#politics aspect of this in a more meaningful way but alas

[kendallroygf]

Your Kendall post speaks volumes. I never knew how to articulate it properly but I always think (idk if it’s canon or not) His ex wife is Jewish, his best friend Iranian and his daughter, South Asian. But he’s aligning himself with parties like ATN etc. I don’t know, it’s a funny thing to me because wether or not the writers did this on purpose or not but the people he’s closest to (aside from his sibs) are as you said, from marginalised communities. Does he think the amount of wealth a person earns suddenly makes them immune to a system that wasn’t originally built for anyone aside for people like him. I wonder what his stance would’ve been on Mckenen if he were in the room when they were all deciding who should be president. It’s more personal for him, his daughter is quite literally apart of the community that Mckenen demonises. Not even just for Kendall but for Stewy & Marcia too. Like they can’t be seen opposing people like him because where does that put them? Just being poc in a cooperate world is threatening enough. This is me putting too much thought into it while also knowing the writers maybe didn’t when it comes to the Sophie/Marcia/Stewy and the role they have to put on.

hmm i don’t know how qualified i am to speak on this but in terms of ‘aligning himself with atn’ i truly think it’s never been an conscious choice for kendall to do that. like it came with the job. logan groomed kendall to one day be in charge of waystar and subsequently atn for however many years and i think a consequence of that is that kendall doesn’t really have any concrete ideologies/beliefs, much like roman. but similar to shiv (although her politics are way more clear) he has this abstract idea of ‘doing good things’ with waystar and wanting to be a ‘good person’ but this in itself kind of centres around logan . like his desire to ‘be good’ is just a desire to be good in comparison to his father (i’m a good person i’m better than you etc) but ultimately kendall (in s1 mostly) wanted to be the Good Guy but without much foresight on what that actually looks like and i think that’s where his relationships with stewy, rava and sophie come in i suppose. but i don’t think kendall intentionally created a relationship with stewy and rava or adopted sophie out of tokenism or anything. i simply think he connected to stewy and rava in some way mostly because they oppose logan and what he Represents very outwardly and consciously or unconsciously that’s what kendall was looking for. it stems from that patricidal drive + resentment kendall’s always had for logan but ultimately i think kendall is too self absorbed to think more deeply about what stewy or his daughter might face esp in terms of the toxicity of atn or what part kendall himself plays in it all. but i think i agree with you in the sense it seems kendall does think material wealth kind of shields you from having to deal with institutionalised racism + i played back that scene and kendall says wrt to atn and waystar he’s ‘trying to keep the world safe’ for his kids so i do think that he thinks that sophie was ultimately safe from all that and he probably assumes people like stewy and marcia are too. so with that in mind i don’t think he really counts his daughter as part of the many marginalised groups that mencken demonises even though sophie as we see isn’t exempt from facing racism. like at all. as for what kendall’s stance would be on mencken if he was in that room in ‘what it takes’ i could not say for sure but i think that itself goes back to kendall not having any concrete ideology or politics except on an entirely abstract level. like mencken’s a ‘nazi’ but ‘on a business level, they need to have a relationship’ so i think honestly his stance would be completely determined by his state of mind wrt to himself and his father. but no yeah i agree it’s probably extremely difficult for stewy, marcia and stewy who have all at one point been othered or treated as nrpi by the roys while still being closely connected to it all.

[gravitascivics]

“STUDENT” AS A COMMONPLACE, VI

This posting continues a review of student political interests as an item of consideration in developing a civics curriculum.  What follows is in line with one of William Schubert’s commonplaces of curriculum development, the student.[1]  The review is reactive in that it is posed as an alternative approach to what prevails today in American classrooms – a curriculum guided by the natural rights perspective. 

In turn, what prevails, ala natural rights, has a strong proclivity among Americans to treat government policy in a neutral fashion.  That includes dependency on such analyses as what is rendered from neutral protocols such as cost-benefit analyses.  This blog’s last posting describes this practice as it affects classroom instruction of civics. 

A contradictory approach would be one that explores how people feel about the subject or whatever aspect of life is being considered.  A civics curriculum guided by liberated federalism, what this blog promotes, relies heavily on normative, value laden content.  Moral considerations are central and, therefore, are not neutral but guided by federated, constitutional values. 

Moral analysis, as what is being promoted, is more in line with the long-term interests of the individuals or any other entities, such as politically active groups, that engage in political behavior.  Philip Selznick writes about the challenges such a position places on the socialization processes of young citizens.[2] 

The challenges involved are about reconciling the demands of authority and autonomy or with repressive policies as they relate to participatory socialization – a socialization that encourages a civic engagement by students as they are ready to enter their adult years.[3]  Given the issues facing young people during adolescence, these distinctions are highly meaningful.

Of course, in repressive socialization, one is relying on punishment and uses methods to elicit obedience to what is usually considered by adults – mostly parents or teachers – as appropriate behavior.  Often, respect is the sought after disposition of young people.  This sort of socialization relies on external sources of motivation, striving for conformity to some collective standards such as those of a family or religion. 

Here, there is a distinction between adult-centered and child-centered socialization.  In short, each places different emphasis on determining how young people are socialized into what is good, correct, or appropriate behaviors.  In both, adults lead the socialization process to what children and young people should do, but both take different paths.

The more adult-centered participatory socialization places the adult as responsible for ascertaining compliance, and a child-centered participatory socialization places the adult as responsible for ascertaining the child’s needs instead of the other way around.  The child-centered approach is further characterized by extending freedom to youngsters, assuming that learning is the product of trying things out. 

But this latter method should not be confused with parental indifference.  Parents and other supervising adults who engage in participatory socialization do exert a great deal of worry and attention.  They express these concerns in general – as in creating or providing an inquisitive environment – as opposed to detailed supervision. 

This, in other words, is not an either-or choice.  Selznick sees how both are necessary components of a viable socialization strategy.  He writes:

At times, repressive authority is in truth the only means of establishing order or accomplishing a morally worthy task; in the circumstances the alternative may well be utopian and self-defeating.  But it is more often tempting to claim there is no other way and to rely on repression as a first rather than as a last resort.  For its part, participatory authority requires very congenial conditions and may readily degenerate into weakness, negligence, and undue permissiveness.  Yet it holds the greater promise, not only for moral development but for high levels of personal achievement.[4]

A fraternal ethos best regards this distinction as a continuum in which functional levels of order must be established to be effective and efficient.  But the adults should move toward the participatory end. 

Why?  Because it is the participatory end that promises to result in optimum levels of effectiveness and promises that community can be reached as young people learn how to be active citizens.  A well-thought-out instructional plan can give young students face-to-face experiences that expose students to the real human concerns facing the communities in which they live.

          A relevant national trend noted as early as 1991 is the movement away from traditional institutions and associations, such as political clubs and parties, toward single interest groups.[5]  The consequence of such moves is that public debate tends to disregard the general good.  Politics and its rhetoric become the sole domain of self-interested parties only fighting for narrow ends, which seems to be selfish to the rest of the population. 

A review of a Pew Research Center report adequately shows the negative poll results which document the low esteem among the public in its views of both politicians and current political processes.[6]  Under the natural rights perspective, as it is judged in this account, such alienation to politicians and the political process is tolerable among Americans, even expected given the levels of individualism one finds in the national culture.[7] 

The federalist-republican view sees that alienation as being a political problem in and of itself.  The liberated federalism perspective takes the stand that the nation’s core institutions, such as schools, should actively strive to encourage citizens’ involvement in all aspects of governmental processes.  According to this view, the citizen has a duty and obligation to take on such a role. 

Beyond the obligational aspect, this account judges that such involvement is in the long-term interests, if not the short-term interests, of each individual citizen.  The ideal is that such a role should be taken up by every citizen because it adds to the knowledge base, skill base, and social base of each participant.  These benefits are again intangible and not easy to measure.

          Insofar as the political processes of the nation have been the product of group dynamics, such as the work of special interest groups, the liberated federalism model is insightful regarding the processes of those groups.  While that model is not a group theorist model, it does have a certain overlap with those models.  Students have an interest in understanding the workings of groups in a pluralistic, democratic society, so that they can better understand current political operations.

This posting argues that the national welfare will be served to the extent that group structure and group decision-making processes approach the ideal that the liberated federalism model offers, in which the participants of such groups feel a sense of partnership with their fellow group members.  The students’ long-term interests are advanced by each student becoming aware of such an ideal and acting to support, both in words and actions, its normative aims.

[1] William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).  The commonplaces can be defined as follows:

The subject matter refers to the academic content presented in the curriculum. 

The teacher is the professional instructor authorized to present and supervise curricular activities within the classroom setting. 

Learners (students) are defined as those individuals attending school for the purpose of acquiring the education entailed in a particular curriculum.

Milieu refers to the general cultural setting and ambiance within the varied social settings found at the school site.

[2] Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth:  Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1992).

[3] See for example, Michael Fullan, Leading in a Culture of Change (Hoboken, NJ:  Jossey-Bass, 2020).

[4] Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth, 268, emphasis in the original.

[5] Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart:  Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York, NY:  Harper and Row, Publishers, 1985/2007).  More recently, see Omer Taspinar, “America Remains Self-Centered, Brookings (December 6, 2010), accessed September 30, 2023, URL:  https://www.brookings.edu/articles/america-remains-self-centered/.

[6] Public Trust in Government:  1958-2023,” Pew Research Center (September 19, 2023), accessed September 30, 2023, URL:  https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/public-trust-in-government-1958-2023/.

[7] For example, see Jean M. Twenge, Generations:  The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents – and What They Mean for America’s Future (New York, NY:  Atria Books, 2023).  It should be noted that individualism is not all bad.  It has its positive elements, but here the concern is with excessive individualism at the expense of communal interests.

[ohsalome]

Dear Victoria,

Hi. Italian/German here. I hope you are doing alright despite the dire times. I am just wondering if I got this right, I always had the impression that Ukrainian policies towards human rights in general is very near to the point of view of the EU and that's why it is since some years being considered as a candidate new member. I admire your people's courage a lot and wish the EU would have acted earlier against Putin. Some friends of mine are actively involved in debunking, have done so for years and I am appalled by all the evident government-level misinformation caused by Russia that has been underestimated in the EU, despite damaging EU itself. I hate this situation.

I honestly had hoped for Ukraina to become a EU member before this whole mess, that way Putin couldn't have done what he's doing. He would have actively caused a WWIII if he tried, but alas, here we are and all I can do is show my support through donations.

I wish you peace and your country restored as soon as possible. I also hope Russia will get a blow they won't recover until they drastically change their ways.

We'll hopefully may drink together soon to your country.🍻

Thank you for the kind words. And thank you even more for the support with the propaganda debunking to you and your friends. I hope more people would understand that it isn't simply russia's war against Ukraine, it is attack on the democratic world in its entirety, and all the countries need to stand up for themselves if we want to keep authoritarianism at bay.

As for your question, I find that just talking about "policies toward human rights" is too vague, as it omits a lot of important analytical points. In general, yes, there is a huge request towards bigger transparency and democracy from the population, especially the generation that was born after the fall of the soviet union. At the same time, a lot of our political institutes are corrupt, the structures of power are remnants of soviet era and the promised european reforms are failed. This criticism is fair, and many (maybe most?) politicians are not interested in making meaningful change because it would cut their access to money and power. However, EU diplomats often quote Ukraine's failure to fight corruption as a reason for not inviting us to EU, but I find this argument disingenious. Firstly, it is not their place to judge us about corruption when so many european parties, institutions and companies lay in bed with Kremlin (god, do I even need to mention Schröder? What a hypocricy). Secondly, it ignores the economical and political aspects of the question, like Europe appeasing Putin for the sake of gas trade, pro-Russian Hungary veto-ing our presence, etc. Basically, I believe that our abscence from the EU is not due to the failure from our side, but from the Russia-orchestrated opposition within Europe and EU's political impotence. Is that what you meant by "EU damaging itself"?

Also a different question would be what you mean while talking about human rights. I have a strong suspicion that in Western and Eastern Europe we might have very different priorities. E.g. being more culturally conservative, we lag behind severely with LGBT+ rights (although we still manage to hold the biggest Pride events in Eastern Europe, which I am immensely proud of). But topics like freedom of press, police brutality, local autonomy are extremely important and are topical in ukrainian activist community - well, were topical. Culturally we have a very strong strive for freedom and dignity, but due to our high individualism and generational trauma from soviet times, we don't always act

Regarding the EU partnership... The following is going to be my personal opinion, so please do not interpret it as a representation of any ukrainian collective or whatever. But at this point, why would we need EU? It has proven itself to be weak, corrupt and useless. Experience has proven that Ukraine's closest allies are our western neighbours - Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, etc. Not only a political-economical union with them would be more mutually benefitial, frankly, it would be more trustworthy. EU has damned itself by letting Putin slide during these 20 years, but much worse is its refusal to learn from the mistakes and change. To quote a popular joke in Ukr spaces, after this war EU would have to apply for a membership in Ukraine 💅.

In short, today we are bleeding for the whole Europe, and I don't know what will happen tomorrow. But my faith in ZSU stands unshaken. Once we kick this bile out of our land, you are invited to Kyiv for a drink 🥂

[jonthethinker]

Alright, this is going to be a long post, but I like Critical Role a lot, so here goes.

Something to consider as the new CR Discourse boils over: fandom discourse is no substitute for activism, and if your emotions are so wrapped up in it that you feel enraged with a righteous fury or utterly devastated by a development in certain aspects of your favorite entertainment product, you may need to back away.

I understand what’s going through the heads of the people on both sides of this discourse. Critical Role feels like this safe place to feel a little less alienated and depressed about the world we live in. This is the same for many entertainment products. The people seem so open and fun and accepting, and we just layer all of these feelings and expectations on people we don’t have an actual personal connection to in real life, because we’ve spent so much time watching and listening to them and come to feel like we know them and are connected to them more that we actually are.

I get it. In this world we have very little in the way of actual power. Most of the power we have is what products we choose to consume, and so in a roundabout way, what you consume become a moralistic decision; you can be considered a bad person for listening to a certain podcast, or disliking certain characters, or having certain opinions on celebrities. We come to focus more on what people think than what they do.

There’s this quote by a civil rights leader named Stokley Carmichael I think about everyday that goes, “If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power.“

I have come to believe this is true about everything; racism, sexism, religious bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, classism. All the major problems of our world are caused because certain groups have power to dis-empower and harm others with little to no consequence. This isn’t because of the group they belong to, but because they have that power in the first place. It may be an unpopular notion, but I believe that if you went through history and reversed every power dynamic the other way around, you’d still have the same situation. If women had the power men have had for all of history, misandry and in this case matriarchy would probably be just as bad as misogyny and patriarchy are in our current world. The problem isn’t the group, it’s the power.

So you have these folks online, who in real life are probably alienated and exhausted and depressed and they turn to an entertainment property to make themselves feel a little better and make it through the day, and in this instance, it’s Critical Role. And because everyone’s morality is all wrapped up the products they consume instead of the actions they take, it is Capital G Good to watch Critical Role. I mean, they support the charity, and say the nice things, and seem so fun and genuine, and so they are Good.

But then a problem arises. One of the Cast says or does something that goes against what they like. Maybe this is another in a long list of things they have done that have been deemed Problematic by certain sectors of the community. And seeing as these people have so little power in their lives, to demand better wages at work, more consideration from the halls of power, more protections from the many harms inflicted upon them by those with more power, they decide enough is enough. They don’t have the power to change their material circumstances, but if they can join forces with enough like-minded people online, they can perhaps forcibly remove the Problematic Element through social pressure, or at the very least, harass the person they don’t like into one hell of a headache.

But alas, there are others in the fandom community, here to save the day. They too see themselves as Good for consuming the Critical Role product, and they may very well like this thing suddenly labeled Problematic. And you see, it can’t really be problematic, because they like it, you see, and they are Good People, who only consume the Good Things, and if some aspect of this were Problematic, it wouldn’t be Good anymore, and that, in their minds, is a flat out impossibility. The Goodness of Critical Role, and by extension their Goodness for liking it, is at stake. That just won’t do.

So this second group proceeds to scold and harass the other group in mass, bitterness seeps in deeper, trenches are dug, and a fandom is further divided, its members further alienated, and everyone hates everyone else just a little bit more. In one fell swoop, the world is a little worse, and a little harder to navigate, all because some well meaning folks wanted to protect what is Good by using the power they have.

Critical Role is a show made by well meaning, upper-middle class white professionals who live in the Los Angeles suburbs. They seem to have a lot of compassion for others, I wouldn’t deny them that, but they make this product to make money. That is what it is for. They may try to do some Good with it, but that Goodness is going to be shaped by their well meaning upper-middle class white perspective, and all the blindspots that entails, and at the end of the day, if it didn’t make them money directly or indirectly, they would stop doing it, regardless of the Good they could do.

This does not make them Bad, and I’m not suggesting so. We live in a Capitalist society. We all want to be able to live comfortable lives with our dignity intact, and under Capitialism, in order to do that, you have to make money. So that’s what they do. I have empathy for that motive. As I do for Critters who want to hold them accountable with what power they have to Be Better, as I do for the Critters who hold those Critters accountable with the Power they have, and so on and so on. We all want to be Good. I just don’t think this is how you’re really going to do it.

I don’t care what products you consume. There is no ethical consumption under Capitalism. You’re going to be hard pressed to find a product in the world that doesn’t involve someone being exploited or tricked somewhere along its production or consumption (and while you can and should seek out those that do the least harm where you reasonably can within your means, it is unavoidable under our current system to avoid benefiting from someone’s exploitation). As much as it hurts me to say this, it is almost certainly true for Critical Role as well. And that is a hard pill to swallow. Especially if you’ve based your entire identity on consuming the Good products, instead of the Bad ones. This is why I don’t care about the products you consume, I care about how you use your power, however big or small. That is what defines you. Not your ships. Not your faves. Your actions.

There is a real hunger to do good in this community. I see it all the time. Think of all the charity drives CR has handily met the targets of. That desire is real, and it’s beautiful. I am here simply to encourage another avenue besides online discourse for you all to act upon all those good intentions. There are many organizations and political bodies that would love your In Real Life support, that will simultaneously allow you to do good and build real connections with the people around you in your own communities, and start the delicate, difficult process of empowering the dis-empowered and holding the powerful to account.

And I know you may feel tired and beaten down, anxious and depressed, socially-limited and uncouth in comparison to what you imagine the members of these organizations to be. But I promise you all of them started out feeling the same way. It is through those efforts that you can truly do good instead of just feel good, and create a purposeful, meaningful life for yourself along the way.

It is through solidarity and cooperation towards mutual goals that we make this world more livable for ourselves and the most vulnerable among us, not bitter infighting and petty online squabbling. Maybe I come off as an a real ass for saying all of this, and for that I’m sorry. I don’t mean to or want to hurt anyone. I too just want to do good, and maybe this will help, in some small way.

Don’t forget to love each other.

[tyrantisterror]

Tales of Kevalry: A Collection of Star Wars Fanfic Ideas

Ok, so, if you’re looking at this you’ve probably seen the posts where I and a bunch of others workshopped what was originally just a joke proposal for an alternative to the Sith and the Jedi in Star Wars into an almost workable proposal for an alternative to the Sith and the Jedi in Star Wars.  @theswiveldiscourse suggested making a sort of campaign/setting pitch out of all the scattered bits we’ve established so far, so... this is that.

Keval Errants

Our alternative force users, for those who think the “you cannot have meaningful relationships with anyone - family, romance, etc.” rules of the Jedi suck but also don’t like the complete devotion to selfishness that defines the Sith.  They’re called the Keval Errants, and they basically play on the “wandering hero” archetype in fantasy fiction - i.e. the knight errant who wanders from place to place slaying monsters and saving villagers, the nameless gunslinger who rolls into town, shoots the bandits, and rides off into the sunset, the ronin who decides to protect villagers from marauders out of the goodness of his heart, the gumshoe who gets in over his head investigating a criminal conspiracy because a dame with a problem came into his office looking for help, etc.

There’s a loose code for the Keval Errants here, but the jist of it can be summed up as:

A keval errant devotes their life to helping others as much as possible

Keval errants believe that you can’t be good at helping others if you don’t understand and care about them

To that end, Keval Errants dedicate themselves to understanding other creatures as much as possible, and are required to have at least one animal that they partner with in combat to reinforce this idea (because training an animal as a mount requires you to practice communicating with and caring for a creature that isn’t capable of communicating the same way as you)

If a Keval Errant’s mount dies, they are expected to raise a new one after a period of mourning.

A squire is usually expected to pick a different mount than the one their Keval Errant mentor uses, as the point of having a mount is to hone the skills of understanding different creatures - relying on the mentor’s pre-established knowledge robs the squire of a valuable learning experience.

Any creature can be a mount so long as 1. it consents to the partnership and 2. its biological and psychological needs are different than the Keval Errant is works with.  Droids and sapient beings, while uncommon, can be found among the Keval Errants’ partners.

Keval Errants believe that freedom is an essential right of all beings, and oppose tyranny in all its forms

No force power is off limits, though draining life force, dominating minds, and looking into the future are viewed as inherently dangerous powers that should be used sparingly if at all.

Unlike the Jedi and the Sith, Keval Errants aren’t big on dogma and strict rules.  Their code is a set of guidelines that is meant to be open to interpretation and, if need be, broken when necessary.  There is no strict dress code, naming convention, weapon selection, etc. - freedom is a big value of the code, and so followers of it are encouraged to do things their own way.  Keval Errants are also free to leave and rejoin the order as often as they need to - no one is shamed for, say, wanting to pause their training to go save their friends from being killed by fascists, or take a brief holiday to rescue their mother from slavery.

If one chooses to be a Keval Errant, one must travel the Galaxy trying to help people in need and have a creature one trains as a mount.  That’s it, those are the only requirements.

Like the Jedi and the Sith, the Keval Errants are not well chronicled in history - in fact, they are even more obscure than the other two, as Keval Errants don’t actively seek out children to indoctrinate like the Jedi, nor do they try to conquer the Galaxy like the Sith.  Most stories of the Keval Errants are folktales of a mysterious and helpful stranger who wandered into a town, solved some problems, and eventually went on their way.

Though they don’t actively recruit new members, Keval Errants will accept any who ask to learn from them.  Most Keval Errants began as an ordinary citizen of the Galaxy who witnessed another member of the order performing a heroic act, and decided to ask the mysterious stranger to teach them how to do the same.  Keval Errants accept squires regardless of their midichlorian count, believing that anyone - even droids, perhaps - can learn to use the force if they open themselves to it.

Though a Keval Errant’s travels can take them anywhere, they are most often found in the Outer Rim - where there are plenty of problems to solve, and few good warriors willing to deal with them.

Umbrade Vassals

Star Wars loves dichotomies, so the Keval Errants need an opposing faction.  Enter the Umbrade Vassals (we brainstormed a lot of different names but only the “Vassal” part stuck, so we might play with the name some more here).  Their philosophy focuses in the ideas of necessary evils and greater goods, believing that certain cruelties and inequalities are inherent aspects of the universe, and that the Galaxy would thrive if everyone submitted to the rule of the Dark Side of the Force (and, by proxy, the rule of the Umbrade Vassals themselves, who execute the Dark Side’s will).

Like Keval Errants, Umbrade Vassals embrace anonymity, albeit for very different reasons.  While a Keval Errant drifts from town to town as a mysterious but helpful stranger, an Umbrade Vassal commits acts of cruelty beneath a mask in order to deny responsibility for their actions - it is not THEIR will that others should suffer, but the will of the Force, and as such they should not be held accountable for the suffering their actions cause.  Like the Sith, Umbrade Vassals try to dominate and rule as much as possible, though unlike the Sith they prefer to do so without getting credit for it.  Umbrade Vassals spend most of their lives in positions of power that avoid fame - high level bureaucrats, chancellors to emperors, etc.  They do not seek the throne, but rather to be the whisper in a king’s ear.  When forced to change things in the open, they wear uniform set robes and armor that conceal their true identity as much as possible.  Identity is something the Umbrade Vassals would like to do away with should their conquest of the Galaxy ever fully exist - in their Utopia, all are nameless pawns for the Force to use as it will.

There are few stories of grand battles between Keval Errants and Umbrade Vassals - though the two despise each other on principle, most of their conflicts are less epic struggles of good vs. evil and more akin to a story of a trickster evading an over-reaching tyrant.  The Umbrade Vassals have tried to wipe out the Keval Errants on many occasions, but have failed in part because the Errants are so loose and chaotic in structure that tracking all of them down is nearly impossible, especially for an orderly and rule-oriented group of villains who by their nature hate thinking creatively.

Rough Ideas on How a Keval Errant Story Would be Shaped

The Star Wars stories that focus on Jedi/Sith conflicts tend to be Epic in scope - stories of nations going to war and high political drama ala The Iliad.  A Keval Errant story should be a bit more personal and intimate in structure - less Phantom Menace and more The Mandalorian, if you will.  Keval Errants wander the Galaxy in search of people to save and villains to thwart - they don’t get involved in Republic trade disputes and take orders from Galactic senators unless the problem gets REALLY out of hand.  Which is where the Umbrade Vassals come in - while a Keval Errant story should start as a fun road trip where the Errant(s) helps out people in need across the Galaxy, Umbrade Vassals can escalate the problem to a degree that the Keval Errant has to become involved in a grander conflict - a Star War, if you will.

Thematically, a Keval Errant story should be about the value of kindness and love - any and all forms of love, be they Romantic, Platonic, etc (for clarity’s sake: you don’t have to be romantically/sexually attracted to anyone to be a Keval Errant, but you do have to care about people in some capacity).  Keval Errants are compassionate and want to connect with the world, and their enemies are those who are cruel and selfish.

Also, Keval Errants are space warriors who ride space monsters and stop space villains.  Have fun with that and do some goofy shit.

Ok, that’s all I got - what did I miss/what else can we add, gang?

[sodomyordeath]

Queen of Drags

Finally the post many of you asked for since the show went into heavy promotion.

This is going to be long. To keep this from being too boring I decided to publish it in form of an ongoing conversation between myself and the one and only Chiara.

Me: So let’s start with the cast and the jury.

Chi: On the jury side we have Conchita Wurst.

Me: Guess we have to disclaimer this?

Chi: She’s our friend, She knows and loves Drag and is a talented and amazing performer. So disclaimer done.

Me: Next we have Bill Kaulitz.

Chi:  Wasn’t he in some kinda child band?

Me: Yep Tokio Hotel, they are still around. he was also a judge on an music casting show back in the early 2010s. 

Chi: Garbage music[1]?

Me:  “Deutschland sucht den Superstar”. So nothing you or I would call music.

Chi: Right. Garbage music.

Me: And we have guest judges.

Chi: One per show right?

Me: Yea even in the final episode. They use a point system. Each of the for judges awards points. The highest number per episode is the number of contestants left.

Chi: The lowest is one or 0?

Me: Normal people start with one.

Chi: So decimal system than?

Me: Smartass.

Chi: I am smart and I have an amazing ass.

Me: No arguing with that.

Chi: So who are the guest judges?

Me: In order of appearance:  Olivia Jones, Amanda Lepore, Leona Lewis,  Pabllo Vittar, La Toya Jacksona and for the final Laganja Estranja

Chi: So 4 judges that know there shit and 2 professional singers. That’s a lot better than a typical Drag Race season.

Me: Yes and they actually do matter due to the point system they used.

Chi: So what do you expect from our 3 permanent judges?

Me: Obviously the best insights will come from Conchita and some of the guests. Bill will focus on overall performance aspects, stage placement, lip-sync etc. and Heidi... well looks and she brings the “girl at the drag bar” perspective.

Chi: Well we cheated here didn’t we?

Me: Yes because that was how it played out and Conchita felt like kind of the head judge the entire season but what we expected because of the pre show PR was Heidi dominating the show and giving us her model casting show 2.0.

Chi: Did Pro 7 fuck it up with the trailer where they framed Heidi as the head judge?

Me: Well at this point in time I don’t think they tried to provoke the backlash they got. They just tried to frame the show in a way so there usual audience sees someone they are familiar with.

Chi: So you don’t think the baited the queer community and press into a push back just to get the buzz going?

Me: You mean a PR campaign that would exploit a marginalized community to sell a commodity? That would by cynical!

Chi: ...

Me: Moving on. Let’s talk about the artists.

Chi: I honestly didn’t know much about any of ��em.

Me: Not even your “home girl”?

Chi: Do I have to remind you that I’m from Zurich and  Hayden Kryze is from Bern? Plus I wasn’t in Switzerland for an awful lot of time in the last 2 years.

Me: Right and she's rather young isn’t she?

Chi: 20

Chi: Speaking of age Catherrine Leclery is the oldest cast member with 48 and seems to be the one who’s in the business the longest, Hayden is the youngest.

Me: Hmm, what I noticed is that anyone but Catherrine is under 35.

Chi: I feel old now.

Me: I knew about the 3 Berlin girls but never worked with any of ‘em. 

Chi: That’s Bambi Mercury a bearded queen not related to our friend Bambie the high priestess of gore. Candy Crash a funny bitch who paints her face on youtube and the “infamous” Katy Bähm.

Me: You know Candy had me when she renamed Katy into “Käthe Baum”

Chi: *lough crying* me to bitch!

Me: But really Candy is a miracle she managed to age 5 years since she was in a documentary in 2018 

Chi: *sings* Forever Young, I want to be... forever.. 

Me: Still I like her and people I know, who worked with her, like her.

Chi: Too bad she doesn’t make wigs...

Me: *spills drink* *side eyes Chiara*

Me: Looks like we both are not turning into Käthe Baum fans any time soon.

Chi: I learned a saying from the southern United States “Bless her heart”

Me: Moving on. Janisha Jones.

Chi: We didn’t know her before the show

Me: But our good friend Ephe Drine knows her and as a Munich queen with spanish roots (like Ephe) she’s somewhat of my “home girl”.

Chi: We did run into her however and she’s a lovely person,an true artist by heart and a way better drag performer than it came across on the show.

Me: She sadly was the first one that went home but if you get a chance to see her. Do it. She doesn’t disappoint.

Chi: Next up is Samantha Gold.

Me: Oh yea our full figured Bar Queen from Hamburg with Austrian roots.

Chi: Old school drag. She was the second one out. 

Me: She did sing live on episode one and her performance was...

Chi: ...not as strong as we would have expected from someone who does that for a living.

Me: Moving on.

Chi: Now my “home girl” Hayden Kryze.

Me: She’s young.

Chi: She sure has talent but it felt...

Me: Aimless and her performances where sloppy

Chi: Unpolished. She sure can move and the whole “I can be a manly man but also a hot drag queen” segment was...

Me: She’s young

Chi: Speaking of young Aria Addams.

Me: Not related to my drag daughter Wendy Addams

Chi: That we know of. I mean age wise she could be hers.

Me: And they sure have the same fire and undeniable talent.

Chi: She was the big one for me. She grew episode to episode was never afraid to try something new and wasn’t annoying. I’d love to work with her at some point.

Me: Speaking of people one wants to work with, Vava Vide.

Chi: I had no idea that there even was a drag scene in Stuttgart.

Me: There were 3 standouts in the cast when it comes to drag as visual performative art form, Vava Vide, Bambi Mercury and, to a lesser degree, Aria Addams.

Chi: I do agree but I would also include Janisha. Alas her time on the show was too short for her to really show it.

Me: We are missing one.

Chi: You clearly had a nap under the shade tree my love. You forgot Yoncé Banks, the first Queen of Drags.

Me: Oh you are right but I really forgot about her because, and that’s just me, her kind of pretty girl drag packaged with rather limited dance performances and the most questionable tuck since Jade Sotomayor on Drag Race season one is very very boring to me.

Chi: You never tuck.

Me: I don't do pretty girl drag so I don't have to.

Chi: ...

Me: Come on it’s not only the tuck it’s the fact that her tucker underwear was clearly visible ever single episode. Make sure that your stage outfits do fit kids.

Chi: So you don't agree with her winning?

Me: Well, and that once again is just me, she’s a one trick pony that never stepped out of her comfort zone in any meaningful way and she should have gone home for her Horror/Halloween performance.

Chi: You sound like Michelle Visage.

Me: Oh my dark lord you are right.

Chi: lol

Me: Anyway I would have loved to see Aria Addams win because from the top 3 she has the most potential and showed the most growth.

Chi: I have to admit for all the lip service production was paying to Drag as an art form during the season and even when the sent the other “pretty girl”  Katy Bähm home over Bambi Mercury I had hope. Handing the win to  the rather conventional Yoncé Banks felt like a let down.

Me: That’s what I’m saying. It felt like “We want a mainstream compatible winner for our sponsors.” and the medical problems Aria had sure helped create the perfect pretext to do just that.

Chi: My background is in marketing and the cynical voice in my head does agree with you but do we really want to know?

Me: Does it actually matter in the end? I think not. This show sure had it shortcomings but it managed to do 2 things. First it felt a lot more relaxed and “real” than Drag Race ever did. I loved it when they all went out partying. Second to give the German public an idea of how wide contemporary drag as an art form is.

Chi: On the competition side I liked the point system they used. I loved Conchita who was an amazing head judge and all the guests did really really well. Amanda Lepore is in deed one of the sweetest humans alive and Laganja Estranja is a grown up now.

Me: And she single-handedly gave a masterclass in how a dance focused Drag performance looks in 2019.

Me: There was a little too much crying for me and we never got into any depth about the problems we as a queer people face. Only this snippets with the “same old same, old” mainstream media always pulls when they talk about us.

Chi: That’s a narrative problem in wider media and the editing sure felt exploitative in some parts. Especially you as a long time activist pick up on such things almost intuitively.

Me: Yes it felt a little odd that Katy’s sob story had more screen time than real activists like Vava got and I absolutely loved it that Bambi refused to part take in the trauma navel gazing.

Chi: Oh yes Bambi had a couple of power moves in this season and I love the fact that she had the trans flag on stage with her in her opening performance.

Chi: Any last words?

Me: Aria Addams should have won the title. Candy Crush should have stayed longer and the top 3 should have been Aria Addams, Vava Vide &  Bambi Mercury because I greatly enjoyed what they brought to the table.

Chi: I’m not mad that Yoncé Banks won but I’m underwhelmed by it. I want to put the focus a little on  Catherrine Leclery[2]. She was never afraid to try something new and turning her Fairytale performance into a political statement about the rights of Indigenous people to a fucking Disney musical song was very very smart.

Me: Over all where do we stand?

Chi: Better than expected. The artistry was there the talent was there the presentation was fine for the most part. Going clubbing and having that spa night made this show more real and honest than all seasons of Drag Race combined.

Me: They did have a budget for the show and they used it well. For the future I hope they can get rid of some of this tired reality TV tropes like this fake and over exaggerated conflicts and keeping around contestants because they are a source of drama. I want to see the performances in full not this snippets that look like they’ve been edited by an hyperactive 10 year old who got his hands on 6 cans of red bull. Season 2 will show if it will evolve or turn into the usual shit show that passes as tv entertainment these days.

Chi: I fully agree.

Me: Congratulations to Yoncé Banks for being the first “Queen of Drags”

Chi: Congrats!

Picture: Martin Ehleben / ProSieben

Instructions: To get our voices right read her lines with a Swiss accent and mine with a Bavarian one.

Note: The content of the post is edited together from conversations Chiara and I had over the last couple of weeks since the Show started airing. I translated and rephrased when needed so she ends up sounding a bit like me at some points. I’m sorry about that. 

[1] For those of you reading this and are not in the know we both are multi instrumentalists and vocalists with a spectrum from delta blues & early jazz all the way to technical death metal and post industrial 

[2] She hails from Brazil with black and Indigenous roots

[ceescedasticity]

‘start again’ writing babble

Honestly I think I am probably paying way more attention to whether (non-recruited) Personas ‘suit’ the characters than the actual canon does, and since that’s the canon and they never really spell out how it’s supposed to work there’s some question about whether it’s actually a meaningful thing to say... Well anyway I’m still really pleased with what I’ve come up with.

Defarge (Madame Defarge from Tale of Two Cities): I really like this one. Like Akechi, she has a grievance -- a legitimate, serious, life-warping grievance. Also like Akechi, got very very bitter and misanthropic and never let anything go. And like original-timeline Akechi, pursued vengeance/justice heedless of massive collateral damage. 

--In addition, it didn’t occur to me until someone pointed it out that Defarge could very well suit the Empress Arcana, what with the power and cunning hidden behind unassuming femininity, and new-timeline Goro gets the Persona about the same time he’s forming a connection (although at the time a very wary and mutually dishonest one!) with Haru... I’ve decided to just leave it ambiguous whether the connection was a key factor or if original-timeline-Akechi had Defarge, too. As Haru said, if he did, they never would have found out about it -- Defarge’s vulnerabilities mean bringing her out during a fight when you don’t have support would be stupid so she wouldn’t show up in the last confrontation, and before that he was pretending to have only one Persona. 

(In terms of powers, Defarge was awakened to have navigational abilities, and the information-gathering also fits her well. The extensive weaknesses and lack of other abilities are just a sort of... justification of why more Wild Cards don’t get a navigator or two to pull out at need. Some people are natural navigators and some aren’t.)

Medea (Greek Mythology): A couple of different aspects come into play here. Medea and Akechi are both completely ready to cut off their nose to spite their face -- they won’t hesitate to hurt themselves in order to hurt someone else. They also seem never to have picked up some basic moral principles that seem obvious to those around them. New-timeline-Goro specifically also has the aspect of, as mentioned in the awakening dialogue, embracing a newly chosen path completely, and trusting a newly formed connection to take them somewhere new. (Fortunately, Akira and Haru are both considerably more reliable than the mythological Jason.)

This time I deliberately cultivated the parallel to the developing connection with Makoto -- Medea doesn’t seem much like Priestess Arcana, but the mythological Medea was a priestess. If I hadn’t been cultivating the priestess thing, I probably would have gone with Jekyll for Goro’s healing-capable Persona. I considered a couple of legendary ancient female doctors, but none of them had the sharp edges/warpedness I wanted, so -- Medea. Unlike Defarge, ‘Medea’ has appeared as a Persona in previous games, which is why this version has ice abilities specifically.

Moving on from Akechi:

La Maupin (actual historical but much-storied person Julie d’Aubigney): La Maupin is just a really really really good candidate for a P5 initial Persona. She was a social rebel who did her own thing and ignored rules and mostly got away with it. To be perfectly frank I think she would have been better as Ann’s initial Persona than Carmen was, but that’s a whole different complaint. I knew I wanted La Maupin to be a Persona as soon as I knew I was giving other characters Personas -- until I decided Shiho would be getting involved it was going to be Hifumi, though I’m glad it wasn’t in the end.

Someone in the comments mentioned Queen Boudicea as a Persona for Shiho, which I had never thought of, and that is good, especially for canon Shiho. La Maupin is more justifiable with new-timeline-Shiho, who’s never ending up under Kamoshida’s thumb to start with -- she’s going to stop doing what’s expected of her and give herself permission to be selfish sometimes.

Sun Arcana for Shiho is not an idea original to me, and I thought about going with Strength or Temperance to be more original -- but Sun suits La Maupin better than those! So Sun it was. La Maupin’s powers were mostly Arcana-inspired -- Sun is usually Fire or Bless, and Ann has Fire covered. La Maupin may be able to learn revival skills? Not sure.

Hangaku (actual historical but much-storied person Hangaku Gozen): Like I said in story notes, Hifumi’s ideal of rebellion is a literal military revolt. (Not a successful one, but we’ll just ignore that part.) Hifumi got a Japanese figure mostly because of the shogi and... hmm, having trouble putting this into words. Hifumi isn’t actually very traditional? She just... sort of gives that impression anyway?

Hangaku has wind powers because Star Personas usually have ice or wind powers and she was going in a party with Yusuke, so. She does not have healing powers because I didn’t want the girl to automatically be the healer. (’Thanks loads,’ says the Escher crew, going forth with no healer.) The poison resistance goes with Hifumi’s ninja aesthetic.

Hypatia (fifth-century mathematician and philosopher): Hypatia wasn’t a rebel or criminal or deviant; she was a scientist who ran into trouble with politics. This suits Wakaba very well, if not the usual theme of initial Personas.

...I still need to decide a lot of things about this Persona. Hypatia wasn’t planned -- they had to get rid of the Palace immediately without a Treasure theft, and this was a way out of the corner I’d written myself into. 

Hypatia is Fortune Arcana... Apparently Fortune Personas often use wind powers, but Hangaku has that covered. Analytical abilities would make sense, but Futaba has that covered. Hmmmmmm.

Everyone knows Mishima will be getting a Persona in the very near future, right? I’m just going to go ahead and talk about that, too. Don’t read on if you want to be surprised in the next Valor and Discretion chapter.

Eulenspeigel (Till Eulenspigel, Germanic folktales): ‘Spiegel’ means ‘mirror’, which can be associated with the moon, and also with seeing/information. The folkloric Eulenspiegel spent a lot of time puncturing the egos of the arrogant, which fits Mishima’s role of pointing out good targets in the original timeline. (The folkloric Eulenspiegel is also, alas, frequently rather scatological in his pranks, but let’s ignore that part.) And the Eulenspiegel stories are described as a ‘picaresque’, which is often applied as a group description to the P5 initial Personas (even though it really doesn’t suit them all).

Eulenspiegel the Persona is going to have navigational/anaytical capabilties (information-themed again) and inflict status effects on enemies rather than attack directly. Mishima’s a little disgruntled about it.

[animatevibration-blog]

Mad Titan, Or Last Man

Please note that this is an incomplete assessment of motivations simply because comic book characters will never have an end to their story. I am also not informed on Thanos’ current exploits in the comics since I have not read Marvel, or any comics for a number of years. The focus will be on an older iteration of Thanos and his fascination with death that I believe derived from him growing up in a utopia of immortals essentially. Also, this is not an explanation of the Hollywood version of Thanos since his motivations make no sense and is clearly just political propaganda from writers that don’t know anything about population trends. This is not a super in-depth analysis either, I’ve merely looked at his motivations through the lens of the Nietzschean last man, as well as the underground man from Dostoevsky's works.

I had difficulty understanding it at first, mostly because I personalized concepts too much that I shouldn’t have, namely Lady Death. Which in turn, made Thanos’ motivations look like an outburst of an angsty teenage boy. You can’t fully personalize a concept in a story otherwise you miss the point, Lady Death is still death itself, the only real reason it was given form is because that’s seems to be the easiest way to relate to values expressed in stories; it makes it easier to embody them through secondary personalization, which is a term coined by the psychologist Eric Neumann. Secondary personalization is an act from which the more something is understood, the more it is refined in the consciousness until it’s anthropomorphised completely, creating almost a god image within the individual. It’s essentially the same as the image of Helen of Troy discovered by Faust when he travels to the realm of the mothers, she was the spirit of unbridled creative generation and freedom that he longed for. Lady Death is the anthropomorphised value of what Thanos desires most, and he expresses it as female because he is male, because it’s that which he lacks, the other part of his reality. That is partly a Jungian notion from which the male takes an inward journey to discover the Anima within, or his inner feminine that is tied to his highest value, making the attaining of that value an almost sexual act of union between being and image, something like that.

“But wait” you may say, “then why is Death a woman to all within the Marvel universe?” Good question, that is because the concept of death has always been a feminine one throughout history; it is the consumptive element of nature that consumes the life that came before so that successive generations may come into being. The easiest picture to express this in is the Ouroboros, the serpent that eats its tail. It is the sphere that contains existence from which death, or consumption is the precursor to new life. Other faces of death are the Babylonian Tiamat, the Malekusian Le-Hev-Hev which translates to “she who draws us in with a smile so she may consume us.” There is also Nut from Egyptian myth, the mother sky who embraces all in death, which you can see her image placed on sarcophagi, and Ta-Urt who is the bestial guardian of the underworld. Death is Feminine because it is part of nature, or the great mother earth, so it’s not surprising that we will portray it as a woman... Most of the time.

For this assessment though, I want to focus on Lady Death as a very singular expression of his “highest art” so to speak, which arised from the stagnancy of Utopianism. So, let’s begin.

What would a man(or eternal) strive for when perfection was already attained? I really needed to think about that for a second because when you think about utopia, the interesting bits are always the struggle to achieve it. That’s where the meat is in such a value system, that’s where all the action is, and that’s when I had an idea. So, what would a man(eternal) strive for when perfection was already attained? Perhaps he would strive for struggle itself. Perhaps when given eternity, what then would be more desirable than the finite? What could you desire more after you are given the universe through society, than to have it all taken away? It sounds crazy doesn’t it, who would ever destroy perfection merely to struggle? Well, a human would... Even in the face of eternal happiness and comfort, simply to achieve one semblance (if even for a moment) of the meaning that comes only from the finite and imperfect, a person would dash it all away.

That is the purpose of Thanos, he craves the one thing that was taken from him by his parents, and the society that believed it knew better, namely death. Honestly, what meaning could you ever possibly find in a world where people have already conquered the most meaningful aspect of it? Things have to die, things have to wear down, they need to decay because the universe isn’t a structured space of rules and laws. It bends, it curves, it’s constantly changing, it’s a flow of perpetual becoming. The speed of light itself is constantly changing, and that is the speed of causality itself, which is the frame from which events can even happen in reality. Laws, structures, immortality are all societal concepts born from consciousness, more precisely the consciousness of the left hemisphere; especially the concept of immortality. Things are always changing, we just cant perceive most of it, and you, are not really you. Everything you are now is the current complexity of a a cosmic lineage that dates back to the very beginning of existence. All the material that makes up your being came from the death of something before you. Whether it be the nutrients you ingest from animals and plants, or the elements of you refined in the cores of long dead stars. You are a process, not an end, and to extricate yourself from that process is to produce a fate far worse than death could ever be, an immortal Utopia.

I had to ask myself, is that really the goal of life, just to transcend it? If like the eternals that happens, what other outcome could you have but a utopia of eternal happiness and complacency? Why would you even want that when what is taken is so much? What other options could you ever have than sacrificing everything that made you human; to place it all at the alter of godhood, so that you could simply keep existing and going through the motions like a machine. There’s a reason why vampires are portrayed as impulsive nihilists most of the time, because what the hell else can you do with eternity once you have it. Of course there is a universe full of possibility within the universe, but it will never be achieved by the eternals because they are no longer part of that process and the only kind progress they can achieve is scientific analytical processes which is very indicative of western culture now, because that’s all they value. Which in turn will probably only lead to them becoming like Celestials, ethereal nothings that don’t exist in reality, that don’t understand the underlying complexity and importance of emotion, and merely act like computers.

That entire society and Thanos himself is a microcosm, most likely of the projected anxiety of a post-industrialized society that puts far too much (to an almost pathological degree) value in a singular system of linear analytical cognitive progress. My god ladies and gentlemen, if eternity was sitting in a lab continually making it easier for people to live for the eternity they have anyway, where all that’s left are mere intellectual and habitual procreative pursuits, I would also think death and destruction would be a far more preferable option, it could even become an ideal. Jesus, just try it for a hundred years and get back to me on how you feel about it. I don’t blame Thanos for pining after it, lusting after it, making it his muse, his companion, the Galatea to his Pygmalion, his reason for being. It’s meaning that matters, not more life, not happiness, not perfection, It’s the meaning in the struggle for more life, it’s the meaning you derive from struggling for happiness, it’s the meaning in life that you derive from struggling for perfection that gives depth to existence. It’s not the result, it’s the process. Death matters because it makes everything beautiful, everything meaningful, everything is something you will never see again, something that will never be again. Struggle matters because it makes you more than what you were, it allows you to change. Now let me talk about struggle more.

To struggle is to be human, to suffer is to truly live. Humans are the only beings that can say life is suffering and have a smile on their face. And humans are the only beings in the known universe that will willfully suffer in full understanding of it. Each person has a vast ocean of dormant potential in them just waiting to be realized. I don’t say that in a metaphorical way, though that’s the best way to describe it. You have a plethora of dormant genes in you that wait for the right environmental factors to be activated and embodied as new modes of being, because humans are action oriented, not cognitive oriented. It’s the notion of wishing upon the stars, each one represents a potentiality of what you could be, and you have a choice, you can pick a star and struggle for it. But if you don’t have to struggle anymore, if you have forever and everything provided for you, you won’t do it, you won’t experience it, because you don’t have to. I say this because Thanos is human, strikingly human, perhaps even the greatest of what humanity could be, essentially he is the underground man in a world of last men.

“I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. Alas! There comes a time when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas! There comes a time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself. Behold! I show you the last man, ‘What is love? What is longing? What is a star?’ So asks the last man and he blinks. The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man who makes everything small.”

“His species is ineradicable like that of a flea; the last man lives the longest. ‘We have invented happiness’ says the last man, and blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live for one needs warmth. Becoming sick and being suspicious are sinful to them: One proceeds carefully. He is a fool who still stumbles over stones or human beings!”-Thus Spoke Zarathustra p.13

Of course, it would be very rational to want such an existence, and everyone on his world is very rational, but rational isn’t reasonable, and reasonable isn’t meaningful. People are contradictions unto themselves. They almost never want what they need, or need what they want, or even want what they want. The easy paradisaical life is a beautiful dream full of splendor and joy... Only so long as it stays a dream. If man were to make his dream a reality I believe, well, I know that the moment after he would spit on the very ground he toiled so arduously to build and content himself with its absolute destruction,  just so something interesting could happen in his utopia. That is the folly of it, and that’s what I believe Thanos saw, even if he didn’t understand it himself. That is essentially Dostoevsky's notion of utopia and the values of enlightenment which is basically the society the eternals had made. 

“There are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity to make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbors simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that sooner or later those people have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you? What can be expected of man since he is being endowed with such strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man will play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all of this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself(as though it were so necessary) that men are still men and not keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man were nothing but a piano key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive suffering of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by this curse alone he will attain his object- that is, convince himself he is a man and not a piano key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated chaos darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point!” -Notes From Underground p.230-231

The point I’m expressing is that people are inherently chaotic, and that they love it too, it’s the source of our greatest freedom, the dancing star. We would also destroy all that was good for us merely to keep it. That chaos is lethal to utopianism and eternity. Thanos killed his people and worshiped death because perfection had a flaw, it was meaningless. They sacrificed everything for it, and in turn missed the sole notion powerful enough even to propel one to remake the whole universe and succeed... death. But, that’s just some guys opinion. 

[sage-nebula]

Five questions you want to answer but haven't been asked yet! ;D

99.) Pokemon Cards, Games, or Show?

Despite my unyielding, unending, unstoppable love for Alan, the games will always come first for me. (Of course, he’s had a shout-out in the games as well, so … ;D) The games are the entire reason why I was interested in watching the anime in the first place. The games are the reason why I was interested in the cards. As much as I love the anime and have a lot of opinions about it, the games always have and always will come first for me. The games are where it all started. Without the games, we wouldn’t have any of what we currently have. Without the games, the anime wouldn’t exist. Without the games, the hundreds of manga series (because there are a lot, which is why I get so aggravated when people talk about “the” manga when referencing PokéSpe) wouldn’t exist. The games started it all, the games are the source of everything. The games will always come first.

After the games, though, I do pick the anime. And then the cards, I guess, but I haven’t cared about the TCG in a very long time, outside of still being salty af that my biological mother threw out my card album (that had, among other things, my holographic first edition charizard card, and sentimental value aside, those still sell for upwards of $300 on eBay; I wouldn’t sell it, but damn, she threw away something so valuable out of pure spite and stupidity, I just). So for me it goes games, anime, and … everything else, haha.

98.) Pokemon main series games, pokemon ranger games, or pokemon mystery dungeon games?

The main series games come first, obviously, for all the reasons started above and more. I love the main series games. While of course I have some criticisms about some of them, and while of course there are some things that could be done better, I still adore the main series games and very likely always will. I love most everything about them and I can’t foresee that changing.

But that said, I also really, really, really love the Ranger games! Or at least, I really loved the one I played, which was Guardian Signs. The gameplay was a lot of fun, I love the concept of the Rangers and the Ranger Union, and how they differ from ordinary trainers but still do so much good in their own unique way. I love how they “capture” pokémon by not actually capturing them, per se, but rather by using their capture stylers to convey their feelings to the pokémon, calming them or soothing them and then asking for help from them. I also love the instances where this is done when rescuing pokémon from the poachers / villains. They send pokémon out to attack you, as any trainer would, but instead of battling and knocking their pokémon out, you use the capture styler to soothe and convince that pokémon to stop attacking. You, in essence, help that pokémon see that they don’t have to battle for this awful person! To be honest, having a device that can allow you to communicate with a trainer’s pokémon like that could be used for nefarious purposes, if put into the wrong hands, but capture styling is not as easy as it looks and I imagine that Rangers have to undergo tests and rigorous training to be certified. Regardless, I loved all these aspects, as well as the overall atmosphere, the story (even the silly bits!), and the characters … and I adored the Sign aspect of it, how you could draw, well, guardian signs with your styler in order to summon legendary pokémon. Did you know, Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs had Soaring long before ORAS! And you didn’t have to Soar on one of the Latis (though of course you could, and why wouldn’t you?), but rather, you could Soar on any flying-type pokémon you had bonded with during a “capture” session. It was great. And you could rampage across the countryside on Raikou, or Entei, or Suicune, just by summoning them with your styler. You didn’t own them, of course, they weren’t captured in a little monster ball, but you could summon them if you needed them for aid just by drawing their sign in the sky. (Or, er, if you wanted to get across Oblivia faster, but … >_>;; ) It was great, and that’s the kind of legendary pokémon partnership I’m okay with, rather than the utter nonsense of capturing one to use for battle.

Anyway, I really want to replay this game, and I might do that soon, but I really loved it! I wish we could get a new Ranger game sometime this century, but alas … T___T

(Meanwhile, I don’t see the appeal of the Mystery Dungeon games. At all. I never have. I tried to play the first one, I really did, but I was so bored I completely forgot I owned it after a little while. I’m glad people enjoy them, more power to them, but they’re not for me, and I wish we could chill out on getting new Mystery Dungeons to instead get at least one new Ranger game instead, but alas.)

97.) Gym Leader, Elite Four, or Champion?

I’m not entirely sure what this one is asking, if it’s asking which one I’d personally want to be, or which position I value more highly, or what. But either way, I guess my answer is Champion … but in the way I see it, rather than the way I think most people interpret it.

In all my years in this fandom / way of life, I’ve seen most people interpret “Champion” as simply “strongest trainer, gets lots of accolades, gets to sit on a throne and be cool all day”. And I can’t blame people for having that interpretation, because—in an effort to make this series accessible to kids, which is not something I am faulting—Pokémon has not delved very deeply into politics. Again, just to make it extra clear, that’s understandable; kids aren’t here to play a game that dives deep into policy and procedure, even though Gen V really toed that line and confirmed a lot of the beliefs and headcanons I already had, even without explicitly saying so. But either way, I refuse to buy into the idea that the Champion is just there to be strong and take challenges. A Champion is more than that. A Champion needs to be more than that. Setting aside that this world has to at least try to have some form of functioning government in some way, if someone is going to hold the position of Champion—if they are going to be the ones that people and pokémon look to in times of crisis—then they need to earn that. In my view, a Champion is someone who not only handles all the policy and procedure that comes across their desk as it comes across their desk (fulfilling the executive branch, as well as tapping into legislative and judicial when the time calls for it), but they’re also a protector. They’re the very tip of the spear that is used to protect their region and all of those within it. In How to Train Your Dragon 2, Hiccup says, “The alpha protects them all,” and that’s the Champion, in my eyes. If the Champion is the strongest trainer in the region—and that’s something that all Pokémon media seems to agree on—then it is the Champion’s duty—their obligation and responsibility—to use that strength that they have to protect all of those within their region who may not be able to protect themselves. Regardless of anything, regardless of the danger or crisis, regardless of whether the people and pokémon in that region love them or hate them, they have to protect them, it’s their job. “It’s not about what they deserve. It’s about what you believe,” Diana says in Wonder Woman, and that, too. That’s absolutely true of the Champion. The Champion, as the strongest there is, is the one who must put themselves between their region and any oncoming danger. They need to be the ones looking out for the people and pokémon. They need to be the ones fighting for them, both in terms of literal fights (battles) and metaphorical ones (legislation, politics, et cetera). That’s their duty, first and foremost, before anything else. They have to be ready, and willing, and able to do it.

So to try and sum this ramble up, in my eyes, being the Champion is completely empty, meaningless, and worthy of scorn of all it amounts to is praise for being The Very Best™ and adoration from fans. That’s not what it should be about. If the only point to being Champion is to sit on a throne and look pretty, then I’ll pass, thanks. Being the Champion should be about being the people’s and pokémon’s champion. It should mean protecting those who can’t protect themselves. It should mean fighting for those who can’t fight for themselves. It should mean standing up, saying “no” when someone threatens innocent lives, and doing what’s right even when everyone else just runs away. (Thanks for letting me paraphrase you, Rose Tyler.) It should mean taking that skill and that strength you have and putting it toward what’s right, even and especially when it’s difficult, even and especially when you might not get thanks or recognition afterward.

Being Champion is not about accolades. It’s work. It’s incredibly difficult work, available only to a select few, but that’s what makes it so important and meaningful. That’s why I hold that position in such esteem, and also why I’m so selective about which characters I think could potentially do it, and do it well. It’s not just winning badges and tournaments. It’s so much more than that. So, so much more.

84.) Drought, Drizzle, Sand Stream, or Snow Warning?

And now for a shorter, less intense answer—Drought! Specifically, the Drought ability on my ‘Zard Y, which I then use to immediately Solar Beam any foolish water-types that thought they could take my dragon down. ♥

76.) Reshiram, Zekrom, or Kyurem?

Reshiram! In pretty much every single way, haha. Superior typing (dragon/fire), superior design, and I also prefer what Reshiram stands for (truth) over the others. Reshiram is right alongside Victini in terms of favorite Gen V legendaries. ♥

[clairehosking]

Reading Notes

Ian Bogost wrote a piece in the atlantic, here are some of the notes I took on my second reading, as in-line replies.

A longstanding dream: Video games will evolve into interactive stories, like the ones that play out fictionally on the Star Trek Holodeck. In this hypothetical future, players could interact with computerized characters as round as those in novels or films, making choices that would influence an ever-evolving plot. It would be like living in a novel, where the player’s actions would have as much of an influence on the story as they might in the real world.

Okay straight off the bat that seems a pretty specific definition of story, which requires:

complex characters

Player Influencing plot

“Living in a novel” (which I’ll take for meaning complex simulated environments)

It’s an almost impossible bar to reach, for cultural reasons as much as technical ones. One shortcut is an approach called environmental storytelling. Environmental stories invite players to discover and reconstruct a fixed story from the environment itself. Think of it as the novel wresting the real-time, first-person, 3-D graphics engine from the hands of the shooter game. In Disneyland’s Peter Pan’s Flight, for example, dioramas summarize the plot and setting of the film. In the 2007 game BioShock, recorded messages in an elaborate, Art Deco environment provide context for a story of a utopia’s fall. And in What Remains of Edith Finch, a new game about a girl piecing together a family curse, narration is accomplished through artifacts discovered in an old house.

Okay so environmental storytelling is seen as an attempt at holodecking b/c it allows for rich environments, while artifacts imply or relate the life histories of complex characters, and player has influence in the sense that they move the plot along.

The approach raises many questions. Are the resulting interactive stories really interactive, when all the player does is assemble something from parts?

I think you doing the assembly rather than having someone assemble something for you is still a meaningful difference.

Are they really stories, when they are really environments?

I think I can only answer this when I understand what your definition of story is.

And most of all, are they better stories than the more popular and proven ones in the cinema, on television, and in books?

On this measure, alas, the best interactive stories are still worse than even middling books and films.

I’m a little confused by this standard. In terms of storytelling, are games falling short of the holodeck, or falling short of books and movies? b/c they seem like different questions to me. The holodeck question is about whether games meet the specific criteria to become the dreamed-of interactive movie. If the question is whether they measure to books/films, it’s more about whether games have equivalent ways to express characters and events but not necessarily whether it matches up to a linear, player-involved, immersive environment standard.

In retrospect, it’s easy easy to blame old games like Doom and Duke Nukem for stimulating the fantasy of male adolescent power. But that choice was made less deliberately at the time. Real-time 3-D worlds are harder to create than it seems, especially on the relatively low-powered computers that first ran games like Doom in the early 1990s. It helped to empty them out as much as possible, with surfaces detailed by simple textures and objects kept to a minimum. In other words, the first 3-D games were designed to be empty so that they would run.

An empty space is most easily interpreted as one in which something went terribly wrong. Add a few monsters that a powerful player-dude can vanquish, and the first-person shooter is born. The lone, soldier-hero against the Nazis, or the hell spawn, or the aliens.

Those early assumptions vanished quickly into infrastructure, forgotten. As 3-D first-person games evolved, along with the engines that run them, visual verisimilitude improved more than other features. Entire hardware industries developed around the specialized co-processors used to render 3-D scenes.

Ok so games are kinda doing the complex simulated environments part?

Left less explored were the other aspects of realistic, physical environments. The inner thoughts and outward behavior of simulated people, for example, beyond the fact of their collision with other objects. The problem becomes increasingly intractable over time. Incremental improvements in visual fidelity make 3-D worlds seem more and more real. But those worlds feel even more incongruous when the people that inhabit them behave like animatronics and the environments work like Potemkin villages.

But failing at the complex interactive characters part. True. (Some interesting experiments by SpiritAI and the game Event[0] however.)

Worse yet, the very concept of a Holodeck-aspirational interactive story implies that the player should be able to exert agency upon the dramatic arc of the plot. The one serious effort to do this was an ambitious 2005 interactive drama called Façade, a one-act play with roughly the plot of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It worked remarkably well—for a video game. But it was still easily undermined. One player, for example, pretended to be a zombie, saying nothing but “brains” until the game’s simulated couple threw him out.

Also failing at the plot-influencing part and emergent events part (but some interesting experiments -- blood and laurels, for instance).

Environmental storytelling offers a solution to this conundrum. Instead of trying to resolve the matter of simulated character and plot, the genre gives up on both, embracing scripted action instead.

In between bouts of combat in BioShock, for instance, the recordings  players discover have no influence on the action of the game, except to color the interpretation of that action. The payoff, if that’s the right word for it, is a tepid reprimand against blind compliance, the very conceit the BioShock player would have to embrace to play the game in the first place.

True, this is what 3D games do. But I’d argue that other games give up on the fully simulated environment in order to resolve simulated characters and/or simulated plots. All three of these things are happening they’re just not happening in the same games.

In 2013, three developers who had worked on the BioShock series borrowed the environmental-storytelling technique and threw away both the shooting and the sci-fi fantasy. The result was Gone Home, a story game about a college-aged woman who returns home to a mysterious, empty mansion near Portland, Oregon. By reassembling the fragments found in this mansion, the player reconstructs the story of the main character’s sister and her journey to discover her sexual identity. The game was widely praised for breaking the mold of the first-person experience while also importing issues in identity politics into a medium known for its unwavering masculinity.

Feats, but relative ones. Writing about Gone Home upon its release, I called it the video-game equivalent of young-adult fiction. Hardly anything to be ashamed of, but maybe much nothing to praise, either. If the ultimate bar for meaning in games is set at teen fare, then perhaps they will remain stuck in a perpetual adolescence even if they escape the stereotypical dude-bro’s basement. Other paths are possible, and perhaps the most promising ones will bypass rather than resolve games’ youthful indiscretions.

I love Gone Home but I certainly don’t think it shows the limits of what can be achieved at all, even within this palette of techniques. So far it feels like this article is trying to point out the weaknesses of games trying to holodeck, but Gone Home never felt like an attempt to. It felt like it was trying to glean which storytelling techniques come naturally to games and explore them.

* * *

What Remains of Edith Finch both adopts and improves upon the model set by Gone Home. It, too, is about a young woman who returns home to a mysterious, abandoned house in the Pacific Northwest, where she discovers unexpected and dark secrets.

The titular Edith Finch is the youngest surviving member of the Finch family, Nordic immigrants who came to the Seattle area in the late 19th century. It is a family of legendary, cursed doom, an affliction that motivated emigration. But once they arrived on Orcas Island, fate treated the Finches no less severely—all its lineage has been doomed to die, and often in tragically unremarkable ways. Edith has just inherited the old family house from her mother, the latest victim of the curse.

As in Doom and BioShock and almost every other first-person game ever made, the emptiness of the environment becomes essential to its operation. 3-D games are settings as much as experiences—perhaps even more so. And the Finch estate is a remarkable setting, imagined and executed in intricate detail. This is a weird family, and the house has been stocked with  handmade gewgaws and renovated improbably, coiling Dr. Seuss-like into the air. The game is cleverly structured as a series of a dozen or so narrative vignettes, in which Edith accesses prohibited parts of the unusual house, finally learning the individual fates of her forebears by means of the fragments they left behind—diaries, letters, recordings, and other mementos.

The result is aesthetically coherent, fusing the artistic sensibilities of Edward Gory, Isabel Allende, and Wes Anderson. The writing is good, an uncommon accomplishment in a video game. On the whole, there is nothing to fault in What Remains of Edith Finch. It’s a lovely little title with ambitions scaled to match their execution. Few will leave it unsatisfied.

And yet, the game is pregnant with an unanswered question: Why does this story need to be told as a video game?

(This sort of conjures up the idea that game designers sit down with a linear plot and attempt to holodeck it, which I feel is less and less of a thing)

The whole way through, I found myself wondering why I couldn’t experience Edith Finch as a traditional time-based narrative. Real-time rendering tools are as good as pre-rendered computer graphics these days, and little would have been compromised visually had the game been an animated film. Or even a live-action film. After all, most films are shot with green screens, the details added in postproduction. The story is entirely linear, and interacting with the environment only gets in the way, such as when a particularly dark hallway makes it unclear that the next scene is right around the corner.

One answer could be cinema envy. The game industry has long dreamed of overtaking Hollywood to become the “medium of the 21st century,” a concept now so retrograde that it could only satisfy an occupant of the 20th. But a more compelling answer is that something would be lost in flattening What Remains of Edith Finch into a linear experience.

Yep, I would agree with that.

The character vignettes take different forms, each keyed to a clever interpretation of the very idea of real-time 3-D modeling and interaction. In one case, the player takes on the role of different animals, recasting a familiar space in a new way. In another, the player moves a character through the Finch house, but inside a comic book, where it is rendered with cell-shading instead of conventional, simulated lighting. In yet another, the player encounters a character’s fantasy as a navigable space that must be managed alongside that of the humdrum workplace in which that fantasy took place.

Something would be lost in flattening most “walking sims” and narrative investigation games and that’s the experience of space itself, perhaps the most prized thing holodecking adds to stories (after all, if you want to participate in an ever evolving, player influenced story, you could do d&d instead).

These are remarkable accomplishments. But they are not feats of storytelling, at all. Rather, they are novel expressions of the capacities of a real-time 3-D engine.

I disagree. “novel expressions of the capacities of a real-time 3-D engine” are the “telling” part of storytelling.

The ability to render light and shadow, to model structure and turn it into obstacle, to trick the eye into believing a flat surface is a bookshelf or a cavern, and to allow the player to maneuver a camera through that environment, pretending that it its a character. Edith Finch is a story about a family, sure, but first it’s a device made of the conventions of 3-D gaming, one as weird and improvised as the Finch house in which the action takes place.

Such repurposing was already present in earlier environmental story-games, including Gone Home and Dear Esther, another important entry in the genre that prides itself on rejecting the “traditional mechanics” of first-person experience. For these games, the glory of refusing the player agency was part of the goal. So much so that their creators even embraced the derogatory name “walking simulator,” a sneer invented for them by their supposedly shooter-loving critics.

But walking simulators were always doomed to be a transitional form. The gag of a game with no gameplay might seem political at first, but it quickly devolves into conceptualism. What Remains of Edith Finch picks up the baton and designs a different race for it. At stake is not whether a game can tell a good story or even a better story than books or films or television. Rather, what it looks like when a game uses the materials of games to make those materials visible, operable, and beautiful.

Right, so it rejects holodecking and tries to convey character, plot and space according to its own language. This feels like saying games are bad at holodecking, not necessarily bad at stories.

* * *

Think of a a medium as the aesthetic form of common materials. Poetry aestheticizes language. Painting aestheticizes flatness and pigment. Photography does so for time. Film, for time and space. Architecture, for mass and void. Television, for economic leisure and domestic habit. Sure, yes, those media can and do tell stories. But the stories come later, built atop the medium’s foundations.

What are games good for, then? Players and creators have been mistaken in merely hoping that they might someday share the stage with books, films, and television, let alone to unseat them. To use games to tell stories is a fine goal, I suppose, but it’s also an unambitious one.

lol

Games are not a new, interactive medium for stories. Instead, games are the aesthetic form of everyday objects. Of ordinary life. Take a ball and a field: you get soccer. Take property-based wealth and the Depression: you get Monopoly. Take patterns of four contiguous squares and gravity: you get Tetris. Take ray tracing and reverse it to track projectiles: you get Doom. Games show players the unseen uses of ordinary materials.

And if I take a story, shake it up and scatted it all over an environment? Is that the aesthetic form of storytelling?

As the only mass medium that arose after postmodernism, it’s no surprise that those materials so often would be the stuff of games themselves. More often than not, games are about the conventions of games and the materials of games—at least in part. Texas Hold ’em is a game made out of Poker. Candy Crush is a game made out of Bejeweled. Gone Home is a game made out of BioShock.

The true accomplishment of What Remains of Edith Finch is that it invites players to abandon the dream of interactive storytelling at last.

This doesn’t make sense to me. You’ve made a good case that games can convey character and plot well through “novel expressions of the capacities of a real-time 3-D engine”, and you’ve made a case that environmental storytelling doesn’t achieve holodecking, but I’m not going to rule out that other techniques might.

Yes, sure, you can tell a story in a game. But what a lot of work that is, when it’s so much easier to watch television, or to read.

A greater ambition, which the game accomplishes more effectively anyway: to show the delightful curiosity that can be made when stories, games, comics, game engines, virtual environments—and anything else, for that matter—can be taken apart and put back together again unexpectedly.

To dream of the Holodeck is just to dream a complicated dream of the novel. If there is a future of games, let alone a future in which they discover their potential as a defining medium of an era, it will be one in which games abandon the dream of becoming narrative media and pursue the one they are already so good at: taking the tidy, ordinary world apart and putting it back together again in surprising, ghastly new ways.

But this sort of gets why games have stories at all, which is that they are necessities to explain and contextualise the weird things game engines produce. I’d argue that regardless of whether you feel game stories are as good as books, some  “novel expressions of the capacities of a real-time 3-D engine” need narrative context to be understood and enjoyed by players. Rapture is less rapturous without its story. 

[teaandinanity]

For the valentines day ask thing! 2, 11, 16, 18 and 26! 😊

:D Thank you, nonny! Under a cut, ‘cause I got a little verbose. Also a lot of this is Dragon Age, oops.

2. Is there a ship you didn’t like at first but ultimately started shipping?

Well, for Dragon Age, Tamlen/Mahariel was a big one. I tend to automatically nope out hard any time the writers try to push my character into a relationship - the same knee-jerk reaction made me HATE Kaidan and Jacob in the Mass Effect series just because I LITERALLY DID NOT HAVE A CHOICE about my character flirting with them and it squicked me right into outerspace and through the rings of Saturn. With Tamlen, though, I thought about my character for a little while and then re-played the origin while giving the relationship a shot, and the tragic aspect really worked for me, and then I shipped it and REALLY got my heart broken mid-game.

Getting my feelings hurt is apparently a perk for me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

11. What is a character you can only imagine in one particular ship?

Well, I mean… I’m a monoshipper at heart. This is… most of my ships. I aggressively blacklist NOTPs, which is one of the reasons I appreciate that so many of the blogs I follow are good about tagging for characters and pairings.

The ‘only one ship’ thing gets especially bad with my OCs, and it’s REALLY bad with the 7KPP crew - Calanthia and Safiye both unlock literally every romance in the base game (no idea what’ll happen when the bonus options are added in), because I’d intended to try to see all of the possible content with them. I cannot make them do other paths. It is Wrong (especially with Calanthia, who’s demi/ace because OH MY GOD A GAME THAT LETS ME PLAY MY SEXUALITY EEEE but that also means that going ‘okay so could you–’ means she goes ‘NO. D:’ unless I’m making her do a political marriage and that’s TOO SAD she does not deserve that again. Also it eats up way too much time she could instead devote to collecting secrets like Pokemon and saving the world.)

16. Is there a ship that made you realise something about yourself?

I think I probably learned more about myself from ships I didn’t like than those I did - it was really helpful, for example, in bitty Tea figuring out that grand romantic gestures just made her uncomfortable (I do wish I’d figured that out a little better before high school and managed to pair it with good communication skills, but alas, I was dumb as a teenager).

Although, uh, Elizabeth/Darcy is #goals. So there’s that. I aspire to one day have a cuddlebuddy who thinks I’m awesome and respects the hell out of me and listens if I chew them out. I would be SO ok with a relationship full of witty banter and meaningful hand touches. Financial security would also be nice.

I feel like I should have something deep to say for this question, but all I have is shallow. OH WELL MOVING ON.

18. Is there a ship the writers have ruined for you?

Yyyyyyyeah. Unpopular opinion time; there is a banter for Dorian and Bull that made me want to punch someone on the writing team in the FACE. I’m pretty sure I could have really dug the ship, and I know it really works for a lot of people, but the fact that they made me listen to Dorian being perceptibly uncomfortable and didn’t let me stop it? Was shit, and I am still angry, and I reloaded a save and never put the two of them in the party at the same time again.

Her’s the thing; I am protective as hell and have baggage, and it would have been hard for the writers to handle that relationship in a way more precisely calculated to make me viscerally and profoundly uncomfortable with it.

26. Name a ship that ended like you wanted it to.

Almost none of them, that’s why I produce fan content!

More seriously, Pride & Prejudice and North & South deliver pretty much everything I want out of an ending, so let’s go with Elizabeth/Fitzwilliam Darcy and Margaret/John Thornton. I just want my faves to be headed for a life where they will no doubt be happy and smooch and occasionally have very erudite and witty banter-fights. 

(Questions from the Valentines Fandom Ask Meme)