#except the latter was not actually in the rules but it was enforced

[homestuckconfession]

Im a big fan of roxy’s gender being different in each timeline. Meat!roxy being a transman is super cool, it makes total sense he would have a different journey regardless his gender than candy!roxy did. What really annoys me is how quick people are to accept that Vriska is a transgirl bcz of pesterquest, and that June is canon via word of god despite us not yet seeing candy!john develop in that direction on the page, but be so adamantly against meat!roxy’s transmascness. It feels hypocritical , if that makes sense?

.

[milky-rozen]

Im not sure if you talked about this yet but what makes Set different (as a pharaoh) from Osiris? I always kinda liked the idea of the original gods being out of touch from Humanity and with Osiris being the god of life he becomes closer to them with his teachings.

Is Set approved of by the other gods? Do Ra and other gods side with Set over Horus because of his strength and wisdom at first in your interpretation?

Heya!

So, differently from Osiris and, later on, from his successor Horus, Set's reign is definitely as out of touch as that of his father Geb and that of his Grandfather Shu, however, not every man or God was actually against his rulership.

Now, I don't want to make spoilers cause this part will be explained later in Thoth's Library and in Young Horus later on, but basically speaking, he had his own followers who believed he was the most suitable king among the three male sons of Geb and Nut. These latter will, in fact, wedge a war against those who supported them, especially Osiris. as for the Gods, he has always had Ra's unconditional support and favor which will, later on, influence the Ennead's position over Horus.

All the Gods do recognize his unparalleled strength, as he is the only one who's able to fight the giant snake Apep effortlessly, but they're also intimidated by his cunning and malicious mind as well. So, his divine supporters, being more afraid of him than anything, are less loyal to him than his human followers on Earth, who believe truly in his vision, with the sole exception of the foreign gods who entered the Pantheon during his reign and remained loyal to him.

Unlike Osiris, whose focus was on teaching humans to build an efficient society through his and Isis's teachings, Set prioritized territorial expansion and foreign trade and relations. His policies even allowed the Egyptian pantheon to grow as new gods joined their ranks.

Overall, Set's reign had its merits, but he had to overshadow the worship of other gods in favor of his own to better ensure his position, due to the violent way through which he obtained the crown. To prevent uprisings, he ensured that he was always the first to be worshipped, going as far as censoring or banning cults like those of Isis and Osiris when necessary, always enforcing these rules with the backing of his military forces.

Hope this answers your question!

[thegreenwolf]

Howdy! I stumbled across a broken link to your WordPress blog where you mentioned your views on people who believe their religious/spiritual practices exempt them from wildlife laws. I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts, since this is a topic I have a hard time getting through to others about. If you don't have the time (or don't want to), don't sweat it! Have a wonderful day ^-^

@raspberrysquid Well, it's something I've primarily run into in the Pagan/etc. arena. These religions, as a general rule, are recently created, though they may seek to emulate older polytheisms to varying degrees. (There are also polytheist reconstructionists who do not consider themselves under the modern Pagan umbrella for varying reasons, FTR, but that's a whole other discussion I'm not going to get into here. The Venn diagram is complex, and not everyone fits under the Big Tent, so to speak.)

The attitude I seem to run into repeatedly is the idea that Neopagan religions should be on an equal par with indigenous American religions with regards to access to restricted items such as eagle or other migratory bird feathers. For example, Lady Suzy Bunnysnuggles picks up a red-tailed hawk feather that a bird molted, and decides that this must be a sign from [insert deity or other higher power here] that she must incorporate that animal's energy into her spiritual practice somehow, and so she takes it home.

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with interpreting an encounter with an animal (or its shed bits) as being personally, spiritually profound. However, if Lady Suzy Bunnysnuggles is--like many of us Pagan folk--an American citizen of varying European origins or otherwise not in a federally enrolled* Native American tribe, she is breaking the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) which prohibits the possession of almost all native wild bird parts, other than a few exceptions like turkeys. This law is in place because in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries bird populations in North America were being absolutely demolished for both restaurant tables and the feather trade. Since you can't really tell the difference between a feather that was naturally molted, and one that was torn off of a poached bird, the law has a blanket prohibition on possession regardless of origin.

There are some exceptions to the MBTA, and to the Bald and Golden Eagle Act, for federally enrolled people to have access to otherwise prohibited parts for religious or cultural use. However, people like Lady Suzy Bunnysnuggles, when informed of the laws, huff in indignation that they, too, should have religious exemptions, and that they are not, in fact, going to put that feather back where they found it. In fact, they may very well hang it from their rearview mirror or on a ritual staff, in blatant violation of the MBTA, and with the assumption that they will not run across a USFW law enforcement agent or other authority who is familiar with the laws. If pressed, they may claim "Oh, it's a TURKEY feather**!", but they're banking on the idea that no one is actually going to recognize what they have.

My thought on it, as a longtime Pagan of various European descent, is that it's my people who basically screwed up everything for everyone else by coming over here and overhunting species and systematically destroying their habitats. I've been working with hides, bones, and other remains in my practice for over a quarter of a century, and I am totally fine with staying within the confines of various laws. I have plenty of things I can legally work with, AND I am creative and flexible enough to come up with legal alternatives to prohibited items. My traditions are my own, and they don't pre-date me. Indigenous people, on the other hand, have been dealing with over 500 years of physical and cultural genocide, and the previous ban on their possession of eagle feathers and the like is just one more manifestation thereof; reversing that ban and making allowances for feathers/etc. for their spiritual and cultural practices is a TINY piece of trying to undo centuries of damage.

I am not going to try to argue that the erasure of European polytheistic traditions by Christianity many centuries ago affects me in the same way that the ongoing oppression of indigenous Americans affects them. They're not even comparable. Any problems I may have experienced as a relatively out Pagan in the United States are nowhere near in comparison to the immensity of 500+ years of active racism and other violence enacted upon Native American communities by both individuals and governmental entities.

Moreover, if we open exceptions to Neopagans and other followers of modern nature spirituality, then anyone can step up and say "Oh, hey, I'm a Wiccan/Druid/etc., can I have some eagle feathers?" that would then open up a greater demand for otherwise prohibited animal remains, and feed into a still-substantial black market. Therefore, I think it's best if I and Lady Suzy Bunnysnuggles simply find alternative ways to work with the archetypal spirit of Red-Tailed Hawk, rather than argue that our supposed religious oppression is somehow on par of that of indigenous Americans, and use their plight to try to weasel our way out of following a law that is in place to protect wildlife after other white people have demonstrated time and again that they couldn't be trusted to hunt wildlife at a sustainable level. Is it a case of some bad actors ruining things for everyone else? I mean, sure, maybe. But it's one of those things that I've long since made my peace with.

*This is with the understanding that there are also significant problems with federal recognition of some tribes, but not others, and the immense amount of bureaucratic bullshit a group of indigenous people have to wade through just to prove their legitimacy to the BIA.

**I once pointed out to a fellow vendor at an event that some of the feathers on their wares were, in fact, from various species of owl, because the last thing I want is for someone who is simply ignorant of the law to get in trouble, and generally speaking people are pretty cool about removing the illegal bits of their work and grateful that they met me before they met someone who could actually issue a ticket and/or cause trouble for the event runners. This person instead insisted repeatedly, both to me and to event staff, that they were turkey feathers, in such a manner that it was clear they knew what they were but was assuming we all played the "wink wink, nudge nudge, yeah, those sure are TURKEY feathers!" game. Needless to say, they had to take down anything made with owl feathers in order to stay in the vendors' row.

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Les Misérables - Section 1.5.13 - Solution of Some Questions of Municipal Police

The thing that stands out to me about the scene whete Javert arrests Fantine is that Javert isn’t actually motivated by enforcing the law.

That may sounds counterintuitive. Isn’t Javert’s defining characteristic that he cares about virtually nothing except enforcing the law, at the expense of mercy and compassion?

Yes to the latter; no to the former. Javert’s motivation, shown throughout this scene is not enforcing the law, it is enforcing the social hierarchy, the class system.

M. Madeleine in fact points this out:

“The truth is that I was passing through the square when you arrested this woman; there was a crowd still there; I learned the circumstances; I know all about it; it is the citizen who was in the wrong, and who, by a faithful police, would have been arrested.”

In saying this, Madeleine emphasizes what Javert did not do: ask anyone else what had happened, and whether Bamatabois had done anything to provoke Fantine, as, in fact, he had.

Moreover, the law says that Madeleine does have jurisdiction here to decide Fantine’s case, and it’s delightful to see Valjean out-rules-lawyer Javert, noting that Javert is (if I understand correctly) employed by the national government, whereas this case falls under municipal jurisdiction, which Madeleine has authority over:

“The matter of which you speak belongs to the municipal police. By the terms of articles nine, eleven, fifteen, and sixty-six of the code of criminal law, I am the judge of it. I order that this woman be set at liberty.”

“But, Monsieur Mayor – ”

“I refer you to article eighty-one of the law of December 13, 1799, upon illegal imprisonment.”

Javert does not have any rebuttal to Madeleine’s citation of the actual law.

Now, let’s look at Javert’s motivations and emphases throughout the chapter:

1) He called all the ideas of which his mind was capable around the grand thing that he was doing. The more he examined the conduct of this girl, the more he revolted at it. It was clear that he had seen a crime committed. He had seen, there in the street, society represented by a property holder and an elector, insulted and attacked by a creature who was an outlaw and an outcast. A prostitute had assaulted a citizen.

2) To see a woman of the town spit in the face of a mayor was a thing so monstrous that in his most daring suppositions he would have thought it sacrilege to believe it possible.

3) “This wretched woman has insulted a citizen.”

4) “This girl fell upon Monsieur Bamatabois, who is an elector and the owner of that fine house with a balcony, that stand at the corner of the esplanade, three stories high, all of hewn stone. Indeed, there are some things in this world which must be considered.”

If Javert was merely a ruthlessly impartial enforcer of the law against all who broke it (which would be bad enough!) then Bamatabois’ house would have been perfectly irrelevant, and the fact that he attacked Fantine first would have been highly relevant. But that is not what Javert cares about. What matters to him is being the enforcer of the class system, of the respectable and propertied against the poor and miserable. He diesn’t need to do anything so pointless as investigate anything, because the entire point, to him, is that Fantine is intrinsically guilty simply because of who she is.

[tanadrin]

There seems to be a common cycle in U.S. law where the federal government establishes some principle to protect citizens in their individual capacity from government abuse (a law, constitutional amendment, or SCOTUS decision) > business uses that principle to try to argue they shouldn't be subject to some law > after much wrangling, the original law is held to protect property rights but not any other rights like voting. The Slaughter-House cases weren't a complete cycle--the butchers lost, and the privileges and immunities clause was gutted--and sometimes you get a bonus Step 1a of "conservative complains that supposedly oppressed people actually have it better than the majority these days" (notably we have Andrew Johnson on record, complaining less than 20 years after the end of the Civil War, that in fact black people have more rights than white people now).

And I think this contributes to the view in the U.S. that individual freedom/civil rights are inherently bound up with capitalism. It's not that there's actually a strong logical interdependence between the two concepts in law, it's just that rules about the former get argued to be actually rules about the latter, and the Supreme Court (which for most of its history has been a pretty reactionary institution; the Warren Court is a major exception) is much more comfortable protecting property rights than individual rights. So what's really on display here is a quirk of American jurisprudence, out of which a philosophical connection has been retconned--even though if that connection were real, you would expect historic protections for civil rights to be a lot stronger in the United States!

A more complete example of this cycle is Lochner v New York (1905), which used the 14th amendment to make labor laws basically a non-starter, while also, of course, not using the 14th amendment for its original purpose: letting black people vote. In the Lochner era in particular there are occasional civil rights wins (Buchanan v Warley), but there's a real reluctance to take the same logic of substantive due process in the sphere of property rights and rights to conduct commerce and apply them to the sphere of civil rigths. No challenges to Jim Crow, no restrictions on private racial discrimination (restrictive covenants are fine, just not municipality-enforced racial zoning laws), and the effect of all these rulings altogether is a court which is weakly protecting of civil rights, but strongly protective of the rights of business owners--in short, more a pro-business court than a really principled libertarian one.

[miniar]

"No politics." and "No religion." rules are Massive Red Flags.

These rules are common in a lot of places that are intended for discussing specific things like your personal disability and relationship to it, or your personal queerness and your relationship to it, or your hobby, be it trains or cross-stitching, and more often than not, this rule creates an unsafe environment for marginalized peoples.

These rules are especially common on US based forums and chat servers, but they're found all over the world.

The problem with these rules should be obvious, but in case you've missed it; Everything is Politics.

Everything in your life is affected by how your country and the world around you are governed. From the price of your tap water to whether or not your postal service works. From whether something is purchasable locally to if it can even be imported or not. From whether you've got a safe place to live to whether or not you can legally drive your car.

Every single moment of every single day of your life is affected by the rules and regulations that exist around you. The fact that you can read this right now is because I live somewhere where my access to the internet and freedom of speech allow me to write this, and where you either have access and freedom to read, or you've found a workaround that lets you get away with accessing and reading what your government has forbidden.

EVERYTHING! Every Damned Thing is affected directly and indirectly at all times by politics.

And everything you do and say anywhere outside of your own personal bubble where not a single soul can hear you is both political and shaped by your politics.

It can be so minuscule and so mundane and normal that it's effectively irrelevant, but every last one of you has some idea, vague as it may be, of what kind of world you long to live in. And not only that, every last one of you, even if that too may seem vague and mundane, is shaped to some degree by the world you Do live in.

Religion, for better or worse (mostly the latter in most cases), is intricately interwoven into the world in much the same way. Even heathens like me are prone to exclaim "Jesus Christ!" or "God Damn It!" when the occasion calls for shouting expletives and throwing your hands up in frustration.

Much of western European and US culture is so steeped in cultural christianity that people treat the idea of going to church for a concert as an entirely secular and non-religious thing, even when that concert is a team of church choirs singing songs from Jesus Christ Superstar to mention a real life example.

So when these rules are set and implemented, they don't actually mean what they say on the packaging, and they're consistently enforced in a way that is based in conflict avoidance first and foremost.

And here's the thing that happens, and while exceptions may exist I have never seen one: - Someone makes a post or writes a comment or shares an image that contains dogwhistles or other forms of fascist propaganda, without using the words that people associate with specific political parties. - Someone else, often times the very target of the fascism in question or at the least a semi-aware ally, responds by calling out the problem with the post or comment or image, calling it out by name. - The rule of no-politics is invoked and the person responding is scolded for either making it political, or failing to keep their criticism of the politics a private matter with either the fascist or the mods.

That's the sequence of events I've watched unfold, and been a part of, too many times to count, and the results are a testing ground for dogwhistles where a fascist feels welcome and protected.

Their politics are never challenged because you're not allowed to talk politics.

They get to feed you tropes and dogwhistles all day long, as long as they don't say the quiet part out loud, and if anyone challenges them, the mods and rules are used in their favor.

Any environment that tells me "No Politics!" and/or "No Religion!" is an environment that tells me that this is a place where I'm forbidden from speaking up for myself when the fascist start implying, polite as can be, that perhaps the world would be better of if people like me were simply not allowed to exist.

Or at the absolutely very least, it tells me this is a place run by people who have forgotten that they live in a world and that pretending otherwise won't make that a political fact.

[loki-zen]

it’s weird i think of space in America as being less… micromanaged than space in the UK. for obvious reasons. but i wonder if space in big cities is actually more micromanaged.

i mean, there are tons of american cities so presumably they vary and maybe here is somewhere in the middle or something. but comparing Portland to like various big UK cities i’ve spent time in and manchester in particular as that’s most fresh in my mind.

it felt like anywhere there was that you could licitly linger in was like An Designated Park, and there are lots of them and they’re great but they have like rules and opening times.

(not that the latter are enforced most of the time except i assume against unhoused ppl but still)

idk hard to words largely Vibes but y’know

[pizkwat1]

Stormcloaks or Imperials?

So, obviously the real answer is "who would your character side with?" And really, the negotiated settlement route is the best choice, kicking the can until hopefully either the Thalmor play their hand and piss off the Empire enough to abandon the concordat and legalize the cult of Talos again or the Markarth incident is forgotten and Skyrim can regain the autonomy it had previously. But, if we're applying real-world ideology to a fantasy setting, and if a side has to be declared "right":

The Stormcloaks have a right to self-determination in the face of the Empire's denial of their right to free worship. Skyrim remaining in the Empire would probably be better for the Nords and Tamriel overall, but that can't be dictated to them. "It's for your own good" can't trump human rights.

Yes, Ulfric is racist. Deeply racist, his man Galmar evoking the Ehlnofex race war from literally before the dawn of time. Racist not just against the Dunmer, which is honestly almost understandable (how would Mexico feel about American refugees? Especially if Americans lived a thousand years and most of them were alive for the Mexican-American war?), but actually more racist against Argonians, which is honestly pretty weird. (Why? Because of Umbriel? The Knahaten Flu? That was generations ago. Under Hoag Stormcloak they weren't banned from the city. It honestly doesn't make sense.)

Ulfric did also prompt the crackdown on the cult of Talos in the first place. Remember the Markarth Incident? Reachmen (a whole other issue) took over Markarth, and a militia led by Ulfric took it back and said they would occupy it until the Empire legalized Talos worship. Prior to that, Talos worship was definitely illegal in Skyrim as with everywhere else (play Elder Scrolls: Blades), but it wasn't very strongly enforced in Skyrim. After Ulfric's stunt, it was very strongly enforced. Now, it seems most likely that Ulfric did this because he was stupid -- if he was smart he wouldn't have killed Torygg. It can't be ruled out that he did it to create instability in which he could gain power. But it does seem more likely that he was just stupid. But Ulfric's demands were not unreasonable. He voted Green when he should've voted Dem, in essence, and blew it all up. He wasn't pragmatic, but he shouldn't be faulted for idealism.

(The Altmer in Windhelm do not make Ulfric not a racist by the way; The Pocket Guide to the Empire, I forget which edition, pretty much definitively establishes that most Altmer who live outside of the Summerset Isles are exiles. Ulfric would be predisposed to quite like an Altmer political exile.)

Ulfric is a bigot and frankly a bad leader. It really should go without saying that Ulfric is not the entirety of the Stormcloaks. In Riften we see several licensed Argonian merchants and even landowners fully accepted, and a Dunmer holding a prominent position in Dawnstar even despite his shady past. (The latter might be called a token exception, but you gotta remember every city in that game has like 30 dudes in it so Erandur is like 3% of Dawnstar's population.) The Stormcloaks are united by their cause, not by loyalty to Ulfric. The only Stormcloak Jarl who actually seems to even like him is Skald of Dawnstar -- that's probably because, again, Ulfric is probably stupid, and the Jarls know it. Ulfric is undoubtedly an extremely problematic element of the Stormcloak administration, but not really a very powerful one, and to reiterate, a flawed administration, even a bigoted one, does not exempt its people from a right to independence. (There are some recent real-world examples which I feel it would be disrespectful for me to bring up.)

By the way, this is very different from the American civil war. The Confederacy seceded explicitly because the federal government was trying to remove a form of oppression. The Stormcloaks rebelled because the Empire was reasserting oppression. As evidenced by all the talk from Windhelm's Dunmer and Argonians about "ever since Ulfric came along," Windhelm was not a racist city prior to the rebellion. Ulfric's oppression of Windhelm's racial minorities is less akin to Confederate slavery and more akin to American internment camps in World War Two (which to be clear were very bad, and also very different from fighting a war to preserve institution chattel slavery. All throughout human history you see a flareup of xenophobia during wars. War is bad.)

You can also consider the alternative. From a utilitarian perspective, an Imperial victory is worse because the suffering of two small immigrant communities in one city is replaced with the suffering of a religious group representing something like a third of all of Skyrim. (No suffering is not an option because The Elder Scrolls is diet grimdark.) Again, the negotiated settlement really is the best option, but that's a cop-out, so, Stormcloaks. That said, in most of my playthroughs I went Imperial lol.

[philosopherking1887]

If it's only "many," not "most," your argument makes no sense. I found this source stating that 10% of the Israeli population has dual citizenship. Some proportion of those might be Israeli Arabs rather than Jews, but for the sake of argument, let's say they're all Jews. So if 1 million of the 7 million Jews living in Israel have dual citizenship and can move somewhere else, you've still created a refugee crisis of 6 million. Your argument relied on an equivocation between those two vague quantifiers, "many" and "most." Your allies will read and nod along, thinking, yes, of course most Israelis have a spare apartment in Brooklyn. When an opponent points out that it's not most, you can retreat to say "I only said 'many.'" Well, how many is "many"? How does that actually solve the problem? I was reading your claim charitably as the one that actually supports your overall argument -- though it is empirically false -- rather than a complete non sequitur, which serves no function except to invoke stereotypes about Jews (which you may not realize are antisemitic, but the Left generally considers that to be no excuse in the case of harmful stereotypes about other marginalized groups).

(Putting the rest under a cut because it got long.)

Leftist activists in the West might not want to kick out the Jews (at least, officially), but listen to what actual members of Hamas say (the 2017 revised charter was a piece of cynical propaganda, as their subsequent actions should prove). Listen to what Palestinian children are taught to say about Jews. It is not "an imagined threat"; it is taking them at their word. We -- people who favor a two-state solution (because no one in this conversation is a right-wing Netanyahu supporter) -- do not think Palestinians "must be held on a tight leash and cannot be given autonomy"; we think they should be given self-determination, but should not be given untrammeled power over the Jewish population in Israel. We do not think they're "wild animals"; we think they are human beings, who like all human beings have the capacity -- and in many cases the demonstrated willingness -- to commit horrific acts of violence. Having been oppressed does not make them automatically incapable of doing wrong, and assuming that it does is just as reductive and infantilizing as assuming that they are capable of nothing but violence.

History shows that oppressed people turning violently against their former oppressors when they find themselves in a position of power is not nearly as rare as the Left makes it out to be. Leftists like to hold up emancipation in the US and the end of apartheid in South Africa as "proof," but these are only two examples, which took place in their own unique contexts that are not generalizable to every other situation of historical oppression. Similarly, the context of "land back" movements in, e.g., North America and Australia matters: those populations are vastly outnumbered by the settler population, so even if they were granted legal rights over all of the land, they know that they wouldn't have the power to violently enforce them even if they wanted to, so of course it's in their interests not even to consider the possibility. But there are plentiful historical examples where vengeful violence and persecution did take place, sometimes lasting beyond the acute conflict: the French and Russian Revolutions come to mind (the latter including persecution not only of the former ruling nobility, but also of relatively well-off peasant landowners who were perceived as part of the oppressive system); I have seen people on here hold up the mass expulsion of both European-descended Pieds-Noirs and all Jews (both Sephardi Jews who fled there during the Spanish Inquisition and Maghrebi Jews who had been there for millennia) from Algeria as a positive example that should be emulated by Palestinians.

But since you did say that the oppressed group "is far more likely to react peacefully and be open to cooperation if their rights are actively returned to them than if they have to take them by force," perhaps it would be more persuasive to focus on examples where there was a political settlement, but newly empowered formerly oppressed groups still took revenge against their former oppressors. One such is Uganda, which was granted independence by the UK without a violent independence struggle, but Idi Amin inflamed resentment against South Asians who had been economically favored under the British colonial government and in 1972 expelled nearly all of them as part of a policy of "Africanization." The cases of violent expropriation of whites in Zimbabwe and the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis (who had been the pre-colonial ruling class and were further empowered by German and Belgian colonial regimes) are a little more ambiguous because there had been earlier armed conflict, but in both cases the revenge violence occurred well after the acute conflict, when the formerly oppressed group had been in power for a while; in Zimbabwe it was part of the implementation of legally agreed-upon land redistribution, while in Rwanda it was a drastically disproportionate response to guerrilla attempts by Tutsis who had gone into exile following the Hutu Revolution (which was facilitated by the departing Belgian colonial government) to overthrow the Hutu-dominated one-party dictatorship in Rwanda and regain citizenship and influence. For that matter, the French Revolution is also a somewhat ambiguous case, since aside from the storming of the Bastille, the abolition of the Ancien Regime was mostly accomplished through legislative means, with many prominent revolutionaries themselves being aristocrats or clergy members who wanted to discard their own privileges; but that did not protect them from being accused of "counter-revolutionary" sentiments and executed during the Reign of Terror.

So your factual claims are largely unsupported by the evidence, but your normative framework is also simplistic and ultimately indefensible. In your first reply you said this:

a victim-oriented approach would focus on giving back what was taken and allowing the victims to direct the course of justice.

What is "a victim-oriented approach"? Does it mean giving the designated victims everything they want, regardless of what it is? Would a "victim-oriented approach" dictate that rape victims who want to see their rapists castrated, or tortured and murdered, should be given exactly what they want? And once again, it is simply untrue that all victims are automatically virtuous, forgiving, and merciful; yes, some are, but vengefulness is also a natural and frequent human response, as history can amply attest.

Your later reply does seem to suggest that your favored approach is to give the victims exactly what they want, consequences be damned:

you can't talk about reparations and ignore that palestinians have actually been incredibly clear about the reparations they want: to return home.

Which of course sounds very simple and reasonable unless you consider that returning to Palestinians who fled or were driven out of their homes in 1948 and their heirs all the land that they owned at the time would require evicting a lot of Israelis, and would likely make Jewish self-determination non-viable by breaking up any territory where there is a majority -- much like the West Bank settlements, which similarly threaten the viability of a Palestinian state (which in both cases is part of the point). Of course, you will respond that these are entirely different because the Palestinians would be reclaiming land they were forced from only 75 years ago, whereas the Jews were forced from their land 2000 years ago, so their claim has long expired. Others have discussed the logical and ethical difficulties with setting an expiration date on indigeneity; I don't need to get into that. As far as I'm concerned, the most relevant question is not just who owned it when, but: what would be the wider consequences of enforcing a given land claim?

The safety and right to self-determination of Israeli Jews (which is almost half of the world's Jewish population) deserves as much consideration as the safety and right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. I absolutely think the 500,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank can and should be evicted because their presence actively endangers Palestinian civilians and threatens the integrity and independence of a future Palestinian state -- but also because they would have somewhere to go: namely, to Israel proper, within the pre-1967 borders. (I also think it would be reasonable to cede more land currently held by Israel to a future Palestinian state, in proportion to the respective populations -- the original 1947 UN Partition Plan was much more generous to the Palestinian Arabs -- but unfortunately, I doubt that's even on the negotiating table.) If hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews were evicted to honor the 1948 land claims of Palestinians, and the state that protects them and realizes their aspiration to self-determination consequently became unsustainable, most of them, as previously established, would not have somewhere else they can go (once again, more than half are descendants of Jews expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries, who definitely do not have the option of returning there; see, for example, this article about Libyan Jews who have faced danger just returning temporarily to check on the state of abandoned Jewish sites, which also features a photo of Libyan Arab Muslims holding up signs saying "We strongly refuse the Jewish on our land" in response to a proposal to restore the main synagogue in Tripoli).

The question I often find myself wanting to ask Leftists is: do you believe that violence and oppression are wrong in general, on principle, or only wrong when directed at certain people by certain others? Do you believe that all peoples have a right to self-determination if they want it, or only selected ones? If you are only capable of empathizing with one party to a conflict; if you are only permitted to "frame this from the perspective of the indigenous population," or the oppressed victims -- that is, the population whose claim to indigeneity and victimhood you recognize -- and you consider it treason to even consider the perspective or the well-being of people on the other side, you will have a very narrow understanding of the situation, and you will likely end up demonizing an entire population and thus justifying any degree of violence against them -- which is exactly what has happened in Leftist discourse on Israel/Palestine. You can critically evaluate the claims of both sides without necessarily granting them equal weight; after consideration, I still think the Russian justification of their invasion of Ukraine is disingenuous and/or delusional. But I also don't think that random Russian civilians should be brutally murdered, even if they wholeheartedly support the invasion, and the fate of Russian civilians in the Donbas and Crimea should be taken into consideration in the resolution to the conflict. Are you capable of genuinely considering the rights and well-being of Israelis -- genuinely, seriously, without having to falsify the facts of their situation to dismiss any concerns?

Idk it's just weird that people want israel disestablished.

Like do not get me wrong, the Israeli government very much has its wrongs and is not good. However idk? Like maybe instead of metaphorically nuking it all, we should instead focus on improving the Israeli government and laws and policies?

Under the current governments of Palestine, getting rid of Israel would not bode well for jews. And it seems just odd want bad things to happen to jews living in Israel instead of working on making things better for both jews and Palestinians. Like putting one group down to uplift another is not very coexistence.

And it's crazy how going "umm guys maybe we should be promoting coexistence instead of getting rid of a whole country" is seen as bad and radical.

[gentrychild]

Some part of me wonders if the hsc was just waiting for the hero system to fail as badly as it did in canon. I don't mean it in the, they don't benefit from the working hero system, but I mean it in the, the hero system is working exactly as it is meant to. All Might brought peace and peacetime can make it hard to maintain power over a population because people have the luxury of questioning stuff. Obviously the entire culture around pro-heroes and villains would be a good deterrent to people saying "hmm, maybe that was excessive force and also that villain was motivated by poverty and maybe force shouldn't be the go-to way to prevent crime" but peace makes people feel safe enough to ask those things.

But disruption? Terror? All Might gone, heavy losses on the side of heroes, heroes failing to defeat the villains with mass casualties, a loss of faith a system with comparatively a gentle use of force to what the hsc might use, where daytime heroes were under intense scrutiny from the public and help to high standards of behaviour?

All Might made people feel like heroes would always win and so they could demand high standards of behaviour and ethics from them. Without All Might and a guarantee of victory, handing more power to the hsc or allowing more leeway might seem logical to scared people. Perhaps not heroes, but still individual actors using quirks with different branding. It's likely what happened during the Dawn of Quirks and historically, that's often how governments gain greater power as a result of instability. And even once Shigiraki is dealt with, this attitude will extend to all villains/criminals with harsher responses to mild infractions. Perhaps tighter Quirk laws as well, or at least more enforcement.

If left alone, the hero system as it is would likely go through cycles. Chaos, power granted to the government, use of this power to gain stability through force, and either this peace through force is maintained until a stronger disruption/villain, or the amount of force used is lessened through public demand. The hero system collapses once again because root causes are not addressed, chaos, and then power is handed over to the government to regain stability through force. Rinse, repeat, until it inevitably implodes.

I don't think the hsc predicted it failing as badly as it did, or how Endeavour's actions would bite them in the ass with Dabi. But I could see them betting on All Might retiring, the spike in crime and social unrest as a result, and using that to push through more authoritarian measures. Because that's how it often goes in the real world

Panem and circenses, Anon. Bread and circuses. That's how you keep a society from noticing people in power are taking them from fools and that's on what the hero system is based.

Civilians need big good heroes to protect them from the big bad villains. Add some cult of personality.... I mean, hero worship and quirk veneration (since heroes are the elite, the only one allowed to use their quirks, normal people can't use theirs in public places, and villains are usually people with ominous quirks), and you get BNHA!

And the great thing is that if people are brainwashed into loving hero, they don't question the statu quo too much and you don't need force to justify more and more power being given to the heroes.

Well, to a point. Because, as you said, the longer the peace lasts, the more people have time to think about the flaws of the system.

I think that the reasons why this lack of questioning lasted so long despite All Might's enforced peace was because:

1. again, the society worships heroes and propaganda is a nifty tool.

2. that peace was enforced by All Might. There is a real difference between "We live in peace because people wants to be nice to each other" and "Our protector prevents the bad guys from harming us." For the latter, there is still this sense of "the others would harm us if heroes weren't there to protect us".

But even with that, you're right, the public would have grown antsy sooner or later. So, the way to keep the system in place would have been to show that the villains were becoming more vicious, so the Hero Commission would have no choice but to say "See what happens when we don't have free reins to protect you?"

However, i am convinced that the HPSC never would have allowed the hero society to fail this way.

Endangering it a little bit is good to scare the public and make them long for the safety of the past. But when you let a system crumble, odds are that the opponents are the one to get in power and to become the new government. (Or, if said opponents are a bunch of anarchists who don't want to rule, you get chaos then, some time after, government slowly rebuilding itself but it's not the same guys anymore and the HSPC, since it's made of people who like power, would never willingly part with it.)

No, I think that messed everything up was All Might's sudden retirement + the fight in Kamino.

The Hero Commission probably knew that All Might was weakening (that was kind of an opened secret in some circles) but he would have lasted longer if there wasn't for the Kamino fight. So, and I am speculating here but that's kinda my thing, the HSPC probably had something planned so they would slowly introduce the idea of All Might's retirement to the public and a new number 1, ready to walk in All Might's footsteps but different enough for people not to constantly compare the both of them.

And if the HPSC had the time to make it happen, the new number 1 hero would have been that guy:

Alas for the Hero Commission, All Might not only retired sooner than intended but in a very public manner, and worse of all, he almost got killed.

Before Kamino, the LoV was a bunch of scrubs. They had their behind handed to them by high school children (on their first week at hero school, no less).

Then, the summer camp happened. UA being attacked and Bakugou being abducted was a golden opportunity for the Hero Commission if they wanted more power. They had THE excuse to have more influence on the hero schools.

Except that 1. Nedzu didn't call the top heroes to rescue Bakugou. He called the UA alumni, restoring some of UA street cred and (accidentally?) preventing HC heroes to fix the situation. 2. the Hero Commission, even if they were warned that AFO could be there, thought that top heroes would easily take care of the LoV, who had won against students and a bunch of low ranked heroes.

Instead, they got this:

SSS ranked villain. Someone who almost killed All Might. Someone who probably could have razed a town.

That's the kind of power backing the LOV.

And that's terrifying.

But worse than AFO killing so many people, worse than AFO almost killing the Symbol of Peace under everyone's eyes, he revealed the truth.

All Might, symbol of absolute strength, their protector, was actually reduced to this state.

That's the opposite of slowly introducing All Might's retirement to the world. For the moment, everyone who saw this had to live through the eventuality that the one guaranteeing their peace was going to die on this day, leaving the villains free to do whatever they wanted.

After that, they needed to comfort the public, to tell them that they could fix this. Once again, it could be taken as an opportunity to have more power, to have more authority, but now, there was a much higher risk for the Hero Commission.

So, they had the great idea of doing whatever happened during the war arc. To show the threat of the big bad villain and to assemble an army of heroes to defeat them, to show that 1. the heroes have it handled 2. that the Hero Commission helped preventing things from becoming worse so they should be granted more powers.

This was a high risk, high reward situation.

And the Hero Commission failed to assess how great the risk was.

[joemuggs]

ESCAPE THE CRINGE

I first wrote this piece for an art mag at the start of the year but they dicked me about over rewrites so much - and I mean really dicking about, like radio silence for three weeks then suddenly demanding changes for the next day - that for the first time in my life I actually pulled a piece. A couple of other outlets were up for it, but needed further alteration to fit house style... With so much going on I let it slide and let it slide, and now it's been so long I just feel like shoving it out there. It still feels relevant (maybe more so now that we're seeing an increasing public collapse of some of the most high profile demagogue scammers, albeit with new hydra heads quickly replacing them), and I'd rather have people see it and maybe feed back, rather than wrangle over it any further. So without further preamble, here's some thoughts about one of the defining reactions of our time and how to get away from it.

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

We live in a time when groupthink and echo chambers are everywhere, where ingroup radicalisation, cult-like behaviours and submission to scammers and demagogues seem to be defining patterns of the era. Blame for these things is often laid at the feet of algorithms, of politicians, of capital - in many cases rightly so - but we all individually play the game too. We build the walls of our own cultural gated communities, with tweets and artworks and individual choices about where to go and what to say, and the more we do so the more those spaces that we force ourselves – and others – into become more or less gilded prisons. We all think we’re hip to something, and end up orbiting that something endlessly.

The first rule of hip club is you don’t talk about hip club. That is: if you’re serious about your aesthetic nowadays, you do your very best to not acknowledge that it even is an aesthetic – let alone identify its rules and delineations. Now, of course this doesn’t go for everyone: there are still anime cosplayers, emo kids and others who still gauchely adhere to the overt “style tribe” late 20th century ways of belonging. But these are exceptions that prove the rule. Far more often the things that make us “us”, that hold us together, are still based on taste - but these tastes that provide us with a sense of belonging are signalled covertly. They’re signalled not by discussing, or even necessarily knowing, what preferences make you belong among Your People, but rigidly enforcing the ingroup-outgroup divide with reactions against The Others’ tastes: through a set of real or figurative winces, grimaces and cringes. 

Oh yes, the cringe. That most visceral response, often deployed simply as a single word sentence by the Terminally Online, the argument ender to end all argument enders: just “cringe”. It’s noun, verb and adjective all rolled together into a gut level rejection, and it’s a dead giveaway that so, so many parts of The Discourse - as people solipsistically have it - is based way more on aesthetics than it is on any kind of coherent set of positions. That is, it’s less about showing revulsion at ideas, than about the fact that they’re expressed gauchely or clumsily or simply with the wrong slang. It’s a social cue, a nod to one’s fellows, to acknowledge shared good taste in memes, phrases and cadences, which one’s interlocutor has unforgivably failed to engage properly with. 

This kind of of us-and-them cringe-signalling operates in various ways across society, but perhaps the most fundamental dichotomy is basic vs hip, or normie vs hip. This in itself is framed in a variety of ways, but a super simplified version might run like this: influencer culture, sincere slogans, Will Ferrell and The Office memes, Goop wellness, "Fiat 500 Twitter" on one side - and shitposting, pursuit of the latest zero-caps punctuational microvariant, everything intellectualised but ironised, the moods formerly known as “based” and "dank" on the other. The former sees the latter as smug, pretentious, nonsensical, messy while in the other direction the hip cast the basics as conservative, simplistic, unimaginative, conformist. Each cringes at the other, each considers the other fundamentally in bad taste.

And these dichotomies are held in place firmly by the material interests of vested powers. So to keep with our sample duality, on the basic side, there are the affirmatory or aspirational solution-havers, the Matt Haigs and Johann Haris, Rupi Kaurs and Molly Maes, while on the hip side there’s the Somethingawful-to-Vice-to-Broadsheet ironymonger pipeline and the Politics Podcast Industrial Complex embodied in people called things like “PissPigGrandad”. Each relies on hate and fear of the other to provide a steady stream of attention and income to those who shore up their own self-image, who normalise an way of being, who provide just enough answers to make people feel like they’re on the right track, but not so many that they won’t keep coming back for more. Yet each is, of course, built on a lie. 

The basic think they are commonsensical and unpretentious, but actually adhere to byzantine aesthetic and political codes of belonging. The hip think they are switched on, fast moving and progressive but in fact their gatekeeping is deeply conservative: the solipsism of believing an echo chamber is “The Discourse”, no matter how ironically you try to couch that, is all about normalising enormously limited race, age, nationality and class boundaries around what is acceptable. Both are co-dependent false divisions of ideas and people made to shore up power structures and the interests of the privileged, and both are built on aesthetics above all else. Each is, in its own way, an insistence of good taste.

Once you see this, you see it everywhere. There are so many versions of this mutually exclusionary duality. Sometimes they’ll manifest as ostensible generational, regional or professional divides, sometimes as scene or faction schisms (and note well, political factions have more in common with musical, fashion or social scenes than anyone within them would ever care to admit). Each time, if you look, you’ll find that they are defined more by aesthetics than ethics: by those assemblages of catchphrases, by certain quirks of timing and emphasis. Whether it’s Dawkins and Harris quoting facts-and-reason guys defining themselves against what they think of as a feminised, emotion-driven mushiness in the barbaric masses, or underground music fans against the flash and spectacle of EDM, or vintage specs wearing postgrad ketamine-leftist cliques against “shitlib centrists”, or crypto-bros against anyone who doesn’t have a wallet, all too often the sense of self is generated by what one is NOT. 

And each time if you dig into what is happening in these oppositions, you’ll find someone benefitting in real, material terms: spokespeople, figureheads, demagogues, people whose theories or slogans are rallying points for believers and who rely on those believers for speaking engagements, podcast and newsletter subscriptions, NFT sales, academic tenure, political appointments, newspaper columns. There is a whole egosystem of commentariat and metacommentariat whose job appears to make bogeymen of one another, yet who one all too often finds in the upper echelons are on perfectly friendly terms when they run into one another in green rooms of media recordings, backstage at literary festivals or in the offices of the agents that they share. This last location not picked idly, n.b.: one of the UK’s loudest hip-left commentators of the past decade shares a literary agent with a leading hip-right provocateur and an old-school hard-right rabble rouser: they are very literally all in it together.

All of this, it really bears repeating, is built on lies, and further, is built on consciously or unconsciously deliberate obscuring of the truth, in order to support these power structures. If ever you see an argument that’s built around one of these abstracted dualities - pop vs underground, modernist vs traditional, respectable vs transgressive, health vs pleasure, decadence vs morality, rationalism vs “the blob”, take your pick - you can be sure that not only is there someone making cultural or actual capital out of it, but that they are muddying waters to make it more difficult to make out the connections, genealogies and human realities underlying what is being discussed. An appeal to take a side in one of these, ultimately aesthetic, judgements – an appeal to show good taste – is an appeal to feel the cringe instead of analysing what one is cringing at. It’s an appeal against scholarship.

Which is why we must, with extreme prejudice, abolish the concept of good taste. “In principle,” said the DJ and dance music producer Chrissy in 2020, “I think the idea of good taste is classist and racist! Usually whatever's considered good taste is what the most powerful or most educated or wealthiest people feel comfortable yelling about, and the ones out of them that can yell loudest and most eloquently about it, as a society we call that good taste.” And he is entirely right. No matter how you define “good taste”, you are defining it as a power relation, an exclusionary tool, a way to deride. 

Which is not to say that taste and discernment don’t and shouldn’t exist – but they exist in the sense that scholarship exists. Not ivory tower, status-accrued-by-citations scholarship, but scholarship as in demonstration of knowledge accumulated and the practice of accumulating it. The kind of scholarship that’s as likely – or perhaps more likely – to be exhibited by autodidacts as celebrity professors. You can’t judge scholarship according to winces, grimaces and cringes, you have to take it on according to what it is actually saying about its subjects and objects: and so with taste. Someone’s taste should impress precisely to the degree that they demonstrate that they know and care about the objects of their affection, not for its adherence to a social code imposed by vested interests. 

Maybe there are reasons to hope. The early years of this century were formed by information glut, by seemingly all of cultural history being available all at once. Many thought this would lead to cultural paralysis, a dissipation into undifferentiated “conent”, and a death of innovation – and certainly it can be seen to have driven a retreat into reactive and reactionary positions. When bold statement of preference and belonging is made difficult by the baffling array of choice, covertly coded taste bubbles are an inevitable outcome. But two things abode. 

Firstly, those genuine old-school style tribes, from cosplayers to grime lovers, who grew up together over years, put in the time together, and truly and positively identified with what they do, and the real spatio-temporal existence of what they do, in defiance of the grimaces of others. Second, the rise in value of curation. It’s a word often derided because of its ubiquity in marketing speech, and mocked because “everyone’s a curator” (or “everyone’s a DJ”) nowadays. But curation at its best is precisely the kind of pride in scholarship and individual ability to map connections across the information ocean, that can short circuit the demands of good taste. 

It’s available to all, it can be expressed easily – as punks did with paper fanzines and grime lovers with phone-shot video – and it is by its nature collaborative, sharing, and dependent on positive choices. There ARE glimmers of hope that Generation Z are more able to think in a curatorial way than their predecessors, to cut and paste the always-on data glut of past culture into something more actively expressed than reactively defined – something that can engender a sense of belonging without the need for those gut level micro-rejections of The Other to define itself. And if that is the case, then maybe, just maybe, they can demonstrate new ways to escape the cringe.

[collecting-stories]

I Think He Knows - Rafe Cameron

Request: can i please request Rafe with I Think He Knows from Taylor’s album Lover ❤️

A/N: I don’t really know where I was going with this...just kinda writing off the song. 

TS Anthology Series | Outer Banks Masterlist

_ . ◦ ⭐︎:*.☾.*:⭐︎◦∙._

The gathering on the beach was small, nothing more than some kook friends having a bonfire in one of their backyards (and the backyard just so happening to be a beach). Rafe usually preferred the louder parties, the house parties that teetered on the edge of losing control, not because he liked the crowd butt rather because he felt like he could disappear inside of it. In a crowd of people, all drinking, no one was putting too much focus on him. Tonight didn’t give him that same feeling, more so he felt a little caged in. Trapped on the beach listening to people he didn’t give a fuck about talk shit with each other. It was boring, even with the light house music someone was playing and the few people that were smoking.  

He wouldn’t have come really, except he was already on the beach, begrudgingly having agreed to spend the day with you doing “nothing”, as you had put it earlier. Just laying out under the sun for the most part. When you’d finally decided to pack it in, craving real food over the various snacks you’d brough with you, some kooks from school texted about a small get together.  

“This is boring,” Rafe said, voice just above a whisper as he leaned down near your ear so no one overheard. You were standing by the fire and he’d finally broken away from the group of acquaintances that he’d been entertaining to come over, placing himself so close behind you that you could feel his chest against your back as he spoke, feet practically caging yours in.  

The only good thing about the entire “party” was that you hadn’t bothered changing, standing around in the bright red bikini that you’d worn to sunbathe in. At least the view was worth it.  

“We can go...but my dad is home by now,” you mentioned, tilting your head back to look at Rafe. It was probably more a parental thing than a ‘your dad’ thing but Rafe was not a popular topic in your household. Granted the first time your dad met your boyfriend had been midsummers and you’d been in the men’s locker room together. You had to be grateful for the length of your dress because you thought it might’ve been ten times worse if your dad had actually seen Rafe eating you out and not just the shape of him beneath a satin gown.  

Either way, Rafe Cameron was banned from your house and your person, though the latter was a harder rule to enforce.  

“So, let’s not go home.” He replied, hands settling on your hips.

“Just once,” you whispered back, taking a sip of the vodka lemonade someone had concocted, “I would like to have sex not in the back of your truck.”

“Don’t be dramatic.” He snapped the side of your bikini against your waist, “we did it in the shower like two days ago.”

“The shower at the gym.” You pointed out. You downed the last gulp of alcohol before tossing the cup into the grocery bag someone had tied to the cooler, grabbing your beach tote and letting Rafe lead you away from the party.  

There were no goodbyes and you could practically hear your friends ragging on you for it tomorrow, how you were in such a hurry to leave with Rafe that you hadn’t bothered saying goodbye to them. You’d pretend to care but really you didn’t. You’d never been this “about a guy” before but you couldn’t help yourself, Rafe had you pretty much wrapped around his finger, willing to do anything. Including driving somewhere remote to have sex in the backseat of his truck.  

“Gimme my keys,” Rafe waved his hand out to you, trying to reach for the set of keys that you were already pulling out of your bag. He’d given them to you earlier on the beach and never taken them back. You smiled, waving them by the UNC lanyard and knocking your hip against his.  

“Nope.” You replied, getting between him and the driver’s side door. Rafe wasn’t so particular about things that he couldn’t be swayed, aside from his truck. He never let you drive it. He never let anyone else drive it. Even when he was drunk off his ass and could barely walk. “I’m driving.”

“There is no way in hell I’m letting you drive.” He said, gripping the  

“There’s no way in hell I’m giving up these keys.” You replied, tucking your hand behind your back as if he couldn’t just reach around and grab them from you.  

Rafe’s hand flexed on the edge of the door before he loosened his grip and you smiled, knowing you had won. “If you get a scratch on my car-”

“What’re you gonna do?” You teased, leaning in close to him. When he didn’t say anything, you turned on your heel, pulling yourself up into the truck, “that’s what I thought.” You joked.  

Rafe fiddled with the radio while you backed out of the driveway, trying not to seem like you were intimidated handling the truck. You were used to small cars, four door sedans like your dad drove, not trucks like this. It honestly freaked you out a little bit but as you turned onto the main road and Rafe’s hand dropped from the dial on the radio to your bare thigh, feeling nervous about handling the car was the last thing on your mind.  

“Where are you going?” He asked when you turned down the road that led to the bridge, crossing over into Pogue territory.

“You said you didn’t want to go back to my house...” you shrugged a shoulder, glancing over at him as you rolled the truck to a stop at the sign.  

“Yeah, I don’t wanna slum it over here either.” He replied, shifting down in his seat so he could spread his legs.  

“Don’t be such a baby,” you joked, leaning over the center console and kissing his cheek, your nose bumping against the rim of his sunglasses.  

When you had first started hanging out with Rafe, too casual to describe it as dating, you were already someone else’s girlfriend. To be fair, he had someone else too but that didn’t stop him from expressing an interest in you, one that was hard to ignore. The majority of your friends, on both sides, were quick to warn you that what Rafe did to his last girlfriend, he would do to you.  

“Careful,” he unconsciously reached for the steering wheel as you hit the brake abruptly, jolting the truck a little as a car flew passed, having breezed through the stop sign on their side.  

“I’m not gonna scratch your truck, calm down.” You swatted his hand away as you kept driving.  

“Just pull over somewhere already.”

Your dad hated Rafe cause he was convinced that the only thing on his mind was sex and, to be fair, your dad had a pretty compelling argument. Rafe had about three moods at any given time: drinking with his friends, being grumpy, and having sex. In his defense though, you weren’t much better.  

Being around him was more intoxicating than you had first expected it to be but you shouldn’t have been too surprised. He’d weaseled his way into a two-year relationship and convinced you to go out with him. “God, keep it in your pants.” You joked.  

“I just wanna spend time with you.” He groaned, as if that was a believable enough excuse for you to pull the truck over.  

“That’s some bullshit,” you laughed, “you spent all day with me.”  

Rafe’s hand dropped to your thigh again as you pulled off the road, “yeah and it still wasn’t enough time.”  

[thecurioustale]

I’ve given a fair amount of thought to this as well over the years. Here’s my take:

Instinct covers three things: 1) It covers close-body hugging—more so as a form of mate socialization, comfort, protection, and warmth than as an explicit sexual behavior per se, though these things collapse down into sexual behavior during sex; and I should note that we don’t see most animals do this; 2) more to the point, instinct covers the impulse for and mechanistic knowledge of plain old vanilla-style vaginal–penile intercourse, which exists in the body as an understanding of certain physical positions and motions and in the mind as an abstract desire for contact and fulfillment; and 3) instinct covers the rhythmic thrusting that occurs during sex—something which most other animal species do much less of or don’t do at all.

All of the above would (normally) come even to a pair of feral humans with no social learning. (”Normally” covers my butt for the inevitable stream of exceptions, like sickness, trauma, lack of libido (e.g. when it’s very hot), and asexuality.) A good rule of thumb for “Is it an instinct?” is: Did humanity as a whole have to do it to survive prior to the dawn of civilization? And sex definitely qualifies.

By the way, in same-sex attractions (and also in furry / otherkin attractions) I surmise that the aforementioned impulse for sex is fully intact by default, as are the mental desire for contact and fulfilment, and the mechanistic knowledge of how to actually move one’s body. The latter is especially revealing: This is a deceptively complex system of physical motions; if we didn’t know it instinctively, we would have to be taught. Anyway, gay people absolutely could have straight sex with no social learning or physical teaching, and frequently did throughout history, just as straight people often had gay sex. (Or, to put it another way, human history is a lot queerer than most of us realize.) The only thing that actually changes in same-sex attraction is the type of body one is attracted to, and attraction is a different topic from the knowledge of how to have sex.

Meanwhile, everything else in sex is some combination of socially conditioned behavior and individual behavior (some individual behavior being deliberate and some being the result of sexual stimulation and excitement).

On the socially conditioned side: Kissing is absolutely a construct to the extent that society softly enforces it—although the application of one's lips to a lover's body as though to nibble on them is an understandable cross-circuit of our desire to eat, which is the other fundamental human desire that isn’t immediately provided for by our bodies and the surrounding environment (like breathing or peeing or sleeping). Things like perfume and shaving and lingerie, yeah, I obviously don’t need to say; those are constructs.

On the individual “result of stimulation” side are sexual behaviors that are common but far less common than vanilla intercourse, and are either the result of a person’s reaction to their sexual stimulation and excitement (like moaning, groping, breast play, fantasizing, biting and some kissing, and restraining / grappling / wrestling). Individual sexual behavior on the “deliberate” side can be anything, as it usually intersects with the world of conscious thought. Kinks often play out here, like feeding or bondage or foot play, and most kinks themselves are typically anomalies in our sexual wiring, ultimately stemming from our “attraction” programming, which as I mentioned is kind of another topic independent of the knowledge of how to have sex.

Oral sex, by the way, and manual sex too, I would surmise exist mainly on the individual level. For as integral as these acts are to many people’s sexual experience, they are not as common or desired as pop culture makes it seem, and are not instinctive for most people the way vanilla sex is and typically require learning to perform well. (You could rightly say that of vanilla sex too, but in my opinion the gradient is a lot shallower.)

What new radical forms of outsider sex would humanity come up with if they had to start from scratch armed with nothing but their genes?

I imagine a lot of conditioned and individual sexual behavior is convergent, in that both societies and individuals often independently come upon many of the same sexual acts. Attraction-based kinks, sexual sub-orientations, and some fetishes, for instance, have a biological component and independently re-arise quite often—and should probably be interpreted as the natural variation / diversity of evolved human sexual behavior. Physical reactions like moaning and groping are also going to come up again and again, because these are straightforward, simple actions available to most people. Sadly, patriarchal efforts, to conform the female and male bodies to whatever the arbitrary beauty ideals of the day are, are also likely to come up again and again.

After we move past the vanilla deviations like different lingerie fashions and beard styles and jewelry and makeup norms, and the societal conventions of sexual beauty like the “blond bombshell” and the “tall, dark, and handsome stranger,” I think it’s really only the super-abstract stuff that starts to well and truly depart into “radical” space. And any single constructed sexual behavior is always, necessarily, going to be limited to small numbers of people. Some fetish space exists here as well.

Ultimately, however, I think our potential for sexual radicalism is constrained somewhat by the utter centrality of sex to the human body and our universal existence within those bodies. Just about everything that a body can do, discounting highly abstract behaviors dependent on prolonged series of motions (e.g. dances, songs) or external artifices (e.g. sex toys, pillows, airplanes, etc.), has already been done and is frequently partaken of in the world today.

If, instead, you interpret “radical” in this context to mean “norm-shattering,” then I would propose that the radicalism is usually more about context than about substance—with some exceptions. My own desire for fatness and attraction to fat people is incredibly radical in this sense, and it’s kind of awe-inspiring and disappointing simultaneously to imagine that one of the most subversive things I have done in my life is squeeze flab and like it.

Society is weird, and its weirdness is well-cloaked by the conditioning that comes through normalization.

I always wondered can people who never heard of sex and have no idea what sex is rediscover it on their own?

Like two kids growing up alone in an island, I'd imagine as they hit puberty they would feel attracted and start exploring each other's bodies but how far would instinct alone take them?

What wwould be something that inevitably arises from human nature and what would turn out to be merely socialization?

What if kissing on the mouth is merely cultural convention and they do other things instead? Would they figure out the whole penis in vagina thing or is that something that needs to be taught? What new radical forms of outsider sex would humanity come up with if they had to start from scratch armed with nothing but their genes?

[angofwords]

Let’s talk about Blanca.

Mostly, I’ve seen some very well-argued posts about how he’s the absolute worst and should be reviled. It’s a very persuasive stance. While he was employed by Golzine to train Ash, he witnessed horrific child abuse, and yet did almost nothing to protect his student from any of it. It’s completely unforgivable, and yet, in the canon of Banana Fish, he’s forgiven for it. He’s portrayed as almost a heroic figure.

How can that work?

I can’t say for sure how (or even if) it works for others, but I can explain why it works for me.

First, consider Blanca’s backstory: he was born Sergei Varshikov and was trained from a young age to be a killer for the Soviet Union. He tells Yut Lung that he didn’t feel anything at all about his role back then, which seems to indicate either pschyopathy or repressive training in childhood. Because he’s able to fall in love with someone (Natasha Karsavina, who becomes his wife and who is later killed by the government), I think we’re supposed to understand that it’s the latter. Blanca was taught not to feel, and it took falling in love to reprogram him.

Losing Natasha affected him enormously. He defected from the Soviet Union and became a professional killer. I think he’s uniquely suited to such a profession, as he not only has the skills for it, but also his ethics are rooted in logic, rather than morality. I think that his upbringing skewed his perspective of the world: rather than seeing people in terms of “good” and “evil,” Blanca sees only power—who has it and who lacks it.

When he was first asked to train Ash, he fully intended to say no. In the end, however, he took the job because of Ash himself. In Private Opinion, Blanca meets a boy on the cusp of absolute destruction. Ash’s life is out of control—he’s being abused, not just by Dino, but also by his tutors and by Marvin. Ash has become violent, like a wild animal. Blanca takes the job because he sees how powerless Ash is, but also the potential he has to transcend his position to become very powerful. He thinks that harnessing that potential is the only way Ash will survive.

It doesn’t seem to occur to him to “rescue” the boy, or to report Golzine for child abuse. I blame this on his unorthodox upbringing. Blanca doesn’t see Golzine’s actions as inherently evil, because he’s been trained his whole life not to make moral judgements. Instead, he finds way to elevate Ash’s power and therefore improve his life’s conditions. An important element of that elevation is social status, which is part of the reason that Blanca threatens to kill Marvin if he touches Ash again—clearly a boy who is considered a sexual plaything for anyone who wants him must have very low standing. By enforcing a no-touching rule (except for Dino) Blanca elevates Ash into an exclusive plaything, rather than a common one. It’s not a huge step up, but it gives Ash space to become something entirely different. He teaches him to be a weapon. And once he’s a weapon, he has much more inherent value (as well as the ability to fight off unwanted advances).

Golzine also appreciates his boy becoming his weapon (that’s why he hired Blanca, after all) and his own view of Ash shifts as well. By the time Blanca retires, Ash is more to Dino than just a toy. He’s become an enforcer. He kills for Dino now, and this status is a *far* more powerful a position. Blanca leaves for the Caribbean knowing Ash has been elevated and under the impression that Ash has ceased to fight against Golzine, that he has accepted his role in Golzine’s household.

When Blanca returns to New York in volume 12, he’s surprised that Ash and Dino are no longer working together (to me, this speaks volumes about how things must’ve been when he left, because Blanca can definitely read a room) and says as much to Ash, urging him right from the start to get back onto the path of power—Golzine can make him one of the most powerful young men in the world, after all.

After watching him with Eiji, Blanca understands Ash’s reasons for resisting. He tells Ash that a lynx can’t be friends with a rabbit, not because he’s trying to hurt Ash, but because he genuinely believes in the need for power, and Dino Golzine is the obvious source of future power for Ash. Eiji represents an alternate path, one that Blanca doesn’t understand. (Though, to be fair, neither does Ash. He doesn’t think of a future with Eiji because that future in unimaginable to him.)

Blanca refuses to promise not to kill Eiji, even when Ash begs.

It's here where we first see any indication that Blanca’s stances are irresolute—once he hears Ash’s pleas, he tells him he regrets coming back to New York at all. He’s still going to do the job he’s been hired to do—he seems to have a deep sense of honor toward duty—but it’s clear that his affection for Ash is complicating things.

Because Ash gives in and returns to Golzine, Blanca’s job is finished. He lingers, however, despite saying that he is eager to get home. Yut Lung tries to hire him (to kill Eiji) and Blanca refuses, but still he doesn’t leave the city. This gives Yut Lung the opportunity for blackmail. He roots out Blanca’s history and threatens to notify the KGB if Blanca refuses to work for him. Blanca concedes, but only as Yut Lung’s bodyguard (having just witnessed the aftermath of an attempt on Yut Lung’s life).

It appears that he takes an interest in Yut Lung, but a careful reading shows that he’s really only interested in Yut Lung’s feelings about, and plans to destroy, Ash. He does his job very well, though, and protects Yut Lung through several skirmishes. Still, twice he tells Yut Lung he’s quitting and twice he’s reminded why he can’t (blackmail). It’s not until Yut Lung sends boys out to ambush Ash and Eiji that Blanca finally quits, choosing to try to protect Ash even knowing it means he could be exposed to the KGB.

He gets to them too late—Eiji is being wheeled into an ambulance and Ash, who has also been shot, is feral and dangerous. Blanca sends Jessica to the hospital with Eiji and prevents Ash from going along. He tells Ash that his presence is a danger to Eiji, that Ash’s selfish feelings about Eiji are what got him shot in the first place. Blanca is pretty intense here—I think he’s speaking from experience, that he sees himself and Natasha in Ash and Eiji.

In order to watch over him, Blanca persuades Ash to hire him. Again, there’s a lot of reason for him to leave at this point (Yut Lung could be bringing Soviet agents down on him at any time, for example) but he seems to need to see Ash through this. He even cryptically tells Jessica that Ash is his “savior.”

I think that means that Ash saved his soul. He had been a soulless killer before he met Natasha, then went back to that emotionless existence after she died. But meeting Ash stirred something inside him, gave him someone to care about and a purpose. Even when he urged Ash to submit to Golzine, he was trying to help Ash obtain the power he needed to survive. It wasn’t until Ash’s love for Eiji reminded him of Natasha, however, that the full effect was complete. Blanca became Sergei once more and remembered what it was to love.

He still cautioned distance—because it was true that Natasha was killed because of him, he believed that Ash was similarly dangerous for Eiji—but it was for Ash’s sake. Blanca he actually understands that, to Ash, Eiji’s safety is more important than any possible happiness together. Blanca understands Ash in a way that his other “fathers” never will. He understands Ash’s limitations as well as his potential, and I don't think either Golzine or Max (and especially not Jim!) ever did.

I think Ash comes to understand Blanca in the same way. They are kindred, bonded by experience and similar ways of thinking. Ash doesn’t need to forgive Blanca for not saving him from Golzine, because he never expected him to. Instead, he sees Blanca is the first man who didn’t let him down, who always had his back and who helped him become more than his situation.

I don’t hate Blanca. He’s deeply, tragically flawed, but he does his best.

[ckneal]

So, there’s this one angel story in the back of my head that I know I wont write. I wont write it, because it’s utter nonsense, with very little regard for the canonical timeline of Supernatural, and a willfully blurry view on what is and is not “in character.” It’s fluff. It’s all fluff, in the form of a bunch of smaller stories that gradually weave together, following the Love, Actually style of storytelling, but instead of problematic love stories, it’s all about angels playing hooky from Heaven after the Fall.

(Seriously, there is no substance here, I swear.)

Stories include Abner, living out the first half of the movie Family Man, struggling to figure out how to be a good father and house husband after he steps into the life of the raging alcoholic who agreed to be his vessel. There’s also a very minor story about Esther (not to be confused with Hester, who is not in this story because she never deserted her post in Heaven) learning to play the part of a little girl and navigating schoolyard politics, but kids can be mean and Esther learns the hard way that Michael’s approach to asserting dominance in Heaven does not translate well. There’s also Daniel and Adina, who both settle into vessels in the same movie theater where a romantic comedy is playing, and fall into a very innocent, play-acting sort of love after they leave the theatre—like little kids pretending to be in love, recreating the scenes from the movie, but at the same time not really understanding it. Balthazar, Gabriel, and Anael each trying to roll with the luxurious high roller life style, and awkwardly running into each other at VIP poker games, exclusive spas and clubs, and the occasional orgy that they promptly leave IMMEDATELY after running into a sibling (don’t give me weird looks, Balthazar and Gabriel canonically include that sort of thing in their definition of luxury, and the whole thing of their story is their siblings keep cramping their style). Tyrus is in there bowling, somewhere. Benjamin’s playing arcade games with his wife. And then there’s Thaddeus, my pet favorite minor angel character, realizing what’s happening as he’s falling with all the other faithful angels during the Fall and seizing the opportunity to abandon his life as a guard and torturer, settling into a pop star for his vessel—initially for the sake of the cushy lifestyle, but then gradually looking back, before the garden and Lucifer, before everyone was assigned a job in Heaven, like it or not, and the options were to adapt or to be smote, and remembering that back then, he could sing.

And of course, Michael and Adam get a story too—in which Michael lowkey gets into a pissing contest with death, as he and Adam travel the world, hitting up hospital after hospital to heal people. Because the first thing Adam wanted to do after getting out of the cage (okay, second thing—burgers came first) was go to the nearest medical center and start healing people left and right. And at first, they’re having a great time. Adam steals a white jacket he finds in the breakroom somewhere, and anytime someone says he looks a little young to be a doctor (Adam still looking nineteen years old, because I say so), Michael wipes the poor sap’s mind. But eventually—sometime after they’ve cleared out the children’s ward, the cancer ward, the cardiac ward—Billie shows up, sniping at them that they can’t just go around healing people who are destined to die, because there is an order to life and death that cannot be shoved aside. And Billie tries to make a show of it, as Terra did with Dean, by having several people who Adam had healed over the course of the day inadvertently cause several massive accidents. The news suddenly comes pouring out of the television, channels flipping as newscasters talk about tragedies occurring in several different parts of the city they’re currently in. The sound of approaching ambulance sirens fills the air, as in the hospital hallway, doctors and nurses begin hurrying to receive a rush of ER patients.

Adam’s horrified.

Michael does not take kindly to this. He snaps his fingers and makes it so that the carnage has never happened. Because he is the archangel Michael, only two steps away from being a god, and if he says that all of these people are going to live, then they are going to live, and he WILL NOT be intimidated, especially by an amateur reaper whose only qualification for her position was dying at the right time.

Billie in turn lands Michael with a cold stare, and points out that the order to life and death is beyond even God’s authority, let alone daddy’s blunt, sniveling instrument.

As Michael’s eyes start to glow, Adam steps in and says, “So, to be clear, you want us to stop healing people on the verge of death? We can do that.”

After Billie leaves, Michael is outraged, but Adam says, “No, Michael, THINK about it.”

We then cut to other stories, where newscasts in the background reveal that ailments that are not IMMIEDATELY fatal (AIDs, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, etc.) are mysteriously disappearing overnight, worldwide.

Billie is not amused, and tells her reapers to be on the lookout for an archangel at every major hospital in the world.

Cut to Michael throwing open the door of the bunker, muttering aloud to Adam that he’s going to do it, he’s going to bind Death, just like Lucifer did—how hard can it be? Sam and Dean see him as he goes stomping off toward the cabinet where they keep all of their magical dry goods, but Michael snaps his fingers and the two of them are abruptly half drunk in Dean’s man cave, sitting in front of Dean’s flat screen TV, watching some campy monster movie, because that’s lowkey what Michael and Adam assume they do all day.

As they’re raiding Sam and Dean’s supplies though, Adam says, “Wait, I have an idea.”

Cut to Abner looking up while pushing his vessel’s daughter in a park swing, and literally seeing Michael and Adam chasing an ambulance, so they can technically heal the person inside before reaching the hospital.

Yes, I’m aware that Abner was dead by the time Michael and Adam got out of the cage. But see, this story? This story is like when someone gifts you a goldfish unexpectedly, and you put it in a bowl, checking in to feed it a couple times a day, lowkey expecting it to die. But it doesn’t die, it gets bigger. And you’re not a cruel person, so you put it in a bigger tank, but it just gets bigger again, and you don’t really know what’s going on, but you know, you just kind of keep checking in, meeting the minimum requirements but not really getting in there as a guiding force because it’s a goldfish and it’s surely going to die any minute now—but then you look over and there’s giant tank taking up your living room, and you’re thawing out bloodworms twice a day, and looking into tankmates to keep Charles company, and realize that “Oh wow, I guess this is a thing now.”

In short, the story says we’re ignoring the timeline, and it’s calling the shots. I’m just keeping the tank clean.

The angels all eventually wind up running into each other. Abner and Esther happen upon one another in a park, where Esther is morosely realizing that she is terrible at being a human child but she does not want to go home to Heaven, and it just happens to be the same park where Abner goes with his “little nibblet” once a day to let her toddle around the playground while he chats with nannies and other house parents. Anael, Adina, and Daniel meet up when the latter two’s game has reached the point where they’ve decided to get married, and they apparently need to buy something new—preferably blue—as per this very important rhyme someone told them about. Esther and Gabriel run into each other in an ice cream parlor. Thaddeus gets recognized while doing an interview on TV that everyone sees. And, while out joyriding in a Lamborghini, on their way to meet up with the growing community of angels who decided to opt out of their responsibility to Heaven and their father’s legacy, Balthazar, Gabriel, and Anael are all startled to see Michael land on an ambulance stopped next to them at a red light.

Balthazar and Anael are both terrified, as if they’ve just been busted by a parent, because Michael, of course, is the guy who enforces the rules, and isn’t he supposed to be in Hell? They both shoot Gabriel looks as if to say ‘what the hell are you doing’ when Gabriel, watching as Michael climbs down and matter-of-factly wrenches the ambulance doors open, calls out, “Hey, Mike! Is that you?”

Michael looks over, freezes for a second—not prepared to be suddenly thrust into a social situation in the middle of his self-imposed mission to spite death—then his eyes flash and Adam takes over. “Oh hey, you’re Michael’s family? What a small world! I’m Adam, I’ve heard so much about you. Wait, hang on—”

The light starts to turn green, but Adam snaps his fingers and it promptly reverts to red.

Three jaws drop in the luxury car, and they don’t even hear Adam politely explain that he and Michael are in the middle of something, as he ducks into the ambulance, because Michael’s evidently letting a tiny human use his powers like it’s nothing, and what does that mean?

“Sweet dad in the unknown, Michael’s shagging a human. . .”

“Nooo!”

“HOW?”

“Hey, kid, you like weddings?”

At some point in the story, all the MIA angels are together, and Benjamin or someone comes running in saying, “Quick, they’re coming! Everyone hide!”

And everyone scatters, except for Michael, who stands in place, saying, “Gabriel, we’re archangels, two of the most powerful beings in existence. Why would we—”

And then Gabriel picks Adam up like a sack of potatoes and sprints off, calling back, “Trust me, you do NOT want to get involved with them!”

Being a projection, Michael is obligated to follow.

Team Free Will then walks by, looking constipated from whatever Big Awful Thing is currently threatening to destroy the world.

The story, of course, culminates in the wedding of Adina and Daniel, who still don’t quite understand what marriage is beyond promising to love each forever, which of course they will, after all, they are the very best of friends—which is about the same concept that most of the other angels present have. Adam is the first one to actually approach the big awkward question, upon finding out who the bride and groom are.

“Wait, aren’t they brother and sister?”

To which Serafina’s Adam, (who is of course there since Serafina was the original angel to play hooky) whose sons married his daughters, and all the angels, who do not understand what that has to do with anything, all cock their heads in unison and respond with, “So?”

Adam struggles to find words, looking into so many innocent faces. Then Benjamin’s wife puts a hand on his shoulder, whispering, “Shhh, let them have their fun.”

Benjamin’s wife and the two Adams wind up sitting at the venue’s bar, where they order nachos from a very confused bar tender, and watch as the angels go about setting up a wedding. But given that most angels haven’t been on earth regularly in roughly two thousand years, none of them have a clear grasp of what a human wedding entails.

“I heard it’s traditional for the father to give away the bride.”

“I think they’re supposed to kiss over bread.”

“Do humans still slaughter cows at these things?”

“I’m pretty sure someone is supposed to break a glass—”

Several angels promptly throw glassware on the floor.

At no point do the angels ask the humans for advice.

Occasionally, Gabriel knowingly throws out obscure details to keep the confusion going.

“You know, the groom needs to stand with the right arm to the aisle in case a sword fight breaks out.”

“Right! . . .How do we know which one’s the groom?”

At the bar, Adam open’s his mouth to say something, but the original Adam shushes him.

“No no, son, let them get there.”

The angels agree that being the better fighter, Adina should be the groom.

They’re nearly ready to start when Michael suddenly doubles over with his hand over his mouth. It coincides with the sound of Adam pounding the bar top, having just eaten a Carolina Reaper pepper on dare. Michael’s eyes quickly flash silver-blue as he straightens, and both he and Adam are abruptly fine—even if their eyes are still watering somewhat. But a different sort of damage has already been done, as Anael, Balthazar, and Gabriel all abruptly turn toward the triad of humans, having been reminded that the Michael walking around with them is actually a projection. In actuality, Michael is anchored to the human ex-college student sitting at the bar.

All three of them rush toward Adam, but Serafina gets there first, asking Adam if he’s ever tried mushroom tea.

Balthazar gets there next. 

“Adam, was it? We didn’t get to talk in the car, let’s fix that. Are you over twenty-one? You know what, this is a family affair, don’t worry—CAN I GET TWO SHOTS OF DON JULIO OVER HERE?”

From that point on, any time Adam turns around, there’s one of Michael’s siblings, wanting to get to know him—by consuming some sort of beverage. Because Adam and Michael are sharing body—and that means they share a liver too. A bet ensues as to how much it will take to get God’s alleged favorite wasted.

Gabriel’s actually one of the first out, having been convinced that Michael would be a lightweight. Little does he suspect that Benjamin and his wife caught onto what was happening soon after Adam was fed his third long island iced tea and second jager bomb, and began quietly cleansing the alcohol from his system through casual shoulder pats and high fives.

Adam does not know what to make of any of this, but it’s Michael’s family and he wants to make a good impression, so he just goes with it.

Thaddeus, of course, is in charge of music, Gabriel and Esther consume the majority of the cake, and Michael catches the bouquet (he may have cheated after finding out what the bouquet toss is for).

[dwellordream]

“...We may quickly describe the Dothraki social organization; while we only see inside one traditional Dothraki khalasar, we are repeatedly told it is typical and may take it as such (AGoT, 83-5, 195, 328). Each group of Dothraki is led by a male war-leader called a khal (whose wife is a khaleesi and whose heir is the khalakka) in a group called a khalasar. The khal‘s personal guard are ‘bloodriders’ and are sworn to the khal and are supposed to kill themselves after he dies (AGoT, 328).

The khalasar also has subordinate commanders called kos and smaller bodyguard units called khas (and at this point, you will forgive me a joke that I began to wonder if the Dothraki rode to battle on their khorses, drank out their khups and fought with khords, kows, and kharrows; it will surprise no one that Martin is not a linguist). The khal is the autocrat of this organization, he has a single, readily identifiable male heir who is his direct descendant (the khalakka) and should that heir be underage or not exist, the khalasar will disband. Strikingly, beyond the khal‘s male heir, family ties play no role at all in the organization of the khalasar or in relations between them.

This is not how horse-borne nomads organized themselves, although it bears a passing resemblance to some elements of pre-Chinggis Mongol organization. We can start by quickly ruling out the Great Plains as an inspiration and move from there. I am not an expert in the organization of any Plains Native American society (so please forgive any errors – but do tell me, so I can make corrections – I am doing my best!), but from what I have been able to read, the key institution is not the ‘chief’ but rather the extended family network (what the Sioux call, I believe, the ‘thiyóšpaye’) which were then composed by smaller households (‘thiwáhe’). The elders of those households elected their leaders; while certain families seem to have been more prominent than others, leadership wasn’t directly heritable. Direct inheritance doesn’t seem to have been as pressing an issue; territorial claims were held by the nation or tribe (the ‘oyáte’) while moveable property was held by the household or extended family network (and personal items might be buried with the deceased).

I am being a bit schematic here to avoid outrunning my limited knowledge, but a system of kinship bonds with elected leaders coordinating the efforts of multiple ethnically or linguistically related kinship groups is a fairly common system for non-state social organization (obviously that label obscures a lot of cultural and regional variation!). This would have been a plausible enough way to organize the Dothraki, with lots of deliberative councils of household leaders and chiefs that are often shrewd political leaders, managing the interests of many households, but presumably that wasn’t badass enough. It would have involved lots of complicated political dialogue and quite a lot less random murder. In any event, it is clear the Dothraki are not organized along these lines; kinship matters functionally not at all in their organization and even when Daenerys is present, we see no deliberation, merely the authority of the khal, enforced by violence.

What about the Mongols and other Eurasian steppe nomads? The Mongols and other steppe nomads were broadly organized into tribes (an ulus or ordu, the latter giving us the word ‘horde’ in reference to nomads) which were organized around a leader (for the Mongols, a khan or ‘chieftain’) and understood to be part of a given ethnic or linguistic grouping which might or might not be united politically at any given time. The position of khan was heritable, but with some significant quirks we’ll get to in a minute.

In theory, these were kinship groups, but in practice the incorporation of defeated clans and sometimes shifting allegiances blurred those lines. Ratchnevsky (op. cit., 12-3) notes a divide within groups between the non-free captives (otogus bo’ol) and the free followers of a khan (nökhör or sometimes spelled nökhöd), but these categories were flexible and not ethnically based – individuals could and did move between them as the fortunes of war and politics shifted; Temujin himself – the soon-to-be Chinggis Khan – was at one point probably one of these bo’ol. The nökhör were freemen who could enter the service of a khan voluntarily and also potentially leave as well, living in the leader’s household. This is a rather more promising model or the Dothraki, but beyond this very basic description, things begin to go awry.

First off – and you will note how this flows out of the subsistence systems we discussed last week – inheritance does matter a great deal to the Mongols. Steppe nomads generally tended to share an inheritance system which – I have never seen it given a technical name – I tend to call Steppe Partible Inheritance (though it shares some forms with Gaelic tanistry and is sometimes termed by that name). In essence (barring any special bequests), each male member of the ruling clan or house has an equally valid claim on the property and position of the deceased. You can see how this would function where the main forms of property are herds of horses and sheep, which are easily evenly divisible to satisfy such claims. Divide a herd of 100 sheep between 5 sons and you get 5 herds of 20 sheep; wait a few years and you have five herds of 100 sheep again. And for most nomads, that would be all of the property to divide.

This partibility was one of the great weaknesses, however, of steppe empires, because it promoted fragmentation, with the conquests of the dynastic founder being split between their sons, brothers and so on, fragmenting down further at each succession (each inherited chunk is often called an appanage, after the Latin usage and often they were granted prior to the khan‘s death as administrative assignments). But overall leadership of the empire cannot be divided; in theory it went to the most capable male family member, though proving this might often mean politics, war or murder (but see below on the kurultai).

Thus Attila’s three sons turned on each other and made themselves easy prey for what was left of the Roman Empire; Chinggis’ heirs did rather better, sticking together as regional rulers in a larger ‘family business’ run by the descendants of Chinggis until 1260 (Chinggis died in 1227), when they began to turn on each other. The Ottomans resolved this problem – seeing their empire as indivisible – through fratricide to avoid civil war. Note also here, how important knowing the exact parentage (or more correctly, patrilineal descent) of any potential descendant of the khan would be – we’ll come back to that.

On the surface, this might sound a bit like how Khal Drogo’s khalasar disintegrates on his death, but there are enough key wrinkles missing here that I think the match fails. The biggest difference is the importance of the larger kin group and biological inheritance. You will note above that the males of the entire royal family generally had claims on the titles and property of the deceased. And actual, patrilineal descent was important here – all of the successor states of the Mongols were ruled by rulers claiming direct descent from Chinggis Khan, down to the disestablishment of the Mughal Empire in 1857. If Khal Drogo has any extended family, they seem to be unimportant and we never meet them; they do not figure into to the collapse of his khalasar (AGoT, 633), whereas in a Mongol ulus, they’d be some of the most important people.

Indeed, Drogo’s khalasar splits up with no regard at all to the ruling family, something that Jorah notes is normal – had there been a living heir, he would have been killed (AGoT, 591). This is obviously not true of the Mongols, because Temujin, the future Chinggis Khan himself (and his brothers), was exactly such young living heir of a powerful khan and was not killed, nor was any serious attempt apparently made to kill him (Ratchnevsky, op. cit. 22) and Ratchnevsky notes that was unusual in this instance that Temujin’s mother was not supported by her brother-in-law (possibly because she refused to be remarried to him).

Moreover, succession to leadership was not automatic as it is portrayed in A Game of Thrones (either automatic in the way that Khal Ogo’s son Fogo could become Khal in the mere moments of battle between his death and his father’s, AGoT, 556 or automatic in how Drogo’s khalasar automatically disintegrates, AGoT, 591). Instead there was a crucial mediating institution, the kurultai (sometimes spelled quriltai), a council of chiefs and khans – present in both Mongol and Turkic cultural spheres – which met to decide who of the valid claimants ought to take overall leadership. Such kurultai could also meet without a succession event – Temujin was declared Chinggis Khan in the kurultai of 1206. There wasn’t typically a formal heir-designate as with the Dothraki, both because of the need for a deliberative kurultai but also because of the partible inheritance. It was rather exceptional when Chinggis designated Ögedei as his chief heir (as a way to avoid war between his other sons; Ögedei was the compromise candidate) in 1219.

We might imagine the kurultai upon the death of the Mongol version of Drogo would have been a complex affair, with political negotiations between Drogo’s brothers and uncles (should he have any) who might well use the existence of an heir as an excuse to consolidate power within the family, along with Drogo’s key lieutenants also seeking power. Of course we do not see those events because Daenerys is asleep for them, but we do hear them described and it is clear that the key factors in a Mongol kurultai – descent, family ties, collective decision-making – do not matter here. As Jorah notes, “the Dothraki only follow the strong” (AGoT 633) and “Drogo’s strength was what they bowed to, and only that” (AGoT, 591). There is no council – instead Drogo’s key lieutenants (all unrelated to him) take their chunk of followers and run off in the night. There is no council, no effort to consolidate the whole, no division of livestock or territory (because, as we’ve discussed, the Dothraki subsistence system considers neither and consequently makes no sense).

Likewise, the structures of Mongol control, either before or after Chinggis (who makes massive changes to Mongol social organization) are not here. Drogo’s horde is not the decimal-system organized army of Chinggis, but it is also not the family-kin organized, deeply status-stratified society that Chinggis creates the decimal system to sweep away. The Mongols did have a tradition of swearing blood-brothership (the Mongolian word is anda), but it only replicated strong reciprocal sibling alliances. It certainly came with no requirement to die if your blood-brother died, something made quite obvious by the fact that Chinggis ends up killing his blood-brother Jamukha after the two ended up at war with each other. And these relationships were not a form of ‘royal guard’ but intimate and rare. Instead, Chinggis intentionally assembled a personal guard, the keshig, out of promising young leaders and the relatives of his subordinates, both as a military instrument but also a system of control. Members of the keshig did not simply die after the death of their leader, but were bound to take care of the surviving family of the deceased ruler.

So apart from the observation that Steppe nomads tended to have singular leaders (but, of course, monarchy is probably the most common form of human organization in the historical period) and that they tend to fragment, almost nothing about actual patterns of Steppe leadership is preserved here. Not the basic structures of the society (the ‘nobles,’ kinship groups and larger tribal and ethnic groups which so dominated Temujin’s early life, for instance, see Ratchnevsky, op. cit. 1-88), nor its systems of inheritance and succession. Instead, most of the actual color of how Mongol society – or Steppe rulership more broadly – worked has been replaced with ‘cult of the badass’ tropes about how the Dothraki “only follow the strong,” only value strength and have essentially no other cultural norms.”

- Bret Devereaux, “That Dothraki Horde, Part III: Horse Fiddles.”