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msclaritea · 2 years ago

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Women have shared their concern about the erasure of "all female identities" after Johns Hopkins University used the phrase "non-man" to describe lesbians.

The Baltimore-based university received backlash online after defining "lesbian" as "a non-man attracted to non-men" in its glossary of LGBTQ+ terms.

The update, which has since been removed from the website, was initially meant to be inclusive of non-binary individuals, who may still identify as lesbians.

However the definition was labeled misogynistic, with social media users pointing out that the guide does not use similarly non-binary-inclusive language for the term "gay man.

Johns Hopkins University has temporarily taken down the glossary from its website while it looks into "the origin and context of the glossary's definitions" and stated that the guide is not intended to "serve as the definitive answers as to how all people understand or use these terms."

This Language Pushes Us Back Years

In my view, Johns Hopkins describing women as a "non-man" is outrageous and an insult to women everywhere, especially those who want to be known as women.

I believe it strips us of our biological makeup and makes identity more complex. In my opinion, it suggests that women are irrelevant, and it tramples on women's rights and equality that we have fought so hard for.

In my experience, the majority of women in the workplace are happy to be identified as such. It's part of our identity. I feel that this has a lot of wider implications long term, especially around equity.

Johns Hopkins is a prominent research university and one of the first of its kind. A lot of research and opinions that come from the institution are used worldwide. This could mean other institutions calling women "non-men", which is a term I personally do not gravitate towards.

It puts us back years as there is more to fight for. The adoption of this term in the workplace is problematic too, as it brings into play the gender bias that we are fighting so hard against.

Evelyn Okpanachi, 46, from London, is a leadership and women's empowerment expert

I Trained at Johns Hopkins, I'm Dismayed

Johns Hopkins has long been regarded as the premier institution nationally—perhaps globally—for biomedical sciences. I was fortunate to get excellent training and research opportunities from this institution.

I am utterly dismayed that my alma mater would subvert all of the biology that it so assiduously taught me. If Hopkins has decided to cast biology aside, what use is my hard won degree?

In my opinion, Hopkins has decided to pander to the post-modern ideologues who demand intellectual submission to factually untrue statements that serve to erase the humanity, biology, and progress of women.

I refuse to be defined as "non-man". I define myself. I am a woman. I reject the narrative that men are women; it is objectively false.

Perhaps we need to have the broader philosophical discussion about whether or not science should be based on objective reality or whether it ought to bend to ideological mandates. I am ready to have that discussion now.

Dr. Amy Chai, 59, from New Haven County, is a physician, educator and author.

I'm Bisexual, I'm Horrified by This Language

I am a bisexual woman and I was deeply horrified by Johns Hopkins using this language.

In the most charitable possible interpretation, I feel it's a clumsy attempt to include non-binary and gender non-conforming people. But, in my opinion, it should have been obvious to the people making this change that this was not the right way to do it.

It's also concerning that they apparently didn't want to include non-binary and gender-non-conforming people in their definition of "gay".

In my role as co-founder of a diversity and inclusion consultancy, I often run workshops with clients to help them build directories of definitions of inclusive terms, and we always stress the importance of involving staff and key stakeholders in this process, rather than these terms being dictated from above.

Clearly, not enough voices from within the lesbian community were involved in creating this definition. I think this shows how woefully lacking we are in language to describe non-binary and gender-nonconforming people, and how difficult a space this is for organizations to navigate.

We see similar clumsy effects when people are flailing for words to describe people from ethnic backgrounds that are in the minority in the country concerned, and they use non-white. In my experience, many people of color, quite reasonably, don't want to be defined in relation to white people. We have to stop defining under-represented and marginalized groups in relation to the dominant groups.

There's a lot of fear-mongering out there that inclusive terms are "erasing women". For example, I often hear right-wing commentators saying: "You can't say the word woman anymore," when in actual fact inclusive terms are about making space for everyone.

I believe that Johns Hopkins, unfortunately, has added fuel to the fire.

In my eyes, this demonstrates how all organizations make mistakes—everyone can get it wrong sometimes. The fear of making mistakes holds a lot of organizations back from taking any action at all, which is a real tragedy.

It's important that we all learn from this, and recognise that the important thing is to apologize, acknowledge the damage done, listen, learn and take steps to do better in future. Starting with ensuring greater representation of different groups in the decision-making process to make sure voices from these communities are heard.

Allegra Chapman is the Co-Creator of Watch This Sp_ce, an award-winning diversity and inclusion consultancy.

Women Are Being Failed by the Medical Field

Using the term "non-man" to describe women seems to me like a poor attempt to avoid wading into the complex waters of gender; yet it ends up erasing all female identities.

In my view, it takes away all of our hard-fought-for agency and reverts us to something from the past—degrading us to beings that only exist in relation to men rather than as our own, unique and varied people.

It also highlights something most women have experienced, which is having your identity defined by your relation to men.

I recently had a dentist tell me: "If I was his daughter" he wouldn't prescribe me antibiotics for a wisdom tooth infection. I was left untreated, in pain, and feeling belittled. I was angry with him but also myself, because I hadn't pointed out that I was his patient and not his daughter. I ended up needing surgery.

Given Johns Hopkins' role as a prestigious scientific institute, to me it acts as yet another indication of how often women are failed by doctors. Not just in my case, but in the case of every cis woman I know.

For many, it takes years for common disorders to be diagnosed, because our pain and symptoms are chalked up to hysteria.

For example, I know several people who had to wait years for their endometriosis to be finally diagnosed, despite it being a common illness that roughly 10 percent of women in the U.K. experience.

Describing everyone who identifies as a woman as "non-men" others us. I believe it implies that men are the norm, and we are not. In my eyes, it's outdated, has no place in society. We deserve to be seen for the complex beings we are.

Jennifer Smith, 25, lives in London.

I was born a man. Extreme trans activists make my life harder

Regressively Sexist Term

Defining women as "non-men" suggests that our only characteristic is "not being men". It is so regressively sexist that it sounds like it must have been something said about women in the far past. Women are half of humanity and, like men, we should be defined by what we are. Not by what we are not.

The fact that any 21st century medical institution would endorse anything this backwards, and this dismissive of women and girls, is appalling to me.

It is not, however, surprising to me. In my opinion, there has been a relentless social push from certain proponents of trans ideology to reduce women to stereotypes and to body parts—who can forget the headline which referred to women as "bodies with vaginas".

In my eyes, the motive for this dehumanization seems to be an attempt to divorce being a woman from being female, and largely for the sake of the few men who assert that they are women.

But what are they really claiming to be if we are only the absence of a man?

Lorelei H, 35, is a writer and women's rights campaigner from England.

Women Are Being Treated Like Witches

In my opinion, to suggest that a lesbian is not a woman is misogyny, pure and simple. But for an American university to suggest this is even more shocking.

It seems that people have forgotten women were not admitted into universities in the U.S. until the 1960s—they literally had to burn their bras in protest to be given the same privileges as men. And within just 60 years, these same institutions are seemingly, once again, trying to eradicate women.

In my view, not being able to use the word "woman" in an institutional context, states loud and clear that women are not as important as men, that women should not take up the same space as men and that women's voices should not be heard.

I believe that modern universities in the west have become dominated by left-wing groupthink, that silences debate. I feel they have fostered an anti-woman stance, where women who stand up for their own rights and the freedom to disagree with others, are branded TERFs and treated like witches.

It seems as though many people are so tangled up in trying to not discriminate against people who identify as trans that they are discriminating against women, who have been marginalized for centuries.

I believe this cult-like ideology is a new form of male violence towards women. It may not leave physical scars, but it is no less scarring for women as it tries to silence us and wrestle from us our hard-won freedoms and equality.

Let's not go back to burning our bras

Paola Diana is CEO, author and a woman's rights activist.

I'm a Lesbian, I've Distanced Myself From the LGBTQ Community

The Johns Hopkins website recently redefined "lesbian" as a "non-man attracted to non-men," igniting widespread concern and disappointment among women, including myself as a lesbian. This attempt to erase women from the conversation is deeply troubling.

As a prominent Twitter user, writer, activist, and a married lesbian, I spoke up. In fact, I've officially distanced myself from the LGBTQ community due to the erasure of women and lesbians.

The temporary removal of this offensive definition from Johns Hopkins provides some relief, but it underlines the ongoing fight to ensure that women and lesbians are not marginalized or erased.

A woman cannot be defined solely as a "non-man." Women deserve to be defined by their own attributes and strengths. We are beautiful, life-giving creatures vital to humanity's survival and flourishing.

I am not a "non-man." While I jokingly said on Twitter: "man, I feel like a non-man," a reference to Shania Twain, let me make it clear that I am unequivocally female and proud to be a woman who loves other women.

I refuse to let women and lesbians be erased, and I hope this issue has raised awareness among more people. Together, we must stand against this erasure and fight for the visibility and rights of women—adult female humans.

Heidi Briones is a writer and content creator from Portland.

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I first found out about what John Hopkins University had done from the below article on msn:

Woke individual claim lesbians are non-men attracted to non-men and not specifically for women

Story by Asir F • Yesterday 1:00 PM

The article says that Republicans are even coming to the defense of Lesbians. There ARE conservative LGB, many of whom I've seen express upset that Trans were included under the umbrella of LGBTQ.

There actually is an attempt going on to erase women from society, even going as far as taking our very identity.

Two things can be and are true: That all of this is a huge psyops, part of the drumbeat of Fascism in turning different groups against one another. But many of the young people sincerely pushing all of this have been steadily groomed/brainwashed into these beliefs. so, while some know exactly what this is about, others are quite serious.

What is it about? What exactly? As far as I can tell, Population Control by pushing individuals to prefer an alternative lifestyle. Also, Pedophilia. The younger they can encourage kids to talk about such subjects, knowing how experimental and vulnerable children are, that they may just do so. The erasure of women is how pedophiles can get more access to children.

DON'T BELIEVE ME? I'VE ESTABLISHED THAT BRITAIN HAS A HUGE PROBLEM WITH CHILD SEX ABUSE. READ BELOW WHAT THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN BRITAIN THINKS IS APPROPRIATE TO TEACH CHILDREN. IF ANY AMERICAN PARENTS, TEACHERS, ETC WANT AN ACTUAL EXAMPLE OF WHAT GROOMING LOOKS LIKE, HERE YOU GO:

"A Church of England primary school in Norfolk has refused to amend its extreme and graphic Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) lessons, and to address safeguarding concerns following parent complaints.

The controversial lessons and materials, which were implemented without effective parental consultation at Swanton Morley VC Primary School in Dereham, Norfolk, teach children as young as seven “to think about what gender they are” and they may be “born like a boy (with a penis), but feel like a girl inside”.

Elsewhere, the material encourages teachers to hold mock same-sex ‘weddings’, promotes the use of contested terms such as ‘pangender’ and ‘cisgender’ and tells children they can identify as pangender – someone who is neither a boy or a girl..."

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xavier-elrose · 2 years ago

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What does it mean, to die?

It's one of those philosophical questions, which you can answer quickly and blithely ("To die is to have your head reduced to the consistency of chunky salsa by a mortar round"), as long as you completely disregard what the question is actually asking.

What does it mean, to die?

Around here, it's an unusually complicated question. You can see it happen, but...you also kinda can't.

Let me try to explain.

See, there's all these bits (obviously 'bits' is a highly technical term, here) that collectively make up the whole enchilada that is a person (again, obviously, 'whole enchilada' is what the experts call it. Let me know if the terminology is too much). Two of the big bits are memory (you can think of this as being, like, your conscious self- the part of you that knows and cares about, say, which team is which in a football game) and your...soul? Essence? "Self-stuff"? (As you can see, I am steeped in the technical terminology of these matters.)

Your essence. Lets call it your essence. Like, if you woke up tomorrow with no memory, don't even know what a bed is, your first actions will still depend on who you are. Are you going to get up and explore? Are you going to feel violent? Are you going to roll back over and mutter the language-independent equivalent of "...five more minutes..."? My personal definition of death, which may or may not be what the philosophers have decided to go with, is when these two bits go their separate ways.

Reincarnation is a thing. Your essence wanders back into the world, floating free in time and space, finding another home, usually quite far from the last one. I've been doing this long enough to have a little bit of data on souls that have come through multiple times.

An afterlife- a 'heaven' if you like- is also a thing. It's...kinda not as good as it sounds? All your memories are there, all of your conscious self, but your essence- your true essence- has wandered off elsewhere to live in a snail or a peacock or a medieval Swiss mercenary or something. Your memory persists with a sort of...static copy of your essence coupled to it.

What that means is that you can, kind of, grow and learn, but only in very, very limited ways. You can gain new information and new experiences, but you'll always still be the same you, you'll always process things the same, you'll never really grow and change as a person.

Heaven takes the concept of a single, permanent self and makes it so. The result is honestly a little horrifying, even though it is, in all other ways, quite nice. Heaven is literally if the you right now had everything they could ever want, you just can't ever grow and change.

It's apparently the only way humans can be truly, permanently satisfied. We're not meant for static situations.

What words the philosophers use for all this I don't know, but the main one I use is 'blech'. I didn't want to split my self. I didn't want my essence out there, wandering around in a sloth or swallow or a shark. I wanted it here, with me, all of my memories and ideas and my self.

So when the time came to split, I just...kinda...didn't.

Most people can't really do that. But most people aren't as stubborn as I am. Most people would give up on something like this after a century or two.

But, listen. I've just gotta be me.

There are others around, in various states of transiting. Some simply run on ahead, their essences to orbit and to return to the Earth, their conscious selves and memories to eternal happiness (and the happiness is real, whatever else I've said about it being horrifying), as static monuments to the living beings they once were.

Some stick around for a while.

Some are like me- a little like me. No one else has ever stuck around for more than a year or two out of sheer stubbornness, but they're good company. It's always nice to talk to the like-minded, even if they feel the pull of eternity after a while.

Some are simply dying slowly. Coma cases, certain diseases (especially mental ones, like Alzheimer's), more odd cases than I'd really rather know about. They're disconnected from the Earth, but not yet entirely. They're gone, but they're not gone. They flicker back, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Sometimes they even go back...well, not permanently, that's not how that works, but persistently.

With so many wandering through, I decided that I should do something productive.

Hence my little café.

I could have made a fancy restaurant, or some sort of entertainment extravaganza, or even a strip club, being limited only by memory and imagination, but...no. Souls passing through don't want anything big or loud, they want...comfort. The ability to think. To ponder the greatest philosophical questions, on their own time, in their own way. The point of the café isn't the café itself, it's the journey you undertake while in it. Do you make peace with the afterlife as you find it? Do you move on?

Or do you, like me, find what you see imperfect, and strive, in whatever way you can, to make it better?

You run a café on the edge of life and death. Souls who have been departed from their bodies temporarily, such as in comas or near-death experiences, can relax in your quaint cafe for as long as they need before they can either return to their bodies or begin their journey to the afterlife.

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grandhotelabyss · 2 years ago

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A few weeks after the Kafka vogue, Andrew Martin considers the youth appeal of Osamu Dazai, as filtered through Soundcloud rappers and TikTokkers (repeat after me: "ironic metaphysical quietism"):

To someone with a great deal of interest in postwar Japanese literature and almost no working knowledge of TikTok, anime or manga (surely I’m not the only one), this combination of elements is baffling, if not alarming. What would it mean to unabashedly identify with a novel that turns on the Hobbesian epiphany that society “is the struggle between one individual and another, a then-and-there struggle, in which the immediate triumph is everything”? Why is Dazai, continually in print but long overshadowed in the United States by his philosophical and literary inheritor Yukio Mishima, now prominently featured on display tables at Barnes & Noble and prompting new translations and reissues of his 75-year-old back catalog from New Directions, the venerable independent publisher not exactly known for viral hits?

As a dilettante-generalist, I know equal amounts about postwar Japanese literature, TikTok, anime, and manga—more than the average person off the street but less than the expert or otaku. I'll pass on Bungo Stray Dogs for now; it sounds pretty distant from my interests, though "Kafka Asagiri" is a good name.

I was more or less ordered to read No Longer Human in 2019 by my Japanophiliac art students. One of them ruminated sagely, albeit with a bit too much east-west narrative essentialism of the kind we just saw Naomi Kanakia debunking, on the difference between a culture that prescribes No Longer Human and one that prescribes The Great Gatsby as a schoolbook. I liked No Longer Human, but I can also understand why Mishima overshadows Dazai. Mishima seems a superior novelist to Dazai in something like the same way Dostoevsky is superior to Camus: the former writers have more of the world in their books than the latter. This may render the nihilism impure, but then if your nihilism were pure, you wouldn't write a book in the first place.

Anyway, if any TikTokkers are out there, you may enjoy my essay on Dazai's No Longer Human—

Here we see the distance between Dazai’s fiction and contemporary narratives of the superfluous man, such as Todd Phillips’s Joker, whose delusional hero might have been saved by a good therapist and the love of Zazie Beetz, and who in any case manages in his mental illness to lead, however inadvertently, a legitimate social rebellion. On the absolutist terms offered by No Longer Human, this naturalistic faith in secular salvation, whether through psychology, love, or politics (or, for that matter, money and social status), is all nonsense.

—and my essay on the revered horror mangaka Junji Ito's graphic novel adaptation, into which I also folded a few skeptical thoughts on that overrated film Come and See:

Ito is too literal a visualist of Dazai’s verbal vision—almost as literal as a camera, the way the best comics and films never are. Dazai’s novel gave me more reason to ruminate than did Ito’s manga; likewise, Jerzy Kosinski’s novel The Painted Bird, for all its notorious problems, offers us all the horrors and then some—and all the horrified questions—of Come and See, with much more besides, including a philosophy of individuation that we experience by growing with the protagonist. This happens in the inner theater of the mind, where we feel and think it at once and as the same thing; but the film remains always outside, a beckoning or threatening spectacle that never becomes one’s own, a permanent dissociation of sensibility.

Do you think, in the age of "ironic metaphysical quietism," we can meme The Painted Bird into a TikTok sensation next? It could be said to combine Kafka and Dazai, though it may be too pornographic for our gnostic straight-edge puriteens.

#osamu dazai #junji ito #yukio mishima #jerzy kosinski #andrew martin #tiktok #japanese literature #literature #literary criticism #manga #elem klimov

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squidproquoclarice · 4 years ago

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If you'll answer AMA that's not about MTSBH, aside from Arthur dying what one thing would you change from the game?

Yeah, "Arthur doesn't need to die for the sake of the story" is my first call, of course. ;)

My next in line is the Chapter 3 mission "Blessed Are the Peacemakers". They either needed to cut it, IMO, or do far more with it than they did. Because as-is, what you have is a mission where Arthur undergoes a horrifying near-death experience where he's strongly implied to have been set up by Micah and abandoned by Dutch, only to have it fizzle out like a wet match...just so three chapters later we can hit the exact same notes with TB so he can have a slow-death experience and be abandoned by Dutch and finally expose Micah as a traitor. And as introspective and thoughtful and philosophical as he is, it's very, very weird that an ordeal where he's almost certainly set up, and then captured, severely injured to the point full recovery of that shoulder would be a while if ever, imprisoned, beaten, tortured, implied to have been sexually assaulted, and nearly dies of sepsis merits just "I guess I'll live, even if uglier than before" in his journal and is dismissed with only that. And aside from a few comments around camp immediately after and Sadie's angrily telling him in Chapter 6's "Goodbye Dear Friend" that at least he lived unlike Jake, it's really never brought up again by anyone. It's like this profound, prolonged trauma that should have shaken the foundation of everything he's believed for so long is just utterly forgotten, erased only so its beats and themes can be repeated almost exactly several months later. Arthur's mortality and how the life he's led has made him suffer. Dutch's complete narcissism and how he uses people. Micah's cold, cunning betrayal. It's almost like it's a relic of an earlier storyline that got abandoned so they could focus on the TB and making Arthur into a sacrifice. And it's peculiar, because it feels like that could so easily have been a springboard to the exact same thing: his growing realization exactly how little he or anyone else means to Dutch and his delusions of grandeur, things with Micah coming to more of a head, and dealing with his mortality and the legacy of his life. It also would tie in better with Sadie's own descent into ugly, messy PTSD courtesy of the O'Driscolls and give even more shading to their intimacy and friendship. As-is, the O'Driscolls don't seem to matter at all to Arthur in terms of either anger or fear or anything else, which is somewhat weird given how much they put him through. He's not allowed to have any PTSD reactions to them like Sadie is, which is frankly weird. Even for a man who thinks as little of himself as Arthur does, it seems unrealistic for him to have zero reaction, even privately, given we see how deeply he feels things. And so Peacemakers is this weird blank where a profound, alarming event that feels like it should very possibly have been the turning point along with Sean's sudden, shocking death in Rhodes and triggering that slow-creeping horror of no, we are not going to just wait it out and be OK, and it seems I cannot rely on Dutch to make it all OK because we're in deep shit and all he's doing is talking grandiose promises realization...apparently just doesn't matter at all? As-is, you could cut it from the game and it wouldn't change anything at all, and that really says something. I feel like if they gave Peacemakers a bigger prominence, the game's pacing would have worked better. Chapters 4 and 5 in Shady Belle and Guarma could have easily been more naturally working towards Arthur's growing awareness of Dutch and Micah rather than artificially prolonging it and suddenly having it all happen in Chapter 6 after like three dozen glaring neon signs already, and after many of Arthur's likely allies are conveniently dead and he's dying. It maybe gives him the chance to confront Micah and Dutch more actively. It gives him a chance to make choices and truly grow up from that scared, traumatized street kid who's made Dutch his father and god and become a man in his own right, rather than becoming a martyr.

#arthur morgan #rdr2 #thank you for coming to my red talk #i may or may not have a growing au idea here #oh noes #but i'm guessing a fic may happen at some point lol

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thepapergirlandthespiegelman · 4 years ago

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Castlevania Season 4: I’m not mad, just disappointed

Season 4 is poorly written fanfiction, which is...better than a lot of things could be, I guess.

Spoilers below the cut.

Content warning: trauma, sexual assault, psychological manipulation

The Gods Have Had a Change of Heart

Or, “Season 3 Blocked and Ignored”

Season 3 felt like the fabric of the universe had been twisted just to inflict additional pain. Season 4 overcompensates in the other direction; trauma evaporates, and good things happen for no other reason than to make our favorite characters happy.

The Season 3 finale left two characters in particular totally devastated: Alucard and Hector. Alucard is violently betrayed in a horrifying sexual assault by the first two people he’s spoken to since Trevor and Sypha left. He ends up killing them in self-defense and puts their bodies on stakes outside the castle, alluding to his father’s habit of doing so and potentially hinting at a turn toward evil. Hector is seduced by Lenore and then enslaved using a magic ring.

Yet at the start of Season 4, it’s as if these things never happened. Alucard is troubled, but not totally devastated, certainly not evil. Taka and Sumi are referenced in exactly one conversation with new character, Greta, in which she says the rather tactless throwaway line, “I had a boyfriend and girlfriend at the same time once. But they never tried to kill me.” Hector is nominally imprisoned, but immediately seems highly agentic, perhaps even more so than before. He studies, lays traps, and makes secret plans with other people. Furthermore, his relationship with Lenore is completely transformed. From falling to his knees in abject horror and despair at being enslaved, he suddenly switches to light banter, in what is apparently a basically okay, mutually enjoyed romantic/sexual relationship. Manipulative, selfish Lenore is now a sympathetic character struggling to reconcile her own role and feelings with Carmilla’s plans.

The events of season 3 happened, remaining canon in the most basic, literal sense. But the emotional weight attached to them has disappeared into thin air.

Not gonna lie, I did breathe a sigh of relief when I saw that Alucard and Hector were okay. I’m soft-hearted! I don’t like seeing characters I like suffer! I mean, conflict is important, and I can deal with (or even enjoy in a certain sense) seeing characters suffer if it makes sense and serves a narrative purpose. But as far as I can tell, the season 3 finale was nothing more than lurid, meaningless violence. I probably wouldn’t have continued watching the show if it devolved into nothing more than finding novel ways to torture the characters.

Still, it doesn’t feel quite right to pretend like nothing happened either. Or, really, not that nothing happened, but that those things didn’t matter, didn’t hurt, didn’t leave lasting scars. That’s...almost kind of worse.

But, I thought, I can sort of forgive this sudden shift in the stars, given that there may have been some sort of change in creative direction relating to Ellis’ decreased involvement with the show.* Plus, season 3 was insanity. It’s not like it was full of great writing choices, so if we quietly ignore some of them, maybe that’s for the best.

*I only later learned that Netflix actually chose to continue with Ellis’ season 4 scripts. It is not lost on me that maybe Ellis doesn’t know how to write about the lasting effects of traumatic sexual experiences or how power dynamics can make a sexual relationship problematic because he doesn’t understand that those things exist.

Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening

Pretty Pictures, Not Much Else

Unfortunately, the disconnect between seasons 3 and 4 isn’t the only problem with this season. Although I felt that season 4 was a bit less boring than season 3 (I particularly enjoyed some of the earlier episodes of season 4), it suffers from the same basic problems of Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening.

None of the characters experience any significant development, let alone any sort of coherent arc. Sypha has changed slightly, becoming more rough and jaded. I did really like the scene where she talks about becoming the kind of person who says “shit.” I think it really speaks to how entering into a relationship with someone means taking on aspects of their lifestyle, and how that can change you in ways that you can’t predict and therefore can’t exactly “agree” to. Sometimes those changes are good, sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re neutral, and sometimes it’s difficult to know. But you have to accept that you’re sacrificing some aspects of the person that you could have been if you chose to live completely independently, or with someone else.

Trevor really hasn’t changed since season 1 when he first decided to take up the mantle of hero again. Likewise with Alucard. Hector and Lenore change, as previously noted, but that change is sudden, jarring, and occurs completely off screen in between seasons 3 and 4. Carmilla dies as exactly as she lived: bitter, angry, and violent. Saint Germain just kind of...gets fucked over in a nonsensical subplot, which is its own whole can of worms.

We also get several new characters in season 4, none of whom have developed personalities or motives, nor do they develop any of those things over the course of the season: Greta, Zamfir, Varney, Ratko.

And nobody. Does. Anything.

Trevor and Sypha spend the entire season trying to explore and aid Targoviste, which comes to absolutely nothing. They’re unable to help anyone, Zamfir dies, and they end up just jumping through a magic portal to the actually relevant subplot in the finale. Carmilla literally does little more than draw maps until she’s ultimately killed. Hector plays a minor role in Saint Germain’s extraction of Dracula from Hell; otherwise, he and Lenore basically just exchange banter. Saint Germain does sort of do some stuff? But it’s often unclear how he’s made his connections, who the people who are helping him are, or what exactly he’s doing in terms of his magic beyond “whatever it takes to get back to his lover.”

Sure, there are fight scenes, but they feel meaningless. There’s no context, no stakes. There’s also a LOT of dialogue, and it is. Not well written. Exposition is embarrassingly clumsy at times, and the philosophical musings are cliche at best, muddled and confusing at worst. There’s just not all that much going on.

That is, except for Isaac. But more on him in a second.

What Kind of Show Is This?

When the plot line adapted from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse ended with season 2, the show struggled to establish a new identity.

Despite nominally dealing with themes like whether humanity is inherently good or evil and how to cope with wrongdoing and loss, seasons 1 and 2 ultimately boiled down to a pretty generic action-adventure/fantasy plot with found family/power of friendship elements. Main characters Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard don’t really wrestle with big philosophical questions or suffer any major defeats. They know that they have to take down Dracula for the good of the world, and they work together as a team to do it, with a little character development relating to their various backstories sprinkled in.

Then season 3 happened, and things got weird. The trio is broken up for what feels like a pretty trivial reason—Alucard has to protect the castle and Belmont hold, I guess? And the result of that decision is that the dynamics for the three main characters are completely unbalanced.

Ellis openly admits that he basically went feral with the writing of season 3, and it shows. The messaging in seasons 1 and 2 was cliche, but consistent. The message of season 3? Anyone’s guess.

Season 4 reversed the darkening of tone from season 3, but shares its inability to pick a story and tell it.

Isaac is the Main Character

Always has been.

While I can’t say that his character or arc are perfect, I can say that he actually has a character and an arc. He starts off motivated by his fierce loyalty to Dracula, then has to struggle to find his purpose once Dracula is gone. He goes from subservient to agentic. He goes from fully endorsing the genocide of humanity and not caring about his own life to seeing some worth in humans and genuinely wanting to live. He has an interesting moment that deepens our understanding of what night creatures are, while also serving as an exploration of the meaning of one’s fundamental nature. Most importantly, these changes happen naturally over the course of the show. They never feel forced or out of the blue, and while I feel like even more could have been done with Isaac’s character, there’s a lot to appreciate about what is there.

If there’s any thread holding Castlevania as a single, coherent work together, it’s Isaac. Not only is his character the best executed and the most coherent over the course of the show, his character explores themes that are larger than himself and relevant to the show as a whole, like those mentioned earlier: misanthropy versus a belief in the value of humanity; the ability to go beyond one’s “nature” or initial circumstances; and how to respond to being wronged or losing something important to you. Exploring the individual lives of characters is great, but really good writing usually requires going beyond that to reflect on broader questions and ideas. Isaac is the only character here that serves that larger purpose.

Sorry...I Just Don’t Buy It

The season 4 finale is crazy, although in a different way from season 3′s.

Varney being Death makes no sense on several different levels. I’m not going to spend a lot of time picking that particular plot twist apart, but I will talk about why I think it doesn’t work at the largest scale, and how I think season 4 might have been done better.

Last minute twists with zero foreshadowing are rarely a good idea, and this is no exception. Why introduce this “Death” entity at the last minute to be the most important battle of the season? The finale of the entire show, even? Besides the lack of logic or emotional buildup, this robs the show of the opportunity to make use of the antagonists that it already has. Since Dracula died, Carmilla has been the obvious choice for a new big bad. Why hasn’t she done more?

Season 4 feels crowded with characters and plot lines that amount to nothing. Why not bring some of these characters together? If Carmilla is the main antagonist, how come she never meets any of the protagonists (except Hector, who is a pretty minor player in this ecosystem) or even affects them in any way?

Season 4 feels like maybe it was trying to make something out of season 3 and the model that it presented, but it ultimately fails to do so. The writers throw the trio back together at the end anyway, so why not have them rejoin sooner and work together? Maybe Sypha and Trevor’s past experience with Saint Germain could have helped Alucard and Greta piece together what he was plotting sooner, rather than all four of them being completely blindsided by it in the penultimate episode. (Sypha and Trevor know that someone is trying to resurrect Dracula, but they fail to find out any actual detail about the plans, despite their supposed attempts.) Have characters actually do stuff, figure stuff out, advance the plot!

Likewise, maybe Carmilla becomes aware of Saint Germain’s scheming, sees it as a threat, and tries to take him down. Maybe she tries to get involved and somehow use alchemy or the Infinite Corridor to her own benefit. What does it look like when power-hungry Carmilla, who wants to rule the world, finds out there’s an entire multiverse out there? That could easily set her up to be a foil to Saint Germain, causing him to realize that what he’s doing is wrong.

What actually ended up happening in the show feels disjointed and often empty. In particular, most of the events that happen in the last two episodes just don’t really work for me. I didn’t like Trevor suddenly sacrificing himself to this random, new, super powerful enemy, or how the gems and dagger that he found just happened to be the perfect weapon to kill this new enemy, or how he inexplicably returns from the dead.

This kind of thing is what I mean when I say that this season feels like fanfiction. Trevor comes back from the dead for no discernible reason other than that it would really suck if he died. Greta as a character seems to literally only exist to be Alucard’s girlfriend and support him so that he doesn’t have to continue to be alone and potentially turn evil. Alucard’s trauma from Taka and Sumi and Hector’s trauma from Lenore are both conveniently erased. Even Dracula and Lisa are resurrected somehow and get their happy ending. And it’s like, I guess I prefer deus ex machina to the opposite (Does that have a name? When everything is going well but then something terrible happens for no reason other than to make things worse for the characters?), but they’re both bad writing.

God. This isn’t even getting into what happened with the Council of Sisters. And I don’t even really like those characters, but that doesn’t mean I want to see their characters handled poorly.

I’m not sorry that I watched until the end, but I can’t in good faith recommend the show as a whole. If you’ve yet to watch Castlevania, just stop at the end of season 2. While there are some shining moments in seasons 3 and 4 (4 more than 3), it’s just really not worth it.

#review #thoughts #television #animation #adult animation #video game adaptation #fantasy #Netflix #Netflix Original #Castlevania #storytelling #writing #characters #plot #character development #vampires #Isaac (Castlevania)

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curligurl0896 · 4 years ago

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So getting to read @thejakeformerlyknownasprince 's FMA AU reminded me of my own ideas for a FMA/Animorphs fic. A crossover, in this case, a Megamorphs of sorts (complete with rotating narration) because I really want an excuse to have the Animorphs interact with the characters of the FMA universe. I don't have enough ideas worked out to confidently write a whole fanfic yet, so I think I'll just share some of my ideas so that at least they don't stay inside my head forever like the vast majority of ideas that I either never finish enough to post it or just never get around to at all, especially when my brain is always generating new plot bunnies instead of focusing on developing the ones I already have, it's so distracting lol

(Also maybe y'all could give some suggestions if you wanna, I'd definitely appreciate it lol)

Anyway, here it is:

First off, the answer as to how exactly the Animorphs end up in the FMA universe: I was kicking around a few ideas for this, and was originally thinking something along the lines of like, a freak accident that somehow results in them ending up in front of the Gate of Truth, but I think a better idea would be for an alchemist (or perhaps even several alchemists) to end up in the Aniverse, get Yeerkified, and the Yeerk (or Yeerks, as it may be), intrigued by the memories and knowledge of an alternate Earth where you can manipulate matter and shape it according to your will with nothing more than a well drawn chalk circle (or even less than that if you've been through the Gate, as the Yeerk(s) will eventually discover), lured in by the idea of a legendary object that supposedly can be used to circumvent a pesky little law known as Equivalent Exchange, decides to pull something of a "Tom's Yeerk and his Yeerk buddies a la book 52" deciding to start their own colony in the FMAverse where they won't have to answer to the Council of Thirteen or the Visserarchy (well, at least the ones higher ranked than the Yeerk in charge, who, I imagine, would have to be a Sub-Visser at the very least to have the power to arrange all this) in addition to being able to use alchemy, which, much like the morphing power, can be used for a massive variety of things, ranging from merely convenient to pretty damn useful in a pinch to OP as fuck to even just downright terrifying.

It takes a lot of time and meticulous planning, of course, as they have to find a way to transport the Yeerks, their ship, and all the other stuff they'll need to thrive over there through the Gate and into the FMAverse-- all while in a universe where alchemy flat out doesn't work. The Yeerks have to figure out how to get around that issue, and it takes at least a year of research and using their new hosts' alchemical knowledge to work out a solution, but they work it out, and soon enough they get everything set up and ready to go. At some point, the Chee find out about this secret unknown project going on, inform the Animorphs about it, and Jake decides that they should at least check it out on the off chance that it's something big.

That's where the story officially starts: with our team of traumatized teenage shapeshifters at the location where this thing is being set up (haven't figured out the where yet). They've spent the past several days spying on these Yeerks, but still aren't sure what exactly is going on-- they keep talking about opening a gate-- and aren't sure if it's worth it. Marco's convinced the whole thing is ridiculous, especially after overhearing a human Controller mention something about a "Philosopher's Stone" ("What is this, Harry Potter? Are they gonna wave wooden sticks around and yell in Latin?") . Rachel is bored at this point, and just wants to kick ass and call it a day-- they were probably up to no good anyway. Cassie isn't particularly keen on the asskicking part, but she's been having a bad feeling about all this that she can't shake, and Tobias agrees that something fishy is going on and says they should wait a few days-- after all, from what they've gleaned, whatever plans these Yeerks had would be set in motion very soon. Ax, being Ax, declares as usual that he'll just go along with whatever Prince Jake orders, though when Jake presses him about his opinion, he just says he isn't sure what to make of it. In the end, they keep it up for a couple more days, and sure enough, the time comes for the Yeerks to "open the gate", whatever that means.

After all the time they'd spent spying on the Yeerks, it is conveniently now, when the Yeerks are about to do their thing, that they're discovered. It quickly turns into a fight, and the Animorphs attempt to bail as they're soon overwhelmed-- and then the Gate is opened.

None of them had any idea what to expect next. They certainly weren't expecting the blue lightning that erupted around them in a massive circle, seeming to originate from the curving lines that had been so painstakingly carved into the floor. They aren't expecting the atmosphere to turn dark and purple and creepy, or for a giant grey eye to suddenly appear beneath them, or for wavy black tentacle arms to come out of that eye. And they definitely were NOT expecting to abruptly find themselves in the white void of Zerospace.

Only they aren't in Z-space, exactly. Surrounded by it, sure, but somehow they stand there, as if on solid ground, surrounded by the eerie blankness that had once nearly suffocated them to death.

Each Animorph is utterly alone, with nothing and no one else in sight. That is, until they hear a voice, one that sounds like several voices speaking in unison, and suddenly they see a figure-- or, more accurately, an outline of a figure, with only shadows to mark where the figure ended and the void began. The figure is shaped like a human in all but Ax and Tobias's case: the figure Ax sees is shaped like an Andalite, and Tobias's version takes the form of a bird.

Truth gives the whole "I am God, I am the world, and I am also you" speech, then informs them they can't pass through the Gate without payment. Suddenly, there's a huge gateway where previously there was nothing. Truth is unconcerned with the fact that these "A-ni-morphs" have zero clue what's going on-- it simply takes the required toll and sends them on their way.

Except the toll is literal body parts-- which, even then, isn't usually a big deal for an Animorph, but in this case it absolutely is a big deal, because, as they'll soon discover, there's no way they're going to just replace their lost limbs through morphing. It's expressly forbidden for one to simply have nice things in this universe; in other words, Truth isn't letting them off the hook that easily.

The discovery that they're not able to replace their lost body parts through morphing is especially horrifying to Ax, because, well, y'know... book 40. The one that every Ax fan, and really anyone who otherwise genuinely enjoys Ax's character, would like to pretend never fucking happened.

In fact, given Truth's precedent for irony when extracting payment from people who've opened/been through the Gate in the series, I have no doubt in my mind that Ax would end up suffering the exact same fate as Mertil. Andalites, after all, place high value on their tail blades, especially the warriors; it's their number one go-to weapon when shit hits the fan. Ax himself is such a warrior, in fact it's a huge part of who he is as a person. Needless to say I think yeeting Ax's tail blade would be the exact kind of twisted irony that Truth would employ.

He gets over himself eventually-- well, sort of. However, it takes him a long time to truly come to terms with it-- instead of accepting that the attitudes he'd been taught his whole life regarding those who aren't fully able-bodied are actually shit, I feel like he'd be more likely to double down on them, internalizing them, and actually go into full-on self loathing as a result.

He holds his metaphorical tongue, though, upon seeing that Tobias has suffered a payment that is arguably far more cruelly ironic-- given that Tobias is a bird, given that his initial attraction to the morph that eventually became his default body came from the sense of freedom and escapism only provided through flying, I think it's fairly obvious what Truth would take: his wings.

As for the others: Rachel has lost her arm (for basically the same reason Ed did), Cassie loses her hands (which she uses to, you know, help injured animals and stuff), and as for Jake... well, it was a bit of a struggle, the best I could come up with is the idea of him going blind much like Mustang did after being forced to open the Gate (though maybe not for the same reason, though... idk. If anyone has any better suggestions, please let me know lol, I couldn't think of any solid ideas for what body part would be ironic for Jake to lose). Marco is the only one who doesn't lose any outwardly visible body parts-- what he loses is his voice.

At some point, they are discovered, taken into custody by the Amestrian military, and eventually they end up in Colonel Mustang's office. Mustang listens to their story with a massive dose of skepticism. He isn't sure what to make of these bizarre barefoot children, nor their claims of fighting bodysnatching slugs from outer space by turning into animals, nor their wingless pet hawk, nor... well, he could only assume the other creature was some sort of chimera, although he had zero clue what animals could have possibly been used to make something with blue fur and extra eyes.

At this point, they're about to do a morphing demonstration to prove to the Colonel that they aren't completely batshit, when suddenly the door is slammed open, and a teenage boy with blond hair and sharp golden eyes comes sauntering in, accompanied by a hulking giant covered head to toe in a suit of armor.

The boy immediately starts shouting at Mustang, calling him a bastard and accusing him of wasting his time, to which Mustang responds by merely rolling his eyes and sighing, as if this sort of thing happens all the time (spoiler alert: it does). After a moment, the kid stops as he takes notice of the other kids standing in the room.

"So," he says, calmly, as if he wasn't yelling at his superior just a moment ago, "what's the deal with these fuckers?"

The casual use of the kind of language that would have surely landed them in hot water back home was quite shocking, but they don't comment on it. Instead, Rachel says, in a voice sweet as honey, "Oh, look, Marco. He's just as short as you are."

Before Marco could turn to glare daggers at her (come on, it wasn't like he could argue back in that moment), the boy goes absolutely ballistic, and the armored guy has to physically restrain him as he screams obscenities at Rachel ("The fuck did you just call me, you freakishly oversized bitch? I'll show you too-fucking-short-to-fucking-sit-at-the-fucking-table-without-a-fucking-booster-seat! Call me short one more fucking time, I fucking dare you to! You think I give a shit that you're a girl? I'll fuck that pretty face of yours right up, just you fucking wait--")

"Brother!" The armored guy cries. "Calm down!" Then, to the Animorphs: "I'm sorry about my brother's behavior. He's, um, a bit sensitive about his height."

"A bit sensitive" is the understatement of the century, but none of the Animorphs call him out on it. They're too dumbfounded by the sound of his voice, which sounds sweet, innocent, and, despite his size, sounds like it belonged to a boy no more than nine or ten years old.

And that's where I'm going to leave it for now, since I've spent way too long on this post already. I have a few other ideas, but mostly in bits and pieces, not really any more comprehensive plot points beyond this point. Please do let me know what you think!

#animorphs #fullmetal alchemist #crossover fic #partial outline #i really just want to write them interacting #and to talk about ed's staunch refusal to kill in comparison to the fact that the animorphs have crossed this line countless times #even cassie who's the pacifist of the group #but besides that ed and al could pretty much be honorary members of the team #even if they can't morph #i mean they definitely have enough trauma to qualify don't they?

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livlepretre · 4 years ago

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This is prob a weird question, but do you wonder what a ‘typical vampire’s’ relationship to religion would be like in the tvd universe if it had been explored (&I get why it wasn’t), at least upon being turned, considering that most vampires would have been brought up in eras where religion (generally) played a comparatively more serious role in everybody’s lives? I mean, how would one BEGIN to grapple or fit in this critical aspect of one’s (prior??) worldview, with rising from the dead as what’s essentially a demon, w supernatural powers & preying on humans — what would be t implications of your existence? Were the Salvatores never believers? Plus, do u have any hc on the Originals’ faiths as humans?? Were they Pagans? Christians? Or… I guess not the latter/they would have believed in the spirits as their mother was a witch..? Thoughts? (Srry if I’m bothering you with this question btw, I appreciate that you’re probably busy)

No, not bothering me, I'm very interested in the intersection between religion and vampirism.

We have to assume that religion played a huge role in the lives of MOST vampires-- secularism is relatively recent, and even then all that's happened is that older gods have been replaced with newer gods. And I can't think of any religion where rising as a vampire would be anything other than, as you say, rising as essentially a demon, a night hag, an abomination. And also, to make a blanket statement here, many religions focus a lot on the progression from life into death-- on making sense and peace of the natural order of birth, life, death (and rebirth). Vampirism breaks a person from this cycle, forever divorcing them from the natural world, the natural order. The combination of becoming that demon, of fearing themselves, and of becoming trapped in the netherspace between life and death is a horror unto itself-- one of the main reasons I find tvd vampires in particular so fascinating is because it is not just that they are truly monstrous and frightening, but that the show delves into the way the vampires horrify themselves with their own monstrosity (at least, it used to). They can only be horrified by that monstrosity if they retain some sense of what it is to be human-- and therein is the key. TVD vampires don't lose their human souls, as the vampires in BTVS do-- they simply... transmute. They're cursed with that never ending bloodlust that turns them inevitably into monsters, and they go further and further down that road until they just give in. It's a very dark curse. I'm sure there are plenty of vampires who lose faith... but there are probably even more who don't lose their faith, but instead come to accept their role as the dark mirror in opposition to life. There are a lot of really profound psychological implications to all of this.

As for the specifics of the religions of the vampires-- Damon and Stefan would have almost certainly been raised Catholics-- and I've never thought they weren't still Catholic, although, being Catholic doesn't necessarily make one devout, as with any other sect of any religion. Damon obviously crossed a lot of lines as a human. Also, the show would never have gotten into the thick of us, but how much of Stefan's guilt and shame is tied up in an understanding of the world and morality based on his religious upbringing? We can talk about Humanist ideals all we want, but I think it would be stretching credulity that someone turned as a 17 year old in the 1800s would be feeling so much shame from pure philosophical ethics and not from a sense of morality built into the religion he was brought up in. (And how do we know that Damon isn't so furious with Stefan for forcing him to turn because Stefan has essentially damned him?)

The other vampires are interesting because they're medieval people, so their worldviews would have been even more strongly intwined with religion than the Salvatores.

Katerina I've always assumed would have been Bulgarian Orthodox (you could make an argument for other religious takes based on the Travelers-- but that came later and I tend to just blot that all out of my memory because frankly I think making Katherine exceptional at all other than as the doppelganger is stupid and actually robs her story of tragedy-- it's tragic for her to just be living her normal life and losing her baby the way she did and then to discover that no, she has this dark fate she had no idea about-- it's somehow less tragic if she also is from a family with superpowers and her daughter just gets vamped to track her down) -- nothing much to this other than that is a likely choice. Although I have ALWAYS wondered about Katerina's life in Bulgaria, since it was part of the Ottoman Empire at the time and of course, the show has no interest in history so there's nothing that even touches on this potentially fascinating detail.

Okay the Originals. I have a special place of loathing in my heart for the Viking!backstory and have basically decided to whole heartedly reject it. I think Elijah's "my father was a landowner in Eastern Europe" story was much more convincing and likely. I prefer the idea of Russian!Originals, for various reasons I've documented here on this blog, so I think they would also be Orthodox Christians. (But: potentially before the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches? so perhaps they wouldn't really think of themselves as "orthodox," or perhaps they later started to think of themselves this way.) The Orthodox Christian thing also ties into Tatia Petrova, whose descendants I headcanon as Orthodox. (I'm also fond of the idea that the Originals were Jewish, or the idea that Esther was Jewish.) There are a lot of mystic arts buried in religious arcana, so I don't see there being a conflict between Esther's witchcraft and simultaneously practicing a religion. I think in a medieval context, framing the world in terms of religion would have been just so inevitable, so tied in to every other element of life. It's actually fascinating to consider what hold overs of this thinking medieval vampires would have. (And I think of the Originals as deeply medieval in outlook, in ways in which they are largely unaware)

At any rate, the Originals are by far the most monstrous of the vampires, and the ones that have slipped the furthest from their humanity. I wonder in what ways they developed such horrific tastes as a means of spitting in the eye of their faith? If some of their differences could pertain to who held on to faith (Finn) vs. who felt most abandoned by it (Klaus)? Food for thought!

#anonymous

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0aurelion-sol0 · 5 years ago

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SNK 134: Why we need to move forward.

Well...

That's horrifying...

Oh but whatever they are probably bad people in there. Thieves, greedy people, hateful mothers, men who beat their wives , liars, bullies, killers, murderers, rapist, child rapist and racist babies.

Yeah...

This is a rhetoric that has been used for ages and is currently being used in this fandom especially on reddit and 4chan.

The justification of injustice.

When George Floyd was slammed on the ground and died because he couldn't breathe anymore, conservatives and republicans at large ignored the police brutaliy leading up to that.

He was just a cocaine or drug addict who one day pointed a gun at a pregnant lady. So he was a criminal and deserved that.

Of course ignoring the racial segregation that happened from the very legalized slavery hundreds of years ago and how poor and racially stigmatized black people are being in America right now.

When the Uyghurs are being genocided by China, the world blinds itself because China is one the worlds necessary assets in economy as it basically produces a good chunk of what is being used in the world. Most made by children, " but it makes us live "... Apparently that's the only logical reason...

When Palestinians and Israelis are literally killing each other over some complicated non sense that no one ever really understands and also Israël basically doing Apartheid at this point,

When the totality of the Middle East has turned into a warzone because of the United States's violent imperialism,

When most far right or extremist group decided that Islam and Islamic terrorism are the same thing,

When xenophobes and racist always attack immigration,

"If she wasn't wearing that skirt, she probably wouldn't have been raped",

When we have homophobes, transphobes, LGBTphobes, telling us what's natural and always bragging about "\___-_-___/ God, Holy Jesus",

When you have people who tells you that poor people chose their way of living when there are a small percent of billionaires and soon to be trillionaires having such a gigantic amount of wealth,

When 6 millions Jews were genocided which was 40% of Jewish people at the time and 2/3 of European Jews,

When the prime minister of Israël is saying that the Holocaust wasn't Hitler's Idea but Haj Amin al-Husseini, (who was extremely anti semitic, don't get me wrong)who suggested it to him maiking the prime minister a revisionist but at the same time making his actions against Palestinians justified,

When around the world Christianic places of worship are being vandalized,

When entire SYSTEMS of segregations have made societies work,

When the South American continent has been attacked by the United States because of different political beliefs,

When people use their rape as a way to attack other communities of a specific religion or color,

When Black Panthers uses racism against White people because of the story of USA and are being anti semitic but essentializing a whole group,

When Nationalistic Israelis tells you what is a good Jew and what isn't a good Jew,

When dozens of groups have been forced to extinction,

Natives who were being murdered, yeah? YOU DON'T SEE THAT A LOT IN YOUR COWBOY MOVIES ?

When literal "feminist" calls for the destruction of men while they can't educate the kids about what to do and what not to do, OH, can also be transphobic apparently,

When you have entire websites who encourages pedophilia,

And pedophiles killed, left alone and live a life of endless torment while no one does nothing to help them and fight those who encourages it even in the highest places of our society,

Oh and Hollywood, that's all I need to say.

And let's not even talk about animal brutality and the destruction of ecosystems.

And there is more and more and more and more and more and FUCKING MORE,

All that because of reasons, reasons, reasons, reasons,

All stuck in a cycle of hate, violence and discrimination that just never ends.

The selfishness,

The greed,

And at end, everything is meaningless. There is just blood.

This is what this chapter represent the meaningless of it all. How everything goes to shit...

How everyone, whether it's the oppresor or the oppresed, will justify the violence, the injustice.

Society does nothing cause society right now runs for the entitled and the entitled only and creates it's own monsters.

I want to ask those people who defend the rumbling.

After everything we saw in this manga, after what the real world has commited, after how much these real events have inspired this story, how can you say it was the only way ?

After everyone hided Hange valuable informations including Eren who had information about KRUGER who was a spy in MARLEY. Who has created a civil war in Eldia and activated the rumbling while killing Eldian civilians in the way.

After seeing the mental breakdown of Bertolt, who we don't hear about anymore, Annie and Reiner's mental breakdown over GENOCIDING AN ENTIRE GROUP OF PEOPLE, by the way Reiner totally didn't develop another persona at that time to cope with what he was doing, HUH ?

After all the deaths, Carla, Grisha, Dina, Faye Marco, Levi's squad, Ymir, Erwin, Sasha, Hange, Hannes, Floch and many others, how can you go and be like "CHAD EREN, BEING DADDY, FUCKING HIS MEAT WAIFU, PHILOSOPHER FREEDOM SEEKER"

"104th crybabies... xDdDDDD Prfrpfr"

Come on...

This isn't serious at this point.

And for the H character, we're gonna come back for her but...

GODDAMNIT!

THANK YOU, DEATH.

This has sparked debates.

Some are thankful for this speech by the commander.

Others are finding it disingenous.

Others think it's too on the nose and not natural.

Others don't care.

On my part, I enjoy it but I take it with the context. Most of their airships have been destroyed and they are facing their doom upfront right now. It's more of a death plea at this point. Just like in the cave with Histor... GOD IT'S SO HARD SAYING HER NAME... with Historia who said truly horrible things at the point of an imminent death. At that moment, words like this can tell what you really are inside but even that is not enough to have a full picture.

It did have some interesting elements.

It is true, using, raising, breeding hate and shoving problems upon a group will always come bite you up the ass someday.

Marley in their extensive and violent coloniaslistic, imperialiatic behavior towards Eldia creates only weaknesses for them on an international field and create this monstruosity that is right now Eren.

Eren, a soldier who suffer from trauma and PTSD, who has terrible insecurities and everything to lose after losing so much and possibly in my book being influenced by another entity decides to kill them all.

But...

In no way does that justify Eren's actions, in fact it goes against it.

He is just as angry and hateful as they were back then but instead of destroying the system, he decides to genocide.

Essentializing the whole world as your ennemy and problem, and deciding to get rid of it is just continuing what has been started and continued for hundreds of years before.

No one ever thinks about the simple families, the innocent children, the homeless...

What about them Eren ?

What about the people who faced discrimination like Ramzi ?

What about the other groups that are almost extinct just like yours ?

What about the groups that tried to support the Eldians but were considered freaks ? HUH ?

What about the babies and innocent children ?

Isayama is even spelling it out for you this chapter.

Is he not worth it ? To stop all this ?

He was born into this world just like every other baby.

Look at that while everyone, is trying to jump off, their trying to save the baby. Even if it's probably impossible. That's humanity right there.

And... jesus christ...

I literally saw people who said that the mother was dumb to give it to the people because titans were behind them.

I can't even...

Imagine if Eren is the daddy of H's Baby and that he completes the genocide, killing his friends or even persuading them and at the end he is saying you are free to this baby.

So this baby is worth more than this baby ?

He is more legitimate to live than him.

I can't even imagine what the arguments would be like with the Eren stans:

"He's protecting his friends."

While literally challenging them to fight and right now trying to kill them.

"Well, you know the Rumbling is horrible but they got what was coming for them. They did nothing to help Paradise."

While forgetting the complexity of human nature, how banalization of these acts of violence have come to be BECAUSE...

These just like me and you are just simple people. With simple lives and not too much power who can't do anything about it.

Most of the people today sees all the suffering in the world, they just don't have the power, nor the will to go against such complex geo-political conflicts.

Would you be able to just resolve the Israelo-Palestinian conflict ? I don't think so, so shut your ass down with this argument.

These people can't change the world with power that they have and the one that has the power to change that, is killing them right now. BRAVO.

" Well, uh, the child is a child, parents might be racist and uh... child maybe is racist or will become racist..."

God...

Just because someone has done horrible shits or is an horrible shit doesn't mean he should die like this.

Here it is people, how we work as human :

Fuck redemption and possible solutions, let's kill everyone who did something bad.

Y'all would have been perfect during monarchies time.

And like... having an argument on a baby should face genocide is just fucking disgusting.

AND DON'T GIVE ME THE BULLCRAP OF FICTION DOESN'T EQUAL REALITY!

That you are interested into what could bring the Rumbling in terms of thematics and story is fine.

BUT ENDORSING IT ?

Do y'all even hear yourselves sometimes ?

You just sound like every racist, bigoted, fascist and violent person that has ever existed.

You're just excited to see someone die because he commited something wrong, sadistic pricks.

You're no different. Perhaps the guy who was talking to Grisha in chapter 97, who was a Marleyan and gave serums to Eldian is right. When he was talking to Grisha, Isayama use it to break the fourth wall and talk to the readers.

Why do we watch this, all this violence ?

" Because it's fun!"

" People take peace for granted!"

" Of course we're abnormal in society's eyes."

" We wish to exterminate all eldians!"

" Your sister did nothing wrong. Shame she was an Eldian!"

The fun fact is that this guy is a racist fuck but he dies pushed by Kruger and killed by his very own creation: a titan.

Why do people endorse genocide ?

" Because it's justice!"

" They got what was coming for them!"

" Isayama is just showing us that genocide is not really wrong if you just understand the concept of morals. Puritans."

" Humanity can die, they deserve it!"

" I'm sad for Ramzi, he didn't do nothing wrong but you know... maybe he didn't have good ideas about Eldians."

While also saying why children could deserve genocide. \____@-@____/

Of course I found most of these on Reddit and 4chan, the nazi propaganda website. Tumblr is a little free of it.

Babies....

Literally babies...

That remind me of somethin'...

OH YEAH!

QUEER NO MORE.

*put gloves on*

PUUUUUUUSSHH!!! COOOOOOOMMEEE OOONN!!!!

Breathe...

I SEEEEE THE HEAAADDD, IT'S HEREEEEEE!!!!

Natalie, bring the bucket, quick!

Of fuck she shitted on herself a little bit!

_________________________________________

So ?

Y'all like my fanfic ?

It's about how Erehisu is canon and how Historia is actually thinking about Eren right now because she is blushing.

But also about how Historia actually looks good and sexy while being pregnant and how she looks so happy!

She also is a lesbian that turned straight.

I'm so proud of my work.

_________________________________________

In all honesty...

This is... dissapointing and an insult to Historia fans. Why ? What is the purpose or the reason ? Being tragic ? To show how far Historia can go to protect her loved ones ? A female Eren so ?

I always leaned towards the fake pregnancy even if I don't know how something like that could be really pulled. I didn't understand this choice for his storytelling. The others I understand but this one...

O_o

What the fuck ?

So she really is pregnant ? But nothing leading up to it makes sense.

The character whose thematics still rings too much true for this arc is put in the background and as a breeding farm on top of that.

It even came to a point I started people to stop asking about her.

I had faith in her presence in the final arc. That she would have a role play.

But now ?

/\/\/\

For people who don't understand why this aspect of story is wrong, we have to break it down.

First off, Historia one of the first queer characters with Ymir in SNK. Others are suspected but these two are the few that holds a definitive representation as queer.

Most often in media or in real life, LGBT people have been forced into a situation that requires them to fall under heterosexuals lives. Here Historia is forced to be pregnant, yes in a way she agreed because of her people, but at the same time she didn't really want it.

For queer people, like me, this still rings true. Too much true. People literally forces you to go for your opposite sex everytime, to have a family.

No, stop forcing your view of your own life or desire of life on other people.

The fact that the fandom rationalizes that and says that she is happy and in love with Eren is just so fucking weird.

It either is blind ship following, heteronormativity or not understanding the story.

And I saw people saying she might be bisexual. This doesn't change anything. Also ignoring the fact that she hasn't shown any attraction to men other than women in the story.

If she is bisexual, it doesn't change anything, she is still queer. Not semi-straight AND EVEN IF SHE WAS A WOMAN WHO HAPPENED TO BE STRAIGHT, SHE IS STILL FORCED INTO SOMETHING SHE DID NOT WANT.

Bisexual is not semi-straight, semi-gay.

It's bisexual.

Bisexual, Straight and Homosexuality are not the same thing.

And if she was straight, that doesn't make it acceptable. It's just sick.

Just because you're a straight woman doesn't mean you are going to be more happy or have god like duty to have kids.

I just don't understand it...

A manga who was so progressive with his female characters reduces Historia to this.

Imagine...

Just imagine...

Eren is the father. I would shoot myself in the face. A forced straight relationship at the end for the pleasure of shonen readers and heteronormative readers.

" What if I have baby, Eren ?"

" Only if it is from me. I want him to live and have FREEDOM!"

" It's open bar, honey." *saying this after hearing the guy says he's going to genocide which goes against her own values and actions as queen*

Ew... Just ew...

And even worse she wasn't supposed to give birth right now, she was supposed to give birth in a few months.

She could DIE. SHE IS 19. This is dangerous.

Everyone is like this is normal.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL. *sigh*

This goes against what she is supposed to have as a character development.

The fact that she would be okay for genocide while as a queen she reached out to the most weak and in need is fucking incoherent.

No. This doesn't make sense. Even Eren said that Historia's action as a queen were to help others. How could she be okay sitting at her house ? Telling no one about what Eren was going to do ? And becoming a breeding farm ? What is the logic in that ?

Why make it suspicious than ?

The only thing that was able to make any logical sense to me was that the person we are seeing here isn't Historia.

I know if my theory is right, it's sick, even more sick.

The only times we saw Historia after the timeskip was during flashbacks, the reveal at 107 and possibly at the end of 123.

If this is her at the end of 123, I want to ask you why is she all prepared, why is she all dressed up and why is she wearing the same clothes in 134 that she is wearing 107. Something doesn't add up.

She is young, small-petite, blonde and her belly and face are hidden.

I was only able to go through the theory that this is a fake Historia. Than who it is than ?

Well, I searched for female characters who look like her or who could look like Historia right now. From all the characters that we haven't seen coming coming back and that has interacted with Historia, there is only one.

Rico Brzenska.

For those, who don't remember her : She was a Garrison Member who helped Mikasa and Eren during the Trost Arc and also helped Historia while she was exhausted during the Clash of the Titans Arc.

She hasn't appeared ever since the start of the Return to Shiganshina Arc unlike many of the older characters.

She is the only one I see who could pass as Historia I think.

I know this is still sick. But this is the only way I would be able to make Historia get out of this crappy storyline and play some relevance in the story. And if we look at Rico and Historia in 107, they kinda look the same. They have the heart shaped face, they are both small and they both have this sort of closed eyelids.

One line that just stuck with me of Rico was:

"Hiding/Lying about Eren's rampage in the report wouldn't have benefited humanity. "

This was during Eren's trial before joining the Survey Corps. What was discused was when Eren lost control of himself during the Trost Arc and attacked Mikasa.

The second line that struck was the one where she holds Historia who is exhausted in her arms:

"Wow! Who is this girl, is she okay ?"

I don't know why it just pushed that theory. And I kinda believe it now, because no one can make me believe that there is something satisfying coming out of this. Why would she sacrifice herself for Historia ? Well, I don't really know but Rico was always a little wary of Eren, even after the Trost Arc but yeah ultimately for Rico being able to give her own life for Historia. I don't know about that. But with this manga you never now. It is a very dark and twisted theory but this is the only logical thing I can see right now since no answers have been provided.

Monkey is BACK

Zeke is back and like most of us predicted, Eren dragged him with him. And I'm not gonna lie, the way he was attached to the spine was pretty badass.

He is used as a puppet which reinforces the theory for me that all three of them: Eren, Ymir and Zeke are being used by the Attack Titan.

I cannot understand Eren's illogical behavior especially after seeing the train scene where he says he wants them to live long happy lives and than having him kill his friends.

Ymir the first being free and having eyes to returning to having no eyes just like before and Eren.

And Zeke would have never agreed to the Rumbling. And we can't see his eyes either.

And...

Thank you, 104th for existing.

Because...

After how much shit they have gone through and after how much the fandom, not just the Eren stans, have mocked them. Like the fandom has been the biggest asshole to the the Alliance while they were the ones who were able to survive through the sentence " Genocide is wrong!" that so many people seems to find to be so hard to say.

I will root for them until the bitter end, I don't care. They are the one who are fighting. You can call Cringevengers all you want but I am glad they are winning.

They all suffered like Eren but they didn't prioritize their own and only feelings above everything else and they stood by for the values they fought for since they joined the Survey Corps. Even if I have to admit they have, for most of them, conflicted feelings with what they were doing and have done things like trying to talk to Eren while it's obvious he wasn't going to talk and that in a situation like this I don't think someone would try to stop Eren by just talking.

Levi, and it would be foolish to not recognize it, is being consumed by his promise but he is restraining it and still is able to think about the bigger picture.

There's one thing I really like about this is Armin asking Eren:

"Eren... I'll ask you one last time... "What part of you is free" after we rip you out from there... "

Hehe... yes... what part of you is free ?

To be honest, there's many things I don't want for the ending.

A Lelouch Ending, it was all Eren's plan. Literally wouldn't make sense. No one would be questionning his free will and he wouldn't have these weird shits happening to him.

A Code Geass ending, why would Mikasa have to kill Eren, what does that add to her as a character ? More tragedy ? No she doesn't have the scarf, it's pretty telling what place she's at right now.

Eren being the daddy. NO, JUST NO.

Everyone dies, genocide is the right thing. You know all the worst shit that can happen.

But most of all I want important plot points to be explored and moved over because ever since the timeskip, there has been no important plot points out the way. Eren's behavior, Ackertalk, Bertolttalk, Historia's Condition, Paths stuffs, answers!

Whatever... Trust me Peace is not something I take for granted. Being proud of myself and having a life with the least conflict and problem is something you fight for. Having rights, being recognized as a human.

Never lose that, fight for it. But never with injustice, be smarter and stronger. Cause at the end what unites us is not only what we have in common but what the perspective of what we have not in common can make a bigger picture of what we are as humans. We all are different and have a different story with similarities but in the end, we are human and born into this world. And in that, we must move forward. In the present, because of the past and for the future.

We all wish for the problems to go away but if it's for the solutions to be rigged with injustice, it will not work. No one has acheived with genocide and never will.

It's kinda sad that this long of a post has to say this. Did y'all see that ? Pretty inspiring what I wrote. Oh well you know what ? If they can be bigoted why can't I myself.

Here's a song I wrote:

(Fuck everyone and you.

We hate women

There are only 2 genders, the breeder and the breeded.

Everything is degenerate.

We hate brown, Arab and Muslim people.

Genocide is cool

And Hitler was too.)

I know but you know what, at least if they want a spy for Nazi Germany someday. They'll know not to give it to me because I'd laugh at the stupidity of the people just like you and I are doing with the rest of world cause for all the shits it gives us, it's entertaining.

youtube

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sepublic · 4 years ago

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WandaVision Finale!

Okay, that finale was AMAAAAAZING! Everything about it… Particularly, I love that with all of these references to American, black-and-white television shows, we got a bit straight out of what felt like The Twilight Zone! Let me tell you, when Dottie came up to Wanda and started begging to be with her daughter, bargaining, playing with the role and trying to appeal, even offering up her daughter for the antagonistic, demonized role of bully, just to be with her; That was INCREDIBLY messed-up and really shook me up, as did everyone else in that sequence! It was utterly wonderful, and really, the entire premise and set-up DOES seem like a Twilight Zone episode; Perhaps the final homage/allusion by this series?

The Vision battle was great, some much-needed action and usage of Vision’s powers that we needed. I love how Vision manages to talk down the White counterpart with logic and existential thought… The philosophical, almost deconstructive way Vision deals with stuff and life isn’t cold, but rather appreciative, like someone taking apart a clock and marveling in how its put together; They don’t rage at the clock for no longer upholding the undefinable illusion it used to have…

And of course, the idea of ‘illusion’ I feel applies to Westview as well. The difference being that Westview’s mechanisms are inherently immoral, but the way Vision gets down to the basics and fundamentals of things in his almost wondrous, childlike curiosity- It’s great. He’s questioning everything, but in anticipation and acceptance of an answer, he does not view the world with cold disdain the way someone like Ultron would.

The Theseus Ship paradox was a wonderful discussion, as was the suggested answer that either neither of them are the ship, or they both are! As is Vision’s constantly poetic talk of how the ship is more the experience and memories, so if they’re attached to either, then sure- They’re both the same! I love for a hypothetically cold android, this dude is so poetic and marveling at everything. He should be a writer, a poet… But that’s not happening anytime soon; But it doesn’t mean it won’t EVER happen, either! As Vision realized, they’ve said goodbye before, only to say hello again… I love his little way of looking through and exploring loopholes in apparent certainties, both at the end and with White Vision.

Not gonna lie though, I half-expected/anticipated for White Vision to emerge with Ultron’s mind, once Vision reawakened those memories, and I have to wonder where he is. I was kind of hoping both Visions would merge together to complete a true one, given how both acknowledge that the other has something that they don’t. White Vision is still out and about though; And I like the clever usage of color, with blue representing the cold and mechanical Ultron side of him, and yellow being the Mind Stone, but most importantly Vision. And I LOVE the idea that Scarlet Witch has the last remainder of an Infinity Stone within her, preserved like her love for Vision; Some things you can’t truly eradicate, Thanos!

That reference to the Darkhold from Agents of SHIELD was great, and I imagine it’ll come into play now that Wanda’s taken it from Agatha. How Agatha got it, I have to wonder; But that’s a story for another day, I presume. I guess she’s been brainwashed truly as Agnes and is doing her own thing in Westview, without anyone to realize she doesn’t quite belong; Or maybe they will? What a wonderfully poetic, vicious fate for her character- She faked it all, and now she gets to be real! The idea of playing a ‘part’ is just a fascinating motif in this show for me, and I’m sure there’s some philosophical stuff I could dredge up about that term, ‘stories’, from my Philosophy class.

Wish we got some more resolution with Darcy, and Hayward kind of just left; But I do appreciate how we could’ve gotten a bit of an all-out brawl, with the SWORD agents targeting Agatha and how she alludes to the Salem Witch Trials! Also the allusion to the Sorcerer Supreme, AKA Doctor Strange, was great- And things are still complicated with how Wanda more maturely vouches to save those agents, even if they’re also against her… She knows that people’s dislike and hostility is pretty valid. It’ll be interesting how she’ll own up to the ‘role’ of Scarlet Witch now, as a lot of her vilification came from her own actions, admittedly. I imagine she’s going to try and it do it on her own terms, see what loopholes in the requirements she can exploit- Much like her husband Vision would! Also, Tommy and Billy having to dissipate when Vision at least understands and accepts IS messed up, so I can see why Wanda feels the need to rescue her children, who definitely don’t deserve this.

I do have to wonder if that last scene is a hint that Wanda hasn’t fully moved on, or if she HAS, but of course Tommy and Billy don’t deserve to die just for her character development! Really that dilemma and sad ending was handled so well, I half-expected Wanda to isolate the Hex to just her house, or maybe focus all of the energy of the Hex into maintaining JUST Vision, Tommy, and Billy. Maybe she’s consulting her chapter in the Darkhold for info on that? Either way, I like how she’s prepared and kept all of her assets in place in case she ever needs them, such as Agatha, now Agnes! There’s a very spiteful and utilitarian way she handles herself now, reminiscent of a villain who keeps tabs on their friends and enemies; Wanda seems to be doing the typical steps of a villain, but hasn’t exactly committed to it; And maybe never will, again, it’ll be interesting how she exploits her role as Scarlet Witch. I love the callback to those runes, how a scene that could’ve been written off as magical world building foreshadowed and came back into play; Such a simple and obvious trick, but one I always fall for because I’m so invested and IN the world!

Also, I think that lake Wanda lives by, might be the one where Sokovia’s remains landed? If so, then that’s incredibly fitting; A watery grave for her home and memories, huh? I wonder if Pietro, the real one, is buried here- It makes sense, Agatha alludes to Pietro not being buried in North America (nor South America if you want to get into technicalities), so of course their home country, or what’s left of it, is ideal! The site where he died, lowkey; Although that was arguably several miles above, but still. This third-world country that everyone dismissed and ignored has now had a major legacy that is felt across the world… It’s been heard, huh? I’m not sure why Wanda’s maintaining that illusion of herself, is she just practicing, maybe creating a front in case anyone notices activity, checks out, and then assumes it’s ‘just’ some random lady?

I can only imagine how Doctor Strange will tie into this! Probably with the Nexus of All Realities and the Darkhold, and of course the Scarlet Witch’s role as a potential threat to the Sorcerer Supreme; And hopefully with what we’ve seen of Agatha making note of magic belonging to the ‘deserving’ and being able to take it from others… Baron Mordo, perhaps? Maybe he’ll make his return interrogating Agnes as he tries to track down the Scarlet Witch, seeing her as a threat… Dang, now Mordo’s reminding me of Emperor Belos from The Owl House, with the whole belief that after chaos and bloodshed, magic should instead be isolated to only the deserving who prove themselves, and whatnot! Now I’m even in MORE interested and hopeful for Mordo with this comparison!

Likewise, the allusion to the Nexus in that commercial made me wonder if New Jersey would be the location for the Nexus of All Realities in the MCU, but now that Wanda’s left, it’s possible she’ll track down its location to Louisiana, just in the comics! Still hoping for Man-Thing in the MCU, maybe we’ll get a setup for him! I’m telling you Feige, this is your chance to make a Frankenstein/Iron Giant type of film, a misunderstood monster story to incorporate into the MCU, what with your exploration of new genres beginning particularly in Wandavision! Also iirc the Darkhold has a corrupting influence on those who read it… But the last people who did were regular humans, is Scarlet Witch above such things? Or will the Darkhold mess with her, too- An external force that disrupts her character development by corrupting her? I’m just in even more anticipation for Multiverse of Madness to be trippy and horrifying.

Overall, what a WONDERFUL conclusion, and an incredibly satisfying finale to this series, while still paving the way for new stories! It seems Photon’s story has just begun, now that Nick Fury has sent a Skrull to invite her; Maybe for the Captain Marvel sequel? I’d assume the sequel deals with the fall of the Supreme Intelligence, which takes place before 2014; Nine years before Monica gets her powers! Something had to have happened to lead to the Kree’s peace treaties with everyone that angered Ronan…Well, we’ll see!

And White Vision, we’ll see what happens with him, what existential crisis he’ll get into, poor dude; He’s arguably the original Vision, except traumatized and questioning himself! I’m surprised Wanda didn’t go after him, did she assume he was destroyed? Or has she just moved on, focusing on her sons? We’ll have to see… Vision did allude to him reuniting with Wanda, so perhaps Wanda can use her powers to gather the Mind Stone’s scattered atoms within the fragment she holds, and reform an Infinity Stone to truly resurrect Vision, from his white template! Perhaps that’s how the Nexus will come into play, as a place to draw together such cosmic power that was once scattered by the Mad Titan…

Wish we got to see more of Darcy and Woo, as well as Fietro; Him being confirmed as Ralph was great, as was that little hilarious man-cave segment of his, fitting into what would’ve been his time period. I’m a bit disappointed he’s just some dude, but at least there’s the meta gag… I LOOOOVE Scarlet Witch’s new outfit, it’s such a stylish red dress/cape and crown, love how it’s repeatedly invoked as a symbol for her; Wanda finally gets to own her classic costume, her tiara! The bit where her ‘shirt’ meets the pants reminds me of fangs and the points on her tiara, I love that sharp and threatening visual cohesion! And with all that in mind, here’s hoping to The Falcon & Winter Soldier as our next installment into the MCU! And one day, we’ll finally get that Black Widow movie released… One day!

#wandavision #wandavision spoilers #spoilers #marvel #mcu #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #vision #speculation #analysis #review

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lightholme · 4 years ago

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That's a great way to describe the nature of human nature. A lot of our instincts stem from useful shortcuts like that.

Human brains didn't evolve to handle the vast interconnectivity, complexity, and nuance of the modern world. Hell, the brain can't even really handle more than ~150 meaningful personal connections.

We operate deeply by back-of-the-napkin heuristics that solve our early evolutionary problems, but they're not very accurate. It's easier to get it right 70% of the time in one second than it is to get it right 100% of the time in thirty seconds. When a snowball (or lion) is flying at your face, moving at all is better than sitting around while you verify the threat's trajectory precisely.

Unfortunately, our tendency to align with those around us (a convenient heuristic sometimes still) isn't the sole problem here.

Some of these heuristics/instincts are naturally buffered. For example, one might imagine that the tendency (or inevitability) for people to bifurcate and fracture larger groups into less-than-150 sized groups is enough to minimize the problem, but just because it feels fine doesn't mean the result is fine. We form tribes on the spot for all sorts of reasons. Team A, Team B. My group, your group. Soccer teams, military platoons. Clades of styles and habits bloom and wither like algae tides. As a species, we crave that aspect of tribalism so deeply that sometimes a well placed "us" and a weaseled in "them" is enough to draw the lines that become a riot. This tendency can be positive sometimes (sometimes), sure.

What about our tendency to over-value sugar in a world where calories are no longer worth storing? That is a known-and-visible problem, isn't it? And how about the fact that a single mouse-click can show you more naked ladies than one's ancestors saw in their entire life - multiples more, in fact? It seems obvious that distorting such critically important evolutionary impulses miiiiight muddy the waters a bit even if we allow ourselves to believe that we handle it fine, that all is well, or that it's even somehow ideal.

Even these examples of specific and "obvious" discrepancies between our bioevolutionary hardware and our socio-technological elevation is a small enough as an idea to share with a stranger over a beer. The Real Heavy Shit™ is so unwieldy that a scientist-philosopher would struggle to gaze at directly, let alone transmit to others in a format smaller than a series of structured TedTalks.

The reasons for the issues we're facing (and in a sense have always faced) are myriad, but in recent times I think a new dynamic has been born, magnified, then bootstrapped itself into life beneath our notice - all within a single human generation. Information has become a danger to us. Any information. It is an emergent property that rises from the quasi-computational substrate of human social interaction.

Problem: When the complexity of an idea rises above the level of one's ability to conceptualize the 'entire thing' at once, we have to take the parts we can't see on faith.

With the proper framework, foundation, and a well-trained instinct this isn't an entirely disruptive phenomenon - it's even obvious and expected, right? One cannot hold the entire subject of 'science' in their head at one time. One cannot even hold the entirety of 'geology'. And even if one could, you'd be unable to truly understand geologic mechanisms without understanding that the elements that make all those fancy rocks came from dynamics that stem from astrophysics.

These things cannot be held, but they can be traced and compared and tested (if someone cares to do so in the first place). Even then, misconceptions easily bloom like cancers in the absence of an effort to validate.

Now consider the idea of an informational construct that is not so easily proven by mere effort and time. Imagine one that isn't built specifically to avoid misconception like science is. (which - unfortunately - still results in vast misconceptions by layman and scientist alike). When we cannot hold an idea in our head from start-to-finish, we also cannot verify that it exists distinct from itself at all. One can't tell a snake from an ouroborous. And unless you have something to compare it to, reference it against, the difference between a cancer and an organ is negligible. It's only in the context of an organism that a cancer is even harmful, even deadly. A cancerous tumor, viewed in a vacuum, is - for lack of a better term - successful as fuck at what it's doing... Perpetuating itself at all costs, regardless of benefit, regardless of consequence.

Ideas are not just informational nuggets. They're active, living systems which 'compete' not unlike living creatures do through the rules of their unique brand of quasi-evolutionary pressures. Ideas are both organs and cancers. And when billions of thinking beings are unable to easily determine the difference between an organ and a cancer, well... It's not so difficult to imagine that problems might arise.

To the elucidated or aware, it's horrifying to see someone running around trying to share a poison with others, claiming it to be something it is not. It's confusing to imagine how such a delusion can not only exist at all, but to spread with a veracity greater - far greater - than Real Deal truths. I will admit that part of that is because these sort of ideas empower the thinker. Real truths are either boring or frightening (or both). Aliens and crystals, gods and secret societies are so much more comforting than acknowledging that nobody is really at the wheel, that society is a ship in a storm rocked by systems - hydrodynamics, meteorological - far too complex to grasp, far too large to be defeated by comparatively meek human drives.

There's certainly more than one reason that someone interested in particular subjects (flat earth, for example) tend to also be interested in toxic conservative politics, religion, ancient aliens, so on. Many of these sort of meme-laden ideas are fundamentally incompatible with each other, yet you commonly find them in the same place. I personally use invented terms like "psychological antivirus/firewalls" since the concept of common sense alone doesn't have the load-bearing capacity to address this level of metastasized information.

Again -- A cancer is successful in a vacuum. It is optimized for relentless growth in absence of both usefulness and sustainability. Modern pressures (namely a social density vastly greater than what our brains can handle and the fast-paced war-for-attention nature of the internet) are now selecting ideas not for value or consistency, but transmissability.

Close your eyes and apply this metaphor to the rest of the world. Taste the horror of this truth, then consider that the issue can barely be described at all, let alone compressed down and shared to the world like some sort of hotfix. Following the metaphor, it'd be like writing a well-worded essay to convince your immune system to recognize an autoimmune disorder. You can't "Hey, bud. We need to have a talk." to a virus.

Christ, we can't even convince people to vaccinate against an actual virus that can be seen and verified as both real and harmful. This informational plague of idea-viruses is not only not-visible, hidden by abstraction, too recent to be intuitive, too large to even be named - some are seen by its victims as positive, absolute, worthy of defending with one's life even as one denies it exists at all.

Unfortunately, even this is just one of the many reasons why/how the modern world is simply too much for the smart apes known as homo sapiens.

TL;DR - Modern pressures (namely a social density vastly greater than what our brains can handle and the fast-paced war-for-attention nature of the internet) are now selecting ideas not for value or consistency, but transmissability. Some people are more ideal as carriers and vectors than others, but most of us have felt the sensation of being drawn into something or slowly waking up from a stupor we were born into.

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arcticdementor · 4 years ago

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There are three kinds of dissidents: (a) anons, (b) pundits who still care what people think, and (c) outsiders who DGAF. All these groups are great; real greatness can be achieved in any of them; and good friends I have in each. But each has its problems.

…

The problem with (b) is that you are always policing yourself. Not only do your readers never really know what you really believe—you never really know yourself. In practice, it is much easier to police your own thoughts than your own words. When choosing between two ideas, the temptation to prefer the safer one is almost irresistible. This is a source of cognitive distortion which the anons and outsiders do not experience. (Though anons do suffer something of the opposite, a reflex to provoke.)

As a pundit, you sense this stress in every bone of your body; you can never show it to your readers. This creates a deep dishonesty in the parasocial relationship between writer and reader—like a marriage that can never escape some foolish first-date fib. The falsity, like the blue in blue cheese, flows through and flavors every particle of your content. Neither you nor your readers can ever be sure whether you are speaking the truth, lying to them, or lying to yourself—but you are constantly doing all three. You may still be very entertaining—enlightening, even. All your work is ephemeral, and once you die only your relatives will remember you. And it’s not even your fault.

…

From my perspective, both the anonymous and official dissidents exhibit a kind of unserious frivolity, but a very different kind. The frivolity of the anon is imaginative, surreal and playful at best, merely puerile at worst. The frivolity of the pundit has no upside; in every paragraph he is breaking Koestler’s rule, and he knows it; the best he can do is to shut up selectively about the things he cannot write about.

And his mens rea, too, is awful. He is selling hope. He is selling answers. Pity the man whose life has brought him to the position of selling answers in which he does not believe, or which he is forced to believe, or which he must force himself to believe. However sophisticated and erudite he may be, he is just a high-end grifter. His little magazine is a Macedonian troll-farm with a PhD. He is lucky if his eloquent essays about the common good don’t appear above a popup bar peddling penis pills—and in fact, I know more than one brilliant scholar in precisely this bathetic position. The frame defines the picture; the context sets the price of the text. Sad!

Worst still must be the reality that bad punditry is worse than useless—since useless strategies for escaping from a real problem are traps. When you lead your readers toward an attractive but ineffective solution, you lead them away from the opposite.

You got into this business to change the world for the better. You cannot avoid the realization that you are changing it for the worse—because your objective function is that of Chaim Rumkowski, the Lodz Ghetto’s “King of the Jews.”

You exist to convince your own followers that they neither can nor should do anything effective. The easiest way to do this is to convince them that ineffective strategies are effective. And this, as we’ll see, is exactly what you cannot avoid doing, dear pundit.

Moreover, from our present position of profound unreality, where the official narrative shared and studied by all normal intelligent people and all prestigious institutions can only be described as a state of venomous delirium, the opportunities to play Judas goat are almost unlimited. Cows, remember: there does not have to be only one Judas goat.

…

A particular favorite of the pundit is the error that AI philosophers call the “first-step fallacy.” It turns out that the first monkey to climb to the top of a tree was taking the first step toward landing on the moon:

First-step thinking has the idea of a successful last step built in. Limited early success, however, is not a valid basis for predicting the ultimate success of one’s project. Climbing a hill should not give one any assurance that if he keeps going he will reach the sky.

When a vendor sells you the moon and ships you a rope-ladder, you’ve been defrauded. Time for that one-star review.

…

Today we’ll chart the edges of the legitimate possible by looking at three recent pundit essays which have done a fine job of exploring those edges, and maybe even expanding them: Richard Hanania’s “Why is Everything Liberal?”, Scott Alexander’s “The New Sultan”, and Tanner Greer’s “The Problem of the New Right.”

…

After reading Hanania’s essay, a fourth pundit (who is out as a radical conservative) asked me: why does the right always lose? “Narcissistic delusions,” I replied.

Which was far from what he expected to hear, or what most readers will take from the essay. All three of these essays are good and true; but their inability to go far enough leaves them pointing their audience in precisely the wrong direction.

Most readers will emerge feeling that conservatives need more and better narcissistic delusions. Indeed, both pundit and politician are right there with just such a product. This meretricious frivolity, posing as seriousness, is too egregious to leave unmocked; yet the right reason to mock it is to challenge it to assume its final, truly-serious form.

Richard Hanania and the loser right

Hanania’s true point—backed up with a ream of unnecessary, PhD-worthy evidence—is that the libs always win because they just care more:

…

Since the rebirth of conservatism after the revolutionary monoculture of World War II, all conservative punditry has consisted of attempts to create more excitement around policies and values which effectively resist the power of the prestigious institutions—giving “normal people” as much to care about as their fanatical, aristocratic enemies.

Sensibly, this tends to involve raising “issues” which actually seem to affect their lives, but which also run counter to aristocratic power. Over decades, the substance of these issues changes and even reverses; the opposite stance becomes the useful stance; and “conservative values” have no choice but to change to reflect this. (If this seems like a liberal way to rag on conservatives—the cons learned it from the libs.)

…

“New Right” is not Greer’s term, but as a label I can barely imagine a worse self-own. It promises something ephemeral and irrelevant. So far as I can tell, this same cursed label has been used in every generation of conservatism to mean something different. When it inevitably fails and dies, people forget about it, and the next generation, stuck in the eternal present of a Korsakoff-syndrome movement, can reinvent it.

Who reads the conservative pundits of the ‘80s? Even those who remember them have to throw them under the bus. Every generation of National Review twinks, solemnly intoning what they conceive to be the immortal philosophy of our hallowed founders, is horrified by its predecessor, and horrifies its successor—a truly bathetic spectacle. And of course, each such generation would utterly horrify the actual founders.

…

Greer then goes deep into David Hackett Fischer territory to explain the obvious, yet important, fact that this “New Right” consists of upper-class intellectuals (inherently the heirs of the Puritans, since America’s upper-class tradition is the Puritan tradition) trying to lead middle-class yokels (the heirs of the Scotch-Irish crackers, and (though Greer does not mention this) Irish, Slavs, and other post-Albionic “white ethnic” trash, today even including many Hispanics. He even gives us a clever historical bon mot:

Pity the Whig who wishes to lead the Jackson masses!

Uh, yeah, dude, that would be called “Abraham Lincoln.”

But the point stands. Not just the “New Right” with its new statist ideology, but the whole postwar American Right, is a weird army with a general staff of philosophers and a fighting infantry of ignorant yokels. How can this stay together? How can the philosophers bring forth a mythology that creates passionate intensity in the yokels?

…

There is wisdom in this madness, of course—the problem is caused by aristocrats whose minds are wholly given over to narcissistic delusions. Doesn’t it take fire to fight fire? Doesn’t it take passionate intensity? Isn’t passionate intensity generated only by myths, dreams, poems and religions, not autistic formulas for tax policy? So the answer is clear: we need more and better narcissistic delusions. Ie, shams.

After all, any “founding mythology” is a narcissistic delusion. The flintlock farmers and mechanic mobs of the 1770s, and the Plymouth Puritans of the 1620s, have one thing in common: none of these people even remotely resembles the megachurch grill-and-minivan conservative of the 2020s. None of them even remotely resembles you.

They did live in the same places, and speak sort of the same language. Otherwise you probably have more in common with the average Indonesian housewife—at least she watches the same superhero movies.

To Narcissus, everything is a mirror; in everything and everyone, he sees himself. No field is riper for narcissism than history, since the dead past cannot even laugh at the present’s appropriations of a human reality it could not even start to comprehend.

And fighting fire with fire is one thing, but fighting the shark in the water is another. For the aristocrat, transcending reality is a core competence. The essence of leftism—always and everywhere an aristocratic trope, however vast its ignorant serf-armies—is James Spader in Pretty in Pink: “If I cared about money, would I treat my father’s house this way?” Mere peasants can never develop this kind of wild energy: that’s the point.

Yet Hanania remains right about the amount of energy that a rational, Kantian agenda for productive collective action motivated by collective self-interest, or even collective self-defense, can generate. The grill-American suburbicon is like Maistre’s Frenchman under the late Jacobins: he has defined deviancy down to rock-bottom. “He feels that he is well-governed, so long as he himself is not being killed.”

O, what to do? When you are solving an engineering problem and see the answer at last, it hits you like a thunderbolt. The conservatives, the normal people, the grill-Americans, must accept their own low energy. They must cease their futile reaching for passionate intensity, whether achieved through Kantian collective realism or Jaffaite founding mythology. They must fight the shark on land.

Conservatives don’t care—at least not enough. Yet they want to matter. Yet they live in a political system where mattering is a function of caring—not just voting. Therefore, there are two potential solutions: (a) make them care more; (b) make systems that let them matter more, without caring more.

Conservatives have low energy. They want high impact—at this point, they need high impact. After all, once you yourself are being killed, it’s kind of too late. Any engineer would tell you that there are two paths to high impact: more energy, or more efficiency.

Conservatives vote but don’t care. If we don’t have a viable way to make conservatives care more—meaning orders of magnitude more—effective strategies and structures must generate power by voting, not caring. They must maximize power per vote.

…

Interference means voters who are on the same team are working against each other. Impedance means voters resist delegating their complete consent to the team.

Interference is like a bunch of ants pulling the breadcrumb in different directions. To eliminate interference, point all your votes at one structurally cohesive entity which never works against itself.

Impedance is like getting married for a limited trial period, so long as your wife stays hot and keeps liking the stuff you like. As Burke pointed out in his famous speech to the electors of Bristol, the fundamental nature of electoral consent is unconditional:

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of Constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a Representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider.

But authoritative Instructions; Mandates issued, which the Member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgement and conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental Mistake of the whole order and tenor of our Constitution.

The cause of electoral impedance in the modern world is the conventional concept of “agendas” or “platforms” or “issues.” When you vote not for a cohesive entity, but for a list of instructions you are giving to that entity, you are not voting your full power. You are voting for Burke’s opponent, who felt “his Will ought to be subservient to yours.” In effect, you are voting for yourself. Narcissism once again rears its ugly head.

When you vote an agenda, you are granting limited consent to your representative. You say: I vote for you, for a limited time, so long as you stay fit and cook tasty dinners. I am actually not voting for you! I am voting for “reforms for conservatives” (Hanania). I am voting for “a broad set of shared attitudes and policy prescriptions” (Greer). Dear, I am not marrying you. I am marrying hot sex, regular cleaning and delicious meals—till ten extra pounds, or maybe at most fifteen, do us part.

You implicitly withhold your consent for anything not on your jejune list of bullet points. Then, you wonder why your representatives have no power and are constantly mocked, disobeyed, tricked and destroyed by people who are legally their employees. This is not political sex. This is political masturbation. You voted for yourself. And instead of a baby, all you got was a wad of tissues. Nice way to “drain the swamp.”

Your vote does not work because you are not voting, delegating, or granting consent. You are like an archer with one arrow who, afraid of losing it, refuses to let go of it. Without releasing his dart, all he can do is run up to the enemy and try to stab.

So if conservatives want to maximize the impact of their votes, all they have to do is the opposite of what they’re doing. Instead of voting for the okonomi a-la-carte stupid little political menus of hundreds of unconnected candidates and their staffs, they can all vote for the omakase prix-fixe chef’s-choice of a single cohesive governing entity.

Such a power, elected, has the voters’ mandate not just to “govern,” but to rule. When no other private or public force enjoys any such consent, no other force can resist. We are certainly well beyond “rule of law” at this point! On the inaugural podium, the new President announces a state of emergency. He declares himself the Living Constitution. In six months no one will even remember “the swamp.”

Wow! What a simple, clear idea! The engineer, when he comes across so compelling and obvious a design, knows there’s a catch: he won’t get the patent. Someone else must have invented it before. People may be stupid—but they’re not that stupid.

Indeed we have just reasoned our way to reinventing the oldest, most common, and most successful form of government: monarchy. And we are setting it against the second most common form, the institutional rule of power-obsessed elites: oligarchy. And to install our monarchy, we are using the collective action of a large number of people who each perform one small act: democracy.

The alliance of monarchy and democracy (king and people) against oligarchy (church and/or nobles) is the oldest political strategy in the book. The suburban conservative, who just wants to grill, either has no idea this ancient and trivial solution exists, or regards it as the worst thing in the world—even worse, possibly, than his sixth-grader’s mandatory sex change.

And why? Ask your friendly local Judas goat, the pundit. Even the “new right” pundit—who only differs in his policies and issues. Which are, true, slightly less useless. As the top of the tree is slightly closer to the moon.

The 20th century even came up with a handy pejorative for a newborn monarchy. We call it fascism. No word on whether Cromwell, Caesar, or Charlemagne, let alone Louis XIV, Frederick II and Elizabeth I, were fascists.

But, to borrow Scott Alexander’s charming term, also not his own invention, they were certainly strongmen. TLDR: if you want to be strong, elect one strongman. If you prefer to be weak, elect a whole bunch of weakmen. Do you prefer to be weak? “If the rule you followed brought you to this place—of what use was the rule?”

The pundit reassures you that you don’t need a strongman to be strong—you’ll do fine with weakmen—so long as those weakmen have the right “shared attitudes and policy prescriptions.” By the way, here are some attitudes I’m happy to share with you. Click now to accept cookies. Did I mention that I have policy prescriptions, too? Skip ad in 5 seconds. Congratulations, you’ve been automatically subscribed! Check the box to opt out of most emails—void where prohibited by law—terms and conditions may apply…

…

An odd sort of pundit, who remains only nominally anonymous but has always very much GAF, Scott Alexander does not have Hanania’s cagey diplomatic noncommittal. As a “rationalist,” he is deeply committed to his own class status, and to oligarchy itself—which, like most, he misidentifies as “democracy.”

While the whole raison d’etre of the rationalist is the irrationality of our oligarchy, as displayed in genius moves like refusing to cancel regularly-scheduled airline flights to stop a Holocaust-tier pandemic, the rationalist’s dream is a rational oligarchy—using Bayes’ rule, which given infinite computing power will become infinitely intelligent—in Carlyle’s immortal phrase, “a government carried out by steam.”

Obviously, this is not just logical—it immunizes the rationalists from the scurrilous charge of “fascism,” or worse. And they were right about stopping the flights. So was my 9-year-old. Sadly, in a world of universal delusional delirium, rationality can get quite pleased with itself by clearing quite a low bar.

My view is that no government can be or ever has been carried out by steam—only by human beings—a species the same today as in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, if possibly a little dumber on average—and this will remain the case until some computational or genetic singularity occurs. For neither of which events will I hold my breath. This is why I find it easy to picture 21st-century America under the phronetic monarchy of an experienced and capable President-CEO, and almost hilariously impossible to picture it under a Bayesian bureaucracy of polyamorous smart-contracts.

Alexander disagrees. Here is his analysis—the same text that Hanania quotes. Let’s go through it thought by thought, and see if we can’t turn it into some delicious carnitas.

…

Let’s get back to those “elites.” Alexander conflates three quite orthogonal concepts in his use of the word “elite”: biology, institutions, and culture.

Elite biology is high IQ, which is genetic. Elite institutions are any centers of organized collective power—Harvard, the Komsomol, the Mafia, etc. Elite culture is whatever ideas flourish within elite institutions.

Destroying biology is genocide—specifically, aristocide. Destroying institutions is… paperwork. Who hasn’t worked for a company that went out of business? Same deal. And if the culture is the consequence of the institutions, different institutions (with the same human biology) will inevitably nurture different ideas.

The SS was anything but a low-IQ institution, yet it propagated a very different culture than Harvard. 21st-century Germany is anything but a low-IQ country, but the ideas of Kurt Eggers do not flourish in it. It seems that high-IQ institutions can be destroyed—and the new “elite culture” will be the culture of the institutions that replace them.

So the only target is the institutions. There is nothing “nasty” about closing an office. In the worst possible scenario, the police need to clear the building, lock the doors, and impound the servers. Such tasks are well within their core competence, and can be performed with calm professionalism. They will probably not even need their zip-ties.

…

For democracy to be effective in such a situation, it must know its own limitations. It can seize the reins—but only to hand them to some effective power. This power must have one of three forms: an existing oligarchy, a new monarchy, or a foreign power.

Also, there are three classes in an advanced society, not just two: nobles, commoners, and clients. Since clients support their patrons by definition, once nobles plus clients outnumber commoners, the commoners have permanently lost the numbers game. This is why importing client voters is a recipe for either civil war or eternal tyranny—if not both.

…

Yes. This is what happened in denazification, except with monarchy and oligarchy reversed. For example, all German media firms today are descendants of institutions created, or at least certified, by AMGOT. Nothing “organic” about it.

The essential problem with Alexander’s picture of this process is that, since like most smart people today he inhabits Cicero’s great quote about history and children, he simply cannot imagine replacing one kind of elite institution with another. Nor can he imagine high-IQ elites—human beings as smart as him��which are as loyal to a new sane monarchy as today’s elites are loyal, slavishly loyal, to our old insane oligarchy. Does he think that Elizabeth’s London had no elites? Caesar’s Rome?

If Alexander was analyzing the Soviet Union in the same way, he would conclude that elites are inherently devoted to building socialism for the workers and peasants. Since the present world he lives in is all of history for him, he cannot see the general theory which predicts this special case: elites like to get ahead. To genuinely change the world, change what it takes for elites to get ahead.

If the elites are poets and their only way to get ahead is to write interminable reams of “race opera,” as my late wife liked to put it, the floodgates of race opera will open. If the elites are poets and their only way to get ahead is to write interminable reams of Stalin hagiography, Stalin will be praised to the skies in beautiful and clever rhymes.

…

There are two big strawmen here. Let’s turn them into steelmen.

First, “the populace uses the government” is non-Burkean. The populace (not all of it, just the middle class) installs the government. Then it goes back to grilling. So long as the commoners have to be in charge of the regime, and the commoners are weak, the regime will be weak. They need to “fire and forget.” Otherwise, they just lose.

Second, Alexander has clearly never heard of the atelier movement. No, this is not the same thing as your grandma in front of the TV copying Bob Ross.

What happens is this: every (oligarchic) art school and art critic no longer exists. Not that they are killed, of course. Just that their employers are liquidated (not with a bullet in the neck, just with a letter from the bank). They exist physically, not professionally. They were already bureaucrats—they had careers, not passions. Who gets fired, but keeps doing his job just for fun? Certainly not a bureaucrat.

And every (oligarchic) artist no longer exists—not that they are killed, of course. Just that the rich socialites who used to buy their stuff got letters from the bank, too. Libs sometimes talk about a wealth tax—a one-time wealth cap, perhaps at a modest level like $20 mil, will concentrate the rich man’s mind wonderfully on actual necessities.

Elites like to get ahead. The people who got ahead in the oligarchic art scene can no longer get ahead by doing shitty, bureaucratic, 20th-century conceptual art. Because there were so many of them, and because the demand for this product has dropped by at least one order of magnitude if not two, elite ambition is replaced by elite revulsion.

The enormous supply-and-demand imbalance for both art and artists in 20th-century styles leaves these styles about as fashionable as disco in 1996. “Paintings” that used to sell for eight figures will be stacked next to the dumpster. “Artists” once celebrated in the Times will be teaching kindergarten, tying trout flies, or cooking delicious dinners.

Inevitably, some of these people have real artistic talent. (The first modern artists had real talent—Picasso was an excellent draftsman.) They can go to an atelier and learn to draw. They will—because now, acquiring real artistic skill is a way to get ahead in art. And again, elites like to get ahead.

…

There is nothing “normal” or “natural” or “organic” about oligarchy. Does Alexander think “uncured” bacon is “organic” because, instead of evil chemical nitrates, it uses healthy, natural celery powder? He sure is easy to fool. But who isn’t?

Culture and academia is already yoked to the will of government in a “heavy-handed manner”—yoked not by the positive pressure of power, but the negative attraction of power. When the formal government defers to institutions that are formally outside the government, it leaks power into them and makes them de facto state agencies.

Power leakage, like a pig lagoon spilling into an alpine lake, poisons the marketplace of ideas with delicious nutrients. Ideas that make the institutions more powerful grow wildly. Eventually these ideas evolve carnivory and learn to positively repress their competitors, which is how our free press and our independent universities have turned our regime into Czechoslovakia in 1971, and our conversation into a Hutu Power after-school special. PS: Black lives matter.

The paradox of “authoritarianism” is that a regime strong enough to implement Frederick the Great’s idea of “free speech”—“they say what they want, I do what I want”—can actually create a free and unbiased marketplace of ideas, which neither represses seditious ideas nor rewards carnivorous ideas. But it takes a lot of power to reach this level of strength—and it requires liquidating all competing powers.

I have never been able to explain this simple idea to anyone, even rationalists with 150+ IQs who can grok quantum computing before breakfast, who didn’t want to understand it. Ultimately it reduces to the painful realization that sovereignty is conserved—that the power of man over man is a human universal. (Also, we all die.)

No surprise that nerds who think of power as Chad shoving them into a locker can’t handle the truth. PS: I went to a public high school as a 12-year-old sophomore, was bullied every day for three years, and graduated college as a virgin. Whoever you are, dear reader, you are not beyond hope. You can handle the truth.

…

And yet: Alexander’s post is about Erdoğan—and his description of Erdoğan is spot on. It also is a perfect description of Orban in Hungary; it applies to Putin in Russia and Xi in China; and it is even pretty accurate for Hitler, Mussolini and friends.

What all these “strongmen” have in common is that they are provincial. Turkey is not exactly the center of the world. Even 20th-century Germany was nowhere near the center of the world, though it could at least imagine becoming that center. If Turkey just disappeared tomorrow, no one would have any reason to care except the Turks. Who needs Turkey for anything? What would collapse—the dried-apricot market?

Erdoğan’s problem is that he cannot vaporize the oligarchy, because the institutions that matter are not in Turkey. The provincial strongman has no choice but to follow the “populist” playbook that Alexander describes so well.

Orban can kick Soros’s university out of Hungary; he cannot do anything at all to Soros, let alone to the global institutions of which Soros is only a small part. He is indeed “arrayed against” these institutions, to which his Hungarian elites (who speak nearly-perfect English) will always be loyal. The contest is unequal and has only one possible winner, though it can last indefinitely long. Even Xi, whose country can quite easily imagine becoming the economic center of the world, is a provincial strongman—in fact, he sent his daughter to Harvard. Sad!

In a global century, the only way for these provincial strongmen to develop genuine local sovereignty is to go full juche. This is simply not possible for Hungary or Turkey, both of which are firmly attached to the cultural, economic, and military teat of the Global American Empire. Indeed it is barely possible for North Korea, a marsupial nation still in China’s pouch. So Alexander is right: these “strongmen” cannot win. Their regimes will all go the way of Franco’s. It’s impressive that they even survive.

Erdoğan simply has no way to attach his best citizens to his own regime. They are citizens of the world. Elites always like to get ahead. If you’re a world-class talent in anything, why would you try to get ahead in Istanbul? Suppose you want to make a name as the world’s greatest Turkish writer. Succeed in New York, then come home. Turkey is a province; provinces are provincial.

Yet I am not a Turk or a Hungarian, and neither is Scott Alexander. The greater any empire, the more essential that its fall begin at the center. The Soviet empire did not fall from the outside in; it was not brought down from Budapest or Prague; it fell from Moscow out.

And the American empire will fall from Washington out—though that may not happen in the lives of those now living. And although nature abhors a vacuum and no empire can be replaced by nothing—and oligarchy, in the modern world, can only be replaced by monarchy—the “strongman” of this monarchy will not look anything like these mere provincial dictators.

…

The result of Alexander’s perceptive calculations, which are only wrong because their only input data is the present, is simply that our present incompetent tyranny is and must be permanent. Of course, every sovereign regime defines itself as permanent. Yet when we look at the past and not just the present, we see that no empire is forever.

Some grim things are happening in America today. These grim things have a silver lining: they expose the gleaming steel jaws of the traps that the aristocracy sets for its commoners. They remind the cattle that a goat is not a cow and a baa is not a moo.

Every pundit is a Cicero. And amidst all the greatness of his rhetoric, Cicero could not imagine a world that had no use for Ciceros—a world governed by competence, not rhetoric. By the time Caesar crossed the Rubicon, nothing had failed more completely than the whole Roman idea of governance by rhetoric—an idea many centuries old, an idea whose execution had beaten all competitors to capture the whole civilized world, but an idea that was past its sell-by date. Rome herself was no longer suited to it. The republican aristocracy of Rome no longer meant Regulus and Scipio and Cincinnatus; it meant Milo and Clodius and Catiline. Its factional conflict was the choice between Hutu Power and Das Schwarze Korps. Caesar was not a disaster; Caesar was a miracle.

In the death of the American republic, every detail is different. The story is the same. The contrast in capacity between SpaceX and the Pentagon, Moderna and the CDC, Apple and Minneapolis—between our monarchical corporations, and our oligarchical institutions—is a dead ringer for the contrast between the legions and the Senate.

The sooner we stop pretending that this isn’t happening to us, the better results we can get. Wouldn’t it be nice to get to Caesar, Augustus and Marcus Aurelius, without passing through Sulla and Marius, Crassus and Spartacus? Alas, from here and now it seems unlikely. But I can’t see why every serious person wouldn’t want to try.

#curtis yarvin #substack #long #moldbug #well worth the read #monarchy #oligarchy #scott alexander #richard hanania #tanner greer #those who just want to grill #strongman #pundits #i'm reminded at several points of jim donald's arguments about how holiness spirals are ended

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mariabumby · 6 years ago

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Occult Concepts you might have missed in Good Omens

Nah, I get it, we’re ethereal not occult. But you’d be lying to yourself truly, if you said you weren’t interested in the occultism, philosophy daresay ontology presented in the Show in the Good Omens. And in case you haven’t stared in the bath shower and deeply and meaningfully assessed the concepts underlying your favorite apocalyptic romp. Then I’m Here to Do that for you.

Ofcourse you obviously should have watched the show.

Ready?

As you’ll ever be.

1. Choice is part of Humanity

It all started and ended with a garden. The two main characters being the ones who… hmm godfathered this aspect of humanity.

Crowley, the snake, who tempted people to first ever know what good and bad is. And Aziraphale – an angel who either let, or was incompetent enough to let it happen. Didn’t even try to smite the first two humans or the demon Crowley. Just this awkward fumbling on top of a garden wall with an impending storm.

This is repeated again by the angel when he is reprimanded by the archangels – it is not for “us” (angelic realm) to decide – the humans have free will to decide good and bad.

And in the whole course of the story – these two almost eternal entities have “gone native”. Or acted more human. Liked sushi, liked wine, and bentleys and music.

And Made their Own Decisions.

Especially for Aziraphale, who disobeyed orders for the first time in his really long life. It was uncalled for, an act of “treason”. Crowley by the end even said “i think the big one will be “all of us” vs “all of them”“referring to all of humanity vs heaven and hell.

He referred to himself as human. He’s choosing to be human, by the end of the story. Just as much as Aziraphale redefined himself by exploring who he is outside of the angelic box, Crowley has been since the beginning was quite intent with being a lousy demon anyway.

Yes he did tempting. But he is so gloriously an incompetent demon. And as etheric beings, these two are very relatable to the audience, acting as main characters and the main POV that the audience lives through. And they’re not cold or of higher existence (like some angel channellings). They’re so delectably human. Not because this is a piece of fiction, because the whole argument is:

They want to be human. They like their choices, no matter what the consequences.

Which is echoed by adam by the end, who reckoned any apple was worth eating and worth the consequences. And by what manner is this occult?

Well in Ken Wilber’s model of consciousnesses, the difference of humans from other living beings — what separates us from vegetable, animal and sky is our capacity to define itself. Meaning tomatoes more or less tomatoes. But humans have an almost infinite limit on being anything. They define themselves – that is our nature.

Our Choice is our humanity.

And as much we kind of hate out existence a lot of times, it’s really refreshing to see near immortals liking and even being jealous of the way we exist. Of what would be the shaded echoes of our flailing in “who am i” and so forth…

2. There’s Good in Evil, there’s Bad in Good

Or otherwise known as paradoxes and koans being the underlying fiber of all of reality… say what?In every creation lies destruction. In every delusion reality. In every push a pull. In every death a birth, in every order there is chaos.

Two sides of the same coin. Or in taoism would be the yin yang symbol.

Meaning, Good Omens doesn’t just argue against moral dogmatism…

Good Omens, if you look hard enough, is saying opposites dance inside of each other. All. the damn. time.

The two characters are literally sworn enemies (angel vs demon) who find allyship. The destroyer of worlds is the one who saves it (adam). The major screw-up that made everything start aren’t even necessarily people being bad or good but people being people.

Which really argues not for a moral gray area but an acceptance that we’re paradoxically both all the time depending from which way you’re looking and interpreting. Meaning it’s a mess, it’s crazy, partly why it’s so ineffable, and that maybe we shouldn’t be so stuck up thinking so highly of ourselves.

How is this occult? Well. You’ve ever heard of shadow work? Chaos Magick and Sigils? Have you ever actually met occultists who unironically summon demons with a dagger and a cup and spill their own blood whole shebang?

I have. I even fell in love with one. But the point of the matter is, that this logic isn’t some cutesy theme for your supernatural romp. It is an actual force of nature harnessed by actually living witches and mages. Meaning the dark – the things you’re afraid of facing, what lies in your subconscious, the forces of destruction, bad luck and curses — it all operates under that assumption.

That it is the half of the coin of existence. That as much as we hate to face our traumas, that some people would get triggered and regressed and spiral to really hellish shit – the treasures you seek are in the cave you’re most afraid of. Or the demon you’re most afraid of. Or the scar you’re most horrified to feel because you think it will eat you alive.

A lot of occult work is mastering your demons- your self, your fears. Utilising fear to your own advantage, acknowledging it, dancing with it. And gaining greater awareness.

And recognising they’re you’re best friend and they’re looking out for you. Kind of like how Crowley undoes Aziraphale and allows him to walk into what he most fears. Betraying heaven. Through, well.. Love which is the unconditional empty space which allows the two opposites to play. Or leela, in yoga.

3. What the demon Crowley has, is the power of the imagination.

The story is not short of law of attraction moments. Or let’s just say the whole operation of how things come into being with a human boy having no upper limit of choosing how things should be.

Should I remind you, both the anti-christ and christ came here to be human? What is this facet of human being that these supernatural forces might want?

Oh right I talked about (1) already.

Anyway, take it from me your friendly neighborhood actual witch that is Magick. Old School Magick, simply willing things to existence. And I’m actually seriously happy with how occultic-ly consistent this entire series is?

It’s even, loving?? with the usual topics that cover any good wiccan new age enthusiasts in how it depicts Anathema and atlantis and the fascination with peace loving aliens. Which leads me to another paradox which I’ll write as (3.5)

3.5 It is written.

Paradoxically [2] you both have Choice [1] and Destiny [3.5] coexisting in your narrative.

Every rebelling that Crowley and Aziraphale did that was against their etheric nature was written in Agnes’ Nutter’s book. It was both a choice and destiny.

Even Anathema who was loyal to her family’s prophecies and takes pride in being a witch, burned the next prophecies of Agnes Nutter not wanting to be just a descendant. Another choice, or maybe just another destiny.

Aziraphale and Crowley themselves comment on this in the bench waiting for a bus to come asking – what if this was part of her divine plan? What if all this choosing and fighting was planned too?

And they only answer — who knows? What if they’re the same thing?

As much as I seriously adore the #ineffablehusbands, I also adore how deep into the occult philosophical rabbit hole you can get in terms of duality and what it means to be human with this giant ass story. Which is also handled so well by so many of the fandom’s art and fanfiction in AUs and interpretations of demon!Crowley and angel!aziraphale as humans or in their post-apocalyptic humanly existence may it be cottage or bench.

How do humans judge themselves to be unforgivable? In how many viewers is --an Aziraphale who can only think of themself as this “good” or as a Crowley who can only think of themself as “forsaken”?

How are we paradoxical and human? How can this be an okay thing to be? Something left to be desired by our favorite demon and angel?

Good Omens is hopeful. It’s underlying beliefs, are beautiful, loving and yeaaaa occult. A+ from this witch right ere.

Here’s my occult esoteric blog if ya’ll curious:

https://wanwuspiritlibrary.com/start-here/

#ineffable husbands #good omens #neil gaiman #crowley #aziraphale #occultism #occult #good omens spoilers #david tennant #michael sheen #terry pratchett #good omens analysis #occultAF #here's my essay writing contest entry yall better read it

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smallnico · 5 years ago

Text

Nico’s Book Reviews: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ stars.

no real spoilers under the cut, but the book is a prequel, so bear that in mind. i’m not including information from the original hunger games trilogy in my definition of ‘spoilers’. the cut exists because it’s longish, my dudes!

I thought it was alright. Many of the philosophical concepts raised in the book I found intellectually stimulating -- the question of "what did you enjoy about war" being one of those that stuck out in my mind. It made me think about the reasons I enjoyed the original Hunger Games trilogy, and when I found this book (admittedly) somewhat lacking in those same regards, it set my brain cogs spinning in the right directions. As engaged as I was in THG's sociological meditations and its highly symbolic dystopia, as horrified as I was by the violence, I'll admit I enjoyed the series for many of the same reasons Coriolanus admits he enjoyed the war. Reading this book made me miss the bombast and drama of the original series, particularly the first book, and while I consider that a message delivered with rousing success, I recognize the irony and dissonance in praising a book because it made me hyper-aware that I missed having a more entertaining book in my hands. Bear with me. Definitely, this one's a tough case. In a lot of ways I'd compare it to Catcher in the Rye, if Catcher were easier to read from a pure accessibility standpoint. Collins's writing is refreshingly easy to devour while still packing a lot of strong symbolism and questions that make you really reflect on your own beliefs and consider what lies you've been told, what propaganda you've been fed. Ballad, like Catcher, is positioned in the mind of a protagonist deeply disconnected from his own life and surroundings, retreating into a world of ideals to replace a dissatisfying reality. Also like with Holden Caulfield, I read Ballad fully expecting Coriolanus Snow to tip over the edge into murderous dissociation, though Holden never ended up actually doing that. I wasn't disappointed -- not that I was excited, but I was expecting it to happen in that good "setup and payoff" way. The book makes more liberal use of symbolism than THG, almost to the point of surrealism, but I felt that worked for the protagonist, again mirroring Catcher. Coriolanus is the type of person to consider elements of reality as symbolism in order to further entrench himself in his own beliefs, so I can’t fault the narrative for that. But like Catcher, Ballad does drag. Just because it works, doesn’t mean it’s inherently enjoyable. Collins's writing style is a mercy, because if this book were harder to read, I would've put it down unfinished. As addressed in my first paragraph, reading Ballad made me long for something more entertaining. As symbolic and reflective a book as it is, it lacks the dramatic substance necessary to keep me interested in the story. I never found myself asking "what happens next", only "so, how many more hundreds of pages is it going to take for Coriolanus to finally accept that he's a bad person?" -- I had come to terms with that by the first few chapters, even without considering the events of THG. This is not the origin story of someone's tragic descent into villainy, this is more like a character study of someone who’s already lost, living in a Hobbesian society eager to praise his cutthroat pragmatism, his obsessive and idealistic personality, and his lack of empathy. It's fairly straightforward, and at times where the plot might have become more interesting, it frustratingly refused to do so. Coriolanus's life, in spite of how much he complains about its difficulties, is too easy. I grok this to be the point of the book -- his success is as hollow and corrupt as he is -- but god, does that ever make for a dull book. He wants something and gets it. It's a classic example of class privilege, but it makes for insipid narrative. So, really, I'd recommend this book if you're a fan of THG who also, like me, is a huge weirdo who loves a book that makes you think about whether a story about war and murder and dystopia should, morally, be entertaining. But if you're more into satisfying tension, emotional stakes, interesting characters living by their wits, and just enough spectacle to make you feel both delighted and disturbed simultaneously (or if you have a less generous answer to the question of whether a book has to be entertaining to be worth reading), you're probably better off reading the original series again. That all was what I liked most about the war, so I'm torn. Really, why read a book about children being sacrificed to bloodsport in a society that dehumanizes them so badly they barely care? Why read a book about how immoral the situation is without doing anything to fix it? Why read a book about how depressing it is to be exposed to the contents of the book, as the despondent sociopath protagonist makes helpful suggestions toward making the contents, and therefore the book itself, more entertaining? If your answer to these questions is "who gives a shit", then this isn't the book for you. If you're curious about that sort of thing, though, then it's worth a read.

#nico's book reviews #loquor

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shizekarnstein · 6 years ago

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Remember way back when Eren was on trial for being a titan shifter after Battle of Trost? He screamed that he's willing to "bear it all". What if that foreshadows Eren replacing Ymir in the Paths? What if the bittersweet ending for Eren is finding the purest form of freedom in an entirely different plane of existence? If Eren stays there with his independence intact, he might even have full control on who gets Titan forms and not too.

That's a possible interpretation anon. After all there are some panels in the current chapter that seem to at least hint at that development.

When Eren sees Ymir in paths, he's horrified. That all powerful goddess appears to be nothing more than a mindless puppet, not that different from a pure titan. Basically a slave trapped forever doing her work for all eternity, in a realm where time seems to be frozen.

Shortly after that Zeke reveals that he was testing him so see what he truly wanted to do, and commands Ymir to chained him up.

As you said, this isn't the first time we've seen Eren in chains. After Trost the military decided to locked him up just as Ymir herself is trapped. He was a prisioner just like her.

The both of them are locked up by people fearing them and their power. Seen as nothing but monsters. You certainly can draw that parallel.

Eren declares that instead of restraining him tho they can use his power. He agrees with the SC and wants to fight with his monstruos abilities for the betterment of his peoples lives. I can't help but wonder if Ymir Fritz originally wished and did something like that.

But Eren was freed of this shackles not only due to his will to fight. I find it beautifully symbolic that the ones who lifted those shackles in part were people wearing the Wings of Freedom.

Curiously that wasn't the last time someone put chains on Eren. And just like in chap 120 the person who did it is someone after the power of a god and bearer of royal blood.

Rod Reiss did the same thing as Zeke. He even triggered his memories to try to show him the sins and montruous nature of Grisha. By the end of it he tries to manipulate Historia to make her eat him. He tells both of them that only someone with royal blood can master the power of the FT, and that only that someone would be able to save humanity. At first Historia agrees, filled with grief and pain at the loss of her cherished sister.

But after seeing that Eren agrees to this sacrifice for the greater good, she pauses.

Eren is utterly convinced of the necessity of this sacrifice. He even mentions it as a relief and freedom bc he can't bear all the deaths that happened until now. He's devastated by the prospect of his father essentially having doomed humanity by stealing what wasn't his. He agrees to let Historia eat him and lay down his life in a last attempt to help humanity as a whole.

But Historia, thanks to Frieda's memories and the advice of her Ymir is able to see clearly through her fathers bullshit. She chooses her friends and herself and tells Eren that she will never stand and let people think they have no other choice but to die, bc that's no true. And she frees him.

Ymir Fritz and our Ymir and Historia have been paralleled time after time in the story. Our Ymir as a false goddess who even at the end did the best for the people she loved regardless of what it would meant for her. Historia as a literal Krista who did the same thing, always looking out for others. But in Historias case that was in part a mask. She is really a kind girl by nature, but also someone able to being selfish and looking out for those she cares about without giving a damn about the greater good. This Historia frees Eren and tells him that his life has meaning, that he doesn't really have to meassure it in terms of how useful he is.

She also is the first one to note how the apparently devious Grisha Jaeger may have actually saved them all, or at least gave them a fighting chance, by stealing the FT power from the royal bloodline. She says is a good thing bc they were missusing it. They enslaved their people and couldn't do a single thing for them due to the First kings vow. Zeke is trying to repeat the same mistakes of the royal bloodline all over again. Look at how casually he referes to Ymir as a mere slave, at how he has no qualms deciding for himself what's the best destiny for his people.

But just as Rod, Zeke is destinated to fail. Trying to show Eren the memories of Grisha is backfiring on him at an alarming pace, thus giving Eren the chance to retake control of their little journey.

Anon you mentioned that it seems that Eren freeing Ymir and replacing her, by his own choice and with his will intact, would be a way to finally gained not only his freedom but that of his people. Placing those chains on himself by choice, bearing the burden onto his shoulders. That's definetly something Eren would do. He has said so many times. But I think we shouldn't dismiss what hapened at the Reiss chapel either. Back then Eren willingly chose to exchange his freedom and accept those chains for the sake of humanity. And it was Historia, formerly known as Krista Lenz, the one who showed him a way out of it. In a philosophical sense, choosing to chain yourself can be really be considered freedom? There are many who would answer yes, and just as many that would reply with a rotund no.

One last thing: if chaining himself would give Eren the absolute power to command the fates and destiny of how the titans opperate and as you said, controlling how those powers are used and in whose hands they end up... is that really in line with this statment?

Maybe this is only wishful thinking, but to me this is more in line with a more absolute solution to the curse that infects the eldians. As long as there's a Founder and the ppl of ymir are being bounded together through paths, the mere existence of this reality would never change. One way to do it is to end the existence of the eldians, as Zeke wishes to do. But Eren himself said that's a stupid and foolish plan, as it denies their right to live. So if he's not going with that (pfff as if, only people with less than two braincells could believe that), what's left? It's the ability to turn into monsters and their ties to paths realm. Can those be altered or severed? If it were so easy as to go to paths and command Ymir to change any aspect of their biology then why the curse of ymir still exists?

If Ymir Fritz herself ended up imprisoned then why was her will lost? What happened to her? The only thing that her current state tells me is that this isn't the way to go. Our Ymir tried to live as a goddess and lost everything. Historia put the good of her ppl first and all it brought her, at least for now, is nothing by despair. These three incarnations of Ymir have miserable fates. Maybe this is all in order to tells us to not travel this route after all.

I have little doubts Eren is going to eventually die for the good of his people. But Id like to think his solution would be a little kinder to him at the end. Im sorry but being forever bounded to the paths realm sounds absolutely horrible to me, free will or not.

#anon replies #snk #snk spoilers #snk 120 #snk meta #eren jaeger #ymir fritz #zeke jaeger #rod reiss #historia reiss #ymir

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