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meowmeow0w · 1 year ago

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My analysis of Spamton G. Spamton

i connect very deeply with characters, and i love looking into the depth, emotion and meaning into them. it means a lot to me when i analyze characters, because i can understand what it is that has me connecting to them. it’s comforting knowing that a character and their emotional complexity can be understood, because i relate to them.

Because of my autism i get very emotional and passionate about storytelling, and it’s usually characters that i get fixated on the most.

i keep hyper-fixating on Deltarune so i really really wanna write about it. i’m gonna be writing about one of the characters, Spamton G. Spamton.

in my analysis, i’ll be detailing his character through three talking points. His past, his present, and his impact. He has lots of depth and emotion to his character, and he embodies the themes of Deltarune. The themes in the story consist of free will and choice. Also, i’ll be talking about what he makes me feel too. i’m a Spamton fan. His biggest, fan actually.

The idea of choice is played with since the very beginning of the game, where you’re very literally shown that your choices don’t matter. in the beginning you create and name your own character, presumably to play as. Your creation is promptly discarded, and the narrator gives the opening line for the start of Deltarune’s story;

No one can choose who they are in this world. Your name is Kris.

You use the main character Kris, while they are stuck as an observer in their own body. Neither of you have any say in this.

Spamton is a relatable figure for kris as he is quite literally a puppet, just like them. He related himself to Kris, seeing someone who had no choice over their life and desired freedom. i’ll be detailing this more, but i think their friendship is vital for both of their characters.

So with Spamton, i feel very attached to him. He makes me feel a lotta stuff, and i love the complexity that invokes these emotions.

Spamton is an antagonist in the story, and he’s intrigued me in this way. The way he feels so realistic, with his motivations and his background.

He isn’t a corrupt official, trying to take over the world.

He doesn’t cause conflict and chaos for his own entertainment. He doesn’t want power over others, he doesn’t entirely fit archetypes of a recognizable antagonistic-type of character.

i’m not saying that he isn’t one, but his motivations stem from how he simply want’s to feel free. He’s definitely an antagonist, as he highlights and provides a deep obstacle within Kris.

His means of obtaining his goals themselves, are an obstacle on their own. Not only does he try to scam you, he’s also manipulative and aggressive. in his first appearance, you must fight him to proceed with the game. He appears again as a optional secret boss. He’s also just unhinged and unwavering to his goals, especially in that second boss fight.

In this second fight, He traps Kris and tells them that he wants to take their soul, to achieve a freedom he would share with them.

At the end of it, he’s unable to free himself, and Kris has to watch how he couldn’t break his strings.

Still, he lent them strength, and became of use to them.

So upon defeating the secret bosses, the enemy drops either a weapon, or a wearable armour

( unless you’re fighting spamton in Snowgrave, cuz then he just drops DEAD. LOL.)

For Spamton’s character, this act of gifting Kris his strength literally displays how he wants to help Kris and their friends in any way he can.

He does it so they’d have more of a chance of getting the ending he wanted to have for himself. He encourages them, and gives them a motivation fuelled by anguish.

So as he physically traps them and highlights how impossible their obstacles feel, he also gives them his strength and motivation for overcoming them.

Spamton being a fleeting antagonist in game, and having this impact is fascinating to me.

Just the notion of Spamton doing this for Kris, exemplifies his nature.

Spamton’s backstory.

His backstory details someone who is self centred, and holds a very unhealthy, poor image of himself. Spamton has something in him, and it makes him feel completely empty and powerless, especially when he doesn’t have his identity attached to the effort and outcome he puts into what he wants to do.

To me, his story makes me think about neurodiversity. He makes me think about how differences are seen by society, and the mistreatment people face for no other reason than their brains. People get punished for their existence, especially when they’re trying to survive.

From the very beginning he knew he wasn’t meant to live for himself, but he was solely meant to live doing what he’s expected and told.

Spamton is an addison, a type of darkner in the Cyberworld. An addison’s purpose, is to advertise and sell things to lightners. He really sucked at his job, to his dismay.

is there even a reason to why he was failing? No, there wasn’t.

Well there was, but it’s an awful reason. it’s just misfortune. Unfortunately, he’s unable to do the one thing he was made to do. This caused a sense of urgency and desperation in him, as he felt that it was more than just being bad at his job.

it’s his entire life. He felt as though he’s being bad at existing, having his purpose revolve around his career, and his own identity reliant on making these decisions for himself. That’s what he can control about himself.

Spamton’s resilient enough to keep trying through every obstacle he’s faced, but he’s getting desperate. It frustrated him how his attempts to progress did nothing. He couldn’t change the zero sense of self he had.

He started losing control over the one thing he had of his own: his patience.

i’d like to detail another pov in Spamton’s backstory; his friends/co-workers.

His fellow addisons thought he was unlucky, and bad for business. They felt bad for him because he was different. But what could they do about that?

it's his job. He’s just... Unlucky. Unlucky to be so mismatched to his life.

After work each night, they’d all drink together at their local grill. He’d talk of how he’d make it big in just a matter of time. His addison buddies hear this, and they’re all like, “Right...!! You got this, little guy…”

(spamton is significantly shorter than all of them. this is unrelated, but i headcannon him with dwarfism)

They REALLY pity him, if you can’t tell.

Suddenly, everything had changed for him. Like, really suddenly.

For so long, he’d run his mouth about how he’d soon be the top-rated salesman, he’d make the best deals when he’s a bigshot. Now he’s... Actually doing these things.

This success brought him tv commercials, luxury, and it got him a room inside Queen’s mansion. He was everything he said he’d be.

They didn’t know why, but they realized how much he was on his phone talking to someone….

Someone new, who they never got the name of.

His friend’s weren’t happy for him, or anything like that. They became super jealous, so they stopped being friends with him. They never liked him anyways.

it's important to note how the people around Spamton see him, because they make up the world he lives in. The world that wasn’t shaped for people like him. You know, people with inexplicable differences and challenges will have to suffer in a world that has no consideration for them. That’s unless there’s a shift in society.

Acting from his desperation, Spamton accepted help from a mysterious phone person?

That’s not very surprising. He wasn’t making progress in expressing what made him an individual, and he’d actually be pitied for who he is.

By now, he’s desperate to do anything to get him out of this dark pit that exaclty where he stood in society. He needed to make a choice to change his life.

Even the idea of a “quick fix” to take him out of there was something he’d be vulnerable to.

it’s very easy to obsess over yourself, and the aspects of your life that you want to change. it's easy to fold to your insecurities. That’s just what happens when someone is vulnerable.

He viewed it as his own freedom, doing everything he could for what he wanted in life. The only way he can truly feel satisfied and proud, was through making these choices for himself.

That’s exactly why he appeared to be so arrogant to his friends.

The suddenness of the success made him euphoric, all thanks to that new friend over the phone.

Spending all his time talking to them, while making BANK, he began to depend on them. Of course he would, they’re responsible for everything he’ had. None of it was actually his own hard work, skill, or talent.

He formed an unhealthy way of viewing friendships. This person helped him, while all others got jealous and left him. He felt that they saved him even though he was a pathetic nobody, desperate to feel any sense of control in life.

information about deltarune’s characters are either speculation, obvious, or stated blatantly. its obvious that he became dependant on this friend, because they’d abruptly end his career just as quickly as they made it begin. His sales dropped to zero, and he’d find that his life started crashing down before him.

He was pushed back into this pit he felt rescued from, just to realize that it had grown enough to devour him.

He was evicted from Queen's mansion, being unable to pay his rent.

Spamton would be begging to be left with anything to call his own.

The only thing he had left was himself, but even that was nothing at all. His fall from grace was noticed by his ex friends, colleges, and Cyberworld citizens with almost all of them showing no concern to his livelihood. They all told themselves that they should simply mind their own business.

it’s unfortunate. Yeah, he’d be living out of dumpsters and eating scrap food like an animal, but he was always unlucky. it’s not a surprise that nothing could change that for him.

When he was still residing in the mansion, he found a robotic body within it’s basement. When he wasn’t talking on the phone or at work, he’d sneak down there to pray to it. Once he was kicked out however, he started planning ways steal it for himself. it was symbolic with its own story being about hope, individuality, and freedom. it was created for a lightner who desired their own body, made from their own design.

He began breaking into the mansion in order to steal it. He’d get caught obviously, but wouldn’t be giving up. He’d find luck, as he eventually met the perfect person who could help him.

Present day Spamton G. Spamton

Now upon his in game introduction, you don’t get much as to who Spamton is, and you get hints to his goals and motivation.

if you already knew his backstory, you could see who he is and how his past quite explains his present self

(if you ignore the unknown force that drove him to his insanity. i’d love to elaborate on his phone friend, but i literally have no idea either.)

You could understand his actions, and why he’s so attached to Kris.

What a new player sees however, is a very shady dude who gives Kris an open invitation to visit him in his shop in the garbage dump. He instructs them to come alone.

So this shop of his provides a setting, where you’ll be seeing more to him than you would’ve initially thought. His store gives a really clear impression that when first playing, he‘s very unwell. i mean, nothing could’ve prepared me for how off put i was when i entered his shop in my playthrough.

Engaging in such a random strange mini-boss fight with him, you’d be interested and excited when he tells you to meet him in his shop site, right?

i know i was!!! Dear god!!! What is this? it's just so fitting, because it perfectly encapsulates his mental state. it seriously caught me off guard, because this just looks so personal for him. I didn’t know anything about his character.

The way he’s found through a pile of garbage, with the interior containing a bright blue sky painted on the walls, his weird little phone in the background, and Spamton himself sat directly in the middle the screen staring directly at you… Like, doesn’t it feel like you’re looking at what he made for himself? What he put together for his own eyes?

After accumulating everything that’s meaningful to him, he brings them all together.

With the blue sky he painted, i feel is what represents how he hopes for a better future for himself. When i look at our sky, i feel like it symbolizes freedom as it’s sublime, not having any restriction. it’s naturally beautiful, vast, and intense.

About the phone, its pretty on the nose with why that’s there for Spamton. He has a motif, being phones. That was the only way of communicating with you know, that person we don’t know. That bastard

(he has really heartbreaking dialogue about using the phone that i kinda wanna mention somewhere but you get what i mean, phones are so reoccurring for him!)

it's jarring how its set up, seeing this try to resemble anything of personal value to himself, in his shop where he can make his own deals and call his own shots.

He’s right there spouting nonsense, glitching out, randomly being lucid and aware of himself, with the track “dialtone” playing in time with that ringing phone behind him.

it sounds a bit odd but it's very intimate, like you know the person in front of you is deeply not alright, but you have no idea how you can support them.

Honestly he stood out to me so much, and i was drawn to his character just based on what he made me feel in this moment.

i didn’t anticipate the impact he had on me.

Spamton’s impact

i know for a fact others relate to him in the way i do, but i wanna talk about myself for a bit here.

i resonated with his experiences, and his place in the world and the way he responded to all of it.

i can relate to how much it means to him to be himself, for himself.

i’ve felt that i have little no autonomy over my life thus far, being that i’m also inexplicably different than my peers and the world around me. its not that i was expected to do one certain thing with my life, but i was expected to be the one thing i couldn’t be.

i relate to how he feels that he has such little identity, but is always trying to justify himself and his existence to others.

it pains me how he had no idea that his friends never liked him, and that alone altered how he felt about the people around him.

None of his relationships were genuine. instead of recognizing friendship as mutual respect and warmth, he felt that friendship was simply a transaction of sorts. He didn’t see that friendship meant you’d be liked and cared for because of who you are, he felt that it was about what could be exchanged.

He also didn’t like that he became dependant on the connections he felt he bad, because they provided him with things he didn’t have in their transaction.

i actually don’t wanna detail how i find this relatable, but you can understand why i do.

i find it so comforting how i relate to him, and how i wanna protect what i have in common with him.

it’s precious to have the desire for personal freedom, with an impact on the world and others.

With everything in me that holds empathy towards him, i feel a lot of emptiness and resentment but i can really feel for others and be motivated express myself because of that.

i put value onto what i want for myself, so that has me my time to listen and empathize with the people in my life simply because that’s just what i’d hope someone would do for me. i want to respect others as equals because thats all i’d like for myself.

Spamton makes me wanna live with hope and perseverance!!

its very inspiring relating to him, and seeing how badly he wants to fight for his future. He has a lot of empathy to people like him.

He’s never given up anything for himself, so he wouldn’t want me to do that either. He didn’t want that for Kris or their friends.

Now with Kris and Spamton’s friendship, they’ve both inspired and impacted each other. i love to think about their dynamic.

Spamton made Kris realize that they weren’t alone, they weren’t bad for being defiant to the force controlling them. He gave them strength, and his encouragement to keep pursuing their own personal goal no matter what.

Kris made spamton realize that he must give up, in the most hopeful way possible. He’s been so alone in his goal, having developed such little trust in others while he’s wanting to have someone see him, and connect with him as an equal. it meant a lot for Spamton, to see himself in Kris and root for them as he wants then to be different.

He was hoping that his ending would make all of his choices matter. He was devastated that he didn’t get his desired outcome, but he wasn’t thinking about his future anymore.

He felt that he’d be better off putting the rest of his effort into Kris’s fate, than his own.

This ties into his impact on deltarune, with his themes. He did that because he just knew that was an option he could make based on his own feelings and morals. He held so much faith in kris. He felt this choice mattered because believes they will be free, and he would be an avid supporter of theirs in that journey.

The choices the player can make purely self indulgent, and they have no impact on the story. The player picks whatever they feel, and the game allows this to entertain the idea that their decision matters.

it really doesn’t feel like this is what’s happening, but it is.

The player must go out of their way to pursue Spamton’s secret boss fight, to see his character arc play out.

You don’t really know this for the first time, so you have a curiosity about whether or not doing his fight matters, what’s up with his character, and what other content/details exist in deltarune.

Once completed though, you are meant to continue as though nothing happened.

So many players have the realization that he’s tried so hard to matter, and DIDN’T. not just for himself, but in general. Kris isn’t the only one who realizes how little control they have over the direction of their story, because the player shares the same realization that literally nothing matters.

You have to see that he accepts his fate, than you than resume playing as though nothing happened.

This obviously disturbing to realize, and it sticks with the players. i’ve seen so many people experience this and react in their own ways to his character.

conclusion

i’d like to further express that Spamton means so much to me, and i’m very autistic about his character. He makes me so passionate. Bro means so much to me.

i find him to be the best character for me to hyperfixate on. He’s so detailed, interesting, and mysterious. Also, he’s just like me and makes me emotional.

like, focusing on a storytelling aspect, he embodies the themes of deltarune. This is very literal with his character, i don’t know how to detail it.

He’s a puppet who wanted to live life for himself, but couldn’t be himself without strings. He held such little control over anything, and he had his circumstances shape who he became.

i’d really like to elaborate on certain parts of his character, but i just cant. Like, who is the person over the phone?

i love how complete his character feels, even though he holds so much mystery. He had had his own character arc, with such a mysterious ending for it?

He isn’t dead, but he had his ending.

to summarize his arc, he grew to accept that he can’t change his future, but he can at least impact someone else’s. to do so, he let himself relate to another and consider them as his equal. not a superior or a colleague, but akin of his. a valued friend which he’d wanna see light in, and give strength to. He can watch them grow, and have a future he wanted. He doesn’t need to fight for himself any longer.

He’s a very charming character! He quickly became a fan favourite in deltarune for many reasons. i just love the intensity and depth he has.

i really enjoyed writing about him! thank you for reading about my very autistic analysis of Spamton G. Spamton. lol.

“I’M A SALESMAN ,

I WAS NEVER IN IT FOR THE MONEY!!!

I WAS ONLY EVER IN IT FOR THE [Freedom.]

TO MAKE YOUR OWN [Deals]

TO CALL YOUR OWN [Shots]”

- Spamton G. Spamton.

(i just wanted to put this quote of his bc he’s so honest with this and i didnt know where to put it shhhh. thanks for reading again.)

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authoramalgam · 11 months ago

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Okay so, bit preface, I know some stuff is different in the original french version. But, I have never played the french version, nor do I understand french (I took two years of french class and immediately deleted ALL of it from my memory the second I stopped taking the classes.) So this is all going to be based off what I remember from playing the english translation, and from the Wiki (Cause the wiki is funny as hell)

(Also, I don't know everything about autism, I'm just noting things that stuck out to me.)

So, just to get it out of the way, Batter absolutely Embodies the 'Autistic people are like Robots' trope. He shows very little emotion, and what little he does show is heavily subdued. Literally the 'angriest' he gets throughout the game is right after the first Enoch fight, and his biggest reaction there is to essentially call him a fat bastard. (And I think he was more upset about having to run from the fight than anything.)

He also may have flat affect, where he does not make very many facial expressions to show his emotion. (However, Dedan claiming Batter is smiling during one of their confrontations may show he Can express emotion, but only does so infrequently.) The biggest point showing Batter may have flat affect is the roller coaster in Zone 2 (Specifically the 'Picture of You' item.

(This could also be because Batter does not like roller coasters. I may be misremembering, but I believe Batter refuses to ride again after getting the photo with the Zacharie statue.)

Back to other things. Batter also shows a dislike for sudden changing of plans. Specifically, this happens when first getting to Pentel, where upon being asked to purify the spectres in the cow barns, he refuses, saying he wants to finish purifying the smoke mines first.

Batter also shows a very 'black and white' sense of morals (Even though his morals are very questionable at the best of times.) This is highlighted with the first Dedan encounter in Pentel, where after seeing Dedan be aggressive with his workers, he immediately assumes that means Dedan is a spectre, and must be purified. (However, this could also be Batter manipulating the player into continuing his plans.)

One of the details that I find personally interesting, but is also the wildest speculation from me, is that Batter may have an aversion to bright lights. This is just based on the fact that the Elsen in the smoke mines comment on how weird it is that Batter walks around with his eyes closed all the time, and how he isn't afraid of the dark. (His response is that the player is guiding him, and at several points in the game, Batter comments on things he sees, so he does occasionally open his eyes.) It's unclear if this behaviour is just Batter being Batter, or if it actually points to something like light sensitivity or possible vision problems.

Finally, the lowest hanging fruit, Batter is Hyperfixated on purification. Every action he takes, every move, even most of his dialog is either focused on it, or taken in order to get back to it. (This is also another thing that could be explained by other means, as it was stated that Batter (theoretically) only started existing at the very beginning of the game, and his entire purpose is to purify.)

The Batter from OFF is autistic as hell

#rambling #this entire thing is structured horribly #but i am not gonna sit here and format an official essay #conclusion is that everyones favorite(?) omnicidal baseball player has the tism #and hes an awful person #i do not condone his actions #off game #off mortis ghost #off the batter

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dragontrailz · 4 years ago

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Greta Thunberg - Her Privilege Makes Her Blind To Her Own Manufacturing

This is what privilege looks like - 'Only people like me dare ask tough questions on climate’. Only the affluent upper middle classes could possible engineer a quote quite this stupid.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/11/greta-thunberg-people-like-me-ask-difficult-climate-questions

She’s not the only type of person to do this. She’s not the only person with a disability, autism or Asperger’s to speak up. She’s playing on the fact that she’s on the spectrum. Many people have spoken up before she did. Some of them from working class and ethnic backgrounds. She literally can’t see that her privilege, affluence and her parents connections have made this happen for her. As Cory Morningstar has pointed out, Greta Thunberg’s mum was a WWF Hero of the Year in 2017; she does adverts for Greenpeace and moves in those circles. When the 15 year old created her Twitter account in 2018, after her mother, the next accounts she followed were Greenpeace Sweden, Greenpeace International, Greenpeace UK, Friends of the Earth International and Friends of the Earth USA. A little further down the list we find Bill McKibben, 350.org, fellow speakers who would join her at XR’s Declaration of Rebellion (months later on October 31st): George Monbiot and Rupert Read and soon after that We Don’t Have Time, an NGO that would play a crucial role, as well as This Is Zero Hour, their founder, Jamie Margolin and the main account for Extinction Rebellion. Morningstar also cites Callum Grieve, a former Communications Director at The Climate Group and We Mean Business, who now works for Mission 2020, as a key architect of her manufacturing. Grieve also assisted Thunberg; on the first day of her protest he was the third person to respond on that platform. He’s not a huge Twitter influencer though, as he doesn’t have so many followers there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzCgKEjgCng

https://soundcloud.com/lastborninthewilderness/cory-morningstar

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/17/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/

This 17 year old is still being used; but nows seem to enjoy the limelight so much, that they’ve made a film. Her mum is an opera singer, her dad an actor, she was propelled from her first protest to global superstar within weeks. On the day of her first protest, on August 20th, 2018, she was approached by We Don’t Have Time’s Ingmar Rentzhog who ‘discovered’ her and she was soon a major story, appearing on the front page of Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet the same day. Rentzhog had met Greta Thunberg’s mother at a climate event in May 2018, shortly before Greta’s Twitter account was set up. On September 1st, Greta Thunberg was featured in her first Guardian column. It’s worth noting that the Aftonbladet account was followed after those mentioned in the previous paragraph, which suggests she was looking to the global stage before the Swedish national stage.

https://medium.com/@frackfree_eu/green-capitalism-is-using-greta-thunberg-66768db6c0e1

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/01/swedish-15-year-old-cutting-class-to-fight-the-climate-crisis

The sequence of events which led to Greta’s sudden rise to prominence and the role of Ingmar Rentzhog is explained in more detail here:

https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/media/the-pr-guru-behind-the-rise-of-greta-thunberg/news-story/fae7bd1704d58e8ff0dd4d93ec0b3560

Talk of her “'zero-carbon yacht” in this article is nonsense. There is no such thing. Manufacture of it has embodied energy, besides which, how many of us can afford a transatlantic yacht for those times when we want to sail to the USA to lobby the climate capitalists in that country? The same narrative was peddled when she made her way from Sweden to London by electric car for XR’s Declaration of Rebellion on October 31st, 2018 (I was there that day). What was wrong with using public transport? Surely that would have conveyed a much more sustainable message?

Climate change isn’t the only crisis we face; people have been trying to defend nature from the onslaught of extractive capitalism for a long time; again many of them were poor or Indigenous people, so their narratives were airbrushed away and they weren’t given a number of Guardian articles to platform themselves so that the middle classes could be softened up.

Since those early days, the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos used Thunberg and the global media to manufacture consent for what’s coming - the new fake ‘Net Zero’ world, the '4th industrial revolution’ and next year’s 'New Deal for Nature’.

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/10/19/perfect-distractions-and-fantastical-mitigation-plans/

Thunberg herself happily plays along signing the letter about 'Natural Climate Solutions’ that appeared in the Guardian alongside fake green George Monbiot, who also wrote an abysmal column to go with it, which seemed to be more about geoengineering and terraforming than habitat restoration, particularly when the academic references to support his narrative are analysed. This climate-washing of the narrative has got to stop.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/03/natural-world-climate-catastrophe-rewilding

The Climate Emergency Fund (USA), set up by Trevor Neilson and funded by Aileen Getty and Rory Kennedy are just one of the big money foundations who now fund the movement she helped create, Youth Strike. I was at the first big Youth Strike protest in London; it was organic and spontaneous. Children took the roads and risked arrest; the cops brought out mounted patrols, some children were arrested, later de-arrested. I noticed that several people within the UK, who’ve positioned themselves at the heart of the climate movement, people from 350, UK Youth Climate Coalition, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc. were already there on the sidelines, coordinating and framing the media message.

At the second big Youth Strike protest in London, the children were pushed aside, the speakers on the big red bus that positioned itself on Victoria Embankment were now mostly adults. The Trade Unions were now also in attendance, alongside other NGOs like Global Justice Now, War on Want and MPs like Jeremy Corbyn (he gave a great speech that day) and Caroline Lucas (she did not and seemed very irritable afterwards when I tried to speak to her, a first). The SWP were eagerly recruiting youngsters and filling their heads full of propaganda. It was painful to observe.

By the third big protest, the children were told to march aimlessly around the streets of London, whilst 'activists’ from Greenpeace, FoE and 350 who had coordinated the event looked on. Something so energetic faded so quickly. Very little has happened since that day in Autumn last year, although #Covid19 perhaps has also been responsible for muting any efforts to mobilise.

Her marketing team now seems to think a film about her, to go with the numerous books (yes, I’ve read one of them, the speeches have aged very badly) is now what’s required. Roger Hallam recently made a film, called 'The Troublemaker’, it was largely a work of propaganda. I wonder what Greta’s film will say?

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/sep/16/i-am-greta-review-slick-yet-shallow-thunberg-documentary

“Intriguingly, even bafflingly, Grossman’s film begins by showing Thunberg’s pre-famous self as a high-schooler with her homemade climate strike placard, enduring a lonely vigil outside the Stockholm parliament every Friday with a few grumpy older shoppers coming up and telling her off for not being in school. Here she is: the non-famous nobody, and these scenes lead seamlessly to later moments showing her campaign taking off. So … does this mean Grossman has been prophetically following her career from the very beginning?“

This journalist has clearly not been following the story. That all these early protests were filmed shows they had much larger plans.

Do people think any of this is normal? This post is likely to grate with people. If it does, may I suggest you’re emotionally invested in this story and you can’t see what’s really happening. Step back and get some perspective. I invite discussion but nobody is fooling me with what’s happened over the last two years.

https://starecat.com/greta-thunberg-theyve-stolen-my-childhood-hardworking-kid-cool-story-bro/

Many people seem to be of the opinion that Greta can’t be criticised. There’s a confirmation bias in wanting to believe her story, from a one person protest to meeting world leaders, the UN and the Davos set at the World Economic Forum, where she platformed herself alongside David Attenborough and Jane Goodall. These people won’t engage with the narrative that indicates she’s been manufactured. This is compounded by her support from those in XR, who also can’t seem to see their own movement is also constructed and coupled to her story. A lot of the themes in her speeches, that of the planet being 'on fire’ or that we’re running ‘out of time’ are common to XR and Youth Strike and then later authors like Naomi Klein, and are based on mobilising people based on urgency. We’ve seen this go very badly wrong many times, notably in Afghanistan (See Adam Curtis - The Power of Nightmares)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwvSQ56HYg8&list=PL46FkcYcj-72IK9xFcWVRwoIu9Lfsi1S9&index=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwvSQ56HYg8&list=PL46FkcYcj-72IK9xFcWVRwoIu9Lfsi1S9&index=2

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB8m6nNWpMA&list=PL46FkcYcj-72IK9xFcWVRwoIu9Lfsi1S9&index=3

In her film trailer, we see the time theme being repeated once again. Her father also continues to perpetuate the myth that she did this on her own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwk10YGPFiM

“My name is Greta Thunberg and I want you to panic!” - but this repeated doomerism has had a paralysing effect on many people. Other flanks of people have been mobilised to take action, notably within the UK as XR, which is a larger movement than Youth Strike. However, much of the mobilisation has been about virtue signalling, their virtuous non-violence and colourful boats has meant their movement has failed to really diversify beyond it’s white, middle class base. The movement appears to have now peaked and largely run out of money.

There is also the common theme of expecting governments to act to resolve this. When are people going to realise that’s not going to happen. Parliaments are not going to end capitalism. Who was the last parliamentary candidate who ran on a #degrowth platform? As such, both movements are self defeating and tend to reinforce hierarchy and statism. In the worst case scenario what they are asking for is EcoFascism. If people are struggling to deal with Covid19 restrictions on movement which have only brought about around a 6-7% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, then how would they cope when they are told the truth about what ‘Net Zero’ would really mean: private cars would be banned, consumption would be drastically reduced along with an end to pointless bullshit jobs, international flights would be rationed and restricted and people in the Global North would have to eat a lot less meat.

Some of us have begun to make these sorts of changes to our lifestyles, but it will be a tough task to prepare for the post 2050 world where the following scenarios are looming:

Oil depletion - more wars will be started to fight over the remaining oil resources and the ongoing trend will drive economic collapse and further inequality

Nuclear war is an increased risk as tensions between USA, Russia and China continue to escalate

Critical metal/mineral depletion - this will puncture the myth of the electric car

Overfishing - less food for humanity but also the unravelling of marine food webs, with knock on effects for adjacent ecosystems

Ecological collapse and climate change - biodiversity loss; soil erosion; freshwater depletion; nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon cycle disruption will intertwine to create complex problems for the biosphere.

Those are 4 or 5 of the biggest evolving threats

Free Range Collective (2020) WEIRD 02 - Welcome to the Extinction (authored by Paul Mobbs)

http://www.fraw.org.uk/frn/weird/002/index.shtml

Net Zero within 5 years is a fallacy. Anyone who’s looked at the data knows this.

The IPCC have based their climate models on a doubling of energy consumption between now and 2050. The pretence is maintained by claiming there are ‘Negative Emissions Technologies’ that will magically sequester away our historical and future carbon debt. The primary technology that they envision will do this, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) is not yet technically viable and never will be. It’s neither safe, nor ethical and it won’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Delaying the urgent mitigation required now leaves a larger problem for future generations. BECCS would also require huge amounts of land, freshwater and fertiliser and would destroy biodiversity, threaten food security and trample on Indigenous land rights. The IPCC ‘science’ that Greta Thunberg claims is her version of the truth, is merely only one part of the picture. There are good scientists and bad scientists. Which ones is she backing?

https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1318216965639503873

She seems blind to the modelling work going on which assumes that #BECCS is viable and cost effective, a trick of economic models within which subsidies and discounting correct for impossibilities. BECCS will never happen at scale as citizens will mobilise against it. Thus Thunberg’s attempt to lecture Joe Biden, who is well aware of what carbon capture is and has opened the door to it, merely show how little she understands the bigger picture. In the following article, Steve Horn explains how Biden has embraced carbon capture under pressure from oil industry lobbying, which will lead to enhanced oil recovery and won’t reduce emissions.

https://www.drillednews.com/post/biden-climate-change-platform-fossil-fuel-carbon-capture

In reality, what we now have is this pretend world of ‘Net Zero’ False Solutions, where corporations have taken centre stage. Yet, XR, Youth Strike and Greta Thunberg are largely silent on this and are still screaming for governments to take action. In the UK, they did take action as XR suggested and set up a citizen’s assembly, which was then rigged to provide the wrong outcome as these resources clearly show. Under the guidance of the Committee on Climate Change, the process has been captured by false technofix solutions and corporate thinking.

https://www.climateassembly.uk/resources/

The conversation is so far from where it needs to be. Greta now has a film about her life, which will make the middle classes feel like they can change the world if they just shout loudly enough. The trouble is their dominance of the debate and misdirection has wasted two years. Only Covid19 has really reduced emissions, as its forced a much needed reduction in hypermobility and a reduction in oil use.

I hope people can start to see what’s happened over the last two years now. Some folks are waking up to the reality of what needs to be done. No one else is going to fix this mess but us. The only way we can do that is by collectively disengaging from the system, but in more constructive ways, where we can come together, build community and connection. I’ll be writing more about how we do this another time. The solutions need to be centred on mutual aid, land rights, citizen-led journalism, agroecology and permaculture. Food security for communities is of critical importance to our future cohesion and survival.

#GretaThunberg Privilege Entitlement Affluence

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grayisholi · 6 years ago

Note

@ the DND ask game: ALL OF THOSE QUESTIONS, I CAN'T CHOOSE!! XD (or if not that, the ones you rlly wanna do!!

BOY OH BOY OH BOYIve been answering these throughout the day and I’m too lazy to reread the full document so sorry if I’ve left gaps or whatever but here it is! All 35 questions about dnd! Matt you unstoppable Madman.

1. A favorite character you have played.

You can’t just make me pick between my children!!! I think I might have to say Atticus Sallow, my faeborn bloodhunter, partially because he’s like 100% homebrew content which I LIVE for, but also because he’s probably the most kinda self-insert character I’ve ever played? Almost became the kinda angsty, brooding asshole character before he was like “get your shit together” and learned that loving people isn’t so bad.

2. Your favorite character that someone else has played.

I almost, ALMOST had the pleasure of DMing for @no-more-good-omens and their character was gonna be SO RAD and I’m a little heartbroken he never came to be. A half-drow paladin of Vecna, pretending to be your typical good and wholesome paladin? Dude, I love that kinda two faced backstabbing in a player. It’s such a shame it never came to anything (although if yall still wanna play hmu ;))

3. Your favorite side quest.

Ooh, there’s been so many good ones. Probably when i was playing as Adrian Smirks and went off on a tangent to rescue his brother ? That was the first time I ever got to see Adrian’s more raw and emotional side beneath the suave mask he wears and it was fun to explore his character in that way ^.^

4. Your current campaign.

That I’m DMing? It started inspired by Guy Fawkes and was gonna be “your party blows up parliament” but I got bored of following historical accuracy so it ended up being “blow up the palace in a magical city that just happens to be called London”. I accidentally wrote myself into a hole with this campaign tho, so once they’ve finished this arc I’m handing over the DM hat to my sister @philosophical-wanton because she seems to love it and I kinda miss being a player lmao. I can’t wait for it.

5. Favorite NPC.That I’ve written? Probably Hai Shen, the youngest son of a group of circus performers who were killed and the party got blamed for their murder. He had such a great attitude and his dynamics with the party kicked ass. And the twist that he was actually dead the whole time and it was his soul that had stayed behind to help solve his family’s murder? ICONIC.

6. Favorite death (monster, player character, NPC, etc).

NPC death would probably be Hai Shen, actually. After the party had brought the real killers (A cult to the demon Prince Orcus) to justice, Hai’s time on earth had come to an end. He had really beautiful moment with the party before being reunited with his family. Alternatively, the time I broke my entire party’s hearts? “Artagan’s staff comes cracking into Ellios’ chest, forcing him onto the ground. Artagan raises his sceptre in hand, pointing it menacingly at the young prince. And for the first time, you see him. Like, REALLY see him. He’s not the strong and powerful leader you’ve all come to know him as, he’s not Prince Ellios of the Four Realms. He’s just a boy. A boy who is much too young to be involved in such a grand scheme. And the fear in his eyes. You see the fear he’s managed to keep buried for so long, finally coming to the surface. And then? You don’t see anything, aside from his cold body hitting the ground.” I got punched three times for that moment, but GOD was it worth it.

7. Your favorite downtime activity.

Like in game? A healthy lil bit of vandalising the local law enforcement buildings is always a good time.

8. Your favorite fight/encounter.

Aw man, how can I pick ? I gotta say, that one time we, a level 6 party, managed to take down two earth elementals was pretty rad. The DM kind of expected it to be one of those encounters that we saw and immediately tried to run from, but what she didn’t take into account was that ALL of us had chaotic alignments so we just went crazy. The DM was rolling really badly (thank God) and we were getting really creative (“I use the produce flame centripetal to light my bottle of ale on fire and create a molotov cocktail” “you do WHAT”) and after like an HOUR we won and it was amazing. The rush I got from that victory was better than any drug my dood.

9. Your favorite thing about D&D.

I know I say it a lot, but I legit can’t choose. There’s so many great things about ttrpgs that a lot of people don’t really think of. The creative fulfilment I get from a session is incomparable, the friendships you can build that you couldn’t form in any other way. And like, not to get too real for a sec here, but I grew up with undiagnosed autism and didn’t understand how a lot of social situations worked, and DnD was such a good mechanic for me to try communicating with people without many real world consequences, and I appreciate that experience so much. It’s just such a great thing my dood.

10. Your favorite enemy and the enemy you hate the most.

Can they be the same thing lmao? I mean, I’m obviously partial to Count Cassius, the vampire lord that Adrian slept with lmao. I also always appreciate a good beholder, until I get hit with three disintegration rays IN A ROW.

11. How often do you play and how often would you ideally like to play?

We’ve got kind of a monthly schedule with my main campaign, and I manage to get a couple online games in-between them, but honestly I’d kill to be the kind of group that got together every weekend.

12. Your in game inside jokes/memes/catchphrases and where they came from.

Oh MAN. “I say we do this.” “Yeah, but that’s coming from the guy who decided to tie 3 50ft ropes together to escape the palace.” “iT wOrKeD dIdN’t iT ???” i.e that time I forgot I gave the gnome rogue flying boots so when I planned for them to get arrested at the palace, they managed to escape by tying their ropes together, sending the gnome with it to the top and climbing the wall. I had to improvise the rest of the session. Also “FLINTON BELINDA SKINTON” bc as a role-play exercise I got my party to come up with rumours about their characters and the gnome rogue called Flint AKA Flinton B Skinton decided that one of their rumours was that the B stood for Belinda, and it was GLORIOUS.

13. Introduce your current party.

My current group consists of Flinton B Skinton, gnome rogue. He’s a quick-fingered, silver-tongued gay disaster who can sell anything to anyone. He’s a charming flirt, and a veritable genius in his own right. Kava Daardendrian, dragonborn ranger who loves nothing in life more than her animal companion - her pig Snortin Norton. She’s fun and sassy and shameless, she’s great. There’s Sparks, the fire Genasi Monk, and full embodiment of a disaster lesbian. She drinks, fights, and gets laid, and doesn’t deal with her problems in healthy ways. An icon. And finally Milo, the halfling Bard who falls in love at the drop of a hat and just wants everyone to get along. I call them “The Shenanigang” and I love them.

14. Introduce any other parties you have played in or DM-ed.

A party I joined late? We had Sylvia Moondrop, the half elf sorcerer who was just trying to get along with everyone despite what the world seemed to want. Orland the half orc bard who was just trying to shake off the Barbarian stereotype his family left him with. Rose Morleen, air Genasi fighter who was literally born to kick ass and take names. I joined as Mason Terrai, the Earth Genasi Alchemist with a perchance for explosives. The very definition of chaotic neutral.

15. Do you have snacks during game times?

Of COURSE. What manic wouldn’t ?

16. Do you play online or in person? Which do you prefer?

I used to play online a LOT back before I had friends who were into dnd, but I VASTLY prefer playing in person. The chemistry that’s built not only amongst the players, but also the actual characters themselves is unparalleled. It’s just such a great experience.

17. What are some house rules that your group has?

Anyone can attempt anything, the only restriction is the dice. Don’t question the DM unless it’s out of session, then bully the dm on the groupchat until he’s so pissed off he gives you inspiration just to get you to shut up. And also canon lore and canon rules are bullshit when it’s convenient. That’s about it

18. Does your party keep any pets?

Our ranger, God bless her, has her pack pig Snortin Norton, sold to her by one Flinton B Skinton. And Flint really wants a monkey, he’s been trying to find one for ages.

19. Do you or your party have any dice superstitions?

Not really ? I’m the kind guy that if my dice rolls a 1 I will bench it for a bit, but tbh all my dice are cursed af and I’ve kinda just learned to roll with it by making my characters canonically terrible at everything lmao.

20. How did you get into D&D? How long have you been playing?

Aw man I can’t remember when or how, it’s been so long. I had a couple friends who were kinda into it, but all the games they tried to run were complete disasters. I only really started playing I’m the past year or so? Maybe a little more ? Adrian was my first character, and he was a very RP heavy character in a party of tanks and they all hated him but MAN was it fun.

21. Have you ever regretted something your character has done?

Oh all the time. One time my character was careless and didn’t check for traps on a legendary artefact and it lead to the death of a party member. One time my character got angry at his party and walked out. My characters don’t make good decisions, but that’s part of the fun.

22. What color was your first dragon?

White! I thought it was silver at first and went to go say hi, and it clawed me within half my HP straight away lmao.

23. Do you use premade modules or original campaigns?

Oh dude, original all the way. I live for that shit.

24. How much planning/preparation do you do for a game?

Depends on the session, but usually a good few hours, couple of days if I’m DMing.

25. What have your players done that you never could have planned for?

“You wake up in a mysterious forest. The strained autumn sun shines through the trees. The only thing you can see it each other, the trees, and an old sign post leading to a path that says "Myrrill” on it. What do you do?“ "We walk in the opposite direction of the sign deeper into the forest.” “…of course you do.”

26. What was your favorite scene to write and show your characters.

I wrote a full carnival show one time for them to watch, and then it got derailed when a horrific monster attacked. But writing all the characters and their acts, and watching my players get entranced as I described it ? Magical, my dood.

27. Do you allow homebrew content?

I live and breathe homebrew content. I don’t know what my games would be without it. I LOVE homebrew.

28. How often do you use NPCs in a party?

I make some pretty sick characters if I do say so myself, so I throw them in a LOT.

29. Do you prefer RP heavy sessions or combat sessions?

Oh dude, role play all the way. Fighting and killing stuff is great, but role-play is just so good. We can go from laughing with a bartender to crying over a backstory reveal and it’s just beautiful.

30. Are your players diplomatic or murder hobos?

Depends on the party, but i find the best players are a little bit of both XD

31. What is your favorite class? Favorite race?

Official ? I’m a fan of the hexblade warlock? Bards are always a good call, and to be real playing monks make me feel like an absolute badass. Race wise, there are just so many. If we’re only talking players handbook stuff, half elf is always rad. Outside of that? I’ve been researching the Shadar-Kai lately and I’m LIVING. They’re so rad.

32. What role do you like to play the most? (Tank/healer/etc?)

What would you call the disaster gay? I don’t really gear my characters towards usefulness in combat, so it’s just whatever the class happens to lend itself to.

33. How do you write your backstory, or do you even write a backstory?

I usually write my character, personality, backstory, alignment etc, before I even pick a class or even a race. I basically just make OCs and apply them to dnd rules, and it’s SO much fun. 10/10, would recommend.34. Do you tend pick weapons/spells for being useful or for flavor?

FLAVOUR. My party usually hates me, but what I lack in combat utility I more than make up for in creative out of combat skill checks XD.

35. How much roleplay do you like to do?

Boi, I even RP my combat, and the great thing is it rubs off on my party too. I’ll have a really low initiative and everyone else will be like “I attack and do 10 points of damage” but then on my round I’m like “I use my staff to leap across the battlefield towards the opponent and launch out with a spinning kick to their jaw” and everyone else is like “oh, okay, that’s what we’re doing.” and the battle becomes so much more dynamic and cinematic, it’s amazing !

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1-way-ticket · 6 years ago

Text

PANS Year One

Sensory processing disorder, anxiety, speech delays, sleep disturbances, obsessive compulsive disorder, tics, autism. These are the labels he would have received if we had not tuned in to that news story on October 8th 2017. We had returned from a long vacation only a few hours before hand and fought the usual hour and a half battle to get our 2 year old son to sleep. My husband had paused the news to have me hear what they were reporting on. The following morning was PANDAS/PANS awareness day. There was going to be speakers and a gathering at the state capital to bring attention to this very unknown condition that is suspected to effect 1 in 200 children. The 2 minute story on the news barley touched on what this really entailed, but it was enough to get our laptops opened.

“PANS (Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome) or PANDAS (Pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcus.) is when an infectious trigger, (like Strep), environmental factors, and other possible triggers create a misdirected immune response.” -PANDAS Network

“It is an autoimmune condition which disrupts a child’s normal neurologic activity. PANDAS occurs when the immune system produces antibodies, intended to fight an infection, instead mistakenly attacks healthy tissue in the child’s brain, resulting in inflammation of the brain (basal ganglia section) and inducing a sudden onset of movement disorders, neuropsychiatric symptoms and abnormal neurologic behaviors. PANDAS/PANS is characterized by an abrupt onset of obsessive-compulsive behaviors (OCD) and/or motor or vocal tics in pre-pubescent children immediately following an infection. These symptoms are extreme and interfere with a child’s daily life. Additionally, children experience concurrent psychiatric and neurologic symptoms. Patients can have recurrent symptom exacerbations (flares) later in the disease when exposed to other (non-strep) infections.” -Moleculeralabs

Vocal or motor tics of any type, sensory abnormalities, drastic personality changes, anxiety or unusual fears, fits of rage, depression, behavioral or developmental regression, OCD, inability to concentrate, impulsivity/distractibility, signs of autism; these are not things that have sudden onsets. Though our child never had a happy demeanor, the signs of obsessive compulsive disorder, auditory processing sensitivity, and motor tics starting showing immediately after a major cold last Fall, right before that vacation.

October 9th is PANDAS/PANS awareness day. If any part of this story has you wanting to run to google because it sounds a little too familiar, I implore you to remain calm and find a doctor who is literate in this condition. You will not get to the end of the research for this. I spent countless hours trying to get just one answer. What are the causes of this? What are all of my treatment options? The list goes on.. Find out as much as you can, but go to sleep on time at night and love your child the same. In the transparency of our story, I hope to help spread the word as this is still so very unknown. And unknown leaves it unaddressed, undiagnosed, or even misdiagnosed, and untreated. If not for the awareness day news report a year ago, I would not have known the actual cause for my son’s behavior. I want it to be seen for what it is. I won’t go in to all of the details of our journey but I do want to give my God all of the glory.

Our son is no where near the extreme case that the majority of the Panda-kids you would find. Some of the worst cases I hear are of 5 year olds wanting to end their lives. This condition can be extreme and horrific. Most days you wouldn’t see much different about our child aside from a little speech delay and frequent tantrums. Even those could be hidden in common toddlerhood behaviors. The tricky part for us is that he has been this way from birth. Whereas most children have symptoms onset when they are around 7 so the overnight change is very obvious. He seemed to be an unhappy person from the day we brought him home. The more he developed, the more he had to occupy himself, but he just never seemed ‘normal.’ I don’t like looking for something to be wrong to justify difficulty. I just chalked it up to him being strong-willed and settled in to the hardships of seeing my expectations of motherhood be catapulted away from me. I wanted to cover him in kisses and play with him in joyful laughter. It all made him cry. God grew me a lot in this perceived rejection, but that’s a whole other story.

I used to struggle with OCD, so when I saw the signs manifesting in my child, I knew what it was, and I knew the turmoil that was churning in that little mind. This is what raised the flag to an issue being more than a bit of delay, a dislike of loud sounds, and a cranky attitude. After we found out what PANDAS was, we elected to get him tested. God worked this process out so efficiently. There is only one laboratory in the entire world that tests for this, and it is in our city. I was having problems getting the orders to go through. A friend gave me her mother’s phone number, who happened to be the administrator for this very small office and she got me the help I needed. These types of things kept happening. I knew His hand was in it. The tests came back positive for PANS and we started on the grueling process to then find his “trigger.” This would be what causes his immune system to mis-react. Once discovered, you have a few treatment plan options to pursue. This is treatable! We have yet to find it/them, but in the interim we take the steps to boost his natural immunity with organic anti-virals, probiotics, a healthy diet, and detoxing. The flares come every so often, typically after a cold or increase in environmental allergies. They are awful. He regresses in his developments, he wakes all through the night, he screams at everything we do or don’t do, and sometimes he will self harm to get his aggression out. After about a week, he comes back to us.

Here is what changed our lives. A prayer. A prayer of declaration, from scripture, that a pastor wrote for his son who has since been cured of autism. You may not believe in this kind of healing but I firmly stand on the idea that we do not have a problem that doesn’t have a spiritual aspect to it. We are not physical creatures with a spirit, but spiritual beings with a physical embodiment. There is no issue aside of my faith. I started to pray this over my son. And he began to transform. He laughed. He spoke in full sentences. He showed empathy and consideration. He developed some patience. He stopped covering his ears near hand-dryers. He sang. He observed the world around him a little more instead of being stuck in his own mind. He acted silly. And he continues on this path. Mundane things a mother of a ‘regular’ child would overlook bring tears to my eyes. I cherish being able to enjoy my son in ways I hadn’t been able to before. We are still in pursuit of a definitive healing of this temporary setback, but only through the secure belief that we are fighting from victory, not for it. Jesus has fully healed my son. We’re just catching up to this truth here on earth.

#pans #pandas #autoimmine disease #autism #difficult child #faith healing

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justforbooks · 6 years ago

Photo

Towards the beginning of The Golden House, there’s a soireè scene, where the eldest of the three Golden sons, the loquacious Petya, offers a brilliant display for the guests. The narrator recounts:

“That night he talked and drank without stopping, and all of us who were there would carry fragments of that talk in our memories for the rest of our lives. What crazy, extraordinary talk it was! No limit to the subjects he reached for and used as punching bags.”

Those subjects range from the collapse of foreign currencies to the sex lives of British royals, from the lyrics of Bob Dylan to the flaws in Stephen Hawking’s theory of black holes. Petya, “glittering-eyed and babbling like a brook,” flies from topic to topic, drawing spontaneously on his vast reservoir of knowledge, “like a whole cable box full of talk-show networks that jumped channels frequently.”

Veteran readers of Salman Rushdie will recognise this tendency from the author’s body of work. Like Petya, Rushdie is a polymath. His books – and his lectures -– overflow with myriad allusions, digressions, and stories within stories, sweeping through eras, continents, and cultures. However, unlike Petya, who suffers from a crucial “flaw in the program,” Rushdie is the master storyteller in his latest book, never losing control over what is, ultimately, a suspenseful thriller.

Return to realism

In The Golden House, Rushdie abandons the fantastical elements of much of his previous fiction, choosing realism over the magical realism for which he has become renowned. His return to realism may not be all that surprising in a novel that examines life in the United States in recent years. Actual events in America have proven to be so bizarre that the need to invent fabulous ones may have been eliminated.

In any case, this book is set firmly in the real world – in contemporary Bombay and New York – the city of the author’s birth and the city where he now resides. Its present action coincides with the eight years spanning Barack Obama’s Presidential term. As in some of Rushdie’s earlier work, most notably Midnight’s Children, the story of individual characters runs parallel to that of a nation caught in the throes of transformation.

The novel’s immediate setting is the Gardens, a grassy quadrangle in the heart of Manhattan that forms “an enchanted, fearless space” for the exclusive community that resides around it. It is in this idyllic space, where fireflies sparkle on summer evenings and children play freely, that our millennial narrator René lives with his liberal, academic, parents. At the beginning of the novel René is “just a young man dreaming of the movies.” He is, in fact, an aspiring filmmaker, in search of a subject.

On the day of Obama’s first inauguration, an event marked by a sense of unbridled optimism across the city, the grand mansion that has lain empty behind the Gardens for years is finally occupied, by a wealthy foreign family who refuse to divulge any information about their previous lives. The family’s imperious patriarch, like many immigrants before him, seeks to reinvent himself in America. He christens himself Nero after the last of the Caesars, and his sons choose their own names – Petronius (Petya), Lucius Apulius (Apu), and Dionysius (D). The mansion itself is renamed The Golden House.

Nero Golden shares many characteristics with another American literary hero – a mysterious past, unexplained wealth, decadent parties, a mythic property. Like Jay Gatsby’s guests, Nero’s new acquaintances try to fill the gaps in his narrative by spinning tales about him. René, who fancies himself as a modern-day Nick Carraway, makes several references to Fitzgerald’s novel. But unlike Gatsby, Nero is not alone.

The golden sons

In a sense, this is a story of fathers and sons. Each of Nero Golden’s sons is idiosyncratic and distinctive. Petya, afflicted by high-functioning autism, is an incredibly intelligent and erudite but socially awkward man who spends much of his time inside his bedroom bathed in the blue light of computer screens. When he is not expounding on the many subjects that crowd his brain, he immerses himself in the virtual world of gaming. Petya’s manic conversations conceal a deep and endless suffering.

The second son, Apu, is the artist in the family. Romantic and political, Apu becomes a successful painter and dabbles in activism before growing disillusioned with what he regards as liberal posturing and ineffectualness. He has a way with women, which places him and Petya firmly on the warpath.

The youngest son, the beautiful, androgynous D, is forever the outsider. Born of Nero’s extramarital liaison with “a woman of no consequence” 18 years after Apu, D has never felt like he really belongs in this family. Tormented by his illegitimacy and plagued by questions about his sexuality, D is the first to leave the Golden House and find refuge elsewhere – in Chinatown – outside the cloistered precincts of the Gardens. There is something deeply tragic about each of the sons. Their vulnerability shines through at key moments. These are the most moving sections in the novel.

Compared to the men, the women seem less vulnerable. From a relatively minor character such as the exotic Somali sculptor Ubah Tuur to the “astonishing” Vasilisa who presides over the novel, their physical perfection and power over men make them both magnificent and slightly removed from the reader. Even when they suffer – and they do suffer, often because of actions taken by the men – we rarely get inside their souls in quite the same way as we do with the men. At one point René makes a telling statement when he says, “‘The art of the cinema,’ Truffaut allegedly said, ‘is to point the camera at a beautiful woman.’” It is perhaps fitting then that our narrator is a filmmaker.

Watching from the window

However, this does not mean that the women are not interesting or indeed fascinating. And no one is more so than the one whose machinations change the destiny of the Goldens: the Russian émigré Vasilisa. At once goddess and witch, Vasilisa is seductive, manipulative, and ruthless. It is her all-encompassing ambition of living a life “worthy of her beauty” that propels the plot forward. In a book about immigrants, Vasilisa embodies the immigrant desire to start over. “The past,” she says, “is a broken cardboard suitcase full of photographs of things I no longer wish to see.” Contradicting forces for good and evil literally struggle within her soul. Again, this seems more mythic than human, but whether or not she will ultimately prove to be one or the other is one of the many mysteries the narrator will have to uncover.

The auteur-narrator makes numerous references to movies throughout, and the influence of cinema, both on him and on the novel, is unmistakable. Like Jeff in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, René watches the Goldens – and other neighbors – from his home, overhearing noises and catching glimpses of scenes that hint at secrets and scandals. He soon discovers that the place the Goldens have fled is none other than Bombay. His research – and imagination – reveal that they left behind a city infested with corruption and crime, a world of underworld violence and international terrorism. “The worlds are less different than we pretend,” Nero tells him.

Initially, René is only a witness, but soon he finds himself becoming a participant and getting further and further entangled in the events. Poet, philosopher, and chronicler, René serves as the conscience of the book. And while he is flawed and complicit in the events that unfold, he says, “Allow me this at least: that I am self aware.” That he is, and it makes him the most endearing character of all.

Truth and lies

Even though this is not a work of magical realism, the distinction between lies and truth is often blurred. The Goldens of course tell “stories about themselves, stories in which essential information about origins was either omitted or falsified.” The characters frequently betray each other. The structure of the book further contributes to the blending of lies and truth, as René begins to invent scenes for his film in progress. Several sections are written as script, with scenes dissolving or ending with the director’s cut, and the camera zooming in and out. Some include voiceovers and other stylised effects. At times it’s difficult to say what really takes place and what is invented by René. If you don’t know the truth, fellow filmmaker Suchitra tells him, use your imagination.

Meanwhile, even as truth and lies begin to collide inside the Gardens, outside it, in the wider world of America, the greatest betrayal of all begins to take shape. The world readies itself for the 45th US presidential elections between two unlikely contenders. On the one hand there is Batwoman, “who owned her dark side, but used it to fight for good, justice, and the American way.” On the other is the Joker – a green-haired, white-faced, red-lipped, real estate tycoon who is “utterly and certifiably insane.”

Rushdie uses rants by minor characters on the streets of Manhattan, as well as observations by our protagonists, to explore the growing “discontent of a furiously divided country.” It is tempting to find the author’s own well-known views on certain topics in the characters, for instance, when Apu chastises “wishy washy” liberals for attempting to sanitise language due to political correctness, or when René defends his suspicion of organised religion. While much of this author’s prior work has dealt with political events, this book’s preoccupation with many of the burning issues of the day makes it particularly urgent and relevant.

The personal and the political

Of all those issues, the question of gender identity is especially prominent. The Museum of Identity where Riya works represents the quest for identity in general, but for D, this quest is very personal. “Come inside and learn about the new world,” Riya tells him. What follows is an education, mostly about transitioning and “gender identity, splitting as never before in human history, spawning whole new vocabularies that tried to grasp the new mutabilities.” Some of their dialogue on this subject sounds didactic, like an introductory lecture on the transgender community for a beginner, which of course is what D is. Nevertheless, the effect of this new education on him is profound and real and will eventually lead to the most poetic, moving section in the book.

Rushdie’s prose is as always both dazzling and dizzying. Replete with clever wordplay and digressions, it includes allusions to Shakespeare, Greek tragedy, the ancient Chinese hexagrams of divination, the 1956 chess Game of the Century between Bobby Fischer and Donald Byrne, video games, superheroes, and Seinfeld, to name only a small fraction. References to current affairs range from Planned Parenthood and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States to the telecommunications scam and the 2008 terror attack against Bombay’s Taj Mahal Hotel in India.

People often appear and disappear within a few lines, but are given their own histories and eccentricities. They are, in René’s words, “minor characters who might not make it past the cutting room floor.” These people, like some of their dialogues and many of the allusions, might at times seem a tad gratuitous. The long, packed, meandering sentences can feel overwhelming. But, then, so is New York. Together, the obviously significant and the apparently insignificant help create the teeming, chaotic world of the city to which the book is a tribute of sorts.

The novel can be read as a chronicle of America in recent years, leading up to the present, troubled, Presidency. But that is only a part of it. At the heart lies a page-turner that is the stuff of blockbusters. There’s something breathtaking about the combination of contemporary events that we have all witnessed and are part of even now, and the gripping story of crime and passion, all narrated in such baroque prose.

Much suspense is created through René’s laments as he recollects events of the past eight years. Statements such as “it concerned all of us less than it should have,” and “I should have known there would be trouble,” suggest impending doom. Always, looming over us is the premonition of tragedy. “What would it mean,” René ponders, “if the Joker became the King?” The innocence, of both the Gardens and of Obama’s inauguration in 2009, cannot be sustained. This is the tale of a dysfunctional family within a dysfunctional nation, both hurtling toward disaster. At times it may be horrifying to watch, but it is impossible to look away.

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