#even when they’re clearly someone who makes decisions that are more or less morally guided

[saetoru]

i think about what alhaitham’s childhood must’ve been like and i honestly make myself very sad thinking about it

[perriwinklesblog]

I know some people prefer consistent content but I like to take it as it comes and sometimes life happens and other projects need to take priority. 

So right now, I consider this to be a mid season break. Techno going into the prison was like the midseason finale for the Dream Prison Arc and Wilbur and Ranboo’s stuff was like their midseason finale and the Red Banquet where the egg was contained, was a midseason finale and alllllllll the mini episodes we’ve had since there are like specials etc. 

You know, like how in Dr Who you can go a few years without a solid season but get a special at Christmas and New Year? You know like that. 

So like all other programs, stories, videos I watch, I am coming up with ways in which the next bit could go. Some are a bit out there and definitely not happening, others I could see happening. 

This is long and pointless and full or errors both grammatically and spelling wise but I had fun thinking of what could happen next. Read if you want.

Dream escapes prison with Technoblades help. A server wide man hunt comes for Dream but unlike his videos he had stolen the spare armour in the prison and so is pretty OP making it easier for him to put distance between his enemies and himself. 

Technoblade returns to the artic and him, Phil and Will come to an in pass, a slight disagreement. Philza whilst having sided with Dream before, knows he’s not a good guy. Only used him to help destroy lmanburg for his own morals. It was not because he agreed with Dream. In his eyes, he was using Dream for his own goals. Plus, now he’s seen the aftermath of Dream’s terror on the citizens he realises the man perhaps shouldn’t be set to run entirely free. This slightly goes against Techno’s beliefs but the main issue of tension between them is Technoblade willingly placing himself in danger when he didn’t need too and helping release the man who tortured Tommy and clearly has something going on with Ranboo thats bad. 

Wilbur is angry because Techno won’t say where Dream has gone due to an agreement between the two and Technoblade is a man of his word. Wilbur wishes to thank and meet the man who saved him. This also worries Philza because he’s worried he’ll revert back to the man he saw the day he blew up L’Manburg. Over all tension between the three

Niki and Wilbur finally meet and it is as heartbreaking as it is beautifully tragic. Wilbur apologises but misses the mark, misses what hurt her which hurts her more. There’s an explosion with their argument that leaves a stunned silence. Niki asks Wilbur to leave. He does so. 

This leads to a Wilbur and Ranboo conversation where Ranboo tries to reason with Wilbur about Niki’s side. Wilbur brushes it off because much like the blue counterpart we all miss, he’s not a fan of the negative emotion. He tries to focus on the business etc and let’s slip that Dream has escaped somehow. Ranboo leaves. Wilbur is confused but distracted by a confrontation with Quackity.

Ranboo then starts his stream and he’s in the fucking panic room and he’s panicking because there are signs so many signs and they don’t make sense. Theres lesson rules, asking about the missing journal and it’s like every issue he’s ever faced is staring right back at him because Ranboo has never really resolved any issue, just pushed and moved on. He’s tried but that usually failed and for a while he’s ignored all the issues and here they are in front of him, all at one. A big volcanic eruption of anxiety and stress, and it ain’t sitting with him. 

Dream appears. But is it really him? We never know because after a conflict and a back and fourth about everyone in Ranboo’s life eventually landing on a threat about Michael and Tubbo, he blacks out and the stream ends. 

Quackity is livid with everything thats happening, the careful empire he’s building is falling apart and he’s shifting the blame around from person to person. He manipulates everyone around them into believing this is somehow their own fault and that they must make it up to him because he has been nothing but kind and loving to them. He gave them a place, a roof on their head when they had nothing. He misses out the parts where he insulted and or destroyed their homes, but it works and his employee “family” become the main bounty hunters for Dream, with Bad and Ant tagging along since they’re guards. 

Now the streams relating to the manhunt displays everyones wants. They’re all doing this wanting something, and whilst it’s to gain Quackity’s favour back they’re all doing that for different reasons. Their motivations are somewhat different even if on the surface they are the same and so on the man hunts, because there will be many, this is slowly picked apart and through that the manipulation of Quackity is revealed and then we see a parrallel between Quackity and previous people in power where they start to get desperate to keep control over the thing they’ve created. Because that’s been one of (not the only) issues with every leader on the server, the control and their feeling of lack of, even if thats not truly the case. But you get these moments between all the characters where they’re trying to outwit one another, trying to figure it out without blatantly saying it. Maybe Foolish does. He’s a bit of a himbo. 

Ponk always said he’d leave the door open for Sam and I truly think something happens, whether it be a look in the mirror with one of his guards going too far with someone or a conversation with Quackity where Quackity holds the mirror up to Sam maliciously, that causes him to hit the rock bottom and just break and I want that breakdown in front of Ponk. And I want Ponk not necessarily to give him the second chance off the bat but give him that peace offering, give him that hand to pull him up. I want him to take Sam to Niki and explain to Niki we’ve done bad things in the past, this is a safe haven and I believe Sam needs help and a place he can truly feel safe and for a moment Sam does and this begins his raid to redemption in gaining back the trust of the people in his lives. He becomes Tubbo 2.0 spying on Quackity like Tubbo did for Wilbur, but maybe less... bad.

But what of the Fiances? Wellllll,. With Dream escaping him and George meet in secret. George confesses he doesn’t believe it’s real and for a long time has been struggling with reality. He misses the early days, misses when they’d just have fun. Dream says he was having fun and George says I wasn’t. Dream shows true regret for George but says its too late now, can’t change the past. George agrees. Dream asks him what he’s going to do and he simply replies with “Sleep” Ending stream. 

Sapanps stream is a lot more WE ARE GOING ON A DREAM HUNT WE’RE GOING TO CATCH A BIG ONE, I’M NOT SCARED. vibes. He’s gearing up, he’s suiting up and he’s saluting pets on the way. He made a promise and with everything else going on in his life, he’s ready to throw himself into a distraction. He tries to convince George to help him but he waves him off saying, what’s the point? and mumbles something about divine powers and dreams which Sapnap just shakes off. He tries to find Karl in Kinoko but instead comes across Quackity. They have a blow up about how They abandoned each other, both did wrong but neither see the other side of things and eventually he tells him to leave. Quackity says okay, and the place blows up. Foolish cries in the corner. All that heard work but the boss said so. Sapnap ends the whole thing saying at least he’s there for Karl and Quackity pauses and is like why? And Sapnap is all like you care. Just go, you’ve done enough damage, I can’t have you damaging him too. And after a little more but but but between the two, Quackity goes. Sapnap leaves the place to burn, going to find Dream and hopefully Karl on the way. 

Karls in space. That’s where his latest travels have taken him and where the other side decided was his time to visit. Here I see a Wizard in Oz scenario where solutions to some issues will be revealed for Karl in relation to the other side. When it comes to his Dream SMP stuff, he starts confusing names and people more and Sapnap is worried about him, considering keeping him in a safe place. The only place that survived was the library with Karls books. Karl says he’ll stay there. Thats where the answers are anyway. Sapnap is unsure and gets bad vibes but is distracted by a lead on Dream and agrees, he tells him he’ll be back soon. 

They don’t see each other for a long ass time 

I’m not sure on the egg stuff but I do feel Niki and Puffy should have a conversation about all the shit thats happened and Puffy trying to help Niki and vice versa. I feel like Puffy should reach out to Foolish and try and comprehend what the fuck is he doing with Quackity. They have a little argument but it comes to a point where Puffy realises she cannot shield Foolish from harm and that her son ,just make his own decisions. All she can do is guide him where she can and hope that when it comes down to it he will make the right choice. She hopes she didn’t fail this dependant like she did with Dream her duckling. Though only she sees it as failure. 

Jack and Niki finally talk. She goes searching for some things and comes to his new place, he tells her to fuck off and that he doesn’t need anyone. They all abandon him. Niki pretty much does the verbal equivalent of slap some sense into him as she and him discuss how he is not the centre of everything, how he is not the sun. She was hurting, and he didn’t bother, no instead they just fed off each others anger and once he couldn’t feed of her or anyone else he isolated himself. She tries to convince him there are better things in life, there are better ways to place your energy etc. A lot of healing talk with Jack being stubborn. Eventually Jack finds himself at the door of Quackity after sticking to stubbornness, not quite ready to heal and he becomes the next member of Las Nevadas. A big blow to Wilbur too. 

They finally destroy the egg with magic. I dunno how but either destroy or hatch. Either or would be great. Red comes out the thing and I want a gay ass villain please. Bring it Red. Let’s go. Invite him to the server, bring the fire, bring the plant power Red. He can be the villain that unites everyone in a begrudging way. Like they all hate each other but fine i guess we’ll team to stop Red and Ant. 

Skeppy’s dead. 

Tubbo and Ranboo have a fight but Ranboo says “Weren’t we enough?” and it’s in relation to him and Michael (this happens before panic room). Thats when Tubbo realises where the wires got crossed and he immediately rectifies it but explaining he’s happy with the two of them but he wanted a job, something to work towards. Family wise he’s got it all, he’s content with it all but he wanted a project and one that didn’t incite violence. Fun rivalry sure, but he’s done with violence, he’s doesn’t want to add to the nightmares he already has. He wants competition but not one that will put all he loves in danger. So they talk it out and Ranboo feels more confident and Tubbo asks him to tell him if he ever takes anything too far because he can get a little carried away sometimes. Ranboo agrees and then they have a cute playdate with Michael. Then Ranboo does the thing with Wilbur and ends up in panic room.

Tommy and Tubbo discuss everything and lay it all out on the table because Tommy doesn’t want to be on the other side again with Tubbo. Tubbo doesn’t understand why everyone is making such a big deal about his burger business and Tommy tries to explain the issues with Quackity and the level of intensity he’s seen with Wilbur but Tubbo just laughs it off. They eventually talk about Ranboo and Tommy relents saying he likes Ranboo although he does sometimes get jealous of how Tubbo seems to have it all. Tubbo tells Tommy of his nightmares and so does Tommy to Tubbo. They come to an understanding with each other and understand that no matter how long they go apart, there is always a space shaped to fit them perfectly in their lives for them. Tubbo and Tommy then go play some pranks. 

Wilbur is unhappy with the pranks and gives a lecture and they get into a fight. This leads to Wilbur talking man to man to Quackity. Theres some weird sexual tension. Once again they’re trying to outwit one another. That when we get to the crazy stuff. 

And here’s where I get crazy with my stuff. 

Ponk is digging in his lil cave when he accidentally breaks through to a random room buried deep underground. Tommy’s there trying to scam him out of something he has. Tubbo and Ranboo too. When they get to this room Ranboo thinking it’s the panic one and freaks out, but the others calm him down. Ponk thinking theres diamonds in the room storms ahead setting off some traps but surviving. Tubbo opens one of the chests and just says theres a bucket in there. Ponk pulls it out and says it has a named fish in it. 

You see where I’m going. 

They empty the bucket whilst asking what the fish is called. They are interrupted by a voice. It’s Sally. 

Dream had captured her and bound her to a bucket and put her in the chest and hid her from Wilbur. 

She has been released. She freaks out over how much time has past because for her nothing has changed at all. She thought it might have been a couple of hours or something since Dream pulled that prank on her but clearly not. 

They all catch up and the season ends with Sally and Wilbur meeting in front of Quackity, Dream in the shadows and Sally and Wilbur turning to see Fundy who just freaks the fuck out. 

Oh and just a side, Callahan is the last member of the syndicate and God of the server and is having fun playing with the mortals. 

And then I have the next season planned out and how I’d end the whole thing but like until then. This is it. Mid Season to finale. How I picture things happening. 

None of this will happen but isn’t it fun to imagine? 

[veryvincible]

Hey! 👋🏼 I was looking at Tonys panel with Carol and his AA panels. It got me thinking how can a person like Tony .. who is an atheist, a believer of science and a confident engineer rely on AA which has a religious foundation (the 12 steps) and place so power on God. I know secular AA have different takes on it and encourage a personal definition of God as any higher power the person may choose. But doesn’t that defeat Tonys belief? Because I don’t think he believes in a higher power regardless if it’s a deity or not.

This is a wonderful question. There’s a lot of nuance to the answer, in my opinion, because I think there are some things called into question here that Tony (very realistically) treats with a lot of complexity.

Firstly, Tony’s atheism is kind of... I don’t want to say it’s up in the air, because at this point, I think it’s kind of made its place in canon and fanon both. But, most likely as a result of the times in which he was created, he has been shown in canon (at least in the early stages of his life) to follow some sort of organized religion. This is from Iron Man Vol. 1 #164, and it’s... not strong evidence for him being a spiritual man, as most people who call themselves “not that religious” tend to be religious by way of traditions, but. You know. It is what it is.

Of course, we could dismiss this as yet another thing that early canon imposed on a character who wouldn’t be like that at this point in time, but I think it brings up interesting beats in the way Tony’s character has progressed over the years.

Considering him as someone who may have been raised as traditionally religious makes sense in the context of defining events, as well, given that we watch him pray the Lord’s prayer in #14 of Iron Man Vol. 4, one of his Civil War tie-ins.

Given the proximity to the alcohol (and the point he’s at in the timeline, here), one could also easily assume that even if he had no religious background, the very presence of the Lord’s prayer in AA meetings could have formed a connection in his head between this “worship” and sobriety-- at the very least, enough of one that the prayer strengthens the effectiveness of his willpower. It seems the little push he needs to pour a drink down the drain is borderline Pavlovian.

There’s actually a lot of religious imagery in Tony comics in general. He’s a man with a suit facing conundrums of cosmic proportions. It’s difficult for him to keep rationale exclusively within the range of earthly probabilities.

Point is, his atheism doesn’t come from his disbelief in a higher power. It’s quite the contrary, actually. His atheism comes from a belief that there’s no single entity that could claim the title of God, that any being willing to try has, just by being, already forfeited the title.

Which is a fair assessment to make, given that he’s fought many people claiming to be Gods, and they’ve all bled. He’s also watched people worship Gods that turned out to not... really be Gods, whether they were otherworldly beings, his buddy Thor, or, uh, himself. The idea of him, at least. In space.

Because of course that happened.

But Tony actually does have a higher power to give himself up to in these meetings. In Civil War II #1, he very explicitly states it:

“I respect the future. I believe in the future. I worship at its feet.”

“The Future” to him is something he can affect, certainly, but he’s aware of just how massive it is, just how massive all of time is compared to the few decades he’ll spend on earth. This is his higher power, his cosmic deity of choice.

It can’t bleed. It can’t falter. It’s inevitable.

And this mindset is... pretty in line with everything else he’s done. He’s referred to himself as a “necessary monster.” He’s implied many times over that he thinks he’s rotten and potentially dangerous, but he’s also intelligent and capable and he wants to do the right thing, even if he doesn’t always know what that is. 

If you’ve ever been in a religious environment, you’ll probably recognize his mindset going into any problem: there’s always a solution, always information he’s missing, always a “right choice” he’s looking for with a domino effect that’ll be as favorable as possible for future generations. He trusts in the future the way people trust in God, with an awareness that he’ll never have all the pieces to make sense of everything, but he can have enough information to act. And he must act, or else his worth, his right to be alive, even, is at stake.

So, needless to say, he’s not praying to a mainstream God. But religious imagery isn’t and has never been off-putting to him, and though he certainly could seek out unreligious (is that a word?) alternatives to AA, I find it hard to believe that he would, given just how influential his higher power of choice is as it guides him through life. He puts everything at stake for it, going so far as to make choices that will destroy not only himself, but also his relationships with his loved ones if it means he’s doing what he perceives to be the right thing.

Secondly, even if he were a man who had no belief in any form of higher power, not even a stand-in for it, AA still might not be something he’d discard in favor of an alternative.

Religion serves as a guide. Most often, it has “do”s and “do not”s, certain beliefs it supports, and a kind of... basic explanation of what human life is and how it should be treated. One of the more common threads among most religions that I’m aware of (I am not an expert in religious studies; please don’t @ me) is the idea that human life is generally sacred, and as such, people should treat each other with respect. Yes, some texts can contradict this, but the general rule is “be nice to each other!” when you really look at the basics of what people are trying to teach. At its core, religion is linked to what we as humans already tend to for the sake of survival: compassion.

As such, though we might not always identify with religion as a concept, it’s not difficult to identify with some religious morals and teachings. Some people take to certain teachings better than others-- it’s super case-by-case-- but if you’re stuck in a religious environment listening to some preaching or anything, there’s probably going to be something you can relate to, and some way you can morph and adopt the message. This isn’t, like, all-encompassing, by the way. Of course there are some things that atheists and religious folk will never be able to relate to within each other, but.

You get what I mean.

I’m an atheist myself. I spent a chunk of my schooling at a religious institution. At best, there were messages that affected me deeply (as they were hard-hitting even when I stripped them of the God-worshipping aspects). At worst, I had to grit my teeth through some assignments, though I felt mostly indifferent (if slightly resentful at times, more out of frustration with the closed-mindedness of the administration than with the concept of religion itself). My experience isn’t universal, of course-- some people in my shoes were more frustrated and angry than I was, and I can see why. But my point is, being an atheist in and of itself (even one as strict as Tony) doesn’t render religious imagery useless.

For example, if you happen to pass by a pastor preaching about struggles with guilt, you might not identify with the sentiment of “Give your worries to God and know He’ll take care of you.” However, you could identify with the sentiment of, “Those little things, those side effects of decisions you’ve made? They’re here. Those decisions have been made. You’re allowed to swallow past the reality of what it is that’s passed and move on. You’re allowed to let go of it, so long as you’re better today than you were yesterday.”

It’s especially easy to do this if you’re listening to or being exposed to content from a religion you’re already familiar with; in Tony’s case, if we assume he was a Christian at one point or was raised with Christian ideals (not unbelievable in the slightest, given his circumstances and upbringing), then he wouldn’t have to do a lot of heavy lifting in order to get to “core messages” of certain Christian teachings that he could still identify with. Couple that with the higher power mentioned before, and... it’s not hard to see what might be appealing to him about AA, and it’s not hard to see why it was so effective at sticking in his mind all the way through his darkest periods in life.

Now comes the less healthy part.

There’s also an aspect of self-flagellation to it that I feel Tony might identify with on a deeper level. We’ve seen him hate himself openly, and we know how he regards himself. Even if he managed to find himself in a courthouse-like environment where the religious undertones were more about judgment than recovery, I don’t know that that would necessarily... push him away? He’s already told himself there’s something rotting and evil at his core many times over. He’s already committed himself to a lifestyle of atonement and progress, punishing himself when he fails to accomplish things no human reasonably could and barely praising himself when he doesn’t fail. Do I think these kinds of meetings would be totally sustainable for him, given that he clearly needs to feel pride or relief on some level for conquering his demons? No, not really, but. I don’t think he’d abandon them straight away.

Besides, every healing environment he’s been shown in has been more on the welcoming, open side, even if we only get to see a bare bones interpretation of AA (with deeper exploration happening more with Tony’s response to it, or his and Carol’s responses to each other) in canon. He’s in a good place with it, and it’s very nice to see.

Tl;dr: Again, great question. At the end of the day, I think the combination of self-loathing, his desire for progress, and his conceptualization of “the future” as his higher power makes AA a good fit for him despite his lack of a belief in "God” as an entity.

[wisteria-lodge]

Character Analysis: Sorting Pirates of the Caribbean

So @sortinghatchats is brilliant. Absolutely my favorite character (and person!) analysis system. Instead of one house, you get two - a PRIMARY (your motivation, why you do things), and a SECONDARY (your toolbox, how you get things done.) Here is a very stripped down refresher, and here is my explanation for why I am saying Lion, Bird, Badger and Snake instead of the names of the Hogwarts houses. 

IDEALIST PRIMARY Lion - I do what I feel is right. (MORAL) Bird - I do what I decide is correct. (LOGICAL) LOYALIST PRIMARY Badger - I do what helps my community (PEOPLE MATTER) Snake - I do what helps me/my inner circle (MY PEOPLE MATTER)

IMPROVISATIONAL SECONDARY Lion - Charge! React! Smash the system! Snake - Transform, adapt, find the loophole. BUILT SECONDARY Bird - Plan, make tools, gather information. Badger - Community-build, caretake, call in favors.

Now let’s talk Pirates of the Caribbean! I’m mostly focusing on the first film because it’s the best and my favorite, but I do mention 2 and 3.

***

Jack Sparrow is the classic Snake secondary. He’ll improvise an escape, improvise a weapon, wait for “the opportune moment.” He’s never fought fair in his life and doesn’t feel the tiniest bit bad about it. He’s silver-tongued. When he’s in a tight spot, he’ll tell you exactly what he thinks you want to hear. And if he knows you don’t trust him, he’ll reverse-psychology you on purpose.

It’s hard to see past his theatrical, charming, over-the-top way of doing things, and that’s on purpose. The last time Jack told someone what he actually wanted, he got himself marooned. No wonder he “plays things close to the vest now,” living in his secondary, and making people guess his motives. 

At first he appears totally pragmatic, always on the side of the person who can give him the most stuff. But I don’t buy it. Jack Sparrow has a weird code of honor. Maybe not one he’s comfortable with (“you can never predict when an honest man is going to do something incredibly… stupid.”) But it’s there. The way he’s introduced - alone, respectfully saluting hanged pirates – that’s letting us know it’s not just his own freedom he values.

I like that little moment after he rescues Elizabeth when he makes it clear that she doesn’t owe him anything. “I saved your life, you saved mine, we’re square” implies that there’s a right way to do things, and that the wrong way is making people feel obligated. Jack has similar moments with Gibbs. Every time he says “keep to the Code,” he’s reaffirming that no one has to save him. When his crew abandons him, Jack shrugs and says, “They’ve done what’s right by them. Can’t ask for more than that.” 

This means that Jack Sparrow has a Lion primary. But he’s a pirate, so his felt morality is less right vs. wrong and more free vs. trapped. Apart from that he’s actually kind of a classic Lion - perfectly happy on his own, so long as he doesn’t have to compromise his morals. In a deleted scene we learn that he turned pirate because he refused to be a slave ship captain, and that’s in character. He only wants the Black Pearl because the Black Pearl is freedom. That’s the message he teaches, as an unconventional mentor. He cuts Elizabeth out of her literal corset, and prods Will out of his figurative one.

(and a magic compass that points to whatever Jack wants most is a gorgeous metaphor for a Lion primary, guided by their feelings and intuition. Their internal compass).

Elizabeth Swann has a pirate’s soul. She ends the story as Pirate King. But when we meet her, she is a high-class lady deeply suspicious of the rules. She’s not on board with the latest fashions, eager to ditch her table manners, and she’s real friendly with Will - even though it makes her father bluster, “The setting is not entirely proper!” Miss Elizabeth Swann is stifled by her situation (her corset is too tight.) She’s got a whole life planned out for her, and it’s a nice life. Port Royal is a nice city and Norrington is a nice guy. But still. The thought that this is where things are going makes her uncomfortable. 

Elizabeth wants to be able to act based on her gut responses. And as long as the pirates are also doing this, she’s on board. But she ditches the Pirate Code the moment it contradicts her own internal felt morality.

ELIZABETH: All of you with me. Will is in that cave and we must save him! (…) GIBBS: There’s the Code to consider. ELIZABETH: The Code. You’re pirates. Hang the Code, and hang the rules. They’re more like guidelines anyway.

She’s been using the pirate way of life as a way to justify and explain the way she’s always felt. And when you put things in that order (I like this system because it supports what I already know to be true) that’s a Lion primary. Also, the advice her dad gives her is just so perfect for a Lion: “Even a good decision if made for the wrong reasons can be a wrong decision.” You’re doing the smart thing Elizabeth, not the thing you feel is right. It’ll make you miserable. Stop it.

When it comes to secondaries, Elizabeth definitely has some Bird skills. She collects data (about pirates), and can put a plan into action. But it’s a model. When she’s in trouble, when things are serious, she goes improvisational Snake secondary all the way. Elizabeth lies to Barbossa, tells Norrington what he wants to hear, pretends to be drunk to put Jack off his guard. She improvises weapons, and she plays into “proper lady” stereotypes so people underestimate her. Gibbs actually recognizes this, and calls Elizabeth “daft like Jack.”

Elizabeth and Jack do house-match, which is why they always seem to get each other. Elizabeth can pin Jack down and make him give her a straight answer. She’s the only one who can consistently trick him. And when she kills him – well, he forgives. Easily. It’s never even a thing. If he had been in Elizabeth’s place he would have done exactly the same thing, and he knows it. And he knows she knows it.

(it’s kind of neat how at the end of the first movie, the two of them are trapped by Norrington, then freed by Norrington, and go off to form the core of their respective pirate crews.)

Will Turner is a charging Lion secondary who deals with challenging situations by laying all his cards on the table and throwing his sword at something. This makes him a really good foil for the Snake secondary leads, and I will never get tired of watching Jack make faces, and say variations of “how about this time we don’t just run in screaming, yeah?”

JACK: Do us a favor. I know it’s difficult for you, but please, stay here. And try not to do anything… stupid.”

WILL: Let her go! BARBOSSA: You’ve only got one shot, and we can’t die. JACK: Don’t do anything stupid… WILL: You can’t. I can! JACK: … like that.

JACK: So what’s your plan then? WILL: I row over there, search the ship until I find your bloody key. JACK: And if there are crewmen? WILL: I cut down anyone in my path.

To be fair, Will does start off with a Badger secondary model. Badgers care about things being fair, and Will gets annoyed at Jack for cheating, and annoyed at Elizabeth for stealing the medallion. He’s also really leaning into the hard work aspect of the Badger secondary by practicing sword fighting three hours a day. But this doesn’t seem to be a secondary that’s especially good for him. It makes him tense and uptight, and by the end of the first film he’s completely thrown it off.

I really considered a Snake primary for him, based on how single-mindedly he goes after Elizabeth. Movies 2 and 3 just keep throwing Loyalist conflicts at him. (Will can stay with Elizabeth or save his father, but he can’t do both!) But I think he’s actually a Badger primary.

This boy cares about his communities a lot. He doesn’t think he can be with Elizabeth (even though she clearly likes him) because of “propriety.” He believes society when society tells him she’s out of his league. He covers for a boss who spends most of his time passed-out drunk, probably out of a sense of loyalty, or because he feels that’s what he’s supposed to do. He starts off the film completely dehumanizing pirates, but slowly learns his lesson –  a very Badger primary character arc. And then, when Will rescues Jack at the end, it’s not because Jack is his (the way a Snake primary would parse it) but because Jack is a good man who isn’t being treated right.

(also the “part of the ship, part of the crew” refrain that Will’s new crew chants as he takes over for Davy Jones is very… dark Badger magic. You are becoming part of the whole.)

Hector Barbossa is the definition of a Burnt Primary. He can’t want. He can’t allow himself to want. Wanting is off the table. (because he is an undead skeleton.)

However, I do think that when Barbossa is healthy and y’know, not cursed, he’s a Snake primary. His beloved monkey is a little nod to the sorts of Snakey bonds he would like to form, but isn’t able to at the moment. Apart from that, he values self-care, and is a bit of a hedonist. He likes pretty things. He likes putting Elizabeth in pretty dresses. He likes elegantly prepared food, antique furniture, and nice hats. (Things start getting serious in the sword fight after Jack cuts off his feather.) This is why I think his redemption arc is so funny. Once his primary unburns, and he’s able to want things safely, he pretty much becomes a happy-go-lucky good guy overnight. And you know, I completely buy it.

As for secondary, I’m going with Badger. Barbossa community builds (he’s a much better captain than Jack.) He gives morale raising speeches. Leader of a mutiny is pretty classic dark Badger stuff. Marooning Jack, and dropping Bootstrap Bill into the ocean tied to a canon are both very ruthless, very public acts that are all about weaponizing community as a way to dehumanize your enemies and cement your power.

James Norrington starts out very Establishment (like Elizabeth.) But unlike Elizabeth, he seems to enjoy the way he can just see his life all laid out. Work his way up, become Commodore, marry the governor’s daughter. He proposes the second after he gets his promotion, it really is like he’s working from a checklist. It’s a very rigid Bird primary.

And he follows the law: “One good deed is not enough to redeem a lifetime of wickedness.” But more than that, he is comforted by following the law. When Jack tempts him into going after the Black Pearl, Norrington is clearly feeling it – but says there are things he values more than his own gut responses.

JACK: Think about it… the last real pirate threat in the Caribbean, mate. How can you pass that up? NORRINGTON: By remembering that I serve others, Mr. Sparrow, not only myself.

This is such a great illustration of the difference between a Lion and Bird primary. A Bird’s higher power lives outside of them (and as we see here, that can make them really hard to tempt, bribe, or corrupt). But a Lion’s higher power is inside them, always. At the end of the film, Norrington adapts his system into something that looks a lot more Lion primary (this is a universe that likes Lions, and Norrington likes Lions too). But he’s still very, very Bird.

Governor Swann tells him that “perhaps on the rare occasion that the right course demands an act of piracy, piracy itself might be the right course,” and Norrington takes that in, sees the actions of Elizabeth, and says - okay. Maybe hunt all pirates always isn’t the perfect system I thought it was. Jack Sparrow tends to leave the world better than he found it, so it’s best to let him go. This change doesn’t seem upsetting to him, he doesn’t need to justify or explain it. It’s just obvious. Norrington reacts exactly the same when he learns that Elizabeth is not in love with him. He absorbs this new information, tells her that he understands, and walks away. When Lions change their minds, the process is a heck of a lot more emotional.

Then in the next film, the people around him don’t support his new Truth, and force Norrington to continue doing things he has discovered that he finds morally objectionable. And so he resigns his commission, burns, and goes into freefall, grasping at the systems he sees around him, trying to find something to hold onto. He seems like he might be beginning to build a more stable Truth – but dies before he can manage it. The sequels did Norrington dirty.

I actually want to say he’s a Badger secondary. At his most desperate and lost, his instinct is to join Jack’s crew. At his most powerful, he’s quietly calling in all his favors and getting the entire Royal Navy to look for Elizabeth. These are both versions of the same thing – leveraging community and connections to get things done. 

tl;dr

Jack Sparrow – Lion primary that sees “freedom” as the ultimate good, with a bit of an amoral, pragmatic Snake primary performance so people don’t find that out / Snake secondary

Elizabeth Swann –  Stifled Lion primary living in a situation where she’s not allowed to act on her instincts. Runs after pirates every chance she gets, because the ‘pirate life’ allows her to do just that / Snake secondary, Bird secondary model 

Will Turner – Badger primary / Lion secondary, Badger secondary model that Jack gets him to drop.

Hector Barbossa – Burnt Snake primary that un-burns when the curse that doesn’t allow him to want things is lifted / Badger secondary

James Norrington – Rigid by-the-books Bird primary that changes to something that looks a lot more Lion, before it burns in the sequels / Badger secondary

[uncloseted]

i know you like harry potter, right? i recently read an article called The Danger Of Ron & Hermione's Relationship (bustle) and i never thought about it that way... what do you think?

(Sorry in advance if this answer is a little disjointed) 

In general, I really dislike when people try to argue that Ron and Hermione are “toxic”.  They’re children who are the main (and sometimes only) combatants in a major war.  No, their emotional maturity is not at the level of an adult’s, and no, they don’t always make the best decisions with regards to one another, but I think that’s to be expected given the two above facts.  

I think the Hermione/Ron and Ginny/Harry ships were clearly set up as endgame from the beginning- even six year old me in 1999 could call that (and JKR says it too- “[the Ron/Hermione relationship had] far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione with Ron.”).  

There are a lot of people who hate Ron for who he is in the movies and forget that his book character has a lot more nuance.  In the movies, yes, his character is largely characterized by being mean to Hermione.  But in the books, he’s all sorts of things- a clever strategist, a loyal, good friend, in awe of Hermione’s intelligence, their guide to the Wizarding World, funny, sensitive, and ambitious, to name a few.  There’s actually a whole trope for this vilification of Ron- it’s called “Ron The Death Eater” (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RonTheDeathEater), and as you might expect from the name, it happens to Ron quite a bit.

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that “Ron Weasley spends the majority of time with Hermione being unkind to her”.  He spends the majority of time with her being her friend; even when we see their fights, it’s because those fights are unusual for them and because they move the plot along.  Ron’s “unkindness” towards Hermione largely comes from jealousy that she’s not interested in him- he’s upset because she went to the ball with someone else, he’s afraid that Hermione will choose Harry over him.  

And Hermione, for her part, isn’t a saint, either.  Ron can be insensitive when he makes jokes; Hermione is insensitive right back when she makes him feel stupid.  She “emotionally tears [Ron] down” just as much as Ron does to her, by tapping into his inferiority complex.  She often belittles him for not understanding things that are obvious to her, and is frequently unwilling to try to see things from his point of view.  For how smart she is, Hermione is incredibly unself-aware and emotionally inept at the beginning of the series, and that impacts her relationships just as much as Ron’s “emotional range of a teaspoon” does (something Hermione actually said about him to his face).  I think there’s also an aspect of that combative relationship that Ron and Hermione like- they’re young, and I think they see it as passionate.  

I think the article’s narrative also ignores that we do see a lot of really tender, caring moments between the two of them, especially after they mature and grow out of the “boys are mean because they like you” phase (which is true to life, whether we like it or not).  Ron only “gets the girl” once he starts being more emotionally mature and treating her well.  Ron can be petty, sure, but to suggest he’s just an abusive husband waiting to happen feels like nonsense to me.  He’s someone who’s shown himself to be incredibly kind, supportive, and loyal to Hermione as well.

Then the author of this article brings up Cursed Child to justify their point, which just shouldn’t be considered canon.  Everyone in Cursed Child is a weird flanderization of themselves and acts in ways that they wouldn’t in the core series.  Cedric Diggory becomes a Death Eater and Voldemort produced a child.  Cursed Child is garbage and shouldn’t be taken seriously at all.

To me, it mostly seems like the author of this article is projecting.  It seems like she just has a chip on her shoulder about an ex she has who is a “Ron Weasley”, and sees herself as a perfect Hermione character who can do no wrong and has to “apologize for who she is”, “suppress herself” and felt like she needed to “fix her Ron”.  To me it seems like she thinks that she deserved better, and that she can blame Harry Potter from preventing her from realizing it earlier (because that’s easier than admitting you made a bad decision).

Look, are Hermione and Ron a perfect couple at age 12, or 15, or 17?  No. Of course not.  But very few couples are.  You have to learn how to grow into and with one another, how to interact with one another in a way that’s healthy, how to honor your partner’s needs even when they’re not what you would need yourself.  Relationships don’t just pop into existence being perfect- they require work.  And I do think we see Ron and Hermione doing the foundation for that work throughout the series, and especially in book 7.  Should JKR have done more to show that Ron’s (and Hermione’s, for that matter) actions in the early books were NOT OKAY and ABUSIVE AND HARASSING?  Maybe.  But I don’t think it was meant to be that deep.  I think it was just a woman who grew up in the 70s writing kids the way they acted when she was a kid herself.  Sometimes the ways kids act are “problematic”, but I think it’s better to show that than to have every character be a paragon of morality.

Also, on a side note, the “JKR REGRETS RON AND HERMIONE TOGETHER” thing that the Bustle author cites was, like a lot of the things she says, taken out of context and blown out of proportion to the actual comment.  I don’t want to be a JKR apologist here, because I do think she holds some awful views, but I think it’s important to get the whole picture when things she’s said get referenced.  In the article, she’s talking about how she doesn’t know if Ron and Hermione could get past the “combative side of [their relationship]” as adults, but then she also says, “oh, maybe she and Ron will be alright with a bit of counseling, you know...they'll probably be fine. He needs to work on his self-esteem issues and she needs to work on being a little less critical.”  She acknowledges that while they both have issues, they can work through them and have a relationship that’s successful. 

Edit to add: I do get where the author of that article is coming from. A lot of little girls are told to put up with bullshit from little boys because “he’s being mean because he likes you” or “boys will be boys”. But I don’t think the Harry Potter series, which models all different types of relationships, can be blamed for that. We should be holding the parents, teachers, coaches, etc. who say those things accountable and asking them to think differently instead of blaming media representations of relationships.

[disasterhumans]

All the posts about Nott, Caleb, and Beau flying around this morning have me thinking more generally about the growth and development we’ve seen from various characters throughout the entire group. I think in some ways Beau and Caleb are both the most different now than they were at the start of the campaign. Beau actually softens to people pretty easily, but she’s gone from person with a lot of self-professed moral apathy, to one of the only people in the group with a moral framework she consistently works at, and reminds the others of. She’s also worked really hard both to open up to the group (even if she still has to do it on a one-on-one basis for now), and to be someone dependable that people can come to with their own baggage. She’s gone from broadly being considered a liar, to genuinely being one of the most trustworthy members of the group. Caleb has gone from being incredibly self-centered and ready to leave the group at the moment, to the person to most frequently call the group a family. His selfishness hasn’t disappeared by any means, but it is far more often subsumed into the needs of the group, and he will sacrifice his own desires in order to further the wellbeing of the group. He’s gone from being extremely withdrawn and tight-lipped about himself, to being the most open and vulnerable member of the group.

But it’s really interesting to think about how Beau and Caleb both got to that point. Because while it definitely took time for them both to get where they are, it also didn’t quite happen organically. Caleb—at various turns—has been pushed into his openness and vulnerability. First with Beau in episode 18, but also by Nott in episode 27 (where she tries to get him to admit he loves the group), and again by Nott in episode 48. The confrontation between Nott and the rest of the group in episode 13 also contributed to a lot of Caleb’s early changes in how he interacted with the group. Without those big, specific moments (and also a lot of tense Team Human conversations along the way), I don’t think we’d have the Caleb we do right now. I imagine/hope Caleb would have slowly come to a similar place of loving and caring for the group so intensely, but without the big moments where he was challenged and backed into a corner, I don’t know if he would have ended up as open as he’s starting to be.

Beau, meanwhile, had her foundational sense-of-self rocked to its core by Molly’s death. She walked away from her conversation with Molly in episode 26 realizing just how much she’s willingly caused other people harm, and then after he died she made a strong executive decision to change that. As with Caleb, I think that she naturally would have ended up at that point on her own. Beau has always been good at apologizing, has always sought to seek self-improvement, and has always actively listened to the people around her when they offer constructive criticism. But I don’t know if she would have adopted such a strident moral code without Molly’s death. Not a quotable one, at least. Not one that she uses as an overt guide when she’s not sure what to do. And likely not one that she would consistently repeat to a group as a whole. That big moment propelled what might have been natural development further a lot faster.

Yasha also fits this pattern—it’s a bit harder to track her development due to Ashley’s absences (curse you, Blindspot), but she’s gone from being flighty and avoiding forming interpersonal bonds to sharing her story more-or-less willingly with the whole group. This happened after a couple very intense Stormlord-induced confrontations that forced her to acknowledge the strength her friends lend her. It has forced her to confront her feelings and fear about loss head-on.

But the big moments Fjord, Jester, and Nott have experienced haven’t quite cut into the crux of their personal flaws in the same way. And the three of them all have very similar flaws. Namely, they’re to people in the group most likely to lie, deflect, and obfuscate their feelings. I think Fjord started working through exactly what he wants (at least as far as his pact is concerned) during the Pirate Arc, but so much of the circumstances of that arc forced him to lie about how he was feeling (e.g. with Avantika), and deflect. This is especially true given he was predominantly experiencing a lot of uncertainty during that time. Fjord likes looking like he has his shit together, and so many of the big scary things that have happened with him have happened out of sight of the group. In the recent past he’s been getting better at opening up to Caduceus, but even this is because Caduceus has seen the aftermath of his dreams, and because there’s now a tie between them that plays into Fjord’s god-curiosity. I’m hoping this will grow into Fjord being more open with the rest of the group, especially now that Caleb has also confronted him, but this all remains up in the air.

And while it’s not as though no one has asked Jester how she’s doing, or talked to her about her tendency to obfuscate her feelings of sadness, she also hasn’t really been pushed. When she’s feeling distraught and questioning her faith after the Iron Shepherds Arc, the Traveler reassures her, but also does so by directly referencing her joy. Aside from her conversation with Beau after the blue dragon fight, there hasn’t been a huge external moment that challenged the way she hides behind her happiness. 

Nott’s big moments have also prompted her to double down on the ways she deflects and obfuscates. Nott deflects to cope—she has a hard time dealing with big emotions, so she plays them off. Nott was moved and clearly deeply affected by Molly’s death, but it didn’t get at one of her flaws in the same way it did with Beau. Nott has never had trouble admitting to loving or caring for others. Discovering Yeza had been captured prompts her to reveal her backstory to the group, but unlike with Caleb, keeping her past secret wasn’t really the thing holding her back with the group. Her biggest thing has always been that she tends not to be honest about herself in a more fundamental sense. The group certainly knows more of her and her complexity now, and being in Xhorhas has made her more comfortable with some aspects of herself, but she’s still not really being open and honest about her fears. She’s tried with Caleb, but she’s also in a place where she just wants him to fix it, more than trying to have a conversation about what her specific fears are and trying to have an actual conversation about that. 

And another problem, is that while Caleb and Beau are starting to get pretty good at interpersonal conversations—especially with each other—they are both also people inclined to deflecting and holding back. When someone comes to them they are good at having an open conversation. They’re both—especially Beau—getting pretty good at checking in with people. But they’re both also likely to let someone to deflect, or to wait for someone to return to them instead of following up on a difficult conversation. In some ways that’s good—I think it would be more of a detriment than anything for Caleb to try to push Fjord again—but in others it means that everyone is generally keeping up with their typical patterns.

And then there’s Caduceus, who falls outside of this in a lot of ways, but who also has his own trouble opening up. Part of Caduceus’ thing is that he is almost too easily comforted by the concept of destiny. I’m really genuinely happy that he’s not experiencing any trauma over literally dying. But the extent to which the Wildmother’s vision comforted him means that we also lost out on what might have been a productive conversation between him and Nott. Jester comforting him during the Pirate Arc was important and sweet, but it also meant we didn’t get much of an idea of what Caduceus wants from the group. The fact that Caduceus—for whatever reason—seems to be reluctant to open up to the group means that even while he is an important steadying and nurturing presence in the group, he feels at a remove from the rest of them in a lot of ways. And while his judgy-streak isn’t overt in exactly the same ways as Molly’s or Percy’s, he tends to carry himself in a way that can make him come across as a kind of moral authority that I imagine might make it difficult for people to feel like they can come to him with the uglier bits of themselves.

Every week we’re all exhorting the group to just talk to each other, but even when they try to, they’re all so frequently lying and deflecting—and believing each other’s lies and deflection. And I’m so fascinated by how everyone’s gotten to the places they are at, and where they’ll all go from this point on. As always, I hope that this bout in the tomb will prompt a larger group talk with Nott, but I’m nervous that it will take something in the drastic range of, say, Nott’s recklessness killing her or a (different) party member before that happens.

[edwardsvirginity]

a short(er) twilight-themed guide to my dissertation on memes

for anyone who wants to know why and how i wrote 8k words of academic theory on memes, but doesn’t actually want to read 8k words of academic theory on memes

so to begin with, a meme is really hard to define. this part is pretty boring if you don’t care about linguistics, so just take my word for it. i ask a lot of questions like “is a meme still a meme if” (no one shares it, no one makes different versions of it, there’s no standard format for it) and the answer is “sometimes! but we can’t tell you when!” and i also ask “how do you know when you’re looking at a meme?” to which the answer is “you just do! except when you don’t. that happens too.”

so basically, memes are like porn, you know them when you see them

then i talk about why it’s hard to study memes. this is fairly obvious if you think about it. imagine trying to find out the source of a random meme. and then every iteration of that meme anyone has ever made. then how popular each iteration got. how one iteration inspired another. how many times each iteration is reposted by someone else without credit. THEN, attempt to do that for every meme in existence. actually, just try and get a definitive count of how many memes exist. then, realizing that’s impossible, attempt to choose a “random” selection of memes to study not influenced by your personal online world. attempt to study memes that you don’t even know exist bc they don’t exist within your highly-customized online world. basically, memes are a rabbit hole and i don’t even pretend to do any sort of formal semi-comprehensive study, because i do not hate myself.

ok, moving on. i’m actually trying to write this post based on what I remember from my dissertation, which i haven’t reread in... a while. but i like to think i have a fairly good grasp of it bc i wrote it.

so basically the most important part about memes is that they function on at least 2 levels. let’s say there’s an active level and a passive level. the active level is the conversation you THINK you’re having when engaging with a meme. the clearly stated point/idea of the meme. the passive level is all the assumptions a meme is making in the background that, if you are not actively challenging, you are endorsing.

let’s see some examples.

this is a meme *i* made, so i’m gonna put myself on blast here

So the active level of this meme is the text/the point i’m trying to make, which is basically that bella is horny. but like, so horny that she’s willing to throw everything else in her life under the bus for some sexual satisfaction. i feel like this is fairly clear and most people interacting with the meme would consider that what the meme is about. we’re having a conversation about bella’s insatiable thirst for sparkling penis when we engage with this meme. 

sort of an in-between level that provides us with further information about the point i’m trying to make is context for the meme/meme format. this meme format is about someone choosing between a good thing and a bad thing. they’ve got the good thing, but they’re tempted by/indulging in the bad thing anyway. it’s fairly reasonable to come to the conclusion that i’m judging bella, when you combine the meme context with the actual text. i’m not only interpreting bella’s behavior here (she eschews her loved ones for sexual gratification), i’m also giving it moral value, labeling yeeting herself onto that dick = bad, building/maintaining relationships with friends and family = good. however, if you’re not familiar with this meme and it’s format, the fact that i’m throwing shade at bella is less clear, even if you understand how i’m interpreting her behavior. 

now on to the passive level of the meme. this meme makes some ASSUMPTIONS, and in engaging with the meme you’re validating those assumptions as “how this thing is/how the world works”. so here are a FEW of the assumptions this meme makes: 1. this is a man with his girlfriend checking out another girl. 2. the girlfriend is angry/jealous of her boyfriend expressing interest in another woman 3. everyone in this photo is heterosexual 4. men are always checking out other women/otherwise unfaithful, and this is normal/funny 5. this “couple” is monogamous 6. the “boyfriend” is relatable and we understand and condone his actions 7. maintaining a relationship with the “girlfriend” is a good decision and pursuing the girl in red would be a bad one

these assumptions might seem fairly clear, obvious, and straightforward, but they are ultimately, assumptions. we know NOTHING about the people in this photo and are projecting relationships on them. and clearly, we’re projecting some pretty intense gender and relationship roles on to them. and it’s necessary to accept those gender and relationship roles as “truth” long enough to understand the meme, because otherwise the meme wouldn’t make any sense, because the person who made it (me) made it with the understanding that you would be operating with the same set of assumptions about these people and their relationships as I am. understanding of what i’m trying to say with this meme is dependent on understanding and accepting the assumptions i’m handing you with it. 

and again, these ARE assumptions. take away the text, and there could be plenty of things going on in this photo. it’s possible none of these people are in romantic relationships, and this is a guy with his friend/family member, and they like to hold hands. this guy could be whistling at a dog he sees on the sidewalk because he wants to pet it, and the girl in blue is mad because they’re in a hurry. the girl in red could be his ACTUAL girlfriend, whose self esteem he’s boosting, and the girl in blue could be some random girl who wants his attention. this could be a couple in an open relationship, but the girlfriend is in the middle of an argument with this guy about something else. the guy could have shoulder checked the girl in red and is looking back to say sorry, and the girl in blue is mad bc shoulder checking this poor girl was a rude af thing to do. 

the reason why we don’t think any of those things ^^ upon seeing this meme is bc we live in the patriarchy. however, unfortunately, by sharing this meme uncritically, we’re also reinforcing the passive ideas within it, that men are unfaithful and it’s no big deal, that women are always competing with each other, that heterosexuality and monogamy are standard and correct. 

let’s look at another meme.

i didn’t make this one, i found it on a really cringy list of (old) twilight memes

active level of this meme: kristen stewart never smiles

in-between context level: this is the “most interesting man in the world” meme, where, bc he’s so interesting, he rarely has time to do normal things, and when he does them, he does them in a weird way. so according to this meme, kristen rarely smiles, and when she does, she does it in a weird way

passive level: kristen stewart SHOULD smile, and the fact that she doesn’t is weird/bad. WHY she doesn’t smile, and WHY she should, is left to viewer interpretation, but the implication is she’s doing something wrong. this meme wants you to fill in the blanks with the idea that kristen stewart is a bad actress because she doesn’t smile. it also reinforces the idea that women are SUPPOSED to smile and not be serious all the time. you could even go so far as to assume this meme is condemning bella’s character as a whole for being overdramatic and not smiling, playing into the narrative that women are hysterical and get upset about things that aren’t a big deal, and we shouldn’t take them seriously. personally, i think kristen’s acting in twilight was spot-on and super nuanced, and it was true to bella’s character that she didn’t smile often. i also think that kristen as a person smiles a reasonable amount and is only criticized for not smiling bc ppl so heavily associate her with bella. but if i were to share this meme uncritically, i wouldn’t just be reaffirming the (false) idea that kristen stewart doesn’t smile, i would also be reinforcing the idea that women SHOULD smile all the time, kristen is a bad actress, and bella is a bad character. i could go further into the sexism of all that but this is already long. 

HOW DID I GET AWAY WITH WRITING ABOUT THIS FOR MY MASTERS DEGREE?? 

basically, while you think you’re engaging in a conversation on one level with memes, you’re actually engaging in a lot of conversations. when it comes to political memes, often the “passive” levels of the memes come with a lot of ideas about how the world is or should work, which you reinforce when engaging with those memes. these passive assumptions shape the conversations we’re having, and the kind of policies we’re willing to support. memes come encoded with opinions on gender, relationships, race, sexuality, class, etc, and and make declarations about how these things DO or SHOULD work, shaping our own personal understanding of them. a meme that makes donald trump look stupid is advocating for different policies/political decisions than one that makes him look dangerous. and if all of our memes about trump focus on him looking stupid, we put more political effort into addressing that problem than the problem that he’s dangerous. memes can be used to challenge norms/question widely accepted ideas (here’s an example i literally just made):

but they can also be used to help people internalize ideas/messages that they wouldn’t be willing to accept uncritically if those ideas were presented in a different format. sometimes this is good, if you use memes to help people internalize good messages, like self-love. however, unfortunately in recent years this has mostly been used to radicalize lonely men, who internalize increasingly more hateful assumptions in memes and don’t realize that they’re doing it, because those messages are not explicit. just look at how pepe became a hate symbol. if you laugh at enough memes that operate on the assumption that women are sluts, you’re gonna start believing women are sluts, and are gonna be more likely to laugh at memes that imply that women are bad because they’re slutty, then that since they’re bad they don’t deserve rights, etc. 

basically, memes shape our understanding of how the world works because they make assumptions about how the world works that we have to agree with in order to understand the meme. when these assumptions involve identities or politics, they affect how we understand those things, and what conversations we have about them.

and that’s basically my dissertation on memes, minus a lot of other discussions about pop culture, humor, and group formation. 

any questions??

[notesondeltarune]

A commentary on innocence and the characters of Asriel, Ralsei, and Lancer.

The word “innocence” seems to have taken on a much broader and varied meaning in our judgment of characters. Whenever someone calls a character innocent outside of an immediate context of crime or sin, it usually invokes some notion of youthful naivety. 

Innocence generally relies on two properties:

Lack of moral direction (undeveloped moral judgment/corruptibility). A good way to distinguish between innocent and righteous (morally upstanding) characters is to ask, “Could this character serve as a guide or role model?”. Righteous characters usually have internal principles and a keen eye for situations that call for moral responses. Innocent characters generally struggle with recognizing when they are in a moral situation, and are vulnerable to corruption since they can be misled. This undeveloped moral judgment--a lack of moral direction-- is why people feel that innocent characters should be protected rather than looked up to.

Free of moral wrongdoing. Even innocent characters are still held to moral standards. A significant display of moral wrong, like an act of bullying or a murder, usually coincides with a loss of innocence.

Using this criteria, let’s first take an example of someone who’s not innocent despite being adorable: Asriel from Undertale.

Why do people portray Asriel as being innocent, even in some of the more serious depictions that try to develop him seriously as a character? Maybe they’re just that hopeful that Asriel could somehow return to a normal life that he was denied. Perhaps it’s an idealization of his cuteness, which risks reducing the character down to being cute and nothing more. Maybe there really wasn’t much to work with in Asriel to begin with (and one can definitely argue that his character development is rather spotty in the game as is). But even this is to have missed much of what characterizes hus time as Flowey.

Flowey from Undertale would not be innocent by any means. But this includes that game’s Asriel by extension, despite the fact that many people like to portray him as being innocent. Flowey is clearly a malevolent force for most of the game, with plenty of examples of moral wrongdoing. Flowey is also keenly aware of the moral boundaries that he oversteps and the ill will he displays towards others. Even during his redemption as Asriel, he harbours no illusions about the things he’s done. Now if Asriel is to atone for his evils, he must properly recognize them as evils (which he does). This requires moral direction. This completely cuts off the possibility of him becoming innocent again, even though it may make him worthy of being considered righteous.

This highlights something paradoxical about innocence. To avoid or atone for moral wrongs, you’d need the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. That is, a moral direction. If a character doesn’t get this moral direction, you can usually guess that they either won’t develop as a character or will become corrupted somewhere down the line, undermining their innocence anyway. Innocence as a character trait is necessarily a temporary trait that is meant to be lost for the sake of development.

So what kind of character would be innocent? It’d be a character that lacks moral experience--someone who is yet to develop. This is the reason why I believe that, between Lancer and Ralsei, Lancer is fundamentally more innocent.

Ralsei is a righteous character who is still morally inexperienced.

If we were going to compare Ralsei to a literary character, I think he is very much like, if not completely similar to, Alyosha from the Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Ralsei has a great moral character. He upholds expectations of being a “good person” better than anyone else thus far in the series. He’s abnormally kind and nice to just about everyone that he comes across, and even when he does get frustrated or angry, it never lasts beyond a moment. He doesn’t hold grudges and is quick to forgive, or rather completely overlook previous hostilities, be it from Susie or Lancer. He seems to always do the right thing from the moment you meet him, and is always prepared to sacrifice his own well-being for others.

Unlike Lancer, Ralsei very much understands moral principles and morality. He has a strong sense of right-and-wrong and in fact imprints that moral standard over his friends. He implores Kris to spare enemies, and discourages Susie from attacking her enemies. Even when castigating her for her decisions, he is quick to encourage her, and even blames himself for having been too aggressive towards her when she reacts badly to it. 

If he can faulted for anything, it’s his naivety. His moral beliefs are only challenged during the final boss fight against the king, and he doesn’t go through the slightest bit of psychological struggle over it, but rather quickly accepts that the king was someone who must be fought. (Side comment: I’m not sure if this was rushed character development or a more intentional piece in a grander character development. But this is probably one of the less satisfying aspects of Deltarune’s story.).

Lancer is morally naive, but his misunderstanding of evil betrays his innocence.

Lancer’s something like Adam and Eve before eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That’s to say that he literally doesn’t seem to understand what the “evil” he so celebrates actually means. What he thinks of as being villainy seems to be mostly harmless mischief and aesthetics with none of the symbolism. To him, evil is like a subculture which he gleefully participates in, and he does it so long as he has no moral directive that would otherwise inform him that what he’s doing isn’t actually evil.

The fact that he believes that he is being evil, though, shows that Lancer is clearly vulnerable to moral corruption. His father, the King, has clearly made his influence felt on Lancer by the time you meet him. Lancer arrives as an adversary who is already eager to be the poster child for the bad guys of the game, albeit one that blunders so much that the protagonists soon no longer take him seriously.

In a more serious story, Susie should have been the concluding influence that would have fully culminated in Lancer’s corruption. She could believably had Lancer begin to feel the fear or anger necessary to finally make Lancer seriously consider what evil means. Perhaps Lancer would have been inspired to commit his first truly evil act, or realize that evil was not what he was looking for all along.

Instead, Lancer’s corruptibility “backfires” at that point. After thanking Susie for her “advice”, they quickly realize that both of them like each other for how they are, and stumble into a friendship based around Lancer’s idea of evil: bumbling mischief. (Why Susie is so willing to follow along Lancer’s stupidity, I’m not sure.) The two “corrupt” each other in this way, developing empathy that will allow Susie to have a change of heart. Neither does Lancer stay innocent. By the time the game ends, he comes to value his friendship in Susie too much to allow his father to kill her. He makes moral decisions--one to imprison the protagonists to avoid a struggle, and another to inspire rebellion against his father.

[ivalice-tifalucis]

Found a forum about Take That, also found some interesting discussion

Now it’s 4AM in the morning, I slept too much for past couple of days because of some flu and the medicine makes me drowzy and moody all the time and sleeping was very tempting. I should’ve finished my essay so I can get this one subject to more than a ‘B’ so I can still retain my dream of going to Netherlands this year. But here I am searching non-important things (or at least maybe it’s important for my curiosity), and tried to google if there’s any existing Take That forum. My standard is high with mygnrforum which is a super active and long term versatile fan forum of Guns N’ Roses, I even manage to find myself some friends there. The whole website is even made and funded by fans, active discussions from all age, nationalities, and genders, and even there was a time when Axl Rose decided to showed up to everyone’s surprise. But hey, obviously GN’R is bazillion times bigger than TT. I just saw their concert of same shit they’ve been singing for 35 years with terrible mickey mouse voice of Axl’s and people still went lit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that I finally see my favorite rock band. It just hanging around with old fans give me sense of cynical for the band.

Anyway...

I went to thread that is talking about Odyssey. You may check it here: http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=209704&st=440

The thread is actually meant for both Robbie and Take That fans. I found nice thread that talked about Reveal and even gave me snippets that I haven’t even seen before since I was too poor to buy Reveal. But what I want to talk about in Odyssey thread is the view of this person who definitely this kind of annoying GB Army you will find a lot around Thatters group or social medias comments sections. Try to start from the link I gave you. Here this person talks about the BBC Documentary.

Tl;dr the cynical side of Thatters and that for this lovey-dovey band, in the eyes of some of their fans they still are one of the most controversial band.

“Saw it  There were some tears involved here as well, but of boredom, unfortunately. Absolutely NOTHING new whatsoever and nothing of substance and, on many occasions, it felt like the Robbie and his backing singers documentary. The era starting with 2006 was almost brushed off, because, of course, Robbie wasn't there - most of the moments from this era were the ones with Robbie in it-, we had the neverending Jason eulogy, but nothing to actually celebrate the members that really carry Take That. And I realized another thing that pissed me off - in almost all the recent performances, Robbie had the silver jacket, to make sure he distinguished himself from the others - God forbid someone mistook him for just a member and he didn't take the center of the stage. I guess that, on a very superficial level, the documentary will do its job, it will sell the album, but I see it as nothing more than that - just a promo trick, without real substance. I hope one day we get a documentary that brushes off Robbie's coming and going and the boys' constant "guilt" over it and the Jason "I'm happy to enjoy the money I've made off the back of TT, but without TT" and actually concentrates on what Mark, Gary and Howard have been doing. I know I sound bitter and I'm probably blowing things out of proportion a bit, but, seriously, is it too much to ask, as a fan, to have one episode that doesn't involve Robbie? Gary's documentary with James was so much more fun and deep, at the same time. This looked just like a label-ordered film, with no other purpose than filling some pockets. I was really disappointed. And I didn't understand what was the whole thing of including their mums in this documentary if they gave them 2 minutes and didn't get anything of substance out of them? We got more time with the same old fans that appear everywhere and say nothing interesting. It would have been more interesting to just have 2 fans that actually had some stories to tell; the same for the mums - considering how crazy it got in the 90s, they'd have had a ton of stories to tell - they probably talked amongst themselves, but nobody was smart enough to include the stuff of interest in the documentary. Sorry, just because I'm a fan, I'm not gonna praise everything they do, especially when it's so shallow. Rant over “

I mean a documentary released close with release date of their Greatest Hits album obviously not for commercial purpose related, right? People already complain that it’s going to be only TT3 doing Greatest Hits tour and she wants this documentary only about TT3. I agree though that maybe there should be more Take That mums and less fan stories maybe. But I think she doesn’t understand that ‘We’ve Come a Long Way’ is not like ‘For the Record’ or ‘Look Back Don’t Stare’. The purpose of this documentary is celebrating and look back but with brighter light on their career in the past 30 years. Don’t expect bunch of guys look pissed and depressed in this one.

And when I say she’s definitely GB Army, just read it how she reacts around the other person who is more leaning to Robbie. 

“Take That have been a UK (almost) only act since especially after Progress. Boy or Manbands do not sell well in the rest of Europe. It is not down to them only. The music taste is different. Robbie maintained his solo fanbase in Europe different to the UK more than TT. He sells out stadiums still. Progress was the unification all time height. Gary never sold well in Europe. And in the UK in the comments on FB, Newspapers etc (aside of the usual hate comments every public figure gets) you see that his political direction and the tax issue hurt his image. Robbie coming and going makes some people happy, some unhappy as you also realize in the comments even in this thread. But what really took mojo away is Jason leaving. And the miss of huge ballads. However, as long as they sell tours, even if it is for the live moment rather than TT - it is good for them as it pays millions in their wallets. In 10 years there might be a full reunion and then the Progress effect will set in again”

And this GB Army lady thinks Gary has no political direction. Then do tell me why people mocking him as Tory. I don’t understand UK politics. I always roll my eyes when I found random comments like for example at Kit Harington, sometimes he got called Tory too and ffs the dude never say anything about his political views, the reason he got called Tory is probably people mistaken him for being blue blood because he is the nth descendant of an Earl and married to Rose Leslie, whom her uncle is an Earl. But then again, it’s even written on his wikipedia page with article related, Gary did stated he supported David Cameron.

Oh this GB Army lady again...

“To be frank, I understand certain fans liked Jason and miss him, I personally don't. I'm probably one of the few people who don't acknowledge that "intelligence" and "wisdom" the others are talking about - that's probably because I saw really intelligent, academic people in the person of my professors and I know how that truly looks. I guess Jason strived to be intelligent and he probably read a lot, but, imo, he had no real in depth view of anything. I'm not saying, by any means, he was a stupid person, just that he wasn't any more intelligent than the others. I agree with you, though, about his contribution to the band - even if it was only for the moral of the group, he was good for them. But he chose to leave, he wasn't kicked out, so I don't see why the boys have to always go out of their way to acknowledge him - if "fans" attack them for this, then they're idiots. The interviews the boys did in November clearly showed they are annoyed of always being asked about Jason and Robbie - that's why I find this documentary to be more of a "guided" one - they said exactly what people expected them to say, regardless of how they actually feel.“

“As I've said, I agree that both Jason and Robbie's contributions had to be acknowledged, that's indisputable. What I'm saying is that Robbie's presence in the documentary wasn't necessary, given all he's done to the boys. He could have left them have their moment. I truly, truly despised him when he referred to them as "my business brothers". He's clever when it comes to distorting reality without many people noticing it. Maybe the III and Wonderland eras weren't as successful as the previous ones, but, given the context, it's no wonder. They were still successful and it was all down to Gary, Mark and Howard. 30 years of work and did anyone actually acknowledge these eras? Even Odyssey was brushed off. So, I have a problem with the program being called "We've come a long way" while we're only presented the beginning and some of the middle. Oh, and funny how Robbie uploads his new single on yt precisely the day the documentary airs! How convenient! “

There’s also some talking about TT downfall, how they can’t sell as much as they used to. Personally, I wanna know too from this side of the story, long term fan all the way to the 90s. And tbh their problem is also every musicians for all time and all place problem. Even Gary acknowledge this. They’re an old act. And that’s ok. Kinda agree that they made some bad decisions on songs and singles, but to me it’s related to the first problem. I stand with all the 5 lads so I don’t think Robbie came and left and changing the dynamic has something major to do. I agree that they’re lacking huge ballads now, but I still enjoy their newer songs tbh, The Jason one is quite intriguing though.

“I agree about the impact of Jason leaving. He may have been quiet on records but from what I could see he was --Robbie and Gary aside-- the next most popular member since they reformed. (**) I think Jason represented 'the good guy' and humble aspects more naturally than the others and this gained him droves of fans. He is very intelligent, including emotionally intelligent which made him relatable with everyday members of the public. The other four are nice though in my opinion you could tell Jason was truly sincere. Of course he is also the only member not involved in any tax issue and possibly took moral issue on this. I once read he still banks with his local co-op.”

IMO, this part is even interesting

A (dylandog): “I actually feel for Howard. A few months ago he bumped into the 'elusive Jay' on Kensington High Street and they had a brief chat. Apparently that was the first time Jay had see Howard's two children. Howard has also posted some lovely heart felt posts about Jay - who has completely cut the boys out of his life. I genuinely think that Howard is upset by Jay's decision to not only walk away from the band, but also their friendship.”

B (GBA lady): “That's exactly what I'm thinking, dylandog. Howard and Jason seemed to be very good friends during the TT years and Mark, well, he seems to be friends with everyone. I'm not including Gary on this one, although, back in the 90s, they said themselves, it was Gary-Howard-Jay, on one side, and Mark-Robbie, on the other side. I can understand - to a certain extent - Jason's decision to quit the music industry, but I don't get why he had to also quit his friendships. Howard was the one who said, during an interview, that Jason doesn't even reply to their emails anymore.”

A: “Jay was always the one that struggled with the limelight so to some extent it wasn't a surprise that he was the one to jump ship. I also felt that he was, to put it bluntly, rather work shy.  I think they probably understand/accept his decision to leave the music industry, but I agree with you, they must be hurt and confused by his actions to cut them out of his life. I know if a friend I'd spent many years with did that to me I'd feel very hurt. It does make me wonder what an earth went on? Was Jay appalled by their involvement in the tax scheme or was it something else? Whilst I understand Jay has his own life and friendship groups to completely erase them from his life is drastic to say the least. “

B: “I don't think it has anything to do with the their tax scheme. I doubt he even knew what the boys did with their share. Jason's finances are managed by his brother, the boys' by someone else. I don't see them sit down and talk: "oh, did your lawyer/accountant make you sign that paper regarding that investment?". I really trust Gary when he says he had no idea what he was signing - if he had any suspicion back then that it would be something that would backfire, he'd have pulled the money out immediately and payed the tax to the State, just like he did when he found out what it was all about. BUT, in the eventuality that Gary and the others lie and they knew they were doing something morally questionable and Jason was aware of this and this is the reason he left the band, then shame on him! He isn't a saint, he's done his fair share of morally questionable things in life - at the end of the day, using fans for sex is way more wrong than making an investment that doesn't break any laws -, so he wasn't in any position to judge. Just like all the others, he did alcohol, he did drugs, he used people for his own pleasure.....he really had no foot to stand on when it came to this. He is enjoying, after all, a life of doing nothing off the back of others, limelight shy or not. I sincerely hope that is not the reason he quit the band. If it were, his mum being in the documentary would look very weird.“

Then another guy came...

C: “I don't understand the talk about Jay like he is a bad guy here when this is probably the main reason why he quit the band, to stop stangers being judgmental on him. What's wrong with him dating young girls or older girls (Catherine Tate wasn't exactly young when they were dating)? He is single and should be allowed to date whoever he wants. And if he decided to quit because of the tax thing then I don't see any problem. People has different values in life that hold dear to their heart. Anyway, all this was just you guys' speculations (not even truth) and you still manage to use it to talk down on him just because he is not your favorite. Jason has never been a fan of technology since when he was in the band so I see no reasons for him to change after he left the band. Being of grid is so Jason that I don't know why everyone would be surprised. I have a lot of old colleagues that I was close to when I was working with them but never bother to keep in touch. I still like them but they are not my priority at the moment. There are so many levels of friendship and Take That is definitely a unique one.”

A: “I'm sorry you see it that way BadHabit. I in no way meant to be dismissive of Jay or suggest that he is a 'bad guy.' If you read my post I do say I miss Jay and for me they were at their best as a four piece. However, it's not unfair of me to point out that he had few leads, which I think is a shame by the way,because he's my second favourite vocalist in the band, or that he had very little input re song writing. The forum is for comments and opinions and unless we're looking at facts such as sales figures, then of course it's merely conjecture. My point was that I didn't fully understand the intellectual label given to Jason. Of course he can 'date' whom is wishes, regardless of their age, I don't think I suggested otherwise, but simply made an observations that he appears to have been photographed with much younger women on a number of occasions and therefore falls into that stereotype of older man/ younger woman. By the way for balance Howard is married to a much younger woman as well.“

B: “In regards to Jason dating younger women - although I couldn't care less about his private life (as long as his private life doesn't affect TT's image/reputation/connections)-, I do believe it's morally wrong for a 40+ old man to be dating 20 year olds. No, a person doesn't have the right to date whomever they please. In some countries, it's legal for 80+ year olds to marry young girls, some are still kids - based on the mighty principle that "one can do whatever/whomever they please". Just because it's not illegal, it doesn't mean it's not wrong. Plus, it's just disturbing to see an almost 50 year old - or is he 50 already? - jumping from woman to woman - he's either interested in settling down, in which case he should be dating just one person -or he's not interested in a family life, in which case he shouldn't be dating at all. I could understand it to some extent when all the boys were teens or in their early 20s, but now it's just ridiculous. I know you all live in a "liberal" thinking country, but I have the feeling nowadays abnormalities are being perceived as normal, which is soooo wrong. It's not right that any person on this forum be made to "retract" an opinion based on a system of values, just because others' fan bias. Like dylandog said, nobody believes Jason is "a bad guy", but that doesn't mean he's a saint either- he's just showing signs of immature and questionable decisions. Every single member of this band has been criticized for various choices they've made in their lives, why would be Jason exempt from the same treatment? He actually had it pretty easy going while he was in the band. For all his questionable public appearances, he never got the 10th amount of the slagging Gary did for simply existing.“

*sigh* now I’m getting some pattern that the older you are as a fan of an act, the cynical you are.

If anyone manage to read this until this part, please let me know your thoughts. Especially about Jason because tbh even I still confuse about his mindset.

[roach-works]

i've been biting my tongue on this post but i've seen it reblogged uncritically so many times now and i really do want to point a few things out:

all these suggestions mean well and that's commendable but:

all these suggestions very clearly demonstrate that the person requesting them doesn't understand the scope of the problem, let alone how phenomenally complex their proposals would be to actually try and institute. not only does the archive not have the mandate or responsibility to do any of them, it sure as fuck doesn't have the resources.

let's review.

Anti-Racist Writing Resources: “Have a link on the front page that says something like Guide to Not Being Racist In Your Fan Works. Have that go to a page of links to stuff like the Jim Crow Museum.”

The main definition of ‘racism’ here is a central, possibly even exclusive, focus on United States anti-blackness. Okay. What about other nations. What about other forms of colorism. How about racist tensions in England, towards the polish and Irish, who are considered white in America? How about Australia, South Africa? What about anti-semitism and islamaphobia? What about people writing in English as a second language, what about works translated into English. What about other languages? What about Chinese?

Who is selecting the links that teach any of us how not to be Racist? How are they selected? What’s the criteria— personal accounts? An actual degree in the field? Will they be submitted or nominated? And who is selecting the people who are going to select that literature? And what about link rot? And is anyone getting paid for any of this? And are there going to be appeals?

Assuming you’ve managed to answer all these questions and gotten your links in place, how are you going to make people read the links? What are you going to do to them if they don’t? If they disagree with your selections and your process? What if they have good points, what if they’re a racial minority who is biased against other minorities, what if they’re just being malicious, what if they refuse to stop being racist? Who is going to make the call on that one? When is someone going to get censured, and how? What happens to their work? Who’s going to review it? Who’s going to review any of this?

This is just the first Simple Suggestion.

“More Mandatory Tags: I’m not going to list exactly what tags should be added here, as I think that’s an issue that would need to be studied and analyzed before a final decision was made. You’re looking for a list that covers a lot of territory without being massive, which is a bit of a balancing act. The cons of this one is that it wouldn’t apply to existing fan works and might be tricky to code.”

-OP doesn’t even know what they should be

-who is going to do the studying and analyzing? Who’s going to appoint those guys

-it’s not just a ‘Bit’ of a balancing at. This is an extremely complex clusterfuck with a ton of moving parts that want each other dead.

-massively underestimating the difficulty of instituting a new mandatory tag, too. This is time and money and the archive doesn’t have much to burn.

-also gets away from the point of mandatory tags: they’re for the most common trigger warnings and dealbreakers. They’re not meant to be a comprehensive list of moral judgements.

-racism, period appropriate racism, and slurs are already established secondary tags in the metadata. Speaking of which:

More Restrictions on Meta-Data: “by restrictions, I mean things like “Don’t use racial slurs in the metadata”.”

-Let’s look at the term A/B/O, alpha-beta-omega dynamics, a popular kind of queer fantasy. If you take those slashes out, you get a nasty slur for indiginous Australians. A lot of English language speakers have no idea that slur exists, due to not being Australian. Also, the slur is a contraction of a longer and less immediately hateful word, Aboriginal, so the fact that it’s a slur is all down to context, and the issue of using the longer word is complex. So that’s a fun headache for everyone.

-So, what do we do about that one single immediate issue with instituting this reasonable-sounding rule, no slurs in the tags?

-Is there going to be a blanket warning sent out to every fic using A/B/O without the slashes, telling them to change it? (who is in charge of seeing the problem, determining that it IS a problem, writing the warning, coding it, sending it out?) What if they can’t change it? what if it’s archived, what if the writer is on vacation, what if it’s orphaned? What if they don’t understand—or disagree with—the new rule? Should it just be automatically changed FOR THEM? Should their work be deleted after a certain period if they don’t comply? Or is someone going to have to volunteer to sit down and comb through thousands of works to determine which, if any, are actually the slur and which are the queer porn?

-does the archive want to send the message that works that end up incidentally, coincidentally, sharing a term with a slur from another culture—or even another language entirely—may well wind up on the chopping block for deletion?

-why the fuck would the archive want to send THAT message, when their entire point is to be a safe place for every work submitted to exist in perpetuity, no matter what current social mores dictate?

“The pros of this one is that it would better allow users to filter out fan works they don’t want to see and that it would again contribute to AO3 having a culture of anti-racism.”

-it wouldn’t, because most people who write racist stuff don’t know or don’t want to acknowledge they’re racist, and you can’t make them.

-‘contribute to… having a culture’ is just virtue-signalling. This expensive, unfeasible, impractical, and largely unworkable change would be a halfassed way to wave a flag that says We’re Not Racist! When again a shit-ton of users would say ‘yeah! We aren’t!’ Then continue being racist.

being racist is not a switch you can turn from On to Off, especially not on other people. There are no easy solutions. It’s a lifelong commitment to learning and understanding you have to do in dozens of directions at once. And showy, expensive ‘fixes’ that make an organization look principled don’t amount to shit. Look at all the corporations that fly rainbows in June and continue to be homo- and transphobic every other month.

The archive is honest about who it is and what it’s there for. It has a very clear and very modest mission statement. It’s an archive for all of fandom everywhere. It accepts fan fiction from good fans, bad fans, racist fans, pervert fans. It was started in 2008, well before gay marriage was legal in America, and where many nations still punished homosexual activity with jail time and death. We still live in an age where many nations criminalize a lot of the activities depicted in the works submitted to the archive. We will probably always live in that age. The Archive is committed to archiving works anyway. All of them, from everyone.

The archive is not, and will never be, the Archive Where Only Good People Submit Nice Things. There is no way for them to determine how to do that.

If you think you know how, MAKE YOUR OWN ARCHIVE.

Steps AO3 Can Take to Minimize Racism in the Archive

I wanted to summarize some of the suggestions either I’ve proposed or other people have proposed that work toward the goal of decreasing the amount of racism on AO3. I also wanted to talk about some of the challenges that are involved with this. Note that while minimizing racism is the focus of this post, a lot of these solutions could also be worked to, say, minimize ableism. That this post focuses on one thing should not be taken to mean that it precludes other things. Similarly, that it talks about some solutions does not mean that it is saying that other solutions are automatically bad. These are just the ones I feel most comfortable speaking to.

But first, I want to say that the very first thing that needs to happen is that anytime someone talks about improving AO3, people need to not respond to the post like they’re Miette. I will not be having a discussion with any Miettes. Miettes will just be blocked.

Alright, let’s start with some big picture items.

First, AO3 was built to be a sort of dumping ground for all fan fics, to preserve them so that they wouldn’t be lost. But AO3 is not a static archive by any means. It’s a hub for fan interactions. And to that end it runs into the Paradox of Tolerance, also called the Nazi Bar Problem. To summarize briefly, if you run a bar and let Nazis patronize your bar, then before long, what you have is a Nazi bar, and other patrons leave. Because AO3 is a site where people read fics in addition to post fics, minimizing racism on the site has the benefit of making the site more usable.

Second, racist fan fics - not fan fics that depict racism but fan fics that are racist - have a stochastic impact. However, AO3 archives far too much content to be monitored individually. Additionally, determining if a fic is racist or not is hard to construct boundaries for and involves some degree of subjectivity.

Third, there’s the Judgement Day problem. Back during the era of the Comics Code Authority, the creators of the comic Judgement Day (a comic denouncing segregation) wanted to get the comic republished. But the racist piece of shit in charge of giving it the CCA seal of approve objected to the comic having a Black hero, claiming that it was, err, offensive to minorities? Yeah, it was a bullshit objection. So that’s the Judgement Day problem. Any anti-racist policy or practice is only going to be as good as the people tasked with enforcing it.

Taking the above into account, here are some things AO3 could do to minimize racism on the site. They have different pros and cons, but I don’t want to let perfection be the enemy of good hero. They also aren’t mutually exclusive with each other. We’re Swiss cheesing the solution here.

Blocking/Muting: Nothing really to say on this one. AO3 is working on this already, and it will help once it’s implemented.

Anti-Racist Writing Resources: This is honestly probably the easiest solution AO3 could implement. Have a link on the front page that says something like Guide to Not Being Racist In Your Fan Works. Have that go to a page of links to stuff like the Jim Crow Museum. See, a lot of resources already exist. Eventually, it would be better to have those resources in house (so as to avoid reliance on outside links) but as a starting point, just linking to existing material would help.

There are two goals here. One, there are writers who haven’t unlearned the racism they’ve learned from general society and who are coming from a place of ignorance. Having a readily available resource means that those that aren’t coming from a place of malice can improve themselves. People are more accepting of information they discover for themselves; having it be a resource they can consult gets past people’s knee-jerk rejection of anything that feels like criticism.

The other goal is that it sends a message that Not Being Racist ought to be something that writers posting to AO3 strive for. If you put a No Nazis Allowed sign at your bar, there’s nothing to actually stop Nazis from patronizing it, but they won’t come in with swastikas on, you know? It’s about generating a culture of anti-racism.

More Mandatory Tags: I’m not going to list exactly what tags should be added here, as I think that’s an issue that would need to be studied and analyzed before a final decision was made. You’re looking for a list that covers a lot of territory without being massive, which is a bit of a balancing act. The cons of this one is that it wouldn’t apply to existing fan works and might be tricky to code. The pros of this one is that it would better allow users to filter out fan works they don’t want to see and that it would again contribute to AO3 having a culture of anti-racism. What the mandatory tags are indicate what the priorities of the site are.

More Restrictions on Meta-Data: This is titles, tags, and fic summaries. The reason there should be more restrictions here is that this is the stuff users see when deciding whether or not to read the fic. And just so it’s clear, by restrictions, I mean things like “Don’t use racial slurs in the metadata”. That’s currently not against the rules. Same for negatively tagging fans in the tags.

As you may recall, thanks to someone’s excessive Sexy Times tagging, AO3 recently added a restriction on the meta-data in that the number of tags one may use is now limited. But the overall lax rules here means that it’s a point of vulnerability.

[fvaleraye]

Political Correspondence

Oh hey would you look at that, I made another chapter Amazing what a few kind words will do... I see y’all ;w;

Anyway, this one is... a little different? It’s mainly worldbuilding, and a peek at the goings on of the political shit of the Council that runs the world, or, more specifically, their more... uncooperative members, and it’s not very long. I may do a follow up that’s just the council members who don’t get along messaging each other ASDLFKJN

I hope y’all enjoy reading ^^

The lands of Magna Terra have been dominated by the Ten Great Cities for generations. Though still a relatively young civilization, all things considered, it has manage to stand tall despite much strife. Or, at least, that's what they say. The Council, the leading body of the government, are believed to be a unified and benevolent group, unshakeable in their will to lead Magna Terra to greatness and prosperity. While this is not... entirely accurate, the continent has not descended into anarchy yet, so that must mean something. The Council are, on paper, made up of ten exceptional, hand-picked individuals from each of the ten cities. In reality, only six of them consistently show up to any meetings. One is typically busy with research, another has many spiritual responsibilities, while the other two quite honestly only have a seat on the council in name only. No-one complains, however. Forcing all attendants to appear in person would most likely do more harm than good. So. Written correspondence is the next best thing.

Technically speaking, Finley was the one and only Free Lands representative on the council, as he was the only one who had the patience for all the paperwork and political dealings, but all four Pirate Kings typically debated, or argued, on any decision that the Free Lands would make on council proceedings. Odysseus was usually busy raiding ships for "volunteers" in his bloodsports and shiny metals to decorate his opulent ships with, and clearly cared very little for anything else. Delphine mostly guided the various ocean dangers away from the ports, as she was expected to, as every siren emissary from the Deep Kingdoms did. And Finley's brother, Lockley, mostly just got into barfights and raided ships that Odysseus hadn't already picked clean, when he wasn't nursing hangovers.

So, with all these... colorful individuals, it fell to Finley to keep track of everything, and make sure that the Council didn't come down on their less than legal activities like a hammer. It was stressful, and he didn't want to be the one to do it, but someone had to. And no-one else was going to volunteer. So he spent most of his time sitting in his study, or in the captains quarters if he was on the sea, writing to the other Council members and keeping track of all the numbers in his fellows... escapades. This is why he had his own private grog stash kept stocked at all times.

"Fellow Members of the Council.

I appreciate your continued tolerance of my fellows activities, and we're all thankful for the shipment of various goods. Odysseus in particular was overjoyed at the crates of fine wine, and I doubt you'll be seeing much of him and his crew for a bit, as they've managed to drink themselves into a stupor these past few nights with the stuff. Delphine is doing well, and, as a result, so are the seas, so you should have no trouble getting your other shipments here and back. I must admit that I am continually thankful, though not surprised, at the generosity and tolerance you have shown us, despite how the citizens of the Free Lands continue to do what pirates, outlaws, and scoundrels do. Again. Thankful. Not surprised. After all, we're the ones with all the cannons, muskets, and flintlocks. And, to answer your last letter, no, they're still not up for trade. You have magic, don't you? You'll be fine. I'm sure. As long as we're all in good standing with each other, that is.

Signed Yours Truly, Finley Bracket, Third of The Name, Lord Pirate King of The Free Lands."

The Charred Lands, meanwhile, wanted very little to do with the land beyond the forests, and the pyromantic Council members, understandably, stopped attending any meetings after the Third War of Embers. They still weighed in on any decisions the Council made, but they were governed by their own Council, the Council of The Charred Ones, presided over by the Nine Charred Lords. Quite honestly, they were more united in their efforts than the actual Council, but they still had their squabbles. They hardly payed lip-service to any laws the Council made, and were simply self ruled. The Charred Lords had been around since the dawn of the Sparking, they did not need to listen to these petty mortals in their gilded tower.

The cold war between them and the Golden City went back ages, as the words of the Sacred Embers and the teachings of the Holy Church often conflicted, and the animosity between them was only strengthened after the war. The Church didn't take kindly to any "pagan" religions who did not worship their Lady of Light, and the people of the Charred Lands believed in only the Nine Unburnt Gods. Most Council members were thankful when the Lords stopped attending, honestly, as they spent most of their time bickering with the Archbishop than actually adding anything to the decisions. It was far more productive this way, even if they still didn't add much at all to Council decisions.

"Councilman of The Uncharred.

We have deigned to hear your requests for the holy metals, and the rare ores they are crafted from, that our holy guard uses in defense of the most holy Citadel of The Everlasting Embers, resting place of the gifts of the Unburnt Ones. We shall decline. These metals are for the use of true believers, and you have shown yourselves to be quite the opposite time and time again, as the wars prove. Remember, you have earned our tolerance, not our forgiveness. We have not deigned to give you any of our resources. We, however, deign to give our thanks for the fine jewels you have sent. We shall return them to you in a few suns time. The Unburnt Gods have no need of such finery, and neither do we. Bribery will get you nowhere in these discussions. As for your requests to remove the demons currently creeping through your lands, isn't that what your "Holy" Order is for? To kill or restrain these Blessedly Charred Beings is to betray the teachings of the Holy Ember, which your "Church" should take no issue with. Deal with it yourselves.

May The Blessings of Ember Touch Upon Your Woefully Uncharred Minds. The Council of The Nine Charred Lords, Children of The Unburnt Gods."

The Councilman Argentum, or Silver Councilman as most people call him, spent most of his waking hours researching the magic and history of Sparks, as well as contributing to the Historum in the Silver City. While he had very little interest in politics, his decisions and opinions were weighed very carefully by the rest of the Council, and his mind was held in high regard, even if his more logical approach to things rubbed the Church the wrong way at times. While he is a well regarded and respected member of the Council, more and more often he fails to attend Council meetings, as he becomes more and more absorbed in his work, hoping for a breakthrough before the end of his long life.

He keeps in very close contact with the High Magus of the Historum, though the two have been falling out with each other in recent times. Mostly due to a difference in scientific opinion. But still, he contributes to the Historum, and to the Magus's research, as well as his own. Still, the other Council members have recently begun to raise brows at his decision making in his old age. But he hasn't gone senile yet.

"Regarded Members of The Council.

While I am shocked and appalled at what has transpired in the eastern villages, I must protest the investigation of my Magus's. These men and women are respected historians and valued sorcerers, not barbarians who burn villages and steal children. And the accusations laid against the High Magus himself are absurd at best. I refuse your request to investigate any of my inner circle, as internal investigations have already taken place, and nothing has been found. I doubt the Church's Inquisitors would find anything that my investigators haven’t. You can tell the Archbishop that. As for your request to have the lower levels of the Historum searched, I must refuse that as well. The only things down there are dust and things too valuable to be within reach of the public. If you want to poke around at dusty old relics, go to the Old Lands and find some for yourselves, it will be close enough. And the fresh air should do you some good. I am old. Not senile. And I'm a better judge of character than any of you seem to assume.

Signed Stephan M. Moores, Councilman Argentum."

The Archbishop, the spiritual leader of the Holy Church, and representative of the Golden City within the Council, could very easily attend more Council meetings, as she lives directly within the Golden City's Holy Ring, but she values her spiritual teachings more than the political intrigue of the Council. Which, given how often the other members of the Council grate on her nerves, is understandable. She leads the processions of the Holy Church within the Golden City, and personally teaches aspiring priests and priestesses of the words of The Lady of Light, as well as dealing with the backlash of the more zealous actions of the Order. Many people who do not hold the church in the absolute highest regard often raise brows at the steps taken to "protect" the Cities from the "harmful" or "heretical" religions spread around Magna Terra.

Still, the Archbishop is not a cruel woman, and would rather convert a "heretical" individual than kill them. Though, as the other members of the Council know, she is more than willing to take a morally grey stance on things if she believes it would do more good than harm in the long run, and that she can be rather terrifying when angered. While not the oldest, or wisest, member of the Council, she is level-headed enough to be a key component in keeping the other Councilmen from ripping each others throats out. When she actually attends meetings, that is.

"Dearest Councilmen.

I have heard your fears and concerns regarding the pagan cults cropping up across the outskirts of Magna Terra. I, too, am worried for the spiritual future of our fellows, so far from Her light. I have already sent several cohorts of clergymen, and, while many found success, most were repelled. I have, with a heavy heart, authorized use of the Order's Paladins to quell these dissidents. I did not want it to come to this, but some just cannot see the light until they are brought to Her judgement. As for your reports of Abyssal Kin in Crystalbarrow, I have dispatched several Inquisitors. They will arrive before the Scaled Moon rises. If the Silent Titan's misbegotten children are hiding there, they will be found. I promise you that. And, as for evidence regarding the attacks on the eastern villages, I am sorry to report that no new evidence has been found. It seems that we have found all we're going to.

May Her Light Shine Upon Your Path. Yours Truly, Lilliana Beneficia, Archbishop of Her Holy Church."

The other members of the Council, while just as important to the wellbeing of Magna Terra, are not as noteworthy as those who cause the most issues with the formal proceedings. They are, while still colorful individuals, rather normal in comparison. Most are often exasperated by their fellows. Some are amused. They would all rather they just get along and get things done without a crisis having to happen first. While not quite as unified as they wish to appear, they are thankfully still far from ineffective in keeping the different territories from tearing each other to pieces.

[spilledreality]

Engineering doctrines

Cappelen and Plunkett open their 2018 paper “A Guided Tour of Conceptual Engineering and Ethics,” with a quote from Nietzsche’s Will to Power:

Philosophers … have trusted in concepts as completely as they have mistrusted the senses: they have not stopped to consider that concepts and words are our inheritance from ages in which thinking was very modest and unclear. … What dawns on philosophers last of all: they must no longer accept concepts as a gift, nor merely purify and polish them, but first make and create them, present them and make them convincing. Hitherto one has generally trusted one's concepts as if they were a wonderful dowry from some sort of wonderland: but they are, after all, the inheritance from our most remote, most foolish as well as most intelligent ancestors. …What is needed above all is an absolute skepticism toward all inherited concepts.

It’s a good reminder that this diseasing of 20th century philosophy—its mixture of “functional monism” (the conceit of a one-to-one relationship between handles and reality) and “classical concepts” (as having sufficient and necessary conditions)—was not a universal affliction. It appears most of the century’s “great” thinkers grasped it as a problem far ahead of broader adoption or articulation. Dewey’s pragmatism is a de facto solution to verbal and frame dispute and thus an acknowledgment of terms’ untethering from wordly structures; Wittgenstein anticipates cognitive science by half a century; and Nietzsche writes in Twilight of Idols of a man “stuck in a cage, imprisoned among all sorts of terrible concepts.” Carnapian explication is undergoing a 180-degree revision, no longer considered defeated by Quine as previously assumed.

One enticing part of the Nietzsche quote, in my mind, is its comparison to the “mistrusted” senses. It would be egregious had philosophy not learned until recently to distinguish between the world as it is and the world as it is apprehended by our senses; I’d like to suggest that philosofolly’s previous conception of language and concepts is equally egregious.

There are so many causes of messy handles that even a cursory examination of the process by which humans invent and disseminate them subverts any modeling of them as “tidy” or monistic. But I’d like to introduce one frame, adapted from NNT: the Procrustean bed, where bad carvings—simplifications or Platonifications—amputate important parts of the whole, or else “stretch” it to fit a desired factoring. (Procrustes is a mythical figure who would lop off or stretch out his guests' limbs in his home, so they would perfectly fit his bed.) It’s a barbarism masquerading as hospitality, so to speak. Think of the game of telephone, or Chinese whispers, by which each successive adapter unconsciously and consciously “stretches” or “amputates” the term as learned to fit with his models and experience of reality.

But now we have these garbage bins of concepts, and Cappelen & Plunkett want to improve them—engineer them. Construction has a rich vocabulary here that might diversify “engineering”: retrofit, renovate, refurbish, remodel, all of which have meaningfully distinct denotations. Perhaps someone will adopt them, but for now, the core questions of conceptual engineering, to C&P:

How ought we assess concepts, both in determining which existing concepts need engineering, and, once engineered, whether the new formulations are improvements over predecessors?

How important is the genealogy, or history, of a concept in making engineering decisions?

Expanding on the first question, what sorts of defects might our representational devices (“handles”) possess? The pair present:

Cognitive defects (which distort reasoning)

Moral or political defects (which undermine our values)

Theoretical defects (which undermine philosophical progress)

Semantic defects (incoherence or incompleteness)

While the entailments of #2 and #4 are very clear to me, the odd-numbered items are less so. I could suggest that the “all under one roof” problem of conflation and linguistic over-burdening is one of the central failure sources of conceptual disputes, but perhaps this is a “cognitive” or “theoretical” defect. Similarly, I would point to back-coherence (in the sense of preserving genealogy) as holding back concepts from being their best selves; still, I can’t pretend that maintaining the coherence of historical texts via such a historical continuity is unimportant.

(Sidenote: One core divide C&P attempt to grapple with is externalism or internalism, but until presented with a compelling argument otherwise, I’ll consider, in the spirit of “generalized compatibilism,” these stances as perfectly congenial in their abstract formulations. Internalism, C&P write, is the view that a concept or utterance’s “meaning depends on facts about” what’s inside an individuals “head”; externalism holds that “meaning is determined at least in part by facts having to do with the history of linguistic usage, or complex use patterns over time, or the judgments of experts.” I’ll classify this as a verbal dispute similar to literary theory’s Meaning Wars: it is clearly the case that the models in people’s “heads” [and bodies] are built from external norms and histories, and that there is both a descriptive fact about the society’s aggregate usage and the individual’s neural interpretation, and that the only source of contention at play is which of these ought to be called a concept’s “meaning.” Crucially, if two people or groups in contention don’t refer to the same “thing” in thingspace, they’re not having a disagreement; they’re talking past each other. Social meaning and individual meaning are clearly different “things”—or more accurately, “processes”—both clearly real.)

But I’m getting off-track: I want to talk about two doctrines I’d propose as crucial for any would-be conceptual engineer. There are plenty of smaller considerations which the current literature neglects; one is the metaphorical fabric which holds our concepts together and forms an important axis of meaning; the other is the linguistic conquests constantly performed on language, and the way these refactorings create variability in the field of meaning. But these addendums can come later; for now:

The doctrine of non-intervention. Concepts should—in part because they can only, with any efficacy—be engineered locally. Only locals know the affordances of their specific use cases. Philosophers ought to engineer philosophical concepts, but leave fishing concepts to the fishermen. Engineering-on-behalf ought only provide possibilities for bottom-up adoption; it should never limit possibilities by top-down imposition.

The illumination doctrine. Concepts should help illuminate the world, but never obscure it. This is especially important in ameliorative or ethical-political projects.

The non-intervention doctrine is partly an attempt to prevent the failures of “high modernism,” or “systemism,” or “overhaulism” (James Scott’s, John Gall’s, and Ari Holtzman’s terms, respectively). In areas of vast complexity, such as the intersection of language and human psychology, unknown nth-order effects dominate the landscape of consequences. Most recently, this hubristic approach was found in the behavioral economics of Kahneman and Tversky, who made grand, rationalistic claims about local domains like profession basketball, of which they knew absolutely nothing, naively supposing that the local expertise and folklore of these domains were merely riddled by cognitive biases (as opposed to having been weeded out based on what “works”—e.g. the hot hand “fallacy”). Perhaps the surest safeguard against the failures of overhaulism is allowing local communities to freely adopt those terms which work for them, and freely ignore those which don’t. To the would-be conceptual engineer I say: model and advocate, but never impose.

The illumination doctrine is founded on an ethics of accuracy. There is much danger in normative, ethics-based, “activistic” linguistic meddling. When top-down imposed, such conceptual engineering projects are well-known to us via writers like Orwell. While individual engineers almost without exception believe that their individual intervention on language is for the greater good (in the great tradition of noble lies), limiting the thinkable ought to be viewed as assailing free speech. (Recall also that once a technology is utilized for one political end, a tacit allowance of a class of strategy has taken place, and the technology will be co-opted by the other side: victimhood and identity politics’ adoption by the right is a recent & relevant example.) Expressive liberties are premised not just on the ability to say, but on the existence of an expressive language which enable the sayable.

Both these doctrines join the doctrine of preserved ground discussed in a previous post on conceptual engineering. There I distinguished between two types of linguistic “conquests” that re-carve the language, seeing the “divide and conquer” method as healthier for the language, in the long run, than the “narrow and conquer” approach:

First, the narrow and conquer method, where a specific sub-sense of a concept is taken to be its "true" or "essential" meaning, the core which defines its "concept-ness." To give an example from discourse, Taleb defines the concept rationality as "What survives, period." The second style I termed divide and conquer, where multiple sub-senses are distinguished and named in an attempt to preserve all relevant sub-senses while also gaining the ability to talk about one specific sub-sense. To give an example from discourse, Yudkowsky separates “rationality” into “epistemic rationality”—the pursuit of increasingly predictive models which are "true" in a loose correspondence sense—and “instrumental rationality”—the pursuit of models which lead to in-the-world flourishing, e.g. via adaptive self-deception or magical thinking—rationality as “what works.”

Conquests by narrowing throw out all the richly bundled senses of a concept while keeping only the immediately useful—it's wasteful in its parsimony. It leaves not even a ghost of these other senses' past, advertising itself as the original bundled whole while erasing the richness which once existed there. It leads to verbal disputes, term confusion, talking past each other. It impoverishes our language.

Division preserves the original, bundled concept in full, documenting and preserving the different senses rather than purging all but the one. It advertises this history; intended meaning, received meaning—the qualifier indicates that these are hypernyms of "meaning," which encompasses them both. Not just this, but the qualifier indicates the character of the subsense in a way that a narrowed umbrella original never will. Our understanding of the original has been improved even as our instrumental ability to wield its subsenses grows. Instead of stranding itself from discourse at large, the divided term has clarified discourse at large.

[philosopherking1887]

(1/8) I’m going to make my argument on anon because my blog is not political. I’ll message you off anon separately as I think it’s rude to engage someone in debate when they don’t know who they’re speaking with, but if you decide to respond to this I ask that you don’t post that message. I want to explain why I feel very uncomfortable with people calling the left and right mirror images of each other under any circumstance.

(2/8) It would be erroneous to suggest that there aren’t parts of the left the deal exclusively in black and white morality, who conspiracy-theorize, and who reduce people to basic identities such as race and sexuality. I wouldn’t even make the claim that these people are a loud minority. I’m also aware people who accept nuance in morality occasionally state things in black and white terms, and in doing so turn people off to their more nuanced arguments.

(3/8) I would argue that leftists don’t consider anybody with antisemitic beliefs or conspiracy theories to be leftist, because the backbone of leftist ideology is wanting to crush things like antisemitism, homophobia, racism, and the systems that support these ideologies. Leftists actively distances themselves from these people, in the same way the feminists distance themselves from terfs and swerfs, stating that these people are fundamentally counter to feminist ideology.

(4/8) All that said, I still identify as part of the left. In the circles I run in, it’s less about destroying anyone who has ever said or done something “problematic” (which we acknowledge would be everyone), and more about wanting to reduce the harm caused by oppressive systems, and convince others to consider their language and actions more carefully. It’s these leftists that I’d argue could actually affect societal change.

(5/8) Let’s say someone’s said something racist. People who I’d consider centrist like to focus on the fact that someone is legally allowed to say that. People who I’d consider effective leftist seek to make it clear that it’s not ok to say such things, thereby pushing back against the speech becoming morally acceptable, but also believe that you haven’t completely morally bankrupted yourself simply by saying a thing.

(6/8) People that I’d consider effective leftists don’t believe that media with morally wrong elements shouldn’t exist, and we recognize that it doesn’t have to expressly state something is wrong for it to clearly be wrong. I personally enjoy media that includes ableism, racism, rape, etc. The story doesn’t have to remind me these things are wrong, because a well written story will present these things accurately, and these things are wrong.

(7/8) What I understand to be the right does not have room for people who want to consider humans, their words, and their actions complexly. Their very ideology believes whole sections of our population unworthy of consideration. It’s this core difference that makes me extremely uncomfortable when I see people compare the left and the right.

(8/8) Are there people on the left who think too much in black and white terms? Or course, but this isn’t an intrinsic part of the ideology, it’s the result of not developing or engaging critical thinking skills. The right on the other hand ideologically opposes critical thinking and complex understandings of all human beings.

You’re right that I was overstating the case when I said that the Left was just a mirror image of the Right. There are some good principles motivating the Left; I have no sympathy at all for the principles that motivate the Right. But I do think that the black-and-white morality, bolstered by a simplistic worldview, is an intrinsic danger of being at either extreme on the political spectrum.

The main reason I no longer consider myself a leftist is in your second paragraph: the people who think in black-and-white morality and reduce people to their social identities aren’t just a “loud minority” on the Left; they are the voice of the Left. I see it from my academic friends (“friends”) on Facebook and I see it from people on Tumblr, where the ideas from leftist academia get popularized and proliferated. If anything, it seems, the people who genuinely accept moral ambiguity are a silent minority who are gritting their teeth and going along with the complexity-challenged majority because they agree, on the whole, with their policy goals. I, too, agree with the policy goals, but I don’t accept the -ist label, the identity as a Leftist, because I don’t share the general worldview.

This got incredibly long (and took way more time than I was expecting), so the rest is under a cut.

In paragraph 3 you say: “leftists don’t consider anybody with antisemitic beliefs or conspiracy theories to be leftist, because the backbone of leftist ideology is wanting to crush things like antisemitism, homophobia, racism, and the systems that support these ideologies.” Probably the biggest single factor that’s driven me away from the Left is the very shallow understanding of Jewish history and identity that I see even from people who claim to oppose antisemitism. Most of them don’t even seem to recognize antisemitism within their own ranks, much less distance themselves from it; as commented by David Schraub, a UC Berkeley law professor, on his excellent blog The Debate Link, all kinds of blatantly anti-Jewish crap can get excused as legitimate “criticism of Israel” (including, in a German legal decision, firebombing a synagogue). Despite loving to insist that Israel should not be equated with Jews when they claim that criticism of Israel can never be considered antisemitic (even when that includes saying that the Jewish state should cease to exist, or that Israel’s actions prove that Hitler was right), they’re perfectly happy to interrogate any Jews who show up at progressive political events about their views on Israel. And, apparently, protest LGBT-rights events partly sponsored by Hillel on the grounds of “pinkwashing.” Ah, there are those conspiracy theorists!

Tumblr has actually been a breath of fresh air in that respect: I’m seeing a lot more people on here than among my leftist “friends” in academia (whom I would have expected to know better) who acknowledge that antisemitism is actually still a problem and maybe you should believe Jews when they say it’s a problem, rather than automatically dismissing it as a tactic for shutting down criticism of Israel. Many of my Tumblr mutuals also seem to understand the apparently difficult-to-grasp concept that Jews, even pale-skinned Ashkenazi Jews, have not always and everywhere been considered white—and still are not, by the people who call themselves “white nationalists.” I’m not sure how widespread this view is, but an idea seems to have gotten hold in some segments of the Left that the Jews are just a group of white Europeans who fabricated a historical origin in the Levant to justify a colonialist land grab. This is stupid for a variety of reasons—the basic ignorance of history foremost among them—but what really strikes me about it is how it’s actually a logical consequence of the simple guiding worldview that seems to be widely espoused by the Left.

Here are a couple of general principles of that worldview:1) The world is divided into white oppressors and oppressed people of color.2) The original sin of the modern world (indeed, of the world in general) is European colonialism.

To be clear: I agree that in the vast majority of the contemporary world, white people (i.e., people of European descent) are in a position of dominance and privilege over non-white people. I also agree that colonialism is a great evil and the source of most of the systemic injustices that continue to plague the world. But I also think that racial identity is contingent and contextual, and while leftists will pay lip service to that idea and trot it out when it suits them, their approach to the history and situation of the Jews, which throws a wrench into the simple worldview, suggests to me that they don’t fully understand or believe in that contingency and contextuality.

I agree with leftists that the state of Israel has oppressive policies toward Palestinians. I also agree that in America, Ashkenazi Jews (which most American Jews are, though NOT most Israeli Jews) are for most practical purposes white. Here’s where a problem arises: part of the reason colonialism is such a great crime is that it displaces people from their ancestral homelands—both the indigenous populations who lived on the colonized land and the African people who were transported from their homes into slavery on distant continents. So, the Left concludes, there must be a great moral importance to the connection with an ancestral homeland. Acknowledging that Jews, even Ashkenazim, have a historical origin in the territory of Israel/Palestine would (a) complicate their designation as white oppressors and (b) raise the possibility that they have some rightful claim to the territory. Now, there are all kinds of ways to dispel (b). You could say that diaspora Jews have been gone from the land so long that there’s no longer a meaningful connection to it… but then that raises the question of how long Native Americans, aboriginal Australians, etc. get to claim that they have been wronged by the displacement of their ancestors (is there a statute of limitations on an ancestral connection to a land?). You could say that it’s still wrong to forcibly reappropriate your ancestral land from people who have moved in in the meantime… but that would be a problem for the argument that Palestinian refugees have the right to return to where their grandparents lived. Maybe you could say it’s wrong to reappropriate land from people who aren’t the descendants of the appropriators (the Romans, in the relevant case)? Except then it’s OK to punish descendants for their ancestors’ crimes…?

It’s easier to square everything by just saying that Jews have no historical connection to the land, they’re white through and through and have never been otherwise, and the displacement and continued oppression of Palestinians is merely an instance of the very same European “settler colonialism” that (according to Principle 2) is the wellspring of all the other injustices of the modern world. You may have heard that expression applied to the existence of Israel; it’s a watchword of the BDS movement, beloved of much of the Left. The Chicago Dyke March borrowed from them the credo that “Zionism is an inherently white-supremacist ideology”—which would be a really weird thing to say if you acknowledged that Zionism (meaning the movement to found a Jewish state) arose in response to the prevalent European attitude that Jews are an “Oriental” people who can never really belong in Europe because they don’t have the proper kind of ancestral connection with European lands. Better just say—as did a Facebook “friend” of mine, a philosophy grad student from a prestigious university—that turn-of-the-century Jewish settlement in Palestine had absolutely nothing to do with rising antisemitism in Europe, because racialized antisemitism wasn’t even much of a problem in Europe until the Nazis came to power. Because apparently that shit just came out of nowhere. He even went so far as to say that any Jews who may have left Europe for Palestine before 1930 out of fear of antisemitic persecution were “alarmists.”

Do you see how this reflects the same kind of black-and-white morality that we see on Tumblr in other contexts (whether that’s telling people that they’re horrible for sympathizing with villains and other Problematic™ characters, or that they must be rapists and abusers if they read, enjoy, and/or get off on fic that depicts rape and abuse)? Acknowledging the origin of Zionism in European antisemitism, acknowledging that the state of Israel exists in large part because of the Holocaust, even acknowledging the correct geographic origin of the Jewish people, might mean allowing moral ambiguity into the situation. It might mean that early Zionist settlers were not white-supremacist monsters; it might mean that Israeli Jews, many of them the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and refugees from the USSR, are not merely callous racists (which many of them, I’m sure, are), but frightened, and not entirely without reason. Not to mention that acknowledging sources and forms of oppression that predate European colonialism and defy color-based racial categories would complicate the simple worldview.

It’s having those kinds of arguments (over and over and over) with people on the Left—trying to explain very basic things about the history and experience of my people—that has thoroughly alienated me. I sometimes like to say, savoring the deliberate irony, that “identity politics is bad for the Jews.” It is, on both sides: we’re not white enough to be considered worthy by the Right, but apparently we’re too white to be considered worthy in the way that matters to the Left: a claim to oppression. People on the Left and the Right both like to say (or just insinuate) that Jews control the media and mainstream politics and are using it to make U.S. foreign policy subservient to Israel (the Chicago Dyke March and the KKK can bond over that). You know what was good for the Jews? Enlightenment universalist humanism. The principle that individuals are to be judged as individuals, not by their membership in a community; that association with a minority religious or cultural community is a private matter, as long as you’re a good citizen of the state in which you find yourself. Those were the principles that drove the emancipation of Jews in Europe (i.e., the elevation to full citizenship), and the principles with which Zola et al. defended Dreyfus. And yes, you can recognize the effects of systemic group-based oppression and work to fight it, while also insisting that the ultimate locus of moral value is the individual, and that all individuals must be presumed to have equal value in virtue of a common humanity that is more important than group differences.

But here the moral rigorism of the Left—the view that a person, action, or institution with any moral taint must be rotten through and through—causes me problems again. Enlightenment ideals were formulated, articulated, and enshrined in government institutions amid racist European colonialism and misogynist patriarchy. Therefore, the Left concludes, they must be wholly bankrupt. Enlightenment individualism, they say (with a little help from Marx), is just a pretext to glorify the white wealthy landowning male and the capitalist order. Racists and sexists like Locke and Kant, slaveowners like Jefferson and Madison, cannot have had good, genuinely liberatory ideals that they failed to live up to; the ideals themselves must have been devised purely to uphold the system of white supremacist patriarchal capitalism. I find this extremely ironic, considering that the ideals to which the Left swears loyalty, of casting off oppressive systems of domination and striving for equality and “liberation,” have their roots firmly in the Enlightenment. Yes, we should acknowledge the failings and limitations of Enlightenment thinkers, and we should keep expanding our conception of the humanity that deserves liberation. But we should also acknowledge our debt to these flawed, sometimes even overall immoral, human beings—keeping in mind that we, too, will probably look deeply flawed to future generations, even if we are striving in the right direction.

I can cite all kinds of other examples of this moral rigorism, including the very loud people who liked to say that there was no moral difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (and then, oddly enough, cited the 90-some percent of African Americans who voted for Clinton and the 53% of white women who voted for Trump as proof of the virtue of the former and the depravity of the latter). In fannish spaces on Tumblr, it shows up as a hybrid moral-aesthetic rigorism: if a work or its creator is morally problematic, nothing about the work can have any artistic value, either. Thus, since Joss Whedon is a bad feminist (or perhaps not a feminist at all), not only can we no longer enjoy Buffy or consider it progressive in any way, but we must say that he’s a bad storyteller, and a bad writer of dialogue and character, even for white male characters (and if we have to read sloppily to come to that conclusion…? *shrug*). The issue is not just about enjoying media that depicts problematic things (though there is a truly batshit wing of the Tumblr Left that does have a problem with that); it’s about whether you’re allowed to enjoy the good aspects of media that depict certain things in a problematic way.

As for the issue of condemning hate speech and acknowledging the legal right (in the U.S.) to speak it: someone genuinely committed to the reality of moral ambiguity would say that you can do both. You can very strongly condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis, you can go out and protest their rallies, while also saying that it’s not a good idea to initiate violent altercations with them. You can say that the ACLU is still a good organization even though they defend the rights of neo-Nazis to march. You might think that, as a Jew, I’d be in favor of the “punch a Nazi” attitude—and when it comes to dyed-in-the-wool Nazis like Richard Spencer and Steve Bannon, punch away. But as a believer in moral ambiguity, I also recognize that a lot of the young white men drawn to the alt-right have been radicalized in the very same way as the young Muslim men who are drawn to Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. Here’s where I see an instance of mirroring between the Right and the Left: Conservatives will tend to say that Islamic terrorists are inherently evil, there’s no redeeming them, and the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist, while many neo-Nazis are just unhappy, isolated, vulnerable young men, despairing over the bleakness of their economic prospects, who have been led astray. Meanwhile, over on the Left, people say that neo-Nazis are inherently evil, irredeemable, etc., while many Islamic terrorists are just vulnerable young men who have been led astray. So both sides accept a double standard, only it’s reversed. Can’t we say that there are some vulnerable, misled young men (and women) among both kinds of extremists? In fact, in Germany, the very same strategies that were developed to deradicalize neo-Nazis are being adapted to deradicalize Islamic extremists.

I know a number of genuinely critical thinkers who want to continue throwing in their lot with the Left for its generally good goals and ideals, despite its problems with moral ambiguity, and I don’t have a problem with that. As long as we’re working for the same outcomes, it’s just a matter of labels. But there are some serious issues where I part company with the Left, and some deep differences on matters of history and philosophy. As a historian and a philosopher, those differences matter a lot to me. And, specifically, as a Jew with a profound sense of Jewish history (though not the religion, which is why I’ve been sitting at home writing this essay instead of going to Yom Kippur services), I also have a profound mistrust of ideological extremes that regard group identity as more important than individual humanity, because people on both ends of the political spectrum have always found reasons to hate us as a group.

[junker-town]

Jill Ellis made big mistakes, but left the USWNT better than she found it

Ellis didn’t just win two World Cups, she laid an excellent foundation for her successor.

Jill Ellis, a back-to-back World Cup-winning coach, announced she was stepping down from the United States women’s national team on Tuesday. The resignation of a coach with her resume would usually be met with grave concern by fans for the state of the program. In this case, the news was met with a resounding “OK.”

Evaluating Ellis as a coach is extremely difficult because she’s bad at the aspects of her job that we can see, but ostensibly elite at the things we couldn’t. When it comes to tactics, Ellis was poor. But her consistent success suggests that she was among the best in the world at the stuff that happens behind closed doors, and the USWNT appears to have benefitted greatly from having her as a coach.

The most consistent feature of Ellis’ tenure was baffling tactical decisions that no other coach would make, followed by explanations of those decisions that were so absurd they felt like trolling. She played bizzare lineups well past the point when she said experimentation would end and earnest World Cup preparation would begin, deploying attacking winger Mallory Pugh in a two-woman center of midfield in March. Once the knockout stages of the World Cup rolled around, Ellis inexplicably benched NWSL MVP Lindsey Horan, arguably the best midfielder in the world, for no discernible reason. Ellis’ team played conservatively in the quarterfinals and semifinals, looking shaky against France and England teams with less talent.

But the USWNT won the World Cup anyway because it had best squad at the tournament by far. Its backups could start for any other team in the world. The next group of 23 Americans who didn’t make the USWNT roster would almost certainly be a knockout stage-quality team. No managerial job on the planet requires less tactical aptitude than the USWNT.

Does this sound mean? It probably sounds mean, and Ellis doesn’t deserve that. In her five years at the helm of the USWNT, she has never publicly said anything rude to or about anyone. That’s a very unique personality trait among high-level soccer coaches who, as a group of people, seem to enjoy being jerks and talking shit significantly more than the general population.

That personality trait probably saved her job in 2017. After the USWNT lost to Australia at the Tournament of Nations, American players went to then-U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati to express their concerns with Ellis’ coaching style and ability. Gulati, Ellis, and the players got together, talked out their problems, and Gulati insisted that Ellis wouldn’t be fired. Since then, the USWNT has won 39 games, drawn five, and lost only once.

Ellis might not have much tactical acumen by top professional coaching standards, but someone who can turn around an attempted player coup into an .867 winning percentage clearly does not lack skill as a coach, no matter how talented her team is relative to its opponents. Finding the right balance between letting players speak their minds and keeping them on task in the midst of a lawsuit against their own soccer federation couldn’t have been easy either.

The soccer world is filled with genius tacticians who have no ability to navigate the politics and tribulations of management, and end up becoming trophy-less journeymen or scouts as a result. I’ve said that Ellis was a bad coach before, and it was an unfair claim. She’s a bad tactician, for sure, but she’s undeniably one hell of a people manager. If we had a mic on Ellis in meetings, in the locker room, and on the training pitch, we’d probably appreciate her a lot more.

Ellis’ people managing skills and tactical deficiencies were both evident throughout her career at UCLA, which is relevant to the future of the USWNT. In her 12 seasons with the Bruins, Ellis made the College Cup six times, but never won the title. She was a master recruiter, but she got outcoached in the hardest games. Three years after Ellis’ departure, Amanda Cromwell guided UCLA to its first national championship in women’s soccer, and the team’s best players were Ellis recruits.

We can’t draw a direct comparison to the USWNT, because they’re the reigning two-time world champions, but it’s possible that something similar could happen next. Ellis has taken the USWNT as far as she can. If the rest of the world ever did catch up to the United States in talent — which seems inevitable, even if it’s happening much more slowly than everyone anticipated — an Ellis-coached team would probably struggle. The USWNT needs a better tactician to progress, but whoever that person ends up being will inherit a program that has an excellent foundation that was laid by Ellis. All the really hard stuff — culture building, morale, confidence — is currently taken care of thanks to Ellis. The new coach just has to make the right gameday decisions.

Ellis is not a world class gameday coach, and the USWNT might improve after her departure, but she left the program in a much better place than she found it. That, more than her World Cup wins or her mistakes, should be how she’s remembered.

[douxreviews]

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina - Part 2 Review

“Not today, Satan.”

While Part 1 of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina focused on the pull of the titular teen witch’s calling vs. the love and familiarity of her mortal life, Part 2 pivots to a wider focus, as Sabrina’s actions begin to pull her down a “dark path.” This is no longer a tale of witches against mortals, but good against evil. Though it’s often weighed down by the need to satisfy some long worn out tropes, Part 2 continues to highlight the altogether different and exciting world of magic and offbeat characters that drew us in during Part 1, while also pulling viewers down the same “dark path” that Sabrina has suddenly found herself barreling down.

The decision to embrace the moral code at the centre of this magical world is an ambitious one, but isn’t necessarily the most original in execution. Often times it feels like the series is about to go through with something really fantastic, but it drops the ball more than once, never truly embracing the sinister side of the darkness that has enveloped Sabrina. On the flip side, the crazier turns of events are sometimes without merit, feeling more like twists built out of a desire to shock rather than natural and exciting progressions. That being said, these nine episodes hit the mark more often than they miss, though it feels like the show is running at 75% power most of the time.

At the close of Part 1, Sabrina finally signed her name in the Book of the Beast, and accepted her witchly fate. Amongst other things, this choice meant that she had finally let go of her mortal life and embraced her inner witch. The final moments of Chapter 10 hinted at a changed Sabrina, one that was ready to let magic into her life, and become a more active member of the Church of Night. This does feel like the case most of the time, though Sabrina herself isn’t as changed as her new platinum wig would suggest she is. She does, however, become far more powerful than she was before.

Her magical abilities don’t bloom immediately, as she spends a lot of the early Chapters in Part 2 with the same novice approach that she did early on. In standout episode ‘The Missionaries,’ she finally taps into a whole new level of power; power that essentially manifests itself out of nothing, with very little build up or explanation. It’s a lot of fun to watch her rise from the dead and burn two aggressive witch hunters to a crisp, but given she was casting the flimsiest spells and organizing the shittiest plans not only a few episodes before, it doesn’t feel completely right to see her rise to this level so quickly.

Though it’s born out of lazy plotting, the events that unfold after Sabrina’s resurrection give this “Part” a whole new level of momentum, as Satan’s plans to use her as his right hand finally come to fruition. After he rises from hell in his “true” form – it turns out he’s actually the incredibly good looking fallen angel Lucifer, who knew – he begins to plan for Sabrina’s ascension to the throne. Thanks to a burned Lilith, they manage to stop Lucifer from going through with the ceremony, though poor Nick Scratch and his dashing eyebrows take the fall.

Harvey is still someone Sabrina truly cares about, and his power over her actions is still palpable, but Nick’s pull is quite evident as well, even more so for me since he doesn’t make me want to watch paint dry. I like what each of these guys represent for Sabrina in theory, though I found my eyes rolling at the constant need to pit them against each other, as if a teen drama can’t survive without a standard love triangle playing out at all times.

In the end, Nick becomes more of a tragic character than I would have expected. He sacrifices himself to save the world from Lucifer and, as he’s escorted through the gates of hell by the newly crowned Queen of Hell, Lilith, I felt for Sabrina. The show doesn’t let this loss settle for long, though, as Part 2 ends with Sabrina already pledging to rescue Nick from Hell. It’s obvious he isn’t gone for good, but letting the dust settle might do the series some good. With Harvey paired up with Roz, we could watch Sabrina pave a path for herself that’s devoid of any need for a love interest to guide the way.

Perhaps she could help her Aunt Zelda who has taken up the reins of High Priestess following Father Blackwood’s fall from grace. With most of the members of the Church of Night dead after Father Blackwood’s mass poisoning of the congregation, there’s a lot of work to be done. Prudence and the other weird sisters were naturally amongst the survivors, and it looks like Prudence will be doing her utmost to make up for siding with her clearly unstable father when the Spellmans were in desperate need of inside help.

My main issue with Part 1 was that it failed to maintain a focused narrative between the surreal events at the Academy and the Spellman home, and the more mundane lives of the mortal characters. This became less of an issue as the episodes wore on, as the magical and mortal characters’ worlds collided a lot more often. It’s an element that thankfully continued into Part 2, with all the main mortals fully knowledgeable of the magical world, giving them more purpose than before. It didn’t, however, make them any less boring.

Sabrina is often dragged back into her mortal life when the magical world demands it, meaning that her absence is never truly felt either way; a fact that doesn’t stop the mortals from throwing unfounded aggression Sabrina’s way when they don’t inform her of major things that have happened and expect her to know what they are without any fore warning. So Sabrina is supposed to intuitively know that Roz is blind while she faces the aggression of Father Blackwood’s reign at the Academy? It makes Harvey, Roz and Theo seem unnecessarily mean just because the plot demands that Sabrina feel guilt over the extra time she’s dedicating to the Academy and, more importantly, her new relationship with Nick Scratch.

It gets to the point that I honestly forgot Harvey, Roz and Theo existed a couple of times in episodes they didn’t appear in. I’d say the series should do away with them completely, but they’re such an integral part of what makes Sabrina so great. I just wish Harvey and Roz didn’t bore me to tears. Theo, formerly Susie, doesn’t have the same problem because of the really important role he plays in terms of representation. I really liked how the series dealt with his on-going transition, even if it feels tacked on the series’ primary narrative most of the time.

Potions and Notions

I loved the scene of Sabrina changing outfits in Chapter One. It was a cute nod to Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

The Christmas episode definitely feels even weirder as Zelda’s rescue of Leticia is abandoned for her pursuit of power as Father Blackwood’s new bride. The orphan child is brought back into the fold after a while, though the bond Zelda formed with Leticia doesn’t feel like it ever happened.

Michelle Gomez still kills it as Lilith, and I loved Alexis Denisof's turn as Mrs Wardwell's partner. His final and unfortunate appearance as the main course on Lilith's dinner table was one of those disgusting yet fantastic examples of how weird and dark this show can be when it just goes with it.

Ambrose is a bit of a dud in some of Part 2’s initial episodes, siding with the male patriarchy and failing to support Sabrina’s run for Head Boy. He makes up for it later on, though. And he deserves some bit of sympathy after he’s framed for murdering the Anti-Pope by Father Blackwood.

This is still an undoubtedly fun series, though it’s one that’s still treading water rather than completely submerging itself in the dark and murky depths of Greendale and the Church of Night. I’m not certain it ever will reach its full potential but until that day comes, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is still exciting enough to satisfy my teen fantasy cravings.

7 out of 10 evil turnips.

Panda

[odilekuronuma]

Is Alibaba a good foil to Sinbad?

With me being rather uninterested in the actual events of Magi and its spinoff, I find myself only able to write about the characters themselves. On that front, Ohtaka hasn’t completely dropped the ball yet I feel.

So the way Ohtaka is setting up the final confrontation will likely have Sinbad be confronted by someone, and this someone would have to be Sinbad’s foil in every way. And that person is likely to be Alibaba.Yes because I believe that only Alibaba really qualifies as such, not Judal, not Hakuryuu, and certainly NOT Aladdin. So is he really a good foil to Sinbad?

We have to remember what a good foil is, it is someone who is the complete opposite to a character, while at the same time  similar in some ways.That imo is a good foil.

Let’s start from the beginning and figure out how they’re opposites to each other.

First things first , even their color scheme are opposite to one another, yet complementary. Design wise, Sinbad’s hair color is purple, while Alibaba’s is yellow, which on the color wheel are opposite colors, but also complementary. Ohtaka went for her main trio with the 3 primary colors; blue for Aladdin, red for Morgiana and of course yellow for Alibaba. In order to obtain Sinbad’s purple, you’d need to add the two other primary colors, red and blue.

 Next, Alibaba’s quest if we can call it that started with him meeting Aladdin and conquering a dungeon along with him, which as it turned out is the exact opposite of how things went with Sinbad. Sinbad while being chosen by a Magi, ended up conquering the dungeon (Baal) on his own. 

Alibaba would have never been able to conquer the dungeon on his own, so clearly in this he’s the complete opposite to Sinbad who did just that.More on that later.

The second big difference is the magoi. Alibaba started with some very low magoi, he only got a boost thanks to him absorbing Kassim’s rukh. But Sinbad was born with very high magoi, the highest iirc, as such he’s the complete opposite to Alibaba.

Alibaba is described most of the time as a “loser”, more than Sinbad ever was. And even though SnB showed that Sin also failed quite a bit, unlike what was reported in his adventures that Alibaba is an avid fan of, those can mostly seen as setbacks since he always manages to come on top, being guided by destiny and all that jazz. So even in a very unfavorable situation like with Madaura, he managed to profit from it in some way.  So he’s very much a winner, and Sinbad was introduced as a Grand King, who achieved many things, which is a stark contrast with Alibaba.

Even when it comes to women, Alibaba is rather unpopular (motenai), while Sinbad is very much popular with the ladies. Although to be fair Alibaba seems to be more lucky as of late, since he got to be with the girl of his dreams, while Sin is doomed to have inconsequential one night stands...which might be the dream for some men, but it’s definitely a lonely life. Poor baby.

But the major way in which Sinbad and Alibaba are opposites imo is the fact that Sinbad is often shown only relying on himself , while Alibaba is always getting help from others. This is what I meant earlier about the dungeon conquering. There’s definite pros and cons to both approaches. Sinbad is seen to be more decisive, and that is a quality appreciated in a leader, but at the same time acting on your own most of the time just means you’re going to shoulder a big responsibility and makes you come off even as distrustful. On the other hand you could say that Alibaba relies too much on others, and isn’t too prone to act on his own which makes him come off as undecisive. At least that’s my explanation to his inaction.

Even when it comes to having a country they have opposite approaches. Alibaba is born to Rachid Saluja, a monarch, he was raised as a prince for a good portion of his life, but failed to succeed his father on the throne. When he came back to his country later he wished for it to become a republic. So that shows that he had no interest in the throne and becoming King.

Sinbad on the other hand is a commoner who created his own country, and became its king. He was obsessed with the idea of having his own country, and believed it will allow him to change the world, which it did.

Also needless to say that Sinbad sees himself as a special entity, while Alibaba believes that everyone is equal. And even though it really got on my nerves how Aladdin placed Alibaba on a fucking pedestal, by saying that he’s the Greatest King, which in my eyes is contradictory to saying that everyone is equal...It still stands that Sinbad and Alibaba disagree on that.

Sinbad is shown to be extremely sly, but Alibaba isn’t sly or even comes off as naive...and so on. I’m sure there’s more ways in which those two are opposite, but those are the ones who are the most relevant imo. Now unto the ways they’re similar.

Let’s start by saying that Alibaba greatly admires Sinbad, he wrote Alibaba’s adventures because he’s a huge fan of “Sinbad’s adventures”. So with that in mind Sinbad likely represented the ideal of a King vessel for Alibaba for the longest time.That is of course before he met the real Sinbad, but even with all of his misdeeds Alibaba still admires him and what he has achieved.

At times  Ohtaka is shown deliberately drawing a parallel between Sinbad and Alibaba, like when they’re both shown starving and failing miserably.

But the major way in which they’re similar, is that they are both king vessels who are able to inspire others, and who are able to gain followers in the form of a household, and they’re completely faithful to them. In this regard Alibaba does a better job than Hakuryuu, because he actually has a HH, and not a bunch of weird plants and two old generals....He’s definitely more charismatic than Hakuryuu.

And it so happens that both have died (literally or not) and it somewhat changed their perception of the world. 

To me those are the ways they’re similar. So overall yes Alibaba seems to be a good foil to Sinbad, in fact he’s been written as such, especially if we consider the beginnings of the manga, and even their design.It even feels forced at times like that time with Aladdin praising Alibaba and shit.

While there are others who could have been thought to fill in that role at one point, they don’t come close to Alibaba imo. Here’s a few:

Kouen: many thought at one point that he’s the real foil to Sinbad, but as we got to learn more about him I don’t think he was ever meant to be Sinbad’s foil. And that is because he’s way too similar to Sinbad. He’s very sly, doesn’t hesitate to use shady methods, manipulative as fuck, you name it. So no he’s not actually Sinbad’s opposite, he’s only his opposite in terms of vision.

Judal: He could be seen as similar to Sinbad because of what happened to him and his parents, and Al Thamen. Both him and Sinbad were fucked over by Al Thamen. And while Sinbad likely wanted to make the world a better place, Judal only wanted to destroy it and wreak havoc....because it’s fun. So he could be seen as somewhat of a foil, but not entirely.

Hakuryuu: Hakuryuu has a few things going for him, especially now after the timeskip. He got a lot of character development, and we’ve seen him evolve from someone who is vengeful and consumed by hatred, to someone who actually let go of his hatred. He’s definitely more mature now. Just like Alibaba he’s of noble birth, which is opposite of Sinbad, but the major way in which he’s different is that he acknowledges the fact that a king can’t be righful at all times, which Sinbad thinks he can be all the time, or else he wouldn’t take all that responsibility on his own. It could have been interesting to explore more of this aspect, since I believe Hakuryuu has more edge than Alibaba, and it’s less cliche to have the guy who did some questionable things be the one who turns around and does the right thing, as opposed to the MC who is often shown to be naive and always ends up on the right side of a conflict. But that’s just me.

Aladdin: Oh boy, where to start? Aladdin is in no way Sinbad’s foil, no matter how hard he tries to  lecture him about fate. You could argue that both him and Sinbad are special entities, with Sinbad being a singularity while Aladdin is “Solomon’s proxy”, and prince of AT, a world that was destroyed ages ago...But there isn’t much to his character that can actually create a good contrast with Sinbad, personality wise. In fact I even find that he’s rather bland...but that’s not really relevant. His opposition to Sinbad’s plan has a lot to do with the propaganda he’s been taught by Ugo, so it’s not really clear if those are his ideas, or he’s just repeating the same PC crap that Ugo taught him. He’s definitely less of a foil than Hakuryuu and of course Alibaba.

So with that said, it’s pretty clear that only Alibaba can be seen as Sinbad’s real foil, because he’s been written in such a way. Only a true good guy would have to take on the big baddie who happens  to be morally grey, in typical shounen fashion. So there’s that too.

Does Alibaba actually have what it takes to oppose Sinbad and make him regain his senses? Or will Ohtaka just pull some Deus ex machina and have Alibaba just kill him? That is unclear, but one thing is clear in my mind is that Alibaba was deliberately written as Sinbad’s foil, ever since the beginning actually.