure, unassuming girl who would be happy to sit back and become known for her healing above all else while her friends fought in her place. Katara would have hated to see her future as it was written. She is loud. She is proud. She is a fighter.

Katara not only accepts a challenge; she’s eager for it. She’s strong, she knows it, and she isn’t afraid to use her power for good.

I know someone is going to jump in the comments and accuse me of “shaming” Katara for her “choices” (nevermind the fact that she’s a fictional character so every choice she makes isn’t her own; it’s a narrative chosen for her by the male writers) but I’m not even saying that being a healer is inherently weak or bad. I’m saying it’s not Katara.

It’s a shame that so many people are willing to overlook the butchering of her story just because they’re so protective over canon and are completely unwilling to engage with it critically.

This sentiment reflects the issues many fans have with canon kataang, because it’s a very common misogynistic trope in media. A female character can be strong, but it’s only temporary. We can see her fight and triumph, but at the end she’s expected to give that up for marriage and motherhood after the war. Her identity is reduced to her relation to a man. She isn’t expected to retain her strength; she is expected to accept a quiet recognition while the world sings the man’s praises.

That was the fate of Katara in canon. And it is a disservice to her character. Katara would have wanted to continue to fight, because the fight wasn’t over. Anon’s recognition that Fire Nation nobility would have an issue with her holding power shows they understand that too. So why do you think Katara would be fine with sitting back and letting that happen? Why do you think she’d let that scare her away? Not my Katara.

Especially when love enters the picture. Let’s say Katara did canonically love Zuko, or Azula, or anyone outside of her nation for that matter. Yes, it would be more difficult for her. But do you really think Katara would back down for that reason?

In fact, do you realize how insulting it is to imply that she should to anyone in an interracial relationship? Or a same sex relationship? Yes, societal pressure and bigotry make them more difficult. But it doesn’t make them wrong. And the idea that it’s selfish or wrong because it’s endangering the family is insulting.

Especially in the case of Kazula. The Fire Nation is canonically homophobic. There would be danger and backlash for any same sex relationship, especially involving a member of the royal family like Azula. So…what then. Are gay people supposed to stop existing? Is Azula supposed to just never date or marry because it would be too dangerous?

Yeah, no. 0/10, trash take, do better.

(This part is mostly a joke but I also want to point it out)

The anon also implies that Katara’s canon relationship (with the Avatar) wouldn’t also carry the same risks. Which it would, probably even more so. Katara could be used as leverage against Aang by people trying to get to him. I mean, it already happened in canon.

And quite frankly, Aang was pretty useless at protecting Katara in that situation. Look at his face. Literal baby goo-goo-ga-ga shit. She’s lucky Fong wasn’t willing to actually kill her and that she was safely underground when Aang had his Spirit Tantrum because she would have been dead meat. So if your argument is that poor helpless little Katara would be sooooo much safer with Aang, I’m really not convinced.

If you’re going to decide who to ship Katara with based on who can protect her from danger the best, well…

I’m just saying 🤷🏻‍♀️🍵

[doctorofmagic]

Why magic in the MCU has failed

I remember the "good" old days when Doctor Strange was about to debut back in 2016. I was obsessed with spotting every single little magic detail in the MCU in the hope that magic would slowly grow in status and importance, only to give up after so much disappointment.

But the major issue? The moment Feige stated that every side project was a part of the MCU. People who experienced phase 1 and 2 will remember that magic was a taboo. "It's just science we don't understand yet". While it's a common line quoted by Marvel's greatest geniuses, we all know it's pure arrogance on their part. Otherwise, they'd be doing what magic users do.

It was not MCU's case. Magic was INDEED treated as science. From Ghost Rider's portal being reproduced by a robot through the Darkhold to Wanda's powers being a product of an experiment but not explained at all. From a loooong season of Cloak and Dagger taking its time to finally introduce magic elements to Nico's staff almost falling to the same old "technology" trope. From whatever is happening in Asgard to Loki's limited magic. It's frustrating, but we'd still find a way to turn the tables, right? The Dark Dimension was introduced (twice?), the (third) Darkhold was finally attached to Chthon, Morgana and Lorelei debuted, Nico's powers were finally acknowledge as magic... So what happened?

My best guess? Structure.

There's no structure to define what is magic in the MCU. Doctor Strange (2016) tried. Really hard. And, although it got several things right, it failed in two fundamental aspects: pre-established comic book knowledge and magic deities.

Remember how we got three Darkholds? The first was just so detached from magic that it became a book used to create a VIRTUAL world in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The second was used by Morgan le Fey, but how was she associated with the Dark Dimension? Moreover, that was NOT the Dark Dimension from the first DS movie (or any comic book, really). Its last appearance, as seen in WandaVision and DSITMOM, finally mentioned Chthon, but it literally did NOTHING it was supposed to do. That MCU!Wanda has nothing to do with her 616 version, this is not new. But if we're going to use comic books as foundation to adapt a story, the very bare minimum you can do is do it right. Point is, the book does corrupt people, but it's because of Chthon's influence and his connection to Wanda. Where's Chthon in the movie? The corruption was badly explored and her journey towards evil and redemption doesn't make any sense from a magic point.

Now, the "main" magic cast in the MCU could have worked... Except that there's little to no information regarding how Kamar-Taj works as a temple/school for new sorcerers. And worse even, magic isn't connected to its deities. Sure, there were a few name drops, but does it explain where it comes from? And who chooses the next sorcerer supreme if the Vishanti isn't involved?

The truth is, magic was all over the place, and the creative minds were either too oblivious to the importance of learning about how magic works in comics (to the point of adapting a second Dark Dimension that has nothing to do with the original one) or too shy to introduce a magic hierarchy (as in, deities).

There's an actual attempt to create this structure now, but it's too late. Sure, you can ignore past tv shows, but the mess remains. Eternity was supposed to be an abstract entity, deeply connected to magic, cosmic aspects and life itself.

Loki is still so embarrassing because the very foundation of Asgardian mythos started wrong (and why is that? Because no magic, of course!). While I find funny that Stephen trapped Loki in an endless freefall, there's no way the god of stories would be humiliated like that. Loki being taught magic by his alts is infuriating (and it's, again, mostly illusions).

Remember when Stephen was beaten by math? That also happened.

This is the moment I completely give up to see magic portrayed at its fullest, in all its beauty and complexity. Because it's not treated the way it deserves. It has never been.

And here's my boldest take: if you really wish to see the full potential of magic in the MCU, go for What If. The price you pay, the cosmic proportion of being misused, the creative elements... It's all there. Which is sad because it's not the main timeline. Anyways, this is it.

PS: This post may age poorly as DS3 comes out in 20 years. Let's wait and see.

[read-watch-sleep]

How do you think the dynamic between Mello, Near, Matt, Light and L would be if they were female? Would fantom response to them be different in your opinion?

Hello! Thank you for the ask, anon. I think a lot of their individual personalities wouldn’t change much (largely because otherwise I would have no other framework from which to view them, but also because most traits just aren’t restricted to gender.) Similarly, I don’t think Near, Matt or L would change much in terms of presentation. It’s obvious that they don’t dress for public expectations, and I don’t think that would change. 

I imagine Mello, if anything, would make a greater show of proving herself. Mello is a self-made success of sheer will, charm, and hard work, and I think that common misogyny would challenge that for her. God forbid if Light or anyone else perceives her as another vapid blonde. If you think Mello’s inferiority complex towards Near is large in canon, just wait until she has to work twice as hard just to be taken seriously. She’s going to be twice as mean, driven, competitive, and afraid. She’s that bitch.

Because I believe in shipping Meronia in any format, there’s also something to be said about how intensely she’d have to believe in and trust Near. While I think this is the case no matter what, I imagine if they were women, Mello would be the person who underestimates Near the least. 

Speaking of underestimating Near, I imagine that Near would come off as even more childish/shy as a woman, even if her behaviour does not fundamentally change. Possibly due to a softer voice and smaller frame, but also just because of expectations. She’ll have to work to gain the trust of the US president, or her team. Light doesn't really see how much of a little girl Near appears to be until the very end, but this would probably come as a shock. Unlike Mello, I imagine this isn’t a reflection on Near’s self esteem, and rather, she just finds it annoying. 

I DO think that it would affect her relationship with L and Mello, so far as I think she’d seek out what little connections she has. I think the distance from her team would amplify how much she yearns for a capable mentor, or a strong and willful lover. The same exact taunting and banter between Mello and Near (ie “May the best woman win”) would come off as 100% flirting. 

Honestly, I don’t think L or Matt would change much at all. Matt’s burnout and low-energy lifestyle, or sheer loyalty to Mello, don’t really change with gender. She’s still going to follow Mello anywhere, make dark jokes, and chainsmoke. 

When it comes to L, in canon we already know that L’s identity is incredibly hidden. I think the world at large would assume that L is a man, and she wouldn’t really do anything to dissuade them. Like Near, I imagine she shocks Light by showing up in person and defying that expectation, but the fact that she’s really odd already does that. Also in parallel to Near, I imagine that L’s affection for Light is greater as a woman, but not to the same extent that Near yearns after Mello– I think L is just delighted to have an intellectual equal who isn’t underestimating her. 

Light would be the person who’s dynamic changes the most. Look, she’s not going to suddenly lose the misogyny that canon Light has, it’s just going to change forms. It’s a kind of TERF-adjacent misunderstanding of gender roles. Light is defending women by killing men… and also any women who don’t fit her ideal world. The perfect preppy brunette honour student is going to hate L for being weird, hate Misa for being dumb and blonde (and probably slutty), and underestimate Mello’s capacity for violence (violence is for the men that Light kills, obviously women are more graceful and subtle than that… Or not, as Mello blows up a building with herself inside.) It will take longer for Light to accept the way L behaves, because it’s so antithetical to her worldview. Ladies don’t sit weird. Ladies don’t stuff their faces with cake (I just know she’s jealous of L’s waistline despite the sweets.) Over time, she builds an exception into her world where L’s behaviour is almost okay (she still has to die, though). Eventually, Near will fill this niche, and Light will hate her that much more, for not being L. 

As for the fandom as a whole, I’m really sorry, but I admit I don’t know! I only joined up with the Death Note fandom again recently, and before that, I’ve been out of the fandom sphere for almost a decade. While I may have written about she/her Near back then, obviously a fandom will change within ten years, so my perception would be pretty inaccurate. However, there are some lovely fanworks that play with gender– I suggest you check them out! 

[abby118]

I have a question regarding Asgard prisons. (English is not my first language)

perhaps prisoners are prevented from harming themselves in some way? Is it due to some magical property of the cell or due to the guards monitoring it?

because, unlike the way cells work in our world (prisoners can leave their cells and communicate with other prisoners), these cells seem to work in a way that never allows prisoners to leave. not even dimming the lights for a few moments. and it seems logical to think that such a condition, if prolonged for a long time, would lead anyone to go mad. 

so it wouldn't surprise me if someone decided to escape from that condition by attempting to commit suicide. and this would especially apply to those sentenced to life imprisonment.

for example, loki is already suicidal. and after the many traumatic experiences he has been through, it seems logical to assume that he would just like to get it over with. just as he implied in the dialogue with Odin. but apparently, even he who has this desire and has already tried to do it in the past, is not trying to do it again now. After all, if someone were to commit suicide, he would be running away from serving his sentence. which in the case of life imprisonment is even a better prospect.

so it would make sense to think that Loki isn't performing such an act (but instead he finds himself forced to use illusions to pass the time and keep himself from going mad) because he is unable to do so for some reason. what do you think?

ps. I have another important and fundamental question. but how do they go to the bathroom? the cells are transparent, they have no privacy spaces. furthermore they don't even have toilets or buckets in which they can do their business -.-

The dungeons are the highest security prison of Asgard (because I don't doubt there are other prison establishments intended for civilians with lesser penalties as well as a military prison which is separate). I think the dungeons are designed for outworlders, particularly dangerous individuals such as mages and people with a life sentence. They are located deep under the palace and were the second structure built by king Buri. The cells within the dungeons were upgraded later, supposedly during Bor or Odin's reign.

'perhaps prisoners are prevented from harming themselves in some way?'

Oh yes, definitely. If you look at the cells, they are completely empty (yes, Loki's was an exception, obviously), white and lit by bright lights from above. This is very much intentional.

no furnishing -> no objects to harm yourself with. (This is why I say it was incredibly risky to give Loki a glass carefe as well as a mirror...combine that with illusion use.)

the lights -> From what we've seen, the lights were constantly on. We didn't get to see the dungeons at night but with the little regard of the prisoners' wellbeing, I think it's safe to assume they priorise security and thus keep them on to grant continuous access for the guards to see the cells' interiors. Of course, that makes is nearly impossible for the prisoners to discern the night from the day, unless they choose to mentally keep track of the guards' daily schedule which must be challenging in a long-term sense.

personal possessions -> Keeping in mind Loki was an exception and the prisoners we saw were the ones arrested on Vanaheim (and so probably overwhelmed the spaces available + Odin's guards are not the most skilled bunch), I'd say that generally, personal posessions would be taken upon the prisoner's arrival to the dungeons and stored/repurposed. Again, meaning nothing to harm yourself with or to use as an aid of escape. On a similar note, I think that the most common number of prisoners is one ..or more (if they don't pose a threat to themselves or each other).

no visits -> As we saw, all visit were strictly forbidden with the exception of the king or his direct or indirect permission to let somebody else visit. But even then, I take it that any physical contact is strictly prohibitted.

the energy barriers -> My personal headcanon is that the patterns we see make up these barriers are a binding spell. Most of the cells are equipped with one barrier, with the exception of the corner cells which have two, supposedly for increased supervision by the Einherjar stationed by the entrance gate.

'for example, loki is already suicidal. and after the many traumatic experiences he has been through, it seems logical to assume that he would just like to get it over with. just as he implied in the dialogue with Odin. but apparently, even he who has this desire and has already tried to do it in the past, is not trying to do it again now.'

I simply think Loki was too apathetic to act on anything (yet). I know that to us, a year and a half seems long but he was still coming out of an incredibly stressful course of events and the survival mode that came with that. He was depressed and probably too aware that would he try to take his life, his plans would most likely fail. His illusions would either flicker or dispel before he died and the guards would step in. The barriers themselves are not strong enough to kill (they can't be, that would be too easy) and would alert the Einherjar as well. In all of his depression, he is a strategist, if not under dire pressure, he waits to see how things unravel. Again, a year and a half seems longer to us than to the Aesir with the context of their longevity.

(but instead he finds himself forced to use illusions to pass the time and keep himself from going mad)

He is highly intelligent, the cells are designed to inflict mental torture on their own (mostly sensory deprivarion) so imagine that coupled with a mind like his. He had to create some stimuli to keep himself occupied because what else was there to do. They took everything from him and his magic was the one thing they couldn't touch. Of course he used it to hold on to the last bits of sanity he had left.

'ps. I have another important and fundamental question. but how do they go to the bathroom? the cells are transparent, they have no privacy spaces. furthermore they don't even have toilets or buckets in which they can do their business -.-'

Not a topic I gave too much thought to but @helshades had written a post covering this. I wonder how they distributed the meals there, I suppose there must be a rule on how many you can skip before they give you a tube or something. Similar to our wards.

[isfjmel-phleg]

A few adaptations/retellings don't get the significance of the fact that Mary has grown up unloved and for whatever reason try to soften her relationship with her parents. But many of them do grasp just how neglected she's been and highlight it, especially in light of how prickly it has made her. These versions tend to understand the root of her issues relatively easily.

But an overwhelming number of recent adaptations/retellings do not do the same for Colin. It is extremely common for these versions to give him/his equivalent a warm relationship with his now-deceased mother/equivalent. In The Humming Room, Phillip "adored [his mother] and she adored him back," and he is in the depths of depression after losing her. Callie in The Misselthwaite Archives has fond memories of her late mother and footage of the family enjoying happy times in the glade, as well as a father who, even though he's gone frequently, regularly keeps in touch with her through affectionate postcards. When Mary meets Colin in the 2020 film, he talks about his relationship with his mother, how she "loved me hugely" (painfully awkward wording), and her letters back that up. Colin in The Secret Garden on 81st Garden mourns the apparently very recent death of a loving father and, despite his anger toward Mr. Craven, is still surrounded by adults who appear to genuinely care about his wellbeing. Although Clement in The Edge of In Between was an infant when his mother died, he apparently had such a close bond with her already that he lost all color (something that happens to those who succumb to grief in this book's world) after losing her. It's been a while since I've read A Bit of Earth, but if I recall correctly, Colin in that book also knew and loved his mother before her death and struggles more with living up to (perceived?) familial expectations than feeling rejected or unloved.

And I'm not saying that these creative choices were necessarily ineffective within the stories that these authors/creators chose to tell. But it does take the character in a fundamentally different direction. Not only does it eliminate one of the deliberate parallels in his and Mary's backgrounds, but it also alters the root of the character's problems.

There are a lot of messed-up reasons for why he is the way he is, but what it ultimately comes down to is this: Colin is unloved. He has never been loved. Like Mary, he exhibits the behavior he does because he has never learned how to connect with others. It's easy to miss this about him, easy to get so caught up in what a horrid little brat he genuinely is that it might not immediately occur to the reader how loveless his existence has been--every bit as loveless as Mary's. His mother died giving birth to him, his father rejects him because of this, and his caretakers are all "tired of him" and (in one case) have even said in front of him that it would be better for him and everyone else if he died.

No wonder he has such ambivalence toward living. Dickon tells Mary once that his mother believes that unwantedness is "th' worst thing on earth for a child," that "Them as is not wanted scarce ever thrives." And that is the root of Colin's problems, the reason his expectation out of life is to die. This is more of the point than any psychological condition that we might be able to pin on the character--those things are symptoms, not causes. This is why developing strong friendships is so important to his arc, why his getting hugged (possibly for the first time in his life) by Mrs. Sowerby and telling her that he wishes she were his mother is such a poignant moment, why his arc ends with being reunited with and accepted by his father.

(Weirdly enough, an adaptation that did seem to pick up on this was the 1986 musical, in which Colin is introduced with a solo entitled "No One Needs Me." A bit too on-the-nose and self-aware for him to be able to spell out like that, perhaps, but as a summation of the problem? Spot on.)

If, as recent adaptations and retellings interpret him, he is a child who has been loved and has lost that, his behavior as Burnett depicts comes from a different place and possibly makes less sense, his whole character changes, and the themes shift. He becomes someone who needs to work through traditional grief--which in the original book is his father's arc, not his--rather than someone who needs to learn that his existence has meaning and that he can matter to other people (and they to him).

And I think that's why a lot of these reinterpretations of the character feel a bit off to me? There tends to be so much concern for remolding him in light of themes of disability or mental health (which are significant to his character! but not all that there is) that the original point of his being as much an emotionally neglected and unloved child as Mary can get lost in translation.

[fipindustries]

satire must [be funny] lest it becomes [unfunny]

I see all the time people online coming up with these bespoke "rules of comedy". trying to determine what makes something funny or not, what makes a joke valid vs what makes it offensive. what counts as "good satire" and what makes something "bad satire" and, honestly?

i think it's pure cope.

i think in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases what is actually going on is that what makes something funny is dictated by how closely it affects you and how much you agree with the message and that is it.

people like to claim that satire must have a "clarity of intent", or that it must "punch up instead of punch down" or whatever, and i don't believe it, i dont think people are being honest when they say these things, trying to evaluate why THEIR joke about white guys is totally incisive and edgy and hilarious but YOUR joke about hispanic gay women is actually offensive and abusive and problematic.

most often it is not about structure, or format or formula, a joke can be incredibly cleverly done but if it hits a personal nerve or is saying something that makes you upset then whatever mirth one is supposed to derive from the cleverness of the joke is overshadowed by the fact the message is upsetting.

problem is, now a days, that the worst cardinal sin someone can commit online, the absolute most terrible crime someone can be find guilty of, is being offended. nobody wants to be a soy, censorious, tut-tutting, wet blanket whose feelings get hurt. so they try to take on this academic affectation for why actually the problem is not at all with the content or the message but actually the flaw is that is not funny at a fundamental level because of structural reasons, because of a miscalibration of the formula. as if any joke about trans women being ugly and killing themselves would make a trans person laugh if it presented the joke in just the right way (i mean, im sure there are some trans women who would laugh but i dont think it would be the majority)

i can laugh at some terribly offensive joke regarding, say, race or sexuality or crime or death or trauma because i am not the target of the joke, i have very little in common with the demographic the joke is about, is not saying anything about me or the things i care about. but i will balk at jokes that paint me or the people i care about in a bad light because im human and have feelings and things im sensitive about, and i think its time we all start being a bit more honest about it

[lesbiansforboromir]

SPOILERS FOR LOTRO's KING'S GONDOR AND THE NEW BOOK QUESTS BUT as always I have a gripe with the major storyline, which is this mirroring of Arwen and Vidumavi. I understand the point of it, to inspire this xenophobic backlash that drives people to look to the heirs of Castamir in the first place and give us a reason to go to Umbar and I also get that the whole concept of middle men vs high men vs men of darkness has been somewhat scrubbed from the game's concepts of race and racism but STILL I JUST... Gondor didn't disapprove of Vidumavi because she was nebulously 'foreign'!!!

She was of a 'lesser' race of men, the movement against her in Gondor was a eugenicist one, they did not want to 'soil' the line of the kings with lesser blood that might incur issues like smaller life spans. This was an upper class southern dunadain issue! And in-text, Tolkien says essentially 'no don't worry, dunadain blood is stronger so it didnt effect their lifespans', as if we need that reassurance! As if the concerns were justified and needed to be assuaged for us! And Arwen, being both an elf of royal descent and literally the niece of Numenor's founder, is just fundamentally not the same.

Eldarion and Eldacar are not in the same position of mixed 'lesser' blood, the introduction of Arwen into the King's line is meant to 'reinvigorate it', what is the beef that gondorians have for her? If the common gondorian populace was looking for a 'foreign' figure to insight their ire, then why isn't Aragorn himself a target? He is just as foreign as Arwen is, both geographically and racially. The rohirrim are a descent of Vidumavi's people, why isn't Eowyn an issue?

If we're going for a mistrust of elves as the root cause, well that's also an issue for me since Gondorians do not need to call upon xenophobic prejudice to have an issue with elves. Couldn't their worry be the precise opposite? It has been a long time since Gondor was a majority dunadain country, most if not all people are 'middle men' by SOME descent, and now here we are with a 'pure' dunadain king whom was born to an isolationist cult that spurned the company of the common folk and associated mostly with the high-beauty eldar.

What will these new rulers think about their subjects? How will this effect their politics, their plans? Aragorn is no Steward he has all the rights of a King including the DIVINE right, what will such a glut of power be used to do? And how will a previously-immortal queen relate to her very mortal subjects? These are all very pertinent questions, especially considering that Gondor was expecting Boromir 'the rohirrim are true and valiant, our allies' II to rule them once Denethor was gone. It's a big and unexpected shift towards Dunadain and elven supremacy for Gondor, would that not inspire political concern?

Like here;

Aithil mentions that an elven sense of superiority over humans is something she has encountered! Which could be a lie, if it wasn't for the player having been through in-game Lothlorien and witnessed the way elves treated Nona. So it just kind of feels like an a-historical loss to position Arwen as recieving the same animosity as Vidumavi, relegating it to undeserved bigotry when the issue of elven superiority is real and believed by many characters, including Aragorn himself! And also minimising the bigotry Vidumavi and her children suffered to just 'oh they just didn't like foreign people', there was a very specific reason they did not like her!! It frustrates me.

Though admittedly I understand LOTRO can't go too far into these issues, lest Aragorn's kingship begin to look a little less like a beautiful and noble thing that will bring peace and happiness to all middle earth. And in any case I want to go to Umbar so whatever it takes to get me there comrades, I'll kiss Aragorn on his dumbass baby head if I have too. BUT STILL!! I wish there had been some other way to do that.

[intrepid-fictioneer-7]

"[Mages] are liminal creatures at odds with their ineradicable humanity". What I spent thousands of words to say in a long ass post, someone managed to say more succintly and far shorter. While my verbous, pompous post argued that the idea the fandom has of a "perfect magus" is reductive and most the characters people think embodify it actually fail, the line I'm quoting is someone arguing that the very concept of "perfect magus" isn't real and isn't represented by *any* character in Type-Moon. The life of a magus is the story of how a person cannot avoid falling short of that ideal of a "perfect magus" - either because it becomes muddled by their humanity (Rin is the quintessential example, but you also have Kayneth and Gordes of all people), or because, in abandoning humanit,y they lose sight of their goal and cause their own downfall (Roa, Zepia, and Zouken being perfect examples).

Kinda like what Medea says in Fate/hollow ataraxia:

"Hmmm, the combination of magic and everyday life. Caster, what do you think about that?" Since I don't know a lot of magi, I'm a little curious. "That though in itself is incorrect, boy. 'Magic' and 'everyday life' cannot coexist. You should not even think about combing them. The fundamentals of magic are "distortion and reversal." No matter what kind of magic it is, when used, it will distort the norm. Therefore, if you want to live correctly, you have to separate magic from normal life." "You can't live in both worlds?" "You must wholly life in both worlds, that is. A magus is someone who crosses that boundary all the time. He is free to focus on either side, but he must never try to erase the line that separates both. In order to fully immerse yourself in magic, you must exclude your normal life. Once you choose that path as a human, you create an inner and an outer face in order to master it. Then you can start deciding how to live as a person divided between magic and real life." "Then what about you? You are Kuzuki-sensei's wife now, but what about your side as a magus?" "It's no different from what it used to be, naturally. I have no doubts about the magus side of myself. I just use my powers as I see fit. But it's true that nowadays, I don't turn into my magus self as often as I have in the past."

Or what Waver says in Case Files:

It wasn’t limited to magecraft. It wasn’t limited to those beyond humans (monsters). In a world of common sense (the obvious), it was something everyone understood. If you said that misunderstandings, miscommunications, disagreements, and false understandings are what connected them, then… “We are misrecognition. Our world itself is misunderstanding. We can experience a multitude of truths, not just one single reality. No matter how wise you are, or how much time you are given, you will never reach something like a single truth. Magi may just be those who continually reject that fact.” Speaking as if in self-deprecation, my master had pursed his lips at that. He had finally realized that his words and the objective that all Magi pursued, known as the “Spiral of Origin,” were in contradiction.

It's why Reines laments the Clock Tower focusing on petty political squabbles. The heart of the world of magecraft miring itself in human emotions and concerns, forgetting their original esoteric goals in the process. This, to me, is far more illustrative of magi than the often repeated "to be a magus means to walk with death". (An aphorism which, as far as I can tell, is mostly the result of fandom telephone. FSN does talk "magus having death right besides them" and "the essence of magi is in death", but the specific formulation of "walking" with death is nowhere in canon I think, and I checked Mahoyo and KnK to make sure. But that's for another post.) Ironically, what spurred this on is that, that post I mention? It was someone arguing Sanda is the *worst* TM writer for how he wrote magi, and I, as Sanda's strongest fighter, had to fight for his honor to mixed results lol.

[thevegetablewhichnoonedaresname]

I think that people who say "chat is a pronoun, actually" or say that it's prescriptivist or stifling creativity or language development are fundamentally misunderstanding what parts of speech are and how prescriptivism and descriptivism work. there's a huge difference between saying "you can't use neopronouns" or "you can't end a sentence with a preposition" and "chat is not a pronoun." the former two are prescriptive statements, the latter is literally descriptive.

in the first two cases, you're trying to tell people what they can and cannot do regardless of actual usage. people end sentences with prepositions all the time, and even though it isn't mainstream right now, there are established communities of people who use neopronouns.

"chat is not a pronoun," on the other hand, is a statement that describes current actual usage. (rest of the post under the cut: it's very long)

currently, no one is using chat as a pronoun. could someone use it as a pronoun? sure! of course they could! you could theoretically use any combination of sounds to fulfill any function. but that's irrelevant to the debate because "chat is not a pronoun" does not in any way entail the statement "chat can never ever foreseeably be a pronoun." it is just saying that right now, chat is not a pronoun because no one is using it like a pronoun: no more and no less. in none of the examples that I have seen provided has it been used like a pronoun. "chat is not a pronoun" also doesn't negate the possibility that there may be something cool going on socially! it's just not in terms of grammar categories. whatever's going on is a different kind of beast.

another very important thing I feel like a lot of people are misunderstanding is what parts of speech are. their entire purpose is to categorize language and study it, NOT to box it in. we HAVE to name these guys and try to classify them and study how they are alike and different, or we would not be able to talk about language and study it at all. think of it like animal classification: we're trying to sort through a preexisting system of something that exists (language or living organisms) and show how it all fits together. there are infinite complexities to how it all works and it takes an insane amount of study to figure out whether something belongs in one category, another, or needs a new label to accurately categorize it at all. pluto is not a planet and tomatoes are a fruit no matter WHAT kind of ""vibes"" they give off to you because "planet" and "fruit" are terms that scientists need to have precise definitions so they can talk about them. if you expand categories like "noun" or "verb" or "conjunction" to just include whatever, then you've removed your ability to talk about things with precision.

and also, parts of speech are not created by saying, "we should have nouns. okay gang, go out there and put all the words we ought to use as nouns in the noun box. if anyone uses one of those for anything other than a noun, we kill them." no. you look at sentences and the preexisting English language and you say, "boy, it seems like there sure are a lot of words that people use to label people, places, things, and concepts. in terms of syntax, we tend to place them in the subject or object position, and they don't necessarily contain information about the specific properties of how the object, person, or concept looks or moves. they can also be inflected to show that there's more than one, and there seems to be a set amount of endings you can use to do that. you can swap them out for one another and the sentence will stay grammatically correct. let's call these nouns!"

^THIS IS DESCRIPTIVISM. it is the reason why we're constantly updating dictionaries. "Stan" started out as a proper noun: the name of a guy. people started using it like a common noun to describe obsessive fans, and guess what? now it's a common noun! and then a little bit later, it got verbed! people started using it to describe the action or behavior of being an enthusiastic or obsessive fan! and now it's a verb! look it up in Merriam-Webster right now, those definitions are in there. any word can get turned into anything if we start using it that way.

the real issue here is that most people are familiar with nouns and verbs. this is not enough. pronouns have been amassing clout lately, and if you paid attention in English class or were really into Mad Libs as a kid, you might also be familiar with adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and articles. I was both an English and a Mad Libs kid! imagine my shock and horror when I started college and got exposed to the horrors of the intricacies of tense, aspect, and modality in verbs, nominalization, the nightmare of actually trying to pin down what an adverb even is, all the little subcategories like vocatives and demonstratives... and THEN I decided to do a linguistics minor along with my English major and was forced to realize that although there's a lot of shared terminology and overlap between traditional English parts of speech and linguistic lexical/syntactic categories, both fields make these categorizations for slightly different purposes, so sometimes the terminology and categorization is different. AND PEOPLE ARE DISPUTING THINGS. ALL THE TIME.

HOWEVER.

these disputes are so much more infinitely nuanced then you are even capable of realizing if all you know is the basic eight parts of speech or whatever that they teach you in school. OF COURSE if your understanding of grammar only extends to nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns, you're going to say stuff like "chat is a pronoun." it's like trying to diagnose someone with a mental illness when all you know is ADHD and depression. it's like trying to identify fossils when you've never seen an animal with the skin off. it's like that stupid argument about whether a hot dog is a sandwich or a taco or whatever that was about, which is a fun mental exercise, I guess, but the real answer is that yeah I guess you could say anything with some type of flat processed baked grain base is a sandwich, but the real and useful answer is that we make distinctions between hot dogs, tacos, sandwiches, flatbreads, open-face sandwiches, ravioli, burritos, wraps, and so on because WE NEED SPECIFICITY IN ORDER TO TALK ABOUT THINGS IN REAL LIFE.

i'm not an expert. all i have is a bachelor's degree in English, and i took grammar-related classes on purpose. you know what that equipped me to do upon seeing the initial post? it equipped me to go "that doesn't sound right" and then to go look up some expert opinions to explain why I felt that way and whether it was right or wrong.

so if I can beg you all to do one thing: please, please go on Wikipedia and read about the vocative case and the page on the parts of speech (this link will take you to the part where they talk about how linguists have different classification methods because it's very complex). what I want you to take away from this is that a) modern linguists and grammarians are, for the most part, very aware of how messy things can get and willing to make adjustments, and that b) "chat is a pronoun" is not one of those cases because it already falls perfectly into a category.

and I lied, because there is also a second thing I beg you all to do: realize how easy it is to be dogmatic when stuff seems simple. realize that everything is more complicated than it looks. realize nothing is black and white. realize everything is infinitely layered. and remember that although we're all human, there are always people out there who know more than you, and if you shut your eyes and cover your ears you are closing yourself off to ever being able to understand anything just so you can stay in your little paper cutout dimension where things make sense.

[bougiebutchbitch]

https://www.tumblr.com/avelera/733616528394715136/i-feel-like-one-unexpected-side-effect-in-the

Can I ask your opinion on this post I saw? Just really enjoy your critical input on things. It’s okay if you don’t answer this, I’m not trying to demand spoons you don’t have <3 thanks for reading

Hm! I think it's an interesting post for sure. And I think it's a valid vent to make, from someone who's obviously been in fandom for a very long time!

But I do think it misses A Lot Of Things Out in order to make its point.

I do agree with their point about how fandoms prefer 'potential' ships to the actuality. But. The exact same preference for 'ship bait' is common with loads of popular ships, regardless of whether they're queer or not. Mulder/Scully works so well because they never get together. There's a reason why House/Cuddy was teased for so many seasons before it became canon (and why they broke up pretty damn quickly after becoming established). Ditto with Garcia/Morgan in Criminal Minds, who flirt constantly but never progress to romantic interest.

The preference of viewers for 'will they/won't they' narratives is certainly not unique to queer media, and it is, in fact, well known and accepted across show writing? It's not just fans of queer ships who are lured in by the premise of 'ooooooh are they gonna kiss'.

I'm certainly not so keen on the subtle inference of this post (and the less-subtle inference of the comments) that queer people should Sit Down, Shut Up, And Just Be Grateful because a few years ago, there was so little canon queer rep. Like... That is exactly how progress stagnates. Do other queer people really think we should be happy with scraps tossed to us by studio executives, and thank them for daring to write about queer relationships in the first place?

Um. No?

Keep writing meta. Keep writing criticism. Keep pushing for better and better rep, and don't let anyone tell you 'it was worse in my day, so you should be thankful now'. That sort of subtle conservatism is really damaging, especially when it comes from within the queer community.

And just... Saying that Izzy was 'never even canonically established as queer' when he confessed his love for Edward, had a clearly established Toxic Past Romantic Relationship with him, was said by his crew to be in a "toxic relationship" with him, had a whole arc about accepting his queerness that ended in him dressing in drag and singing La Vie En Rose while his ex and his new boyfriend fucked, and had ridiculous amounts of gay tension with numerous men in the show, just because he never kissed a man on screen is....

Um.

Well, it's certainly A Take, I guess. But. Uh. Buddy. I think you may need to rewatch the show. The baseline for engaging in discussion of queer media should really be recognising that a character can be thoroughly established as queer without them kissing another guy.

And just on a more personal note: I and many other queer fans loved the Good Omens ending because it was perfectly in-character. From the start of the season, we were shown that these two characters love each other, and that is a love that has developed over centuries - but they also have a fundamentally opposing relationship with authority (Heaven in Aziraphale's case, Heaven and Hell in Crowley's). We are shown the chief conflict between them from very early on, and this crescendoes to create a dramatic, bittersweet, brutal, perfectly in-character finale.

OFMD could not be more different.

Most of the criticism of Ed/Stede in S2 is wholly from a storytelling perspective. Yes, it's a canonical central queer relationship; that's great. But like.... the development of that relationship was all over the place. They moved too quick. They agreed to slow down. They immediately had sex after this.

In itself, that's interesting!! That shows a lot about their characters! There's the potential for growth and progression here! Hell, I was happy when they broke up because they had different life goals, because it felt as if they had been building towards that point all season. I wanted them to be a happy endgame, yes, but I expected all that divergent character growth wouldn't be thrown away; that we would get Ed perhaps retiring while Stede stayed at sea, with the suggestion that they're in a long-distance relationship, or that when Stede is ready, he will join Ed. That could have worked really well!

Buuuuuuut.

Instead, Stede gave up on his life goals that have driven his character from the very start with literally 0 build up or in-character reasoning. They settled down together, after an entire season (two seasons, in fact....) of a show demonstrating how and why that wouldn't work. And we're supposed to view it as a 'happy ever after'.

In short: the problem is not nearly as simple as 'queer fans aren't satisfied with a queer relationship'. The problem is with the plot, the pacing, and (predominantly) the character writing. If Ed or Stede were a woman, I doubt anyone would feel differently.

Ed and Stede both went on a self-discovery arc, but that self-discovery was entirely 180'd for both of them in the final episode with only clumsy foreshadowing (mentioning the inn in the early episodes is.... not the sort of solid character development you need to lay if you want to make a character like Stede change the direction of their life so utterly!).

[luxe-pauvre]

But there’s another angle from which it’s oddly consoling. You might think of it as “cosmic insignificance therapy”: When things all seem too much, what better solace than a reminder that they are, provided you’re willing to zoom out a bit, indistinguishable from nothing at all? The anxieties that clutter the average life — relationship troubles, status rivalries, money worries — shrink instantly down to irrelevance. So do pandemics and presidencies, for that matter: the cosmos carries on regardless, calm and imperturbable. Or to quote the title of a book I once reviewed: The Universe Doesn’t Give a Flying Fuck About You. To remember how little you matter, on a cosmic timescale, can feel like putting down a heavy burden that most of us didn’t realise we were carrying in the first place. This sense of relief is worth examining a little more closely, though, because it draws attention to the fact that the rest of the time, most of us do go around thinking of ourselves as fairly central to the unfolding of the universe; if we didn’t, it wouldn’t be any relief to be reminded that in reality this isn’t the case. Nor is this a phenomenon confined to megalomaniacs or pathological narcissists, but something much more fundamental to being human: it’s the understandable tendency to judge everything from the perspective you occupy, so that the few thousand weeks for which you happen to be around inevitably come to feel like the linchpin of history, to which all prior time was always leading up. These self-centred judgments are part of what psychologists call the “egocentricity bias,” and they make good sense from an evolutionary standpoint. If you had a more realistic sense of your own sheer irrelevance, considered on the timescale of the universe, you’d probably be less motivated to struggle to survive, and thereby to propagate your genes. You might imagine, moreover, that living with such an unrealistic sense of your own historical importance would make life feel more meaningful, by investing your every action with a feeling of cosmic significance, however unwarranted. But what actually happens is that this overvaluing of your existence gives rise to an unrealistic definition of what it would mean to use your finite time well. It sets the bar much too high. It suggests that in order to count as having been “well spent,” your life needs to involve deeply impressive accomplishments, or that it should have a lasting impact on future generations — or at the very least that it must, in the words of the philosopher Iddo Landau, “transcend the common and the mundane.” Clearly, it can’t just be ordinary: After all, if your life is as significant in the scheme of things as you tend to believe, how could you not feel obliged to do something truly remarkable with it?

Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks

[discourse-by-candlelight]

i saw your reblog and im gonna take you up on that offer if you dont mind. im not trying to come from a closed minded point of view, so im gonna ask something i hope isnt rude? i was wondering what brought you to the decision of creating your system?

Wrath: Sorry for the delay in answering this, we've been going through quite a bit irl lately.

As for your question, it's not rude at all! We're happy to answer it. For this post I suppose I the host/original should answer despite rarely being active on Tumblr. This might be a little messy at times so bear with me. I'll also be using tulpamancy terminology for this post as it's what I know if that's OK. My path into tulpamancy was far more unorthodox than most, that's probably why we run a tumblr blog while most of the community would rather do anything else. Fair warning: This may be very, very long-winded, but every tulpamancer has their own highly subjective story, and mine is out there even by my community's standards. So I'll give a TLDR above the cut and the long biography/essay under.

TLDR: While my first tulpa initially was formed on accident, I found that my life was enriched and genuinely far more fulfilling once I started working with tulpamancy, and the companionship changed my life around when I was in a dark place at the height of Covid. From there I purposely expanded my system, although we had an initial explosion of system size due to some experimentation going a little far. We worked together to create a beautiful inner life and dynamic, and with a couple walk-ins and odd experiences down the line we stabilized at 16 members for over year, and then picked up our final member last September leaving us at 17.

The system is still going strong after 2 and a half years living this way and I feel like my life has more meaning because of them. In fact, I'm not sure I'd still be here today if they weren't around for the trials I've faced within the last year. We've carved out a nice life for ourselves, and while depression still kicks all of our asses at times, we have a collectively agreed upon future dream, and all of us have our own interests and hobbies that helps enrich the rest of us too.

So to begin the long answer/mini biography, I'm host of one of the less common but certainly not unheard of tulpamancy systems that initially formed accidentally. There's a couple ways this can happen, usually via imaginary friends, roleplay characters, or OCs coming to life from repeated imaginative activity in a way that the tulpamancy community would consider to be similar to "forcing" (the in community term for tulpa creation and development). In my case it was less obvious and a little more obscure than that, but I've got a decent hypothesis as to the how's and why's.

So my first tulpa was originally named Shade but nowadays goes by Null, and they formed while I was in a stressful period of my life and I ran into a piece of fanfiction whose main character developed an alter ego, an alter ego that was for all intents and purposes in effect a tulpa. I hyperfixated on this little story, and since previous to this I had spent quite a bit of time in occult circles I was already familiar with the concept of thoughtforms in general. The brain did all the heavy lifting for me without my realizing and only a day or so after finishing said story I had my first experience with Null.

(Note: Most first tulpas when intentionally created take a week or so to form with modern community teachings, but time varies widely between systems. My system is on one of the far ends of the spectrum, forming quite rapidly and without much intent at the start. People on the other end may take months or longer due to mental blocks or misunderstandings of the fundamentals).

At first I was confused obviously, and a little concerned, but Null was friendly and knowledgeable, and we both agreed to do some research into the topic. The first check was DID/OSDD, as I'm sure it is for most people experiencing any form of plurality. I knew I had a trauma history, so it wasn't like it was off the cards for me. We found that we didn't really match up with the criteria, however. Certain things just didn't click and while my system to this day drifts farther down the dissociative spectrum than most tulpamancers and tulpas, we still don't think we've ever truly met the criteria nor do we think we ever will. We exist in a bit of a blurry zone there compared to most tulpamantic systems but nonetheless remain steadfast in our understanding of our system.

Once Null and I put DID back on the shelf for the time we moved onto other searches. These were very general, stuff like voice hearing and imaginary friends, but it did the job because fairly quickly we found a certain article written by an academic on the topic of tulpamancy. This caught our eye and felt like it near perfectly described the experience we were having. It also lightly covered on accidental tulpas, and things clicked into place in my head with me having read that story beforehand.

So we joined the tulpamancy community first by signing up for a forum called tulpa.info

This is where we initially learned most of our techniques, and also where my system went from me and at the time Shade, to Shade Null and I. So at this point we were practicing simple stuff, keeping tulpas around and active, visualization training, basic stuff for tulpas. Null having a very specific and less than emotional personality came to the conclusion that he could better help our dynamic if he changed up his personality and style. This resulted in some experimentation with form, voice, and general self expression, and eventually Shade settled into the form of a feminine hooded shadow person, and developed a very different personality. Shade still has this form and has expanded on it since, but things get interesting here as Null chose instead of just presenting as Shade, to instead split off and keep himself as he was, and let this version of himself become an independent tulpa. So my system went from 2 to 3.

Here's a piece of art I had commissioned for Shade on her first birth/formation day, or well Null's birthday. They consider eachother as two independent manifestations of the same identity which is still confusing even for me at times. Luckily the rest of my system while no less odd is (mostly) far more intentional and not nearly as complex to grasp.

So Shade and I were the ones who really made the system as it is today. Null took a bit of an intentional backseat and still prefers being less active. Shade and I during our couple months alone developed all of the fundamental tulpamancy skills. We developed our visualization and a wonderland aka inner world, we learned possession (A tulpa/headmate controlling a specific limb while someone else fronts), and we learned how to switch via a visualization ritual, and eventually developed it and lessened the time needed down to a blink. Shade and I also practiced some imposition, which is kind of like a form or controlled hallucinations, but that's a crude understanding of it. There's multiple guides and references to the topic from my and other communities such as prophantasia you can look into if you desire.

At some point we decided to experiment with the idea of thoughtforms in our wonderland to give it some life, and maybe adding some new members. While we'll spare the details for personal reasons, things got a little out of hand and what was just supposed to be some imaginary characters innerworld became a large set of tulpas, and I chose to accept them in. This made the majority of my system, and while it was chaotic for a time I have zero regrets.

During and a short while after this time we also had 2 walk-ins (which in the tulpamancy community means a tulpa who forms/appears seemingly out of the blue, usually only after you've been a tulpamancer for some time, not to be confused with spiritual walk-ins from the wider plural community) which I chose to accept as members unlike other walk-ins. Walk-ins are interesting, and there's a few working theories on the topic, but that'll be for a different post, probably on our non syscourse blog @thecandlelightsociety

So to tally up this left my system size at 14 including myself. For reference, most tulpamantic systems have 2 to 6 members on average. Things stabilized here and we stayed a this number for quite a few months, but eventually a member of my system, Dawn, decided to make a new tulpa with some help from a friend. I gave her the go ahead and about half a month later we added Junior to our Simply Plural. At this point I was wrapping up school for the year and was at this point fully adjusted to the plural lifestyle, and it was the most memorable few months of my entire life. We all talked every day, shared perspectives I'd of never had on topics on my own, and discussed individual interests. We would and still do sometimes argue but since we share a brain and as a tulpamantic system don't have any major dissociative barriers we near always understand what eachother feel and truly mean, so they never get nasty and are more philosophical or fun banter. I did lose a fair amount of personal time, splitting it between all of our hobbies, but I enjoy seeing the others have fun and grow as people, so it's time well lost.

So fast forward more and we have our second to last member show up, and this one is yet another unorthodox tulpa formation (seeing a trend with my system yet?). Dawn, being a dumbass as always, decided to mess around with a tulpa hypnosis file and ended up dropping to it, and so two days later we had Sera show up. I was skeptical of her, but she quickly showed herself worthy of staying and so our system reached 16 members and we ended up studying hypnosis for a time. This is the number we would stay at for most of our time as a system up until recently.

During all of this time we would switch front based on whoever felt like fronting, and Astra, the tulpa who actually runs this blog usually, became the most frequent fronter and made me proud, accomplishing multiple personal and academic goals for herself. She's the main reason we're now studying psychology in college, and she would later handle quite possibly the worst couple months of our life all my singlet years included. I couldn't be more happy with all she has accomplished for herself and our shared life. Just seeing her happy and succeeding makes tulpamancy worth it for me.

So our most recent member was also a walk-in, and one of only three fictives in our system. Fictives are common in tulpamancy spaces because using a character as a base model for a tulpa makes the creation process much easier. It gives personality traits and an already known form to work with. My system due to it's unique set of circumstances for most formations however is mainly custom forms. One member of my system really wanted her accepted, and I eventually agreed, and I don't regret it at all either. She has been a wonderful person to get to know and quickly became one of the most active and social members out of all of us, and became the most popular person in our online friend groups.

So that covers the (very rough) general timeline of my experiences with tulpamancy. It is horrifically simplified and missing quite a bit, but the main point was to show that my system, while complex and messy at times, has brought me immense joy. Most of all though, it brought me purpose. I'm so glad I didn't just ignore Null all the way back then and let him dissipate back into the sea of my mind. This journey has been a wild ride, but I love all of my tulpas, and I'm happy to have them as my equals in this shared life of ours.

[basicallyjaywalker]

The stupidest thing ever in Ninjago:

The Love Triangle™

I feel the opinion that the love triangle in Ninjago is one of the worst subplots is not only popular but very correct. heck, even ten year old rook who loved drama and romance hated it because it felt fundamentally *wrong*

And I mean there's the obvious point: it wasn't necessary. We did not need a love triangle we had Jaya and things were fine. I actually think the love triangle fundamentally screwed up the otherwise goofy wholesome dynamic Jaya had and showcases some of the worst flaws in how Nya is written

But we did have it and I have a lot of thoughts about it so in this rant-masquerading-as-an-essay we will discuss

The timeline of the love triangle and Jaya generally

Why it's unnecessary, out of character, and generally pretty dumb as a recurring plot

Why Nya was the least wrong of everyone involved in it and also done the most dirty by it

Strap in because this is gonna be a very angry ride

To Recap…

Jaya was initially hinted at in the pilots with a line that was very uncomfy

" You have a sister? Is she hot?" *Gets elbowed for weird teenage boy crimes*

Thanks, I hate it, but Jay seems to be less creepy when the series actually starts and he has his clear crush on Nya. The crush even seems to be reciprocated and they appear to be unofficially official in S1 and S2, including Jay LOSING HIS MARBLES when Nya is captured and Cole makes an accidental pun

And then we hit S3 and I want to commit crimes.

In episode 1 of S3 there is an exchange wherein Nya is talking about how none of her male students listen to her and

Jay: Heyyy Ms. Nya, I saved you a pudding cup!

Nya: what did we talk about?

Jay: Oh right! Boundaries!

This exchange seems to imply that Jay and Nya are on a break, broken up, or possibly just not together in the first place and I misread things and now that they're older Jays teenage boy awkwardness is less endearing and more just creepy.

In any case, we can draw that Nya is trying to gain more independence, and why wouldn't she? Her life from the start of this series has been defined by either a) her brother or b) Jays affection for her. Even when she was Samurai X her main relationships were annoying the ninja or sharing the secret with Kai and hiding it from Jay. Keep this in mind for later.

So later they go to tour Borg Industries, with the guys visiting Mr. Borg himself and Nya staying with the students. As they tour the invention floor they find *gasp* a machine run on flash! No literally I'm convinced this was some interns pet project Cyrus didn't have the heart to reject. A love machine to find your perfect match and, for fun, Nya steps onto it. All of the little girls giggle and talk about how it'll OBVIOUSLY show Mr. Jay!! And then it beeps and everyone looks horrified. Its. Cole? Wait wtf why Cole?

Prior to this the machine listed a lot of Nya's traits and it seems that it's matching them based on that? It's still odd. Anyways, it'll probably be fine because neither Nya nor Cole has shown any sign of attraction before, even in this episode, and it would make no sense for Nya to suddenly develop a crush based on what a stupid machine says-- oh that's exactly what she does? Well.

Okay sure MAYBE Nya harbored affection for Cole before this. Or maybe the machine makes her realize how much they have in common and that's why. Surely if Cole shared similar thoughts he'd have shown them naturally, since he wasn't part of this whole machine thing as demonstrated in the sudden cut-- oh no he starts making moves and reciprocating out of fucking nowhere? Well.

And then Jay finds out and sure this man has a lot of insecurities and he's bound to be a little jealous but I'm sure since hes a grown adult with a least a little more maturity than when he was a teenager he won't react by beating his best friend to a bloody pulp-- oh ffs. Well.

I will get more into the characterization of everyone later but after this initial fight things do not get better. Jay and Cole are constantly hostile to each other in this season and it continues up until Skybound which was pretty good, actually, and I just wanted to punch Jay in the face for a. Portion. Which solidified Jaya after a healthy dose of trauma bonding! And from what I understand they live happily ever after until Seabound ripped all of our hearts out and turned them to fine mist but I haven't seen past Hands of Time so it doesn't matter

Now with that out of the way, let's get into

Why this entire thing was bullshit.

It was unnecessary

No but fr why did they write this in???? The main reason I can think of is it adds a conflict but here's the thing: if they wanted to develop Jaya, give them conflict and make them stronger as a couple they ALREADY HAD A STARTING POINT. Harken back to the pudding cup interaction earlier. There you go! Nya is tired of her life being defined by the men around her. She wants a break to be able to find herself and be independent again. Jay is insecure and worried this means she doesn't love him and overcompensates trying to "win her back." It offers opportunities for both comedy (Jay finding more and more elaborate ways to try and impress her while everyone else tries to break through to him that he's nuts) and actual serious lessons about relationships (Nya telling him that while she still loves him and maybe one day they can have a future, she needs space and the opportunity to find herself, and maybe he can take the time to find himself too). It genuinely wouldn't change much of the dynamic they have from rebooted to Skybound, is not entirely annoying, and doesn't do either of them dirty in the character development department.

The only other reason I can think of other than extra drama is they wanted to introduce a new relationship dynamic, that of Cole and Nya. But 1. It's obvious from the start that they're not endgame so it's pointless to explore them, it's just for drama. And 2. we already had Pixane this season introduced in the same episode and also know as The Best Thing To Ever Happen To Ninjago. So again, I reiterate that the love triangle was entirely unnecessary because of you wanted a new ship you had Pixane and if you wanted Jaya conflict you could just make it internal.

Everyone is written like me doing a Degrassi AU of this show

Let's start with Nya.

Nya is commonly characterized in the show as an independent, self-confident young woman who refuses to be in a boy's club. But don't take my word for it, because when I mentioned the machine that catalyzed this whole thing listed off details about her, that is exactly what it said. And I don't disagree with it, which is why it feels even stupider that in this whole thing, Nya is just sort of a bystander. Like, let's go through the OOC things she does throughout this plot

-listens to the machine at all

Nya comes across as the type of person who would not trust a simple machine with a dumb name (Perfect Match like really???) to decide her fate unless SHE made it. So for her to not only go along with using this thing with no reluctance, but also just DEVELOP FEELINGS for Cole out of the blue based on it?? Feels so out of character for her!! If anything it would feel more in character for her to get on the machine reluctantly after the girls beg her too, see it's Cole, laugh it off publicly ("haha, Cole? Must be broken") but then worry about it in private or just be unfazed. Nya's independence and desire to be defined by her own actions instead of her brother and his friends' contradicts this action because it just. Doesn't seem in character. IDK this as the catalyst just makes me nuts because of reasons I will get into when talking more about Nya later

-her affections towards cole

I already sort of covered this so I'll just reiterate. Prior to this, there were no clear indications that Nya liked Cole romantically. The machine seems to have planted the idea in her and she ran with it. We've discussed why that's OOC for her. Moving on.

-how she proceeds to act in the dynamic

She doesn't. This is more just bad writing and less her being OOC but it's still OOC that the most agency she gets is yelling at Jay and Cole for fighting at the junkyard and picking which wire to cut which amounted to nothing anyways grrrr--

Sorry that's another scene that makes me mad because it's very dumb. Anyways.

Nya literally feels like a bystander in this whole thing. Her general vibe seems to be. Annoyance with the whole thing. Which I get I'm annoyed too but that only sticks around for S3 and after? It's purely focused on Jay and Cole's conflict. Hell when they have a whole "she's yours you can have her" scene in S4 (which means nothing because it's still going in S5 and S6) SHES NOT EVEN PRESENT. It's just them talking about her like she's an object which feels OOC for both of them too.

I'm going to get more into this when I just talk about Nya so we're going to move on for now

To Cole. What the fuck my guy?

-developing feelings for nya

Never shown to have this before. Doesn't even have a machine to blame. It actually almost feels like he did it to spite Jay. Moving on.

-the fact that it just keeps going

Again Cole has NO reason or motivation or skin in this game? Like it's so weird that he just keeps fighting with Jay over it and is just as passionate about it. It feels like he should be more confused about where he stands on this. Maybe he likes Nya? He never considered it before but maybe he does. But also Jay is his friend and he knows Jay likes Nya too. It's so weird that he literally Mr. Steal Yo Girl's this thing OR just isn't listening to Nya when she obviously seems unsure about her relationship status

Cole's was short because his problems are very surface. He just is here for the plot to work because you can't have Kai do it, that's her brother, and you can't have Zane do it because he has a cool new android gf, and you can't have Lloyd do it bc that's his found family sister. But it just feels OOC the entire time.

Now for the best. Jay. Oh my beloved Jay.

Now this whole thing is semi in character for him. He's super insecure and has a huge crush on Nya, so him being a little upset at Cole and her possibly being an item makes more sense. What doesn't make sense is

-HOW NUTTER BUTTER HIS REACTIONS ARE + HOW PUSHY HE IS

Throughout the seasons this stupid ass plot occurs in, Jay's teenage boy crush on Nya reaches a level that makes me openly and violently cringe as someone who not only loves Jay, but really likes Jaya. First, there's his first reaction to finding out. It makes sense that he's a little upset, maybe hurt, at finding out that apparently Cole is Nya's perfect match, but to then violently take that out on Cole and become weirdly possessive of Nya feels like the writers took his sincere insecurities and cranked them up to crazy levels. Jay is absolutely insecure, don't get me wrong. He definitely seems to understand that he's the clown and coward of the team, and that's part of his arc in Skybound which was pretty good, actually and that's why. But his insecurities have always been portrayed as inward before this. He retreats in on himself and gets anxious, not violent. Take S1 for example, during Once Bitten, Twice Shy (I believe that's the episode) when during his date with Nya he continuously worries about screwing up and runs away to deal with it. He never takes it out on anyone else. He can be physical when he's anxious, iirc he shook someone during a freak out when the Devourer was released, but that was more him just being Extra and not being mad at that person specifically. The only other time his anxieties caused him to lose his shit like this--and caused him to be violent towards Cole over nya, coincidentally--was when Nya was literally captured by Garmadon and the Overlord in S2 after a heated battle was lost and Cole made a very poor word choice, and he stopped almost immediately when Wu intervened because he realized that it wasn't an appropriate reaction. Jay is not a violent person. He's an anxious one. Him attacking Cole over a comment he OVERHEARD from Pixal with no prior build up makes NO SENSE to me.

Additionally in future seasons he becomes weirdly possessive/obsessed w Nya. Again, he was always shown as having a borderline desperate crush on her, but he always kept his awkwardness to a minimum both around her and in private. I mean, take S1 again for example, where he wears cologne to smell good and impress her (well, it was perfume and gave her an allergic reaction, thanks guys, but regardless) as opposed to S6 where he is LITERALLY the pushiest mfer alive. Constantly not listening to her and violating her clearly stated boundaries (one of my least favorite parts of Skybound. I have a lot of feelings about that season and need to rewatch it) goes against his character again!! And yes, the argument can be made that that was because he was trying to force the fate he saw in Possession, but I still think it's OOC for him to become as pushy and creepy as he was. Again, Jay is absolutely an insecure dumbass who catastrophizes and is hopelessly crushing on this woman who is definitely out of his league. however his going so far into the creep zone long after the awkward teenage boy phase feels like the writers, again, took his flaws and just cranked them up for drama

Sorry I've harped on this for so long. It will not get better when I go in depth about how Nya was done dirty in this plot.

Generally, this was a stupid plot

Aside from being unnecessary, aside from being OOC for all involved... The love triangle is just Stupid. Let's look at the actual affects it had for the 4 seasons it occurred.

Rebooted

Jay and Cole have one serious fight and there's one serious scene where Nya has to "choose" that we don't see the outcome of and is literally never elaborated on again.

After that it's jokes.

Tournament of Elements

Cole and Jay don't wanna rejoin forces because they hate each other because of Nya. They have one serious fight in which Cole is like "she's yours" (not how that fucking works). Nya has literally no say the entire time.

Possession

Some light Nya x Cole scenes after Cole becomes a ghost. Jay sees him and Nya together in the glass. Can't remember any serious fights

Skybound

Literally the driving factor of the season.

Notice a pattern? Aside from Skybound, the love triangle serves little purpose other than being a driver for Jay and Cole conflict. Nya has little to no agency, not even being present for the conflicts in ToE. Which brings me to my final point and the driving factor behind why I wrote this whole thing to begin with

Nya was robbed.

I could again write an entire essay about how the Ninjago writers flip flop on Nya all the time, but for now I'll contain it in this essay.

One of my biggest gripes about the writing of this show is how they flip flop constantly between Nya being a character used for the boys development and being an independent character who looks after herself. The love triangle is a prime example of this.

Nya is an independent woman who listens to a random machine when she's trying to define herself apart from a relationship. Nya is a self-confident woman who doesn't get a say when the other two decide who can have her. Nya repeatedly and consistently denies Jay's advances in Skybound, only to make a dramatic turn at the end and choose him.

You see what I mean? It's infuriating. Nya is constantly given lip service as a strong woman, but when the time comes the writers will gladly toss her aside in favor of developing the men in her life. It's annoying, it's aggravating, and it's fully on display in this subplot, wherein she's given little agency and acts like a prop for the writers to use. Jay wins the girl, but why was the girl "winnable" in the first place? Why wasn't she given the space to actually have moments aside from "gasp, she's holding his hand!" to really explore her feelings on camera? Why does her life continue to be defined by her relationships with her brother, his friends, and her boyfriend?

So....

The Love Triangle fucking sucked. It sucked so bad I'm almost convinced it was worse than bringing back Garmadon. It sucked because it was pointless, with even a 9 year old able to see where it would end. It sucked because it took two seasons of characterization for three different characters and threw it out the window. It sucked because it was barely important to any development other than Jay's, and it required making him worse than he is to work. It sucked because it represents a cornerstone in a larger problem surrounding how Nya is treated in the series.

It sucked so bad I spent almost a week writing a 40 paragraph essay/rant about how much I hate it.

[lonesomedreamer]

SNW Liveblog: “Under the Cloak of War”

another installment of Grimdark Trek in which SNW tries its hand at “Conscience of the King” without understanding that episode’s ethics.

or: The Wrath of M’Benga

A fantastic look for her! (Finally.)

Ortegas sucks, is judgy/borderline racist, and insubordinate. What else is new?

The choice to put war in Christine and M’Benga’s backstory still makes very little sense to me. I know Christine was underdeveloped in TOS, but this background has nothing to do with that character.

“Chris needs us [at dinner].” Why, though? They both clearly have pretty bad cases of PTSD (M’Benga almost had an actual heart attack in the previous scene), whereas Pike does not. So why does he need them there, for (lack of) moral support? Christine’s dating a Vulcan—maybe she should call M’Benga out for being illogical.

Protective boyfriend Spock!

“Our captain needs us.” This again? He needs them for what? And as CMO, M’Benga should be well aware that neither he nor Christine are medically fit to represent Pike, the Enterprise, or the Federation at large in their current emotional states.

NOT the Superpower Serum subplot coming back. It was stupid in 2x01, it’s stupid now.

Why do Klingon prosthetics/makeup look worse now than they did in the 80s? His scalp looks like it’s made out of plastic. (Which maybe it is. But that's the problem.)

Christine’s often emotionally unavailable partner is attempting to be warm/supportive/empathetic in his own way, and she’s pushing him away. I do understand that SNW!Christine is traumatized and suffering from PTSD, which may cause her to behave in ways others see as irrational…but she was able to cope with the horrific events of “All Those Who Wander” and to offer emotional support to Spock afterwards despite the likelihood that those events were probably upsetting/triggering. So her behavior here makes no sense to me. Maybe the writers hadn’t thought up this backstory for her back in Season One…

“War changes people.” But this episode isn’t going to explore whether it actually changed Rah, is it? Or whether he is/can be/should be redeemed?

“How can we represent a Federation that believes in peace if we say some people aren’t allowed to make up for their past?” Wow, the writers are actually allowing Pike to be articulate AND correct? Granted that he’s been a total insensitive dumbass so far, but I’m still impressed.

“And when you find whoever’s in charge, you make them pay.” Jess Bush is a very talented actress. So it’s a real shame that this is the material she’s been given. Trek is about people overcoming things like the desire for vengeance and being better humans—about choosing to be better, in fact! Yet this nurse is advocating vigilante justice?

“Don’t let hate ruin your soul.” These are some fundamental Trek ideas! But they're coming from the “bad guy,” so I guess the writers ARE saying that “some people aren’t allowed to make up for their past”...

M’Benga violently murdering someone in flashback...yikes??

I saw a comment about how disturbing it is that SNW keeps making its two medical characters special-op types, and it’s true. McCoy might have had faults, but he honored his oath to the letter. First, do no harm. He was an empath, arguably the conscience of the show—not for nothing do fans very often portray him as the symbolic “heart”/pathos of the TOS triumvirate! Pain, suffering, and death physically sickened him. He could never have fatally stabbed someone, in a rage or otherwise. Justified or not. That’s the kind of doctor I want on my peaceful intragalactic exploratory mission. Didn’t the Rukiya subplot and its highly questionable resolution make M’Benga morally ambiguous enough???

…well, that answers that question.

There are definitely cameras on the Enterprise. Probably even in Sickbay. We know this because of common sense and because they pulled the “tape” when prosecuting Kirk in “Court Martial” and then again when Sarek confronts Kirk in Search for Spock! Christine could NOT cover up the truth here. (And while I’ve seen some people argue that the truth is ambiguous, I strenuously disagree. M’Benga murdered Rah.) Nor should she. Though she’s a traumatized war survivor like M’Benga, and Rah is a criminal from the same war, the CMO of the Federation’s flagship stabbing a (probably-unarmed) diplomat in a time of peace AND while on duty is a most definitely court martial offense. To put it mildly! Even if M’Benga was driven by his severe PTSD to react violently when Rah confronted him, he should be relieved of his duties, placed on medical leave, and treated. He should NOT continue serving on the Enterprise. This is even more severe and alarming than his rash decision regarding his daughter in Season One, and it should be the end of his Starfleet career. WHY did they write this?!!?!

Not only does no one properly investigate, Pike kind of shrugs and side-eyes M’Benga slightly before closing the case. A diplomat was killed on his ship under suspicious circumstances while alone with two people that Pike knew were struggling emotionally as a result of said diplomat’s presence… and he just takes their word for what happened and moves on?!

tl;dr They’ve ruined M’Benga. Twice. The Rukiya subplot was pretty bad, but at least his ultimate goal was for his daughter to live. This is also bad, but it makes M’Benga—a DOCTOR—a cold-blooded killer (both in war and in peacetime) in a universe that has always stood against violence and vengeance and for dialogue and reconciliation. It’s still a “war is hell, peace is the way” message, but it’s weakened by the choices made by its characters. War is bad because it irrevocably traumatizes and destroys people. Healing doesn’t exist, not even in the utopian twenty-third century with all its advanced medicine. What kind of message is that?

Thanks, I hate it.

The Good: Babs Olusanmokun and Jess Bush both give amazing performances (better than the script/character arcs deserve by far), and Robert Wisdom was also great as Rah—Spock being a supportive boyfriend! ♥—a nice allusion to TNG: Spock mentions Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” (quoted by Riker in TNG S1)

The Bad: wildly out-of-character/unethical behavior and violence that contradicts and undermines the whole spirit of Star Trek!!! Babs’ excellent acting is undercut by an abysmal story (again)—an unnecessary war backstory for Christine so that she, too, can be Traumatized™—pointlessly sabotaging Christine and Spock’s relationship after just two three episodes* for, idk, drama?—bad Klingon makeup/prosthetics—Ortegas is a terrible officer—Pike is a terrible captain—no exploration of whether Rah was actually a changed man

I won’t comment on the war flashback scenes except to say that I don’t think they needed to be as gory or as drawn-out as they were to be effective. That’s on-brand for SNW, though.

Season 2 Pike is a completely ineffective leader who appears to command very little respect and even less authority. He really is the Sitcom Dad of captains—well-meaning, oblivious, and kind of bumbling.

Finally: I’m really confused about what motivated the writers/showrunners to pursue the Spock/Christine storyline for, what, 16-17 episodes only to now have Christine be reluctant to even call their relationship…well, a relationship. She also seems to be the one undermining said relationship. Just to refresh: in TOS, Christine was the one who admitted to being in love with Spock; who signed aboard the Enterprise out of loyalty to her missing fiance (!); who loved Spock so much that she let his consciousness be placed in hers in order to save his life. And in THIS VERY SHOW, Christine stole a shuttlecraft and engaged in interdimensional travel in order to beg some aliens to repair Spock’s broken genome!

Not only do I support Trek’s decades-long promotion of peace 110%, I also support SNW’s (apparent) goal of fleshing out the underdeveloped female characters from TOS. That said, there was no good reason to put full-blown war in Christine Chapel’s backstory! Girl was studying to be a bio-researcher and dating a professor before she became a nurse, not serving as a combat medic! If the creators wanted this show to feature original characters in the Trek universe, they could have done that—just like every other (pre-Discovery) Trek has done before them. But what they actually wanted was to use familiar names to get more views/higher ratings. So those names got assigned to characters who are still, essentially, OCs. It is endlessly frustrating to me.

But still not as frustrating as what they’ve done to M’Benga. The writers of this episode really need to watch “Conscience of the King” again. On a loop.

*I skipped 2x07 because Lower Decks is not my thing, but I know the S/C sabotage actually begins in that one. :|

EDIT: After thinking about it more and sleeping on it, I think that even if it WAS ambiguous and Rah killed himself or it was somehow self defense, M'Benga and Chapel have a moral obligation to attempt to save the life of a man with a giant knife sticking out of his chest. Instead, they both stare at him as he dies on the floor. Reprehensible behavior either way.

[popolitiko]

After initially finding some common ground on the matter of Donald Trump's 14th amendment constitutional challenges conservative writer Andrew Sullivan had a heated exchange with MSNBC commentator Ari Melber on Real Time with Bill Maher about to what extent both sides the progressive left and the Democratic party versus the progressive right and the Republican Party are responsible for the current toxic state of American politics.

We have a couple of Clips to look at in this video and I'll say the most recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher a show that I don't follow that much anymore was actually pretty good fodder for commentary.

We just did a video about the interview between Maher and Gavin Newsome the governor of California.

But this exchange between Sullivan and Melber who are two political commentators of two very different political lenses was fascinating to me because it spoke to one of the things that we complain about quite a bit on this channel which is the urge of centrists and conservatives and even some on the left to create this artificial balance - this false equivalence between two imperfect but still wildly and fundamentally different political factions and so with that in mind I want to play this clip and for context Maher is going to ask about or ask these two about  a recent story about a right-wing Republican Trump Ally wanting to do something pretty drastic.

Maher: So Roger Stone one of his favorites. This is amazing that I mean it was not a big story I would think it would be media I reported it.   there a tape he's talking about killing people for Trump I not saying with Trump's approval but he says it's time to do it let's go find that's Congressman Swalwell it's time to do it then we'll see how Brave the rest of them are it's either Swalwell or Nadler has to die before the election let's go find Swalwell and get this over with.  That’s not right is it? I mean I feel like we're spinning out of control a little here with this…

Sullivan: I think what Trump set in motion and what the divisions of the country has done and what the Democrats have done the last four years which has respond to Trump by going even further to the left means that we are losing the legitimacy of the system and that is the critical thing when you lose that core legitimacy you lose your democracy that's where we're really going to lose our democracy because we don't believe in it anymore and you can see that the result of that the way this works is you start disbelieving in all the institutions and then you say who do I want you want a strong man you want someone to come in and cut all the knots this is the classic case of how you lose a democracy yeah and he's almost certainly going to be there he's going to win this election.

So before Melber responds I just want to remind you okay Maher just provided a recent story which in my opinion was hella under reported about a very close Trump Ally a guy who worked on Trump's 2016 campaign Roger Stone in private scheming about murdering two Democratic Congress people.  Okay so that is a right-winger scheming to perpetrate a heinous crime against two left-wing public officials and you know Andrew Sullivan's first instinct to say yeah Trump kind of set this emotion but man the Democrats they've really pushed far left so that's the context just to remind you and this is how Ari Melber responds.

Melber: I think you make Fair points Andrew but you sound a little bit both sidese I don't know if that's on purpose. But there are absolutely problems with the Democratic Party and the overreaction to Trump.  We just spoke about the ballot case and its thinness and we cover that all the time on the news.  But there's not equivalence here on the problems that you just referred to…

There’s not equivalence on political violence

There’s not equivalence on responding to court cases.

Bush vs. Gore was very controversial but there was no violent response and there was not any mainstream response from Democrats about overthrowing the certification.  Al Gore actually showed up on Jan 6 remember it was that date and certified it so there isn't a bothsidesism to this Decay and what Trump does   And I agree at times he may draw his opponents into messy dumb feuds but he is the one banking on a cynicism an attack on democracy and a complete rejection of the policy democracy that you want because they didn't even have a platform so he's saying “It's just me. You don't even know what I'm going to do just vote for me”.   No platform and you've got a whole Republican party that's basically codifying that.

So Sullivan's about to respond but I just want to emphasize Melber's response there was very accurate very honest and I would argue perhaps even charitable to a fault. He went out of his way to acknowledge -- which is something Republicans very rarely do if ever -- that there are issues with the Democratic Party and he said it repeatedly and he also reminded Sullivan of the Common Ground that they shared earlier in this interview because both of them think that the 14th Amendment challenges to Donald Trump's eligibility are weak and this is coming from an MSNBC legal commentator and he's publicly admitting that at least from his perspective (I completely disagree)  but that's his perspective. So he's again going out of his way to try to establish some commonality and reiterate that with Sullivan while also saying you can't create a false equivalence here if you do I'm going to reject it.

Note how Sullivan responds

Sullivan: It would be good at MSNBC if you actually did think about both sides and weigh the arguments and make constructive arguments against that side while respecting them. You don't do that. It’s propaganda all the time.

Melber: What you just said - just describe my show. I had a trump lawyer on this week I've had Steve Bannon on my show I've had officials … So describing a goal that I'm achieving I take that as a compliment

Sullivan:  well you might.

You can tell there's obvious tension there.  But also know Andrew Sullivan started to say something before Melber cut him off--  which was you know… he’s like… you should make constructive arguments … and respect the people that are making those arguments.

Well and here's the thing -- Melber just did that.  Melber just said -  and then he goes on to say Sullivan does that you know you're denying the denying and he was clearly starting to say that you're denying that Democrats do  anything wrong but Melber actually said that to the contrary.  He’s like there are issues with the Democratic Party and he talks about how the Democratic Party will fall for various rhetorical traps of Trumps and perhaps overreach from time to time in their criticism of him so again he was generous reiterating the common ground and making it very clear that he doesn't think the Democratic Party is perfect.  That went right over Andrew Sullivan's head because even though Andrew Sullivan by the way and he even mentioned it in this interview he doesn't like Trump he thinks that Trump is dangerous he doesn't he won't vote for Trump I want to be very clear he's an anti-trump conservative he still is compelled to try to create some artificial balance between his side and the opposition when his side is very clearly in the wrong far more often.  They have fewer facts on their side there are much many more moral transgressions on their side and Sullivan is not prepared to confront that fact right.

He’s prepared to seed the ground on Trump but he… well uh… you know listen… well the left has its problems too

Well listen if you're going to be an honest conservative if you believe in conservative principles which presumably Andrew Sullivan does

You should also have the Integrity to admit that… yeah right now … like Liz Cheney.   I don't like Liz Cheney.  Liz Cheney's voting record and her policies are terrible but Liz Cheney will admit and has admitted publicly that right now there is a bigger problem by far with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.   and this is coming from not just a lifelong conservative but somebody who was a lifelong Republican and a republican public official right and even she has found the fortitude to say that right now it's not a both sides issue not that both sides are perfect but one is much worse than the other

Andrew Sullivan doesn't have the courage to admit it and he's so biased in that respect that even when Ari Melber says yeah the Democratic Party has its faults.

Sullivan doesn't hear.   “You deny that there's any problem with the Democratic Party”.

Well no I don't.   But the other thing I want to focus on is this idea that you know listen you should be able to give constructive criticisms of the right while still respecting the right and we've talked about this before again that asymmetry of expectation.

When is the shoe ever on the other foot?

I think it was yeah Nicholas Grossman wrote this article in the Bullwork back in August of last year “The media still doesn't get Biden voters”.

We’re not going to read the whole thing but just to give you a bit of a refresher.

“Conservative and mainstream media don't agree on much but one point of consensus is that everyone should work harder to understand Trump supporters. The implicit message you don't have to agree with the populist right but you should be listening to empathizing with and engaging with them more

And he gives two various examples.

Actually numerous examples of like a New York Times article and Matt Yglesias who is like a liberal leaning Centrist always talking about how important it is to show empathy and understanding for the right.

But this is what Grossman points out:

“Seeing these arguments I was struck by the asymmetry of our political moment. I've never seen Centrist like Iglesias say to people on the right or Center that it's important to read progressives  (even if they're super woke or whatever left-wing equivalent of Hanania’s racism is). Nor have I ever seen traditional conservatives like David Brooks call for empathy with people on the left or claim that any left-wing extremism is merely an inevitable reaction to Centrist and conservative Elites mistakes.  Reporters don't do safaris to Biden country seeking to understand what the voters who put him in the white house while there are pieces explaining how for example black women in Georgia suburbs made a big difference in the 2020 election there's nothing approaching the ongoing coverage of white men in Ohio diners.

And so on and so forth and he goes on and he makes the case like listen you know to whatever extent it is the moral obligation of the left to understand the right by definition the right has the same obligation.  Especially when and very often they're in a position of minority. There are more people who vote Democrat - so if Republicans want to win more elections perhaps they should also take time - like damn why are people voting against Donald Trump? Why are people voting for Joe Biden or Barack Obama or whoever it may be?

But again that's never the expectation.  Andrew Sullivan doesn't talk about that. Conservatives and Centrist don't talk about that. It’s always the impetus is always on the left to understand the right.   Democrats to understand Republicans.

And my position is this - if that is an obligation - it is it is by definition and it's non-negotiable it has to be reciprocal.

If the left has to understand the right - the right must understand the left.

The left's... you know Fox News and others as well they should be asking “why do so many people hate our party's front runner?” but nobody asked that question -- and it's always blamed on TDS Trump Derangement Syndrome.

This asymmetry is disgusting it really is- and I love the fact that Ari Melber publicly called it out you know.  So I think that was a great exchange and I think it further illustrated the weakness of conservatives and centrists again they cannot function

Everyone is always beholden to them everyone must come to them and understand them and understand their views and perhaps so -- but they should reciprocate they have a moral obligation to do so.

Ari Melber very clearly won that argument and you can see it with how upset Andrew Sullivan got how triggered he got and I love it

I love seeing that exposure of the weakness of centrists and conservatives and their snowflakes. They just can't handle it.

 So let me know what you think in the comments

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Comments * I appreciate Ari Melber for his opinions on this awful show with Bill Maher. * Ari attempted to use logic and intelligence while Sullivan tried to be a prick. * Having watched Andrew Sullivan for more than a decade on the show, it’s great to see someone call him out on his nonsense. This is par for the course for Andrew and his narcissistic view of self. Love you Ari! *

*https://youtu.be/6DHvGrxRnCM?si=1sQZ-mvPysa_d-6x