#it just happened to be the correct combination of so many nuances that mattered to me already and them dialed them up to 10

[ontoilogical]

Social Etiquette, Aylin and Isobel

I have this general tendency to write main characters as too wise. As if they're privy to the situation the way the writer is. I know why I do this – because it's frustrating to write and read characters making obvious mistakes when the knowledge is available to you. Suppose the trick is to write so the reader knows as much as the characters, and then the plot eventually reveals the truth. In other words, make the mistakes less obvious...?

I'm thinking about social etiquette and how Aylin and Isobel handle it – individually and together. And in my perfect scenario, Aylin is too direct and too much for most, but handles it well and concedes the loss of many a company and exchanges because of it (her being Selune's daughter doesn't help, either). Isobel, meanwhile, balances this perfect combination of diplomatic politeness and her characteristic amusing wit. Together, Aylin is a doer and a motivator for others to do, a guiding light so bright it overwhelms you, but if you manage to stay a while, it's an experience you'll never forget, while Isobel handles the logistics, the finer details and communication to the goal of enabling them to do their task, and you see her as a very reasonable, smart and easy to talk to person.

Isobel never feels embarrassed for anything Aylin does (including talking about their love life – Isobel is not shy, nor reserved), she doesn't correct Aylin any time she's too much – at most she may give a gentle suggestion, or even better, redirect away from the contentious situation, and if someone is stupid enough to try and conspiratorially gossip Aylin to Isobel – the measured one you can confide in – she will cut you with words so elegantly you'll feel shame over it for the rest of your living days. In turn, Aylin would know how to recognize and cut through excessive politicking and manipulation, in moments when it becomes a bit too much for Isobel or someone is so obnoxious that Isobel gets caught in the opaque web of trying to socially outmaneuver each other.

Most of the time, people are in awe of Aylin, while making easy work friends with Isobel, who they generally find much more approachable, even though Aylin is quicker to approach others, to greater frequency. Such is her direct way. People whose communication style is indirect cannot handle Aylin, because she will be too frank with them, including in calling them out in a way they didn't expect, because they falsely assumed loudness means inability to see the nuances of communication. If someone nice ever expressed the desire to talk with Aylin but felt too intimated to, Isobel would help the matter gently, feeling genuinely touched to witness the exchange as it progresses, her darling happy and in conversation. Not that Aylin needs it. Aylin is good with people, it's just a matter of needing more time for people to figure it out, than is usually afforded due to the transient nature of their stays.

I imagine it would take a very bold person to proposition either of them, or both of them, as they are Very Together and such impressive ladies, so I'll leave the matter dormant for now, although it amuses me to think about it.

Now... Neither of them were born this well adjusted. These are all skills and knowledge that came from discovering, knowing and managing yourself over time... as well as living, growing, learning and actively honoring the relationship you're in. This is them after all that has already happened, so if we're to look at their past, there's a lot to work with.

Isobel's wit creating a diplomatic incident. Young Aylin feeling awkward and lonely for not being socially included in the in-group. Isobel being too agreeable and peacemaking (bonus points if Ketheric is involved). Aylin trying to brute-force her inclusion and getting frustrated as it fails, and then opting to withdraw from others and into her duties instead. Them being freshly together and not knowing each other very well yet, and negotiating and discovering that space.

As I said, I'm still in the somewhat idealized but not easy to maintain stage of them, as they have a lot to work through post-game, but as I get a better feeling for both of them, and feel confident in my conclusions, these things begin to enter my ideas and plots.

Onwards.

[slimeinnocence]

Interpretive Theory and Physics

Mario Ramirez-Arrazola October 28, 2020

Efforts towards explaining the dichotomy between the STEM and Humanities, its history and its implications, should be something of grand value to new students in higher-education. What is even more important however is to teach that this dichotomy can be sewn together. This effort will probably be seen as arduous because of its nuanced sensibilities, especially when getting deeper into the matter; the divide is seen as just that at first, strictly black and white, but I think that the theory of interpretation can ease this process immensely. Another problem that can arise from this process is that the remedy seems to be primarily inside the field of humanities and its subsequent techniques, strategies, ideology, and tools–so nevertheless, the emphasis towards combining the two fields can still be primarily seen as a mainly “humanitarian” effort. This is not by fault of either discipline, it’s important to notice divisions and similarities, it should be stated that the dichotomy works as some sort of Yin-and-yang paradigm. This is not to say either that there is no real or applied division, the aim should be towards being collaborative and successful through such methods–Albert Einstein wrote in a memorial for Ernst Mach: "How does it happen that a properly endowed natural scientist comes to concern himself with epistemology? Is there no more valuable work in his specialty? I hear many of my colleagues saying, and I sense it from many more, that they feel this way. I cannot share this sentiment... Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such an authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens…” And why do I say that the theory of interpretation is a useful methodology for sewing this divide? For the same reason that epistemology has been such an important field for epochs. I think in interpretation we can see the most basic and yet grandest ties between the two disciplines–further, I think the subscription mostly towards Stanley Fish’s theory of reading and interpretation is the best for this paper, especially when in combination with the excellent example of a historical experiment on the theory of temperature by Marc-Auguste Pictet. More specifically, I wanted to approach this from the perspective of applied interpretative communities, from Fish’s side, and to also research the scientific community that Pictet was working with, especially in his confrontation with positive cold and Louis Bertrand. I also find it important and interesting to relay this back toward our contemporary timeline, giving a short analysis into postmodernism and the theory of hyperreading. A roadmap is given at the end in order to best map the trajectory of thought within this paper. There will also be attention towards an approachable and sensible reading, as I think that both fields would appreciate.

First, we are to give an elaboration towards Fish’s work-reader and interpretive community theories, we will also give a short history into the literary theory that Fish was trying to correct. The foundations of interpretive theory go back to circa late 700 C.E., in contrast to the socio-linguistic turn towards literature going all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. The former is much more interested in why and how–referred to as hermeneutics in the theory–whereas the latter is more interested in structure, form, and type–referred to as poetics in theory. It’s important to note that both are interested in specific works, as is canonical with some mediums such as Norton, and they have been both deeply entrenched within the history of reading as a whole and especially the history of reading and knowledge in the United States, though literary theory is arguably more invested in hermeneutics. Further, it should also be duly noted that works under the canon are not specifically put there by any central authority. That could have been the case before, but now it’s much more up to the intellectual community in question. Literary giants such as Dante Alighieri and Friedrich Schleiermacher were among the first modern leaders to deal with a central problem in hermeneutics called polysemy–basically, how to deal with such varying interpretations towards a body-of-work, especially one in great need or worthiness to be interpreted such as the Bible. Dante and Schleiermacher came up with various techniques and skills to structure interpretation; interpreting, to them, was a form of art. The most popular technique that was conceived was on the side of Dante, what he came up with is referred to as the four-fold method, constructed by four different layers of interpretation: literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical. The method is always based on the literal meaning of the passage but the higher levels leave room for allegory (interpretation). As remarked, the norm in contemporary teaching is that all prescribed readings are looked at as complete mysteries which need discovery and investigation–the students have the freedom of allegory, but they know the teacher will always be there to act as the basis towards their reading. As is with STEM, though one may know the application of the science, the teacher is always there to guide towards the true theoretical implications of the application. What I mostly wanted to illustrate is that Dante, Schleiermacher, and Fish (who we will discuss in the next passage) all think that interpretation is an art. This is not to say that they are similar in ideology, in fact they are very different. For Fish, however, literature was better analyzed through its situation within a reader-response paradigm, meaning that literature is only as much as can be interpreted and experienced by its audience.

Fish’s theory was not incredibly new, its beginnings can be seen in the description by Aristotle in Poetics that art should be seen as an experience, a drama. But as Dante and Schleiermacher would say that reading and interpretation is an art-in-itself, Fish would say that reading and interpretation is an art of which the grand value is in its effect on the audience. Moreover, what reader-response theory tries best to illustrate is the conventionalized behavior behind interpretation and reading. What is that conventionalized behavior? It’s up to the interpretive community, a term that we will deeply explain later, but to give another contemporary example, think of the techniques that are given to students, especially in the United States, on how to read–something so conventionalized that you never give it any attention. Close reading, the reading technique that is most popular in the United States, is something much more akin to the ideologies of Dante and Schleiermacher. Close reading is easily executed and easily taught, in correlation with the “easy-to-use” structure it was engineered around in the early 1900’s. It’s a quick and easy way to see illumination within a passage without having a lengthy background in literature. Fish is not interested in changing the technique of close reading for another that better suits reader-response but rather how reader-response works under the contemporary technique of close reading and any technique hereafter. Conventionalized behavior as stated by Fish can also be understood as competency, the competency to infer information from literature–”it was a dark, stormy, and gloomy night on the day of Halloween”–the literature is trying to foreshadow suspense, horror, drama, and downfall. To be duly noted, how would this read if someone from a culture that does not entertain the art of horror or suspense interpret this passage? Probably just a mere description of nature, right? Fish uses the term tacit knowledge to call these conventions, this is immediately interesting because tacit knowledge is a term borrowed from the philosophy of science. 

Further in ode to the philosophy of science, Fish used an experiment to validate his idea that interpretations are not solely based within the literature itself but rather through the experience and tacit knowledge the reader has. Fish was teaching a class in 1971 which surrounded the intersection between linguistics and literary theory, his students had been learning “how to identify Christian symbols and how to recognize typological patterns and how to move from the observation of these symbols and patterns to the specification of a poetic intention that was usually didactic or homiletic.”1 So before the class started he wrote the names: “Jacobs-Rosenbaum, Levin, Thorne, Hayes, and Ohman” on the blackboard vertically-stacked, he told the class that it was a poem, the cohort proceeded to analyze the poem for its typological rhetoric, structural patterns, and religious significance. Of course, this is very peculiar–Fish (though he gives benign reasons as to why he chose those names, none of which having to do with religion) gave his cohort basically gibberish, asking them to decipher a codex which did not have any original intention. Nevertheless, his class was able to churn out incredible and sufficient analysis of the so-called poem–Fish replicated this experiment with universities everywhere, getting the same result, validating his theory that interpretation lies within the interpretive community and does not need “original interpretation” in order to be comprehended. A valid counter-argument would be to ask: maybe it’s not a question if we can but if we should, appealing to the fact that there are many perceptions and interpretations, going back to polysemy. Think of popular practices such as peer review2 that basically reinforce the tacit knowledge of the community at hand. Though we might think of interpretation as personal, do we not learn our knowledge from our peers, the peers learning their knowledge from their teacher, their teachers giving out grades and comments, the teachers working under specific departments within specific institutions? Say a teacher wanted their students to write a paper arguing in favor of a one-party system and a student ended up writing about bioethics–though there might be interesting interactions in those disciplines, there must be a subscription to the conventions in order for anyone to make sense or get ahead. Even further, when Fish presented his list of names to his class, why did they not exceed the conventional boundaries of interpretation? Why was there no correlation of the names to, for example, the field of thermodynamics? It might not be so much a problem that there are too many varying interpretations, but rather that the reinforcement of interpretations creates a lack of originality, by no one's fault. There are even more interesting implications but I do not want to get on the fringe of postmodernism, as an interpretation of Fish can lead to theories surrounding the arbitrariness of models, structures, institutions, and knowledge–STEM especially is not fond of these implications. Instead, what we will take from Fish and apply to physics in the next section is interpretive communities, lack of originality, and conventionality.

The following short historical account into the interpretive climate of temperature during the lifespan of Marc-Auguste Pictet (1752-1825) will have the same message as I’ve already illustrated in the interpretive battle between Fish, Dante, and Schleiermacher. We will be analyzing Pictet’s experiment into radiant heat and his discourse into the findings with Louis Bertrand that led him to do a subsequent experiment into radiant cold. Experimentation in the field of radiant heat was sparse and undirected from the span of 1570 to 1770, appearing in many regions and languages, with the historical basis seeming to fall on the ancient Greek witnessing of the burning mirrors of Archimedes. The experiment that started the popular discourse into radiant heat had to do with the heat of a single coal igniting a combustible object solely on its reflection of the heat by mirror; by 1780 two important laws had been discovered: radiant heat is different from ordinary heat and its properties of convection and conduction and also that radiant heat was different from light but obeyed the same optical laws as light. Pictet’s teacher and mentor, Horace-Benedict de Saussure, was incredibly interested in meteorology and geology; when Saussure retired from his chair of philosophy appointment at academy at Geneva, he made sure that Pictet was appointed to the same position–both of them were a part of the Genevan intellectual community. Saussure researched the application of heat to metrology and geology, so it makes sense that Pictet’s chief work was his “Essay on Fire.” His essay was dedicated to the research on the “reflection, refraction, and absorption of radiant heat.” He conducted an experiment that finally validated assumptions that radiant heat was different from light while also obeying the same laws of light, a figure of his experiment will be shown below, in true Lacanian-esque manner.

It’s important to note that Pictet had plentiful suspicions of his own experiment, the logistics and the validity of the experiment, something he had plentiful exterior experience with. Before completing “Essay on Fire” he did research into radiant heat research being done in Florentine, Italy–the community there had lots of worries about the validity of their own experiments, especially when trying to conduct experiments on the radiation of cold, so they never came to any actual solid conclusions. Pictet debriefed the results of his experiment with his colleague at the Academy of Geneva, Louis Bertrand. Bertrand’s main field was in mathematics but he was also interested in electricity and thermodynamics, his novel question to Pictet was innocent to me, asking whether or not cold could be radiated–in Pictet’s diary he states: “I confidently replied no; that cold was only privation of heat, and that a negative could not be reflected. He requested me, however, to try the experiment, and he assisted me in it.” The experiment was structured exactly as in the figure above but this time the “Hot or Cold object” was a flask with snow in it, the thermometer of air immediately dropped several degrees until it eventually reached a steady temperature, Pictet poured nitrous acid on the flask and it lowered the temperature of the thermometer even more. How could this possibly be? How could something without heat possibly reflect any positive or negative temperature? To put it even more colloquially, how could a shadow cast light? To give a slight historical account of the interpretive community that Pictet was working in, the third edition of Britannica (1797) had interpretations such as: “‘if a body is heated, the cold ought to fly from it’’ or other quotes of general uncertainty such as: ‘‘to lay down certain principles established from the obvious phenomena of nature, and to reason from them fairly as far as we can.’’ I believe this situation to be quite similar to Fish’s class experiment, in relation to STEM one can think of the makeshift CO2 scrubber that the Apollo 13 crew had to make because of failure in their second oxygen tank, having to retaliate against the large amounts of incoming CO2, they built this a filter out of things on board of the Apollo 13 shuttle: duct tape, tube socks, spacesuit hoses, plastic bags, and more. Pictet’s experiment on the radiant nature of cold was groundbreaking and shocking to the field of thermodynamics, though it seems like in the field of physics, illumination is not always so quick. What followed were such statements: ‘‘Heat doesn’t really exist ( being a mere absence of cold), yet certain phenomena could fool us into thinking that it did.” And other statements that detailed the inconclusive nature of the results: “...and they appear equally conclusive in establishing the existence of radiant cold, as the other experiments are in establishing the existence of radiant heat”9 So, in grand essence, the point is made that since literature is all-encompassing, nothing can escape the grasps of the interpretive community. Not STEM or the Humanities. Conventions are spotted all throughout Pictet’s research, before and after, because of the interpretive community he was engaged in prior to talking with Bertrand, he thought that there was no possible way cold could be radiated. Even then, the interpretive community of figures such as John Murray (chemist from Edinburgh) were extremely suspicious of the findings, seeing as it completely went against his own ideology. 

I will provide a quick and interesting relation back to literary theory. Close reading is popular and has been for quite some time now. The effects on the academic community in the United States in following the technique of close reading for so is easily shown. Does it always have to be this way? Because of the invention of the internet, fast information, and institutions such as Canvas, should we change reading techniques? Literary theorist Katherine Hayles thinks so. In the field of Digital Humanities the remedy seems to be moving towards a technique called hyperreading, the technique to properly accommodate the change from reading physical texts to texts that are now primarily on screens. Hyperreading involves techniques such as skimming: “quickly reading over text for gist of its meaning; this is where the F-shaped pattern comes into play” and juxtaposing: “when you have two or more screens, tabs, or documents open at once and jump between them.” Do the characteristics of hyperreading: searching, filtering, skimming, hyperlinking, pecking, juxtaposing, and scanning provide a better structure to interpret texts than the technique of close reading? Does STEM literature require more close reading? Would STEM or the Humanities benefit more from hyperreading than the other? I hope that my attempt to sew together the dichotomy between STEM and the Humanities was useful and interesting. I personally used the discipline of physics for my paper because I find physics the most interesting of all the sciences, though I’m sure there are very interesting ties that can be made into fields such as psychology, data science, biology, chemistry, and so on. I’m sure there are also very interesting ties when the sciences are used through the techniques of critical theory, primarily reciprocal illumination. There are bound to be findings when reading physics research through a critical lens and there already are, for example, the application of the entropy law to natural resource consumption within economics.

[the-ghost-king]

Interestingly enough the fandom isn't always rational with their criticism. Take Percy and Rachel for instance. A perfectly healthy cute and functional relationship dynamic, but people really hated it because it got in the way of Percy/Annabeth.

I think it can also come down to the fact that not all situations are exactly equal if that makes sense. If you have a character dynamic in couple A, that often playfully bully of fight with eachother that's a different dynamic than relationship B, where one person has trauma resulting from bullying and the other parter behaves in roughly the same way as couple A do. In that case the behavior may be seen as inappropriate. Not that this example has anything to do with the ships at hand, but I think a long form meta examining the different paralleling issues from both relationships and their validity would be easier.

Also I haven't seen anything about about Nico/Will being called toxic. Yikes, what are people saying exactly, because I don't doubt a lot of people might be projecting unconcious bias.

Oh absolutely, I may seem young but I remember the Rachel vs Annabeth ship wars all too well... I do not want to go back 😅

The rest is under a read more though, I got a little carried away talking! Also this isn't my best post on the issue by far so please feel free to check out the tags I mention later on!

(AN: I use nblm alongside mlm in this post because some nblm individuals will consider their attraction to men as gay, or queer, while others will not and those individuals are often closely connected to mlm experiences and they also deserve to talk about their thoughts and feelings if they wish. I am aware nonbinary people are not a monolith and not all nonbinary people will categorize themselves or their attraction this way, it's up to nonbinary individuals reading this to determine where they fall on what)

As for Solangelo being toxic some of the conversations revolve around the ableist nature of the ship, this is definitely most obviously a dynamic in BoO, and it's a more than fair point about the ship I don't have anything negative to say there in the slightest!

(The above parallels with the idea that Will is introduced as a "healer character" for the "sad gay kid", which is a fair criticism as well but one that's often left rather one sided, because while that is true- if it's a way Nico likes being treated (watched closely for injuries and cared for) then it's not wrong, and in ToN Will is seen overstepping Nico's boundaries which causes a healthy argument about Will doing so and he stops, so if Nico doesn't tell Will "no" or some variation he's obviously not horribly uncomfortable with the situation, or from the way it would be interpreted alongside previous text, there's fair reason to think he likes it)

The thing with Solangelo I see often is "Nico is still processing trauma, and internalized homophobia and isn't ready for a relationship" which is a huge misunderstanding on how trauma and internalized homophobia work as a whole, because the experiences can be different for everyone. You can absolutely date someone while processing internalized homophobia, you may struggle with certain things but it is absolutely doable for some people. And trauma is such a varied thing, and it's not like he's solely relying on Will either, he is seeing Dionysus for therapy and getting the help he needs! Your life doesn't have to go on hold for therapy no matter how much trauma you are sorting through! (Not disclosing my medical history or anything but I have struggled with both things and my life didn't stop for me to deal with them, I made new friends, went on dates, etc- it is possible depending on the person so the very narrow view of "this is unhealthy" and "this is impossible" rubs me wrong when it's treated as fact over opinion, because it's an opinion).

There's also constant discussions about how fandom (in current) fetishizes both Nico and Will, which I, and other mlm and nblm have spoken our own thoughts on multiple times to be largely ignored by the biggest perpetrators of this "they're overly fetishized narrative". There's also fairly consistent discussion of how fandom treats Nico and reduces him to uwu small gay boy, which more often than not seems to mean "effeminate" rather than actually harmful stereotyping (yes queer men are allowed to be "girly" especially considering there is some canon text that could be interpreted with that meaning, if there wasn't a plausible way to determine canon that way I wouldn't care if people were going after others feminizing Nico a bit- but the issue is again, fact and feeling aren't the same and fandom seem to conflate the two rather often).

(Some of that ties into nonbinary Nico head canons which are common as of current, and that argument quickly becomes transphobic is people don't watch themselves... Even without bringing nonbinary Nico into the equation, headcanoning Nico as femme isn't bad or wrong, and to say otherwise becomes gender policing which is bad).

There's also this weird obsession with there being a "correct way" to ship mlm ships (specifically solangelo), which when considering it's not mlm or nblm saying those things, it becomes really uncomfortable. Especially because the wording of some posts is less "hey this is homophobic" and comes off more like people are more upset at seeing an mlm couple than at the fact that they're being shipped poorly.

All of this in combination with the constant, talking over of queer guys (specifically mlm and nblm) comes off really messed up, and yeah homophobic.

It's not something that can be pinned down to one specific thing but rather a series of smaller microagressions (which in sure most of are intended in good faith but are being filled with subconscious bias) that build up over time- which is why my concern is that solangelo is facing harsher criticism/different treatment that percabeth simply for being a queer ship.

I can't be 100% sure on that like I said, because that's something that is hard to gain tangible evidence for, or maybe even impossible :/

If there wasn't so many other small things going on alongside the harsher criticism of solangelo, I would honestly just ignore it... But the weird policing of "how to ship solangelo" while proclaiming it's "overly fetishized" all while speaking over a not insignificant number of mlm and nblm who have agreed with certain opinions, or taken time to write their own (+ some of the rhetoric that can be found on he blogs of people commonly expressing these opinions) is super uncomfortable and definitely homophobic... Even if they were treating the ship kind of weird, but treating the queer guys talking about it well and actually listening (because the current solangelo fandom probably has the highest proportion of queer guys in comparison to any other fandom I've been in with an mlm ship as of right now) I wouldn't be so bothered... But sadly that's not the case..

(I'd also like to note out of my posts criticizing the current conversations happening around the issue my post saying "listen to mlm voices" got a lot more notes than some of the other ones, which I can't say is specifically anything, because like solangelo perhaps being treated unfairly to percabeth, I am willing to acknowledge there might not be an issue- but it's weird how often mlm and nblm's posts on "listen to us" will be uplifted but never any actual criticism... Just a thought)

I detail things a little closer and in more detail in some of my posts tagged #fandom homophobia, #mlm fetishism, and #gender policing in fandom, it's not a full or comprehensive list (I've only really started speaking up in the last month or so), and it is largely solangelo specific. However I am always interested in listening to the voices of other queer guys about the issues and hearing out their thoughts as well (people aren't a monolith and I'm interested in trying to be as nuanced as possible!) and I acknowledge that although I am mlm and am going to be a little better at recognizing issues and calling them out (although I like every person am not perfect of course)

So yeah! That's a bit of the current ongoings, again not a full comprehensive list, and definitely not my best explanation ever but I think the point gets across well enough? Definitely check out my other tags if you're interested in more, there's also definitely more posts I need to make on some of the things I've seen (maybe not all of them so solangelo fandom specific, and maybe some of them even more solangelo fandom specific) but it's rather slow work in progress!

[enderspawn]

It's alright if u don't wanna answer this cuz this argument gets people really riled up but do you think c!Techno is a tyrant or nah?

Cuz many c!techno apologists argue that he isn't just cuz he's an anarchist but I've also read a lot of essays that go against it and it'd be really interesting to see ur opinion on this

i think he, in some contexts, can most definitely be called tyrannical, yes. a tyrant? no.

to avoid spamming ppl w discourse we've all def heard before (and bc this ended up MASSIVE (like 2.3k ish), but fairly in depth bc i didnt wanna speak out of bad faith and wanted to be EXPLICTLY clear-- oops), the rest will be under readmore

so heres the thing i want to preface: i used to really LOVE c!techno. i joined beginning of s2, right when exile started, and he was arguably my favorite character. since then though i've fallen out with him a LOT, to the point i almost... actively despite him at times (though mainly in a toxic kind of way which i can acknowledge is flawed).

in short, his actions started to speak louder than his words and i lost investment in his personal character struggles because of the actions he took (doomsday was my breaking point. i get feeling angry and betrayed, as well as seeking revenge against lmanberg, but his actions went too far for me to CARE and it hurt so many more characters as well.)

so when i speak, i come from a place of disliking him but also somewhat understanding the position c!techno apologists come from: i used to be one of them myself.

NOW, do i think he's a tyrant? no. for reference in my analysis, i try to look up the definition of terms to make sure they are utilized properly. while "tyranny" and "tyrannical" can have multiple uses, tyrant itself is a more specific term. to combine the top two definitions, a tyrant is referring to "an extremely oppressive, unjust, or cruel absolute ruler (who governs without restrictions, especially one who seized power illegally.)"

techno's position as an anarchist, imo, DOES indeed make him unable to be a tyrant. tyrants are rulers with very clear power over others from a structural way. anarchists are about the lack of structure or power over others and instead viewing the people around you as equals in power.

in forming the syndicate, they very explicitly worked to not designate a leader and instead make it so that no one would have any power over the others systemically. techno may have taken a integral role, yes, but it doesn't make him suddenly "the leader", its a role that wouldve had to be filled by someone (even if it was democratic to decide who to invite, they'd need someone to hand over the invite itself yknow? like no matter WHAT there needed to be A ROLE)

one could argue that he IS a leader in the shadow hierarchy of the syndicate (which, yes, is a real and professional term used in management courses despite sounding like it comes from a 4kids yugioh dub) in that everyone CONSIDERS and looks to him a leader without him having any actual structural basis behind it, but to argue that allows him to be a tyrant is in bad faith i believe. especially because to the people he would be "ruling", he ISNT oppressive, unjust, or cruel. they are his friends and support network and critical for a lot of his personal development (since feelings of betrayal and trust issues are critical to his character and why he acts the way he does). I wish we were able to SEE this develop more, but oh well.

but like i said: tyrant is fairly specific in definition. TYRANNY, and thus TYRANNICAL are not as limited. I've discussed their definitions here. originally, i made that post because i was angry at a take i had seen that claimed that, like you said, because techno was an anarchist and not part of any government or leadership position, he couldn't be tyrannical. to which i heartily disagree.

for something to be tyrannical, they simply must have an overarching/oppressive power over someone or something. it would not be inaccurate if i were to say that something is "under the tyranny" of a concept, because what it means is that something is under the power of another thing/concept. you can frankly call anything tyranny if it is widespread/overarching and you don't like it. mask mandates? tyranny, its forcing me to act in "rigorous condition". hell, theres even such things as tyranny of the majority in which people agree too much on one thing and it gives them unfair power or tyranny of the minority where people with minority opinions have too much power (thats a very grossly oversimplified definition of both, but it covers the base idea well enough for my point)

the point im making above isnt meant to be taken as "anything can be worked to be defined as tyranny thus it is a meaningless claim", it is that tyranny (and again, thus tyrannical) are very open and nonrestrictive terms.

to make it easier to define, alongside the definitions provided i want to add an explicit clause that is (imo) implied in the original definition: tyranny is... well, bad. that is to say if someone has power over a group but literally everyone is fine with it and agrees to it, its not tyranny. thats just a group of people getting along and one happens to have power over another. a leader does NOT equal a tyrant (as discussed above), so leadership should not be equated with tyranny.

thus as an example: wilbur acting as president (before the election) may have been "unelected" with power over his citizens, but no one was upset with that power. thus, he is not a tyrant and not acting tyrannically (as well as the fact his power was, arguably, NOT rigourous or absolute but thats another topic for another time). SCHLATT however IS a tyrant, as his power was absolute (he did not consult his cabinet) and forced people to comply instead of them complying willingly, thus he was acting tyrannically.

now to finally get to the damn point of this essay: where does c!techno lie? honest answer? it depends slightly on your perspective, but it depends a LOT on the future of the syndicate.

techno is incredibly clear in his goals: no governments, no corruption. in fighting with pogtopia, he is actively working to topple a tyranny-- he isn't tyrannical for doing that.

when he strikes out on nov 16th, it is because he opposes them forming a new government. when they oppose him and disagree, he launches an attack against them. is this tyranny? maybe, but probably not. he IS trying to impose his own physical strength and power (as well as his resources) over the others to stop them from doing what HE doesn't want them to do.

however its more nuanced than that:

1. hes lashing out emotionally as well as politically. he feels betrayed by those he trusted and he believed that they would destroy the government then go (i'm ignoring any debates on if he did or did not know that they planned another government, though it is a source of debate). but typically idk about you but i dont call tyranny for someone fighting with another person.

2. he also may be acting with good intent again, in HIS EYES. if tubbo was part of manburg, whos to say he wont be just as bad? he, in his pov, is likely trying to stop another tyrant before they rise.

3. and finally, and tbh the most damning from any perspective: he gives up. he quickly leaves then RETIRES without intent to try and attack again until he is later provoked. tyranny is defined by it not just being power, but power being USED. if he doesn't use his power to try and impose any will, then he's not tyrannical.

Doomsday I am also not going to touch very in depth on for much of the same reasons. My answer is again a "maybe", depending on the weight you personally place on each issue:

1. he's lashing out as revenge for the butcher army and as revenge against tommy for "betraying" him (though this one we explicitly know he was ignoring the fact tommy did not want to go through with it, however he still did trust and respect tommy regardless so his feelings are understandable anyway)

2. he sees new lmanberg as corrupt and tyrannical (which is undeniable: house arrest for noncompliance, exile without counsel, execution without trial, etc), and thus obligated to destroy it

but also, theres the implicit understanding he's doing this to send a message: do not form a government, or else. its a display of force that also works to warn others unless they want a similar fate. phil even explicitly states that he is doing so to send that message, so one could assume techno is doing the same alongside his personal reasoning listed above.

what i just described is the use of a oppressive and harsh (physical) power in order to gain compliance from people (that compliance being 'not making a government'). does that sound familiar? exactly. it follows the definition(s) of tyranny given previously. technoblade is acting in a way that is, by very definition, tyrannical.

so the debate shifts: is he valid in doing so because he is trying to PREVENT corruption and tyranny. like i said, new lmanberg was undeniably corrupt at points. i held nothing against techno for trying to topple manburg, so does that apply to new lmanberg as well? short answer: i dont know. it depends on your specific opinion of what is acceptable. its like the paradox of tolerance: to have a truly tolerant society, you have to be intolerant of intolerance. to have a truly non-tyrannical society, do you need to have a tyranny enforcing it?

personally (and bc im a lmanberg loyalist /hj) i say it is. regardless of the corruption of new lmanberg, they are also giving a threat to EVERYONE. even those who are innocent, they are presented with the exact same threat and rule set: if you make a government, you will be destroyed.

(which, small divergence here, is part of why debating c!techno is so frustrating. so many times you end up hitting a "well it depends on your political views" situation and there ISNT a correct answer there. im here to analyze characters for fun, not debate political theory)

so: the syndicate then. this is where this debate really "took off" and i think its due to one very specific miscommunication about its goals and plans. the syndicate, upon formation, declares itself to stand against corruption and tyranny. when they are found, the syndicate would work to destroy it. so heres the golden question: what do THEY define as corruption and tyranny? if you were to go off c!techno's previous statements, seemingly "any government" is a valid answer. however, he also states he's fine with people just being in groups together hanging together.

what then DEFINES A GOVERNMENT for them? what lines do they have to sort out what does "deserve to be destroyed" and what does "deserve to exist freely"

this is a hypothetical i like to post when it comes to syndicate discourse:

i have a group of people. lets say 5 or so for example. they all live together and build together. any decisions made that would impact the entire group they make together and they must have a unanimous agreement in order to proceed, but otherwise they are free to be their own people and do their own thing. when you ask them, they tell you they are their own nation and they have a very clearly defined government: they are a direct democracy. does the syndicate have an obligation to attack?

there is absolutely no hierarchy present. there is no corruption present. but, they ARE indeed a government. is that then inherently negative? my answer is fuck no (see the whole "difference between a tyrant and a leader" thing above).

but THATS where the issue of this discourse LIES. in some people's eyes, the answer to that is YES. techno's made it clear "no government" is his personal view, but does that spread to the syndicate as a whole? do they act preemptively in case it DOES become corrupt? is it inherently corrupt because its a government, regardless of how it is ruled? the fact of the matter is because of how little we've seen the syndicate work as a SYNDICATE, we don't know that answer. so we're left to debate and speculate HOW they would act.

if the syndicate were to let that government exist, then they are not tyrannical. they are showing that they are working to stop tyranny and corruption, just like in pogtopia again.

if the syndicate were to destroy/attack that government, then they are tyrannical. simple as that. they are enforcing a rule of their own creation without any nuance or flexibility under the threat of absolute destruction.

miscommunication in debates comes, in my opinion, in the above. of course theres more points of nuance. for example:

would the syndicate allow a government like i had described with early lmanberg, where there is an established hierarchy but everyone in the country consents to said leadership? on one hand, there is no tyranny or corruption present which is what they are trying to work against. on the other hand, theres more a possibility of it occuring. perhaps they'd find a middle road between the two binary options of "leave or destroy" i am presenting, such as checking in occasionally to ensure no corruption occurs.

but if they were to destroy it without, for lack of a better word, "giving it a chance" they would be, in my opinion, tyrannical. they would be going aginst their words of opposing corruption and instead abusing their power to gain compliance.

your/others opinions may differ, again it depends on if you see it as worth it to possibly stop future tyranny or if a hierarchy is INHERENTLY a negative thing.

part of the reason so many blog gave up this debate, beyond not getting very clear answers for the syndicate, is because of the nuance present. there. is. no. right. answer. every single person will view it differently, because there is no universally agreed upon truth of right or wrong here. BUT, i hope this helps shed some light on the discussion and my thoughts on it

[eventual-ghoste]

TOG rambling

Hello! This post has to do with Andy and some revelations at the end of Force Multiplied. Spoilers I give aren’t super specific but they’re there, and I can’t promise they won’t bite.

This is also in response to a TOG discord question I couldn’t stop thinking about, regarding Andy’s history as compared to Nicky’s, as posited by Em | salzundhonig:

But Nicky's past as a crusader and his growth from his past was well received, surely that'll be the same with Andy right?

I apologize if these ramblings sound like a rant but I swear my intentions are in the spirit of debate/discourse, and they are not an attack on any individuals.

The TL;DR is: Andy has work to do. Hopefully Hollywood and Rucka don’t fuck that up.

Feel free to check/correct/call me out if I’ve misspoke anywhere here (I realize I still have a lot to learn) but IMHO, I don’t think a semblance of Andy’s growth will be well received. Or, at least, I’m not so certain it should be because, in the comics, I genuinely don’t think Andy has grown. At the end of Force Multiplied, she still defends her actions with the “this is how I grew up” argument, and says it was “a long time ago,” and as much as I love love LOVE Andromache the Scythian for her badassery and how she’s a vision of female empowerment, I can’t help but think about how I hear those words all the time from people defending themselves against racist and/or sexist comments from so-called bygone eras.

Wanna know a sad difference between those people and our beloved Andy? They apologize for what they’ve done, or who they were. As hollow as the words will sound, however unforgivable their actions, however self-serving the apology will be— Those Asshats apologize. Comic!Andy never does, not even when confronted by Nile, an African American woman who likely descends from slaves, and has undoubtedly experienced racism and discrimination on a regular basis. It’s been thousands of years and Andy doesn’t even know how to say sorry (if she ever does, kudos to whoever finds a timestamp/panel, and let me know!). Instead, Andy buries the truth of her actions with a load of justifications to the point that she becomes self-deprecating, calling herself “vermin,” concluding she’s no better than the apathetic, selfish, evil POS they hunt. She may have spent the past millennia with TOG, trying to make things right but then—

But then she gives up. She’s tired. She resigns because she doesn’t have it in her anymore to fight the injustice she once willingly and self-servingly participated in. So, on top of being incapable of apology, Andy also doesn’t vow to do better. She doesn’t accede to change.

If there is one reason for why “The Old Guard” is a fucking absolutely shitty title, is that it refers to people who refuse to accept new ideas and progress. We are in a fandom that has four canonically queer characters, three people of color, and two female leads! Maybe the irony is intentional but damn, why is it that Andy, PROTAGONIST #1, hasn’t completely caught up with the program?

And that brings me to why I think Andy’s reckoning will not be on the same level as Nicky’s. Because as popular as Kaysanova is, neither Nicky or Joe are the main protagonists of TOG.

We don’t follow Nicky or Joe (or Booker) into scenes. The men are strictly back-at-the-ranch, supporting characters. We follow Andy or Nile (who also have the most screen time, I believe, but fact-check me). Filmically speaking, we ought to value them with a measure of precedence. Their words and actions matter the most, especially Andy’s by nature of how everyone looks to her for guidance.

So, with all that in mind: How does one reconcile a beloved protagonist with a despicable past in slavery, of all things? In the wake of an international racial reckoning, how is a celebrated, white South African actress going to fulfill that role? How is production going to balance fantasy with reality? How are Rucka and other involved writers (Theron, Prince-Bythewood?) going to alter the original IP, while retaining the nuance of this moral quandry?

Forgive me for the overkill but: How is it going to happen?

I’m well aware that my thoughts are going down a rabbit hole, and I am definitely overthinking this, but as somebody who’s genuinely curious about whether Victoria Mahoney and the rest of the TOG crew will have the guts to confront the issue head-on, or if they’ll take the easy way out. Excise the bits that no one wants to talk about, much less watch in a feel-good film that TOG has become for many fans.

Whatever production ends up doing, I hope that 2O2G doesn’t end on a cliffhanging “pity Andromache” note because, damn, I’m gonna feel real uncomfortable scrolling through fandom posts, reading people defending slavery and giving the same “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” spiel, in order to protect a fictional character played by a conventionally-attractive cis heterosexual white woman.

(Also: If the past is so different from the present, why are there still calls for social justice? Why do ALL industries still lack diverse and equitable representation?)

Now, this is where I’ll go back to the original question and say: While I think Nicky functions well as an example for change/growth/redemption, I don’t think his change serves as a good comparison to Andy’s. I say this, even while I’m aware of double standards in gender, and even between the reception of gay characters vs lesbian characters vs etc. (re: I’m open to critique).

My line of thought stems from the fact that, canonically, Nicky always had Joe. The two have seemingly been inseparable from the moment they first killed each other. It’s likely that Joe would check Nicky whenever he said or did something wrong and offensive, and perhaps this symbiosis was mutual.

(I also have a feeling that many people easily disregarded the Christian/Muslim conflict because A) lack of knowledge in BOTH religions and B) the onscreen couple appear very much in love, especially when one is giving a beautiful monologue on the nature of their relationship. When we meet Joe and Nicky, we meet them at their best. Shout-out to interfaith couples who know more about this than my single (and secular) ass does, and might have more to say about this.)

On the other hand: Andy never had someone who was like how Joe was for Nicky. No one ever calls out Andy because A) she’s the oldest, B) she’s the lead, and C) her business card says ANDROMACHE OF SCYTHIA, WAR GOD. Yeah, she had Quynh/Noriko but— at the risk of yelling at Rucka for vilifying a queer woman of color (or praising him for not leaning on the stereotype of Asian passivity? idk, anyone got thoughts on this?)— Noriko is clearly not encouraging good behavior. Neither will Quynh if Netflix lets 2O2G be as faithful to the comics as TOG1 was.

Which means the Law 282 conversation might be…unavoidable? Somewhere along the line, we still end up in the hotel room with Andy, on the floor, pleading for her crew to not abandon her, even though she is the one who abandoned their cause.

This sets up a circumstance in which Fade Away might be spent trying to redeem Andy/Charlize Theron, bring her back to the “good side,” teaching her to be better— thereby highlighting her experience and “salvation,” rather than making a point of her past, and the reality of her actions. In other words, a “pity the white woman” fest.

(Because I’m crossing my fingers that TOG production/Netflix know better) In an effort to prevent that from happening, I wonder if Rucka will combine Force Multiplied with Fade Away for the 2O2G script. Given the series’ track record, I think it is feasible that FA’s release coincides with 2O2G’s, and that it finally resolves Andy. Whether by revitalizing her energy as a do-some-gooder, or finalizing her vulnerability by putting her 6,000 years to rest, thus handing off the reigns to Nile and a new generation of leadership.

The last thing I want to leave off with is: I don’t hate Andy. It’s a credit to Rucka and fellow writers (from film and fandom) that I don’t.

I might not love her character as enthusiastically as I used to, but that doesn’t mean I’m not amazed by her creation. She’s a female lead whose sexuality is not exploited by the male gaze; whose emotional vulnerability is not considered a hindrance to, nor an explanation for, her battle prowess; and whose unabashed queerness is not reinforced by cookie cutter stereotypes. Andromache the Scythian is AMAZING.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to excuse or ignore her most glaring and contemptible flaw. More than anything, I’d love to sweep her past under the carpet so that 2O2G can be problem-free. Like many people, I just want to enjoy a movie without getting triggered.

I want to see Quynh and Andy kiss and make up. I want to see Joe rocking Those Shorts, and a cheeky shot of Nicky appreciating his ass. I want to see Nile welcoming Booker back to the family again. Some form of group therapy would be chef’s kiss.

But something about glossing over/removing slavery from Andy’s narrative reeks of dishonesty, and reminds me that the (Hollywood) movie industry is full of people who do not want to be tainted with negative perceptions. Understandably, appearances are their livelihood— but that particular truth is something they still have to reckon with.

[mentalisttraceur-software]

Cooperative Multitasking

An almost stream-of-consciousness ramble of something I was thinking about today.

By Default, Maybe Even Mandatory

The more I think about writing correct code, the more I feel like preemptive multitasking as the norm was a mistake. That operating systems should have been written from the ground up to assume that all good and correct software yields execution back to the scheduler every once in a while. That computer science education and software development tradecraft should teach and presume that cooperative multitasking is the only multitasking available or acceptable.

Preemption for the Uncooperative

Obviously robust systems must have preemption capability, in order to avoid denial-of-service from code which never yields control. So systems would still need the foundation of preemptive multitasking, and processes which do not cooperatively multitask would need to be preempted. The temptation which many operating systems followed is to just make this the norm - anything can be preempted at any time, thus your guarantees against race conditions are weak at best and every piece of the system has to do more work just to keep things sane in the face of multitasking.

But I'm almost ready to say that programs which don't yield control for too long should probably just get killed, ignored, presumed dead or compromised, timed out, invalidated, be stripped of any resources and locks they hold, and so on. At the operating system level, at higher levels of how you design your multiprocessing and distributed systems, in your business logic, at all levels.

Given enough time, all conceivable execution delays and communication partitions which could cause things to not get back to you soon enough to not be a problem will happen. We can either

write code on systems which force us to deal with it thoroughly and from the ground up, across our entire trade and industry and culture, which is cumulatively easier to get right once everyone knows and follows the patterns, or

we can keep living in a sea of code and systems overwhelmingly saturated with an incomprehensibly inconceivably large number of concurrency and latency problems just waiting to happen.

All You Need (Probably... I Just Make Shit Up On The Internet)

Obviously almost everything is in place already, we're just not using it to build systems which are consistently honest, helpfully explicit, and manageably controlled about where concurrency can happen.

In a typical modern operating system, when you call a system call, or at least certain system calls which tend to inherently entail delays and thus are natural points for scheduling or cancellation, you are yielding execution to the kernel. Now the kernel has an opportunity to go do something else, schedule another program, deliver a signal to your program or kill your program with a signal, and so on. The kernel only preempts your process if you don't call into a system call for long enough. Otherwise you're being cooperative. And in the real world, this is how lots of programs actually play. They don't have to be written to cooperatively multitask to do it, they just have to do operations which are natural scheduling or cancellation points, which most program do often enough on their own, because most programs are interacting with the outside world, not slamming the CPU with raw self-contained computation long enough to use up their time slot.

So what about the program that do want to hog the CPU longer than their time slot?

Well, we have the ability to trivially implement a "yield control if something else is waiting" operation which would have effectively zero overhead if it's not time to yield (at most a handful of machine instructions with one branch, and if you're pipelined and branch prediction matters, that branch can be predicted as taking the "no need to yield" path for hot loops and other pure computing logic, which is the only situation where the overhead of that check and branch prediction is actually a problem).

To me that seems like the only remaining primitive the OS kernel needs to provide to user-space to make this work. And it's trivial! Let's assume we're using a memory location for generality, though this could be optimized all the way to the hardware, with a dedicated CPU flag or register and exposed in the instruction set. Anyway, in the in-memory version, the simplest form is a fixed address on systems with an MMU and virtual memory, or perhaps it is provided by the kernel to the process during initialization, to be compatible with ASLR and hardware without an MMU. When the process starts up, the kernel sets the value at that address to zero. When it's getting close to the time when the scheduler would want to preempt the process, the kernel writes one at that address.

(Internally, on modern hardware with all cores busy, flipping the value at this address from zero to one might have to be implemented as a momentary preemption of user-space by kernel-space code. So you can see where the temptation comes from! A working multitasking kernel which does not depend on cooperative multitasking must have all the building blocks necessary for preemptive multitasking, and it is so natural to just let user-space processes partake in concurrency seemingly "for free" - it took humanity half a century of experience to get to this point where we're starting to realize that this is actually detrimental on the whole.)

Now, whenever the process wants to know if it should yield, it reads the value at this address. Is it still zero? You got enough time left to do some work before checking again. Is it anything else? Time to yield - if you checked reasonably often, you've still got ample time to go directly to yielding execution to the scheduler. Did you overwrite it, or take too long to check? That sounds like a you problem, if you don't yield often enough, your process gets preempted, but then it's just killed.

Notice that you're not being asked to gracefully shut down or pause or clean up anything. This isn't some situation where you gotta scramble to flush buffers, save state to disk, commit transactions, or anything like that. You're just being told its time to yield to the scheduler, and if you obey it is exactly the same situation that in a normal preemptive multitasking system would just happen automatically, without warning, unpredictably, possibly between literally any two machine instructions. But incidentally, in a lot of situations, this would probably make it easier to set up systems where you can have enough time to do those things, and fewer possible ways for those things to be interrupted or delayed or half-finished.

So we all gain the profound benefit of being able to pick or at least see where in our code concurrency can slide in and change the state of the world out from under us or give us an out-of-band signal like a cancellation.

And the price is that those of us who write low-level code which does nothing but raw CPU operations for longer than the time slot our process gets have to add an explicit `yield_to_the_scheduler()` call - and if it really really doesn't matter, then just spam it in enough places to be safe. Which is fine because we just established that it's going to be nearly zero-overhead unless you actually have to yield to the scheduler anyway.

Notably, some operating systems already have everything in place to do this. Linux, for example, writes the current time into an address which the process can read and knows about, so the process doesn't need to pay system call context-switching overhead every time it needs the time. In fact, one possible idea to explore for improving my extremely minimal suggestion is that instead of having the memory location work as a boolean, have it contain a deadline.

Beyond that, the structured concurrency people have basically figured out the big picture of how most of this looks for most code - you have operations which are explicitly points where something else could be scheduled or you could be cancelled. For simplicity and human friendliness you probably combine those two concepts together. When we restrict ourselves to languages and primitives where each operation is either explicitly a place where multitasking can be relevant to or intrude on our logic, or a place where there are definitely no relevant concurrency concerns, we can deal with concurrency better.

Exhausting Nuance

There is only one tricky part here. The reason that preemptive multitasking is so useful is that not all concurrency is equally relevant to whatever you're doing. Most of the time, there are specific changes to the state of the world which matter to our logic, and all other changes which might happen don't matter.

Preemptive multitasking kinda takes the gamble that most systems are heavily concurrent but most parts have no reason to care about what the other parts are doing. They are not obviously harmed by the fact that anything could happen between or during any operation they do, because nothing that could happen matters, and so those programs strictly benefit from magical invasive multitasking permeating them with an infinity of possible preemptions.

For example, a typical `sed` invocation which reads from standard input and writes to standard output doesn't care about anything. In between a bunch of pure CPU operations on memory, it will read and it will write, and either those operations succeed, or one of those operations fails and it tries to call another write to standard error with an error message, and then no matter what happens, it will try to exit. Files on the system can change and it doesn't care. If the file it was reading from is truncated while `sed` was reading it, to `sed` it's no different than as if that file always ended there. It could get frozen with a SIGSTOP and eternities could pass, the file it was reading from could get overwritten, and when resumed it would just read from the offset it left off, no different than as if that file always had those contents back when `sed` started. The file it is writing to could be overwritten many times, and `sed` doesn't care - it just writes, and either it's writing in ”append" mode, or it's writing at whatever offset it is currently pointing at and maybe it wins because it's the last write or maybe it gets overwritten and it doesn't notice. `sed` could be started on Linux, have a debugger attached to it, its entire memory could be dynamically copied into another dummy process frozen with a debugger attached, possibly on another computer running a different OS with a compatibility layer for Linux, and then it can be resumed, and it doesn't care.

Notably, in some of those cases, the program which called `sed` to do a specific job probably does care a lot about some of those possibilities.

I, and to some extent structured concurrency, takes a somewhat reductionistic view that conflates all concurrency together. You do an operation and it's either asynchronous or not. You run an asynchronous operation, and anything else that's asynchronous might happen. And in structured concurrency you are never ever allowed to ignore that something is concurrent. You have no choice but to write code which is aware of all scheduling and cancellation points which it is subject to.

Maybe that's fine. Maybe...

everyone should be forced to be aware when they are doing an operation during which anything could asynchronously change,

all code which does too much should be forced to do an asynchronous yield to the scheduler every once in a while,

because these two requirements together would pressure code to cleanly split its pure logic from it impure logic, and to split its pure logic into small chunks of work which the caller can call individually.

This feels onerous to me, but I also suspect that for most problems, the best solution probably naturally meets these requirements. Possibly for all problems. At least for a sufficiently thorough definition of "best", which includes things like "made up of piece of code which are small, composable, reusable, and easy to test, easy to validate and audit, easy to understand in isolation, easy to combine, and easy to change" and "robust against all sorts of real-world problems, including edge cases".

But,

notably my definition of "best" does not include practical things like "could be created or maybe even fully appreciated or maybe even used correctly by a typical fungible software developer, or maybe even by any minds who can actually reliably get things done instead of getting stuck for entire days thinking about the design of everything", and

this design space is at least slightly too big for my thinking limits - I don't think I can yet simultaneously weigh all the tradeoffs in my head against each other, or even see far enough to find all the tradeoffs or feel their full weights.

[weyassinebentalb]

Gaza Conflict Stokes 'Identity Crisis' for Young American Jews

Dan Kleinman does not know quite how to feel.

As a child in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, he was taught to revere Israel as the protector of Jews everywhere, the “Jewish superman who would come out of the sky to save us” when things got bad, he said.

It was a refuge in his mind when white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanted “Jews will not replace us,” or kids in college grabbed his shirt, mimicking a “South Park” episode to steal his “Jew gold.”

But his feelings have grown muddier as he has gotten older, especially now as he watches violence unfold in Israel and Gaza. His moral compass tells him to help the Palestinians, but he cannot shake an ingrained paranoia every time he hears someone make anti-Israel statements.

“It is an identity crisis,” Kleinman, 33, said. “Very small in comparison to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, but it is still something very strange and weird.”

As the violence escalates in the Middle East, turmoil of a different kind is growing across the Atlantic. Many young American Jews are confronting the region’s long-standing strife in a very different context, with very different pressures, from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

The Israel of their lifetime has been powerful, no longer appearing to some to be under constant existential threat. The violence comes after a year when mass protests across the United States have changed how many Americans see issues of racial and social justice. The pro-Palestinian position has become more common, with prominent progressive members of Congress offering impassioned speeches in defense of the Palestinians on the House floor. At the same time, reports of anti-Semitism are rising across the country.

Divides between some American Jews and Israel’s right-wing government have been growing for more than a decade, but under the Trump administration those fractures that many hoped would heal became a crevasse. Politics in Israel have also remained fraught, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-tenured government forged allegiances with Washington. For young people who came of age during the Trump years, political polarization over the issue only deepened.

Many Jews in America remain unreservedly supportive of Israel and its government. Still, the events of recent weeks have left some families struggling to navigate both the crisis abroad and the wide-ranging response from American Jews at home. What is at stake is not just geopolitical, but deeply personal. Fractures are intensifying along lines of age, observance and partisan affiliation.

In suburban Livingston, New Jersey, Meara Ashtivker, 38, has been afraid for her father-in-law in Israel, who has a disability and is not able to rush to the stairwell to shelter when he hears the air-raid sirens. She is also scared as she sees people in her progressive circles suddenly seem anti-Israel and anti-Jewish, she said.

Ashtivker, whose husband is Israeli, said she loved and supported Israel, even when she did not always agree with the government and its actions.

“It’s really hard being an American Jew right now,” she said. “It is exhausting and scary.”

Some young, liberal Jewish activists have found common cause with Black Lives Matter, which explicitly advocates for Palestinian liberation, concerning others who see that allegiance as anti-Semitic.

The recent turmoil is the first major outbreak of violence in Israel and Gaza for which Aviva Davis, who graduated this spring from Brandeis University, has been “socially conscious.”

“I’m on a search for the truth, but what’s the truth when everyone has a different way of looking at things?” Davis said.

Alyssa Rubin, 26, who volunteers in Boston with IfNotNow, a network of Jewish activists who want to end Jewish American support for Israeli occupation, has found protesting for the Palestinian cause to be its own form of religious observance.

She said she and her 89-year-old grandfather ultimately both want the same thing, Jewish safety. But “he is really entrenched in this narrative that the only way we can be safe is by having a country,” she said, while her generation has seen that “the inequality has become more exacerbated.”

In the protest movements last summer, “a whole new wave of people were really primed to see the connection and understand racism more explicitly,” she said, “understanding the ways racism plays out here, and then looking at Israel/Palestine and realizing it is the exact same system.”

But that comparison is exactly what worries many other American Jews, who say the history of white American slaveholders is not the correct frame for viewing the Israeli government or the global Jewish experience of oppression.

At Temple Concord, a Reform synagogue in Syracuse, New York, teenager after teenager started calling Rabbi Daniel Fellman last week, wondering how to process seeing Black Lives Matter activists they marched with last summer attack Israel as “an apartheid state.”

“The reaction today is different because of what has occurred with the past year, year and a half, here,” Fellman said. “As a Jewish community, we are looking at it through slightly different eyes.”

Nearby at Sha’arei Torah Orthodox Congregation of Syracuse, teenagers were reflecting on their visits to Israel and on their family in the region.

“They see it as Hamas being a terrorist organization that is shooting missiles onto civilian areas,” Rabbi Evan Shore said. “They can’t understand why the world seems to be supporting terrorism over Israel.”

In Colorado, a high school senior at Denver Jewish Day School said he was frustrated at the lack of nuance in the public conversation. When his social media apps filled with pro-Palestinian memes last week, slogans like “From the river to the sea” and “Zionism is a call for an apartheid state,” he deactivated his accounts.

“The conversation is so unproductive, and so aggressive, that it really stresses you out,” Jonas Rosenthal, 18, said. “I don’t think that using that message is helpful for convincing the Israelis to stop bombing Gaza.”

Compared with their elders, younger American Jews are overrepresented on the ends of the religious affiliation spectrum: a higher share are secular, and a higher share are Orthodox.

Ari Hart, 39, an Orthodox rabbi in Skokie, Illinois, has accepted the fact that his Zionism makes him unwelcome in some activist spaces where he would otherwise be comfortable. College students in his congregation are awakening to that same tension, he said. “You go to a college campus and want to get involved in anti-racism or social justice work, but if you support the state of Israel, you’re the problem,” he said.

Hart sees increasing skepticism in liberal Jewish circles over Israel’s right to exist. “This is a generation who are very moved and inspired by social justice causes and want to be on the right side of justice,” Hart said. “But they’re falling into overly simplistic narratives, and narratives driven by true enemies of the Jewish people.”

Overall, younger American Jews are less attached to Israel than older generations: About half of Jewish adults under 30 describe themselves as emotionally connected to Israel, compared with about two-thirds of Jews over age 64, according to a major survey published last week by the Pew Research Center.

And though the U.S. Jewish population is 92% white, with all other races combined accounting for 8%, among Jews ages 18 to 29 that rises to 15%.

In Los Angeles, Rachel Sumekh, 29, a first-generation Iranian American Jew, sees complicated layers in the story of her own Persian family. Her mother escaped Iran on the back of a camel, traveling by night until she got to Pakistan, where she was taken in as a refugee. She then found asylum in Israel. She believes Israel has a right to self-determination, but she also found it “horrifying” to hear an Israeli ambassador suggest other Arab countries should take in Palestinians.

“That is what happened to my people and created this intergenerational trauma of losing our homeland because of hatred,” she said.

The entire situation feels too volatile and dangerous for many people to even want to discuss, especially publicly.

Violence against Jews is increasingly close to home. Last year the third-highest number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States were recorded since the Anti-Defamation League began cataloging them in 1979, according to a report released by the civil rights group last month. The ADL recorded more than 1,200 incidents of anti-Semitic harassment in 2020, a 10% increase from the previous year. In Los Angeles, the police are investigating a sprawling attack on sidewalk diners at a sushi restaurant Tuesday as an anti-Semitic hate crime.

Outside Cleveland, Jennifer Kaplan, 39, who grew up in a modern Orthodox family and who considers herself a centrist Democrat and a Zionist, remembered studying abroad at Hebrew University in 2002, and being in the cafeteria minutes before it was bombed. Now she wondered how the Trump era had affected her inclination to see the humanity in others, and she wished her young children were a bit older so she could talk with them about what is happening.

“I want them to understand that this is a really complicated situation, and they should question things,” she said. “I want them to understand that this isn’t just a, I don’t know, I guess, utopia of Jewish religion.”

Esther Katz, the performing arts director at the Jewish Community Center in Omaha, Nebraska, has spent significant time in Israel. She also attended Black Lives Matter protests in Omaha last summer and has signs supporting the movement in the windows of her home.

She has watched with a sense of betrayal as some of her allies in that movement have posted online about their apparently unequivocal support for the Palestinians, and compared Israel to Nazi Germany. “I’ve had some really tough conversations,” said Katz, a Conservative Jew. “They’re not seeing the facts, they’re just reading the propaganda.”

Her three children, who range in age from 7 to 13, are now wary of a country that is for Katz one of the most important places in the world. “They’re like, ‘I don’t understand why anyone would want to live in Israel, or even visit,’” she said. “That breaks my heart.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2021 The New York Times Company 

source https://www.techno-90.com/2021/05/gaza-conflict-stokes-identity-crisis.html

[neostriatum]

The Cake Is Not Quite A Lie

[AO3] [Dreamwidth]

“Okay, now, once more!” He leaned back to clap his hands, gesturing encouragingly, “From the top!”

The man standing by the other table raised his eyebrows, gaze not deviating from the bouquet before him. “I don’t quite think that will work, dear,” He said, staring meditatively at the arrangement of carnations and roses. One of the blue ones was shuffled around, and he picked up a pair of shears to clip one of the thorny vines woven between the stems “Cats of that breed aren’t well known for their ability to act.”

As if in agreement, the Norwegian Forest kitten mewed, managing to look ruffled and disgruntled despite the silk sash tied delicately around its neck. It was a gift from Thor scarcely a month ago, a surprisingly thoughtful blend of Asgard and Earth traditions from the newly-coronated king. They were told the… gift would not reach a height typical to Asgardian breeds, but would be formidable nonetheless.

Loki was quite sure that it liked En Dwi better, given the way it always perked up for a scritch from his spouse. At least it has good taste, I suppose.

“I’ll have you know I ran a successful play for months on Asgard,” He sniffed, giving up the cause for lost when Kitkat jumped out of reach, and pointed a finger at the other man, “And they didn’t even know it was me until Thor came around!”

En Dwi hummed, tapping a few of the flowers to shift them into slightly different colours. His amused smirk was highlighted by the sparkling blue stripe down his bottom lip, pursed attractively as he patted Kitkat on the head with a murmured endearment, “Big brothers will do that,” He reminded Loki, looking contemplatively at the cat’s unruly mop of fur, “Or at least, so I’m told. Did he ever send that RSVP? It would be quite delightful if he took part in our wedding… play.”

For his part, Loki sighed, materializing their running list of guests to check it again. They had decided to go with a period of feasting and various delights that tickled both their senses of mischief, and as much as his lover was fond of his gladiator fights, it would be difficult to convince Thor into another one no matter how… nuptial the reason.

His brother’s name still glowed a faint purple, a mark of undecided acknowledgement. Loki frowned, poking the listing in order to bother the now-king with a reminder. En Dwi had helpfully provided invites that merged with his shapeshifting magic, and while the tablets were a baffling marvel of invention, the pattern of acceptances and rejections was bizarre.

“I think he might attend if the Hulk does,” He muttered, not overtly fond of the idea. Some of the Earthlings had accepted, and Loki thought that was rather out of curiosity’s sake. He was, rightfully, considered a menace on that planet, but what was a little bit of chaos between friends?

“A little bit, indeed,” His spouse murmured in amusement, head tucked onto his shoulder. Loki melted into the grasp, some of the tension of wedding planning draining from him at the snug embrace.

“This is a bit ridiculous,” He griped, waving around the scroll as it curled back up with a sharp snick. “We already married in order to get past customs, why do we need another wedding?”

“For the week-long feasting and gladiator fighting in our name?” En Dwi suggested, pressing a kiss to his neck that yet managed to imprint an amused curl of lips. Loki shivered, poking one of the man’s arms regardless for the gladiator suggestion, and was met with a shrug that set the two of them into a rocking sway.

It was… nice, and still novel despite them technically having been married for some time now.

En Dwi was content to let the matter rest for a moment, more concerned with the way their thoughts met and tangled in an equally luxurious, languid slide. It was one of his more favourite ways to kiss, and the joy of a partner capable of reciprocating was one of the finer pleasures in life. He supposed their haphazard, spontaneous bonding in order to get their conveniently-forged passports approved was only the tipping point of their admittedly equally as spontaneous relationship.

The thought that Loki had become one of the few entities both able and willing to interact with him so intimately sent a certain zing through him, and he tightened his grasp, pleased to hear the sigh and feel the subtle relaxation at the gesture. How lucky I am, En Dwi mused, letting the thought tangle into Loki’s mind, layered in an affection to a depth he was pleased but unaccustomed to showing.

It was a sentiment quickly pinged back to him, roiled and layered in the nuances of Loki’s particular flavour. “How about this,” His lover spoke, voice dropped into a rumbling groan at the entanglement of their thoughts, quicksilvered and heart-deep, “We’ll have a play of your gladiatorial ring, and leave spots open for volunteers to participate.”

En Dwi gasped in startled delight, turning Loki around for an enthusiastic kiss. “You, my dear,” He marveled, taking in the pleasing, bewildered flush across the other’s features, “Are an absolute genius. The best of both worlds! See, this sort of brilliance is why I married you.”

It took a moment for Loki to recover from the onslaught of gropingly enthusiastic adoration, but he managed to worm a hand flickering blue and cold onto his chest, matching with a sardonically arched brow, “Oh, not because of my ability to sneak us onto a new planet?”

He took the hand clasped to his breast and pressed kisses to its digits, delighting in the condensation chilling his lips and the flustered sound his spouse made at the gesture, “Both, I think,” Was his mild response, spoken with a waggle of brows and a nip at the fingers in his hold. The blush was rather flattering, he thought, tempted to let them deviate off-track. But alas- “I can see if anyone from Sakaar could be bribed with a few hot meals, hm?”

Loki tittered, tapping his fingers reprovingly against his spouse’s unfortunately distracting lips. “We shan’t be paying a cent for this wedding, will we?”

“Mmm, no, not if I can help it.” He replied unrepentantly, winking half for the habit and mostly to see how long it took for the other to start trembling, “A favour is a favour, after all. Even if I have to swindle for it.”

“I love you,” Loki sighed beatifically, reaching up to twine his fingers into En Dwi’s hair. Then, in a slightly less soppy tone, he asked, “You’re going to get us in so much trouble, aren’t you?”

He laughed, crooking a finger to let the invitations scroll that had been floating morosely all by its lonesome to realign itself into one of the many voluminous pockets in his robes, stealing another parry of kisses while he was at it.

“You would be magnificently bored if I didn’t, dearest. A little bit of chaos keeps you on your toes,” He punctuated the statement by lifting Loki by the waist, just enough to sweep his toes along the fashionably garish rug, a rather rewarding gasp meeting his efforts, “And then you’d be causing mischief elsewhere in the galaxy, without me along to entertain you.”

The image of a traipsing, much younger Loki flitted across his mind, a montage of youthful history flitting past him. En Dwi smirked at a few of the bashfully recollected memories, “Horses, dear? I didn’t know you were so adventurous.”

“It was one time,” Loki groused, too content anyway to move from the relaxed slouch against his spouse, “Hardly likely to happen again.”

His spouse stifled a laugh, the play at politeness speaking volumes of his thoughts. “That’s alright,” En Dwi mused, his own brand of mischief rife in his words, “We have plenty of ideas to occupy ourselves with.”

“Like a cake.”

“And lots of it, preferably,” He nodded, altogether too tickled by the entire concept of a wedding after they’ve already married. There was this bakery on Lotho that could be persuaded… I wonder how well cake travels in hyperspace.

“Only as good as the coolant, I’m afraid,” Loki interrupted his idling thoughts, huffing dramatically, “Thor and I found that one out the hard way.”

En Dwi stared in bafflement at his spouse, “Why were you transporting a cake?”

“Mjölnir.”

That… did not clear up the situation any, but this was presumably another one of those sibling things. He poked the list of invites again, changing Thor’s name to an acceptable green. A story like that was too unique to be left as a groused footnote! Perhaps the king would be so kind as to trade a story for a spot in the marriage play.

A sigh tickled at his throat. “You know,” Loki said, a shade petulant, “You could just ask Thor to come. He probably would if you did so nicely enough.”

Loki indubitably knew his brother better, but curiosity got the best of him. “… Why? He ransacked most of the stadium and stole my pleasure liner on the way out.”

It seemed logical, but apparently was not, judging by the combination of flat, pitying stare and colourful thoughts that contradicted it. “Because he’s dutiful,” His lover corrected, feeling strongly enough about the issue to detract a hand from where it was twirling En Dwi’s hair around his fingers to visually articulate his point, “Or some such. Honestly, I have no idea why he sticks to such antiquated ideals, but it’s certainly a valid point to be leveraged.”

En Dwi nodded slowly, brows furrowing as he slotted together this new dynamic into his understanding of Asgard royal family dynamics. “Well,” He said cheerfully, resolving anyway to drag the other Odinson by hook or by crook to their wedding, “At least we won’t have to invite Hela.”

“And thank the stars for that,” Loki muttered, “Don’t need that much doom and gloom for a solid week.”

Kitkat mewed in agreement from where they were perched near their feet. It seemed the kitten carried over its patron’s distance of all things dreary, fur puffed up in affront at the idea of his late sister attending the festivities. Loki shuffled carefully out of his spouse’s hug to pick up the kitten, smiling faintly at its vocal distaste, “Yes, I agree, the only fighting should be scripted and entirely fake.”

En Dwi pouted mournfully, making him huff and amend his statement, “Mostly fake.” The kitten squirmed, settling onto Loki’s shoulder, “And entirely entertaining, as it ought to be.”

“You know…” Loki’s spouse drawled, his eyes sparkling with a new idea, “We could always make the last feast day about our wedding.”

“Spectacularly astute, you are,” He replied dryly, “As all the days will be about our wedding.”

En Dwi huffed, and Loki thought it was a little unfair how attractive he looked even when ostensibly peeved. Still, the little spark of pride that pressed against his own mind acted as its own appeasement, making him lean into the arm around his waist.

“I meant about our first wedding, dear.” That statement had Loki nodding, a grin on his face as he recollected the scattered three weeks of travel as they hopped from planet to planet. “Nobody will ever believe we aren’t already married.”

“Nonsense,” He interjected smoothly, teasing lilt to his words, “We have plenty of family on my side that want us annulled.”

“And are thoroughly too late for that,” En Dwi replied smugly.

Loki squirmed himself, flushing at the smattering of memories his spouse brought up. He coughed, “Yes, quite.”

His spouse sighed thoughtfully. “… I still want to wear those shoes that- who was it? The woman with the knives-”

“Romanov?”

“- Yes, her. The shoes that she sent, they would be lovely with the new tunic we picked up at the market.”

Loki fixed En Dwi with an incredulous stare, “Crocs are not fashionable.”

“But they are comfortable!”

--

Author's Notes

Thor gifted Loki with a Norwegian Forest named Kitkat and Darcy is quite proud of being allowed to name it (Thor is an absolute sucker for a good pun and thought it was an excellent idea). It's a direct call-back to Freya's chariot of cats, and I think a sweet gesture of familial bonds between Loki and Thor.

[bitletsanddrabbles]

Theater vs. Books

One thing that has routinely shocked me in the Downton Abbey fandom is how little people seem to know about how TV works, particularly when compared to written fiction.

Examined logically, this should probably not be surprising. I’ve been involved off and on in school plays, church plays, acting camps, etc. for as long as I can remember. I actually went into university on an acting ticket, only to switch when I realized I’d get ulcers if I tried to make a living at it. Between writing classes and Dad going “Honey! The Vacation Bible School skit scripts are terrible again this year! Can you fix them?” I have way more scripting know how than I realize, not to mention directing since I then directed all the skits. I took a few combined study classes in college that involved film and, of course, my BA is creative writing, which does not make me the be all and end all of writing knowledge (there are people who haven’t taken a writing class in their lives who can out write me), but does mean that I have more idea what the different parts of a story are and how they fit together than someone who just took high school English.

However, one of my personal neurosis is that I know the education system I went through is substandard and that I am bad at research, therefore I expect the entire world to know more than I do. From a logical stand point this is rubbish, but try telling my psyche that when someone talks about how bad an actor is and then holds up a badly directed piece with a lousy script. (Guy in high school who insisted Nicole Kidman couldn’t act because Batman Forever, I am so looking at you.)

I mean, really. It doesn’t matter how much I’ve done or how much I know. If I am the only person on the planet who did not, at age five, win an academy award for my first screen play, which I also produced, directed, and starred it, everyone else should know more than me.

Don’t think I can’t see that trophy you’re hiding behind your back.

So for the sake of spreading awareness of what education I do have and helping my neurotic little mind cope with the reality that I’m not the least education person on earth, I’d like to make a few points on theater - both stage and film - versus the written word.

- Theater is an incredibly limited art form. Unlike prose where your narrator can spend pages taking you deep into a character’s psyche, most theater is restricted to communicating entirely thorough what can be seen and said in dialogue or monologue. Some theatrical pieces do use a narrator, but a lot of disadvantages to this in an acted piece (it creates pacing issues, people find it off putting, etc.), so it’s not common.  Now, since people perceive emotions differently based on their personal experience, getting an entire audience on board with a nuanced performance is basically impossible. Take sarcastic characters, for example. In a book, you can say that a character made a sarcastic joke that wasn’t meant to be malicious, but that people got offended anyway. Different people will read it different ways - some people will insist it was malicious despite the explicit statement it wasn’t, etc. - but the story has told you the impression you’re intended to get. In theater, your actor has to be sarcastic, the other actors react poorly, and even if you write in, “I was only joking, geeze”, it’s up to the audience to decide whether that was true or not.

So no matter how good your actors, directors, and writers are, it will always be tricky to nail down the intended authorial intent of any one scene or character.

- Theater requires a large budget. Writing does not. Seriously, these days technology is all about multitasking. It’s pretty much gotten to the point that you can buy a toaster and write a story on it. The most expensive books to write I know of are the early Harry Potter novels because JKR wrote in notebooks with pens. Oh yeah, and she bought coffee to drink while she did it. Now, you can argue that computers still cost a fair amount of money, but they’re pretty much a one time expenditure (unless you insist on upgrading or you break it or something basically not-inherent to computer owning).

Every time an actor walks on a stage or screen, they earn money. Every time a character changes clothes, that costs money. Every time there’s a scene (mostly stage) or location (mostly film) change, that costs money. Every time something catches fire, that costs money. Every rehearsal costs money. Theater is one, big shopping list.

- Theater has time limits. Books do not. One of the things in the budget for a theatrical production is space for that production to be seen. It’s a stage or a park or a movie theater or TV air time. All of that costs money and how much you can buy depends not only on how much money you have, but how much time the owners of the theater, park, TV station, etc. are willing to give you.

This means unlike book editors and publishers who can look at a work so stinking long no one would pay for it or want to hold it up long enough to read and go “Sorry, Mr. Tolkien, but we’re going to have to break this into three parts,” the people writing scripts need to try and meet a strict time limit - not shorter, not longer  - and if they go over, the editors have to actually take stuff out.

The closest thing writing really has to this is things like drabble challenges where you have to tell a story in an exact number of words. When these first hit Live Journal they were popular because they were a challenge. When they started losing favor, it was because 90% of the time you wound up sacrificing good writing for word count.

Theater, thankfully, is generally a bit more forgiving, but still. Telling a segment of story in a one hour time slot - or a full story in two hours - is not a walk in the park.

- Theater is not a one pony show. There are so many times I have seen people criticize an actor or director or script writer for something that is blatantly not their fault (see above), that I can’t even begin to count them. Theater is a group effort. If someone blows their lines, it’s not the script writer’s fault. If a director insists that an actor ham it up, that is not a reflection of the actor’s skills. There are times when directors actively screw up the action and the script writer doesn’t get a chance to fix it. An example of this is Downton Abbey, season two, where Anna and Ethel were supposed to be fluffing the couch cushions - the part you sit on - by dropping them. This was filmed as them dropping the throw pillows, which made no sense, and by the time Julian Fellows got to see the rushes, there wasn’t time (or money) to redo the scene. So we’re stuck with two maids who apparently don’t know how to fluff pillows and, if you do know how to fluff pillows and have not read the scripts with authors commentary, an audience who assumes that the writer was the person who got it wrong.

- In theater, especially film, mistakes are forever. This is more or less true in traditionally published writing as well, but it’s amendable. If an author makes a typo or gets off in their timeline or forgets where Dr. Watson’s war wound was in the last story, it’s set in stone for the already printed edition, but can, if the author so chooses, be corrected in later printings. Similarly, in stage theater a gaffed line is gaffed and there’s no un-gaffing it, but you can get it right in the next show.

An error in film is set in stone until someone decides to do a remake.

- In no institutionalized story telling medium is the audience comprised of one person. Unless someone is telling you a bedtime story, the story is not meant to cater solely to you. In fanfiction, which is amateur by definition, you can appeal to as niche a group as you like. In professional story telling, you need to appeal to as broad an audience as possible if you want to be successful. In theater, with it’s time constraints, this means every time spent on one plot line is time that can’t be spent on another plot line. In order to please the fans of character A, you have to take story time away from the fans of character B and vice versa. It’s a balancing act where you try to please everyone, and pleasing everyone is impossible. And everyone I’ve seen say “We really didn’t see enough of (x) in this show! We were robbed!” has a plot (y) that “served no purpose” that could have been sacrificed for their satisfaction, but guess what? Someone loved plot (y), wanted to see more of it, and thinks (x) could have been cut out to make that happen. The reason the creator gave us a little bit of both instead of a lot of one and nothing of the other is not because the don’t care about the fans of (x) or (y), but because they care equally about both of them.

They have to.

It’s their job.

[mentalisttraceur-long]

@intpdreamer replied to this post:

To not even go as far as ask for a definition of *root* insecurity, how would you define insecurity? Is it anything that causes fear? Anything that causes self-doubt? (In which case - does the degree of self doubt have to be inappropriate to be deemed an “insecurity”?)

I actually have been intending to write a definition post for "insecurity", because after understanding my own insecurities (and to a lesser extent others' insecurities) more and more, I recently realized no definition or explanation I have ever been exposed to actually explained it right, in a way that properly focused on the cognition mechanisms of it, the usefulness of it, or the empirically-learned by the brain logical-ness of it.

Insecurity is what happens when a mind has learned to predict that it will be hurt in some manner, even if only by the chronic absence of positive experience.

Insecurity is what happens when within the futures the mind is predicting, the good-enough outcomes have too little total probability mass/density.

Lucky you everyone, you just triggered a very important rant!

No, this needs big words, that's how important this is:

Important Rant

Step 1 - Prediction Functions

Remember that the human brain is in large part a prediction machine - that is one of its main functions and purposes, and it is subconsciously predicting all the time.

At any given moment, our brain is running a bunch of "prediction functions" with all of our current raw experiences and mental state as inputs (sensory data, internally maintained world model, memories, emotions, and so on), and those prediction functions spit out what experiences will come next, which update the world model and are themselves experiences and thus get fed into more prediction functions, over and over recursively, until the brain runs out of relevant and habituated prediction functions.

These prediction functions are instantaneous by human standards: when new information comes in, they happen faster than we even consciously notice that new information.

Technical detail below; feel free to scroll to step 2.

Prediction functions habituate thusly:

Neurons are regularly growing new connections, this works even if the growth is purely random but there might be any number of evolved heuristic optimizations to make it grow faster.

Neurons are regularly discarding connections whose firings are not reinforced or maybe even "deinforced", and reinforcing those that are reinforced.

How are they reinforced or deinforced? With brain chemicals various parts if the brain squirt around of course, but in response to what? Well:

The brain is always pattern matching different cognition together. A couple obvious sources to compare the result of any given ripple of fired neurons connections would be our raw sensory organ data and our slow conscious thinking. Two more will be described shortly. There may be others.

The pattern-matching wetware for each of these comparisons is always comparing its inputs and squirting out chemicals signaling good or bad pattern-matches, which get circulated around. This concept is enough to work, but you can devise optimizations, and evolution may have already implemented a bunch of them.

The prediction functions are pattern-matched with each other. This helps new prediction functions get developed and reinforced faster, even if they cannot share the same wiring with the older ones, because of too much logical difference or because they don't fully cover the same cases.

Stronger reinforcements due to trauma or other intense experiences are possible, causing neurons to retain and keep reinforcing connections which would normally get pruned out. This is probably done by certain brain parts being responsible for releasing the right type or amount or combination of brain chemicals or otherwise signaling in response to specific severe-enough signals, and then either neurons directly responding to that by treating that as a vastly stronger reinforcement for those connections that matched up with that event the right way, or probably a more advanced system where traumatic memories are stored redundantly or differently in brain parts which themselves are pattern-matching wetware for reinforcing prediction functions.

Note that this means that at any moment there may be any number of "ephemeral" or "nascent" prediction functions "implemented" by the brain, many of which are nonsensical or wrong, and they will be kept or culled as they empirically prove themselves accordingly, but also that prediction functions can get kept even if they were only correct in our earlier specific circumstances, and that older prediction functions might be contributing to the reinforcement or deinforcement of new prediction functions.

So the brain optimistically generates new connections, lets them fire as they will, and the ones that pattern match raw sensory data or conscious slow cognition or maybe each other or other sources get rewarded and retained.

Step 2 - Prediction Pyramids

The result is one or more final predictions logically resting on what I initially called "prediction pyramids".

One pyramid for each final prediction, where the ground at the base is all the inputs, and the root point is a prediction.

Each layer of the pyramid represents all the prediction functions which had the opportunity to execute at the same time - if a prediction depends on the result of a previous prediction, then the pyramid is "higher".

The pyramids can overlap, of course - some prediction functions might cause more than one new prediction function to activate, and so on.

When the predictions are mutually exclusive, that's just our mind seeing multiple possibilities, with how likely each one feels being determined by how strongly and thoroughly those prediction pyramids have been reinforced for similar situations before.

Before we even finish consciously processing what's just come in through our senses right this moment, the brain has already run through many prediction pyramids, at least to some significant height.

Technical detail below; feel free to scroll to step 3.

If we want to get more formal, we can think of them as "prediction trees", using tree in the mathematical or graph theory sense: each node is one habituated prediction function, the output of each node is a prediction, so the root is the final prediction.

Or if you want you can include the raw experiences in the tree and then those are the leaf nodes and the prediction functions are the non-leaf nodes.

If you want to complicate the picture further by representing

how the raw experiences may get fed into some or all of the prediction functions and not just the initial ones, and how prediction functions can in turn update the world model and thus new raw experiences, or

the overlap of multiple prediction trees using the same prediction functions,

then it turns into a directed acyclic graph (DAG).

We can keep going, because in practice it's kinda like a partially cyclic graph which just has some nodes that do not participate in cycles. A directed partially-acyclic graph, or DPAG, if you will.

Keep going with this long enough and eventually you're just representing an actual modern neural net implementation, or something like one.

For practical introspection, just the idea of prediction trees or pyramids is most of the value, and usually good enough.

Also!

There is also a complication I have been skipping: maybe some prediction functions share neurons. So besides data dependencies there is also a possible bottleneck in that case, and reinforcement of prediction functions actually doubles as increasing or decreasing the priority - maybe a neuron has some way of being conditioned to respond more readily to one signal versus another.

Or maybe this is simply prevented at a higher level - even if we imagine just very simple neurons that can only decide to fire on all output synapses or not on any, in responce to a strong enough input on one or more of its inout synapses, with only one neurotransmitter available, even then overlapping prediction functions would simply either misfire too often and get disenforced, or else prove accurate enough and maybe only cause occasional subtle errors.

And remember the idea about prediction functions being pattern-matched against each other?

Notice how these ideas combine: if you have two overlapping prediction functions, and that is the bottleneck in critical situations, and you need to shave off those tiny fractions of a second, then simply keep practicing at that edge or your performance envelope, and gradually a new copy or almost-copy of that original prediction function will grow and get reinforced which doesn't overlap with one that has to fire at the same time.

Basically, the height of your prediction pyramid/tree/DAG/DPAG is more formally determined not just by data dependencies but also refractory periods and any activation at the same time on overlapped neurons.

Step 3 - Prediction Substitution

Of course the brain also heuristically "cheats" to optimize this to be faster and take less energy, which is why this is able to stay fast no matter how tall the prediction pyramid gets.

If a second prediction is reinforced enough for immediately following an earlier one (that is to say if prediction one fires on some input, and prediction two then fires right after because of the result of prediction one), then the brain will simply eventually grow a prediction function that produces the second prediction directly for the initial input.

If two different prediction functions or pyramids are too consistent with their results, without in some situations producing enough different but still valuable/reinforced results, one will eventually be removed.

In other words, the brain will always try to flatten and simplify the prediction pyramids, eliminate all that nuanced reasoning in between. (If we want to resist this, we have to make a point to think and maybe even regularly put ourselves into situations in ways that keep discerning the difference.)

This is why introspection past a certain point, and extracting the logic from inside our intuitions, is part reverse-engineering and part historical inference - because the brain will readily optimize out the original reasoning/justification/"prediction pyramid" behind a given reaction!

The brain will substitute simpler or shorter prediction pyramids for complex or tall ones every chance it gets.

Step 4 - Emotional Reaction

Some parts of the brain are constantly streaming in this prediction data (or some reduced form of it as a heuristic optimization).

They react by activating some physiological process or releases some chemicals (neurotransmitters, hormones, whatever) into the brain accordingly, which we in turn consciously perceive as the often "immediate" emotional reaction.

Remember, all of the above happens basically pre-consciously, basically instantaneously by human conscious thinking speeds.

But why a reaction to a prediction? We can have raw reactions to raw experiences like pain and pleasure, that's obvious. But a prediction is this abstract idea thing, isn't it?

No, because what is the mind predicting? What is it a prediction of? What is the "language" or "format" of a raw prediction in a mind? Raw experiences.

Up at the start of the rant I said that the prediction functions produce "what experiences will come next", and this is a key detail.

At the level of these prediction functions, every single prediction the brain makes represents a raw experience, some of which include pain or pleasure or are otherwise experientially positive or negative, and our brain is ultimately reacting to that.

Step 5 - The Analysis

This, this is what I keep talking about when I mention "raw experience prediction analysis". The reverse-engineering of the pyramids of prediction functions in our mind, many of which have been substituted out for simpler heuristics over the years, to finally figure out why we do what we do, react how we react, feel how we feel, think how we think, and want what we want.

The realization that everything, everything about what motivates our minds, and maybe even all possible minds, can be understood as reactions to one or more interlinked chains of predictions of raw experience - that, that is the "raw experience prediction epiphany".

We apply that enough, while being ready to look at ourselves as unflatteringly as needed to do so, and eventually, the view we get of our mind is profoundly explanatory, comprehensive, predictive, and empowering as a result.

There are some things about how minds work that this doesn't cover, but everything it doesn't cover is far easier to satisfactorily explain with much simpler ideas. And the more time passes the more I find things I initially thought I understood well enough without this, only to find that this enriches it.

So anyway, "insecurity"...

... should make more sense now.

Our mind is constantly predicting raw experiences, based on what it has empirically learned from past experiences.

Our mind reacts negatively whenever it predicts it's experiences will be sufficiently preference-pleasure negative.

An insecurity is whenever our mind has learned to predict that its experiences will be below that threshold. So insecurity can be anywhere from intensely immediate to lightly gnawing about the indefinite future; anywhere from extremely specific to inscrutably general. The essential part is the below that threshold, a certain negative reaction, a compulsion to prevent that outcome, starts to kick it. It's a gradient, usually to some degree proportional to how severely below the threshold it is, but also importantly, how much our brain believes the outcome could be better if only we knew could do something about it.

But the actual follow-up beyond that point, including what emotional reactions are felt, is itself dependent on the prediction functions and other habituated cognition. Some examples different people might experience include:

Desperate or needy or manipulative behavior to try to get a wanted/needed thing.

Rage and hostility and violence because it helped them prevent hurting or to get their way before.

Eager sexual arousal because that helped stop hurt or got them safety and approval before.

Some other behavior which modifies the situation to temporarily soothe or mask a want or need with other experiences.

Going non-verbal or freezing up because their brain literally cannot think of any action which would be predictive of improving the situation.

Physiological activation of the body as in fight-or-flight just-in-case, without any compelled action.

Generalized anxiety, a weaker form of the previous point.

Except an insecure mind is prevented, by the same life strokes that cause and sustain the insecurity, from developing particularly reliable ways of avoiding those negative outcomes - if they had those, they wouldn't be insecure.

So often these reactions are not actually constructive to the goal, because the person simply doesn't know how to do that, or were constructive but only under particular circumstances (often less healthy ones, like abusive relationships, etc).

But just as often, the reactions are very constructive, sometimes even perfectly executed, skilled preventions or mitigations of the predicted negative outcomes, and otherwise totally justifiable independent of the insecurity.

The essence of insecurity, and it's literally in the name but I spent years missing it, is the lack of feeling secure, assured, confident, certain (about our raw experience being good enough in the future).

In saying that an insecurity is whenever our mind predicts that its experiences will be below some threshold, and feels negatively compelled to change that, I deliberately left unspecified whether or not it is objectively sound for the brain to make that prediction, or whether or not the fundamental compulsion to avoid the outcome is adaptive, or whether or not that threshold is in some way at the right level.

Those are all important questions, and touch on the essential point that insecurity isn't just this defect that some people have, but rather an essential ingredient of cognition for most people to some degree. But they are otherwise irrelevant to describing the essence of what an insecurity is.

[thecorteztwins]

Character Flaws: How To Do Them (And How Not To)

Hi there, I’m going to talk about character flaws today! And I’m going to start with a very unpopular statement----I think flawless characters, or characters with minimal flaws, are just fine. It just depends on what kind of character you want to portray. Some character roles are SUPPOSED to be paragons of virtue or sweet innocent angels, just as some characters are SUPPOSED to be dastardly evil-doers or complex nuanced grimdark antiheroes. What matters is whether it’s what you INTEND, and how to pull it off. Also, I’m not an expert. These are opinions. Feel free to agree or disagree, take what you like and leave the rest, etc. I am not an authority in ANY way, and your thoughts are just as valid as mine. That said, let’s start. Strap in, this got long, I’m sorry.

There are three general types of flaws that you can give to a character: INTERVIEW FLAWS aka CINNAMON ROLL FLAWS aka NON-FLAWS I call them this because they’re the sort of “flaws” that you would say you have at a job interview when asked what your flaws are. They’re “flaws” that make someone actually sound better---more moral, or more endearing, or more sympathetic, etc. Things like “too loyal” or “kind to a fault” or “too protective of his friends”. They’re the sort of flaws that “cinnamon roll” characters typically have. These actually can become very damning mega-flaws if taken to the extreme, but more on that later; this paragraph is for when they’re still solidly in “interview flaw” territory. A big aspect of these “flaws” is that they only hurt the character, if anyone. They will seldom, if ever, negatively affect another person. If they do hurt someone else, it will often be in a way that is totally justified to the reader (the character who is “too protective” beating up someone who was being a jerk to his friends) or really not the character’s fault at all (a naive character being manipulated by a bad guy into revealing something important) Whatever trouble they get in will usually be done in a way that is meant to make the reader either feel bad for them, or see them in a positive light for it. If this is the sort of character you want to go for, that is a-okay! Cinnamon rolls have their place in a story, and they can be just as beloved by fans as more grimdark characters. The only problem comes is when someone tries to sell their character as “flawed” when actually they’re just one of these. Or, alternatively, tries to sell the character as one of these when actually they’re one of the categories below. But if it’s exactly what you intended? Great! NORMAL FLAWS Exactly what it says---flaws that a normal person would have. Things like jealousy, snobbery, misanthropy, negativity, bad tempers, irresponsibility, laziness, not taking things seriously when they should, the list goes on and on. This is probably the widest category, since what flaw you pick and how it manifests can span the range from being almost a non-flaw but not quite, to nearly a mega-flaw. It also depends on the character who has it, what they’re like otherwise, and why they have it. For instance, someone who is unjustly hostile to someone trying to help them because they’re suspicious due to being tricked, exploited, or abused in the past by people pretending to be well-meaning, is a lot more sympathetic than someone who just doesn’t think they need help because they see themselves as perfect and don’t like correction. Both still fall under the “normal” category most of the time, but are coming from very different places, and will be perceived differently by most readers. So, which to use? It all depends what you’re going for with your character! MEGA FLAWS The big ones. The ones that will really make others dislike your character. Things like real-life bigotry (as in, being homophobic, not hating elves), gleeful bullying and abusiveness, toxic egomania, blaming others (especially innocent characters) for their mistakes, sexual misconduct, and kicking puppies, to name a few. Sometimes, these can be used to make audiences hate the characters instantly, but that’s actually not always guaranteed. A great many characters that are among the most popular in their respective fandoms have one or more of these traits. Sometimes, that’s just because people love a good villain, but other times it’s because the character’s reasons for these flaws, or the character’s overall personality in general apart from the flaws, are very compelling and interesting. Just as some people love cinnamon rolls, some people prefer darker characters like these, and much like preferring different ice cream flavors, neither is superior to the other. These kinds of flaws also don’t always translate to truly inhuman, awful people either. Sometimes a character may actually be MORE human for them. The protagonist in a novel I once read was raised by his grandparents because his mother, who gave birth to him as a teen, hated him. She wanted nothing to do with him as a child, and outright told him she hated him when he was just barely an adult. The protagonist didn’t know why for most of his life, but eventually found out it was because he was born a twin, and his twin brother died when they were babies. He was born big, healthy, and strong, whereas his brother had been tiny and weak and sick, probably because he sapped the bulk of the nutrients in the womb, which sadly is something that sometimes happens. The mother was devastated by the death of her weaker son, and blamed the surviving one, feeling he was a monster baby that killed his sibling, not to mention resented how he was fawned over by the rest of her family when they had treated her like dirt, including her own parents. This woman was not meant as sympathetic to readers. It was pretty clear to me that the writer wanted us to see her as horrible. And what she did was completely horrible indeed. She blamed an innocent baby for something not possibly his fault, and held that against him his whole life. That’s unforgivably awful, and there’s no excuse for it. Yet it’s such a human reaction that it made me feel for her. People often are illogical and awful in ways like this, it’s very believable to me that a human being would feel this way. It was meant to make her an irredeemable strawman, but my reaction was to see her now as less of a 2D “bad mother” cutout, and more of a person. Sometimes, it’s the worst in people that can win us over, because that can sometimes be the most human part of them. Note that this will often be divisive; I’m sure a lot of readers actually did hate this woman all the more for this, and that’s a totally valid reaction too. However, if you wish to make your character truly despicable, hurting children or cute animals is generally a good way to go; most readers won’t forgive that (though I’ve seen it happen) That said, be warned that making your character sexy or tragic (especially in combination) will inevitably make some fans fawn over them regardless of how evil they are, and there’s not much you can do about it. Someone is ALWAYS going to find the bad guy hot/sympathetic even when you’re not SUPPOSED to. Now that we’ve covered the different categories of GOOD ways to write flaws, here are some ways that I see people failing at writing flaws: INFORMED FLAWS Informed flaws are flaws that the writer CLAIMS the character has, but never actually show up. For instance, they SAY that this character is standoffish, has a temper, and can be cruel, but only ever write him as being lovably surly at worst, and typically very tolerant and patient with others (especially cute children or cinnamon bun types) Or they claim that the character is shy and insecure, but here they are trying out for the lead in the school play without anyone pushing them to do it. This is often due to the author being overly affectionate towards their character. In the first example, they want their character to be a tough guy, but an ENDEARING tough guy, and not risk him doing anything that the audience might possibly dislike him for. So they go overboard with showing his “soft” moments, while never showing the “hard” ones that are what would make the “soft” ones actually special and unusual. In the second example, maybe the character is just shy and insecure in a different way (like they’re comfortable on-stage because there’s no actual interaction with people, and crumble when in real conversations) but more likely, they’re just acting out-of-character because the author WANTS them to be the lead in the play, regardless of how little sense it makes for them to try out and get the part. Informed flaws are basically a failure of a “show, don’t tell” rule. We’re TOLD that this character has a flaw, but we’re either never shown it, or shown the exact opposite. For instance, we may be told that this character never opens up to people because of her dark past, but it sure doesn’t seem that way if she immediately starts talking about that dark past to first man who shows interest in her as she falls into his arms. And it’s hard to take a writer’s claim that their character is “humble” with any seriousness if that character has a habit of bringing up his numerous talents and accomplishments in every conversation. And you may SAY that a character tends to get jealous, but how do we KNOW if she never encounters anyone she’s jealous of? INCONSEQUENTIAL FLAWS The character is a rude abrasive jerk, but everyone likes her immediately anyway! Maybe they can instantly see past her snarky surface to the sensitive soul beneath, or maybe they respect her toughness and candor. Some people have a problem with her attitude, but they’re either prudish sticks-in-the-mod, overly sensitive namby-pambies, sexists who are threatened by a strong woman, or they come around to respecting/liking her in the end! The character hates breaking rules and getting into trouble; he craves approval from authority, and will tell on his friends to get it. Fortunately, he’s never put in this position, or, if he does, his friends understand and forgive him, and may even agree that he did the right thing. The character is impulsive and acts on their first thought, if they think at all. Luckily, her assumptions prove correct (or at least lead her to the right place) and her reckless actions not only don’t cause any problems, they save the day! Everyone is proud of her, and no one scolds her for anything she did along the way that might have broken protocol or endangered other people. The character is super hostile anyone breaking his routine...but then his routine never gets broke in the story or any of his interactions. He’s also terrified of animals, but luckily no animals appear in the story. And he’s an asshole at work, but none of the story takes place there and none of the other characters are his co-workers. See the problem? None of these flaws MATTER. They either don’t come up in the story at all, and thus never get a chance to affect the character, or if they do come up, they don’t cause any problems for the character, and in fact may benefit them. That’s not a flaw. It doesn’t matter if your character is a freaking SERIAL KILLER if they never face any kind of issue because of it, it’s not a flaw in the context of the story unless it works AGAINST your character in some way. ACCIDENTAL FLAWS These often overlap with inconsequential flaws, and are kind of the opposite of informed flaws. In the case of informed flaws, the author claims to us that the character has a flaw, but then fails to show it (or shows the opposite). In the case of accidental flaws, the author claims that the character DOESN’T have a certain flaw...and then proceeds to give them exactly that. For instance, how many times have you been reading a novel where the heroine INSISTS that she’s very plain and not pretty at all, then proceeded to give us an extremely flattering description of herself? How many times have you read something where the protagonist was acting like a huge jerk, but you got the impression from how it was written that the author expected us to be cheering him on, and anyone who thought he was indeed a jerk was portrayed as always unlikable and in the wrong? This is a case where the writer is either so oblivious or so in love with their own character that they become unaware of how obnoxious their darling is actually coming off. They rush to justify everything she does, they portray any opposition as simply evil or jealous or stupid, they overlook any kind of actual harm that he’s doing to anyone else, and they often make the villains end up accidentally sympathetic by comparison because the hero we’re supposed to love and admire is just so unbearable. The writer has made a very flawed character---but they didn’t mean or want to, and that’s the problem. WEAKNESSES Weaknesses aren’t flaws. Being clumsy, having a physical disability, or being a member of an oppressed/disliked group is not a flaw. Flaws are personality traits. They can be the RESULT of things like trauma or mental disorders, so they’re not always changeable or the person’s fault, but they’re still part of WHO they are, not WHAT, and something they can be held accountable for. If your character’s only “flaws” are being deaf and having PTSD and being an elf in a world that doesn’t like elves, those aren’t flaws, they’re weaknesses or drawbacks. If they’re lacking in some skill, such as fencing or shooting or flipping hamburgers, that’s also not a flaw. It could be a flaw if having the skill is important yet they refuse to work on it (ex: a police officer who doesn’t bother to improve his aim) but it is not in itself a flaw. Hell, it’s not even a weakness unless it’s relevant---I don’t know how to use a gun, but there’s no reason that it’s immediately relevant to my life to do so, so I wouldn’t count it as a weakness or a flaw. TIPS: - Try to be objective as you can about your character, even if you love them. Keep in mind that the other characters around them are people with thoughts and feelings too, and that if your character is rude, cruel, annoying, or off-putting to them, then they may have good reason for disliking or losing patience with your character, no matter what good reason your character has for being that way. If your atheist character trashes the faith of a religious character, it doesn’t matter if they grew up in a household of religious abuse, they’re still being a jerk and the religious character has a right to think so. If your character loses their temper and wrecks a store, it doesn’t matter that they were provoked or are really a nice person, the store owner is still well within their rights to press charges and demand compensation. Avoid vilifying other characters, and take their pain and personhood as seriously as you do the main character’s own. This alone will open the door to showing a lot of flaws that your character has, which will let you then decide if that’s the amount you WANT your character to have, or if you should change some things. - Any trait, including very good traits, can be bad taken to the extreme. For instance, let’s take a common “interview flaw”--- loyal no matter what. A lot of people don’t realize just how dark this can get. But what if your character is so loyal to their friend that they overlook it not only when that friend treats them badly, but treats other people too? What if they discover the friend has done something terrible, like is abusing his wife? What if they’re loyal to a fault to a supervillain organization that is actively hurting or even killing people, and they KNOW this? You can take this some pretty terrible places if you want. You don’t HAVE to, it can remain in “cinnamon roll” or “normal” territory if that’s what you want, but if you’re looking to make a more dark scenario, remember that you don’t need to rely on inherently “dark” flaws like “he loves to hurt people”---the most mild and even positive traits can become disturbing and evil if taken far enough. - If you’re trying to make someone MORE flawed, look at the flaws they already have and consider how it might hurt OTHER PEOPLE instead of just the character. For instance, if your character is very insecure, perhaps instead of just thinking about how worthless or untalented they are, they are overly-critical, even mean, to people who are even less talented. Or when someone else is more talented at something they wish they were better at, they scrutinize that person to find bad things about them, or even just assume things about them---like “sure, she’s a much better artist than me, but she’s ugly and she can’t write worth a damn” or “he may have a girlfriend and be good-looking, but he’s dumb as a brick and probably a bully like all dumb jocks”. An attitude like that takes your character from simply being the purely sympathetic sort of insecure, to someone who is actually doing something wrong because of it. Again, this is if you WANT your character to have more of an edge; it doesn’t suit some characters, and that’s ok. - By the same token, if you want to take some edge OFF your character and make them less flawed, look at how their present flaws might negatively affect others, and decrease that. If  the character you WANT to be a “cinnamon bun” lashes out at people who just don’t understand her pain/genius/specialness/goodness/etc, maybe reconsider that. - If you want to get ideas for flaws, look at the things other people do that annoy you. What are your pet peeves? Maybe you hate “Karen” behavior, or people who don’t take proper care of their pets, people who think they’re funny or clever when they’re not, people who interrupt you when you’re talking, people who make assumptions, people you feel are fishing for attention, people who believe or share false information without checking it first, people who never seem to listen or learn, people who are always late, people who feel entitled to something, and so on. See if any of them fit your character. Be sure to be honest with yourself---yes, you REALLY love your tough guy character, and you HATE when smokers just throw their butts on the ground...but maybe he would? And maybe he WOULD be snappish with someone who didn’t deserve it? And maybe he WOULD be quick to stereotype others, such as labeling them privileged preps based on how they dress? Think about it. - Zodiac signs are another good place to get ideas for flaws, as are Myers-Briggs personality types, and anything else that categorizes people into different personality types. Note that your character need not actually, say, have that sign for their zodiac, it’s just good places to get base personality ideas. - Try to keep your voice out of your character’s mouth, and let their actions speak for themselves. Whether you want to portray the world’s sweetest cinnamon roll (tired of that phrase yet?) or the worst dumpster fire in the universe, what works to show that isn’t for your character or those around them to TALK about how sweet/terrible your character is, what works is to actually have them do and say things that are sweet/terrible! - Get second opinions! You want to make your character MORE of a jerk? You’re worried they’re TOO MUCH of a jerk? You think your villain is too soft? You want to add moral ambiguity to your hero? Get other people to look at your work! Friends are great for this, but what’s even better is people who aren’t particularly close to you, and won’t hold back on honest advice and feedback.If you want to see how your characters come off to a set of unbiased eyes, the best way is to ask someone! - Remember that everyone is different and no matter how well you portray a character the way you intend, there will always be someone who views them in a way you didn’t want them to at all, even if it makes no sense for them to do so. Make peace with it. Don’t dismiss everyone by saying they “didn’t understand” or “read it wrong” or “are interrogating the text from the wrong perspective”, but by the same token don’t get too hung up on making sure every single reader views every single character the exact way you wanted. It just won’t happen. Just do your best.

[babyybitchhh]

Shikamaru or Senku?

Damn, anon. You really just came for my throat like that. I don’t know what I’ve done to hurt you but, from the bottom of my heart, I apologize. I swear it won’t happen again. 🤧

Okay, okay. All jokes aside. This is a real toughie and I’m gonna have to reveal just how much of a dumb bitch I really am to explain my answer. Yes, I fall back on the zodiac to fill in any gaps in characterization and determine just how compatible I actually am with fictional men. Sue me. As per usual, this post got a bit away from me so if you want to skip down to the TL;DR for my final answer, please do. I encourage it, actually. lol 

Ishigami Senkuu

January 4th - Capricorn

Strengths: leadership, responsible, disciplined, self-control, good managers

Weaknesses: lack of compassion, know-it-all, unforgiving, condescending, expecting the worst

“Capricorn is a sign that represents time and responsibility, and its representatives are traditional and often very serious by nature. These individuals possess an inner state of independence that enables significant progress both in their personal and professional lives. They are masters of self control and have the ability to lead the way, make solid and realistic plans, and manage many people who work for them at any time. They will learn from their mistakes and get to the top based solely on their experience or expertise.”

“Known for their rational approach to life and their emotions are often well hidden from plain view. Not only is it imperative for them to stick to the realm of absolute intimacy to open their heart for someone but they are often not fully aware of their feelings before hardships occur. This will put pressure on their love life as they have to make a strict and specific equation out of everything, distancing them from carefree and smiling partners who wish to have fun in a relationship.”

“There is nothing easy in the love life of these individuals but they will not see this as the end of the world. They have enough passion and warmth carried within and if mutual respect is found and strong boundaries respected both ways, they will be prepared to let someone into their world and protect them with their shield.”

“As an earth sign, Capricorn has a powerful and instinctive sensuality which expresses itself in a straightforward and natural way without the need for props, frills or adornment. Is it somewhat bereft of romance? Well maybe, but what Capricorn lacks in the way of sentimentality, it more than makes up for in terms of responsibility and discretion ... once it overcomes its initial reserve and caution, it can usually be relied upon to give full satisfaction, no matter how long it takes. As with most other things in its life, Capricorn prefers to take its time over its lovemaking, and its highly developed self-control gives it the stamina to stay the course.”

Nara Shikamaru

September 22 - Virgo

Strengths: pure emotion, loyal, analytical, kind, hardworking, practical

Weaknesses: sensitive to toxic environments, shyness, worry, overly critical of self and others, all work and no play

“Virgo’s are always paying attention to the smallest details and their deep sense of humanity makes them one of the most careful of the zodiac. Their methodical approach to life ensures that nothing is left to chance and although they are often tender, their heart might be closed for the outer world. This is a sign often misunderstood, not because they lack the ability to express but because they won’t accept their feelings as valid, true or even relevant when opposed to reason.”

“Feelings of love and life may be a bit like ocean waves that move with the current. With so much water flowing through their primal nature, their rational mind will easily fade around those that touch their heart. This makes them vulnerable to all sorts of betrayals and wrong compromises along the way. They need to be stable and firm in understanding and deciphering their own feelings before anyone else’s or they might lower their guard too far down.”

“They need a partner who is as fragile as they are but also someone who is aware of the strength of their emotional world.”

“ Many Virgos aren’t particularly comfortable with demonstrative displays of emotion or dramatic, over-the-top outbursts. Normally quite shy by nature, they prefer to express their affection in tangible, down-to-earth ways: love for them is about actions, not just empty words. Big worriers who don’t find it easy to show their feelings, Virgos are prone to internalizing their anxieties about their physical desirability – frequently making themselves ill in the process – and can often be a bit uptight around sex. To balance this, they need lots of reassurance that they’re actually perfectly okay!”

Now ... y’all can correct me if I’m wrong, but that all sounds pretty spot on to me. Like, it’s accurate. I’ve mentioned this a few times when replying to comments on my Dr Stone fics, but I really enjoy how nuanced Senkuu is because there’s a lot going on under the surface of his cool facade. He’s very task-oriented and objective about what needs to be done, but he’s also extremely sympathetic towards others even if he tries to play it off. It seems hard for him to be honest about his feelings because, frankly, they’re not rational enough for his liking, so he tries to find ways to justify them. On the flip side, Shikamaru is a little similar with his cool, objective-oriented outer shell but he’s conversely quite sensitive. Like, hella sensitive. That boy is not anywhere near as tough or impenetrable as he acts and I do think at least part of that is a defense mechanism of some sort to shield his heart, even before Asuma died but especially afterward. They’re both tough to penetrate emotionally and they guard their true feelings so well that it actually does manage to fool people. I mean both the characters around them and also the fans watching at home. So at this point, there doesn’t seem to be a conclusive winner and it should come down to a simple matter of preference, right?

Well, let’s see what the stars have to say about throwing a Leo into the mix.

Capricorn + Leo

“... have one thing in common and it’s their awareness of self. It will be a rare occasion when Leo is attracted to Capricorn but the other way around seems more probable.”

“Both are extremely devoted, especially to each other. Although they may seem to be an unlikely couple on the surface, their love will grow as they discover similarities.”

“Like Barbie and Ken, you’re a good looking pair ... your shared love of achievement and impressive ambition sends power couple fantasies running through your heads. If you’re out to conquer the same goal, your combined skills make you quite an awesome force to behold.”

“The physical intimacy between a Leo and a Capricorn is where this mismatched couple can come together. Leo is hot, physical, feminine, [and] enjoys giving pleasure. In a day to day life, Capricorn is reserved and proper but when it comes to sex, he wants it wild, woolly, rough and tumble. Lucky for him, Leo has a similar sexual appetite. It’s in bed where Leo has the power to make customarily reserved Capricorn throw caution to the wind and become a bit crazy in love.”

“What you’ve got here is one sign with a forensic eye for detail and another who paints with an incredibly broad brushstroke. The possibility of driving each other crazy is real.”

“Capricorn is more likely to be attracted to Leo than the other way around - they’ll watch the lion prance, preform and captivate with their personality and either instantly dislike or feel uncomfortably drawn to them.”

The good: both seek success, Capricorn teaches Leo patience, Leo teaches Capricorn passion

The bad: Leo thinks Capricorn is a cold fish, Capricorn thinks Leo is a show off, it all gets too hard to compromise

Virgo + Leo

“Their rationality might turn into an intellectual battle for sexual dominance, that is, if they ever reach the point in which they both want to have sex with each other.”

“Leo shows Virgo good times and fun, and introduces the spontaneity that is often missing from Virgo’s life. Virgo teaches Leo patience and focuses their intellectual energy.”

“Leo plays cheerleader to pessimistic Virgo while levelheaded Virgo steps into the therapists role, mirroring Leo’s angst until a breakthrough is reached. This is a safe emotional harbor for both of you.”

“Virgo and Leo see their time together in bed as a celebration of their love and commitment. Both are hopeless romantics so there will be plenty of physical foreplay, including morning kisses, long evening embraces, candles, flowers, and massages. A creative and open minded Leo is always willing to try something new and Virgo, who is no prude either, will be a willing follower. Together these two can reach sexual heights they’ve never experienced before.”

“A comedy of errors ...Leo and Virgo are forever working through misunderstandings and mending communication fences. Often it’s as if they speak different languages.”

“Leo pounces and Virgo, invariably, plays hard to get, rebuffing the lion and appearing completely underwhelmed by their charms. This of course drives Leo into a frenzy of heightened passion - they pull out their A game and deliver super hot maneuvers. The funny thing is that such scenarios are usually Virgo devised and orchestrated. They’ve probably observed the flamboyant lion in action - noted that everyone submits to their charisma and decided to go in the opposite direction. If played correctly Leo becomes a lovesick pussy cat ...”

“Virgo is a bit of a tease - for much of the “falling in Love” phase they love-starve Leo who shamelessly begs for morsels of affection. It actually makes the attraction between them electric.”

The good: Virgo teaches Leo patience, Leo teaches Virgo to have fun, they are fascinated by each other

The bad: messy Leo drives neat freak Virgo crazy, negative Virgo brings Leo down, poor communication abounds

So ... what did we take from all that? Well, first of all, both of them are apparently going to teach me patience which I admit I sorely need. Conversely, I’d bring passion, fun and spontaneity to their lives. On one hand, Senkuu seems like he’d be much more drawn to me than Shikamaru because even though I do stay drinking my dumb bitch juice, we have similar driving forces in our lives and I’m not a complete idiot. I love science, especially when it comes to learning about space and how the world works, just not the mathematical portion. That part can eat my ass tbh. On the other hand though, if Shikamaru and I could sort of find a common ground to stand on it sounds like it would be a very healthy relationship for the both of us which I need so badly it’s kind of not funny. Like, I’m self-aware enough to realize what I need out of a hypothetical relationship and it (unfortunately) is the kind of emotional connection that facilitates healing and growth rather than stagnation. I don’t think either of them would just sit there and watch me flounder in my angst, as one of those quotes put it, but everything is pointing at Shikamaru being much more well equipped to tackle the problem while simultaneously needing the same in return, which I would be more than happy to give him.

TL;DR: I actually cannot pick between them. I just can’t do it. I love them both for strangely similar but also drastically different reasons and, objectively, I can’t say I like one more than the other. Both give me soft, doki doki feelings that I don’t know what to do with and even after thinking on it for about two hours, I’m incapable of saying with definitive certainty that I like one more. So all I can go off of is what the zodiac has to say about our compatibility which is pointing at both potential relationships being rocky with their ups and downs, but Shikamaru being the more sensitive of the two comes out the winner in the end. That’s not to say I wouldn’t work with Senkuu to truly become the power couple we both secretly crave, but I know my emotions can get away from me at times and it seems to me that Shikamaru would be a smidge more understanding in that department. 

I realize this definitely isn’t the answer you were expecting, anon, and I absolutely considered scrapping this whole post more than once. lol But I didn’t want to shrug off the question just because I couldn’t decide which of them I liked more. Anyway, for the sake of posterity, here’s what the zodiac has to say about me for comparison. 

August 7th - Leo

Strengths: Energetic, creative, passionate, generous, warm-hearted, cheerful, humorous

Weaknesses: Hasty, arrogant, stubborn, self-centered, lazy, inflexible

“Love is the focus point of these individuals, and while their intellectual and instinctive sides are the first ones to show, we will see that they seek someone equal, to share their inner states with. They need a lot of support and a calm partner that soothes their Soul, someone quiet enough and intimate enough to feel safe with. Easy to detach from reality and our planet Earth, their relationships either speak of the unseen and the impossible or present a safe haven where their bodies can rest, and their routine can be brought to balance.”

“Open for new things and often ready to openly show their sexuality, they need a fine touch of love they are worthy of in this lifetime. Romance can be obstructed by their need to prove a point or become the image of something they admire, but as they get closer to their inner truth and become aware of their talents and potentials, they invite the right partner to be within a strangely peaceful union. Although they sometimes stand opposed to marriage and structures and forms that put any relationship in a drawer, they will gladly commit to the right person by their side, in all those surprising and unusual ways.”

“This Fire sign is passionate and sincere and its representatives show their feelings with ease and clarity. When in love, they are fun, loyal, respectful and very generous towards their loved one. They will take the role of a leader in any relationship, and strongly rely on their need for independence and initiative. This can be tiring for their partner at times, especially if they start imposing their will and organizing things that aren't theirs to organize in the first place. Each Leo needs a partner who is self-aware, reasonable and on the same intellectual level as them. Their partner also has to feel free to express and fight for themselves, or too much light from their Leo's Sun might burn their own personality down.”

“Sex life of each Leo is an adventure, fun and very energetic. This is someone who has a clear understanding of boundaries between sex and love, but might fail to see how important intimacy and emotional connection is to the quality of their sex life. Every Leo needs a partner to fight through their awareness and reach their sensitive, subconscious core, in order to find true satisfaction in a meaningful relationship.”

(Spoiler alert: this is all true, except the part about taking on the role of leader in relationships. I genuinely love being dominated in bed, but only if I deem my partner worthy or adequate enough to get the job done. Other than that though, I can’t say any part of this is horribly incorrect. Oops. : / )

[letterboxd]

Sommar Loving: The Ari Aster Q&A.

“The best filmmaking is mischief-making.” —Midsommar director Ari Aster confesses to being a nervous wreck while answering Letterboxd members’ questions about pagan rituals, grotesque imagery and psychedelic drugs.

It’s crazy to think that only two years ago, Ari Aster was just another New York filmmaker with a few shorts under his belt. But by this time last year, his debut feature, the Toni Collette-starring Hereditary, had taken out the title of most popular film on Letterboxd for the month of June, and ended the year as our Highest Rated Horror for 2018.

Not that he had a moment to enjoy it. Last August, while Hereditary was still in cinemas, Aster was already in Hungary (standing in for Sweden) filming his new horror, Midsommar, with Florence Pugh in the lead role. It was an assignment from a Swedish production company that he almost refused, until he saw it as an opportunity to process the break-up he was going through at the time.

In an insanely tight turnaround, Midsommar is out less than a year since it was shot, and feedback for the film on Letterboxd is largely positive. Midsommar “manages to be the perfect rom-com and the most mesmerizing horror film of the year,” according to Owen, and the film proves to SilentDawn that “Aster is a capable craftsman and an auteur with many dastardly thoughts on his mind”. Laura declares: “Nobody makes me feel as icky, awful, and downright dreadful as Ari Aster, and for that, I’m very, very grateful.”

It’s safe to say that Aster is a Letterboxd MVP, so we thought it only fair to invite you to submit your questions for our interview with him. Ever the optimists, you pitched us well over a hundred, so Jack Moulton got the tough job: whittling, coalescing and combining your thoughts, tucking them in among a few of our own, and putting them to a guy who has “more fun talking about other movies than talking about my own”.

One thing we didn’t ask? The most popular question of all: “Ari, are you okay?” The better question, after watching his films, is: are we okay?

Isabelle Grill (center) and some Swedish friends. / Photo: Csaba Aknay

You wrote both Hereditary and Midsommar while you were in a personal crisis, and you consider that writing was your remedy. Do you think you can make great art—to explore the depths of existential questions—when you’re more comfortable and content? Or is suffering the root of your success? Ari Aster: I’m sure I can. I’ve written a lot of films when I’ve been more comfortable and content. The two short films that I made first were written in that place. I’m a filmmaker who likes conflict, which is not unique to me of course, but I do have a dark side and I go there in my writing.

I’m also someone who believes the best filmmaking is mischief-making and I’m always trying to come from a place of mischief as a writer. But, whether I’m going through a crisis or writing in a more or less relaxed state, I’m also a very neurotic guy. Even when there’s relative peace in my life, I’m kind of a nervous wreck.

That’s relatable. Grief is a catalyst for both films, and both Toni Collette and Florence Pugh’s big scenes of anguish are really the most horrifying parts of the films, because they’re so raw. AlecDouglas asks: what is your approach to directing actors’ performances? More specifically, can you talk about how you prepared each actress for these gut-wrenching moments. A lot of that was laid out in the script as clearly as I could. Beyond the script, it was just a matter of talking through the material with them and explaining what I felt was needed. Luckily both actresses are extraordinary artists who knew exactly what was necessary and were fully committed. They gave themselves to the material in a very generous way and were prepared to dive in headlong.

Florence Pugh (center) has a good cry in another memorable scene from ‘Midsommar’.

Chris Flores, Timur Dzhambinov and Kahlen all asked about your obsession with mutilated heads and/or skull trauma. I grew up loving horror films and subjected myself to a lot of grotesque imagery. I’ve always had a feeling for the macabre. There are a lot of images that traumatized me and I’m sure that they lingered in my mind in a way that conditioned me to pursue images like that and come up with them myself. In all of my stories, the imagery comes after the ideas and characters, so it tends to fall in line with the story. In some cases it does come first, but it’s very hard to trace any of that to any origin.

Several people, including Mark and MrJoshua, would like to know how many of the pagan rituals and artwork in Midsommar are legitimate, and how many were invented by you. Most of the rituals are references in one way or another to actual traditions and laid out in pre-existing folklore, but I did take a lot of liberties from there. So there are certain things in the film that are pure invention and there’s certain things that are absolutely pulled from reality. The pubic hair in the food and the menstrual blood in the drink, for instance, is tied to my actual research.

Gunnel Fred. / Photo: Gabor Kotschy

Scott Stamper, Sam Sellers-King and Ash were interested in your obsession with cults, or, as Deryn asks: “Ari Aster what the fuc— okay, what is it with you and pagan cult-themed horror movies?” I don’t know if I have an obsession. It just so happens that the first two movies that I got made featured cults. They’re also both films that are very much about family and are asking questions about the families you’re born into, surrogate families, and the families you find. So for both films it made sense. A cult is a very useful metaphor when you’re digging into material.

Another common question: how much “research”—personal or professional—did you do into psychedelic drugs? When it comes to the psychedelic stuff, I didn’t really do research. I had taken psychedelics about ten years ago and I had some very bad trips when I was in college.

That counts as research. Inadvertently, yeah.

Laura Valentina asks: which films inspired the look and feel of Midsommar? Can we ask you to also talk about cinematography influences? For the tripping scenes, we weren’t looking at any influences. We didn’t want to do the 1960s and 1970s psychedelia that you might see in Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, or the films by Kenneth Anger. I love all those films and really enjoy them, but they’re dated due to that. If anything we just knew what we wanted to avoid.

For the cinematography in general, we were pursuing a three-strip Technicolor look. We were talking a lot about the color films of Powell and Pressburger and looking at older movies when we were color-correcting the film. When I was finishing Hereditary, I was working on a shot-list [for Midsommar], but it was a more accelerated process because of our extremely punishing and tight prep schedule. On Hereditary we did a lot of screenings for the crew of given movies that I thought would get people in the right mood, but we weren’t able to do that on this film.

You’ve mentioned this was a gruelling shoot on a tight timeframe, but Mariela and NineTailedFox would like to know what the most satisfying part of the production of Midsommar was for you? It’s always satisfying when you have a good scene in the can and when you’re able to achieve certain things. Everyday there’s satisfying moments but it’s also loaded with little disappointments. You’re just always praying for something that will help move the shoot along and keep people’s spirits high. There were a lot of scenes that we were happy with so that’s always something to be grateful about.

Jack Reynor, Ari Aster and Florence Pugh. / Photo: Merie Weismiller Wallace

Many in the Letterboxd community are raving about Midsommar’s stellar cast. Half the character work is achieved in those selections. Can you talk about where you first saw your actors and how you knew they were right for the roles? For a lot of the parts we had people tape and send in auditions, so it’s really a matter of instinct and feeling these people fit. In the case of Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor and Will Poulter, they were people who were at the top of our lists early on who we persisted on that they were right. It was a real joy to work with all of them. William Jackson Harper, too.

Florence Pugh can really do anything. She’s an incredible actress who’s wonderfully endowed with amazing talent. Will Poulter is a total professional and a brilliant actor. Vilhelm Blomgren was somebody we pulled on pretty late in the process and it was very exciting to find him and know we had our Pelle.

Bran asks: how different did Hereditary and Midsommar end up being from your initial ideas for them? They changed in the sense that what we ended up shooting were a lot longer than we could keep them, so the movies were cut down a lot. I feel both films are pretty close to what I was imagining. Midsommar was more ambitious and so there were more compromises, which is just what happens. You’re chasing this thing and you get as close as you can to your vision.

So then, given that Midsommar was significantly cut down, we’ll jump to Joshua Booker’s question: what was the hardest stuff to cut? There’s more rituals and we get to meet more people in the community to get a more nuanced view of them. There are more scenes between Dani and Christian so that their journey to that ending is a little bit more circuitous. There’s more of the thesis competition between Christian and Josh too, that originally had more body to it.

Right out of the gate your vision as a filmmaker feels fully formed. You’ve said that you intend to explore different genres. Do you want to continue working with cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, and do you plan on exploring different styles? I’m always interested in developing different styles but the style needs to fit the film. I’ve been working with Pawel for a long time—he’s one of my best friends and we understand how the other person works. We have a very satisfying shorthand and our own processes, which is great. I definitely plan on keeping on going with him.

Ari Aster with cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski. / Photo: Gabor Kotschy

Everybody wants to know whether you’ve ever written a script, or a scene, or a short, and then thought “I’ve gone too far”? I admit have a problem with brevity. That’s maybe where I wonder if I’ve been a bit too indulgent, but not if I’ve gone too far with the taboos.

MaxT26 asks: do you think it’s important for modern horror films to push the boundaries in terms of being disturbing and creative? Related: Tobias Soar wonders what recent horror movies you’ve admired. There’s a tradition in horror of confronting taboos and twisting the knife, so to speak. The Wailing is a film I absolutely loved and already has a place among my favorite horror movies. I would describe that as a masterpiece.

I’m excited by South Korean filmmakers in general, by the way they approach storytelling and juggling of tones. Their films defy categorization while also tempting it. Later this year, we’re all going to get The Lighthouse. I wouldn’t necessarily categorize that as a horror film but I’m excited for people to see it. I’m a big fan of Robert Eggers. I saw an early cut of it and it’s great.

The final question/answer contain spoilers for both films. Read on at your peril.

You’ve mentioned building the script for Hereditary around the image of both Charlie and Annie’s deaths and the way they mirror each other. What image was your starting point for Midsommar? Some of the final images were certainly the things that came to me first. In particular, it was the image of the wide-shot with Dani and the house burning behind her. The prologue of the film came to me pretty early on too.

‘Midsommar’ is in US and UK theaters now, and coming to other festivals and markets soon. All photographs courtesy of A24. Our thanks to Ari for his time and to everyone who asked a question. Still not sated? Enjoy this Letterboxd list of Ari Aster’s favorite contemporary directors.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

In a book released on the eve of the 2016 election called “Asymmetric Politics,” political scientists Matthew Grossmann and David Hopkins argued that America’s political parties don’t just have different ideologies, but are really different kinds of organizations. “Republicans are organized around broad symbolic principles, whereas Democrats are a coalition of social groups with particular policy concerns,” the authors concluded.

I don’t want to treat that book as gospel, but it speaks to a certain understanding that has existed throughout my 17 years covering national politics. Democrats have been considered the party of Asian, black, gay, Jewish and Latino people, along with atheists, teachers, union members, etc. — in short, a coalition organized around a bunch of different identity groups. Meanwhile, Republicans have been thought of as the party of small government, low taxes, a strong national defense and “traditional” moral values — in short, a coalition based around a few core ideological principles.

That has always been a fairly simplistic view of the parties. (And Grossmann and Hopkins’s book is much more nuanced.) But as an easy rubric to understand the two parties it worked. It still does, to some extent. But less and less so.

The two big stories happening right now in American politics — the 2020 Democratic primary and impeachment — show both parties being reshaped in ways that break with that asymmetry: The GOP is becoming increasingly organized around identity groups, and Democrats are becoming increasingly ideological.

Let me start with the Republicans.1

With Republicans on Capitol Hill strongly defending President Trump amid the Ukraine scandal, you might say that the GOP has simply abandoned many of its principles in deference to Trump. Maybe. But I think the more accurate story is that Republicans on Capitol Hill are standing firmly behind Trump because GOP voters and GOP activists and elites are demanding that they do so. There just isn’t much room to break with the president of your party if close to 90 percent of voters in the party approve of him and many of those voters get their news from sources strongly supportive of that president.

Why are Republican voters and elites so strongly aligned with Trump? There’s not a simple answer, but I think identity — rather than ideology — is a big part of it. Trump is defending the identities of people who align themselves with the GOP, and this is a more powerful connection and reason to back him than pure ideological concerns. In defending Trump, conservative voters are really defending themselves.

No party ever governs strictly on ideology, but some of the breaks with conservative orthodoxy in the Trump era are notable.

If you think of the GOP as being broadly wary of government intervention into the economy, it’s been striking to watch the Trump administration try very hard to prop up the coal industry — even as the rise of natural gas and other alternative fuel sources have reduced the need for coal. The administration’s limits on travel from certain countries and cuts in the number of refugees who are entering the U.S. have affected Muslims most, suggesting that the GOP’s long-championing of religious freedom is now really just about defending the values of Christian and Jewish people. On trade policy, Trump imposed tariffs on China and other nations, and after those nations retaliated by making it harder for U.S. farmers to sell their goods abroad, the administration gave direct financial aid to farmers.

The Republican Party has traditionally favored few tariffs, limited government intervention in the economy and not giving government money directly to people in lieu of them earning it through work. Its recent actions seem out of character for a party organized around a particular ideology.

But if you think of the GOP as being organized around identity groups, these policies hang together quite well. The clear beneficiaries of the Trump administration’s actions have been businesses and corporations whose leaders back the president (such as those in the coal industry), conservative Christians, farmers, gun rights enthusiasts, people wary of increases in the number of foreign-born Americans and Islam, people wary of movements like Black Lives Matter and MeToo, pro-Israel activists and residents of rural areas.

Of course, I’m not the first person to notice any of this. The journalist Ron Brownstein refers to the GOP as the “coalition of restoration,” trying to fight against a “coalition of transformation” led by Democrats. Robert Jones, head of the Public Religion Research Institute, has described Trump as the defender of a “white Christian America” that sees itself in decline. In a recent speech, Attorney General Willam Barr praised the “Judeo-Christian values that have made this country great” and warned that “irreligion and secular values are being forced on people of faith.” All three of those formulations describe a complicated mix of identity and ideology.

“Some values and preferences that were always there, like racial resentment, rural resentment, nationalism, are being amplified and others, like free markets, are being diminished,” Hans Noel, a scholar on political parties who teaches at Georgetown University, told me.

“Allegiance to Trump is becoming more important to what it means to be conservative,” he added, “But post-Trump, that change may persist, with a conservatism that is more populist and nationalist.”

You might argue that this was always the Republican Party — that the GOP of Ronald Reagan and the two Bush presidents was similarly organized around conservative identity groups and not ideology. Perhaps the Bushes downplayed that dynamic for electoral reasons and to be “politically correct,” and therefore presented themselves as, say, more liberal on racial issues than the party’s base voters really wanted. Maybe Trump has simply stripped away the artifice. And you could certainly also argue that the Trump administration, particularly its aggressive push to reduce the number of people on Medicaid, is quite ideologically conservative on many issues.

Notably, Hopkins mostly disagrees with me, arguing that there have been some shifts in the Trump era but that the GOP has not fundamentally changed.

“His racial appeals are more common, more central and more overt, and he is more likely than most Republicans to simply be misleading or dishonest about what his policies are,” he told me. “But his appeals to patriotism, nationalism and nostalgia for an idealized past are very much in line with traditional conservative rhetoric, and he increasingly speaks the language of small government and capitalism.”

I think those arguments have merit. I don’t think that the Republican Party has abandoned ideology in favor of identity completely. But it does seem like identity is playing a bigger and clearer role than it did a decade ago.

Let’s move to the Democrats. Polling shows that a rising number of Democrats view themselves as liberal — now half of the party, compared to less than a third in the early 2000s. Democratic voters are increasingly likely to support liberal positions such as allowing more immigrants into the country and the government playing a role in helping Americans pay for their health care.

But the shift among Democrats is even more evident among activists and elites. Groups like Black Lives Matter, Demand Justice, the Sunrise Movement, Planned Parenthood and the newly-revived Poor People’s Campaign are pushing the Democratic Party in a more ideological direction. That ideology is perhaps best defined by a push for equality across a lot of realms — and particularly around ethnicity and race, gender, income, sexual orientation and wealth.

I think this is why Kamala Harris struggled to win the support of young, liberal black Democratic activists in her presidential run. She often tried to connect with them on identity (as a woman of color), but many of them were more interested in Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who both made taking strong stands on racial and wealth inequality central to their candidacies.

“What makes the Green New Deal notable is that it’s a solution to climate change on explicitly social-democratic grounds,” said Daniel Schlozman, an expert on parties who teaches at Johns Hopkins University. He was referring to the fact that the Green New Deal is an environmental proposal but also includes liberal goals like guaranteeing all Americans a job and the ability to join a labor union.

I don’t want to overstate this shift, which I think is largely about party activists and a certain bloc of the party’s elected officials, including Sanders and Warren. You might argue both that Democrats have long been obsessed with equality and that the party still functions effectively as a bunch of different groups joined together. And it’s worth noting that about half of Democratic voters identify as “moderate” or “conservative,” not “liberal.” Another reason to be cautious about the idea that Democrats are more ideological than ever is that the leader in the national polls in the Democratic primary, Joe Biden, is running much more as a coalition-style candidate than an ideologically driven one. He seems to be trying to capture the nomination by combining the support of blacks, Catholics, liberals, moderates, Latinos, union members and whites, as opposed to running as an explicitly moderate or liberal candidate.

“I think there’s a ways yet to go before the trends we see add up to a fundamentally ideological Democratic Party,” said Hopkins. But he added, “Sanders and Warren are trying to redefine the party, and there’s a chance they or their political descendants could succeed in the future.”

Indeed, I think the party is changing, even if it has not fully changed. There has been a huge shift over the last five years by the Democratic Party’s officials, activists and even its voters in terms of viewing racial inequality as being principally about societal problems like racism (rather than shortcomings in effort by black people). A greater focus on gender equality in the party has forced Democrats like Biden to cast aside support for limits on abortions that some of these pols had embraced in the past. Biden often criticizes the rising left wing in his party, but the former vice president’s actual campaign positions are solidly liberal — he’s against the death penalty, and supports allowing federal funding to be used for abortions, expanding Medicare to many more Americans, free community college, and decriminalizing marijuana. In many ways, Biden (and Pete Buttigieg) are essentially conceding to the rising power of the ideological left and simply offering a milder version of its ideas than Sanders and Warren.

Why do these party changes matter? First, they explain why fights between the elites and activists within both parties are so intense. Never-Trump Republicans such as Bill Kristol deeply believe they are defending the true Republican Party. Old-style Democrats such as Biden think they are defending the true Democratic Party. Secondly, these shifts explain why some seemingly-on-the rise politicians are struggling. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan was trying to find some middle course between the more ideologically conservative old-style GOP and the more identity-driven Trump version and just couldn’t. I think Harris tried both to connect with the rising activists in her party and the more traditional folks and managed to excite neither group.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, these shifts matter because America is to some extent in a partisan civil war, and we essentially have three competing views on how to end it: A Biden/Bush/Kristol style approach that downplays divisions among America’s various identity groups and reaches for more compromises; a Sanders/Warren approach of resetting America along more equal lines; and a Trump/Barr vision that is decidedly Judeo-Christian and favors maintaining traditional norms over upsetting them to expand equality.

[wisdomrays]

Deep contemplation: The Helix of Light that Takes a Person to the Truth

QUESTION: What are the points of consideration for attaining the desired level of deep contemplation?

ANSWER: Deep contemplation means a person’s forcing oneself to think about one’s own inner world, constantly scrutinizing things that exist and take place, and opening to more immense and deep thoughts by taking all of these into consideration time and time again. The original Arabic word tafakkur is inflected in the form of tafaul, which denotes burdening oneself. That is a person’s making serious effort to realize something and forcing oneself to achieve something, and giving the willpower its due in this respect. For this reason, we can say that with respect to its word formation, the word tafakkur expresses an act of thinking that is systematic, deep, and constant, rather than thinking in a simpler sense.

The Qur’an brings active reasoning to attention

Deep contemplation is one of the essential teachings of Islam. In many verses the Qur’an concludes with a perspective of deep contemplation after mentioning the skies, rainfall, plants, clouds, wind, stars, atmosphere, creation of living things, and people’s sustenance… In short, after mentioning various evidences, one can realize in both the outer world and within that the Qur’an always relates the issue to deep contemplation. For example, after God Almighty mentions the creation of the heavens and earth, changing of the length of days and nights, floating of ships on seas for the benefit of humanity, His reviving the dead earth by descending rain from the sky followed by various living beings’ creation there, movements of winds, and clouds suspended between the earth and the sky waiting for God’s orders, He points out that there are signs in them for God’s existence and unity “for a people who reason and understand” (al-Baqarah 2:164). There are many similar verses in the Qur’an. Some of them conclude with an emphasis on reasoning, some on reflection, and some on knowing. Although there are certain nuances among them, it will be seen that they essentially make the same point, which is a person’s thinking about the signs that God created in the outer world and within, making use of reason, and immersing in contemplation. The fact that so many verses end with the emphasis, “There are signs (in the stated points) for a people who reason…” also gives us the following message: By referring to deep contemplation with a present tense form in Arabic, the Qur’an constantly turns our attention to active reasoning. As the Qur’an does not even mention passive reasoning, it does not mention an act of thinking solely directed to the past either. On the contrary, by mentioning deep contemplation as a general and repeated act, the Qur’an demands believers to contemplate on the present and the future along with the past. For this reason, as a person makes connections with the past by reasoning and logic, it is also necessary to distill the present age and future time through deep contemplation and take every step on the grounds of reasonability. The fact that such verses bring active reasoning to attention is also important in terms of putting emphasis on the continuity of deep contemplation.

Incidentally, I would like to draw attention to another point here. When such verses of the Qur’an are translated, the commonly used word is “reasoning.” However, this word does not properly convey the meaning of “ya’qilun” in Arabic. Although “reasoning” is used in translation because there is not a better alternative, it should be noted that this is a weak word to reflect the original meaning. It is also possible to use longer expressions such as: “gaining insight into entities and happenings by reasoning,” “reaching to possible fruits to be yielded by reason through contemplation,” “scrutinizing the creation by making use of reason,” etc.

True self-discovery can only be realized through contemplation

Given that God Almighty draws attention to using reason and deep contemplation in many instances, believers need to deepen both their outward and inward contemplation. In his book Man, The Unknown, Alexis Carrel states that even if you consider man solely with a physiological and anatomical perspective, he will truly appear before you as a monument to be respected. Humans are so perfect with respect to their inner and outer structure that—imagining the impossible—had it been possible to prostrate before anyone but God, it would be human. However, God did not allow prostrating before anyone but Himself. As for the angels’ prostration before Adam, it was a situation of testing for the sake of understanding the subtle point in obeying His commands. Moreover, Prophet Adam’s position as an altar at the prostration for God indicates that there is no other creature that combines qualities of being superior and special because Adam was in a way the intersection point of matter and spirit, of physical and spiritual realms. In other words, he was a comprehensive mirror of the entirety of the Divine Names. So when you begin to study such a perfect creature as man with his bodily and spiritual aspects, you cannot help immersing in deep contemplation. Be it bodily aspects as the hands, feet, ears, nose, tongue, or lips, or be it the truth of the human essence, man resembles a perfect book that leads one to deep thinking, given that a correct reading is achieved. Particularly, when man is viewed in terms of his carnal soul, heart, feelings, consciousness of having consciousness, and ability to use willpower, it will be seen that he is endowed with a magnificent mechanism with no gap to be found. As man holds the wheel of such a system, operates it, and stands closest to it in terms of having set his throne at its central point, he is the one who understands it best. If a person can set out inwardly and can deepen thoughts on human physical and spiritual aspects, then it becomes possible to turn outwardly in the same way, like people who set out to space after having made accomplishments in the world. To put it differently, on realizing that God does not create anything in vain after a systematic contemplation a person realizes in the realms inside, when such person turns his gaze to the outer realms, he will similarly draw different aspects of wisdom, just like a bee returning home with different essences of honey.

The reading circles must be places of contemplation

The duty that falls to a person is effectuating well both inward and outward contemplation, complementary like the two wings of a bird, and transforming their gatherings for their reading circles into strolls on the emerald hills of the heart, as places where the signs of God in religion and in the universe are deliberated. If this is not done, the gatherings will not be saved from levity and trivialities. At places where trivialities prevail, people cannot stop themselves from criticizing this or that person like old chatterboxes, busying themselves with others’ faults, and backbiting people. Engagement in such rumors is a cause of impurity for the time, place, and atmosphere. Such an impure atmosphere does not serve as fertile grounds for germinating contemplation. What a person who is caught by the currents of his carnal soul and fancies does is no different than tying up and paralyzing the mechanism of contemplation, which is the key to viewing and interpreting existence correctly.

So the way to render our gatherings fruitful is to always bring the issue to a place of contemplation where we will think about God and His Messenger, blessings and peace be upon him, always making our conversations and discussions into contemplative dialogue on God, the Real Beloved. If anyone wishes to engage in idle talk, it is necessary to intervene in a mannerly fashion and give the following message: “Dear brother (or sister), if you have anything to say in the Name of God and His Messenger, please say it and we will listen. Otherwise, bring a book (at least) so that we can have a reading.” Then turn to an issue that moves hearts, waters eyes, and reminds us of our human potential again. For example, we can have one of those present recite a portion from the Qur’an, and if there is anyone who can elucidate the meaning of the verses recited, we can ask that person to interpret them, providing some spiritual relief. If there is not anyone capable of Qur’anic exegesis, we can then bring an annotated translation and try to understand the meaning of the verses recited. The more we understand and contemplate, the more we will rid ourselves from simplemindedness and shallowness in thought, and thus set out to more immense considerations. To conclude, thanks to the dynamic of contemplation, we will have a deeper insight into our impotence, poverty, and the necessity of offering gratitude—we will embrace the creation with a more immense compassion, and continue our service with enthusiasm by God’s grace.

[housmania]

In Defense of TJLC

A response to this Slate podcast and to general misconceptions.

Hello! Call me soe. I like cats, BBC Sherlock, and friendly online communities. I hope you do too.

I also blog about TJLC. So, when a Slate podcast came out this week portraying TJLCers in a jarringly negative light, I was dismayed. What I heard was not the community I know.

This post’s aim is to tell the other side of the story. I’m writing both for people who support TJLC and were shocked to hear of the podcast, and for people outside TJLC whose initial impressions have been skewed by the podcast or other outside sources.

I’ll address four of the most common arguments against TJLC through the lens of the argument presented by Willa Paskin, the podcast’s creator:

TJLC, as a theory, is “far-fetched” and merits no serious consideration.

TJLCers are dogmatic, ideological, and close-minded.

TJLCers have hated on people outside of TJLC to an unusual and appalling extent.

TJLC has brought more harm into the world than good.

I intend to refute these points. In the process, I hope to represent your run-of-the-mill TJLCer: not a hateful extremist, but rather someone who supports a theory, enjoys discussing it, and is happy to let those who don’t live their happy lives.

It also means adhering to the standards of a good TJLC meta writer: going through the podcast thoroughly, addressing Ms. Paskin’s correct insights as well as her failings; reading and acknowledging critics and downright opponents; citing all sources; and remaining civil and open-minded. I wish Ms. Paskin had afforded us these privileges.

I genuinely believe that Ms. Paskin meant well. Nonetheless, the biases of her sources, combined with several misconceptions and imperfect research, result in a piece that portrays TJLC inaccurately.

To understand what the podcast got wrong, we first need to cover:

What is TJLC?

TJLC is the theory that the characters John Watson and Sherlock Holmes will end up in a canonical romantic relationship on the BBC show Sherlock. People who support this theory are called TJLCers. TJLCers write analyses of the show, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and numerous other sources known as “metas”.

TJLC is short for “The Johnlock Conspiracy.” I must immediately clarify that this name is a joke. It began humorously and is always, always used tongue-in-cheek. Keep this in mind: Many misconceptions about TJLC arise from the fact that we take very few things seriously, as I’ll discuss later.

What isn’t TJLC?

TJLC is not the same as Johnlock.

Johnlock refers just to shipping John/Sherlock—thinking they’d make a cute romantic couple, without necessarily having any expectation of that happening on the show.

More fundamentally: Johnlock is about creating transformative, creative content. It’s about making something new. In essence, it’s fiction.

TJLC is about analyzing evidence that’s already there. It’s nonfiction.

Ms. Paskin frequently blurs the lines between the two and mourns TJLC for not having the same level of creativity. She explains, for example, that fandom reads into tiny elements of a show to create a transformative space. But TJLC is not transformative. That’s Johnlock.

Neither is TJLC based on wanting the show to “bend to [our] desires”—i.e., Johnlock shippers projecting wishful thinking onto the show. I’m happy to serve as a counterexample for that! I actually didn’t ship Johnlock at all before discovering TJLC. Rather, I found the theories plausible and loved the idea that a show centered around deduction and analysis could also be the subject of deduction and analysis.

Of course, people who already ship Johnlock are more likely to be attracted to TJLC. But the basis of TJLC is not to “see in the story that you have, the story that you want” (46:40)—that’s shipping—but to analyze the story you already have.

I cannot stress this enough: TJLC is analysis, NOT shipping.

TJLC and the “Great Game”

As the podcast explains, TJLCers aren’t the first analyze Sherlock Holmes. Fans of the originals have been analyzing the stories since the 1880s. These early theorists actually gave the name to two kinds of fan analysis: Watsonian and Doylist.

Watsonian fans played the “Great Game,” treating the stories like a real world. Doyle didn’t exist, so every detail had to be explained in-universe rather than attributed to author techniques or error. They’re closer to your modern shippers, creating headcanons to fill in gaps.

Doylist fans acknowledged that (no duh) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a real person, and therefore analyzed the stories as works of literature. They are essentially literary analysts and critics, the kind that wind up on JSTOR.

TJLCers are Doylists. Obviously, someone made the show. That means we analyze character arcs, cinematographic techniques, and rhetorical devices in the dialogue like a researcher in film studies or literature would.

Ms. Paskin warns that in the Watsonian Great Game, people kept “tongues planted firmly in cheek; TJLCers, not so much.” And yet, that’s the point! You wouldn’t expect a literary analyst to go “lol maybe The Great Gatsby criticizes society but like who knows” any more than you’d want Watsonians to really believe that because John Watson’s wife called him James, his middle name is Hamish (Scottish for James) rather than acknowledging that Doyle just forgot. A ridiculous premise entails a humorous approach. A reasonable premise entails a rational one.

TJLC isn’t quite the same as highbrow analysis, however, for three reasons:

First, we use our analyses to speculate about the future of the show. We don’t have the privilege of analyzing a complete work. In that sense, the closest analogy I can think of is that of political analysts: examining what’s already been said and done to predict what will happen next.

Second, we evolved from a fandom space. That means that the barrier between TJLC and Johnlock, between nonfiction analysis and creative fiction, is never as solid as it would be in academia. Furthermore, a significant number of TJLC meta writers also engage in fictional fanworks, making it more difficult to distinguish where hard analysis ends and transformative work begins. I’ll go into some of the nuances of meta in a bit.

Third, the people in TJLC are generally queer women and often young. And we can’t discuss biases against fandom and TJLC without acknowledging sexism and homophobia. When a film critic writes a theory, it’s deep; when we do, it’s ludicrous. Paradise Lost is fanfiction just as much as AO3, but only the former is treated as legitimate literature. Theories about straight couples are plausible; ones about queer ones are suddenly delusional or fetishization. Adult fanboys are mature content creators; fangirls are hysterical.

Conversations about the implicit biases in media depictions of fandom aren’t my focus here. Nonetheless, it’s crucial to bear in mind that highbrow criticisms of fandom that focus only on its ill effects and ignore the complexity, depth, community bonding, and social change that fandom (analytical and transformative) creates often denigrate fans as immature and delusional without considering whether that accurately represents even a significant minority of a fandom. It’s a bias that we should all keep in check.

As progressive as Ms. Paskin may be, the podcast also falls into this trap. In particular, she emphasizes sensationalist depictions of TJLC theories—highlighting far-fetched theories and glossing over deeper points—and the contemptible actions of very few TJLCers while glossing over the far more plausible mainstream theories and kindness of nearly all TJLCers. As a result, we naturally look hysterical and delusional.

So let’s tackle each of those issues: TJLC as a theory and the behavior of the TJLC community.

TJLC as a Theory

If you don’t support TJLC, I’m not asking you to be convinced by a few paragraphs. The aim here is simply to explain why TJLC is plausible.

Ms. Paskin asserts that (1) TJLC is completely unsupported by the original Sherlock Holmes stories, (2) that romantic coding in the show is simply “a knowing wink,” and that (3) TJLC “is based on an unfalsifiable premise: that the creators are lying to you.” In fact:

1. TJLC is supported by the original stories.

The Sherlock Holmes canon contains significant, documented evidence of queer coding similar to other works of the same time period. It’s also reasonable to theorize, based on biographical data, that Doyle himself was bisexual.

The extent to which the stories were deliberately coded is a matter of debate. Yet Ms. Paskin simply asserts that “Conan Doyle wasn’t trying to create a homosexual subtext when he wrote the characters, but he did write a deep and committed friendship.” As @one-thousand-splendid-stars put it:

How on earth can anyone possibly know if the homoeroticism was intentional or not, when ACD could’ve been persecuted for admitting it, or making it more obvious?

Ms. Paskin’s assertion, which does not acknowledge any evidence to the contrary, again conflates Johnlock shippers with TJLCers. Johnlock is about transformative fiction; TJLC is about nonfiction analysis.

Ms. Paskin also suggests that TJLCers are “queering” the text, except that queering generally implies a queer theory approach to something that wasn’t queer to begin with. Our whole objective is to reveal that the text was originally queer.

2. The basis for TJLC is the show itself.

Ms. Paskin supposes that TJLC is “is based on an unfalsifiable premise: that the creators are lying to you.”

But TJLC isn’t based on anything the creators have said. It’s based on analysis of the show itself.

There’s a whole lot of analysis; good summaries are here and here. Essentially, we argue that given the level of coding on the show, the most probable outcome is that there is deliberate subtext meant to foreshadow that John and Sherlock will become a couple. Elements like Sherlock being indifferent to women, yet “romantic entanglement would complete [him] as a human being” suggest that the subtext isn’t just a “knowing wink,” as Ms. Paskin asserts: it would be poor writing (not to mention queerbaiting) to complete such a setup and not follow through.

3. The creators

Ms. Paskin finds it alarming that TJLCers believe Moffat and Gatiss are deliberately lying when they say that Johnlock will not become canon.

And normally, I would agree! Except that Moffat and Gatiss have a long history of lying through their teeth about plot developments. For example, they vehemently repeated that The Abominable Bride would be a stand-alone episode completely independent of the show, but it turned out to be a drugged Sherlock’s theorizing about Moriarty’s plan. And before Series 4, they said that Mary would become a long-running character, then killed her off in the next episode.

So it’s not a stretch to think that they could be lying about one more thing, particularly when TJLC relies on independent evidence from the show itself.

In fact, Paskin argues that TJLCers, like Watsonians playing the Great Game, base their theories on a “contradiction”: “On the one hand the author might as well not exist, but then on the other hand, this person who doesn’t exist has made this perfectly explicable logical thing.”

Except that unlike Watsonians, we do acknowledge that the creators exist. We analyze the show as a work of fiction, with narrative techniques that can be analyzed just as much as plot elements.

Furthermore, the fact that the creators lie constantly doesn’t mean we don’t pay attention to what they do say. They have large incentives to keep upcoming plot twists secret, but that doesn’t mean they can’t reveal their motivations and influences. A lawyer questioning a lying witness can still gain information from what they do say.

Take a closer example: Say I went back to 1897 and asked Bram Stoker if there’s queer coding in Dracula (which is now well-documented). He would probably respond along the lines of “I’m not a sodomite; also, what???” But he might wax poetic about homoeroticism in Walt Whitman’s poetry and mention that his charismatic but domineering idol Henry Irving was the basis for Dracula.

So no, there’s no contradiction between analyzing the show and the creators’ influences while still believing that they don’t want to reveal upcoming plot points.

The Behavior of the TJLC Community

How Theories Work

Ms. Paskin rattles off several far-fetched TJLC theories that make TJLC as a whole sound ridiculous. Furthermore, she implies that TJLC is a monolithic community with a “dogmatic” belief in all of these theories, such that criticism and discussion don’t exist.

Guess what? I’m in TJLC, and I don’t believe half the theories she mentioned. That’s because TJLC is much less uniform than its detractors would believe. Furthermore, the general level of confidence that people have in a given piece of evidence depends on its strength. In other words, the more evidence for something, the more likely that TJLCers agree on it. The less evidence for something, the more likely we are to treat it as just something cool that could turn out to be coincidence.

We can divide TJLC meta into five basic categories:

1. Foundational meta

These are well-respected analysis of character arcs, dialogue, and other clearly deliberate plot elements such as this one. Pretty much all TJLCers agree with them. These are your best-researched, most widespread meta; they form the true basis of TJLC. Here are some examples. And yet they hardly show up in Ms. Paskin’s discussion, because they don’t make TJLC sound too far-fetched.

2. Circumstantial evidence

TJLC can stand on foundational meta alone, but there’s also secondary evidence to support it. This includes the “drinks code” (the theory that beverages serve as symbols on the show, supported by subsequent creator remarks) and similar theories that can’t hold up TJLC by themselves, but do provide extra evidence and add nuance to theories about character arcs and plot development.

3. Accessory meta

These are analyses of elements that could well turn out to be coincidence due to scarce evidence. If true, they allow us to establish character arcs in greater depth, but it’s perfectly possible that any given one is coincidence. These include the theories on wallpaper and lighting that Ms. Paskin reports as though they were the pillars of TJLC. They’re theories that I read and go, “Hm, interesting; maybe.”

4. Spinoff theories

These are theories that deal with specific paths the show might take. They generally have groups of supporters within TJLC, but each spinoff theory usually only has a smaller group of supporters within the larger TJLC community.

It’s important to note that many major theories don’t have to do with Johnlock at all. Take M-theory, the idea that Mycroft and other characters are under Moriarty’s thumb, or EMP, the idea that some episodes take place in Sherlock’s mind palace. If, as Ms. Paskin asserts, TJLC is about wishful thinking and wanting Johnlock to be canon, what would be the point of these? Furthermore, if TJLC is monolithic and dogmatic, why do we constantly discuss and critique these theories in constructive discussions? I had to make a whole table of theories after Series 4 because everyone’s opinion was so different!

5. Crack theories

These are usually clearly labeled “crack” and are never meant to be taken seriously. Again, TJLC contains a lot of humor. So sometimes, we goof off and write theories like this one that are clearly ridiculous, usually with an exaggerated conspiratorial tone, to have fun in the spirit of the Watsonians. Unfortunately, some people outside TJLC think we actually take these theories seriously and accordingly treat us as crazy people. Guys… Ctrl+F “crack” first.

To summarize:

TJLC contains theories with varying levels of evidence that are treated with corresponding levels of seriousness.

TJLCers are far from dogmatic. Different people have different views, and that’s OK.

TJLC is founded on criticism and discussion (here’s an example). By disagreeing on meta, we gain better insight into the characters.

Addressing Ms. Paskin: The theories she dwells on are EMP and M-Theory (40:04 and 10:37), both spinoff theories. They do not form part of the main body of TJLC, and fans are far more flexible about that stuff because it’s not nearly as firmly supported as foundational meta. She cites a clip analyzing Mycroft’s theme in the score, which is accessory meta that could well turn out to be coincidence. (By the way, I have serious doubts about all three of these theories. And TJLC is perfectly accepting of that!)

She also talks about loudest-subtext’s meta on the 2009 BBC queer representation report, whose objective was to demonstrate that it was possible for TJLC to happen from a production/permission standpoint, not to prove that TJLC was happening on the show. In that sense, it’s closer to circumstantial evidence.

She also fears that TJLCers “try to find order and logic and reason in every detail.” Again, sane TJLCers treat less solid evidence as less likely to be true. Caveat: Some TJLCers do go overboard. But they do not represent the overwhelming, sane majority.

TJLC Culture

Confidence and Criticism

Ms. Paskin finds it alarming that many TJLCers regarded TJLC as far more well-supported, even certain, than “an opinion or a possibility” or “just one ship among many” (14:50).

And yet, in an academic setting, isn’t it normal to think that the theory you researched and support is correct? Again, we hit the boundary in how the public perceives highbrow research and fan analysis. TJLC was not “just one ship among many” because (again) it’s not a ship, it’s a theory based on research and analysis. So naturally, we had a higher level of confidence in TJLC becoming canon than a shipper with an unsupported ship would.

Ms. Paskin implies that this confidence led directly to TJLC being unable to take criticism and therefore hating on people outside the community, since “denying [TJLC] was denying the truth” (14:55). But—first off—confidence does not directly lead to thin skins. Again, we debate everything. If good meta writers couldn’t change their minds given new evidence, TJLC wouldn’t exist.

Yet even when some TJLCers were more certain about TJLC than could be reasonably expected, the overwhelming majority was perfectly nice. We can, in fact, agree to disagree with others.

But this brings us to the most painful part of the podcast:

Fandom Toxicity: The Broad Picture

The podcast, having painted TJLCers as delusional, dogmatic crusaders, goes on to argue that TJLCers hated on people outside TJLC to an unusual and deplorable amount, such that TJLC’s main effect was to increase toxicity in the Sherlock fandom.

For starters:  Yes, a few TJLCers did fit this despicable mold. I universally condemn people who went out of their way to attack people outside or inside the community. They are an insult to TJLC’s values of inclusivity and rational debate. And my heart goes out to the people who suffered as a result of them.

But guess what? All the TJLCers I’ve talked to agree with that. Because the fact is that awful people form an incredibly small minority of TJLC.

Most of the TJLCers who listened to the podcast found this to be the most insulting and painful part. They’ve reiterated time and again that the community as a whole is not a toxic place.  @artfulkindoforder put it best:

So many TJLCers were never mean to anybody.

You can think we’re unrealistic, immature, delusional—fine. But at the end of the day, the overwhelming majority of us stuck to our circles of courteous people and just had fun.

In broad terms, there were several inconsistencies between the podcast and what I found. First, the podcast attributes toxic behavior to large swathes of TJLC, when in fact it tended to be a small group of repeat offenders, many of whom would attack people inside TJLC as well as outside it. loudest-subtext, a longtime TJLC blogger, discussed this here.

Secondly, the podcast makes absolutely no mention of the hate that TJLCers—often perfectly civil ones—received, which makes it easier to paint TJLC as engaging in vicious, one-sided attack. TJLCers, especially at the beginning, received shocking quantities of anonymous hate. Like attacks on people outside TJLC, I’m sure that the attacks on TJLCers were also due to a tiny minority of toxic people. But to gloss over them entirely is to paint an incomplete and biased picture. As @one-thousand-splendid-stars put it:

I’m not going to pretend that there was never nasty behavior from TJLC, but I’m also not going to say her description of us was accurate. She presented the TJLC fandom like it was a toxic cult.... She talked about fandom bullying as though we were never on the receiving end of it, and weren’t ever ridiculed, or called stupid, or sent anon hate, or harassed. To imply that tjlcers were only dishing it out is just flat out inaccurate.

The anonymous attacks on TJLCers had several results. First, TJLC developed a culture that stresses avoiding confrontation with outsiders: leaving other shippers be, unless they seek out TJLC posts. For example, some of the first things I learned were to misspell other ship names on TJLC posts so they wouldn’t show up when people wanted content promoting that ship, and not to reblog posts from outside shippers’ blogs with TJLC-related comments. Far from attacking outsiders, the whole point is to let people who disagree with TJLC do their own thing.

Second, the vast majority of TJLCers despise anon hate because they receive it unusually often. I’ve never seen a community with so many posts reminding people never to resort to it because they’ve seen how it hurt TJLC bloggers.

Third, a handful of TJLCers who got repeated and unwarranted hate did get more combative. But when looking at their later behavior, it’s important to understand that many of them became less willing to compromise on TJLC because they’d seen toxic fans remain unwilling to compromise or debate with them. And most of the conflicts I’ve seen as a result came from anti-TJLC people coming specifically to comment on TJLCers’ posts, not from TJLCers going out of their way to fight non-TJLCers.

Specific Incidents

I didn’t want to rely on secondhand knowledge about hate to write this response. In the spirit of TJLC, I wanted to be fair and impartial. That meant looking through the blogs of people who had received hate inside and outside TJLC. So here’s what I found out:

First off, it was awful. I was looking 4-5 years back to find the worst instances of hate in the community, and I wasn’t used to it because the bloggers I interact with are universally inclusive and civil.

Ms. Paskin discussed three specific incidents on the podcast: top/bottomlock, the 2015 221BCon incident, and post-Series 4 anger.

When top/bottomlock came up, I was baffled. First off, that discussion is ancient. It’s so old that by the time I joined TJLC in late 2015, it had practically died out. More importantly, a “debate” that Ms. Paskin describes as “very specific and dogmatic fanon” was—as I’ve understood—never taken seriously. Again, TJLC is not a very serious place, and people outside it are bound to misinterpret inside jokes. 99% of TJLCers saw top/bottomlock as nothing more than fodder for crack theories, and yet Ms. Paskin’s sources on this issue—none of whom are actually in TJLC—describe it as a debate of monumental importance.

The 2015 221BCon, on the other hand, was a serious conflict. As far as I can tell, people like Emma genuinely suffered, and the fact that neutral fans received anonymous attacks is shameful. But the results of this stretched to TJLCers as well as people outside TJLC, something that the podcast conveniently neglects to mention.

The end of Series 4 disappointed people throughout the Sherlock fandom. I’m not talking about Johnlock: plot inconsistencies, weird characterizations, and plot pulled from a horror movie resulted in its lowest Rotten Tomatoes rating ever. TJLC is too small to have that kind of clout, so to say that TJLCers were the only ones disappointed is clearly inaccurate.

Ms. Paskin claims that Series 4 “seemed straighter, not gayer, than before” and yet John telling Sherlock that “romantic entanglement would complete you as a human being” is uh…pretty gay. For many TJLCers, the problem wasn’t that there wasn’t Johnlock; the problem was that the quality of the show seemed to have drastically decreased.

TJLC immediately split into two groups. One group left TJLC, believing that Moffat and Gatiss had been queerbaiting. Many of them began constructive anti-queerbaiting discussions. Unfortunately, a few took their anger out on the creators.

The resulting hateful messages do not represent the views of the vast majority of former TJLCers, let alone people who still support TJLC. The fact that Amanda Abbington received a death threat is disgusting; and yet in TJLC, she’s always been regarded as a sort of beloved “fandom aunt”. In addition, Ms. Paskin cites an article that claimed that fans “dampened [Martin Freeman’s] enthusiasm.” But that interview has already been revealed as a clickbait-seeking misinterpretation—by Freeman himself.

The second group—those remaining in TJLC—were a bit desperate, and I’ll be the first to admit that several theories with scanty factual basis became more popular then than they would have in calmer times. The Apple Tree Yard theory, for instance, is clearly ridiculous in retrospect. But even I was willing to consider it. (Not my finest moment.) As a side note, however: the far-fetched “China cancelled Johnlock” theory she mentioned is by someone who’s not only outside TJLC, but also notorious for hating it

But regardless of the quality of these theories, 99% of the remaining TJLCers were certainly not hating on people—because who was there to hate, if there was no queerbaiting?

Ultimately, the podcast’s descriptions of hate related to TJLC are one-sided, distorted, and do not reflect the conduct of the overwhelming majority of TJLCers.

Podcast-Specific Errors

There’s a reason why the podcast comes off so different from reality: its research is seriously flawed.

For a podcast about TJLC, Ms. Paskin interviewed a whopping one (1) actual current TJLCer, whom she apparently interviewed after building much of her argument. Every other interviewee was outside TJLC and specifically disliked it. That will hardly make for an unbiased final product.

As a result, she culminates with several remarks that are genuinely insulting. She likens TJLC to “any other standard conspiracy where you have a Judgment Day,” suggesting that we’re irrational and fanatical. She summarizes the entire community as “people being cruel to one another because they disagree about how a fictional TV relationship should turn out,” combining every misconception of (1) TJLC being a ship instead of hard analysis, (2) blaming every TJLCers for the actions of very few, (3) TJLC being a silly fan thing rather than a starting point for meaningful research into queer representation and literary analysis, and (4) ignoring TJLC’s vast contributions to TJLCers’ lives while overemphasizing those who were harmed by it. Both remarks are in keeping with standard media portrayals of fans as irrational and immature. I expected better of her.

Ms. Paskin says that she “had a dream about…digging deeper, talking to more people, ones who could perfectly explain the allure of TJLC to me.” She had the opportunity to interview more actual TJLCers, but didn’t take it.

But the offer still stands! Come talk to us! Learn about what we’re actually like! Criticize our theories, if you think we’re dogmatic. Ask us what we think of TJLC, if you think it ruined our lives. Our ask boxes are wide open!

What the Podcast Left Out

Swimming in descriptions of TJLC as a source of hatred, the podcast glosses over one tiny little detail: that TJLC genuinely improved the lives of the vast majority of TJLCers.

I came out because of TJLC. I learned how to analyze literature because of TJLC. I discovered new parts of history and the queer people who have always been part of it. I found a community of curious, passionate, funny, and kind people who I could talk to.

And I’m just one person. I know people who found lifelong friends because of TJLC, wrote books because of it, became students of gender and sexuality studies, found a community of support when they had mental health, financial, or other personal problems, and had a blast theorizing about the possibility of landmark LGBT representation. Heck, Rebekah of TJLC Explained filmed hours of people talking about how much the community meant to them. And I even know former TJLCers who, though disappointed with the show, still appreciate how much it taught them about queer theory, queer history, and themselves.

Evaluating TJLC as a whole, it’s not far-fetched, dogmatic, or primarily a source of “darkness.” It’s a legitimate theory, supported by debate and rational analysis, that improved the lives of far more people than it ever hurt.

You’ve read this. Now what?

If you’re in the media:

This Slate podcast is now the #1 result when I search The Johnlock Conspiracy. Thousands of kind and logical voices on Tumblr and other sites are immediately silenced by well-known publications. So yeah, I care what the media thinks. Few voices have widespread effects. I want people trying to find out about TJLC to get a well-researched, less biased view of it.

Please, take your research seriously when discussing fandom. Interview actual members of the community. Be aware of the public bias of fans as unworthy of serious attention and unable to construct rational, legitimate arguments. And fight against it.

If you’re inside TJLC:

Researching for this meant a trip into the darkest parts of TJLC. We need to acknowledge that not everyone in this community is nice to everyone all of the time, and this resulted in incidents that seriously hurt some people. Remaining civil, especially when faced with disagreement or outright malice, means we keep this community friendly for everyone.

If you’re outside TJLC:

Thank you for taking the time to learn about a topic from someone you don’t necessarily agree with. We need more of your open-mindedness in the world.

If you completely disagree with me, please don’t send me anon hate. Constructive criticism is cool. Anon hate is lame. Be cool. But I welcome questions, comments, and constructive debate. My ask box is always open.

 Thank you for reading.

-soe

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