#he knows what's right and wrong and he knows totalitarian systems are shit. not just some but all

[a---fire---inside]

[eldunea]

hear me out: lotor sincline as muggle studies professor and head of slytherin house.

would happen probably in his late 20s/early 30s after he designs the sincline mech and gets the wizarding space program up and running. at that point he’d probably hand off official control of his project to his mother honerva (though he’d still have some influence over it) and start focusing some of his energy on his decolonization project where he wants to bring back POC customs of wizards and muggles living side-by-side. to achieve this end. his aim as muggle studies professor is to get students used to the idea that wizards and muggles can and should coexist peacefully.

he has four main focuses in teaching his course: customs, history, philosophy and science. he tends to focus more on the last three than the first because those are more within his realm of knowledge. he also has more of an international focus rather than simply a european one when talking about history, philosophy and science--he could go on forever about how indigenous mesoamericans domesticated and bred 3,000 varieties of plants, or about the intricacies of lao tzu’s tao te ching, or about the hidden role of claudette colvin in america’s civil rights movement. and if there’s one thing that he nerds out about more than pre-contact histories of his parents’ peoples, it’s muggle jewish inventors. 

he has a special unit that he teaches to third years about 20th century atrocities and totalitarianism. he spends literally the entire second semester of third year talking about why dictatorships form, the tactics of corrupt leadership in controlling peoples’ lives, and how it’s every citizen’s duty to prevent this shit from happening again. he drives the message home by doing a comparative study of the rise of voldemort and the rise of hitler, and talking about how muggles’ racial biases toward POC have always influenced how wizards felt as well. one of the underlying themes of this unit is that wizards are more influenced by currents of muggle society than many would want to admit, and that’s why muggle studies is important.

one of his biggest messages as a professor other than the fact that wizards and muggles can live peacefully with each other is that muggles are the real wizards. literally when he starts class with third years he starts off with “wizards are fucking useless, i have the stats to prove it, we’ve technologically stagnated since the 1900s and we have the lowest proportion of inventors and scientists of any people in the world. muggles discovered the inner workings of nature through the likes of newton and einstein and hawking, and meanwhile in our corner we have bartholomew briggleby still pooping in the backyard and vanishing it like a dog because he’s never heard of a toilet.” he is vociferous about the notion that wizards are technologically lazy and complacent and it is imperative that the next generation starts being more like him and going out and inventing.

his domesticated foxes kugel and brisket have free run of the hogwarts grounds and all the students love them. occasionally a third fox--lotor himself--shows up with them. students, not knowing that it’s one of their teachers, have affectionately named it “blintzes.”

he’d also teach alchemy to the 6th and 7th years if there’s sufficient interest. the workload in the years where he has to do that is hellish but he pulls it off.

and some separate headcanons about lotor as head of slytherin house because HO BOY he’s about to start a revolution up in this bitch

he’s the first POC head of slytherin as well as its first jewish head. he goes to the chamber of secrets and takes a picture of himself leaning against the giant head of his house’s founder and writes a giant magical blogging post about how slytherin was antisemitic, how he said “jewish blood is just as dirty as muggle blood,” how he wanted to use the basilisk to purge the school of jewish students as well as muggle-born ones and how lotor literally became head of slytherin house out of PURE SPITE. he just.

“this isn’t your house anymore. it belongs to the people who live in it. it belongs to the ambition of the muggle-born who wants to show he’s just as good as any pureblood, or the romani child who wants to be the first in her family to graduate hogwarts. the cunning of the abuse survivor who has done everything in their power to survive. the leadership that young indigenous activists show when we fight to save the planet from the point of no return. the fraternity found in solidarity between jews, christians and muslims. I REFUSE to let hogwarts be a place where one house remains a bastion for prejudiced slander and hate, because if one house isn’t safe for the marginalized, the whole school isn’t safe either.”

half of his house hates him for that. if it’s not the conservative snob students calling for his removal, it’s their parents who most likely silently supported the death eaters while voldemort’s campaign was raging. but many of them learn very quickly not to mess with him for a reason stated below.

with all this feel-good talk, he seems more of a gryffindor or a hufflepuff. but to those students who break the rules or who try to make his life hell on the basis of his identity, he has steady reminders of how much of a slytherin he actually is. students who try to undermine him or others in sneaky ways are surprised to learn that he’s twice the filthy piece of shit that they all hope to be; no matter how clever they think they are he’s at least ten steps ahead, and it drives the lesson home when he manages to beat them at their own games. he sends the students off to detention with a smirk on his face, telling them “you can’t outfox a fox.” most of the time he takes absolutely no shit from troublemakers and isn’t afraid to teach them lessons the hard way. but if someone is looking to go after a known bully or something along those lines…he might look the other way.

he’s also damn good at keeping people in his house from going down the wrong path. he’s seen both sides of the coin--having been abused by white supremacists all his life and then experimenting with dark magic to get back at his abusers--so he knows real trouble when he sees it and he always puts a stop to it. 

this is where his persuasion comes in: he knows those kids won’t listen if he appeals to conventional morality, because he sure as hell didn’t listen either. so he appeals to their value systems instead. like if he catches someone with a hand of glory stealing stuff from other students who wants to be a master thief, he won’t blather on about why stealing is wrong, he’ll say “wow, i didn’t know your biggest dream in life was to be a petty felon. you’re a slytherin. where’s your ambition? don’t you want to be more than that?” or if someone wants to hurt someone via dark magic to achieve their ends, he’s like “well that’s not very clever of you. aren’t you smart enough to think of another way to get what you want?” of course, he always makes sure to walk them through the ethics of it later, but he knows he has to appeal to their self-interest, their ego and their childish still-developing emotions in order to hook them in. basically it takes a bastard to know a bastard and lotor is a supreme bastard so he can get inside their heads like nobody else.

one of the things he often has to do as a result of keeping kids out of trouble is confronting blood supremacist and otherwise bigoted parents when he talks their kids out of following their values. it’s fucking exhausting for him having to deal with their bullshit on a yearly basis but every time this happens he tells his students, “arguing is the jewish national sport. i was born for this” and goes right in.

if the parents get real bad, whether through hammering in bigoted ideologies or other forms of child abuse, lotor will straight up invite them to stay in hogwarts year-round. some of the nastier parents have straight up refused to let their kids go to hogwarts anymore and opt to send them to durmstrang, so this is their only option if they want to continue their education in a school that like, doesn’t teach the dark arts. he sometimes lives in the slytherin common room during the summer to keep an eye on the kids that stay there because they can’t go back home in one way or another and he’s more of a parent to them than some of their parents ever were.

[monkey-network]

Good Stuff - THE TROOF ABOUT STEVEN UNIVERSE - Part 2

WARNING: If anybody’s got a clown suitcase, I would very much like to see it. And here’s part 1, if you wish to know more. Thank you, take care out there, and enjoy.

Steven Universe is a charming, popular show with a quad-polar fandom, and I’m only here to point out what I say is legitimately wrong with the cartoon. Simple enough? Fair enough. Previously, I talked about how their action is so basic, it’s inexcusable. Now for Point number 2, which is also my favorite:

THE VILLAINS:

I fucking love villains. Not just for the who, but why and how they do it. When bad guys like the Joker, Lord Dominator, DIO, or Him do their thing onscreen, I enjoy every moment of their threatening essence (except Jared Leto’s Joker, he sucked). Villains remorselessly do unethical, downright vicious, things to fulfill their goals while initiating setting up the heroes to correct these effects with their efforts and abilities. Steven Universe has villains, sure. Yet, after having so many chances, Rebecca Sugardaddy has failed to make them REAL villains, specifically the Great Diamond Authority.

Now originally, I was gonna compare the Diamonds to the likes of Fire Lord Ozai (Avatar: The Last Airbender) or DIO (JJBA); villains that work in the shadows and when they’re eventually revealed, they’re already a force to be reckoned with. But looking into how they and Homeworld is set up, there was no other villainous ensemble that could stack up with the Diamonds perfectly like the Gorosei from the anime One Piece.

Looking more badass than the US Government

Now these five gentlemen aren’t necessarily what make up the end all be all for the series, but above all, the Gorosei are the ruling leaders of the organization that controls the entire world of One Piece. They command the military, the police, and other agencies, like their investigative and espionage departments, and the only people that out rule these gentlemen are the descendants of those who created it several centuries ago. Like the Diamonds, they seek to maintain order and justice for the people of their world and doing so means taking on any sign of revolution (namely Pirates) that could damage not only their image, but their purpose. Both Authorities possess absolute rule over the many classes that are under them and their stance of power can be present with the many actions that effect the characters we focus on currently. The difference between the two ruling classes is nuance, aka a grey sense of morality, aka an actual sense of relatability. So when I see a series having an overall narrative villain, Steven Universe has shown me that sympathy should NOT be a factor in storytelling.

And their crocodile tears are not welcome either...

Now when I say this, I don’t mean you can’t sympathize with any villain you see. Most of the time, you can feel for the antagonist when their lives never were good to begin with, that’s namely how villainy starts out, therefore making their actions not so much justified, but understandable. Take the rogues gallery that are the enemies of Batman.

Every one of them has a story to tell and a method to their madness. Their histories weren’t as nice or as hopeful as they may have hoped, and you can feel their pain as their efforts to be successful at something grand falls apart due to the Dark Knight or life’s unforgiving nature. However, the sympathy stops there because none of these masterminds, with the Joker being an exception, serve as a main villain to Batman’s crusade for justice, they’re continuous rivals and one off stories that expand the DC Universe. No evil in Gotham is powerful enough because Batman’s story has no real endgame. Steven Universe and One Piece will eventually have an endgame. And while the Gorosei represent an Oligarchical commodity that separates its order seeking rule from their affiliating countries, The Diamonds have amounted to being under one system alone:

Yep. Nazis.

And it’s weird I bring this up. For I would’ve thought to have called Homeworld an authoritative caste system where the gem you’re born with defines your class and status, coinciding with the gems’ natural abilities. The specific gems are given a role and everyone plays a part to maintain societal order, like what India has, with the Diamonds being the biggest and strongest gems and therefore are the de facto Matriarch of the gem society, you feel me? That would’ve earned a little sympathy from me, because the Diamonds losing Pink would’ve meant the massive changes to accommodate their order and resources might not have worked out so well and their image as leaders are slowly diminishing and that can explain the huge resentment for Earth and Rose’s Rebellion.

But no. Instead the Diamonds are a repressive totalitarian government that basically control everyone and everything, all the gems below to strictly follow and almost never question their line of reasoning, and they’re reasons for destroying the Earth has been summarized down to the emotional baggage and grudge that came with their failure long ago.

CAN YOU NOT FEEL THEIR PAIN?!

Wanna know why I didn’t compare the Diamonds to Avatar’s Fire Nation when talking about humanizing the enemy and the connection couldn’t be more obvious? Because before Ozai is ever mentioned, The Last Airbender states very clearly that the Fire Nation is the region Aang and his friends need to infiltrate to stop their manifest destiny. And when we’re early hinted that Zuko’s not full on evil, it lets the audience know that not everyone is on board with those in charge of the Fire Nation invasion, leading up to Ozai's big debut where we see that as the endgame villain, he’s irredeemable and has such a lust for power, that he’s recognizably the main drive everyone has to stop. Avatar did this right because little by little, the main enemy was narrowed down to a single force that hasn’t made itself known until near the end when his presence bear more importance. The same can’t be said for Steven Universe because Rebecca Sugar Rush presented yet another faint mistake.

The Diamond’s personalities are given to us before they’ve shown us who they are and what they’re capable of...

So we see Yellow Diamond as a vindictive, no nonsense leader that wants shit to get done and Blue Diamond as a more tender looking, yet no nonsense leader that’s grieving over Pink Diamond’s death and does whatever she can to move on and remember the fallen fondly. So, have they done anything before we’ve met them personally? Sure.

*They corrupted thousands of their own kind (because of the rebellion)

*Allowed experimentation towards shattered gems to make artificial fusion (because of the rebellion)

*Ordered a search and destroy on all “defective” gems that go against the Authority’s standards and prevalence while said defectives put themselves in a literally hole of despair for coming out wrong (Gaslighting)

*And let’s not forget the Cluster (because of the rebellion)

So yeah, quite a lot actually. Now you might be thinking, “But Monkey Network, what does those five old men have to do with what the Diamonds did?” Well, when you see the villainous shit the Gorosei have commanded, their actions are actually more relatable.

*Ordering the destruction of an island of archaeologists because they were secretly researching forbidden history

*Allowing a hit on their own government affiliated island to erase any potential surviving threats that invaded there

*Directing the Marines, or the front line enemies of our Pirate heroes

*And contemplating their system’s next move when updates arrive

Now I don’t know about you, but these gentlemen make up quite an authoritative class with understandable motives and relatable notions on running the world without necessarily being on the front lines. Kinda like the US over the years? Even when their level of corruption can be on par and we still know little of their true power and who they really are, they’re instantly better than the Diamond Authority because we can see why they’re in command, their thoughts and actions towards our heroes shows no sign of being sympathetic, and yet we see where their motives lie. I mean, their Government’s enemies are pirates. You know, Pirates? People who’ve robbed and killed and are the opposite of order? See where I’m going here? They namely go after our heroes who are seen to be the enemy even when the Pirates and plenty others consider them the enemy. It’s almost as if there’s a grey choice for the audience to wonder whom the real bad guys are. OooooOOh.

Also, quick side note. The Gorosei look fucking cool. Like their designs aren’t exactly human, credit towards Eiichiro Oda and his expressive designs, but they’re drawn with such a level of seriousness and stature that it presents their elder wisdom and grave subtlety towards a subject in a contrasting light to the pirates bombastic, emotional appeal. But the Diamonds?

This picture summarizes how I will never take them seriously, no matter how hard they try or how good Patti LuPone is

So, what has this amounted to? Basically, Rebecca Sugardop has given us nonthreatening villains that showed no sign of any redeemable qualities beyond their ability to mesmerize us with their acting. That and give us an episode that, in summary, tells the audience that killing an enemy like the Diamonds makes you no better than them. Yeah, I have to go there.

I’ll try and make this quick.

This episode was Crime and Punishment done bad. For Crime and Punishment, it was an old Russian tale of a man killing a woman that’s rich yet unliked in the community because he believed it was for a greater good; implying that murder is permissible in pursuit of a higher purpose. Same can apply to Bismuth, having faith that in killing the Diamonds, Homeworld can be liberated from the oppressive elite. Here’s where that tie-in ends: the effect. In Crime and Punishment, the killer shows sincere regret towards his actions because it didn’t present any change in the community beyond the fact that an old woman got murdered and the only thing the she was despised for was being a greedy pawnbroker. What regret would’ve there been in using the Breaking Point on the Diamonds? Bismuth wasn’t set on killing any Homeworld gem around, just the leader who show that they mean and will mean business unless they’re fully out of commission. The show wanted to say killing the Diamonds is bad even when the effect of it could be good, but never offered any other method to success and just shunned Bismuth to dormancy until they need her again, proving she might have been onto something.

Whew. So, what’s the tl;dr aspect of this since you probably won’t take this seriously. Well, call this a domino effect. Rebecca Sugar Pop is trying to make sympathetic dictators, which is itself an oxymoronic detail. In doing so, she failed to make them real villains. In doing that, there really are no real villains in the show. And when there are no villains, the conflict feels dry and absent. And without conflict, she failed at putting together HALF an overall story. And when you’re a coming of age story where it has to end on some note with maturity and change, after almost five years in the making, you just FUCKED yourself over when you didn’t even invest time in HALF of what makes an overall story of good and evil investing and engaging. Oh I’m sorry, what makes an overall story of a blurred line between good and evil. Investing and engaging.

I can’t care anymore. If they get redeemed, sure. If they end up dying like a tragedy, fine. They feel less like villains to overcome and more like stairs Steven has to step on to become a better person. Just let White Diamond be as grandiose and badass as Tumblr’s AUs of her, because again...

The fandom is doing the show a bit of justice

[carolynjanai-blog]

Patriotism Isn’t a Religion and Flag Worship is Creepy

This week’s bonus is a discussion about strawmen, truth, justice, radical nationalism and all that good stuff.

Also, I’d like to discuss the absurdity of idealizing flags and other modes of nonsense nationalist propaganda.

Mostly I’d like to vent my own personal feelings and anger.

Because I’m angry and have no healthy outlets.

Let’s begin.

I hate that every time someone says “hey, racism might exist”, some spray tanned creamsicle-looking asshole goes “hey, you must hate the flag and therefore America.”

God. Fuck. Damnit.

There’s a lot of things wrong with this statement, but let’s start with the obvious.

Taking a stand against inequality and brutality is exactly what a person should do. Saying that protesting police brutality is equal to hating the flag is like saying that the people who protest the pipeline in one of the Dakotas must hate electricity.

It’s like comparing apples to fascist oranges.

So, let’s look at the constituent parts of this clusterfuck.

A handful of people in the public eye take a very public stand against police brutality, something they view as an issue in their country today. They take a 2-minute knee and then resume their activities.

These people happen to be black.

And the President calls them sons of bitches on the news.

Here’s a comparable situation.

of white nationalists and Nazis gather in Virginia carrying torches and chanting anti-sematic slogans while wearing swastikas and carrying torches, generally menacing the public at large for several hours. A person was even killed by a Nazi sympathizer.

And the President says that there were good men in that crowd.

If you don’t see the disparity between these two scenarios, then I don’t know what to tell you. Actually, I have a lot to tell you but I risk editorializing as is.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend, especially in older, particularly white, generations with idealization of certain “American” values and a bizarre obsession with the American flag.Younger people don’t seem as obsessed for some reason (probably the constant war and insurmountable deficit), regardless It’s especially strange to people from other countries that the flag is literally everywhere.

Look outside any building. Flag.

Look at any shopping plaza. Flags.

Look at the ceiling at a Wal-Mart. A sea of flags.

Look inside. I’m can’t be certain that I don’t have the flag etched into my goddamn bones.

In Europe and literally everywhere else (that isn’t under totalitarian regime), the flag is only outside government buildings.

I could throw a rock out a window here in America and it would bounce of 3 flag poles and knock some yahoo’s flag hat off.

Our loyalty in it is creepily instilled in us from a young age. We pledged allegiance to it every day as children.

Children chanting and swearing undying allegiance to literally anything should make a reasonable person skeptical.

That’s some Children of the Corn level shit.

It’s just that its indoctrinated into our everyday lives, making it seem normal. Which is so clearly isn’t by global standards. Which brings us to nationalism.

You remember nationalism, right? It’s that thing that blinded an already divided Germany with pride and got like a third of the European population killed.

America’s pretty divided right now, wouldn’t you say?

Like, we’ve been pretty divided for a while now (Thanks for advocating a 2 party system, T. Jeffs, you shitty, slave raping fuckwit.) but especially now with racial tensions running high, the gun toting lunatics running wild and people throwing down straw man fallacies left and right in order to excuse these events. (for example, saying that police brutality is not an issue because of black on black crime. One has nothing to do with the other and therefore is a strawman. Somehow this is a common argument against police brutality but I’ll get back to it in a moment.)

The division of America will reach its apex in our lifetime, I think, now more than ever. This movement is transcending generations and races more so now because there is an abundance of concrete evidence of these awful things transpiring. Before nearly everyone in the nation is carrying a camera and a means to distribute footage on a device smaller than a deck of cards, we had to take someone’s word for any accusation. A person’s word has never meant much, especially in a new age of 

Footage that can only be irrefutable proof of two things, that police brutality is escalating OR what we can now all see happening has been happening for years and years.

Remember our old pal the strawman? Well, he’s here in the original argument, too. Trying to refute an opponent’s argument by offering a completely unrelated argument is a yellow card, 2 more and you’re off the field.

Even if taking a knee meant hating the flag and therefore hating America, this has nothing to do with protesting police brutality.

Being a petty criminal doesn’t warrant a person’s public execution by the local police.

That’s a matter worth taking a stand for.

Harmlessly taking a knee during a ballgame as a means of silent protest is a drop in the ocean compared to the outrage a country should feel when private, unarmed citizens are gunned down in the street by overgrown bullies wearing badges.

(I’m late to post this and it went all over the place, but I reached the word count and got my ideas mostly down)

[evilelitest2]

Top Nine Reasons why Marxism Failed in Implementation

100 years ago (though not on this day) The Soviet Union overthrew the Tsarist goverment to usher in a new age of Utopian politics..and that didn’t go so well (and now a bunch of tankies are pissed at me). So why is it that Marxism tends to not work out so well in the implementation.  Just forward note, I am mostly talking about the schools of Marxism that are descended from Leninism and actually attempted to control a nation, so when Marxists Orthodoxy folk come in and say “Hey Lenin skipped the Capitalist step” yes I know, I”m talking about the Marxist states that actually exist.  

Number 1: Party Vanguardism 

So while the popular image of Marxist revolutions is a giant crowd of people storming the palaces and killing all the nobles, Marxist organization principle was based around Party Vanguardism, basically a small elite group of ideologically pure Marxists will take over the country in a lightning coup, seize control of the goverment and implement the necessary social reforms for the sake of the people.  The idea is that since the average people are far too ignorant/stupid/religious/superstitious/easily confused what have you appreciate the Marxist Utopian vision, they would basically forcibly implement the system upon them from above.  Party Vanguardism came about in the French Revolution with the Conspiracy of Equals as a response to the sort of self destructive nature of French revolutionary mob politics.  Problem is when you give a small elite total control of the country whose primary qualification is their ideological purity you wind up with a bunch of people living in a total fantasy world and people who aren’t actually qualified are put into positions of power.  Small groups like that are also really suitableness to infiltration by opportunistic egotists (Stalin) but also are prone to corruption and autocracy by those within because those in the vangaurd are like “I seize power” and then they are like “I has power” but they never seem to get to the “giving up power” stage....hmmm

Number 2: No Balance of Power 

So why is it that Marxists regimes always become dictatorships (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Tito, Castro, the Kim Family and much much more) If your nation is led by a single Party who can best implement the great wonderful Utopian vision, then there isn’t really any room for an opposition party.  At first glance this sounds great, no stooges of the capitalist machine trying to gum up reform and plan military coups (that wasn’t sarcastic that happens a lot with right wing opposition parties), but here is the problem.  If you’re regime has no built in mechanism to counter the leadership if they go wrong....then holy shit will they go wrong.  And ambitious morally dubious men will quickly realize “Wait...if I seize control of this goverment, then I will live out the rest of my life as a communist god king cause there isn’t any check on my power”.  And those men will fight to obtain as much power, and once they have it, it is basically too late for the Communist state, because once a dictator seizes power they can ruin the state so thoroughly it is impossible for it to right itself under communist principles, as we have seen in both the Soviet Union and Maoist China.  Because while Marxists never intend to implement a horrible dictatorship, there is not safeguard to stop it, and that is why it always happens.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  

Not that I want to defend the US system too much because it is a mess, but Trump obviously wants to make himself into an autocrat...but he can’t, at least not yet.  The system is so decentralized and opposition is so easy that he can’t even get his travel bans implemented.  Power needs safeguards put into place to keep it in check, otherwise autocracy.

Number 3: Militancy 

This isn’t unique to Communism, and it isn’t always the communists fault, but the violent militant methods embraced by the Leninists descended communist (Yes yes i know not all Communists are Leninists many are peaceful I’m talking about the historical states that have existed).   I know that violent revolution gets romanticized but you know why it so many times turns from “overthrow the fate elites” to “Lets murder everybody” is because it starts as it means to go on.  Once violence becomes an acceptable form of political expression, then violence is just going to happen more, and it becomes just easier to murder you’re political opponents than deal with them in other ways. And when you have an external enemy who the state has to be focused on battling on the first thing to go is individual rights, which is why the French Revolution really went to crazy land once they went to war with Austria and we have seen how the American political system deteriorated once we went to a 16 year long war.  Wars make autocracy more likely, and Marxists states often emerge in a state of war.  This is to say nothing of the fact that when you seize power with weapons, the person with the weapons is always going to be thinking to themselves “I can do this again.”

Number 4: Winner Take All Politics

One of the greatest advantage of democracies is that political losers can still exist within society (one of the greatest failings is that there isn’t any room for economic loser).  Because when making an incorrect political move could result in death, people get a lot more scary.  In a democracy, even a horribly mismanaged one, if you lose an election and can go home to move on with your life, the state as a whole is more stable.  If losing a political battle results in death, then people are going to use any means possible to win, and this is why communist auto-cannibalism comes so quickly, because pretty much everybody has their back to then they will gladly destroy the state in order to come out on top or avoid being killed.  Or like what we saw happen with the Great Leap Forward, people knew that if they didn’t meet production quotas they would be shot, so they lied and said they did, which caused those on top to make terrible estimations about how powerful the state actually was and oh shit famine.  

Number 5: Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism basically means that the state has no independent groups, they have a totality of political power.  I have railed long and hard about how states rights are awful and racist and how much I think the states power needs to be curtailed in favor of the federal goverment, but there is a very good reason why I want state governments to exist.  And I”m not talking about balance of power, by having the implementation of policies go to local governments rather than the central goverment, you can adjust policies to address local concerns.  There are a lot of problems with this like Pork Barrel politics, but one thing you avoid is the constant communist problem of “Lets implement a single policy that doesn’t vary across the entire giant country” which worked out so well with the Great Leap Forward....oh wait.  And since there is no recourse...whoops.

Number 6: Religion

I’m am not trying to get into a religion vs. atheism debate here because I find those debates extremely stupid, just from a practical level targeting people’s religion leads to much more violent reprisals because the common people will ignore their own best interest in order to defend their religion.  The French Revolution really lost its international appeal when they targeted the Catholic Church, same with the Russian and Chinese revolutions, just leave the Church alone and your state will just live longer, no matter how corrupt and conservative they tend to be.

Number 7: Poor Incentive Systems 

One of the biggest issues with communist states  is that it kinda wants people to run on ideologies and so either doesn’t design incentive systems to encourage people to do the work they want, or they only rely on “Do the work or I will shoot you” motivation which just causes this mess of ironically enough, labor problems.  it also makes corruption and needlessly complicated bureaucracy inevitable, which compounds with reason 5 and 1

Number 8: Doesn’t play well with others

Again this isn’t entirely their fault, but communist systems don’t really work co-existing with other countries which means that you don’t usually get a good trade relationship going and the benefits of a debt based economy never really come in, which is why they tend to stagnate economically...along with all the other reasons

Number 9: Its Utopian.  

The problem with Utopian political ideology is that it basically makes any middle ground impossible.  After all, if you are going to bring about a glorious Utopia, then pretty much any crime to achieve that end becomes justified. And if the goal is utopia, why bother with the boring regulatory details like a constitution or specific system. While the American constitution is a giant mess of contradictions and bullshit and it desperately needs reform, but one thing I really like about it is that it assumes everybody is a selfish asshole who is trying to take as much power as possible.  So its designed to try to prevent that, and worked well when it was designed...we haven’t updated it for decades but that is a new problem.  You need to design systems to assume the worse, because the consequences of people taking absolute power are disastrous.  And that is always my issue when I talk to Marxists is that they love theory, but kinda lose when you get to details, which is why marxism is always better as a form of critical theory than an actual implemented policy. 

Ironically bemuse this is a long post, the only people who are going to read it...are Marxists.  Evidently I wasn’t having enough fun getting into fights with Neoreactionaries.  

[somethingsomethingdragonage]

asks part 2

anon: I wonder if the fans of other DA characters get this much shit about their "problematic faves". I wonder if the fenris fans are called "ableism apologists" (because fenris is ableist), or aveline fans called "slut shaming apologists" (because aveline is a slut shamer).. or you know, in general being called MURDER apologists since every single one of these characters is a killer one way or another. and pls ppl, dont tell me anders doesn't have regrets or didn't do what he had to do out of fear. 

especially since I didn’t even post any discussion prior to the first message I got? it was just a “fun” post about bioware/Anders and I tagged it with “Anders was right” which is indeed a tag I use. like if I started any kind of argument and discussion I can understand why people would comment on that but because of a pretty normal post? idk. and yes, we should all incorporate a club and we will be called the murder apologists because clearly everyone who is playing games where ppl get killed and not despise every single character for it (including their own character) is a murder apologist.

anon: I'm sorry you're getting so much anon hate.  I hope things start getting better and people learn to separate games from current events a bit more. That being said it's nice to find another Anders fan! :3

well I’m not very optimistic that it’s going to happen because I always knew there where a lot of jerks in the DA fandom and I kinda managed to keep them off my dash for most part. since I’m mostly a DA fandom blog I kinda expect getting some crap from time to time but since my blog title and my present icon should give a pretty clear picture about my views it’s not a lot. and yes, I still think people who are unable to differentiate between fiction and reality shouldn’t play these games. or at least keep clear of discussions. yes you can identify with stuff in games, be it a conflict, a character but whatever. but don’t give other people a hard time for doing that as well because they are real and not game characters. well look at me ranting haha I’m also always happy to meet other fans of my fav mage and I hope you have a great day :)

audacityinblack: Some people seem to forget that Anders did not have *any* basic rights, let alone the right to speak freely or protest. A Divine in the past almost called an exalted march on her own damn Chantry because the mages went on strike. Mages have absolutely no right to protest. And, mage or not, they absolutely can and will hunt you down and kill you if you dissent against them too loudly. Heresy is a punishable offense in Thedas. Torture and execution are normalized parts of the justice system.

This is a system where peaceful protest never works. Only those with privilege and power are allowed to resolve their conflicts without bloodshed or surrendering their basic civil rights. The Daughters of Song were pacifists, they refused to fight. The Chantry fucking slaughtered them all. It's also hard to feel much for the poor innocent humans when the Chantry has been massacring elves and mages for centuries.

The Chantry ain't your kind peaceful neighborhood church. It's effectively a totalitarian theocratic power. I'm of the mind that people who can't see that have never experienced or educated themselves about religious oppression. Really, millennials have their own privilege in that we have a fuck ton more freedom to protest without putting ourselves in danger. Those rights would never have existed if there weren't people willing to fight and die and risk fucking everything.

Yes, Dragon Age is fiction. "You can't separate reality from fiction" is a common argument thrown at and by both sides. However, for a lot of us, this stuff is very much a part of our reality. We've *seen* reality, and often from a lot of angles the writers did not see. The writers' biases are on full display especially in the way that the "other" groups in the game tend to be written as misguided or wrong, while the establishment knows best and anyone who shows otherwise is an "exception."  

For a lot of us, the shit we see in game is terribly reminiscent of things that we have seen in real life, or even lived through. "Mages are dangerous" isn't much of an excuse, because there are ways to discover magic long before it becomes a problem. The Chantry is also the only authorized source of information on magic in a world where most people are not literate unless they've learned to read from guess who? Once again, the Chantry.

@audacityinblack: I can agree 100% with that. I’m not very good at making my point in arguments, especially if it’s not my native language. but you can do it perfectly. I mean the chantry is obviously based on the catholic church and nobody can argue that they did some pretty bad things and they happend in real life. that doesn’t mean the chantry is real or has the same impact as actual events but you can still make a connection. (and we also shouldn’t forget that the woman writing Anders in DA 2 didn’t like him at all so sometimes the points he’s trying to make might not come across as well as they should and they do try to make him an actual villain) I’m guessing some people are just too lazy to try to see different sides in games and they do the same thing in real life. let’s not forget, that Cullen is well loved by most people and he did pretty horrible things as well. he ordered me to kill every mage even if there was a chance they hadn’t done anything. and don’t try to argue “well but had to suffer you have to understand” yeah fuck you, Anders had to suffer most of his life and he didn’t choose it. none of the mages gets a choice. templars fucking do. I still like Cullen and try to understand his side of view and can see that he has changed since then but if you make me choose I will always be on Anders’ and the mages side. also I don’t even want to think about how horrible the punishment of turning mages into tranquil is. it is fucking murder or actually worse and they try to sell it as “kindness” and because the chantry is such a large institution no one really questions the stuff they do.