#believe it or not things can actually be organized without being hierarchical

[juney-blues]

the anarchist position isn't a principled stance against unjustifiable hierarchies, it's just a lawless state where everyone sits around doing whatever they want and there is no more infrastructure or manufacturing of anything. when left to their own devices, people famously just completely lose all motivation to do anything, and dismantling the state, the entity that enforces law through violence, would be akin to loading up a game of The Sims and just leaving it running idly with no input, the titular sims wandering around aimlessly until they starve.

without a central authority maintaining law and order through threat of violence, society completely collapses! no one has ever or will ever do anything for anyone without the implict threat of jackbooted thugs shooting them in the head if they don't. there is no conceivable mode of society where this *isn't* the case.

"how would this part of society be run without a small group of people exerting their unquestionable will over a large group of people?" is a question you need to constantly ask to remind anarchists that their worldview just doesn't make sense!

if you can't *make* someone do something, then there's just no way to get them to do it!

asking nicely? using convincing arguments to persuade? just accepting "no" for an answer? (because if someone just doesn't wanna do something, they're probably being lazy, there's never any good reason for them to not wanna do it) all entirely unheard of. How will we govern if we are all equal?!?!

[purgemarchlockdown]

Deep Cover prep involves me organizing the Kotoko Thoughts and something I think about a lot is her Adherence to the Status Quo rather than Revolting against it.

It's something that seems strange at first since Kotoko is so overtly violent and aggressive and hateful towards society, but what we know about Kotoko's Worldview are things that seem In Favor in not only keeping the hierarchical status quo, but to make it Stricter.

It's notable to Me that Kotoko wants to partner up with Milgram instead of fighting against it, she believes in Milgrams' ability to affirm "justice."

(Task)

Kotoko: To be honest, I don't know your (*Milgram's?) true intentions. And I don't know whether you are a similar person with similar thoughts. Who knows, maybe it's just my delusion of wishful thinking. Even so, it uses multiple ways to reveal good and evil. To me, MILGRAM, this kind of nature itself, has a kind of charm to it. So? Do you understand me as a person now?

Now, personally. I think Milgram as a Prison is flawed in...multiple ways, and is extremely unjust and unhelpful in actually doing any sort of justice due to being so extreme and unnuanced that it ultimately just harms everyone at the end of of it all. Kotoko even acknowledges that the prison is using unjust methods in Yonah.

(Yonah)

Kotoko: So you tolerate all of the psychological abuse going on in this prison, but draw the line at the physical one? What double standards you have!

She doesn't Stop wanting to become Es fang here, actually she wants them to become even more cruel and harsh and have no mercy for any of the prisoners.

(Kotoko: I can excuse the abuse but I draw the line at hypocrisy

Me: You can excuse the abuse?)

1moremilgram-enjoyer talked about that Kotoko believes that the world's normal state of being is "good" and that evil is a poison infecting it.

The normalcy sought for, Fading away, Everytime death comes

Which informs a lot of her ableism and violence against people who she deems as "sinners."

And I've personally talked a lot about how Kotoko idealizes the Past, and is stuck as how she was as a child. Telling Amane that she was Exactly how she was at her age...that being twelve. She outright admits she hasn't grown from being a child, as if that's something to be proud of. Her worldview is strict and immature frankly, it doesn't allow for any nuance.

(We have a Word for an ideology that idolizes the past and enforces hierarchical power systems for the "good" of humanity and I would link archivalofsins post to it IF I COULD FIND IT-)

Kotoko Believes in the current hierarchies of the prison (the world) and just believes that the people running it are flawed and that if they just instate the Good People everything will be Fine Actually.

Es: Your hand.. What does it mean? Kotoko: Let's shake hands. We will be companions. Es: You and me.. Companions?

She believes in the power of violence and believes that using it is the only way to Truly bring about justice is by using physical force.

T1Q4: When did you start learning martial arts? In elementary school, perhaps. Without enough power, you can't enforce justice and do the right thing, can you?

She does not believe in mercy or compassion, nor is she wiling to put in the effort into understanding that it is Much Harder to make the world a better place than she would like it to be.

T1Q7: What did you study at university? For a while, I studied at the faculty of law. There's something I want to do, so I'm currently taking a break from studies, though.

She wants a good, simple, clean, answer. A group of people she can blame the evils of this world on.

Whose fault is it, This is getting ridiculous What should the punishment be

(Kotoko Birthday Timeline. 12/15/2023)

Kotoko: “Fufufu, fufufufufu. You’re thinking some outrageous things. To be frank, it’s abnormal. But I don’t dislike it. If only all sinners were like you.”

She just needs to find someone who "agrees" with her, a Good Person who can enforce the system the way She wants it enforced.

I've chosen the awaited hero

[hopefull-mindset]

Nagito is definitely more complex than some people give him credit for. He's also pretty tragic when you think about it.

Like he's been through horrible things, to the point that it's almost too outlandish to take seriously (which is something that bothers me but that's beside the point), and has become desensitized to tragedy. He has no control over his own life or even his own mind and body considering his medical conditions. And deep down all he wants is a normal life without his luck, but he can't have it, so he latches on to this hierarchical ideal of hope and talent as a way to cope with it.

And he is selfless in the sense that he doesn't value his own life and will readily sacrifice himself for his perceived greater good, but he still has his own agenda.

He's not really a good person but he's not really a bad person either, he's just fucked up.

Also I can't help but wonder if his obsession with hope overcoming despair is a projection. That it's him secretly/subconsciously hoping (heh) that his own life could improve, even if he doesn't think he deserves it.

Anyways sorry for rambling he drives me insane (affectionate).

No, it’s okay. I can see you want to start a conversation so I’ll give you a conversation to build off your points! Your speech pattern reminds me too much of my own, so it feels like I’m talking to myself LOL. A good rambling is always never not welcome, whenever I do it’s too organized to call a ramble though.

With the outlandishness of what Komaeda has experienced, it’s always topped off with his own casual speech pattern. It’s pretty hard to take seriously when Komaeda is speaking about it like he’s talking about the weather. His desensitization to what he had gotten used to as daily life has created this depressing yet self-centered view of living.

Now, self-centered? I know what you’re thinking, “but Komaeda’s view of the world is incredibly giving” and “Komaeda’s self worth would never let himself be the center”, and yeah that hasn’t changed, but take two steps back from being in Komaeda’s mindscape and you’re able to view the fact that a lot of what Komaeda uses to process the world is based in his own experiences. Everyone knows that it’s a coping mechanism, but what does that entail in reality? I can tell you.

Komaeda has experienced more misfortune than the average human being should ever be exposed to, so he’s chosen to cling onto this idea that everyone else also operates on hope and despair the same way his luck has put him through his entire life. He’s chosen the ultimates to be apart of these views because the talented are considered to be the pinnacle of human life in society’s collective, something unattainable unless you were born with it and the utter hope of a society’s future, so it makes it easier for Komaeda to justify what’s happened to him by making sure they stay up on that metaphorical pedestal, and that keeps him down there. His beliefs are distorted because they don’t align with how reality actually works; It’s why he treats them like he does because his belief in them is based in shallow, exaggerated societal expectations, so he’s going to treat them as nothing more than their talent.

This is exactly what I meant by self-centered. This type of belief does not consider anyone else as individuals with feelings or wants, and purely for his own religious-like faith in that this is what is going to save him and if not, he would gladly be the martyr to its cause. It’s either going to save him or destroy him, and what we’ve seen, has only destroyed him. Like you said, this doesn’t make Komaeda a good person, but it doesn’t make him a bad one.

If Komaeda does not have confidence in his luck, then all of that will crumble. So if any of you were boggled by his relationship with his luck, there you go. He doesn’t think it deserves to be a talent among the ones he idolizes, but he believes in it because it’s what he’s known all his life.

Like I said, this will and has destroyed him. In UDG and Chapter 0 of sdr2, it’s gotten to a point where he’s visibly confused himself while still in full confidence of an even more warped idealistic system, and seeing hope for himself (reminder that the entirety of first game was on TV) wasn’t enough, he wanted to direct it happening himself and see it up close with Komaru, a normal girl, to cause even more hope.

Even though I have personal problems with the anime as a whole (yes, even the OVA), as the OVA has mentioned, what would really make him happy and help him is a normal life, not some grand thing like absolute hope. However, he doesn’t see any worth in that because his life has always been not normal and there’s no great Hope waiting for him if it does become normal. It’s never going to happen either so it’s no fun entertaining the impossible for him, even as optimistic as he goes on to be about terrible situations.

Ugh, too many words. Too much to say. This is not the time to talk about this, but Komaeda what happened to your perception of your own bodily autonomy?

Besides the fact my head hurts having to put that into words, I agree with your points and I hope I covered everything? I always accidentally do that when I’m trying to talk about one thing at a time.

[amai-no-ura]

Hi! It's the 1 seeking a tritype analysis. Thank you very much for taking my case, so to speak, haha. I wasn't sure where to start, so I guess I'll just start by explaining my take on my type. (Oh, and if it helps, I'm a double Lion with a double Bird model and an INFP. I know that's an unusual MBTI type for a 1, but I'm reasonably sure they're both correct? Oh, and I'm probably either so/sx or so/sp.)

Why I think I'm a 1: My deepest fear is that I'm a bad person. Anxiety about this constantly hounds me. I often bully myself into doing the right thing with thoughts that if I don't, I'm a shitty human being. I hold myself to rigorous moral standards and stew in self-hatred if I fail to live up to them. I also have high moral standards for others and will absolutely call out people I think are being shitty. I get into a lot of stupid internet arguments because I can't stand to let someone say something wrong unchallenged. I am fueled by a burning rage at the injustice of the world.

Definitely a gut type, 1 is likely because you hold yourself to rigorous standard. As 8-winger myself, 8s don't hold themselves to high standard. They are more 'revenge is revenge' and 'eye for an eye' type.

Internal thoughts: "God, I don't wanna do X right now... but what if X matters? What if X makes a difference? What if everyone ALWAYS thought 'I don't wanna do X right now'? If I give myself permission not to do X right now, what exactly does that say about me? Ugh, fine, I'll do X."

"Rationally, I know there is no ethical consumption under capitalism and no matter where you buy your stuff you're contributing to exploitation... but boy do I feel shitty buying from this brand anyway."

"God, I am literally the worst person to ever exist. Wait, that's such a self-centered thought. Who's so arrogant as to believe they're important enough to be the worst person ever? God, I'm the worst. Wait... [repeat ad infinitum]"

"Someone's treating me badly! I'm angry! ... But fuck, I probably deserve it. I have no right to be angry."

The most 1 thing I've ever read lol.

Evidence: I've been to 20+ protests over the past couple years and joined a local political organization, driven in large part by that rage at injustice I mentioned. Being at a protest is basically the only time the feeling that I'm not doing enough goes away. I've tried repeatedly to kill myself partly out of the feeling that I'm a terrible person who only hurts the people around me and the world would be better off without me in it. (Don't worry about me, I'm better now.) I still can't help blaming myself for several of the bad things that have happened to me, even though others have told me they're not 100% my fault.

Oh my god, that's level of self-judgment is not a good thing. It's good to be good, but to judge yourself so harsh is not very good, isn't it? This is 1 internal thought. Probably 1w9 (a more internal and detached 1s).

Why I might not be a 1: I really do think I'm a 1, but there are a few things that make me unusual for a 1. I'm not organized or hardworking, and I'm very anti-hierarchical. I'm actually a little bit of a hedonist, even though I kind of hate myself for it--or at least for my propensity to do pleasurable things over important things. Do note that a lot of this can be chalked up to executive dysfunction, as I have a menagerie of mental illnesses.

Have you watched Legend of Korra? The main antagonist in 3rd season is INFJ 1w9 so/sp, he is an anarchist. This can relate to having low Te as well. Low Te isn't very good at forcing yourself to do important things (over what I want to do). Although you feel more like EFP than IFP. Your Te is pretty strong. Hedonism can come from experience and worldview (or having reactive enneagram - like 4 or 6).

Why I'm probably not an 8: I'm not especially controlling of other people. While I do like to be the dominant one in romantic relationships, I'm still pretty laid back as dominant people go. I take leadership positions in groups only if no one else is up to it. My attitude toward people is basically "as long as you're not hurting anyone, you can do what you want." I don't tend to force anything on anyone. No one has ever described me as domineering.

That is more like 9-wing description to me. My ENTJ 1w9 aunt is the same. "Do what you want, as long as you are doing good" and she never forces judgment on other people or try to change them. She directs all those anger and judgment on herself. Which is Fi + 1w9 thing.

To give you a sense of having 8 influence. I don't mind forcing myself on other people if it serves my purpose. People can do what they want, but if they get in my way, I'll obliterate them. I have no qualms about using power on my hand to do what I 'want' even if it's not the most moral thing to do. Leveraging power against people.

Like, my aunt is managing my grandpa's salary. I told her it's her money now, she holds the power and he couldn't do anything if she decides to take it. Why indulges him (giving him money, even if he can't use it. Let him gamble some away for no reason). She told me it's 'bad' to take his money as her own, because it's not hers. He has the right for his money. If I'm in her situation, I'll take it as my own because power is 'in my hand' now. Might makes right, if you have power, you are right. If you don't you are wrong. That is 8 rejection-assertive energy unlike 1 frustration-superego energy.

Why I might be an 8: I have a big thing for protecting the weak and defending the innocent. I hate to be controlled or pushed around. I fear betrayal.

That is more like so/sp instinct. We are protectors. All gut types are concerned with autonomy. So we hate to be pushed around at all cost. And fear of betrayal might relate to your personal experience somehow?

Why I'm probably not a 9: I don't care about keeping the peace--at least not at the expense of doing the right thing. I'll pick fights and shake things up if I feel like something unjust is happening or someone is in the wrong.

That is 9 being subservient to 1. However, you still don't show 2-wing 'meddling' and 'helpfulness'. Your anger is directed inward, the way 1w9s usually are. The question is, do you numb yourself to outside influence when people challenge you. Or do you feel compelling need to 'change' them.

Why I might be a 9: I've been described as chill by people who haven't seen how fiery I get? I dunno, I'm having trouble coming up with anything for this one. I hate arguing with people I care about? But I do it anyway so lmao.

Again, it's 9-wing. A 2-wing wouldn't appear chill in any way. Imagine Hermione. Is she chill? No.

Now onto my tritype. I guess I'll start with the head types.

Arguments for 5: I admit this is one of the least likely types for me to have, but I'm including it anyway for the sake of not ruling anything out. The very fact that I'm doing so is a little 5ish, I think. I've been called intellectual by others, and I like high-minded theories and conceptual bullshit. I do stuff like read political theory for fun. I like gathering information. I tested as a 5 several years ago, when I was still living in my Bird models. I greatly fear being useless and dislike being incompetent.

Nope, not a 5.

Arguments against 5: My 5-ness is more based on stereotypes than actual motivations. I'm rash and impulsive, and things tend to go better for me when I act quickly and decisively. Admittedly sometimes I get too caught up in planning and never actually do the thing, but I'm just as likely to dive into something completely unprepared and hope it works out. I am also a very emotional person and fairly open about my feelings, or at least the positive ones.

5 fix can be quick and decisive. But what concerns 5 fix is autonomy, secrecy and detachment. 5 can detach themselves to look at things as it is and 5 fixers are almost always concerned with autonomy as a rejection type. (I have 6w5 second fix, and I'm very secretive and independent. Never ask for help unless it's on my term).

Arguments for 6: I've had people tell me I have 6 somewhere in my tritype before. I'm fiercely loyal to both my loved ones and my beliefs. If someone I used to be friends with but haven't seen in years suddenly needed my help, I would drop everything to help them. I am very afraid of being abandoned. I have a tendency to be brutally honest about both my flaws and beliefs early on in relationships so that people I won't work out with will leave immediately rather than letting me get attached before leaving, which strikes me as a very counterphobic thing to do. I have generalized anxiety disorder. I often feel like a mess of contradictions. I am a revolutionary socialist, which goes along with 6's rebellious tendencies quite nicely.

That is ... a very strong 6-fix argument. Yep!

Arguments against 6: To be honest, I'm having trouble coming up with any, except that something else might fit better. The only reason I don't consider 6 to be my primary Enneagram type is that the description of 1 calls me out even harder.

You could be a 6. But you have to ask yourself. Are you driven by anger or fear. If you are driven by anger first, then you are 1w9.

Arguments for 7: I'm very pleasure-seeking. I like to feel good, and I do all sorts of things to that end. My biggest vice is escapism of any sort, whether that be by reading a good book or getting high. I'm prone to procrastinating on things that are important but not pleasant (though I procrastinate on things I enjoy too, so who knows). When stressed and sick of trying to power through it, I tend to lose myself in fun things so I forget about the stress (though it's always there at the back of my mind). I'm bold, impulsive, undisciplined, and scatterbrained. I don't take most things too seriously and have a good sense of humor.

6w7/7w6 sounds like your second wing. Ask yourself whether your head fix is driven by avoidance or by overthinking.

Arguments against 7: I'm not especially upbeat and have pretty low energy despite (or because of?) my active mind. I'm willing to endure a significant amount of pain for higher ideals--see the fear, anger, and chaos I endure at protests. I'm kind of a klutz, and 7s apparently have a reputation for being good with their bodies. (Do note that I have something called nonverbal learning disorder which fucks with my ability to use spatial reasoning, so that may have something to do with why.) Many of my 7 traits could also be explained by my ADHD.

7s are not good at their body in tandem. It is that many 7s are Se-dom. Se-doms are great at their body. Even if you have disorders, if you have 7-fix, you will still see it.

Now, the heart types.

Arguments for 2: I want very badly to be loved. I do good things mostly because I know they are good things to do, but part of me does hope I'll be loved in return for them too. I try to be helpful, generous, and kind to others. I like to be needed. I consider myself a very caring person.

Sounds like 2-wing to me.

Arguments against 2: I have higher priorities than being loved. I'd rather do the right thing and be hated for it than be loved for doing the wrong thing. I've heard that 2s feel they deserve love, and I often feel I don't deserve love at all.

2s feel they don't deserve love. That's why they are helpful. They reject the need to feel loved in favor of loving others. 2s are rejection type, do you have this feeling of rejection (and arrogance that you know what is best for everyone and you must guide them)?

Arguments for 3: If I'm not working on something, I feel like I'm being lazy. (I almost always feel like I'm being lazy.) I beat myself up for not doing enough. I used to associate my academic success with my self-worth, and still do to some extent. I often feel like I have to earn love by being good at stuff.

That is 3 fix to the T. If you are 2 fix, you will have an air of 'I know the way you must follow and you must do as I suggest' and 'I'm helpful because that's what I am' 2-wing has this haughty rejection feels to them. You don't.

Arguments against 3: I'm not actually very success-driven or hardworking. I spend most of my time procrastinating rather than working hard to be seen as worthy like a 3 might. I care nothing for status or appearances, and if I'm making an effort to appear successful when I'm not, it's because something very important and concrete hinges upon my perceived success. I don't care about the traditional definition of success--I just want to be comfortable and contribute something valuable to the world.

I think it's your last fix + social dominant.

Arguments for 4: I initially thought I was a 4 because I felt so called out by the stereotypical image of 4s as moody, withdrawn, ineffectual creative types--that's me to a T. I often feel like there's something wrong with me, like I'm just a worse person than everyone else, like I don't deserve the same basic respect and dignity as other people. I have a strong sense of identity. I struggle to let go of negative feelings.

That is your 1w9 line to 4w3. Enneagram 1 has line to 4 when stress. Strong sense of identity often relates to non-attachment type.

Arguments against 4: I don't give a flying fuck about being special or unique. I'd rather be a carbon copy of a good person than a unique but less good person. I don't daydream about attracting a rescuer--I daydream about being the rescuer. I don't value pain the way 4s seem to. I don't feel like I'm uniquely better than anyone. I may have a strong sense of identity, but I don't feel like I NEED a strong sense of identity, per se.

Not a 4, yeah.

I hope that's something like what you wanted! I didn't include as much in the way of evidence and internal thoughts as I'd have liked to, but considering how much I wrote, writing even more seemed kind of unreasonable. If you have any questions for me or want more thoughts/evidence, don't hesitate to ask!

Phew! That's quite a lot to take in. But from what I see (I think you provide solid evidence for each fix, nice job!) you might be 1w9 so/sp with 6w7 and 3w2 fix. 6w7 could be 7w6 though I think 7 is subservient to 6 in this case. I think you are 1w9 mostly because you don't have 2-ish intrusive feels to you. (Think of how Hermione thinks it's her job to monitor the boys, that's 2-wing).

[anarchistmemecollective]

hi!! over the past year or so, i’ve been radicalizing leftwards (does that make sense?), and while i do like to say that i have a pretty good understanding of things like socialism and communism and such, one thing i haven’t really been able to figure out is what anarchism is and how it works. like, i get the basic idea, but what with google being google and most people on breadtube not being anarchist, it’s definitely not as easy to research as socialism.

anyways, tl;dr: what defines anarchism and how does it work?

thanks in advance! have a cookie 🍪

"Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty: a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible struggle for the means of existence,—the savage struggle which undermines the finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short, Anarchism strives towards a social organization which will establish well-being for all."

leftward ho! thanks for writing. these questions are always difficult to answer because i don’t know where you’re coming from on your personal journey. but i’ll try to answer some of the basics and recommend some good resources to start with.

first of all, there are many anarchisms and if you ask three anarchists you’ll get five opinions. but probably the most prevalent form of anarchism is anarcho-communism, so while i’ll try to talk broadly from a general anarchist position, much of it be from an anarchocommunist perspective for simplicity’s sake.

at it’s most basic, anarchism is an opposition to hierarchy, to one person having control over another. it is a radical commitment to compassion and absolute freedom. like communists, anarchists want a moneyless, stateless, and classless society. unlike leninists, who falsely claim to be communists, we know that there has never been a good state, and never can be. they are by their very nature oppressive, and cannot be used as a means to an end to achieve communism. no group or individual can wield that much power over others and not become corrupted by it. absolute power corrupts absolutely, etc. so while we are committed to the fight against capitalism, we are also committed to the fight against the state. they are intertwined and must be defeated simultaneously. so we believe in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion, and the abolition of money and private property, as the best way to ensure the basic and higher needs of everyone are met.

if you haven’t read it yet, the wikipedia article for anarchism is actually a pretty good place to start:

Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions they claim maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessarily limited to, the state[1] and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies or other forms of free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, usually placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, it is usually described alongside communalism and libertarian Marxism as the libertarian wing (libertarian socialism) of the socialist movement.

Humans lived in societies without formal hierarchies long before the establishment of formal states, realms, or empires. With the rise of organised hierarchical bodies, scepticism toward authority also rose. Although traces of anarchist thought are found throughout history, modern anarchism emerged from the Enlightenment. During the latter half of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century, the anarchist movement flourished in most parts of the world and had a significant role in workers' struggles for emancipation. Various anarchist schools of thought formed during this period. Anarchists have taken part in several revolutions, most notably in the Paris Commune, the Russian Civil War and the Spanish Civil War, whose end marked the end of the classical era of anarchism. In the last decades of the 20th and into the 21st century, the anarchist movement has been resurgent once more.

Anarchism employs a diversity of tactics in order to meet its ideal ends which can be broadly separated into revolutionary and evolutionary tactics; there is significant overlap between the two, which are merely descriptive. Revolutionary tactics aim to bring down authority and state, having taken a violent turn in the past, while evolutionary tactics aim to prefigure what an anarchist society would be like. Anarchist thought, criticism, and praxis have played a part in diverse areas of human society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism

i don’t know how much original theory you’ve read before, but i’ll give some reading recs. personally i’m a big fan of peter kropotkin, and found the conquest of bread to be a breath of fresh air after studying marx for years. others have recommended starting with errico malatesta’s anarchy or peter gelderloos’ anarchy works. and zoe baker (anarchopac) is excellent if videos or tweets are more your speed.

https://enoughisenough14.org/2019/06/10/anarchism-a-very-short-introduction-by-colin-ward/

getting involved masterpost

hopefully that’s enough to get you started but please feel free to ask questions, and there are many more knowledgable people here who can help as well.

[amethystroselily]

Ok, I actually did start reading the beast manga, and I think the sad thing about it is how much it makes sense for those two to have switched organizations.

Like, I think Atsushi connected better with the mafia than canon Akutagawa, and Beast Akutagawa connected with the ADA more than canon Atsushi. And like yeah. Atsushi can follow direction well and he’s used to strong authority figures in his life, of course he’s doing better in an intensely hierarchical organization like the Port mafia than the guy who grew up with no parental figures whatsoever and simply cannot follow an order correctly on the first try. Atsushi latched onto Dazai and Kyouka and he seems content with that. Whereas canon Akutagawa is just way to focused on proving himself to be content.

And like, Akutagawa obviously does better in an environment where everyone is patient with him and lets him fuck up a little bit without serious punishment. But also his personality works weirdly well with everyone else in the ADA. He’s eccentric in a way that blends in pretty well with them. He’s their weird little murderous guy, yknow? They can fix him. It’s like a group project. Like a pet.

And canon Atsushi does fine with the ADA, obviously it’s a lot better for his mental health than the mafia could ever be, but I do think it’s hilarious how some of them seem to actually like Akutagawa more. They simply just vibe with him whereas it took a while for any to really form a connection with Atsushi (except Kunikida and maybe Kenji but Kenji and Atsushi’s dynamic just doesn’t hit near as hard as Akutagawa and Kenji’s dynamic). I do blame this entirely on Dazai tbh, he has this subtle yet very present sense of control over every aspect of Atsushi’s life in canon. Which I think effects his relationships with others. But that doesn’t mean the ADA doesn’t care about him.

Anyways this, combined with the possibility that Oda might be the only one who can defeat Fukuchi, leads me to believe that BEAST may actually be the optimal timeline. Like some sacrifices had to be made, but in the long run maybe this really was what was best? (Not for the mafia tho, they’re fucked after Dazai killed himself)

But also it makes sense purely from Dazai’s own wants. Maybe after all the timelines, he just simply cannot bring himself to deal with Akutagawa. He knows he doesn’t have the patience with him that he requires and he probably does want what’s best for Akutagawa to some extent, and the ADA is best for him. He knows Oda and Kunikida could train him right. He doesn’t need Atsushi to be his sheath as much if the agency’s already mellowing him out. Whereas he genuinely likes being around Atsushi. If he needs one of them in the pm with him might as well pick the one he enjoys talking to. His relationship with Atsushi kind of feels like it’s about Dazai’s own ego anyways sometimes, Atsushi makes him feel a little bit better about himself I think, because he’s just so grateful. So maybe it is worth it to prolong Atsushi’s suffering a bit since plans to let him live a better life at the end of this all anyways. It all balances out to a positive in the end.

[wobblydev]

I recently joined the IWW because I believe workers should own their workplaces, what they produce, and be able to make decisions democratically within their workplaces. My co-workers aren't looking to organize with me, but I was wondering how I personally could benefit from being a member of the IWW. Does the IWW use direct action as opposed to negotiating (collective-bargaining especially)? Can they help improve my pay and working conditions?

Welcome to the one big union, fellow worker! I think the way you’ve phrased your question reveals a lot about the relationship between the union and its members. We are the union. When you pay dues and take out a red card, you are the union. You ask if “they” can help improve your pay and working conditions. The answer is no, not without your help.

That is a primary difference between solidarity unions (Such as the IWW) and the more common business unions—we use direct action (as you stated) to get the goods. Depending on the job, organizing workers may decide that pursuing a contract is their best option to win their demands, which is legitimate so long as the decision was arrived at democratically. Unlike the business unions, which very often do operate as a “they” in the life of the workers they are supposed to represent, every member of the IWW is a potential organizer. Today’s modern business unions are generally very hierarchical and undemocratic. Rank and file workers don’t have much say in how things are negotiated and often the contracts that unions end up signing totally surrender power to the bosses and owners, with no input from the majority of workers on the shop floor.

You say that your co-workers aren’t looking to organize with you? How do you know? Did you ask: “Hey, wanna organize?” That’s not going to work. Most workers today have no idea what a union is meant to actually achieve, much less how to actually build power on the job. The primary and sole focus of the IWW is to build worker power through direct, worker-led organizing campaigns. That means talking seriously to your co-workers, 1-on-1. It means listening, learning, mapping and brainstorming to help them realize that a guaranteed way to improve their working lives is to build and leverage worker power. 

To address your big question: what can the IWW do for you?

If you are serious about building power at your job, I would recommend first and foremost get trained. Reach out to the Organizer Training Committee (if you’re in the US) and see when the next OT101 is being held. There is an online module you can take which will give you tools and techniques to begin seriously organizing. Beyond that, there are other initiatives that wobblies participate in, such as the General Defense Committee and the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, both of which can give you organizing experience without endangering your job.

If you think your job is totally hopeless, you could get trained and become an external organizer to assist fellow workers in organizing their own place of work.

You could join the Environmental Unionist Caucus and organize with fellow workers around the globe around environmental issues.

For over 100 years now the formula has proven to be successful: organize, use direct action, win. When done properly, even the most difficult job can be organized, with or without an official contract. The obstacles are myriad and the odds are stacked against us but if you want to get your hands dirty and learn how to fight for real power on the job, you’re in the right union.

If you’re in the US, all North American Regional Administration contacts can be found here https://iww.org/directory/

If you’re associated with a General Membership Branch or an Industrial Union Branch, have GHQ put you in touch with them and see about getting trained, or getting more involved in ongoing campaigns. If you’re not within the jurisdiction of a branch, you can join the At-Large Caucus and still get resources and support. As your organizing gains momentum, you could even charter a branch in your area.

If you need more specific help, feel free to reach out again and I’ll reply privately.

Again, welcome to the one big union!

[cappucino-commie]

The Black Socialists of America decided to reopen a bit of discourse on twitter today about how people who support any states today aren't "real" leftists. Blanket anti-nationalism from a leftist perspective is always a reactionary, ahistorical position. It is a position that refuses to analyze the conditions and needs of the people actually involved, and condemns them for their desires for national self-determination, not distinguishing between would-be white nationalist empires and colonized peoples seeking their freedom.

The United States has been involved in explicit military conquest or attempted (often succeeded) regime change in Hawaii, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba, Russia, Korea, Vietnam, China, Iran, Mexico, Samoa, Honduras, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Philippines, and Costa Rica (this is an incomplete listing). To believe that a colonized people could overthrow their oppressors, and the very next day cast down their arms and live in classless utopia without being in danger of invasion is complete nonsense. Further, to believe that they could destroy even their domestic capitalist power structure and completely transform the relations of the means of production in a single strike is nonsense.

More concretely- when Palestine casts out the Zionist invader, will it not have domestic struggles? Will it not have to suppress the religious fascist element that has opportunistically arisen to combat Israeli invasion? Will it not have to undergo intensive economic material development after decades of forced poverty- especially to catch up to the needed conditions to survive the climate crisis? Will it not have to mediate the better part of a century's animosity between former Israeli citizens and Palestinians in a bi-national, single state solution? These are only immediate questions, ones coming from the perspective of an outsider, that fail to fully capture the truly complex scope of the challenge ahead of the Palestinian people.

Further, while all nationalism must be subject to critical analysis and its reactionary tendencies rebuked, the dedicated anti-imperialist cannot reject the imperfections of liberatory movements of the colonized. If your support for colonized people achieving liberation is dependent on ideological purity, you are no revolutionary. You have reduced yourself to an armchair freedom fighter, an idealist. Such a tendency pervades the western left, those whose only heroes are the dead and failed movements that cannot disappoint them anymore. It is a movement that worships martyrdom, one which can never succeed, which would win no trust from socialist projects internationally.

Ultimately, the state is a tool. As Lenin outlined over a century ago, the state is the organ of the ruling class to suppress the contradictions created by a class society. All Marxist projects march towards the day when the state may be torn down, when class itself is abolished, when people may exist in non-hierarchical harmony. But far from a religious belief in oncoming salvation, Marxists understand that these power structures must be actively combated, and our methods adapted to fully quash them before the state can be destroyed. Existing domestic relations cannot be torn down overnight, and even if such a miracle were accomplished, the capitalist class has an inter-nationalist character that even the most devout marxist should aspire to. The capitalist class of all nations will descend on any newly communist nation like rabid wolves, in desperate fear of the example it may set- any socialist project must construct a bulwark against this assault. This is not speculation, but proven by the bloody weight of history. Were such a thing ever debatable, it has not been for decades.

These are all things that have been said before, by far more intelligent and well-read scholars of Marxism, again and again. But they bear repeating, apparently.

[nezumiismissing]

Authoritarianism Without Leadership and the Formation of Spatial Identity

I think at this point I have probably brought this up in every single one of my analyses, so it’s about time that this topic gets its own breakdown in a full length post (or 2 or 3). There’s a lot to cover and it’s going to get way out there, but hopefully you can find something useful here. And if not, maybe it can at least be entertaining. More exploration of this topic to come at an unspecified time after the convention when my brain decides to enter the No.6 zone again. (and yes it is over 3000 words so, you know, plan for that)

So if you couldn’t tell, the No.6 anime does not have an antagonist, at least not in any traditional sense of the word. The opponent our characters are facing off against, it turns out, is not an evil scientist or an organization or a military, but instead it is the city and its systems that must be either destroyed or reformed by the end of the story. And while those other characters exist within the world of No.6, and all take actions that go directly against the desires of our main characters, they are not fought against especially directly and within the anime have no real identity, instead only existing as part of the whole. But what is the whole exactly? I think the easy answer here is to say that the whole is society, the culture we live within that shapes everything we do in life and that must have some amount of force placed upon it to change in any significant way. But when we say that “society is the whole”, and therefore the antagonist of No.6, what do we mean by that? And how does our perception and interpretation of what it means to be a society impact how we read and understand the story of No.6?

Now, having society be the antagonist of a young adult dystopian series is not something that No.6 came up with, obviously. It's basically a necessity of the genre. But within that structure, although not always apparent at first, there is a lot of variance. These worlds are almost always authoritarian and hierarchical, the result of some massive war or natural disaster that we have been unable to fully heal from, but outside of that, the way in which these worlds are built and understood are vastly different. Some are pretending to be utopias while others give us no image of what it means to be at the “top” and only show suffering. Some take place in over-crowded cities and others have sparse populations of people constantly searching for each other. There are social (and human) experiments, revolutions of all shapes and sizes, monsters and aliens and governments that are all in one way or another trying to reflect the very real events that are taking place in the real world in a way that is perhaps more comprehensible, or at least entertaining. Society as it currently exists is very much the antagonist of these stories, and at the center (and everywhere else) of a society are individual people making decisions that may or may not be good and may or may not have good intentions. So it is easy to see how, when it comes down to it, while society is implicitly understood to be the antagonist, most of these stories focus their energy on the removal of a tangible threat, usually a person or group of people who are determined to be “in charge” of the society and therefore responsible for much of the misery of a dystopia. The No.6 novels also fall into this group, as does the manga. But the No.6 anime, for whatever reason, decided to do something completely different, and something that is arguably much more terrifying.

From here on out I will just refer to the anime as No.6 and will specify if I am mentioning the novels/manga.

In No.6 things do not happen because someone says they need to happen, but they instead happen for…. what reason exactly? We see the mayor referenced briefly in the first episode, so we can assume that he is the one in charge of decision-making, but he makes no actual appearances. The military is clearly shown demolishing the West Block, but who is giving orders? Who is watching over the scientists at the Correctional Facility? Deciding where the wall will expand next if at all? In most stories you would see questions like these answered either near the beginning of the story or revealed at the end, and if it's neither of those then they’ll probably still show up at some point in the middle. But in No.6 there is none of that. There is no one or no group clearly “in charge” of what is happening at any time in regards to the city and its surroundings. Instead, it seems, the city has reached a point in which the details of how these things are occurring are unimportant, and that for the most part, things will unfold with or without the input of an individual or group. The implication of this being that No.6 is somehow separate from its people and government, and is, in a sense, alive.

I think this is largely why the anime is able to be so effective, despite its many other issues. On a surface level, the story lacks any kind of antagonist, making it unclear where exactly it's going. But the existence of the city as an independent entity fills in these odd gaps, creating the image of a society that has, quite literally, lost control of itself. It also makes more concrete the theme of “society vs nature” that is kind of hinted at for most of the story and then kind of shoved in your face at the end with Elyurias and Nezumi’s backstory. But with Elyurias being the physical embodiment of nature, what exactly is it that she is opposing? But before we get into that, some framing and questions (or maybe just one very big question).

What does it mean for a city to be “alive”? Not in the sense that things are happening in it and people are living there, but in the sense that it thinks and feels on its own and makes choices about itself that are not the direct result of human or other external input? Clearly people were responsible for its creation, and took care to create systems that would hold it together. But those systems were not created for the city itself, but rather the survival of the people living within it, with the city and society simply being a result of our need to be social. The city, if we are to see it as a living thing, doesn’t really gain anything from this arrangement so long as we are in control of it, and so will seek out ways to separate itself from us. It does need us to continue existing, however, and so it can’t truly create anything new on its own, and will instead make use of what we have already created. It will warp itself in unexpected ways, or cement systems that otherwise would change or disappear over time, so that it will better serve itself and maintain continuity while still appearing as though run by people. Different people will have varying amounts of control over how this all unfolds, but at a certain point there will be things that can no longer be changed through “traditional” means, at which point people will have to create and impose systems on a large scale that do not fit into the current form the city is in. And this is the point at which No.6 finds itself.

Now, there is a lot of my thinking that I’m skipping over here, especially in regards to how this applies to the real world and the implications that has, but for the purposes of No.6, this is a good starting point. The city that existed before No.6 was “killed”, restructured, and brought back to life as the result of a world war, and at the beginning of the story, we are already at a stage in which this new city has separated itself from its people and become a conscious entity. We see this process from a different perspective in the novels, with characters questioning how everything got to this point as they come to realize that the things they thought they were doing were never in their control in the first place, and that something else had made the city what it was. By omitting these characters entirely though, the anime makes their point clear, “it doesn’t matter who thinks they’re in charge of things, the city will function just fine with or without them”. I would argue that much of this is made possible through the advanced technology available in No.6, making it possible to automate systems in a way that keeps people entirely out of the process of dealing with massive amounts of vital information. You could probably even say that the “essence” of No.6, its identity as a sentient being, is mostly made up of these computerized systems and algorithms that determine everything about how a citizen will live their life.

This is, of course, similar to the way in which Elyurias is understood to operate, the main difference being that she is made up of natural, rather than man-made and technological systems. As sentient, omnipresent beings, they make use of small parts of their greater existence in order to convince different components to act in ways that are beneficial to their continued survival, reproduction, and expansion, with the survival of the individual components being far less of a concern as they are perceived as being easy to replace. Elyurias uses the parasitic bees to infinitely self-replicate, allowing her to endlessly alter and maintain the natural world as she sees fit. No.6, on the other hand, makes use of social and technological systems to convince its citizens to keep things as they are, or expand the limits of the city, or any number of other things it cannot do on its own, but are seen as crucial to its continued existence. Within the context of the story, there is no one person that needs to be “in control” of these actions, since the city is acting in what it sees as its own benefit, but it is also aware that in order to maintain itself, someone must appear in charge, and may even be influenced to believe that that is the case.

The problem with No.6, of course, arises from its desire to continue expanding while otherwise maintaining society as it currently exists. A static city is one that is destined to fall apart, or else have control returned to the people until a new form of stability can be achieved. So in order for No.6 to maintain its identity as an independent entity, it must change in other ways, and thus views expansion and increased complexity as a path forward. When it comes into contact with Elyurias as a result of this expansion though, it is clear that their goals as entities are incompatible and cannot occupy the same space. For Elyurias this necessitates the destruction of No.6, since the city has already been responsible for the damage and destruction of large areas of her “realm”, while No.6 sees her as an opportunity to improve its own systems through the assimilation of her powers into its “realm”. This assimilation, as the city sees it, both expands its power through the elimination and subsequent exploitation of a competing entity, as well as further automates its own processes through the combination of technological and natural systems. None of these benefits are seen by the citizens, of course, and in fact the result would instead be an almost complete removal of their free will, but for No.6’s purposes those effects are inconsequential so long as the people continue existing. 

This formatting can also be extrapolated to describe Shion and Nezumi’s roles and understanding of the world, which clearly play a much more prominent role in the outward text of the series. Shion has a difficult time understanding and accepting No.6’s absolute corruption not because he has no experience with the suffering it has caused or or the inherent problems with hierarchy. Clearly he has been subjected to both of those things quite early on in the series. Instead the issue arises from the fact that while Nezumi, who learned about Elyurias in his childhood and has an understanding of “sentient” non-human systems, Shion has no basis for comprehending this, and is therefore unable to see how No.6 could have become so awful without anyone noticing or intervening, and cannot understand the true nature of the issue without first passing it through the filter of human decision-making processes. Nezumi falls into this as well on several occasions when he claims that the citizens are the ones at fault for the city’s problems. But unlike Shion, this comes from a lack of understanding of the specific systems that make up the city and a need to have a concrete place of blame rather than a belief in complete human control over society. Through this lens, the story of the human characters of No.6 in the anime is one of coming to understand the nature of both human and non-human systems, where they may intersect and overlap, and then determining how change can be brought about when we do not have control, or even meaningful access, to those systems.

So when a city has separated itself from its citizens, when it has become functionally “alive” and begins to behave in ways that no longer benefit or sustain our conception of humanity, what can be done to regain control? Can a city that has become independent be brought back under human control, or must it be destroyed and rebuilt, its structure completely altered so that little if any of what was originally there remains intact? The answer that No.6 seems to give is much more in line with the latter idea (at least in this fictional instance). Because of No.6’s rapid development, there was never a chance for people to fully grasp what they were really doing, and if anyone did realize what had happened, it was far too late to alter the city in a way that took away its power. The city is authoritarian to the point of self-inflicted genocide in an instance of internal social destabilization, and the faulty addition of Elyurias’ power makes this self-destruction incredibly easy. The fact that her assimilation into No.6’s system is incomplete only exacerbates the issue, and is ultimately what leads to its destruction.

The destruction of the wall as a physical presence has any number of meanings, some of which I have written about before and others that I may or may not write about in the future. But within this reading of No.6 as “alive”, what stands out the most is the fact that what ultimately gave the city its independent status was its refusal to even interact with other systems. Its purpose, its role, as an entity was entirely one of self-preservation, born from the paranoia that inevitably followed the war responsible for its creation. By destroying the wall, and allowing people access to “others”, the city cannot remain isolated and reinforce a singular concept of society, therefore losing almost the entirety of its power over people. Without the wall, there is no No.6, and without No.6, people are once again free to build something new.

Just to bring this all back around to where we started, and maybe simplify all that down to something manageable, what does it mean to have an antagonist that is alive, but not human or otherwise sentient in a way that we understand? In No.6’s case, I don’t think it is enough to say that society is the problem, or that by removing a government and installing new leadership, all of the problems can be solved. Unlike in the novels and manga, the anime does not even give us the second option, since there functionally is no government to oppose for the most part. Instead, we are given a city that people have not had influence over for a significant amount of time, one in which “society” is not a single thing shaped by the people that make it up, but is also a social system that is imposed upon people by a non-human force. No.6, as an entity, needs its citizens only to the extent that they are useful to it, namely as a mechanism for expansion and self-defense, but exists as such that the people living within it are completely reliant upon it in every aspect of their lives. Something so simple as putting someone else in the arbitrary position of “leadership” is meaningless when that person has no real power, and so in order to reclaim human control over the entirety of society, an inaccessible entity must be destroyed. In this sense, Nezumi is not wrong to say that No.6 needs to be destroyed completely, and is instead only misled as to what that actually means, mistaking the people living within the confines of the city for the city itself. The defining feature of the city, the wall, also acts as the source of its power and independence, and thus its destruction is functionally equivalent to its death, leaving behind only a loose collection of systems and beliefs that are no longer upheld in any physical or tangible way.

Society is made up of people, that is clear, but what is less obvious is that people are also made up of society. We can recognize that society impacts us and shapes who we are and how we think, but it is perhaps the case that to an even stronger degree, society is operating outside of our own individual or even collective input, and is, in a sense, self-sustaining. Rather than our own beliefs being imposed upon an ever-changing society, it is a preexisting society that imposes itself upon us, deciding when, how, and if things will change. It does change over time, and that of course is due to people’s existence within it, but what No.6 makes clear, to me at least, is that while people are unable to survive without the construction of a society, even if that society is destructive, the society at a certain point will no longer need people to maintain itself outside of the basic definition of its existence, and it is at that point that it becomes much more difficult, and dangerous, to change.

[rotationalsymmetry]

I mean... I think the Number One most important thing people can do about rape, and related concepts like abuse and harassment, is to actively build consent awareness into whatever communities you’re a part of.

First step is learning more if you’re new to this. Yes Means Yes (the blog, the book, whatever) comes to mind; Captain Awkward (the advice blog) has a lot on these topics; Project Unbreakable; The Pervocracy if the BDSM talk doesn’t scare you away; RAINN. Listening to people talking about their own experiences, without interrogating them or playing devil’s advocate. Or with trying to fit everything into an ideological framework right away; I mean, I think having theoretical frameworks can help, but there’s always going to be some people’s experiences that don’t quite fit, so it’s important to not just bulldoze someone’s experiential data with theory when they don’t align.

(I can’t think of any website in particular right now, but I know some places have “what to say/what not to say when someone is telling you about their sexual assault” articles.)

Then there’s sharing info. Talking about your own experiences with harassment or assault or abuse (hashtag me too, right?) can be part of this. But if you’re not comfortable with that (or can’t think of any relevant experience), that’s completely fine. You can also signal boost what other people have to say. Share articles. Have in person conversations. (Uh, pandemic restrictions allowing. Maybe phone or zoom conversations right now.)

Talking about it and raising awareness does a lot by itself. Knowing other people have had the same experiences can be incredibly healing when someone has been living in silence, and for survivors knowing people will believe you whether you tell them anything or not can be very powerful.

It doesn’t have to end there though. There’s also: looking out for each other. Sharing warnings about specific people when appropriate. Crafting better sexual harassment policies for gatherings and cons and discussion groups and institutions. Letting newcomers know what kinds of behaviors are and aren’t acceptable. Going to a bystander intervention class or brainstorming options on your own. Putting resources either into nonprofits or into more informal mutual support networks that are specifically for, eg, helping people leave abusive relationships. Being willing to confront people who are acting badly, and being willing to kick them out if the situation calls for that. Making plans so your community knows how it’s going to handle accusations before they happen. Figure out whether you’re willing to create a redemption path (“restorative justice”) for people who have harmed others who want to do better, and how you’re going to do that while also prioritizing the safety and comfort of people they harmed.

It’s not simple or easy, and it’s definitely not something that takes very little time and effort. Justice generally doesn’t.

For hierarchical organizations or other organizations with leadership/authority roles — really pretty much everything has this to some degree, even organizations that prioritize egalitarianism aren’t entirely free of power imbalances — it’s especially important to figure out what appropriate sexual conduct means for people in authority roles, and what you’re going to do if a leader gets accused of misconduct. Doubly so for adults working with minors.

Anyways, you’ll notice I didn’t say anything about the police in there. I think most of the time involving the police in sexual assault is counterproductive; it creates more trauma for the victim without actually making anyone safer. And when people don’t want to do anything else about consent violations in their communities, they tend to pull out the idea that everything is either something you can bring to the cops, or small enough to not be worth doing anything at all about, which is certainly not the case.

[thisgirlhastales]

“Wayward Son” — Is There Peace When You Are Done?

What we have here is an essay of sorts: a loosely organized mishmash of thoughts and opinions. Disclaimer that this is highly subjective, as it is based on my own experiences and expectations going into this novel :)

And, naturally, many Wayward Son spoilers below the cut! If you haven’t read it yet and are planning to do so, please do not proceed further. If you’ve already read it or don’t care about spoilers, c’mon in! Ain’t nobody here but me!

First Thing: I thought the plot was cool — I loved seeing the characters again, loved seeing the different magical culture within the United States as compared to the UK; all the geographical variety and how that impacted magical abilities and politics, the creatures and the nature of magic as it applied to people who aren’t mages, the syntax, and Shepard. All of that was fascinating. It felt organic and real, even though our main dude, Shepard, did drop a few exposition bombs. I loved it all.

The magical creatures touch on something that I think all the main characters learn and re-learn (and may be symbolic of their issues as a whole): there is no one way to do or be magic. The word magician can apply to any creature who is or practices magic. The UK’s mages have an expansive but selective history. They do not acknowledge people like Lamb (see Nicodemus), even though they are technically part of their world. I wonder if the UK vampires have something like what the Las Vegas vampires do — i.e. ways to feed without killing, ways of living without standing out so much, a hierarchal structure, their own historical narrative, etc. 

Agatha coming into her own was fabulous, driving the plot with the vampires on her end; she wasn’t a character I enjoyed in the last book too much (I thought she was very real, even practical, she just didn’t appeal to me as a person), but in this? Loved her. And she figured out her own way to be, though there’s still a ways to go for her, I think …

There is no one way to be anything, and that’s a lesson everyone in this book needs to learn (and talk about with each other, please, please, please).

Second Thing: Dealing with Trauma — I do think this was what resonated most with me, as someone who likes it when things are not perfectly hunky-dory after severely traumatic events.

Simon is Not Dealing. He stopped going to his psychologist. He thinks about the Mage, but doesn’t fully process the impact of having killed him. He’s in mourning over his magic and the Mage and all of it, but he’s choosing to not digest it fully — every time he was happy on this road trip, I, like Baz, was thrilled, but I also knew that it was fleeting because he hadn’t really dealt with anything. The underlying cause of his depression and listlessness wasn’t being addressed. His bursts of anger, his heartbreak, his inability to let go of the wings … He goes back and forth a lot, as well, tormenting himself.

Baz is Not Dealing. Baz was suicidal in Carry On. Baz barely knows anything about vampires. He lives in fear of being a monster, and of being executed as one regardless of his actions. As much as I detest Lamb, he had knowledge: How to feed without killing your prey. How to live amongst people and blend in better. He looked physically healthier. Baz’s grey complexion is actually a sign that he is starving more often than not. Remember how powerful he is now, and imagine how powerful he could be if he took better care of himself. And how much more comfortable in his own skin he’d be, which would help with so many of his bitter self-recriminations.

Penny is Not Dealing. Wow, that break-up with Micah was rough. She has a few more moments of self-realization than Simon and Baz do, but she’s also completely caught up in her own magical world, culture, and plans for the future; she has trouble reconciling what Shepard tells her, and is still processing (accepting? Healing?) from not only that breakup, but everything else that has ever happened to her and Simon. Penny copes better, but still not necessarily well. Her can-do, will-do attitude is a huge boon, but when it fails? Yikes. I rather feel like she had overly-rationalized (maybe even over-simplified) every trauma she went through with Simon, and … the world isn’t rational or simple at the best of times. I really, really hope she can come to terms with that (and that we get to see it).

Simon and Baz Together Are Not Dealing. It goes without saying that these two NEED to talk. But their separate issues are a huge roadblock — I feel like the chances of misunderstandings occurring are high. Each is convinced that they are bad for the other. Baz is slightly better about it, but he’s so afraid of the consequences of broaching the subject, he simply won’t. And the thing is? His instincts aren’t wrong. Simon does want to break up with him. It’s based on the whole you deserve better than me assumption, but Baz is actually sensing correctly that Simon is on the verge of leaving him. They need to deal with their own, separate traumas, and they can do that together or apart, but they need to start healing in some capacity. I fully believe that they can be together, even with a break, but that break needs to come with communication? Point being, we all go through healthy and unhealthy periods, as individuals, as part of a family, as part of a couple. They are right smack dab in the middle of a rough, not-so-healthy part — however they cope with it, (TALKING AND LISTENING ARE MUSTS), we at least know that they love each other. Love alone is not enough, but it is a powerful, wonderful force in their corner.

The expansion on magic implies legion of ways in which to exist, and such is the case for coping with pain, sadness, regret, and all the other fun aspects of being humans who experience trauma in innumerable ways. Sometimes we choose things that are unhealthy as a stopgap, because we’re not ready for the work and pain that is healing. Y’all, healing sometimes is on par with the issues that made it necessary — in simpler terms, it can really, really suck at the start. Again, some of you may come from different perspectives, but this struck a chord with me. 

I definitely went in with the expectation that all the issues would be laid out, and then addressed … We got the first half in spades … Did not get the second, nope.

Third Thing: The structure of this book implied right from the start that things may be unresolved, but, er, it was still a bit hard to deal with — having an epilogue at the beginning and a prologue at the end implies to me that this second book is a launch point. The prologue at the end is the start for the next (hopefully larger) narrative. That makes Wayward Son something like a sprawling behind-the-scenes look into these characters before we launch into their following, more detailed story. 

But I didn’t feel too great about having been plunged so deeply into this ‘verse, only to not have a lifesaver tossed my way … Which is to say, it kept me breathless, and knowing that people survived allowed me a reprieve, but the core of this novel — the overall mental well-being of Simon, Baz, Penny, and Agatha — had me tight in its grip from the beginning and then just … kept right on squeezing at the end. Even tighter. 

I don’t mind a plot-based cliff-hanger, but the fact that all the emotional and character arcs were left hanging as well? I felt like I got a decent resolution, or partial conclusion, on a few plot points, but next to no resolution for the emotional and/or psychological arcs. That I have a lot more trouble accepting. Particularly when I’ve spent an entire book with characters forced to live in each other’s space, in close quarters, and still not communicating. I wanted to rip out every beautiful thought Simon and Baz had about each other and throw it in the other’s face. Because they were gorgeous and wonderful, and for all that they are currently fractured and bleeding, they so clearly want what is best for each other. They are (mostly) selfless in their love (with a few selfish foibles, but they made sense to me).

I was also rather … not happy with the fact we got no mention of Lucy, of Davy, of them being Simon’s parents. I’m really, desperately hoping we get that in the next chapter of this series.

The positive thing I can take away from this point is that when we get to the next book (and I know there will be one — my copy literally has a number 2 on the spine, which heavily implies series to me), we will be firmly grounded in what is facing these characters both internally and externally.

The biggest issue that lies ahead is COMMUNICATION. I know (I hope like hell) this will be addressed in the next book, but I craved it so, so badly in this. Not just for Simon and Baz but PENNY. They are all sitting on shifting sand foundations now — their worlds have been completely overturned, over and over again in the past year or so, and they haven’t found firm footing yet. When Micah broke up with Penny, I very much thought that was the kick off for a road trip filled with introspection and epiphanies and finally, lots of talking about said introspections and epiphanies — I got half my wish. The latter half, I suppose, will have to wait until the next novel. I didn’t expect all the character/emotional beats to be acknowledged and resolved, but at least some of them, with room for others to be resolved in the next story, so we would have more (and more room) to explore in that novel.

As a result, Wayward Son, for the many things I loved about it, didn’t feel like a complete story for me. It doesn’t stand on its own quite as well as Carry On did. Maybe when the third book comes out, I will retroactively love it more, but for now I’m just sort of … floating along, waiting for that lifesaver. It did, honestly, feel a bit like half of a story. Half a good story, fantastic even, but still … Half.

In addition to these thoughts I’ve shared, here’s where I’m coming from, as a reader — we all come at these books from different places, different life experiences and wants and expectations. 

One of my most formative reading experiences was Harry Potter. I read Harry Potter practically as it came out. I had to wait years between some of the books. By the time the last book arrived, the characters had matured about as much as I had. Because the middle books were so chunky and dense (and I loved them for it!), I was a little thrown off by how slim Deathly Hallows was in comparison, and that ultimately was reflected in my reading — it went by so quickly. While I loved it and sobbed all over the damn place, when I hit that epilogue … that’s the first time while reading that I did a full stop. All the pain and agony of that book, as quick as it had been, had been amazing, and it felt like it demanded some kind of … reflection and communication between the characters, and I thought after ten years of these books, we had a definite basis for an epilogue that could’ve added another third to this novel — maybe one that jumped through the years, showed us different characters at various stages of healing? Something involved and detailed to a degree.

Wayward Son had that rushed element to it … and I think part of that feeling was enhanced due to the lack of resolution to those character/emotional arcs — we were tumbling, running forward into a free fall and then were frozen right at that point before falling.

However, Wayward Son gives me more positive feelings than that epilogue in HP. Yes, it still feels incomplete, like half a story. But Wayward Son isn’t an end. Unlike Deathly Hallows, there is more to come, and that’s what I’m looking forward to most. It definitely has its flaws in my view, but I can reconcile them somewhat, as you’ve seen.

(There is also a whole thing involving the way these sorts of arcs would resolve in fanfiction versus the medium of a book intended for a broader audience, but that would be a whole other post, methinks. Let me know if you want me to discuss that, because I do have some thoughts on it, though they’re a little haphazard at the moment. Um. Assuming all this rambling isn’t wildly boring and/or awful for you.)

Final Thoughts: At the end of the day? I loved reading this book, even for all that I wanted to reach into the pages and knock the character’s heads together. I said, “Oh no!” out loud when I reached the end, but it was because I desperately wanted more right then and there. The fact that I want more means that, despite any flaws, I’m still on board for this universe and its characters — I still love all this magic, and this dragon boy and his vampire boyfriend :)

And now, 2000 plus words later, I am done, holy crap. If anyone actually made it to the bottom of this, thank you? Not too sure how coherent I was, but I hope some of this was of value to someone :) *many hugs*

Edit: Apparently I still had some things to say, so here is a sequel to this ramble — Simon and Baz Carrying On Like Wayward Sons.

[auntbibby]

the things we DON’T share in our struggle, for cruel & arbitrary reasons

ohhhhhhhhhhhh...... sooo.... so, the "let's get down" part of "let's get down to business" would be a euphemism/innuendo for sex????? yeah, ohhh... okay, yeah, then i can see how that line in the song would imply something that was completely or mostly uninteresting to asexuals... A.K.A. a snoozefest for them lol

if i had caught on to THAT part then i probably wouldn't have stupidly asked "DuRrRrRr HoW dOeS aSeXuAlIsM CoNnEcT tO tHe AgEnDeRiSm MeNtIoNeD iN tHe LaSt CoMmEnT DuRrRrRr I tHoUgHt AcE oNlY mEaNt AsExUaL nOt AgEnDeR" but, i literally didn't percieve anything at all in your comment relating to or even referencing in any way Sex or Sexuality or Asexuality other than the word "Ace" itself...... so i moved on to the comment you were replying to and saw the word "Agender" and automatically assumed that that must have been what you were connecting the word "Ace" to, but i just had to confirm with you, because even THAT seemed to conflict with literally everything i had ever heard about the word "Ace" and what it was meant to refer to.... lmao...

being autistic in a neurotypical world is like having to successfully solve a really hard Professor Layton for Nintendo DS puzzle challenge everytime you interact with a specific piece of language, body language, gestural meaning, text, art, or architecture that was made by a neurotypical person... but if you fail at figuring it out, that's on YOU and you failed to meet the bare minimum requirement of Society (not neurotypical society, just Society... because we don't have an autistic society to compare this to, unfortunately, so our neurotypically-shaped society is assumed to be Default-shaped by law, morality & every other societal metric in every nation on earth). but when a neurotypical person even NOTICES you dropping your neurotypical-mask for a single second to react RATIONALLY to the reality you actually perceive 24/7, it's ALSO on you to change YOUR behavior to reflect a more acceptable neurotypical-style reaction to something that YOU YOURSELF ARE NOT ACTUALLY SEEING or, guess what? once again, you failed to meet the bare minimum requirement of Society......

you see, a lot of us autistic people don't realise it, but to the extent to which our autism is severe, it also makes the reality we perceive completely different than the "objectively-universal" reality that neurotypicals percieve. we may not realize this in part because the only shoes we've ever stepped in are our own, so to speak (a fish won't know about the existence of water if it's been swimming in it since it hatched), so we don't actually have a way of knowing exactly how differently we perceive reality than neurotypicals. but according to the intense world theory of autism as well as just broader notions of how autism works, autism is basically just a disorder of either 1) how your sensory organs report on your external reality to your brain thru your nervous system, or more likely 2) how your brain processes that sensory data before it starts trying to make sense of it (finding patterns, making predictions based on those patterns, scaling this process up in a hierarchical pattern)... but the thing is, of course, the brain itself has no way of knowing anything whatsoever about the world outside the skull it's encased in except thru this sensory data, so if it comes into the brain differently than another person's brain, this brain will effectively just be perceiving a different reality entirely...

so believe it or not, the fact that we can't filter out the annoying sound of the electric lights on the ceiling and the fact that we feel most comfortable eating the same set of foods over & over again without exploring new tastes because we actually will never get bored of the incredibly-rare few tastes that don't make us gag are actually just indicators of a larger difference in how we inherently & biologically perceive the entire universe that our eyes, ears, skin etc. sends data via nerves into our neurons.... and we had no choice in the matter about this....

we were born autistic, and therefor have no choice but to perceive a severely different reality than all neurotypical people to the precise extent that our autism is deemed to be severe.... just as trans people had no choice but to feel like they were born in a body that doesn't fit their gender identity, and gay people have no choice but to be attracted to the same gender from birth, and people of one race or another were born in a body that could only pass as being the races that it can pass as, with no choice in the matter, and no way to change this for the rest of their life.

in some ways ableism has a lot more similarity to queer oppression than racial oppression, because with queer and disabled people, the oppression stems from the oppressors refusal to accept that the oppressed group ARE inherently or biologically different for reasons that they have no control or choice over, and to be willing to make compromises for these very-different needs (mainly because they refuse to accept that they are, in fact, NEEDS and not WANTS)..........

....while with racial oppression, the oppression stems from the oppressors refusal to accept that there ISN'T anything inherently or biologically different with the oppressed group (other than skin color and other aspects of surface apperance) compared to the racial oppressor..... the fact that the oppressed group has a significantly-different culture (with differently defined and originated moral compasses & societal values) as well as higher statistical rates of failing to succeed in the oppressors allegedly fair-and-balanced society (The American Dream states that anyone can succeed from any origin in america) and also higher statistical rates of things like addiction & incarceration that the societies of the oppressor AND the oppressed both might see as a failure of the individual??? It's all proof of a problem with the racial oppressors society itself (systemic racism) that can't be explained by a few "bad apples" on one side or the other or both.....unless you believe that there IS something inherently or biologically different about an oppressed race, in which case you are simply a racist.....

so essentially, the way to view queer and disabled people as a NON-bigoted person, is the way to view people of systematically-oppressed races as a VERY BIGOTED person.... and vice-versa.....

which just shows that, racism is an arbitrary and unscientific cruelty based on the genuine belief of something that is a ludicrous fantasy (that people of certain races are somehow less human or have less capacity for Goodness than others) that LINGERS ON like A RESILIENT DELUSION THAT COULD ONLY HAVE COME FROM HUMANITY’S IRRATIONAL PAST, despite the acceleration at which WIDELY-KNOWN TRUTHS about HUGE GROUPS OF PEOPLE are distributed to families in the racist parts of the world over the DECADES, CENTURIES, MILLENNIA, and even right up to this day.......

while in contrast, homophobia, transphobia, & ableism are stubborn and selfish cruelties based on the lack of genuine knowledge of something that is an undeniable truth (that people with certain bodies are somehow differently human and yet still have the same capacity for Goodness as others) that COVER THEIR EYES like FRAGILE DELUSIONS THAT COULD EASILY ARISE FROM HUMANITY’S NAIVE ASSUMPTIONS despite the unchanging nature of CERTAIN SPECIFIC TRUTHS about SMALL PERCENTAGES OF PEOPLE that have been born to families all over the world for DECADES, CENTURIES, MILLENNIA, and even right up to this day.........

[aprilgrayrobin]

Judgment XX

Part 1

When I was sixteen, I came home from school one day and my mother gathered my little sister and I in the living room with an enormous sense of urgency.  Her face was full of fear and sorrow as she presented us each with a backpack, and told us that everything we would need to hopefully survive could be found inside. A change of clothes, running shoes, thermal blanket, protein bars, tablets to disinfect drinking water, basic first aid supplies, iodine tablets to prevent the body from absorbing radiation, and a bundle of cash in small bills.

She informed us that the very next day, according to the prediction of an evangelical pastor, the rapture would take place. In Christian theology, this is the second coming of Christ to Earth and the event that signals what is commonly conceptualized as “the end of the world.”  As a Christian, my mother believed that she would ascend to heaven. As “non-believers,” my sister and I would be left in the rubble… which is to say some vague, resource-scarce dystopian landscape of smoky skies and fights to the death in abandoned grocery stores aisles.

My mom was ready to go. She was ready to leave this world, and move on prematurely to the afterlife. But this was not a new thing. She had been ready, with barely one foot on the ground, for as long as I can remember.

As a young child, I recall tornado warnings that would send us running to the basement with sleeping bags, ready for the worst. The world ending wasn’t always about Christ’s return, see. More broadly, for my mom, I think it was about retreating from reality. It was any excuse to hole up and defend her nuclear family from threats semi-real to fully imagined.  She hoarded (and still, I believe, hoards) supplies as a regular practice--cleaning products, canned goods, bulk grains, batteries--and invariably most of it would expire before it was ever put to use. But it soothes her, my mother, and abates the anxieties stoked by Fox News, InfoWars and fire-and-brimstone preachers delivering end times prophecies to the day.

It is hard to share this. Despite the harm she caused me, and the fact that we do not speak, I have love for my mother. I see her paranoia and her attempts to feel safe in a world that is fundamentally not safe.  I feel sad that she can only conceptualize safety as being more prepared than her neighbors, and keeping it all to herself. I want to share this, though, because in being raised by someone perpetually readying herself for the apocalypse, I developed a readiness of my own.

I am thinking about the Dean Spade lecture on mutual aid, “Solidarity Not Charity,” that I attended this past fall. There was a moment when he was speaking about the idea of safe spaces as being not only an impossibility, but a concept that actually detracts from effective organizing. I want to quote him as saying, “If I get my safety from making you wrong, that’s authoritarian.” He described being at a meeting where people were planning for a common goal, and someone saying something hurtful and offensive. Rather than immediately kicking the person out, he said, what could come of recognizing that you had a common enemy (capitalism, the police, etc) and educating them. The “safety” that would allow him to respond to that situation in the latter way was generated by “having enough, and being held in community so that we can tolerate discomfort.” it is this definition of safety that I have been orienting towards.

Part 2

Recently someone asked me what kind of witch I am, and I told them “a political one.”  I say this because the witch hunts of early modern Europe are one of the main origin points for our current conception of what a witch is. Although the Wicca of second wave feminism claimed those executed as “witches” to be ancestors of a Pagan religious tradition, in reality many if not most of them understood themselves as Christian. According to Silvia Federici’s extensively researched thesis, the people executed as witches were killed for the threat they posed to the newly enforced order of economic and social relations— early capitalism. In medieval Europe, most people practiced some form of what we would call magic. Charms for love, money and protection were run of the mill. It was only the magic of those who existed in opposition to the patriarchal capitalist order--the unmarried, disabled, unhoused, and destitute--that was labeled diabolical. Those Christians became heretics, and heretics became witches. The practice of magic alone did not, and perhaps does not, make someone a witch.

I am a witch in part because I was baptized in the Presbyterian church. I am a witch because I am a dyke who loves God (in a polytheistic kinda way). I am a witch because I survived an upbringing that nearly killed me, and I have committed my life to fight to destroy the societal structures which give rise to the interpersonal violence that I endured. I am a witch because of the non-hierarchical way I strive to relate to life in all its forms— plant, animal, human and non-human, living and dead. I am a witch because I believe that what we can imagine, we can bring into being.

In March of 2017 I was preparing for a spring equinox ritual with a group of witches as part of a Wheel of the Year class offered by my teacher, Miel Rose. On the seasonal theme, we wanted to cast a spell for moving back into embodiment after a time of being numb... For embracing the movement of spring after the dormancy of winter.  In the week between our planning meeting and the day of our ritual, I found out the man my sister was dating, Rafael, an undocumented man from Guatemala, was detained by ICE in Pennsylvania.  I remember feeling utterly powerless to free him from the jaws of the evil machine that is our immigration system. I went into ritual thinking about our intention for greater embodiment and movement. It wasn’t complete, I realized, as a spell to support our own transformation. We needed to cast a spell for freedom of movement for all people, all beings.  And so we did.

On the bike path in Northampton, under the South Street overpass, we chalked in huge letters

A WORLD WITHOUT CAGES IS POSSIBLE.

And we chanted and hummed and visioned and sent the truth of that world we could feel in our bodies out to be picked up and passed on by others.

After ritual, I wrote these words in my journal:

"I WILL FEED MYSELF BECAUSE I LOVE THIS WORLD AND I AM OF THIS WORLD AND I DESERVE TO BE FED

Let it all come up into the (sun)light

Learning to be vulnerable, slowly Learning I won’t be punished for it Learning it’s ok to make mistakes, to be wrong, to fuck up That I can and will be held

Real change is slow and sometimes it hurts but sometimes it’s a steady drip till the water flows in full."

We were unsuccessful in our legal efforts to free Rafael from detention and prevent him from being deported. Witnessing his journey struggling against the system--attending his asylum trial inside the prison where he was being held--further radicalized me and moved me to political engagement in a new way. Fast forward a couple of years and I’ve been blessed to organize as part of the Trans Asylum Seeker Support Network to get transgender and genderqueer asylum seekers across the U.S./Mexico border, out of ICE detention, and set up with sponsors and support in western Massachusetts. This work has drawn me into a web of community I had previously only dreamed of (and cast spells for). We believe it is possible and necessary to abolish the police, abolish prisons, abolish capitalism. As a collective, we treat each other with kindness and encourage honesty in everything we do. We recognize that we need each other, and we act like it. What an immense gift to be surrounded by people who believe that a world without cages is possible, and to be fighting for it together. The more I connect and build with radical left activists, the more I realize we could have an entirely different world.

Part 3

And that is what I am sitting with in this moment. Everyone is calling it the apocalypse, and I don’t think that’s heavy handed. The word apocalypse comes from the Greek apokalupsis, from apokaluptein meaning ‘uncover, reveal.’ The whole world is seeing what was behind the curtain that is the mythology of capitalism.  There are extreme losses occurring in this process. Death abounds. This is heavy. And. In the shadow of death there is preciousness. On this, I think, my mother and I agree. Everything is cast in a softer light. The finiteness of life becomes more real. There is possibility for deep change, because the ultimate change looms so large. We feel the urgency of how totally unsustainable the current order of economic and social relations is. The working class is fed up, and recognizing that they have power.

I re-read the Revelation to John (aka the Book of Revelation) recently for the first time in years. I believe that the end of the world described there cannot be separated from the description of the downfall of the Roman empire. I choose to read it slant. I choose to queer it. I choose to cultivate a relationship with this apocalypse moment that centers weaving webs of care alongside on the ground organizing to bring about the downfall of our current empire. For me, it is the only way through.

[yfere]

Nott’s Morality: A Long, Probably Incredibly Redundant Meta

This is a long one, but I didn’t think it would work as well split in two. Please bear with me.

I’ve been thinking about Gluzo, and kind of laughing to myself over how the way the M9 react to him, alone and vulnerable in the aftermath of his personal tragedy provides kind of a litmus test to the kind of moral beings they are--a sort of D&D version of the story of the Good Samaritan, if you will. You see an attacked bugbear on the side of the road--what do you do? You have Caduceus, who is more than willing to just let things be (it’s none of their business, they shouldn’t bother him), who tries to amicably cut ties with Gluzo several times. You have Jester, who is more than happy to callously terrorize him for laughs, until he’s recruited and she instantly makes it her priority to be friendly and likable with him. You have Caleb, who more than anyone else is interested in recruiting him through a strange carrot-and-stick routine purely because he thinks he can be useful to the group’s goals. 

And then you have Nott. And as always, Nott is very interesting. Nott thinks “he’s a bugbear, fuck him,” and would be perfectly happy murdering him, because, as Sam says with a shade of humor, “I’m a fantasy racist!” But Nott also is the one to present the possibility of plying him for information or possibly recruiting him in the first place. It isn’t necessarily the option she prefers to take, but it’s something that she can help do, so she simply, neutrally presents the possibility, (alongside the possibility of killing him) and follows the group consensus on what to do without hesitation or reservation.

And this brought back to mind two things I’ve been thinking about Nott for a very long time: one, how very, very entrenched she is in “Us vs Them” mentality on every front, coupled with having perhaps the most traditional moral sense of all of the M9; and two, the curious and nearly mathematical way she juggles her various levels of personal allegiances.

#1 is an interesting thing to me, because on one level Sam is saying, “I’m a fantasy racist!” and being a very stereotypical D&D protagonist who thinks yeah, Xhorhas and monster creatures are bad, and the Empire and “good” humanoids are Good, why would I think any differently? What makes Nott’s character so interesting though is how that perspective is in immediate conflict with her surrounding context: she is the only person in the party who routinely refers to the M9′s enemies (and in the case of the Xhorhasian soldiers, people who were not the M9′s enemies so much as the Empire’s enemies) as “the bad guys,” the only one who routinely dehumanizes the people they kill to an extent that she quite literally doesn’t give a fuck about murdering any potential enemy at any time. (Watsonian perspective: maybe that’s one reason her kill count is so damn high?)

She is the only person in the party who immediately and strongly advocates for the idea they turn in the Empire rebels into the authorities for money in Zadash because they’re criminals, and what on Earth is stopping them? She is the only person in the party who ever questions Yasha as if she is a nationally based threat, as if she is potentially an evil spy just because she is from Xhorhas. She (alongside Jester) is among the people in the party who feel absolutely the least angst about murdering pirates on the docks of Nicodranas, because, they’re pirates! Criminals! The bad guys who attacked us! Why on Earth feel bad about that? She is the one who most strongly and insistently questions Fjord’s quest, not because releasing a violent Betrayer God serpent on the Menagerie Coast is “a bad idea” (Beau, Caleb) or because Fjord might personally betray his friends (Jester), but because Uk’otoa, and by probable extension Fjord, is “evil.” 

Nott has these very hard-line, essentialist perspectives on what is right and what is wrong, but beyond being Standard Fantasy Morality, it also reflects on how she’s in many ways the least weird person in a very weird party. And it’s also a very incisive commentary on exactly the kind of hardline, Us vs Them mentality you would expect to see in an ordinary middle-class woman in the rural area of an authoritarian empire rife with racism and propaganda. Because, even if her overall opinion of the Empire has drastically changed, the underlying assumptions and systems of belief the Empire inculcated in her haven’t actually disappeared in the process of her moving the Empire government to the category of “bad guys.” Of course Xhorhasians are the “bad guys”--”we” are the empire, and “they” are the enemy. Of course goblins and monstrous races are evil scum of the earth--”we” are the civilized good ones, and “they” are not. Of course rebels should be turned in--”we” are good citizens, and “they” are not. Notably, Nott’s own status as a deviant thief on the run from the law does not change her views on either criminality in other people or race in other people. She believes she was just forcibly placed on the “they” side of the equation, and, as she thinks that the kleptomania (and by extension, the criminality) stems only from her race, she thinks that the moment she is restored to her halfling body as “Veth” she can go back to being the “we,” a law abiding citizen living her ordinary life with her family.

But, you say, how are we to account for the fact that she is so easily convinced to act against her Empire-borne biases? Why does she agree to help the rebels and turn on the government? Why does she not take her friends to task when they join criminal organizations, when she thinks other criminals are deserving of bad ends? Why is she the one to so easily and uncomplainingly offer the possibility of working with Gluzo the bugbear? How to we account for the heel face turn of her opinion of the Empire after hearing Caleb’s story? Does she not care about the Us vs Them that much after all?

Well, in a way. And that brings us to #2: Nott’s Mathematical Ranking of Personal Allegiances. 

Which we’ve already heard about in action with Jester. Of course Nott would save Jester and prioritize Jester from being threatened by a dragon......unless she had to choose between Jester and Caleb. And I would argue that’s not necessarily a negative commentary on her relationship to either one of them, it’s just that Nott has a very codified, hierarchical system to help her determine how to act to best help Her People, and that involves a system of concentric circles for which the ones closest to her are always prioritized above the rest. (very different from Jester’s simple delineation between Friends and Not-Friends!) It’s a beautiful system, really, that saves Nott from a lot of mental agony. Post Ball of Fun, it’s what allows her to say, with complete sincerity, “I did nothing wrong,” even though she pressured Caleb to remain behind with the books to advance his interests while the others were in danger.

And what is this system? First and foremost, it’s her family, that she will put before everything else, and even Caleb. Then there’s Caleb. Then there’s Jester and a few of the M9...I wouldn’t be surprised, actually, if Nott has worked out a precise order of which members of the M9 she would save in a crisis. And the M9, as a group, come next, before her views on crime, her nationalism, or her racism. It’s because Caleb suffered at the hands of the Empire that she turns her back on the Empire--he is ranked higher, to her. But that doesn’t mean, that if presented with the option of throwing in with either the Empire or Xhorhasians in a conflict, she isn’t going to consciously or unconsciously side with the Empire every time, so long as it’s not against her family’s interests, or Caleb’s, or the M9′s. But her allegiance to the M9 over all else accounts for a great deal of the rest of the moral flexibility we see from her. It’s fine if the M9 join a criminal organization, because it’s them, and they are never going to be the bad guys of Nott’s story. It’s fine if the M9 need to work with a bugbear (to help Nott with her family!) because they’re ranked higher. Really, the reason why Nott does half of the things she does is because it matters to the M9, and what matters to them matters to her above all--until it happens to conflict with the needs and desires of someone more important to her.

What scares me about all this is that this hierarchical mindset of hers is, by nature of its construction, incredibly resistant to change. Because what kind of madness would it take to challenge it, really? When she can so easily justify any kind of code switching to herself without feeling any contradiction in what she does? Beyond that--do we need her to change?

[first-ones-tech]

I have an unfinished Entrapdak fic that’s getting a little too heavy on physics for me because of this:

Look at the bigger screen. It shows a 2D visualization of a wormhole.

THIS NERDS ARE BUILDING A WORMHOLE!!!!

If the portal is in fact a traversable wormhole, there are several narrative alternatives to explore.

1) The portal would allow travel from one part of the universe to another but also could allow travel from one universe to another. 

We know that Etheria is currently isolated in Despondos. So Etheria could be so far far away that it doesn’t receive any light from the majority of the stars that otherwise would be seen in the sky... not all the stars, because doesn’t make sense there’s no “sun” in the etherian system. Satellites need to reflect the light they receive from somewhere to provide natural light.

OR Etheria was sent to another less crowded universe, implying Mara actually created a basement/baby universe to hide the planet from whatever she was protecting it from.

And that bring us a second alternative. 

2) Traversable wormholes could allow space AND/OR time travel. 

So, Horde Prime would be the ruler of the known universe, but not necessarily Etherian (baby or not) universe, if Prime is currently in the future. It just occurred to me that maybe there is still a chance to stop his universal conquest without demoting him as the ultimate villain...

Anyway, time travel would bring a solution to some things that bugged me from the start (I just watched SPOP this week so excuse me if they are explained canonically):

a. The First Ones are introduced both as a bygone ancient civilization and as technologically more advanced than the current Etherians. And that sounds too close to the ancient astronauts theories for my taste.

Yeees, they don’t refer to them in a cultish pseudoscience fashion, not Bow’s dads at least and they’re the experts.. because one thing is using the tech they left (it’s useful to the Rebellion/Horde), another thing is respect and admiration because they were people and they were here before us (the reason it rains on my face when I look to cave paintings from the Paleolithic, and why it was really touching to watch that little girl’s hologram dancing in “Signals”)... but why on Earth would someone align themselves, without a second thought, with an agent of a totally unknown hightly advanced civilization when almost nothing was transmited from them, so they’re an “other” and not “us”. Tradition, invented or not, have to be passed down for us to believe it’s “natural” or the “best way” of doing things without even thinking it could be a bad idea. I get why listening to Light Hope could be rational for now but they’re giving her that kind of traditional authority based on her connection with the First Ones, without having any traditional legitimacy... As if Light Hope throwing shade on Mara wasn’t suspicious enough... ok, moving on. 

The First Ones seem to be quite elusive to research too.  Did they even settle on Etheria? Why their culture (more crucial for the show, their tech) didn’t pass to next generations? Were they the worst/best cultural colonizers? Are there even descendants of the First Ones among Etherians? Wouldn’t the acknowledgement of this lineage (invented or not) have some sort of hierarchical consecuences on social organization, assuring some kind of transmission...? For now there are some scattered ruins and sigils nobody can read, so I bet they’re extinct because of some cataclysm (like the dinosaurs) or they never really established themselves on Etheria and left. Or it just might be we are discovering Etheria through the eyes of our protagonists, that happen to be ignorants on the matter so we don’t know more than them... All of this could be neatly solved by adding time travel because it would let us and the characters see the First Ones, NOT in flashbacks but chronologically and narrativelly in the future.

b. When Hordak crashed on Etheria, the planet was already in Despondos (the only reason to build a portal), so the Horde cannot be the cause of the Marapocalypse. But, if Mara moved Etheria from one time and space dimension to another, Prime’s Horde could be the triggering vital menace, or even the First Ones if you prefer exploring gray morality as the show does, or the intergalactic war between them. With time travel, there is a chance all these unresolved conficts are still happening in the future.

Yeah, I’m craving for some spaceships explotions but if space/time travel gets on the picture and it leads to Etheria’s involvement in some sort of large-scale universal war, I really hope the producers know how to do it without shooting down the dynamics between the characters... I’m not looking at VLD but yup.

Ok, let’s go back to the portal. Do you remember Hordak was settling for sending a signal to Prime instead of making the whole thing fully operational for travel? Well, that’s a hard pragmatist. The problem with wormholes is that they are very unstable and doesn’t stay open long enough for anything to get through. To prevent collapse, they need to be fed negative mass-energy, of all things. Even if negative masses could be a real aspect of our Universe and experiments for generating negative energy have been proposed, it could be reaaaally difficult to engineer them on Earth (or being technically bounded and grounded in Etheria). Actually, I cannot imagine how did they solve it, but I’m a layperson and Entrapta is a genius so it’s ok. Anyway, negative energy is consistent with quantum mechanics, especifically with the Casimir effect that allows states where the energy can be negative at given point. The thing is, at least in principle, a wormhole that’s long-throated enough (I mean a really skinny one) could generate the Casimir energy-density to keep itself open. It would still collapse, but slowly enough to let a pulse of light pass through its center. So, Hordak wasn’t being a defeatist in that scene. Sending a signal was, in fact, the safest bet. 

What I’m trying to say is the writers didn’t need to construct a plausible explanation for the portal. They could’ve just tossed “magic” at us, and it would work wonderfully like the rest of the show, but they chosed to give us this

and their lab partnership and I’m crying because now I have 10k of early Entrapdak mostly about the nerds discussing how to build a traversable wormhole and finishing each other’s sentences and Hordak’s mental ramblings, and it's getting too hard to write (mainly because freaking wormholes but also given that I fail at writing fiction) so it probably would be too boring for anyone to read and it’s in spanish.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#3yrsago Keep your scythe, the real green future is high-tech, democratic, and radical

"Radical ecology" has come to mean a kind of left-wing back-to-the-landism that throws off consumer culture and mass production for a pastoral low-tech lifestyle. But as the brilliant science journalist and Marxist Leigh Phillips writes in Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence Of Growth, Progress, Industry And Stuff, if the left has a future, it has to reclaim its Promethean commitment to elevating every human being to a condition of luxurious, material abundance and leisure through technological progress.

Phillips is a brilliant writer and an incisive scientific thinker with impeccable credentials in the science press. He's also an unapologetic Marxist. In this book -- which is one of the most entertaining and furious reads about politics and climate you're likely to read -- he rails against the "austerity ecology" movement that calls for more labor-intensive processes, an end to the drive to increase material production, and a "simpler" life that often contains demands for authoritarian, technocratic rule, massive depopulation, and a return to medieval drudgery.

It wasn't always thus. The left -- especially Marxist left -- has a long history of glorifying technological progress and proposing it as the solution to humanity's woes. Rather than blaming the machine for pollution, Marxists blame capitalism for being a system that demands that firms pollute to whatever extent they can, right up the point where the fines outweigh the savings.

As far back as Engels, Marxists refused to countenance the idea of limits to human growth. While Malthus was (incorrectly) predicting that humanity would exhaust its food stores any day now and plunge into barbarism, Engels wrote, in Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy:

Even if we assume that the increase in yield due to increase in labour does not always rise in proportion to the labour, there still remains a third element which, admittedly, never means anything to the economist – science – whose progress is as unlimited and at least as rapid as that of population.

But how can a finite planet sustain infinite growth? Through improvements in material processes. We use a lot less to make things today than we ever have, thanks to science -- and capitalism. The less labor and material used in a process, the less it costs to make and the more profit there is. But growth under market conditions also requires pollution/extraction/waste/overproduction:

The firm not be able to pay for new materials or labour or the upkeep of its machines and will go out of business. This is why capitalists, left to their own devices, have no choice but to pollute or extract or pump out CO2 or catch fish at a rate that is heedless of what remains of our store of resources. It is not that they are evil or greedy. If one capitalist says to herself “To hell with the profits! The planet is more important!” then she will quickly be beaten by a rival who is not so scrupulous. To keep going, they will have to give up on such high-minded thoughts. And this is true regardless of size, whether a globe-rogering, $11-bajillion-market-cap, Taibbian vampire-squid investment bank or a mom-and-pop corner shop that sells nothing but thimbles of rosewater-scented whimsy and hand-sewn felt puppets of characters from Wes Anderson films. If right next door, a big-box chain-store Whimsy-Mart opens up with vats of all-you-can-eat cut-price Owen Wilson dolls and that small business doesn’t toughen up, then they’re fucked.

Companies can only abstain from harmful conduct when the market is regulated -- no longer "free" -- and they are required to do or not do certain things that the state has banned. If all companies are required to follow the rules, then following them won't mean being undercut by a competitor. But regulation can't solve the problem, because it's always fighting a rear-guard action:

...[H]owever much we want to regulate capitalism, there will always be some new commodity or market inadvertently ‘polluting’ that has yet to be regulated. So the regulator is always playing catch-up. Further, capital’s need for self-valorisation tends to strain at the leash of regulatory restraint, as there is always some jurisdiction where this regulation does not exist. Which means that there is a force in the economy constantly pushing toward pollution that we are forever trying to push back against, a beast we cannot tame or cage. This is why social democracy goes further toward preventing pollution than less regulated forms of capitalism, but cannot absolutely prevent the problem.

The answer, Phillips argues, is a democratically planned economy -- a socialist solution. Not the "green lefty" answer, which requires "de-growth," but growth that is guided by democratic, not market, forces:

•  The capitalist says: There may or may not be resource limits, but don’t worry about them! Innovation will come along in time! Full steam ahead!

•  The green lefty says: Innovation can’t save us! There’s an upper limit to what humans can have / an upper limit on the number of humans. Slam on the brakes!

•  The socialist says: Through rational, democratic planning, let’s make sure that the innovation arrives so that we can move forward without inadvertently overproducing. And move forward we must, in order to continue to expand human flourishing. So long as we do that, there are in principle no limits. Let’s take over the machine, not turn it off!

"Let’s take over the machine, not turn it off!" There's something gloriously anarcho-steampunk about that, right in line with Magpie Killjoy's Steampunk Magazine motto: "Love the machine, hate the factory."

Phillips believes that the green left's anti-consumerist/pastoral view is more aesthetic than political: they don't want to stop consuming, they just want to stop consuming things that poor people like, and limit their consumption to labor-intensive items that are priced out of reach of most of the world. Material abundance is the end of want and immiseration, and it's what progressive activists have demanded for their brothers and sisters since ancient times.

In the wake of the Black Friday sales after US Thanksgiving that in recent years have begun to take place in other countries as well, or Boxing Day sales the day after Christmas in Commonwealth countries, where people line up (or queue) before dawn in the freezing November weather outside the local MegaMart for ridiculously cut-price deals on everything, I’ve begun to notice a welter of Facebook status updates, tweets and ‘news’ articles sneering at videos of the trampling, stampeding chaos and images of people coming to blows over 40-inch plasma TVs, lap-tops or tumble dryers.

A survey of the incomes of those racing through the aisles to get to that hundred-dollar stereo that normally sells for $400 should give the smug tut-tutters pause though. This is one of the few times of the year that people can even hope to afford such ‘luxuries’, the Christmas presents their kids are asking for, or just an appliance that works. In a democratically controlled economy, we may collectively decide on different production priorities, but surely we would still organise the production of items that bring people joy. Why shouldn’t people have these things that bring them pleasure? Is the pleasure derived from a box-fresh pair of Nike running shoes or a Sony PlayStation 4 inferior to the pleasure the subscribers of Real Simple magazine derive from their $2000 coffee table made from recycled traffic signs? Likewise, why is the £59 hand-carved walnut locomotive from a Stoke Newington toy shop any less consumerist than the free plastic Elsa doll from Disney’s Frozen accompanying a Subway Fresh Fit Kids Meal?

The difference is a poor-hating snobbery and nothing more...

Anti-consumption politics almost always seem to be about somebody else’s wrong, less spiritually rewarding purchases. It is perhaps the pinnacle of conspicuous consumption. At the very least, no one should mistake this lip-pursed bien-pensant middle-class scolding for speaking truth to power.

The left once campaigned for better conditions for the workers who make things, now it is preoccupied with buying less of what's made, but "An anti-consumerist model of campaigning simply and ineffectively replaces that of a trade unionist model." Sure, the stuff is made by terribly exploited workers. That needs to stop. But rather than campaigning for a retreat from the comforts of technology, let's campaign for their provision to all who want them: "Inequality should not be replaced by an equality of poverty, but an equality of abundance."

Rather than campaign against Walmart, lets use its supply-chain management to liberate its goods from exploitation!

Yes, Virginia, while Walmart, the third largest employer in the world, operates within the free market competing against other shops, internally, the multinational firm is the very model of planning, as are all firms. Highly hierarchical and, yes, dictatorial, but planned with brilliant efficiency by humans nonetheless. As American Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson has scandalously suggested, strip out the exploitation of its workers and the lack of democracy, and the stunning logistical wonder that is Walmart actually becomes an example of planning that socialists should study with keen scrutiny. Walmart is, Jameson asserts cheekily but with sincere admiration, “the shape of a utopian future looming through the mist, which we must seize as an opportunity to exercise the utopian imagination more fully, rather than an occasion for moralizing judgments or regressive nostalgia.

The only way to create a sustainable future is to soak the left in technological expertise, not to turn our back on it. We need to figure out how to make a lot more with a lot less, more efficiently and effectively than ever before. We have to stop pretending that organic food -- which uses more pesticides and requires more land than high-tech farming -- is better. We have to stop pretending that "GMO" is a meaningful category. We need to figure out how to give people the wealth and comfort and the access to contraception and knowledge that lets them have fewer kids -- not insist that the technologies that feed the kids they have today be banned because they originate with terrible companies. The problem is the companies, not the technology (Edison was a colossal asshole, but I still use battery power and lightbulbs all the time).

The left has done this before, with enormous success, in the area of AIDS activism:

But I also know the tremendous advances that evidence-based medicine has achieved over the last 200 years as a result of the germ theory of disease, sanitation, antibiotics, vaccines, pharmacology, lab technology and genetics. As Ben Goldacre, the doctor and health campaigner who manages to be simultaneously Britain’s most trenchant critic of Big Pharma and of medical frauds such as homeopathy, herbal medicine, acupuncture and ‘nutritionists’, puts it: “Repeat after me: pharma being shit does not mean magic beans cure cancer.” The socialist left, with its historic commitment to reason and science, has to separate itself from the distractions of the crunchy left.

We could do far worse in this regard than learning from the AIDS campaigners of the late 80s and early 90s in organisations like ACT-UP and the Treatment Action Group. They described and continue to describe themselves as “science-based treatment activists.” While engaging in multiple high-profile acts of militant civil disobedience against the pharma giants and both Republican and Democrat politicians, they also soberly, rigorously plunged deeply into the science of their condition, and were willing to change tack upon the advent of new evidence, as happened when early demands of expanded access or “drugs into bodies,” as was the slogan of the time, proved to be insufficiently nuanced. Despite most of the activists lacking any formal medical training, the extent of their evidence-focussed self-education and the quality of their reports and recommendations were such that clinicians began to recognise them as their equals in an understanding of the disease. And through this combination of a grounding in science and militant activism, ACT-UP and TAG changed the course of an epidemic, forcing governments to care about a plague killing queers, drug users and minorities.

Agrarianism isn't intrinsically leftwing. There's something inescapably Tory about the idea of a world as a Richard Scarry village where everyone is a small shopkeeper in a shire. It's the same force than animates xenophobic anti-immigrant sentiment (and there's plenty of people in the green left who also militate against immigration, for the same reason). Small is beautiful only after you get rid of 80% of the world -- otherwise, we need dense, intense, technological living. The more of that we get, the more of the countryside we can be left for wildlife.

We are not in a lifeboat. Lifeboat politics are awfully convenient for thugs who would rather force you to do what they say than convince you. The Earth is imperiled, and it can't be saved by telling the world's majority that they will never enjoy the comfort that the minority of us enjoyed for the past century: "It is important for those who quite rightly care deeply about the threat to humanity represented by myriad ecological problems to inoculate themselves against such thinking, to foreswear anti-modernism and the lifeboat politics of limits to growth."

In the past century, certain leftists pretended that Stalinism's horrors were the price we had to pay for socialist rule. Today, the austere greens tell us that hairshirts, de-growth, and radical population reduction are the unfortunate and inevitable consequence of undoing capitalism's excesses. Neither is right. Dinosaurs walked the earth for ten million years; we've only been here for a couple hundred thousand years. The idea that we'll just stop now, stop progressing and improving on the things we developed, become "steady state" creatures, for the next 9 million years and change is a terrible one. Let's not swear off our futures.

Some people love living in the countryside, genuinely prefer it. But a mass-scale back-to-the-land experiment would be a disaster: "a wistful, sentimental appreciation of nature and lamentation of a lost Eden arises from a certain level of city-dwelling privilege forgetful of the tribulations of rural life and ever-present menace that is the wilderness. It takes a certain kind of forgetfulness to be able to romanticise the hard-knock life of the peasant. The peasant would trade places with the gentleman horticulturalist—or, more latterly, the Stoke Newington subscriber to Modern Farmer magazine—any day."

A sustainable world is one in which we do things better. The better we do them -- the more material abundance we harness -- the more free we will be, both from want and coercion:

As a result of our audacity, our ultimate resource, each of the limits imposed upon us by nature that we have breached—from fire that allowed us to expend less food energy intake on digestion and permitted more energy to be given over to our expanding brain, through electric lighting that allows us to stay up after dark, to the technologies of the bicycle, the washing machine, the pill, abortion, and fertility treatments that have chipped away at patriarchy—has required a growing consumption of energy. All of these natural limits were imposed as arbitrarily as the rules and dictates of any illegitimate government. For this reason, one would think that the most defiant possible demand of anarchism—the political philosophy that challenges not just the power of the state, but all illegitimate authority—would be for the ever greater degrees of freedom delivered by the liberatory power of more energy. Indeed the entirety of the left, not just anarchists, in recognition of this potential for liberation, used to argue not against energy expenditure or technology, but that these advances be shared by everyone, rather than just the elite few.

Energy is freedom. Growth is freedom.

Austerity Ecology marries incisive science writing, radical politics, and blazing prose. It's an important book about climate, and an even more important book about the politics of doing something about the climate.

Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence Of Growth, Progress, Industry And Stuff [Leigh Phillips/Zero Books]

https://boingboing.net/2016/01/12/keep-your-scythe-the-real-gre.html