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alwida10 · 5 years ago

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Signs of abusive relationship that can be found in the Thor-Films

@alstee We talked about aspects of a narcistic personality disorder we can find in the Thor-films in this thread. The original thread is adjectant to a gif-set, which is why I don’t want to post there. The people who make those gifs are forced to “listen” to the discussion even if they don’t wish to be associated with the anti-Ragnarok party and I don’t want to pull someone into the discussion.

Also, this got kinda long, therefore I put it under the cut. :)

The following text is a quote from you, @alstee, taken from said thread, because I would like to have all relevant points in one thread together.

If anyone is interested, I’ve been skimming through the book The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman, and it’s super interesting! It’s aimed at therapists, but it’s easy, if sad, to read as a general audience person.

I’ve heard internet anecdotes of people who had to try several therapists before they found one that could actually help them, because the first ones ended up validating/siding with the NPD parent’s perspective (big WHOOPS, continuing that gaslighting) and/or didn’t really get what kind of damage and toxic family dynamics they were actually dealing with.

Now, reading through the book, there are example cases where the patient starts seeking therapy for specific problems, not having the slightest idea that their parents did anything wrong or unusual in their parenting, until a neutral third party correctly identifies the cognitive dysfunction in what the patient is saying, and digs deeper to trace the path of that dysfunctional thinking right to the source.

Also, tell me these two following bits don’t scream MCU Loki:

(This first one explains Loki’s whole behavior in Thor 1 and Thor 2, to a T.)

(And this one is in a section about romantic relationships, but I can see this whole thing running through Loki’s subconscious in every scene where he has Thor or Frigga standing in front of him.)

(@lucianalight You have written excellent meta posts about this which opened my eyes in the first place – I had read about this topic years before, but not made the connection to Odin’s family; I hope you don’t mind a tag here?)

So, I am not completely done reading ‘why does he do that? - inside they mind of angry and controlling men’ by Lundy Bancroft so I raise no claim to completeness. Two short remarks at the beginning: The book describes situations in romantic relationships and is therefore not exactly pointed towards sibling relationships as we see in canon MCU between Loki and Thor. Since I believe abuse to work in many situations similarly, I am still using it to interpret the brothers’ relationship. But this is of course a point that can be discussed.

Second: the book describes situations in which a woman is abused by a man. Therefore, a “he” in the text refers to the abuser and a “she” to the abused. Loki would in this context be labeled “she”, since most signs point towards him being the abused one. The book states very clearly that abuse can happen in same-sex relationships as well and is just as bad and worthy of condemnation as abuse in hetero-relationships. The wording simply eases the reading process because you always know if the author refers to the abuser or the abused.

1. Is Loki really abused?

I marked the points yellow which I think might be true in his case. Here some gifs why I think so:

Source of the gif and a nice meta about TDW

The gif is relevant both for “are you afraid of him” and “do you feel like the problems in your relationship are all your fault”.

Source

Also, when we see Thor and Loki for the first time in Thor 1, Loki doesn’t appear to have any friends of his own. As to the aspect of isolating him from his family:

Source

2. Disrespect is the soil in which abuse grows.

I think we know Thor doesn’t respect Loki like he respects other people such as the Avengers and other Aesir.

Gif source.

But Thor doesn’t know of Loki’s heritage until the end of Thor 1. So where does this come from?

This whole topic is connected to the first of my introductionary remarks. Abuse in romantic relationships is so common, because there is an imbalance of power in combination with the feeling of being above the other. Due to our social conditioning, the man is mostly more powerful than the woman, and there are far more abused women than abused men. People often argue a woman could abuse a man just as well. The author meets this point that this is true on a surface level, but abuse is mostly based on entitlement. Men, who are raised in a belief of superiority, feel entitled to be catered by their wife and entitled to use force if she refuses or fails to do so.

So, we are back at Odin again, who certainly knew about Loki’s heritage and didn’t fail to act upon this knowledge. And not only his dismissive attitude towards Loki carries over to Thor, but also to the staff, as we see in the famous “spilled wine”-scene of Thor 1. So Odin basically taught Thor that he’s better than Loki.

And based on this learned disrespect, Thor feels entitled to enforce the respective behavior in Loki.

Thor shows signs of this power over Loki very early. Loki is the only one of his group he doesn’t ask to accompany him. He just assumes it. And Loki complies. He orders Loki around on Jotunheim, but Loki doesn’t comply this time. We can’t know if Thor would have gotten back to him, because he gets banished before he has the change to. We see Thor quite often demand something from Loki in the following films without Loki obeying. It mostly gets violent after that. But since it still are superhero films we can’t count this as abusive behavior because it’s somehow ‘normal’ in this context. I don’t remember Thor using physical force to make someone else do as he wishes in the films. Interestingly, if he does so it would rather invalidate the theory of him being an abuser, since most abuser make sure only to exhibit this kind of behavior in private, because they don’t want to hurt their public reputation. So if he would threaten people more often, it would rather mean that he’s a brute than an abuser.

Since we already discussed the narcistic personality disorder I would mention that both things can appear in combination:

You might have noticed that I did refrain from using examples from Thor – Ragnarok up to this point. This is intentional. Because most points that indicate Thor would act in an abusive way are relatively rare in the first films (Thor 1, Avengers and The dark world). Thor 1 even sketched out a redemption arc from his arrogance (which is the basis of entitlement) and even though he has his flaws in TDW he isn’t giving in to most of his urges. In the boat scene he threatens to punch Loki, but he doesn’t act on his urge. This is means he does, in fact, NOT feel entitled to do so. He remembers Frigga and recalls he should not. An abuser is different from an angry man because he thinks he has the right to hurt the other one.

This tone changes in Thor - Ragnarok:

I will try to make this as conceive as possible and therefore use a list of methods abusers use in interactions (split into two parts because it was to long for one picture):

Sulking, Refusing to talk: Thor’s behavior in the cell when Loki visits to talk.

Ridicule: He throws stones at Loki in the cell.

Source

Distorting what happened in an earlier interaction:

Source

(Ok, this one is not sure, since we don’t know what actually happened. But he says first “I dumped her!” and then “It was mutual dumping” which fits the point that past actions get distorted.)

Using a tone of absolute certainty and final authority: In his talk with Hela about her past.

Source

Everything is your fault: Thor demands Loki to lift his magic before Odin’s death. He implies Hela’s return is Loki’s fault. He blames Loki for the situation in the nine realms.

He changes the subject to his grievances: When he talks to Bruce about his fear being on a planet and changes to the point that Bruce has to help him fight Hela.

Part II:

Provoking guilt/Turning your grievances around to use them against you:

Source

Playing the victim:

Source

Threatening to leave you:

Source

But the major point will always be the physical violence. Here some quotes concerning that:

Source

#Anti thor ragnarok #anti chris hemsworth #tw: abuse #mcu salt #anti taika waititi #tw: phyisical violence #mcu loki #tom hiddleston #ragnarok discourse #there is another point i didn't even start on #it is that abusers are very good in turning other people against you #they distort their view on you so they side with the abuser #for example they often turn the positions around claiming they would be the victim #and now we can start talking about Loki's ooc-ness in Thor Ragnarok #and how he suddenly was the bullying kid #But this would be accusing a real person of abuse #and I tried to limit my rambling to the realm of fiction

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sillyguyhotline · 4 years ago

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yttd and themes of parental failure; how the adults in our life disappoint us

alternate title: how everyone in your turn to die has mommy issues, daddy issues, or both

I’m not the first person to talk about this, nor will I be the last, but there are a lot of themes sprinkled throughout YTTD’s story and one of the themes that isn’t talked about much is the theme of how parents (or more broadly, adults) tend to fail us. Throughout the game, we see children and adults being placed in the same deadly situation, and are disappointed time and time again as the adults prioritize their lives over those of their children... often perpetuating the cycles of abuse that they themselves have suffered. I don’t think this theme encompasses the whole story by any means, but I do think that, in some parts, YTTD attempts to tell a story of irresponsible adult figures, failing as parents, and the ways cycles of abuse are perpetuated.

I think it’s best to start with Sara, the main character and the most visible victim of the adults’ failings in the death game. Despite being a teenager, she’s elevated to a position of leadership partially by circumstance and partially by the machinations of others. I think it’s pretty clear that her being a leader is more crucial to the story than it initially seems to be, but for now it’s evident that she, as a child, has been deemed stronger than the many adults beside her in the game and has thus been made a leader. It’s acknowledged that she is the person who makes the majority of the crucial decisions, she is the person the others look to in times of turmoil, and she’s tasked with shouldering many of the heavy burdens of the group’s failures. This certainly doesn’t come without consequences; much of Sara’s grief comes not just from Joe’s death, but from regret over the countless people she’s failed to protect and the obligation she feels to prioritize their lives over her own. While many of the adult characters (Q-taro, Keiji, Shin, Alice) have the opportunity to sit back and make more selfish decisions for their own survival, Sara never has that liberty because she’s been thrust into a role where the group’s wellbeing is worth more than hers and every group failure is felt by her more than anyone else. This is most evident in the aftermath of the Kanna/Shin decision, specifically in the Kanna Dies route; Sara is the one who is tortured and meant to feel the most pain for Kanna’s death because she, as the leader, felt obligated to take the decision into her own hands... and nobody stopped her. From Russian Roulette (where Kai, the least underhanded out of all of Sara’s adult protectors, tried to stop her from becoming a leader) to Chapter 2′s Main Game, the effects of Sara’s leadership are heavy. She’s still a child who’s been given power, and the other adults in the game choose to either profit from or resent this power instead of challenging the fact that a child has been entrusted with it.

This is where Kanna comes in, another child who’s been failed by the adults in the game. When she entered, she’d lost her most important mentor figure (her sister) and as a result was left incredibly vulnerable. At first, a few of the characters tried to help her (Nao and Reko), but ultimately she was left vulnerable for too long and Shin used that vulnerability to coerce her into going along with his plans, putting her life in jeopardy by claiming she had the Sage. It’s likely that Shin reminded her of Kugie, which motivated her to stick by his side, but there’s no doubt that his manipulation influenced her to continue supporting him throughout chapter 2. Kanna is another character who felt obligated to provide protection and support for adults who didn’t provide all that much of it, which is made evident as she continues to insist he’s a good person throughout ch2 and, of course, demands that everyone vote for her to die in the main game because she thinks Shin is not only good but much more useful than she is. She, like Sara, continues to prioritize the well-being of the group over her own as a result of the position she was forced into and of the failure of the adults around her to do anything about it.

This aspect of Kanna’s character ties into another point I want to make, about cycles of abuse and protection. I believe that Shin is one of the biggest in-game examples of how abuse victims can be pushed to perpetuate those cycles upon the people they’re supposed to love and care for. Shin definitely cared for Kanna; he wrote the message in the phone to boost her spirits and fought for her to survive even knowing that if she got the Sacrifice she wouldn’t pick him to escape with. However, a lot of his dynamic with her comes as a result of the abuse he suffered under Sou Hiyori, and this abuse is part of why Kanna perceives herself to be worthless. He takes out his own anger at himself and his weakness by constantly belittling Kanna, calling her weak and useless to the group (eventually doing this because he thinks it will help her escape), and the constant reinforcement of this mindset is what leads to her self loathing and, in some cases, eventual self sacrifice. Not only does Shin fail to protect Kanna from death as a parental figure, he fails to prevent his own patterns of abuse from affecting her. This is a classic example of how abuse can become generational.

I want to cycle back to the topic of Sara, now, and bring Keiji into the mix, because I believe that Keiji is one of the biggest and also most fascinating examples of the failures of adults- primarily because he is simultaneously the child being failed and the adult who is failing. Keiji started out as an idealistic child with high hopes for his own future and strong beliefs in the police force, but he ended up killing his mentor and destroying his own faith in the goodness of the police. I also find it intriguing that the person he kills is one of the most solid parental figures in the game; Mr. Policeman cares for his child a lot and shows great care for children who aren’t even biologically related to him (such as Keiji). He likely left the police force for the sake of his child as well as to escape corruption. When Keiji kills him, he is not only killing the idealistic dream that his child self once harbored, but he is killing the biggest human embodiment of that dream in his life. Fittingly, then, Keiji goes on to turn into the opposite of what his younger self would have wanted to be. He wanted to be a protector, but in the Death Game we see him flirting with the child he’s protecting, consistently lying to and deceiving her for his own gain, pushing her into being a leader because it benefits him, and going behind her back to help himself survive (such as performing the card trade with Q-taro when it’s clear that Sara had the Sacrifice and likely would have died because of it). At the surface, Keiji is a betrayal of the mentor Sara needed in her life, but when you look beyond that, he’s a betrayal of the adult figure who guided him and the adult figure his child self wanted to be.

There’s also Q-taro, one of the more blatant examples of an adult who valued his own survival over those of the children in the game. His selfishness, however, wasn’t concealed with concern for the children, like Shin’s and Keiji’s were. He indirectly participated in thrusting Sara into a leadership position, and time and time again attempted to get the children (specifically Gin) killed because he thought it would benefit either him or the group. His selfishness is not as much of a betrayal as it is a sad reinforcement of the idea that adults in this game can’t be trusted to protect the children. Even as he campaigns for Gin and Kanna’s deaths, even as he waits until the last minute to press the button, he still looks to Sara for guidance and trusts her as a leader. To make things even worse, the child whom he’s targeting has already been disillusioned to how pathetic adults can be; Gin’s father abuses alcohol, and as Gin establishes from the beginning, he’s already lost his trust in the reliability of adults. And, in a sad way, Gin ends up being proven right; his first father figure in the game dies immediately, and his second either dies or is quickly revealed to have been tasked with killing him. Unreliable adults in awful circumstances.

Then you have Gashu, one of the only actual parents in this game, whose failures are felt in not one, but two children. As I stated before, while talking about Sara, Kai was one of the only people who made a move to stop Sara from being established as the group’s leader in Russian Roulette. While I believe that this is mostly because he knew of the Hades Incident and wanted to stop it from being replicated, I also have to wonder if it was because he knew what it was like, as a child, to be forced into a terrible position (as Gashu had high expectations of him as an assassin) and didn’t want the child he’d grown affectionate towards to be forced to undergo the same thing. Whatever his motives were, Kai was an example of the pain neglectful parents can bring, and he provides a stark contrast to Ranger, who wasn’t yet aware of Gashu’s cruelty when we met him. We watched in real time as Ranger realized that he wasn’t actually all that loved or valued; he was just created to serve a purpose, and when he stepped out of line he quickly lost his value. Just like how Kai served the purpose of being an assassin, and, potentially, how Sara serves the purpose of being the leader. Gashu isn’t just a neglectful parent, he’s outright malicious.

I’d like to speculate, then, about how the story is going to take the path of neglectful adults as it goes forward. I already think that we can see where it’s going to go with Sara, as 3-1a has clearly showcased the effects of her guilt and, depending on which route you take, has either established that she’s grown comfortable with her position as leader or is crumbling under the pressure of her grief. However, going back to the theme of parents... it must be noted that almost none of the characters have been confirmed to have 2 biological parents. They either come from an orphanage or are missing a parent... and the parent they’re missing is typically the father. I have to wonder if this consistent theme of failed parenting is going to tie into Gashu’s reminder to “question your upbringing,” and if the shitty adults are going to make a more literal appearance.

#holy FUCK this was long #if you read this entire thing idk whether to thank you or apologize #also this was so poorly written im so sorry lol #yttd meta #your turn to die #yttd #kimi ga shine #sara chidouin #shin tsukimi #kanna kizuchi #keiji shinogi #depressobean rambles #my writing

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sophieinwonderland · 2 years ago

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Hi there - we’ve been following you for a while now and really appreciate how you handle discourse and take part in civil discussion surrounding endosystems and tulpa systems. A couple of our alters want to unfollow because of something we saw on a couple other blogs, but I wanted to reach out to ask you directly about this before we unfollowed, because I and some other alters look up to you and like your blog.

The issue in particular is we’ve heard from multiple folks that you’ve advocated for not using violence against Nazis in the past. Mind, we haven’t seen any receipts or screenshots that back up this claim, but we’ve seen it made by multiple people.

This is a huge issue for us as a Jewish system! We can’t continue to follow you in good faith if this is true. We’re wondering if you can clarify this at all?

Thank you so much!!

-🫧🍓

This issue is a complicated one, but to put it simply, I am against neutral or counterproductive violence. Neutral violence would be violence that doesn't accomplish anything positive. Counterproductive violence is violence that would hamper efforts to achieve your positive goals.

I do not support violence on the basis of "this person deserves to be hurt." I do support goal-oriented violence that aims to reduce harm being carried out to others.

The American prison system and the politics around it are an example of the dangers of revenge-driven morality. Prisoners are kept in horrible conditions. Sentences are increased, but there is little attempt at rehabilitation. The justification is that these are bad people and deserve to be hurt. The result is that once they're released, they're more likely to commit crimes and therefore be put back into prison.

A more humane prison system that focused on rehabilitation would ultimately be more beneficial to society. Thus, the current prison system is a form counter-productive harm that's driven by revenge-thinking. It's not about the greater good, but about the gratification of hurting people who are deemed to deserve it.

To expand on my position:

Harming people is morally wrong.

If you allow other people to be harmed when you could prevent it, then you're responsible for that harm as well.

When these ideals conflict and someone would perpetrate harm to others, it may be required to cause harm to the perpetrator to prevent them from harming another.

At this point, violent and nonviolent options should be weighed towards the most productive to accomplishing your moral goals of preventing harm to the innocent. The most likely to lead to a positive outcome should be chosen.

I do believe that many cases of political violence are counterproductive. Often, fascists will use violence against them to justify their fascism and increase public support for their regime. Nonviolent revolutions that turn violent will typically see public opinion turn against them, and the public becomes more willing to support fascism. Fascists have even been known to fake acts of violence through false flag attacks because being seen as a victim helps garner sympathy.

I also believe that more often than not, a pen can be more effective than a gun in resistance movements. Someone who dies shooting a fascist dies eliminating one fascist from the world. Someone who is executed for disseminating propaganda that manages to convert a hundred fascists died eliminating a hundred fascists from the world. The goals of any movement for change need to be to increase active support past a certain threshold before change can be enacted.

In most situations, I personally believe non-violent methods are usually much more effective at resulting in a higher net good than violent methods.

But here is the bit of nuance that I think got lost along the way... in the situations where the calculus has been conducted, both violent and nonviolent options are considered as methods of preventing significant harm, and violence is deemed to be the most effective method towards accomplishing these positive moral goals, violence becomes a moral imperative.

Essentially, the choice to use violent opposition has to be oriented around doing what's right for those you act in service of and mitigated with critical thinking to determine if it's the best course of action available. If you have to inflict violence, then it needs to be in service of a specific goal. Violence itself or the emotional gratification from committing violence should not be the goal.

#ask box #politics #us politics #resistance #prison

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years ago

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How the IMF loan-sharks the global south

When you take out a loan or get a credit card, the headline figure is the “APR” — the annual percentage rate of interest. But anyone who’s ever borrowed because they were poor and needed money has learned the hard way that APRs are pure fiction.

To get the true APR (what economists politely call the “effective” APR) you have to factor in the fees, penalties and other gotchas that turn reasonable seeming interest rates into perennial, inescapable debt-traps.

Take student debt. During the 2020 presidential campaign, we had a debate about student debt forgiveness, whose opponents frequently cited the “unfairness” of allowing people to “escape their responsibilities.”

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

In their telling, student debt forgiveness would reward fecklessness, allowing people who got the benefit of an expensive education to duck the costs.

Now, even if you ignore the farcical inflation in university tuition and expenses (for example, the 1000%+ hike in textbooks driven by ed-tech monopolists), that’s still a highly selective account of how student debt works.

Student debt is negotiated from a position of weakness and naiveté, which allows lenders to attack the poorest grads with incredible fees and penalties. “Chris” took out $79k in student loans in 1982. He’s paid back $190k. He still owes $236k.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/student-loan-horror-stories-borrowed

That’s not the magic of compound interest. It’s the magic of loan-sharking. If you’ve ever used a payday lender (aka a “fintech startup” AKA a “loan shark”), none of this will be the least bit surprising. This form of usury is as old as Christ casting out the money-changers.

The payday lending industry didn’t invent these tactics, but they refined, automated and industrialized them, then they spent millions at Trump hotels and (in a stunning coincidence) all those tactics were blessed by the US finance regulators.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-payday-lenders-spent-1-million-at-a-trump-resort-and-cashed-in

The normalization of loan-sharking sent the entire finance sector into a race to the bottom. America’s largest banks saw their profits soar during the pandemic due to record overdraft and other fees — in other words, collecting fines for being poor.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/22/ihor-kolomoisky/#usurers

The sums are jaw-dropping. In 2020, Jpmorganchase made $1.5b on overdraft fees, Bank of America made $1.1b and Wells Fargo made $1.3b. The biggest rake came from the worst months of the pandemic.

https://prospect.org/economy/big-banks-charged-billions-in-overdraft-fees-during-pandemic/

78.3% of all overdraft fees come from just 9.2% of bank customers. At $35 a pop, these fees turn the banks’ overdraft facilities into loans with an “effective APR” of 3,500%.

Three thousand.

Five hundred.

Percent.

These are the cold, bloodless numbers of the debt trap. They conceal a vicious cycle in which those with the least pay the most, a cycled that can’t even be outrun in death.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

Take a moment to (re)read Molly McGhee’s Paris Review essay from May 2021, “America’s Dead Souls,” about her mother’s death. McGhee’s mom made less than $10k/year and suffered “debilitating depression while caring for aging parents.”

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/05/17/americas-dead-souls/

Her mother was haunted by two warring clans of ghouls: debt collectors who harassed her through legal and illegal means, and con artists who located her through databases of struggling debtors and tried to sell her predatory consolidation loans.

48 hours after her mother’s death, these blood-suckers switched to harassing McGhee, as she grieved her loss. Unlike her mother, McGhee had the resiliency and wherewithal (a credit card) to hire a lawyer, whose boilerplate letter reduced the debt by 90%, over $250k, poof.

If you can afford a lawyer, your parents’ debts don’t become yours. If you can’t, you enter a cycle of intergenerational poverty, with each generation sinking deeper into debt.

When you have nothing and owe everything, debt collectors know that they have to terrorize you into putting their bills ahead of the others. The cruelty is literally the point — without it, you might pay your rent ahead of your mother’s old credit-card bills.

To quote Umair Haque, “America is the the world’s first poor rich country.” an “advanced economy” where a sizable portion of the population lives in conditions typical of the global south.

https://eand.co/the-worlds-first-poor-rich-country-c411afc68539

Not for nothing. The same tactics that impoverish the vast American underclass also work to keep the world’s poorest countries — rich in resources and talent — poor. The loan shark here is far more powerful than a payday lender or even JP Morgan — it’s the IMF.

A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research dissects the way the IMF uses fees and penalties to trap the poorest countries in the world in unbreakable cycles of debt — fees that drive up the IMF’s notional APR to dizzying, usurious heights.

https://cepr.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/IMF-Surcharge-Report-2.pdf

Like any predatory loan, these “surcharges” are levied against the countries that have the least ability to repay. They target countries whose debt:GDP ratio passes an arbitrary line. For the poorest IMF debtors, surcharges account for 45% of all non-principle repayment.

These numbers add up. In Egypt, surcharges gobbled up $1.8b between 2019–24 — triple the cost of fully vaccinating the whole country. Small wonder that the world’s 64 poorest countries spend more on external debt payment than they do on their own health care.

In its defense, the IMF offers the same tissue-thin responses that any arm-breaker offers. The claim that penalties and fees are a way to “incentivize” debtor nations not to overborrow, and to seek their credit from the private finance sector.

But these countries are borrowing to pay off their debts — often debts that date back to colonial times, in which the rich (white) world mercilessly looted their resources and fomented destabilizing political divisions.

This undermined domestic resistance to imperialism and allowed kleptocratic, corrupt leaders to thrive — leaders who borrowed heavily to finance vanity projects, corrupt enrichment of domestic elites, and militarized suppression of opposition movements.

All of that was funded by debts, often from the IMF, who tied lending to the dismantling and sell-off of state enterprises, from power to water to sanitation — which is how the world’s poorest get gouged by the world’s richest to drink their own water.

These countries don’t borrow because they want to live outside their means — they borrow because they want to live. They don’t borrow from the IMF because they’re too lazy to ask a multinational bank for credit — they borrow because they can’t get credit elsewhere.

But the IMF has another excuse for this: they claim that the fees they extract allow them to originate more loans, creating a virtuous cycle. But as the report makes clear, this is absurd on its face.

The IMF went into the pandemic boasting about $1 trillion in “firepower” (that’s creepy-cutesey IMFspeak for “cash reserves”). Meanwhile, the annual revenues from these fees is $1b — that’s three orders of magnitude less than that “firepower.”

That means that the IMF could simply give up on these punitive fees, levied against the poorest people in the world, at an annual cost of 0.01% of its reserves. Literally, the cruelty is the point.

The point of all of this? The victims of usury are all in the same boat — in the USA and around the world. The same tactics, the same excuses, the same misery, from Cairo to the Caribbean to Cleveland.

Not all debt is created equal, of course. If you’re Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, you can get sweetheart loans and roll overs that let you avoid almost all taxation through the fiction that you earn no income, even as you amass hundreds of billions.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/08/leona-helmsley-was-a-pioneer/#eat-the-rich

And of course, if you’re a government with debts denominated in the currency you issue, it’s not really “debt” at all — the only way the US government can run out of dollars is by ordering its employees not to type more dollars into existence in a central bank spreadsheet.

Indeed, you couldn’t ask for a starker example of the difference between monetarily sovereign nations and postcolonial countries that owe debts in the currencies of their former conquerors. Venezuela can’t spend its way out of US dollar debt by creating bolivars.

Like McGhee’s mother, whose debts turned out to be fictions that disappeared as soon as a professional with credentials and access to the levers of power printed out a boilerplate letter, these countries’ debts are cruel fictions.

The powerful and wealthy can indulge these fictions or ignore them, as they choose. For example, finance-friendly politicians can insist that the “debt ceiling” must not be raised, for political purposes.

When the US declines to do the trivial data-entry that would make the money to pay its sovereign “debts,” the consumption that the money would have funded still takes place — financed not by the democratic state, but rather by a loan-shark.

National financial “prudence” interrupts the normal and benign process of sovereign money-creation, opening space for usury — private borrowing from the vampires and ghouls whose 3,500% APRs are redeemed through terror.

The cruelty is the point.

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#pluralistic

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shihalyfie · 4 years ago

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Neverland, the role of “nostalgia” in Kiuzna’s narrative, and the 02 quartet’s unusual immunity to it

In general, the 02 quartet (my shorthand for the four human characters introduced in 02 who weren’t in Adventure, namely Daisuke, Ken, Miyako, and Iori) have a position in Kizuna that you can call “shockingly favorable” in that they’re kept safely out of the most dangerous parts of the plot in ways the others aren’t. This especially sticks out when we get to the Eosmon incident reaching its climax, when Takeru and Hikari are placed in the same situation as their Adventure seniors, despite the movie and its surrounding media generally portraying them closer in line with the others in the 02 group than the Adventure group.

To be a bit blunt about it, the obvious main reason the story is set up this way is meta -- a lot of the climax’s effectiveness depends on the audience getting sensory impact via recognizing things from the original series (including 02 as well; how convenient it is that all of the international Chosen are in the positions 02 fans would recognize!), and so it’s obvious that said climax would evoke imagery related to the series that was Digimon Adventure, while the 02 quartet would be treated extra-kindly by the narrative due to the need to give them compensatory action screentime given certain real-life events. But just because the originating reason is meta doesn’t mean there isn’t also a story reason for it, especially considering the relevance of 02′s themes in Kizuna’s narrative, and the surrounding circumstances regarding both series.

Before we get into anything else, the first thing that needs to be established is that Menoa and Eosmon’s lure is pretty obviously depicted as working on a subconscious level. This is why everyone else in the narrative agrees that what they did is “kidnapping”, despite her insistence that she’s just doing what they wanted. While they can’t not admit to having moments of weakness, nevertheless, it’s likely that most if not all of the people Menoa kidnapped consciously knew better and had learned better lessons than this a long time ago; if Menoa had consciously offered Neverland to her victims, most of them would have probably said no! But as Daisuke said back in 02 episode 49 -- when he witnessed his own friends being subjected to something similar at the hands of BelialVamdemon -- there’s no sin in having feelings of worries or troubles (and, by extension, irrational feelings in general), and Eosmon’s abilities and Neverland happen to be able to directly target them. In fact, we ourselves got to witness this internal conflict when Menoa made her direct offer to Taichi and Yamato to join Neverland; they briefly considered it because of the circumstances, but were snapped out of it quickly with Agumon and Gabumon’s intervention, and were really, really mad at themselves for considering it shortly after.

We saw the process of how Ayaka became one of the kidnapping victims at the beginning of the movie -- it happened right after she complained that she wasn’t fond of the idea of becoming an adult at this point. So it does lend some truth to the idea that Menoa’s working off something with these cases, and that Eosmon did specifically target people who had those wishes to some degree. Moreover, note carefully how this kidnapping (and some others in the movie) is portrayed; Eosmon doesn’t actually emerge from the device in question (it’s obvious that nobody notices the giant butterfly monster), and the victim’s consciousness and partner are whisked away thanks to being caught by the device camera. In Ayaka’s case, because her phone was sitting on the table, pointed at her. The fact that this is not how the kidnappings are portrayed all the way to the end of the movie is a very significant point.

So let’s talk about Neverland and its construction. The whole thing is based on Menoa’s own very, very warped view of what “happiness” is. This means that Neverland is only an “ideal world” or “utopia” in a way that makes sense to her -- and once you learn the full extent of her backstory, it becomes apparent how she came to the mentality she did, and, more pertinently, how she ended up projecting that on everyone else. Hence, how she came to decide that she knew better and should decide for everyone, because she thinks she gets the right to decide on everyone’s happiness based on her own experiences. (She doesn’t.)

The way Neverland is constructed is that everyone has “their own places” -- their own individual islands that recreate “memories” of everyone being able to be together with their partner, forever. So in other words, it’s not just that everyone’s being turned into children; it’s that they’re being kept in an eternal loop of their best memory and unable to “move forward”.

Here are three very significant parts about this, which will be important to keep in mind as we go deeper into this analysis:

Menoa’s view of this utopia requires people to be separated -- for all she claims this is a utopia where people can play together, she discourages fraternizing and encourages everyone to stay only with their own partners. This is, presumably, to lessen complications with said memories, because what might be one person’s best memory might not be for another, and also because she thinks one person being alone with their partner is happiness enough in itself. As we’ll be seeing later, this is very much not the case for everyone.

A lot of these memories in Neverland -- and Menoa’s own mentality, as we eventually find out -- are heavily dependent on the concept of rose-colored nostalgia, or, that is to say, conveniently omitting or forgetting about all of the bad things about one’s past in order to portray it as such a wonderful thing that nobody should ever move on from. And in the end, that probably applies to real-life childhood in general, too; as much as it’s so often put on a pedestal for being a time when “everything was simpler”, you can also easily argue that it wasn’t actually all sunshine and roses, it’s just that the process of forgetting things or the grass-is-greener phenomenon makes you conveniently forget all of the bad things and frustration that came with it too.

Because the concept of needing to stay in the past forever is based on the idea that it’s preferable to growing up, these memories thus have a strong premise of “things you cannot do anymore” -- something that, bar going back to the past and never moving from it, you will never get back or be able to sufficiently recreate. It’s unlikely the islands themselves are one-to-one recreating their specific memories in the way they happened, but rather seemingly presenting them the opportunity to “constantly do over” things they want to recreate or do again, as long as those things are associated with a happy thing that isn’t as easily accessible anymore.

In the case of the five Adventure group members who were brought into Neverland, these “memories” that they’re seen trapped in are, of course, from Digimon Adventure.

It is of course foolhardy to pretend that the main reason for this wasn’t meta, since, of course, there’s a huge point to be made here about the relationship between Adventure and nostalgia, plus the simple fact that this is what we’re most likely to recognize and be nostalgic for, but it also makes sense within the context of the narrative; Menoa has an extreme bias towards the happiness of her childhood revolving almost entirely around her partner, and, of course, Adventure was when these kids first had their most formative meetings with said partners. (This is also probably the in-story explanation for why the other international Chosen from 02 appear at or close to their 02 selves; beyond the meta reason of it being a way to make them recognizable when we only knew them for such a short time, it also approximates when they met their own partners.)

On top of that, Adventure was not all sunshine and roses for its cast! After all, there was a ton of drama and emotional trauma and stress from running away from enemies trying to kill them, or trying to save the universe, and glossing over that is also foolhardy -- but this is also where our concept of “rose-colored” comes in. Menoa’s not offering the kids the entire adventure; she’s offering them a small slice of the moments when they were able to be happy, the moments that made them want to stay in the Digital World for a whole 110 years’ worth of time at the end of Adventure -- she’s basically offering them that very thing they wanted and had ripped away from them at the end of Adventure when the time dilation phenomenon stopped. Take out all of the bad stuff, and suddenly, the events of Adventure seem outright romantic -- it’s the whole school of thought that fueled Adventure’s inspirations of Two Years’ Vacation and Stand By Me, in which a lot of stressful stuff happened and yet you still can’t help but think there was something magical and romantic about it. (I cannot emphasize enough how much of a cultural impact Stand By Me in particular had in Japan, to the point where it’s considered the epitome example of a “coming of age story” and “summer adventure”.)

Let’s take a closer look at what’s on each of the Adventure kids’ personal islands:

Hikari is probably the one in the most unusual position among this group, since she didn’t join until over the halfway point, and the first arc she got involved in revolved around everyone wanting her and Tailmon dead. Thus, the memory we get to see her involved in is the Numemon factory in Adventure episode 49. Although this was in the middle of the Dark Masters arc (and, uniquely, very close to the end of the series where a lot of stress was involved), due to the limited amount of time she got to be in the Digital World, this was the one time she got to do something really cool and awesome and impressive for herself that had nothing to do with the others (again: see how the requirements for these islands require not fraternizing with friends and being isolated).

One thing that the Adventure kids got to do that wasn’t in play in 02 was that there were a lot of “romantic experiences”, involving strange adventures and things like phone boxes on the beach, and, very significantly, “Digimon friends” -- ones that the kids made a huge note of bonding with over the course of the series. This contributes to a certain sense of whimsy that was involved in this adventure that the 02 quartet ultimately never ended up getting to foster, because the lack of the time dilation phenomenon meant that they spent much less time in the Digital World overall (more on this in a bit), and once the time dilation stopped, it meant that these kinds of “whimsical” experiences were ones the Adventure group was permanently torn away from once that adventure ended. That dropping of the time dilation phenomenon not only cut that initial adventure short, it also prevented any future ones like it from ever happening again.

And, of course, this is an extremely rose-colored memory, because shortly afterwards, the Numemon ended up all sacrificing themselves for Hikari. But hey, when you’re in a space that can eternally loop good memories forever, everything’s fine as long as we conveniently never get to that part, right?

From this point on, you’ll notice that all of the memories that show up on these islands are from before the halfway point of the series, because after that, things started getting increasingly pear-shaped and much more difficult to disentangle the stress, mental breakdowns, and witnessing of deaths from. (Hikari’s probably wouldn’t have come from such a late incident if she hadn’t joined the party so late.) Although there still were looming threats around the horizon in the beginning of Adventure, they weren’t always immediately apparent to the kids at every turn, and in fact, the beginning of the series involved more of a “well, we’re in this situation and probably need to get home somehow” aura than it did a “the world is in danger and all of us might die” aura. (It’s also in direct contrast to the 02 group, who were given the details of the crisis and what they needed to do roughly from the get-go.) So in other words, if you want to have some rose-colored nostalgia about the romanticism of this adventure, these are some of the best episodes to pull from.

Takeru’s is obviously from the Village of Beginnings, corresponding to Adventure episode 12, when he and Patamon got to have a fun romp through the village, play together, meet Elecmon, and learn about how Digimon are born. It’s also very much something he did without the others, only with Patamon, and had a lot of “fun and happiness” associated with (later solo episodes with Takeru had a lot more upsetting events more intrinsically tied with it), and, again, it’s extremely rose-colored -- it wasn’t even a day later when Angemon died in front of Takeru’s eyes. But hey, that’s even more reason to pick a moment from before then to stay in forever! Can’t have trauma if that trauma never happens, right?

Also, note that Takeru is one of the few here who’s confirmed to be aware of the partnership dissolution issue at this point, and, unlike Koushirou, isn’t confirmed to have accepted a forward-thinking mentality about it yet -- this is a very, very prime time for his fears of being separated from Patamon again to have a nasty relapse.

Mimi’s is the closest to the midpoint of the series, from the affair with the Geckomon and Otamamon castle (from Adventure episode 25; the metal railings here resemble the stage railings from that episode). It’s from the period of time that was a “lull” -- when nobody actually knew about the encroaching threat of Vamdemon quite yet, and for all it was worth, there was no longer any danger. So Mimi got to live happily in the comfort of the castle and play around with the Geckomon and Otamamon...which, of course, also conveniently excludes the affair where she went on a power trip, made everyone miserable due to her selfishness, and immediately felt guilt over it.

Mimi’s associations with this incident are not entirely negative; she was clearly still having fun singing for them in the end (note how her clothing during that scene involved her regular outfit, which she has on here), and she still had a positive impression of her relationship with the Geckomon and Otamamon as per Adventure episode 47 and 02 episode 6 (and as per 02 episode 15, even though everyone’s initial encounter with TonosamaGeckomon ended badly, nobody actually has any lingering grudge against him). So if you filter out that whole affair with the power trip and the resulting embarrassment, it was a meeting with a bunch of fun Digimon friends, a romantic little castle, and a fun stage session where Mimi got to sing.

Jou’s refers to the Infinity Mountain incident in Adventure episode 7, and even from the get-go you can already see the level of rose-coloredness in Jou’s gesture -- in the actual incident depicted, Jou went to the mountain out of a sense of obligation and stress, and the initial climbing involved him having a bit of a bickering moment with Gomamon. But once they did get up there, it was actually their first time the two of them got to really “bond” -- and not only that, their encounter with Unimon had Jou even look on it with fascination, before the Dark Gear had ever come into play.

So in the end, Jou really would have found the incident enjoyable and worthwhile if not for that, and from there you can understand why it would be appealing for him to revisit that setting and finally get to have a bit of calm fun with Gomamon there -- especially since, again, the Neverland islands have a very strong preference for isolating the kids from others, and this was one of the few times Jou got to have a major moment of calm like this alone with Gomamon, with a slight reprieve from the constant feeling of stress and duty.

Koushirou’s most prominently resembles the “sealed room” in the factory in Adventure episode 5, and while Koushirou certainly continued to make a large number of exciting discoveries after that, this was the situation where Koushirou, with no one else but Tentomon to worry about in the immediate vicinity, got to have the largest sensation of “novelty” -- where he first came upon the fascinating discovery of data manipulating reality around him, and he actually got to see the world change around him by wiping things off a wall.

And, of course, there were other things going on like Tentomon confronting him with his first existential crisis, and how things quickly went south with Andromon...but we don’t have to remember that part for now, right?

An interesting thing about Koushirou: the circumstances of how he was “kidnapped” in the first place are actually somewhat obscured compared to the other four in this scene, since Menoa presumably needed him conscious in order to get his list out of him, resulting in his kidnapping scene also involving an emerging Eosmon and not having him be instantly taken the way we see Takeru and Hikari (more on this in the section below). It’s thus unclear whether he’d be in their boat had his position in Menoa’s plan not been unusual -- said memories in Neverland involved “gathering information and learning more”, something he still actively involved himself with even after the events of Adventure, and he’s also the first one to reach a forward-thinking mentality about the partnership dissolution phenomenon. Either way, once he was already dragged into Neverland, it’s natural that the place could find a good memory for him in the same way it did for the other kids who were “manually” dragged in, but the actual method of entry and whether Koushirou's post-Adventure life put him in a mindset similar to that of the 02 quartet (again, see below) is a bit ambiguous.

So here’s an interesting part about how the 02 quartet gets involved in this story: their own encounters with Eosmon happen during a part where the method of kidnapping has abruptly changed. As many have pointed out, this is also when the degree of the targets Menoa wanted had also suddenly escalated, because while her previous claims had involved the idea of kidnapping like-minded adults (who, indeed, were entertaining thoughts of nostalgia to even some degree), she was now kidnapping actual children, ones who weren’t even nearly at the point of the supposed drudgery of adulthood that Menoa claimed they would eventually have, and with her arrogantly deciding she knew better for all of them. The part that becomes particularly intriguing about this is that the exact same thing happens with Miyako -- she is explicitly stated to have connected her laptop to the Internet, resulting in an Eosmon physically emerging and chasing her instead of instantaneously snatching away her consciousness through a camera like her own fellow 02 group members Takeru and Hikari.

So in other words, the 02 quartet’s favorable position in this incident doesn’t just have to do with being lucky enough to have gotten Koushirou’s warning about the Eosmon early; they (or at least Miyako) also seem to have a certain degree of outright immunity to it, much like the young children who aren’t old enough to have nostalgia yet. (Also, keep in mind that Takeru was caught thanks to a security camera; “excess caution with electronic devices” alone wouldn’t necessarily have guaranteed their safety.)

Recalling that, for the most part, Takeru and Hikari are usually treated more like 02 group members in the context of this narrative yet are, in this one case, treated as being potentially nostalgia-prone, it stands to reason that the main difference between the two of them and their fellow members in the 02 group is the fact that Takeru and Hikari went on the adventure in 1999, and the quartet did not. So in other words, the reason the 02 quartet isn’t as prone to this is not so much that they’re fundamentally different-minded people, as much as they have a distinct lack of an experience they can be attached to the way the Adventure group is to their own 1999 adventure. (Remember that Menoa’s kidnappings work heavily on subconscious feelings; you can’t blame anyone for having these kinds of feelings no matter how much they’ve consciously learned.)

As I said earlier, it’s foolhardy to pretend that Adventure was all sunshine and roses, and, likewise, it’s also foolhardy to pretend that 02 was nothing but suffering for everyone involved. Both series involved a lot of balancing of funny, silly moments to be treasured as much as they involved stress (which is why people are so attached to both, after all). So the question is not so much how happy they were in their childhoods as much as the nature of what that happiness came from, and what relation it has to their current lives. And when you look at what experiences the 02 quartet had back in 02, you might notice a thread of the fact that it is significantly harder to romanticize the events of 02 than it is Adventure.

Let’s put it this way: Let’s say that the 02 quartet was kidnapped into Neverland and placed onto islands that fit Menoa’s view of happiness. What, exactly, would you pick from 02 itself that would work? What kind of “happiness” did they have back then that’s so romantic, so impossible to replicate now, that they’d want to go back to because it’s better than their lives now once you disentangle all of the bad stuff?

...Not much. Not much at all, actually. Hanging out in the computer room together? Doesn’t seem like they cared that much about the computer room part as much as the fact the others were there bantering with them (which would put a huge nail in Menoa’s islands mandating isolationism). Going out on a picnic together? No reason they can’t just go on another picnic again (and if the BD box is to be believed, that’s exactly what they did, and they even added Ken to it while they were at it). Hanging out with their Digimon in real life and doing silly hijinks? They’re...probably still doing that now, actually. Getting to find true happiness at a Christmas party? That’s a party from the real world (again, something they most certainly continued to do thereafter), one where the happiness came not from the romanticism of anything that happened to do with some adventure, but just the happiness of being surrounded by true friends, which, again, Ken is still clearly getting to do by the time of Kizuna.

Once you look at the circumstances of what the “adventure” of 02 was to the 02 group, you may realize that it doesn’t really resemble the traditional romantic image of an “adventure” much at all. Sure, they were blessed with being able to regularly go back and forth between the Digital World from the get-go, but it meant that -- especially without the time dilation in play -- the Digital World became much less of a picturesque area associated with a one-time memorable adventure as much as something they had to squeeze in their after-hours while juggling it with their school. The circumstances they encountered their Digimon and the Digital World in were at a point where it had a certain level of “mundane” to them, compared to their seniors; it wasn’t a “fantasy adventure in the Digital World” when so much of the story also revolved around real-world events as well, and you can’t really find many “mysterious fantasy” events in 02 that resemble much of those in Adventure. The closest might be...Daisuke seeing Numemon pile out of a vending machine in 02 episode 1? (Not very romantic.) Daisuke getting chased around by a Tortomon in 02 episode 22? (Really not very romantic.) Iori getting to tour the ocean with Submarimon? (Implied to more about relief from how much he was holding himself back than the uniqueness of the experience in itself.) Ken’s long-time-ago flashback from 02 episode 23 about meeting Wormmon for the first time? (Defeating a Gazimon is hardly that impressive; the important part was him bonding with Wormmon, which he’s...uh...still doing now?)

There weren’t any lasting relationships with Digimon friends like the ones in Adventure, maybe encountering some civilians once and not seeing them much again after that, especially since the lack of time dilation meant not getting to spend as much time visiting them much at all (think about all of the really fun experiences that the Adventure group probably had that weren’t shown in the actual Adventure TV series, just because it probably didn’t have enough drama that would make a good TV episode plot). This means that there’s very little, if at all, of 02 that represents something this group would want so badly to recreate that they can’t already do now; everything from back then was either something comparatively mundane, or something they actually would not want back. Unlike with Adventure, where a lot of the kids had irreplaceable moments that only happened to be spoiled a bit later, a lot of the “really awesome accomplishments” from the first half of 02 were explicitly against Ken, someone whom they’d probably rather not dwell on fighting again because of how much they love him now; many of those good memories are “retroactively poisoned” because of that, and it’s much, much more difficult to make a rose-colored version of those memories disentangled from the bad, because of how fundamentally intrinsic that retroactive poisoning becomes.

And, when you think about it, the mandate of “you have to be alone on your own island” would pretty much break these four in particular, especially since the 02 group is portrayed as the type to need mutual support more than anything else, and so many of the events that represent “happiness” specifically involved the happiness of each other being present. It’s not to say that the 02 quartet had no moments of happiness when alone with their partners, but, rather, being with each other provided so much more fulfillment to them that Menoa’s offer of a memory of their past that requires them to be alone probably pales in comparison to anything they could do now in each other’s presence. Maybe, like with the other kids depicted in these scenes, they could be buttered up with something nice if you successfully got them into Neverland, but it’s not like they have any real wistfulness about anything from back then to the point that they’d be subconsciously drawn towards it instead of having to be dragged in kicking and screaming -- and especially in the case of Miyako, the same one who managed to evade an Eosmon here, who was offered a similar “chance to be alone” back in 02 episode 49 and didn’t take very long to decide she hated it because of how much of her happiness comes from getting to be with others.

By the time of the end of Adventure, the Adventure kids’ ideal situation was to have a romantic and fun 110-year adventure with the sights and fun of the Digital World, with all of the weird fantasy surrealism and less of the world-saving, and that’s something they never got to have (and that Menoa was inherently offering them). By the time of the end of 02, the 02 quartet’s ideal situation was...to find a way to get back to normal life and hope their friend feels a little better, and that “ideal situation” is still persisting even into the time of Kizuna, so it’s hard to imagine they really want more than that.

And, again, when you extrapolate this into what Kizuna’s trying to say about real life, adulthood, and nostalgia: it is true that Menoa’s projecting a belief that absolutely does not apply to everyone. While it’s true that many people feel that childhood had a certain kind of magic that you can’t get back in adulthood, there are possibly just as many people who aren’t really all that nostalgic to begin with, either due to trauma or something about their childhoods being miserable, or, even in the lack of such miserable events, simply enjoying the added freedom and expanded range of ability that comes with adulthood to the point they consider it to be more than worth the tradeoff. The 02 group basically represents this crowd -- Ken’s life right now beats out his past in pretty much nearly every respect, and while there are certain concerns about not being able to meet up as often, they’re finding the same ways to do the same kinds of over-the-top hijinks they did back in 02, with arguably even more range now that they get to exploit Digital Gates to do world travel and act without worrying about their parents. They’re basically like the adults who see Menoa’s creed of “childhood is better because adulthood sucks” and go “sorry, can’t relate.”

That said, remember: this isn’t because the 02 quartet is somehow mentally stronger or anything, but rather just a byproduct of what experiences they've had and haven’t had. Takeru and Hikari’s position is unique here -- for all intents and purposes their mentalities are portrayed as closer to the 02 group’s, but they did still have the experience their seniors had and are thus still capable of being close to their position in this one regard. In the end, everyone is different, it’s no sin to have feelings based on those differences, and “being able to relate” to one’s position is also an important key here; because the 02 group’s position is so alien to Menoa’s, it’s unlikely they could have tackled her problems nearly as intimately as their seniors could.

What we learn about Menoa’s backstory establishes that she forced her vision of nostalgic happiness on everyone based on her own perception of her past in such a warped, rose-colored manner. She conveniently omitted or forgot about details such as the fact that her life as a “child” involved feeling ostracized from everyone and that she herself was guilty of neglecting Morphomon. Not only that, she herself claims that she’s the only one who knows what this feels like -- that nobody relates to her -- and thus, you can see that she came to her conclusion that her experiences are universal by the power of sheer extrapolation, hence why she thinks everyone inevitably loses their partner upon reaching adulthood despite pretty significant amounts of evidence to the contrary. (For all it’s worth, the fact that she still considers herself as having “become an adult” at 14 just because she got into university at that time is pretty conceited.)

Menoa’s existence as being so starkly in contrast to the 02 quartet’s is very likely because her entire character was built up from the ground that way -- her entire backstory of skipping grades into university is heavily based on 02′s initial development premise and Ken’s own backstory, meaning she explicitly represents the path that Ken and the other 02 kids chose not to take, and the timing of certain events in her backstory seems almost deliberately engineered to prevent her from witnessing some of 02′s important answers to Kizuna’s conflict, most notably her inability to witness the final battle and the important lessons everyone present learned about following one’s dreams without restraint, and how that relates to one’s partner. Menoa’s mindset is basically that level of incompatible with 02′s themes of “moving on from the past” and “not caving to arbitrary societal expectations”, to the point her character could only get to this point by going out of the way to exclude her from 02′s story and events, because she’s fundamentally built as a character who started off on a very similar path as them (getting to integrate her Digimon partner into normal life, having a similar backstory to Ken) before veering off on a very different one.

Moreover, about that backstory, and the reason why 02 was conceived as such a criticism of the concept of “skipping grades into university”: the concern that someone in this position will be kept from making any friends their age. Menoa puts the moment of “being with one’s partner” on such a pedestal and considers herself to be “the only one who knows what this feels like” partially because she has a fundamentally warped view of friendship itself. Even the Adventure group, which may not have had quite the absurdly tight level of bonding the 02 group had, still broke out of the illusion via Taichi and Yamato reaching out to them, and Taichi and Yamato giving each other mutual support helped them make the decisions they did in the movie. The movie is titled “bonds”, and “bonds” doesn’t just refer to those between human and Digimon partner, but also bonds between each other; Taichi, Yamato, and Sora slowly drifting away from the others at the start of the movie has very strong relevance to their respective existential crises, and the role that Taichi and Yamato play in supporting each other, and Mimi’s in supporting Sora in To Sora and even beyond that, say a lot as to how they’re already expected to be much better off than Menoa was.

It’s not that adulthood is inherent drudgery; it’s that Menoa’s own circumstances really are that warped to the point where she sees her very unusual experiences as fundamentally synonymous with how life is supposed to work in general. She was so obsessed with “being independent”, “being useful to the world”, and “being on her own” that she had no mentality of making friends or connecting to others besides her own partner, and once her partner disappeared, she seemed to make no attempt to rectify that. So of course her life in university following that ended up being not nearly as fulfilling as she’d hoped, since she was getting no real emotional support from anywhere, and, as 02 itself also drove home, apparent “approval from society” only ever makes you as “happy” as a Dark Seed-implanted child if you’re not also being supported by your loved ones in the process. Her adulthood sucked, and she decided that everything about her rose-colored childhood meant that childhood is fundamentally superior in every way, and thus decided that keeping everyone else in it would be “saving” them from the terror it involves -- even though (even if they’re not aware of the specifics of everything) the 02 quartet is not the kind to be able to relate to this at all, and, eventually, Taichi and Yamato, who do understand her position a bit better due to their own experiences, are able to get her to reconsider a little.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #kizuna spoilers #shihameta

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quotes-ig · 4 years ago

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Self Centred Improv: A Brief Analysis of Wilbur’s RP Style, And How It Limits The Dream SMP

okay first of all this is not an attack on Wilbur’s character! these are all mistakes that are very common for amateur improvers/role players, and absolutely do not make him selfish or anything like that. it’s also something that could honestly be fixed so easily, so if you could share this around it would be much appreciated

anyway, my thesis is basically that Wilbur is a very self centred role player and that is severely limiting the potential of the Dream SMP and putting other content creators in awkward positions. what do I mean by that? well, there are two main aspects:

1) The ‘yes and’ rule. if you’ve ever even dabbled in rp or improv before, you would have heard this rule. it basically goes like this: if someone else in the game suggests something? you never, ever say no. never cut it down, never save it for later. instead, you embrace it and try to figure out how you can build on it: “Yes, and-“. Wilbur doesn’t always do this, and that’s a very unfortunate mistake because it often happens at the expense of other creators.

for example, let’s look at the Eret redemption arc. once Wilbur and Tommy were kicked out, Eret practically immediately approached them with an offer of support. it was his redemption arc. Wilbur and Tommy, though, refused him because they didn’t feel it was the right time in the narrative for that. as a result, Eret’s now in...limbo. we all know the redemption arc is coming, so when it does happen it won’t be nearly as impactful, but even until then Eret is just sorta...waiting. waiting for Wilbur to decide that he can fit into the story again. a similar thing happened to Techno, where Wilbur spent a while being reluctant to accept his support. it was only with Tommy’s prodding that he finally agreed, and Techno could join the server. luckily Techno’s limbo was a lot shorter than Eret’s was, but it still let the hype from his tweet die down a little, and that’s a big shame.

again, please do not take this as Wilbur being selfish. that’s absolutely not the case. he’s just falling victim to a very common trap for amateur improvers, and as a result inadvertently throwing his fellow creators under the bus. to go back to the Eret example, if he’d accepted Eret’s immediate offer then Eret would have the opportunity to expand on his character, while Pogtopia would have a completely unexpected dynamic thrown into it that they could use to build their own narratives. it’s so much more interesting. but unfortunately, that’s not happening, and that’s because of the second aspect:

2) Pre-planning the plot. it is very tempting for new role players to have certain plot beats pre-prepared, but this is actually heavily discouraged among the community. because your plot beats are always going to be centred around your own character and their arc, and so you’ll turn down opportunities from other creators that could enrich the storyline and make for a more unexpected, more high stakes experience.

for example: currently, Wilbur has mentioned that he will only allow one other creator per stream to join Pogtopia, and when Tommy tried to suggest otherwise Wilbur broke character to say that Tommy was making the story move too fast. the problem with that is, the story shouldn’t be able to move too fast because the story shouldn’t be set in stone right now. Wilbur, i presume, sees the storyline being other creators gradually joining Pogtopia over time until there’s one big, grand finale. which is a great story!! but predictable, and small scale, and centred around Wilbur and Tommy’s characters. it’s predictable because all the audience knows about it, so there will be very little hype when Niki and Eret etc join the gang. it’s small scale because it’s from the mind of one creator, and leaves very limited opportunities for unexpected factors to change up the plot or challenge the characters. and it’s centred around Tommy and Wilbur because, until they decide otherwise, all the others just have to wait. and their audiences have to wait too.

one of the best parts about minecraft RP and the Dream SMP is just how random everything is. how stupid it is to have such dramatic occurrences and massive stakes in a minecraft game. if Wilbur keeps saying “not yet” instead of “yes, and-“ then these unexpected and dramatic happenings will be a lot less common. some of the best moments on the server are those that Wilbur didn’t plan for (Eret’s betrayal, Schlatt’s victory etc) but they went along with it and used it as a stepping stone to develop the storyline. i feel like, if we want the Dream SMP to not get stale, that will have to become the common response to all contributions from other creators as well.

anyway, i don’t claim to be an expert in the area. i’ve been role playing for about 5 years now, but have no formal education in it and am going purely off of what i’ve observed and been advised of throughout the years. i also apologise if these seemed harsh or condescending, because i’m honestly just trying to offer a different perspective. i very much doubt any of this will actually reach anyone on the SMP, but if it does i hope they take it into consideration ^-^

#dream smp #wilbur soot #wilbursoot #tommyinnit #pogtopia #eret #nihachu #technoblade #l’manburg #dreamwastaken #jschlatt #tubbo #sleepyboisinc #sleepy bois inc #dreamsmp

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princeescaluswords · 3 years ago

Note

"SHADES OF GREEEEEEY!!!! Nothing is black and white!!!!!" says the fanfic author, who has Stiles, Derek and Peter drenched in the blood of their enemies who are deemed enemies and given no complexity, conveniently.

Wouldn't a TRUE gray story shift away from "murder is the BEST option" and explore complex themes and alternatives? If it really is "not so Black and white" then why oh why is Scott permanently relegated to "stupid and useless" instead of going "he maybe has a point"

You have to understand how shades of gray has drifted from its earlier meaning. In the past, it meant an awareness that competing positive motivations can come into conflict and that sometimes to satisfy one moral imperative requires an actor to slight or outright reject another moral imperative.

Let’s take, for example, Scott’s embrace of shades of gray in Season 2. He wants to protect his mother from Gerard, as well as “every one you love and care about.” He believes that lethal violence to get what you want is wrong. He believes that manipulation and deception on wrong. On the other hand, the situation appears to put those moral principles in conflict. Gerard has the upper hand, manipulating both his own family and Scott’s. Derek has demonstrated his willingness to place his betas in harms way and to go immediately to lethal violence as a solution. Scott chooses the gray path of lying to Derek and manipulating Gerard in order to preserve the lives he wants to preserve (including Derek’s). Scott had to place one positive goal (saving lives) above another positive goal (being honest.)

Black-and-white thinking would be if Scott refused to compromise on either of these moral imperatives, trying to save lives by fighting against more powerful and experienced opponents without compromising his own actions.

Scott compromised like this many other times, as well. Such as going with Alpha Pact at the end of The Overlooked (3x10) because he doesn’t see how to stop the Darach otherwise, allowing the twins to help search the school for the Shrapnel Bomber in Galvanize (3x15), robbing an armored car and interfering in a federal investigation in order to get the shugendo scroll in Echo House (3x20), working with a professional assassin to save his beta in Orphaned (4x06).

In each of these situations, Scott felt impelled to ignore a moral imperative in order to satisfy a greater moral imperative. This is the original meaning of shades of gray.

Fandom has turned the concept into a way excuse white male villains for satisfying their own desires. It is now a means to condemn people you dislike and praise people you like for similar actions, even when those actions are taken for radically different reasons.

What’s the difference between what Scott did in Season 2 compared to what Peter did in Season 1? As I’ve said above, Scott deceived Derek and manipulated Gerard in order to prevent the deaths of his mother, Stiles, Lydia, Jackson, Isaac, Boyd, Erica and Derek himself. That was his goal. He didn’t actually gain anything from his successful deception -- in fact, he lost Allison because he got involved in saving the lives of others when he didn’t have to. Peter, in season 1, manipulated and murdered his niece, manipulated and beat his nephew, brutalized and violated teenagers, and killed his own ally and an innocent bystander in order to get revenge on the five people he held responsible for the death of his family and his own pain. His actions were to benefit himself.

There’s a difference between lying to protect others and lying to get what you want. One is shades of gray, and one is just selfishness.

For example -- they condemn Scott for trying to assassinate Gerard in Season 2 and then turn around and condemn Stiles for killing Donovan, and call it hypocrisy. But their entire stance is Black-and-white-thinking because Gerard and Donovan are two different situations entirely. From Scott’s point of view, Donovan is a victim. He’s watched the experimental subjects of the Doctors turn violent (Tracy tried to kill anyone trying to help her, even her own father; Lucas hurt his boyfriend; Kira tried to execute Lucas). Even if Donovan was trying to kill Stiles, he’s still a victim of the Doctors. Gerard knew what he was doing. He knew more than anyone else. He was the one using Jackson. He was the one targeting Scott and Derek and Stiles and everyone else. (In addition, switching out Gerard’s medication wasn’t an assassination. It was designed to prevent him from becoming a werewolf, which it did. He didn’t die, and not one of the characters expressed surprise that he didn’t. How is that an assassination?)

You see, equating what Scott did to Gerard and what Scott thinks Stiles did to Donovan as the same thing is simplistic binary thinking -- the same black-and-white philosophy they try to saddle on Scott. But then, they aren’t interested in moral analysis. They’re interested in excusing hot white guys.

Fandom constantly misses the fact that Peter “We live in shades of gray” Hale actions didn’t match up to his words. He talks about justice, about protecting family, about helping, but he is lying. In the first four seasons, he avoids conflicts that don’t benefit him directly, he demands payment for his assistance, he freely manipulates the people he claims to love. And he never does this for anything but his own wants. Even when he’s working with Kate to kill Scott -- because he feels personally slighted because Scott didn’t want to be his puppet -- he never bothers to find out what’s going on with Derek. In all the scenes we see, he never asks about Derek’s situation, though he knows that Derek is losing his powers.

The reason why these writers don’t make these situations more complex is twofold. First, Peter, Early Derek, and Fanon Stiles don’t need any reason to murder those who irritate them. Simply being in opposition to their wants and needs makes them the enemy. Ever notice how often a member of this trio murders Scott simply for the crime of disagreeing with them? Why spend time and effort making their enemies complex real characters when it’s unnecessary? Second, if they took the time to establish empathy and explore their enemies motivations, they might be forced to write Peter, Early Derek, or Fanon Stiles considering that maybe, just maybe, other people have a right to live and act for their own goals.

The problem with that is that it would be shades of gray.

#scott mccall #scott mccall defense squad #anti peter hale #teen wolf fandom problems

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comrade-meow · 3 years ago

Link

Why do so many young women hate feminist trailblazers like me?

For anyone uninitiated into the various waves of 21st-century feminism, this will no doubt come as a shock. But in my opinion, what passes right now for modern feminism is doing women more harm than good.

Many young women today are not only pandering to men in their so-called feminism, but seem utterly unconcerned that the hard-won rights achieved by older women in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are at risk of being catastrophically eroded.

They are helping everyone but themselves. In many ways they are betraying everything I and my brave colleagues fought for. This is the worst clash across the generations I have witnessed since coming to feminism in 1979, aged 17.

In universities around the UK and beyond, women are being fed a type of faux feminism, often by men reluctant to lose any of their privilege.

Julie Bindel, who came to feminism in 1979, says the rights achieved in the 19060s, 1970s and 1980s are at risk of being catastrophically eroded. Pictured: Julie (left) with Emma Humphreys in 1995 after a campaign to free her from jail for killing her violent partner

These women are being bullied and cajoled into accepting nonsensical concepts that are, at best, naive and, at worst, downright dangerous.

Prostitution, say these young women, is a job just like any other. They also argue that pornography is liberating. And finally, that trans-women should share female-only spaces such as hospital wards and domestic violence refuges.

This last makes me want to weep. It was women of my generation — often called second-wave feminists — who, 50 years ago, built rape crisis centres and refuges with no funding or salaries. To see them being dismantled by the very women who may one day need them is heartbreaking and infuriating.

I don’t think these women — almost all of whom would call themselves feminists — realise they are complicit in eroding our rights, for the simple reason they are no longer taught feminist history in universities. Instead, they are fed a sop of incomprehensible post-modern claptrap by ivory tower academics.

Feminists of my generation are not just ignored, but actively disparaged — or worse.

Since January 2004, when I offered an early opinion on the trans issue for a national newspaper, whenever it becomes public that I am about to speak at an event, always about an aspect of male violence and always as part of my campaigning work, a mob forms with the aim of bullying the organisers into un-inviting me. This is always played out in public and it is always humiliating. Sometimes the organisers capitulate.

I have been invited then uninvited from numerous events at universities following protests from trans activists and supporters of ‘sex work is work’ politics. I have also been invited to, then de-platformed from a number of events exploring free speech.

By contrast, genuine achievements of the past go unrecognised. From the very beginning of my involvement in the women’s liberation movement, we were out on the streets, waving placards, carrying banners and shouting through loudhailers, protesting the laws we wanted to change.

Julie said feminism has been rebranded and repackaged as ‘just be kind and nice to everyone’. Pictured: A 1970 women’s liberation protest

It was our campaigning that led to the introduction of the offence of coercive control; that barred the use of a woman’s previous sexual history in rape trials and ensured anonymity for the victims of sexual assault; and outlawed rape in marriage, which — young feminists are often astonished to discover — was perfectly legal in England and Wales until 1992.

Absurdly, there is no longer any expectation that being a feminist requires you to do anything feminist at all. Instead, and ironically given my experience, feminism has been rebranded and repackaged as ‘just be kind and nice to everyone’. Young women are told it is simply about the ‘choice’ to be who you ‘want to be’.

But if feminism is about choice, what does this mean for the women and girls who don’t have any? The girls forced into marriage, the women pimped out by violent boyfriends, the women on benefits living in temporary accommodation with young children they can’t afford to feed?

For feminism to mean anything, it has to be for all women and not just the privileged few.

Do young women even know about ‘the battles we’ve fought for them

You might ask, as many young women do, what is there still left to fight for? Although my generation of feminists and those that came before chalked up numerous victories, women are far from liberated. Levels of male violence towards women and girls are off the scale, as we have seen with the tragic events of recent weeks.

Conviction rates are so low that rape has been more or less decriminalised. Sexual harassment is endemic in our secondary schools and still a problem for many women in the workplace.

Many young women claim to be feminists, but seem to spend their time dismissing those of us who do the work — as opposed to simply talk the talk — as ‘irrelevant’, ‘bigoted’, and ‘past it’. Do these women even know about the battles we’ve fought and won to afford them some freedom?

Julie said in the current climate of misogyny, many young women are turning on feminists like her rather than pointing the finger at abusive men. Pictured: A rally to celebrate International Women's Day in 2020

In 2018, for example, Ash Sarkar, a media commentator, tweeted about the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act, claiming the introduction of ‘self-identification’ would not have any effect on the rights of others. I replied: ‘Unless you are a female in prison, one of the most disenfranchised groups on the planet of course.’ It was a reference to the case of Karen White, the transgender sex offender placed in a female prison who went on to sexually assault two female inmates.

When, in reply, Sarkar claimed ‘bigots’ like me didn’t ‘care about women in prison’, it was too much. Had she known her feminist history, she would have been aware that I am the founder of Justice for Women — a campaign I began in 1990 — and have helped countless abused women get out of prison.

When I came to feminism, there were no laws protecting lesbians from discrimination and abuse; violent men often won custody of children when women left a marriage; and domestic violence was treated by police as a ‘private matter’. All of this changed because of active feminists, as opposed to those who sit on social media virtue-signalling.

In fact, a woman reporting rape five years ago had a much better chance of seeing justice done than she does today. There were 1,917 fewer rapists convicted in the year to December 2020 than in 2016-17, a decline of 64 per cent.

In the current climate of misogyny, many young women are turning on feminists like me rather than pointing the finger at abusive men. Yet there are young feminists doing invaluable work to challenge male violence and bring about women’s liberation.

Julie said social media activism isn't the answer, as the #MeToo movement is no substitute for action. Pictured: A women's liberation protest in 1971

The campaigning group We Can’t Consent to This, which successfully abolished the ‘rough sex’ defence so often used by men who kill women, continues the work I was involved in as a young feminist when we, too, abolished the insidious defence of ‘provocation’, used by a number of men who’d killed their wives because of ‘nagging’ or alleged infidelity.

Of the 1,000-plus women attending the 50th anniversary of the Women’s Liberation Movement conference in London, in February 2020, a minority, but significant number, were in their 20s.

And when I launched my new book last month in London, well over 100 of the 250 books I signed were for women under the age of 30, with some in their teens.

Right now, we need feminism more than ever, but not the kind that puts men first. In the real world prostitution is not a liberating career ‘choice’, and increasingly violent pornography is not ‘sex-positive’.

Neither is social media activism the answer. The #MeToo movement is no substitute for action. Let’s point the finger at men who rape rather than expecting yet more women to lay bare their horrific experiences.

We live in a world in which rape, femicide and everyday abuse and harassment are ever present.

To change it, we need to be united and not divided by generational conflict. Somehow, and urgently, we must find a way to bridge the gap. Fighting among ourselves wastes time — and there is no time to lose.

Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation, by Julie Bindel, (£16.99, Little Brown) is out now.

#Anglo.txt

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renegadewangs · 3 years ago

Text

Van Zieks - the Examination, part 6

Warnings: SPOILERS for The Great Ace Attorney: Chronicles. Additional warning for racist sentiments uttered by fictional characters (and screencaps to show these sentiments).

Disclaimer: (see Part 1 for the more detailed disclaimer.) - These posts are not meant to be taken as fact. Everything I’m outlining stems from my own views and experiences. If you believe that I’ve missed or misinterpreted something, please let me know so I can edit the post accordingly. -The purpose of these posts is an analysis, nothing more. Please do not come into these posts expecting me to either defend Barok van Zieks from haters, nor expecting me to encourage the hatred. - I’m using the Western release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for these posts, but may refer to the original Japanese dialogue of Dai Gyakuten Saiban if needed to compare what’s said. This also means I’m using the localized names and localized romanization of the names to stay consistent. -It doesn’t matter one bit to me whether you like Barok van Zieks or dislike him. However, I will ask that everyone who comments refrains from attacking real, actual people.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

And here we have the second half of The Unspeakable Story, because the case was so long I had to split it into two.

Episode 5: The Unspeakable Story – Part 2

When we last left off, Gina was allowed to testify about the omnibus murder two months ago. Sure enough, she talks about what really happened and how she was threatened into lying in court of law. The judge realizes that he made a grave error in letting McGilded walk. Again, I'm not sure why he's only realizing this now when that trial ended in disarray, with the entire gallery shouting about whether it was or wasn't a gross miscarriage of justice.

I'm giving Van Zieks an additional scumbag point for this remark, since Ryu had already admitted to his wrongdoing and, despite Van Zieks's repeated warnings of 'are you sure about this', brought the details of the falsified testimony up himself. Don't pretend to be understanding about the position this puts Ryu in if you're going to be a jerk about it afterwards, Van Zieks.

Some shenanigans and Gregson whispering to Graydon later, Scotland Yard returns with the small box! Turns out it's a music box! When suggested that the court should listen to the music on the disc, Gregson interjects and unconvincingly claims the music box and disc are unrelated to the case. Ryu objects to say that the disc is fundamentally important for understanding the motives of the crime and Van Zieks, on his own accord, chimes in that the prosecution has no objections. When Gregson continues to stammer that the disc is police property, Van Zieks says:

“But it is policy of this prosecutor to leave no avenues unexplored. And you, Inspector, have no jurisdiction here to prevent that from happening.”

So Gregson and Van Zieks are definitely not buddies. Since Gregson is a key player in this case (and I mean that in a negative way, since Gregson is actively hiding important knowledge from the court), the fact that Van Zieks is turning a deaf ear to his pleas does in fact make Van Zieks an accomplice of ours in a roundabout way. Only for this particular context, though. The point is, so long as the prosecution continues to agree with the defense about unveiling key pieces of evidence, Van Zieks is helping Ryu achieve his ultimate goal. Also it's just plain fun to watch Gregson panic. We're having a jolly old time in this courtroom!

Unfortunately, when the box is played, there's no music. It's just weird tones. So Ryu is confronted with the question of whether the music box's sounds are relevant to the case or not. Naturally, I chose that they aren't relevant to see what would happen. I don't know why I expected any different than this:

“When you speak, you must mean what you say. ...Or be prepared to suffer the consequences.”

Penalty from Van Zieks! He's right though, I never learn. Okay, so let's say the tones are relevant. Van Zieks jumps onto that like a cat pouncing on a mouse toy, of course. He wants to know just what that relevance is. Ryu says that the chimes aren't necessarily music, and Van Zieks pursues relentlessly. “Well, now that you've told us what they are not, I'm sure the court would like to hear what they are. Do enlighten us, my Nipponese friend.” This is all very standard fare, of course. In any Ace Attorney game, the player has to outline their reasoning in steps, which means the prosecution and/or the judge will continue to ask for elaboration until all the details are out in the open. Of course, Van Zieks has to be a jerk about it as he follows it up with the words “Surely you have an idea in mind? Because if not... It will be the death of your ill-formed argument!” Eesh. Harsh wording for such a simple concept of 'your argument is void if you don't tell us exactly what you mean'. What's bothersome about these moments is that often, the player already has an exact idea in mind, but the game's dialogue will beat around the bush a bit more and really rub it in. (example: Iris telling Ryu at this very moment that the music box isn't broken at all and it's meant to play these particular chimes.) But because the player isn't given the option to just figure this out for themselves and then gets scolded by the prosecution for 'taking too long', naturally the player may get frustrated.

I'm getting there! SHEESH! It's not my fault Iris is distracting me! I had the evidence ready to present like two minutes ago!

Anyway, Ryu finally links the chimes to government messages being intercepted and leaked to other countries. These messages are usually telegraphed in morse code, so it should be obvious where Ryu's going with this. Van Zieks looks horrified at the notion of the disc containing secrets in morse code. Still, alongside Ryu he works through the logic of what happened and how McGilded would've been involved in this. Graydon, who works at a telegraph office, is of course the prime suspect for intercepting those secrets and that's the reason why he broke into the pawn shop to recover the disc. Graydon is outraged by the accusation, saying “I've had to stand here in silence while that pretentious foreign lawyer has been prattling away!”, but Van Zieks cuts him off with an objection.

“The prosecution demands the witness testifies... in response to the accusations brought by the defense!”

It's Mrs. Garrideb all over again! Yes! So just to reiterate, the prosecution has nothing to gain by doing this, the way I see it. Ryu can't actively prove any of his theories, he's got no hard evidence. The only thing Ryu can do at this point is have Graydon testify and hope that he'll slip up; and Van Zieks is supporting this notion instead of demanding to see this currently non-existent evidence. So Graydon testifies, the topic of morse code comes up again, and we get a lesson in the basics of how it works with the dots and the dashes.

Surely it can't be that a prosecutor in an Ace Attorney game is being passive aggressive again? Anyway, turns out the music box doesn't play morse code at all because instead of dots and dashes, there's only one of the two. The testimony continues on to address that Graydon's last name used to be Milverton, a fact which causes Graydon to react very heavily and attempt to deny it. Van Zieks subtly reminds him that this effort is futile, since Graydon is a communications officer attached to civil service. His personal details would've been thoroughly checked when he was appointed to his position.

I enjoy it when Van Zieks finally gets turned around to point his sharp finger and sharp words towards people who actually deserve it. Yes, he's ferocious and a somewhat horrible person, but Graydon had this coming for being, y'know, a literal murderer who tried to frame a teenage girl. Van Zieks even reminds Graydon of the same sentiment (“it would really take no time at all for the court to subpoena those records”) later when Graydon continues to deny that Mason Milverton was his father. Good boy, Van Zieks. You're learning that not all British citizens are upstanding and it's okay to accuse some of them of wrongdoing. Because remember, in earlier trials when Ryu would indirectly accuse witnesses (or juror no 4) of lying or criminal activity, Van Zieks would overreact with an “HOW DARE YOU, SIR” of sorts. But not this time, oh no. How dared Graydon?

So with the relation between Graydon and the victim of the omnibus murder proven, we've made headway, but still not enough. So long as the music box chimes seem irrelevant, we don't have the full story to pin Graydon down for anything. For this reason, Ryu gets back on that topic and insists it's very much possible for the disc to contain secret messages. Van Zieks is still not quite convinced.

Covering his insecurities with fancy speech, I see. Van Zieks can act as smart as he wants, but the brutal truth of the matter will always be that he's not smart enough to take evidence in his own two hands and flip it over or open it up. Ryu's the only one who takes the practical approach, opens the bottom and finds out that the music box can actually play two discs at the same time. One for dots and one for dashes, which means there's a second disc out there. So with this out in the open, it's time for everyone's favorite type of Ace Attorney tennis: The back and forth truth reveal! Ryu and Van Zieks take turns in detailing the chronology of Graydon's illegal dealings with McGilded, with negotiations apparently turning sour in the omnibus two months ago, and thus the brickmaker met his end. McGilded attempted to hide the stolen disc by sticking it in his coat and pawning it at the pawnshop, but Graydon found out about this, etc. We've all played the case, we all know the story.

Graydon ultimately admits to having been at the crime scene that night, but still refuses to admit he worked with McGilded or stole government secrets. (Okay okay, ALBA, your denial is too powerful to let this game end, have it your way.) Ryu surmises that only Graydon could have shot Windibank, as he would've been the third intruder holding a third gun. Graydon flips this logic around; now that he's admitted he was at the crime scene that night, he can also admit to 'what he saw' as a 'key witness'. He claims that he saw the moment Windibank was shot by the pickpocket and he took the third gun afterwards, and he's ready to testify about it. Van Zieks, who should technically be jumping at the opportunity to hear decisive testimony for his precious guilty verdict, is instead not amused at all.

“If it is shown that your claim is false, you will have incriminated yourself as the killer.”

And these are some very telling lines once again. Why would he warn Graydon about this if he didn't have reason to believe those claims would be proven false? Why would he think Graydon could incriminate himself as the killer if he were 100% convinced that Gina is the culprit? He must know by now there's a strong chance that Gina is innocent and Graydon is the real killer. But sure enough, Graydon testifies about watching through a peephole and seeing blood spatter over the coat. Blood which he couldn't know is there unless he saw the murder happen. So the judge wonders whether the coat can be tested for blood and indeed, Van Zieks confirms that it can. A German scientist discovered that test 'very recently' and it's already being used in several courts around the globe because this test was actually, y'know, verified in the field of science.

“Ideas are no use to us here. In science, as in law, theories must be proven before they stand.” “We could shatter all vestiges of doubt within minutes!”

rip. To be clear, it doesn't seem as if Van Zieks actually knows for certain there's blood on the coat, because how could he? His insistence on the blood test doesn't seem to be motivated by hope of 'cornering Gina because the blood will definitely be there'. Rather, I think he just wants to either prove or disprove Graydon's testimony so we can all get on with our lives. Plus, I think he may want to flaunt these 'official methods' just to diss (S)Holmes's methods some more. While waiting for the results, Ryu is allowed to cross-examine the very suspicious peephole testimony. Despite Ryu being the one to press Graydon at every statement, Van Zieks will occasionally chime in with questions of his own to get some clarification. Which is funny, because the prosecution isn't the one who has to cross-examine witnesses. Van Zieks should technically be staying out of it. The fact that he's butting in to needle Graydon some more is just... I don't know, it's another one of those very telling moments, I suppose. Again, he probably already suspects that Graydon is the real killer.

The cross-examination is put on hold when the test results finally come back, confirming the blood on Gina's coat. Ryu still tries to save his case by saying the blood actually belonged to Mason Milverton, but that's obviously a very dangerous route to take.

“Did you not argue fervently for McGilded's innocence? And yet now that the man is dead... You brand him as a murderer? Your conduct shatters any shred of respect you may have earnt for yourself in this country!”

We all know he was a murderer for real. Van Zieks knows this more than anyone in the courtroom (well, except maybe Graydon). Besides, Gina testified about this like fifteen minutes earlier. To be frank, the fact that Ryu is admitting to this openly should actually warrant more respect as opposed to breaking it down. Because, remember, Van Zieks gave Ryu several options two months ago to blindly defend McGilded and instead of taking those opportunities, Ryu instead admitted he couldn't say for certain whether there was foul play happening. I think what's going on here may be that Van Zieks is emotionally conflicted. He was already buying into the theory that Gina is innocent and Graydon is the real killer, but the blood on the coat threw a wrench into it all. Graydon hypothetically could only have the coat knowledge if he'd seen it happen, which makes Gina the real killer after all. With something so conclusive, any belief he might've invested into Ryu's integrity has just been 'betrayed' and indeed, if Ryu's integrity is in doubt, anything else to come from him will also be relentlessly drawn into question. That doesn't just apply to Van Zieks; all the jury members who were on Ryu's side before immediately, unanimously vote guilty. Van Zieks assumes that there will be another Summation Examination, as has become the norm.

Ryu grows desperate, because changing the jury's minds is going to be exceptionally difficult now. Thankfully, our hero (S)Holmes appears! That mischievous scamp!

“Detective (derogatory)”. I think it would've been an interesting plotline if (S)Holmes actively investigated the Professor case back then, perhaps even at Van Zieks's request, and failed to find the killer in time to prevent Klint's death. That would explain why Barok now thinks so badly of (S)Holmes and the amazing detective he's described as in the novels. Unfortunately, the second game never really addresses whether (S)Holmes played a part in the Professor investigation and if so, why it ultimately came down Genshin's duel and Gregson forging evidence to 'close the case'. You'd think that if (S)Holmes investigated the deaths, he and his partner would've tracked down the real killer long before things could escalate that badly.

Anyway, (S)Holmes asks for five minutes of the court's time to pass some evidence on to the defense. Van Zieks begins by saying that the trial has already taken up many hours of the court's time. So 'having spent that long already...' Gregson cuts him off to agree, saying that since they've spent so long already, they don't want to waste even more time. Unfortunately for him, that's not what Van Zieks was about to say at all.

So he's fully on our side again! Hurray! All well and good, but he does still fling one of his chalices later to signify the five minutes are up. (S)Holmes thanks Van Zieks for allowing the brief recess, the reply being that he needs no thanks, since “the die is cast”. In other words, they've already reached a point of no return here. At first this seems like a very cryptic dismissal of gratitude, but what Van Zieks is actually saying is that the jurors have already made up their minds and settled on guilty. “Any attempt to alter the verdict now would be utterly futile.” Which still doesn't say much about whether Van Zieks believes they're headed in the right direction, it only says that he doesn't believe Ryu can convince them to change their minds this time.

Surprise! Ryu doesn't have to! When (S)Holmes came into the room in disguise to deliver the lab results of the coat, the cross-examination of Graydon was actually suspended. This means that, by law, Ryu has the right to continue that cross-examination instead of turning to the jurors for the Summation Examination. Van Zieks suffers through his damage animation (which has been rarely seen by this point in the game and honestly, it's a delight to watch), calling the whole matter absurd. This is the law, Ziekie boy! Deal with it! So with this final chance granted, Ryu presents the catflap device to debunk Graydon's testimony about the peephole. Susato tampered with the crime scene and made that cat flap mere minutes after Windibank was shot. So if the cat flap wasn't there before, how could Graydon possibly have witnesses what he claims to have witnessed?

Oh, he's thrown off now. He's got no idea what to believe anymore. I can't blame him; who would expect a trial to take a turn like this? We're getting close, but Van Zieks has one more obstacle to throw our way, as all prosecutors do. How can we prove that the peephole flap was made after the crime as opposed to before it? “When was the peephole cut? The prosecution demands proof of your answer!” Again, this is par for the course. This is what any prosecutor would demand. Evidence is law in Ace Attorney world and Van Zieks needs tangible proof that Ryu isn't just a 'lying traitor' like Genshin was. Naturally, we have proof and Van Zieks is the one we have to thank for that.

Considering Van Zieks is the one who showed up to court that day with a big stack of photographs from that very same 'infernal camera', this line will never stop cracking me up. So now we know for sure the peephole was made after Windibank was shot! Unfortunately, in submitting evidence we now also know one other thing.

To be fair, Susato didn't know it was a legit murder scene until the cat flap was created and they could see the body. Up until that point, it was just a scene for breaking-and-entering, along with (S)Holmes shooting. I'm sure that was taken into account when discussing the punishment later on, though. Anyway, we've proven Graydon's perjury, but Van Zieks insists we still haven't quite proven that he's a killer. Luckily, Ryu's already two steps ahead of Van Zieks here. Since we've proven that Graydon was lying about what he saw, the question is now how he knows about these things to begin with. He couldn't possibly have seen the peephole with his own eyes, so how did he know it was there? And how did he know about the blood on the coat? Gregson once again decides to interject, asking Van Zieks for 'a word, please'. He wants to leave the courtroom and return to the station to put in his report.

“You will remain exactly where you are until this trial concludes.”

Heeheeh. Brutal. So with Gregson forced to stay, Ryu is free to insinuate that information about the crime scene must've been leaked to Graydon. And since Graydon had no idea he'd be summoned to court to testify on the murder, he could only have received the information after arriving at the Old Bailey. The only person with the opportunity to pass that information to him (in the middle of a trial, I might add) was Gregson. Gregson immediately barks that he had no reason to leak information about the investigation to someone like Graydon, but we know that's not true. Ryu suggests there was a deal.

I really enjoy this particular expression on Van Zieks, and it fits especially well in this context. While he usually looks very calm and cold on the surface, he now looks outwardly ferocious, slightly unhinged. Perhaps even in pain. This is the face of betrayal and humiliation. We learn in the second game that Van Zieks had already suspected Gregson of having dirty hands when it comes to the Reaper, so I expect this insinuation hits extra hard now. It's confirming to Van Zieks that Gregson is indeed not above dirty tactics. He doesn't take it lightly, of course. “With the stakes so high, the prosecution is not prepared to listen to baseless charges. It is incumbent on the defense now to present evidence in support of this diabolical claim.”

So let's do it. It all comes down to the music box disc and the stolen government secrets, of course. Gregson admits that he was ordered to retrieve the stolen information and do it “on the q.t.” Top secret mission, this one, though earlier on it was implied to have been ordered by Stronghart. Van Zieks concludes that Gregson objected so heavily to the disc being used as evidence because he knew of the information on it. Gregson replies that he realized there was a possibility of it. Since we know the music box plays two discs, the deal must've involved this second disc. Van Zieks is now thinking ahead very quickly, here. He asserts that since Gregson is a Scotland Yard detective, he would've approached this deal with extreme caution and not simply taken Graydon's word for it. He would have asked for the article in question to be handed to him immediately and so, it stands to reason the second disc is in the courtroom at that very moment. Gregson doesn't take lightly to the accusations and when Ryu suggests a cavity- sorry, I mean body search, Gregson agrees to it without so much as a flinch. Suspicious behavior, to say the least. But this means the body search is allowed and everything rests on the outcome.

“If, following the search of the inspector's personal effects, no disk is found... You will be deemed unfit for court service, this trial will end and my country's government will formally demand of yours that you are severely reprimanded.”

But Van Zieks, if Ryu were deemed unfit for court service, who would you face in hectic turnabout trials? He's your one true nemesis now, remember? The judge agrees with Van Zieks's sentiments, but Iris has some very interesting insight: “You're just threatening Runo because you're scared!” Since Iris is one of the most clever characters in the games, we have to examine this statement further. If he's scared, then what's he scared of? My guess would be the firm, undeniable confirmation that Gregson is willing to screw with a fair trial and let a killer walk free. Yes, he was ordered to do this by his superiors (STRONGHART), but it doesn't change that Gregson is throwing an innocent girl under the omnibus to get what he wants. And again, keep this in mind, Van Zieks already held suspicions that Gregson had something to do with the Reaper curse. But they were friends once; Gregson was Klint's friend. There's a difference between suspecting an old buddy of being up to no good and hard evidence that it's true. What adds credence to this being the reason of Van Zieks's fear is one of the game's recurring themes: You mustn't look away from the truth, no matter how blinding it is. No matter how painful, it needs to be acknowledged.

So the game asks whether Ryu still insists on the search, knowing there'll be grave consequences if nothing is found. By this point I was so tired that I didn't choose any of the other options and went straight for the correct answer: Search someone else! Gregson's being so cool about it that we can already surmise he doesn't have the disc on him, but he did have the perfect opportunity to hide it on the taller Skulkin brother earlier in the trial. So Ryu insists on there being a search, and Van Zieks says:

“But your typical Nipponese stubbornness may well land you in hot water this time. Perhaps the lesson will do you some good.”

This sort of implies to me that Van Zieks has also realized the disc isn't on Gregson's person. He's known the guy for a very long time, and so, he'd also know that Gregson is easily flustered with zero poker face skills. There's no way he could look so cool if there was a chance of the disc being found in his pocket. So this is the point where Ryu reveals that he doesn't want the search done on Gregson, which does succeed in ruffling our dear old inspector. Gregson starts accusing Ryu of having lost his mind and the court shouldn't have to put up with this nonsense, with the gallery also erupting into chatter. Iris snaps and tells everyone to be quiet. Ryu's just doing what he was told to do and having the courage of his convictions, so they should all respect that and listen to what he has to say. The judge admits that the court is in awe of the defense's convictions and I could write an entirely different essay here about Ryunosuke's growth throughout the games, but I won't. Point is, the cavity- sorry, I mean body search of Nash Skulkin is allowed. Gregson absolutey has zero poker face without a doubt, as he tries to object to the search in the name of Scotland Yard.

“In this courtroom, only the prosecution and the defence have the authority to object.”

Gregson tries to sputter his way out of this, but Van Zieks says: “I have no idea what forces are in play that might influence your actions, but personally I have no intention of obstructing the course of this trial.” (Gregson literally said that Van Zieks needed “Stronghart's paw print” to get more details on the top-secret investigation into McGilded's shady activities, but sure. No idea what forces are in play. Okay.)

Pin 'im down and use the rubber glove, bailiff! The missing second music box disc is pulled out of Nash's jacket and Ryu explains why he knew it'd be found there.

Uhhhhhhhhhh. I think what Ryu's trying to say is that Gregson would rarely fly into such a rage that he'd assault someone physically, but... This man absolutely loses his composure all the dang time. Just ask the fish n chips he keeps aggressively chomping down or scattering over his shoulder. He doesn't strike me as a composed character at all, so to say he behaved “extremely out of character” is kind of off to me. But whatever, it proved our point so I'll let it slide. When the judge asks why Gregson didn't just submit the second disc as evidence the second he got his hands on it, Van Zieks surmises that if the information on the disc were revealed in court, it'd be problematic. Gregson once again confirms he's working under direct orders from the ministry (STRONGHART) to keep the stolen info on the down low. But now we've got a problem. Neither Graydon nor Gregson will admit that they made a deal for the disc (it just magically appeared in Gregson's possession then, sure) and so long as they don't admit to that deal, we still can't prove Graydon lied about his testimony in regards to Gina being the shooter. The judge is ready to turn the matter over to the jury for their final learnings, and if these people had any common sense they'd all vote not-guilty because Graydon is getting away with his nonsense through a sheer technicality. Even so, Ryu intends to put the squeeze on Gregson by playing the second disc along with the first to determine whether there's truly morse code involved. Either Gregson admits to unlawful dealings with a witness to protect state secrets, or those state secrets get played out loud for everyone to hear. Gregson warns him he'll be making an enemy of the entire British government if he lets those secrets out into the world. Ryu insists he'll stop at nothing to do his job and protect his client, no matter who he makes an enemy out of. Van Zieks pours himself another glass of wine in silence.

Yeah, a real shrewd, calculating man. Uhuh. Again, I want to take a second here to point to the symbiosis we usually have between prosecutor and lead detective. Even in the case of Fulbright and Blackquill, with their unique circumstances, they still worked in tandem. You'd never catch them bickering about whether or not to present a certain piece of evidence. It's fascinating to watch Van Zieks consistently ignore Gregson's pleas. Speaking of which, let's have a leg slam to shut Gregson up.

“I'm a prosecutor. ...I'm no Scotland Yard puppet. In this courtroom, my duty is to the law. So let me propose a toast. To uncovering the truth... by fair means or foul.”

YOOO!!! Get him, Zieks! There's absolutely no denying now that Van Zieks is 100% on Ryu's side. He knows that playing the secret message will cause Gregson to cave and admit to his shady deal. And once we know for certain Graydon's testimony is one huge sham... Well, as Van Zieks already said earlier, Graydon will be incriminated as the real killer.

So the box plays for about ten seconds with actual morse code this time and Gregson cracks like cheap porcelain. When Ryu confronts him with how this dealing would lead to the defendant being wrongfully accused of murder, Gregson just kind of shrugs it off. On its own, you might be thinking Gregson is a scummy asshole for this, but there's some very important factors to keep in mind here from the second game. First of all, very simply, Stronghart ordered Gregson to retrieve the info 'no matter what' and Gregson isn't in any position to refuse at this point. But then there's the Reaper's curse, which is way more important. Even if Gina were found not guilty, she'd still have to die. Not just die; Gregson would have to arrange for her death. I doubt he enjoys being in that position, so it's easier for him to just willfully sabotage the trial and have Gina be executed by the government. Some of the blood would still be on his hands, but at least he wouldn't have had to orchestrate some elaborate death trap himself, leading to all the blood on his hands. (Cool justification, still second-hand murder.)

Uh, wait, this is a Van Zieks essay, not a Gregson essay. So anyway, after Gregson gets choked by Graydon and nobody steps in to help him, we finally get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Graydon has a semi tragic backstory and he was the one who cause the omnibus fire.

I guess Graydon wasn't too familiar with the Reaper's curse. Either that, or he didn't believe it was real. So now, to reiterate, we're told several times that anyone prosecuted by Van Zieks is doomed, but only one of the defendants Ryu's had so far has died a tragic death and it wasn't even because of the Reaper's curse. It was because someone else sought revenge, so even if Van Zieks hadn't been the prosecutor, McGilded still would've died. Graydon then goes on to talk about what happened in the pawnbrokery and how he shot Windibank without even thinking about it. Van Zieks has something to say about this.

“A man who used his wealth and influence to distort the facts and escape justice for the crime of murder. What tragic irony... For what you have done... is exactly the same. You've become the very monster you saw, and despised so deeply, in McGilded.”

I feel like this is even more elaborate setup to the fact that Van Zieks's brother, a wealthy and influential man, was actually a mass murderer. For bonus points: 'someone realized the wealthy man was a murderer, knew he wouldn't be confronted with his crimes and therefore took matters into his own hands with vigilante justice'. Does that sound familiar too? Gosh, I love foreshadowing. The judge tells Gregson he'll have to face charges as well, with Van Zieks chiming in that even if it was in the line of duty, Gregson's crime is a serious and inexcusable one. With that, the attention is turned to the defense. The judge says that the morse code thing was an unexpected revelation (and this is said in a complimenting sort of way), with Van Zieks unable to stay silent on this:

“In fact, I think we should applaud my learned friend's courage here today. I propose a toast. To demanding that government secrets be disseminated before the entire courtroom!”

Hee hee... Well, Gregson did warn him beforehand that he'd be making an enemy of the British government if he played those music discs. Ryu becomes very flustered and apologizes, but the telegraph juror interjects here to say that the dots and dashes weren't really morse code. Rather, it was just gibberish to her. So despite Iris looking thoughtful, it seems we didn't spill any beans after all and the matter is dropped. We move on to our verdict, a unanimous not-guilty for Gina Lestrade. Hurray!

Now there's a very clumsy scene transition of Ryu and Van Zieks standing in the abandoned courtroom, facing one another. I suppose Van Zieks made some sort of gesture for Ryu to hang back so they could speak in private? It's odd for them to still be standing behind their respective benches, though. Since court's dismissed, it'd be easy for them to just walk up to one another instead of shouting across an empty room. It may be symbolism that there's still a gaping void between the two of them; the Professor incident. Or maybe I'm giving the game too much credit there and they just couldn't be bothered to animate new backgrounds for this single scene. So here we have a very important conversation. I'll type it out:

“I must say you've surprised me, my Far Eastern friend. Despite being a Nipponese, you saw through the pretence to the malice that festered within that Englishman. And at the same time, you saw through the grime to the surprising heart of your English client. You have a curious talent for judging character, especially considering our very different cultures.”

So here we have a telltale problem with racial prejudice. Van Zieks assumed that because Ryu has a different background, especially culturally, he wouldn't be able to understand or relate to English citizens. We've seen this sentiment before in case 1-4, where Van Zieks is shocked that Ryu would understand the mind of an English policeman. Ryu says that he doesn't think there's anything curious about it at all, because whether people are from Britain or from Japan, they're all human beings. They're not so different on the inside. Ryu is effectively saying that Van Zieks needs to stop categorizing people based on their nationality because that doesn't work. Human beings are human beings; some of them are good and some of them are bad. Van Zieks doesn't directly reply to this, instead confirming what we already suspected.

“You know, I took this case for one very simple reason. To lock swords with you once again here in the courtroom. When I encountered you for the first time two months ago, it reminded me... of toasting friendship and trust with another Nipponese... only to find my trust betrayed. Through you, I hoped to look into the eyes of the man I once knew... and try to understand.”

So remember in the previous essay when I surmised that the torrid look of hatred in Van Zieks's eyes was directed at someone who died ten years ago? Well, it's confirmed here. Van Zieks didn't see a fresh newbie whenever he looked at Ryu; he saw Genshin Asogi. The betrayal which took place ten years ago was never given closure. Sure, Van Zieks managed to send Asogi to the gallows to exact 'justice' and get some form of payback, but he was never given Asogi's motives. He never got to confront this man with the emotional turmoil or the hurt, because he wouldn't have been given the opportunity to do so and even if he'd tried, he wouldn't have gotten satisfactory responses. Asogi was abruptly executed and Van Zieks never learned just what possessed a dear friend to murder his brother. He was left with boiling hatred, grief and a whole lot of questions. So indeed, now he hoped to 'understand' Asogi through Ryu, but that was never an option to begin with. Ryu has no relation to that man, so Van Zieks might as well have tried to grasp that understanding by 'locking swords' with Beppo. It's about the same level of futility. Van Zieks's misguided attacks appear to be born from the assumption that it must've been a cultural thing; that perhaps betrayal is something which comes naturally to people from Japan. It's an incredibly stupid, naive way of thinking, because by simplifying Genshin's motives down to his race and cultural upbringing, it takes away the option that there's a far darker truth to be found. Quite frankly, I think Van Zieks is afraid of that truth, just as he was afraid of confirmation that Gregson's not above dirtying his hands. To affirm that Genshin Asogi's friendship was genuine and he truly was an honorable man would imply that he'd had a reason to take Klint's life. I'm not saying it was a good reason! I'm just saying... a reason. When Ryu asks for more details on what happened back then, Van Zieks won't reply.

“Coming to be known as the Reaper of the Bailey, and my retirement from service five years ago... It gives me cause to wonder if our meeting has some deeper purpose. So... Farewell, my learned Nipponese fellow. Until we meet again.”

(He crushes another chalice in the process of saying this, because of course.) The deeper purpose alluded to here, along with the earlier line that Ryu may one day learn the answer, can only mean that Van Zieks foresees something of a journey here. A path to walk down together with Ryu in which, eventually, the Professor case will once again surface. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for Van Zieks, we don't know. I'm not sure he knows. But he did admit to having been pleasantly surprised by Ryu and he had a civil conversation with him just now, so the sentiment here is that Van Zieks is slowly letting go of some of his earlier grudges. He doesn't outright admit that he was wrong to be a scumbag to Ryu, nor does he apologize, but by admitting he was only attacking Ryu to make sense of something that happened in his past, he's basically admitting to his behavior being irrational. He's softened up a little, and with a second game on the way, it means at the very least the option of further character development is there.

The conversation ends and in the defendant lobby, Gina is reminded she's not in the clear yet. There's the curse, after all. Gina's not afraid, because he say she sees it, “the Reaper is a bit like Him upstairs.” Sort of funny to equate the Reaper to God, but what she's basically talking about is karmic retribution. Rotten coves like McGilded get what's coming to them, but she knows she's a good person deep down and so, she thinks she'll escape the curse just fine. Which doesn't say much about all those other victims who came before McGilded, mind. We can't say for certain they were all rotten too. Well, the second game will tell us whether she escapes with her life or not. And normally I would also take a look at the little 'bit' that characters have in the end credits, but Van Zieks didn't get his own bit for whatever reason. He's only briefly mentioned by Pat and Roly Beate, so that's it when it comes to his character in the first game.

Next up, we're moving on to case three of the second game, taking place six months after The Unspeakable Story!

#dgs #dgs spoilers #tgaa #tgaa spoilers #barok van zieks #hot dang #this trial escalated quickly #I took like 500 screencaps when Graydon went for Gregson's throat

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haberdashing · 4 years ago

Text

i want you to straighten out my tomorrow (5/?)

The last thing Jon remembers is working into the night in the Archives in early 2016. Now he’s in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, Scotland, with Martin Blackwood as his only companion. Obviously Jon’s missed something along the way here…

Inspired by beloved of jon, though it can be read separately.

Note: self-harm content warning for this chapter! More details on AO3.

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5

on AO3

There were, in Jon’s mind, three possible explanations for his current situation and surroundings, three possibilities that he kept ruminating upon as he lay in bed, trying and failing to get some rest.

The first, of course, was that Martin was telling the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth, that every absurd thing Martin had said was nothing more than the unvarnished reality of his life in the years he couldn’t recall. It seemed unlikely on the face of it, but then, so did the situation Jon was in now to begin with, regardless of the underlying explanation behind it.

The second was that Martin was lying about all of it, that he was scrambling to explain the inexplicable and doing a rather poor job of it, and that the truth of the situation was something more sinister that Martin wanted to conceal at all costs. Martin certainly didn’t seem like some sort of conniving evil mastermind, but then, that’s exactly what an evil mastermind would want him to think, right?

The third was a combination of the other two, that Martin was telling the truth about the past in general but was also lying or omitting important details along the way. That made more sense, in Jon’s mind, than Martin lying about all of it, really--after all, if Martin wanted to come up with a lie to explain how Jon ended up here, surely he could have thought of something that sounded a bit more plausible. Martin might be infuriating at times, and incompetent at his job as often as not (though Jon knew that wasn’t exactly a Martin-exclusive trait), but Jon was pretty sure that he was not, in all actuality, a complete idiot.

Jon could try to logic his way through the possibilities, try to figure out what was most likely, but was there any way of knowing for sure?

Jon tossed and turned and thought and overthought, and every time he started to drift off into a nap he was jolted awake by a nightmarish image, though he couldn’t tell if it was the beginning of a nightmare or just a memory of the one he’d had that night. His head still hurt something fierce, and it only seemed to get worse the longer he lay there.

Martin had said that... that Jon had some kind of supernatural powers, right? If he could prove that that was true, it would verify... not everything that Martin was claiming, no, but a good chunk of it, including some of the most outlandish bits. But how could he go about it when he wasn’t even entirely sure what “powers” he was supposed to have, let alone how to activate them?

What powers had Martin mentioned? Something about... about making other people answer questions, tell the truth, right?

But Martin seemed to be the only other person around, and if Jon was hoping to find out if Martin was lying or not, asking him wouldn’t do much good. Maybe Martin would get supernaturally compelled to answer Jon’s questions, sure. Or maybe Martin would just pretend to be compelled to answer them, as part of his whole lying gambit. Jon couldn’t be sure either way, even if he did get that extra bit of evidence. He couldn’t know.

Jon wanted to know what was going on, not just to guess, but he felt like he knew nothing now. Christ, he hadn’t felt this unmoored even after uni, when Georgie broke up with him... he hadn’t felt this unmoored, he thought, since he was eight years old, since he’d learned the truth of the supernatural’s existence by nearly becoming one of its victims...

But wait, Martin had said something about- about him cutting a finger off and it growing right back, was it? Had used that as an example of how Jon was tied to the supernatural now, even, tied to some evil power he didn’t quite understand.

And even if Martin did have supernatural powers of his own now, the odds were good that those “powers” wouldn’t affect how someone else’s wound would heal...

Jon didn’t want to hurt himself, of course, but... but if Martin was telling the truth about all this, then none of it would last, right? Then he’d heal quickly enough with no lasting injury, and at least he’d have something approaching an answer. And if Martin was lying... well, he’d get his answer then too, and maybe having to seek medical help would lead to Jon getting help in other ways as well, or at least not being stuck in this tiny safehouse alone with his captor...

It was for the best, really. A little pain, a bit of risk... it was worth it, if it meant he would know what was actually going on here.

And he wouldn’t even have to cut his finger all the way off--that seemed a bit much, really--but if he went deep enough, kept a close eye on how the injury healed with time...

After all that laying in bed, Jon was very much ready to move, and he didn’t hesitate to get up, to move quickly but quietly towards the kitchen, to give the area a once-over and confirm that Martin was nowhere in sight (since Jon knew that, one way or another, Martin would be less than pleased with Jon’s current plan) before heading towards the knife block on the counter...

Jon looked over the knives for a minute, pulling each one out and examining it momentarily before returning them to the knife block, hesitating for a split second before picking the one that seemed most suited to the purpose he had in mind--it was thick, sharp, and clean, the metal blade glimmering even in the low light streaming in from the cloud-covered sun.

Jon picked up the knife, positioned it just so on his little finger (it wouldn’t be a glancing blow, exactly, but it wasn’t straight across the middle either, shouldn’t nick too many blood vessels along the way), took a deep breath and then let it out slowly...

Making the decision to cut into his own flesh wasn’t an easy one, and it took him a second to actually go through with it, to push the blade in until it broke the skin and sank in further, but once Jon had made up his mind, he wasn’t going back on it. It scared him, sure, but so did the not knowing, and he knew which he’d prefer any day.

“Jon, what are you doing?”

Jon hadn’t meant to cut quite that deep. He hadn’t been expecting Martin to pop up seemingly out of nowhere, though--perhaps he shouldn’t have lingered over the knives for quite so long--and the sudden noise startled him, made him lose control a bit.

And, as Jon quickly realized, there was a big difference between knowing that something would hurt and actually experiencing that pain.

The blood swelled up faster than Jon had expected, and while Jon had expected the pain, sharp and biting, it made him wince all the same, the combination of the sight of his ripped flesh and the cutting pain leaving Jon a little light-headed.

Jon only thought to actually respond to Martin’s question after a second or two, and all he managed was a weak, “Um...”

Martin shook his head. “Never mind, it- it doesn’t matter. What matters is you getting that cleaned up before it gets infected, because that’s the last thing we need right now.”

That we again. Martin and Jon being considered as one unit, one life. There was probably something worth examining there. Maybe Jon would examine it later, when the blood wasn’t running off of his finger and spilling stark red droplets onto the gray tile floor.

“Can you make it to the sink on your own, or do you need my help?”

Jon focused his gaze away from his finger, shook his head as if to clear his thoughts, took a tentative step and found himself none the worse for it. “I think I’ve got it.”

“Good, good. Uh, you should probably drop the knife before heading over there.”

Jon obediently dropped the knife onto the ground, it narrowly missing his foot and sending more blood splatters onto the floor, only realizing after the fact that Martin probably hadn’t meant his advice quite so literally.

“S-sorry.”

Martin shook his head again as he followed Jon’s lead in heading to the sink. “You don’t need to apologize. I’m- I’m not the one who got hurt here.”

Jon didn’t have a response to that, so he just kept moving in silence, keeping his gaze focused on anything besides the gash on his finger or Martin’s searching eyes. He ended up staring at the sink, his destination proving a neutral enough place to concentrate his focus, such as it was.

A few steps and he was at the sink, reaching up to turn the faucet on-

“You’re going to want to wash that with warm water and soap-”

“I know that much, I’m not an idiot-”

“I know you’re not, Jon.” Martin’s voice sounded... frustrated. Tired. Not angry, at least, which Jon supposed was a good sign. “But you shouldn’t get your finger more dirty first if you can help it.”

“What-”

Jon only then realized that he’d been reaching to turn on the faucet with the same hand that he’d cut, leaving a trail of blood splatters splayed across the sink in the process.

Jon took a deep breath and then turned on the faucet with his uninjured hand, putting his still-bleeding finger under the water. It hurt a bit, but then it hurt a bit without the water too, so he might as well go with the pain that came with a lesser risk of infection, right?

“I wasn’t thinking straight.” Jon noticed distantly that his own voice sounded a little tired now, too. “I’m sorry.”

“Again, you really don’t need to apologize to me. Actually...” Martin let out a long breath in a way that sounded a little like a sigh. “Maybe I should be the one apologizing to you.”

Jon’s eyes darted back to Martin’s face, his suspicions rising up again, only realizing that his hand had moved along with his gaze when he felt water falling onto the palm of his hand. He looked back just long enough to put his finger solidly back under the water before returning to meeting Martin’s eyes.

Martin still didn’t look angry, though, or... or like some sort of conniving evil mastermind. He just looked weary of dealing with the situation, and honestly, Jon couldn’t exactly blame him for that.

“What would you be apologizing for?”

“This...” Martin gestured vaguely to Jon’s hand, to his finger still under the faucet, though the water had stopped running quite so red now. “This is my fault, isn’t it? For, for what I said when you asked if you were evil now. I panicked, I, I didn’t choose my words well, but you’re not evil, Jon, I know you’re trying your best not to hurt anyone, and just because-”

Oh.

It hadn’t occurred to Jon how this would look to Martin: him picking out a knife to stab himself with, hurting himself for no clear reason right after such an emotional conversation...

“No, Martin, that’s not-”

“You don’t need to spare my feelings, obviously I didn’t-”

“Martin!”

Jon hadn’t meant to speak quite so loudly, had meant to use just enough volume to be heard clearly over the sound of rushing water, but, well, if Martin was staring at Jon with wide eyes now, at least he wasn’t rambling about his own guilt any more.

“This isn’t about me thinking I’m evil now. This was me testing what you said about how I grew back a finger.”

“O-oh. Okay.” Martin took a deep breath and let it back out. “That’s... that’s better, I suppose?”

“Admittedly, I wasn’t expecting it to hurt quite this much...”

“You stabbed your finger, Jon, I don’t know what you were expecting-”

Jon removed his finger from the water for a moment, giving it a good look over before bursting into laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

Jon held out his finger for Martin to examine; Martin hesitated before brushing against it softly with his index finger. (Was it just Jon’s imagination, or did Martin feel a bit less cold to the touch now?)

“It’s barely there. I’ve- I’ve gotten paper cuts worse than this.”

It wasn’t an exaggeration, though admittedly the statement said as much about Jon’s history with paper cuts (which was a long and storied one, a combination of being a bookish child and a bit clumsy when he got overexcited) as about Jon’s current injury. Still, there was no mistaking that the cut had healed significantly just in the few minutes since it was created--the bleeding had slowed to a crawl, the cut was little more than a shallow scratch...

Martin’s finger touched Jon’s for a moment longer before he pulled it away as he looked back up at Jon.

“You’d still better put some soap on this, you hear me? And I’ll get the first aid kit...”

“Whatever you say, Mum.”

Martin gave Jon a weird look at that, but as Jon made a show of rolling his eyes and Martin stepped away to get the first aid kit, Jon heard Martin let out a clear snort of amusement.

#tma #tma au #tma fic #tma fanfic #the magnus archives #the magnus archives au #the magnus archives fic #the magnus archives fanfic #personal #my writing #self-harm tw

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melias-cimitiere · 4 years ago

Text

MINORITY REPORT

People who are interested in being honest, true to themselves and to others, eager to learn truth about things (scientific, historical, etc) and acquire knowledge, please keep reading. Everyone else, carry on with your daily activities; this article will clearly not impact on you in any positive way.

There has been a growing concern during the last few years that people have a tendency to “save the tree and burn the forest”; this is a mentality of gross generalizations, over-simplistic attitudes towards right and wrong, and superficial ideological bubbles that do not take into account reality. When historical truth is no longer convenient, when people forget the right use of words and terms and come up with the trendy, politically correct speech while disregarding the established definitions, then watch out: Big Brother is about (the 1984 George Orwell concept).

Minorities’ rights

There is a large number of people who tend to be sympathetic towards any groups, just because they are labelled as a minority. Instead of examining what they stand for and who they truly are (given a historical perspective), they moralize on their behalf and fiercely try to protect them, with a simplistic and gullible attitude. Let’s try and ask some basic questions:

Are their rights more/less important than anyone else’s?

We should be talking about human rights, and not minorities’ rights. If these groups are human groups, then they have some rights; these rights are protected by United Nations and various Constitutions, and political assemblies worldwide, and any proven violation is condemned. Why should any human group have more (or less) rights than any other group?

Are the minorities always correct?

Of course not. Whoever believes this tends to be extremely naïve. For example, amidst the minorities hide some rather loathsome groups (or individuals), such as Nazis, KKK, international terrorists (like Isil/Isis/Daesh, Al-Qaeda etc). And what about the minority groups of suicide cults, slavery rings, drug-dealers, “black market” merchants (of weapons, substances, toxins, organs etc)? What about serial killers or pedophiles? As you can see, membership in a minority group doesn’t automatically make you correct in all things.

Issue of historical guilt

What is trendy or fashionable doesn’t make it necessarily better or right. Nowadays it is not trendy or fashionable to expose certain historical facts because certain groups feel discomfort. This is not new; in fact, it has been an issue with history and with science since the very beginning. When Galileo showed the Earth is round and spins around itself, it caused certain “waves”; people even demanded his death. We still have the Flat Earth Society despite scientific evidence of the contrary. With regards to history and warfare, you will not find any parties that are not guilty. In fact, nearly every nation in the world has committed atrocities, vandalism, slavery, aggressive occupation and its army/warriors raping innocent victims etc. In the history of Mankind there are very few true innocents.

If we do not acknowledge such occurrences as inherent in human nature and as potential threats for everyone, we are doomed to repeat them in the future. Fascism and Nazism is not only a German thing; Slavery isn’t just a “white thing”; Colonialism isn’t just a British thing. We need to address the issues, recognize and study what makes these happen, and confront them. We must all stand united against this, and not devolve into group mentality and us against the others. We need to challenge our own mindset and free ourselves from pre-conceived ideas. Minorities get overly sensitive when people criticize certain behaviors or the past. And yet, how can one hope to be free from prejudice, when one refuses to see the truth, opting to be part of the herd?

What is Racism?

“Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.”

“The belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.”

[Oxford Dictionary]

“policies, behaviours, rules, etc. that result in a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race”.

Also:

“harmful or unfair things that people say, do, or think based on the belief that their own race makes them more intelligent, good, moral, etc. than people of other races”.

[Cambridge University]

So as you can see, racism doesn’t have to do with minorities specifically. Minority groups can also be racist to majority groups, or some nations/people claim to be superior or “God’s chosen” while this is blatantly racist and, by definition, a harmful and unfair behavior. On a final note, just because certain groups have been persecuted historically, this doesn’t justify them to persecute others while claiming to be victims of racism, as this would be hypocrisy.

What is Discrimination? How is it different to Prejudice?

1. “The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, sex, or disability.”

2. “Recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another”.

Usually people tend to forget the second definition, and over time, discrimination becomes something negative. What about, “a discriminative mind is a mark of wisdom?” Should you not pick and choose according to preference? Are all things the same? Obviously not. Prejudice, on the other hand, is always negative. It is wrong in so many ways to be prejudiced against people of any group; this doesn’t just apply to minorities. However, that doesn’t mean that a person cannot choose what he/she prefers. Preference is an act of freedom.

Some groups seem to imply that if a person says that he/she is heterosexual, that it means that they are homophobic. I hate prejudice; I support equal rights. I also fully support the second definition of discrimination; I do this all the time. I choose what I like to eat, where to hang out and who to have sex with. I have specific gender preferences; my choices don’t make me phobic of the other minority groups (another wrong use of the word phobic, meaning fear of something. Not wanting to have sex with specific types of peoples doesn’t mean I fear them, it simply means that I don’t like it and I prefer something else). I also choose what to read, what to reject, what kinds of music or movies to watch and so on. I’m sure you do all that too. So remember to use the words correctly.

What is antisemitism?

Semitic groups have been known to spread to a vast region in the Eastern Mediterranean all the way down to the Persian Gulf. Examples are: the Canaanites, the Akkadians, the Babylonians, and the Chaldeans that settled the Mesopotamian South where the Euphrates empties into the Gulf (from the tribe Kaldu – a Semitic tribe from the Amorites), the Jebusites, the Jewish tribes, the Arameans, and many more. So to pick just one of them and say it is the only Semitic group is doing disservice to the rest and is also appropriating people’s ethnic background.

Also, just because several of these groups were historically persecuted (Jews, Palestinians, small minorities in Iraq and Syria, etc) doesn’t give them immunity from blame when they are the ones committing crimes of racism or persecution. It has become a common thing in certain places from the Levant that one cannot bring about anything in discussion relating history or politics, from fear of offending their sensibilities. This has to stop. People should be freely discussing their opinions, and with the right evidence, they should be able to accept new data. Believing that people from minorities have indemnity from scrutiny is a naïve and socially dangerous stance.

Stereotyping and Reverse Pendulum Mentality

Protect battered mothers / women (but not battered fathers / men?)

Protect raped females (but what about raped males?)

Protect a specific group of a certain ethnic background while turning a blind eye towards other groups of different backgrounds whose rights are violated.

A child goes first (but what about elderly, mentally ill etc which are categories often neglected?)

Homophobic is a bad thing (and not heterophobic?)

A group or groups of different gender definitions must be protected (but shouldn’t all people’s choices on this matter be protected, no matter what?)

It is common, when society realizes that the rights of a certain minority have been violated (ie in the case of persecution, slavery, racist hostility and even killings because of that like the pogroms against Jews and other races), that society goes overboard and through overprotecting, refuse even the slightest of blame, even in documented cases. And yet, there have been plenty of people belonging to minority groups who were guilty of various crimes, including slavery, discrimination or collaborating with the enemy (and all these have been documented also). Minorities can easily become oppressors and they have done so, from ancient to modern times, as any student of history can testify.

Politically correct

We need to see some definitions of this; in the past, I used to pay a lot of notice and try to accommodate to that standard. Not so much now, and I will explain why.

“The avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.” [Oxford dictionary]

“Conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated” [Merriam-Webster]

“Someone who is politically correct believes that language and actions that could be offensive to others, especially those relating to sex and race, should be avoided.” [Cambridge University]

So look again the above definitions and note the words ‘perceived’ in the first, ‘conforming to a belief’ in the second, and ‘believes’ in the third. All these are subjective, thus arbitrary. If one wishes to be well-behaved, then by all means, one should take into account the sensibilities of others over various issues. However, in matters of spirituality, philosophy, history or science, one should care more about the objective truth and less about how people feel about certain aspects of the truth.

Examples include some of the following:

How many people died in a genocide (numbers differ according to which side you ask);

Is a certain behavior sign/symptom of mental illness (again, the psychiatrists will often tell a different story compared to members of various groups);

Are all people equal? (This often gets mistranslated as an inflammatory comment, aiming to annoy others meaning that they don’t deserve equal opportunities and rights. I am talking about people being equal in skills, IQ, innate abilities etc. Anyone who believes they are equal, must believe in that the humans are a race of robots coming from the same factory and production line.)

Thought Police vs Right to Free Speech

Seeking to prevent possible injustices before they even occur… seems pro-active and good, doesn’t it? Has anyone watched the film, Minority Report? If no, watch it. What about, Fahrenheit 451? Another excellent film (a bit old but a masterpiece). Do you believe in freedom? Can you say what you think without fear? Ask yourself if you should double-guess yourself every time you need to say or write something. People around you are a varied lot; many will not agree with what you say or do. Should you be made to feel intimidated by that? I don’t think so. You have a right to believe what you want and also your freedom of speech is safeguarded by the constitution.

Cultural Appropriation

A touchy subject for a lot of people. “Closed religions”? Kabbalah, deities, voodoo, Hindu beliefs, Native Indian spirit animals etc… the list goes on and on. Are we serious here? I mean, who makes these things up? Wake up people! There is NO closed religion. If a spiritual person or a person with respect approaches a concept or a deity/spirit and that deity/spirit accepts them, then it’s not up to the people to judge badly and condemn this approach! I can (and do) use whatever I want; my judgement is all I need, and that makes me a free man. Please, do not bend to such criticism; learn to think for yourselves. Learn, and experience things directly, if possible. You are born Free, like me. Do not bend to slave mentalities.

Constitutional Rights

Lastly, a bit of the obvious. Surely you are aware that any constitution of a country where there’s democracy and not a totalitarian regime safeguards certain freedoms. One of them is the right to think, speak, write and believe freely. Read up on your rights! Don’t take for granted what other people want you to believe; research yourself and then put them in their place. Protect those rights. People died to establish and to protect them in the past; now you got the ball, it’s your call.

#rights #minorities #stereotypes #appropriation #free speech #thought police #discrimination #prejudice #racism #constitutional freedom

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nobodyfamousposts · 5 years ago

Note

You know I was watching a video by overly sarcastic productions and I’m pretty sure that from that definition Adrien is a Mary Sue. The episode was Trope Talks: Mary Sues.

Pretty much Adrien is this to a T.

I hear people throwing the term around a lot and complaining about the term being thrown around a lot but I think what ends up being missed is what actually constitutes a Mary Sue in the first place.

A Mary Sue is not a character who is overpowered or “too strong” like the complaints about Captain Marvel. If that was true, then literally every anime protagonist or super hero that exists is a Mary Sue by default. Every one. Ever.

Nor is it someone with a tragic backstory like Batman or any other long line of superheroes or anime protagonists. Whether it’s dead parents, a past trauma, abuse, bullying, or just a conga line of horrible circumstances, plenty of characters have had bad things happen to them. That’s kind of part of life and what makes them relatable and sympathetic.

It’s not even someone who is loved by many people. Or is a good judge of character. Or whom manages to talk someone into a heel-face turn. Regardless of what claims may come, these are not what make a character a Mary Sue.

What makes a Mary Sue—the central core aspect of what makes a character problematic all boils down to how the narrative itself treats the character.

The narrative is generally indicative of the author’s own preferences or leanings. We see it all the time with stories that create straw characters to symbolize people the author doesn’t like or things the author doesn’t agree with in order to belittle it. The opposite can just as easily occur where a character or position is hyped up to look better or promote what the author wants promoted.

Those previously mentioned tropes are a sign of that. For a Mary Sue, everything from powers to past traumas to relationships are all just “things“ for the character to have. Whether to emphasize their importance or to highlight their greatness. While they’re not necessarily what automatically makes a character a Mary Sue, they are often utilized as tools by the narrative for the sake of propping the character that is a Sue. That’s why they’re easy to pick out and attribute to a Mary Sue as well as used to claim characters are Sues. Because they are tools used to try to make people support a character instead of actually making a character people can like and WANT to support.

A Mary Sue is given powers for the sake of making the character awesome without the character actually doing anything to be awesome. A Mary Sue is is given a tragic backstory for the sake of making the character sympathetic without the character actually doing anything to warrant sympathy. A Mary Sue is given relationships for the sake of being the center of attention and adoration by other characters to shell how awesome they are without having to do anything to show how or why anyone would or should actually like them. Any relationships a Mary Sue has are NOT legitimate connections between two or more people, they’re just labels to slap on the Mary Sue to make the character seem more relevant and important.

Ultimately, a Mary Sue supplants the story for the sake of having this character BE the story, and it’s a major reason why they are despised in most fandoms. A reason that, sad to say, was actually deserved in the early days of fan works.

That said…

Adrien IS a prime example of a Mary Sue because of the way the narrative is going out of its way to portray him. Even the creator has come out and said he is “perfect” and that any flaw he could have isn’t actually on him so much as an indication of something being wrong with the world around him. Anything bad that happens, even as a direct result of that character’s own actions, is portrayed as being the fault of anyone and everyone else but that character, in this case Adrien. That, RIGHT THERE is pretty much the epitome of what a Mary Sue IS.

Some call it an ego trip. Some call it a power fantasy. Many consider it as a sort of reality warper. It’s ultimately the case when the story is being turned in on itself to make this character look good without the character actually DOING anything to BE good and even when the character is specifically doing things that AREN’T good.

This is why Bella Swan from Twilight is a certifiable Mary Sue.

This is why it can be argued that Rey from Star Wars is a Mary Sue.

This is why Anita Blake is definitely a Mary Sue.

And this is what separates Adrien from Marinette. And Adrien from pretty much everyone else in the series.

It’s not that he has superpowers—if anything, I think he got cheated in the powers department, all things considered. No, it’s the way he doesn’t seem to take those powers or the responsibilities that come with them seriously. Given that he has had THREE instances already in which he threw a major fit in the middle of an akuma battle because he wasn’t happy about something only for him to be shown as being RIGHT to do so even to the detriment of his partner, his Miraculous, and ultimately all of Paris.

It’s not that he has a missing mom and a neglectful dad, it’s how the narrative keeps emphasizing how sad Adrien is without actually DOING anything with it so they can milk the “Sadrien” angle. Because let’s face it, seeing Adrien looking sad sells.

It’s not that he has multiple girls who like him. I mean, he’s a model, and is rich and famous. I’d be surprised if he didn’t have multiple girls who were into him.

No, it’s in the over the top emphasis of his supposed greatness. It’s in this consistent impression the narrative is giving that the female lead we are supposed to be rooting for—whom we all KNOW has gone well out of her way to do things for him, try to make him happy even to her own detriment, and has struggled more than any rational person should be willing to just to try confessing to the guy is somehow the one side of the love square that “isn’t trying hard enough”.

It’s in the way he is always portrayed as being the “moral voice” and the one in the right in any situation regardless of how little he’s involved or even understands what’s going on. Whether it was lecturing people on how to deal with a bully or for being happy when their bully was leaving (when he was never actually a target of that bully). Or lecturing people on how to deal with a liar (when again, he wasn’t the one being played or threatened). Or threatening to quit when Paris was flooded by an akuma all because he wasn’t being told secrets that he wasn’t showing he was ready to know and that his tantrum CERTAINLY didn’t show he was ready or mature enough for.

It’s in the back and forth on whether he is supposed to be the epitome of “perfection” and the wise person everyone should listen to only to suddenly be made out as the innocent victim of everyone else when his less than noble or heroic behaviors are pointed out in order to excuse or justify his behaviors. (I call it the Standard Adrien Defense and it follows this trend each time.)

It’s in the clear and blatant double standard between what Adrien/Chat is allowed to do and get away with vs what is allowed from anyone else. It’s in the way that Adrien can do things that anyone can agree is wrong without getting so much as a lecture but anyone else in his place will—and have been raked over the coals by the same narrative that gives him the equivalent of a pat on the head and a cookie.

It’s in the way he’s just…there. He has the plot connections. He has the relevance. He has the position of being at the center of quite literally everything from the villain’s plans and motivations to the adoration of the female lead…and he does NOTHING with any of it.

And it’s in the way that no matter what he does or what side he takes, the narrative always ALWAYS frames him as being the one in the right when there’s a conflict, the one to sympathize with when he and another character are hurt, and the one we as the audience are supposed to agree with and support more in any situation.

And the truly sad thing is that Adrien as a character has potential. From a humorous character to a serious one, from the wise and introspective person to the wide-eyed innocent being thrown into the hero job, there was SO MUCH that could have been done with his character. Instead, Adrien is reactionary. Anything involving him is less a matter of what he personally is doing and more about what is being done to or for him. He has no dreams or aspirations other than being with the main female character, has no interests to speak of, and his other relationships actually seem pretty lacking—again, based less on what HE’S doing and more on what other people are doing to and/or for HIM. He somehow has a wide-ranging impact without actually taking action.

As it stands, Canon Adrien is about as real as the cardboard cutout or wax statue of him. To the point he might as well be either for all that he actually seems to accomplish. Because nothing annoys fans or creates salt quite like wasted potential, and that’s all canon Adrien is at this point.

That’s why Fandom Adrien is awesome, whether he’s portrayed as being dense as a brick, showing a polite exterior while internally screaming, acting like a massive dork, or just acting passive aggressive in how he deals with his father and people like Chloe or Lila. Because however way he’s being made to deal with the crazy situations the fans put him in, he’s at least doing SOMETHING besides standing there and looking pretty for people to fawn/fight over.

Strangely enough, this may be the first case I’ve seen where fans have taken a Mary Sue and made him a real character rather than the other way around.

#ml salt #adrien salt #adrien is a mary sue #yes he is #no pointing at marinette is not a valid argument #no claiming marinette is also a sue is not a valid argument either #nor is it true #no citing adrien's abuse is not a valid argument #nor justification for anything he's done and not done #stop using it #it's getting old #Standard Adrien Defense #mary suedrien

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