#so many posts want javert to be a villain so bad

[javussyannihilator]

the way so much meta wants to virtue signal about modern cops so so so bad and misses javert’s entire purpose in the narrative every! single! time!

[not-wholly-unheroic]

Viewing Disney’s Peter Pan Through the Eyes of an Adult

Recently, I’ve seen several posts floating around talking about how Disney’s Hook is difficult for people to take seriously and is much too comical for what Barrie had intended. I grew up with Disney’s Hook. He was my first introduction to the character and the reason why I became interested in reading classic literature, writing fanfic, and seriously delving into the analysis of complex villainous/antagonistic characters, so he has a very special place in my heart and I’m prone to be quick to defend him. Rather than writing a long-winded reply to these individual posts, I decided to just make my own explaining why Disney’s Hook can be viewed as just as tragic and sympathetic as any other version. (You can also read some of my earlier posts defending Disney’s Hook here and here.)

*takes a deep breath* *cracks knuckles* Buckle up kiddos! You’re in for a long ride!

My view of Disney’s Hook as a tragic character lies primarily in my sympathy for him when he switches from a proud, elegant, dangerous character to a shivering mess of a man when the crocodile comes around. Let me attempt to elaborate--but first, a bit of a necessary digression.

Every film/book/play, etc. can be viewed from several perspectives. Typically, there is one character that we are meant to like and who becomes the primary focus of the story. Anyone who opposes that character is automatically an antagonist, if not a villain. Usually, even if the point of view is omniscient, we can still tell that it is not, perhaps, entirely objective in its portrayal of certain characters. This sort of situation happens all the time on the evening news--the interviewer is, in theory, supposed to be a neutral reporter on an incident, but it is often obvious that they favor one side of an issue over another, and as a result, the public's view of the situation and those involved is skewed. The lens through which we view a certain character tends to do the same thing. For instance, in Les Miserables (another favorite story of mine), Javert is viewed as an antagonist because the book is primarily concerned with the redemption story of Valjean; however, if the story was flipped and instead focused on the inspector's character and his transition from a strict legalist to a man so broken by the idea of morality that he commits suicide, he would, perhaps, be viewed instead as a tragic HERO instead of a tragic ANTAGONIST. Javert likely does many GOOD things in the name of the law as well during his career, but we don't see most of them because he isn't the main focus of the book. Similarly, I think Disney’s Hook can be more greatly appreciated as TRAGIC instead of COMICAL when we consider the lens through which we are viewing him.

Disney has always been geared toward children, so naturally, when they tell a story, they want the material to be attractive to a younger audience. This means not only that certain more frightening or upsetting elements of a story may be left out, edited, or altogether changed, but also that WE VIEW THE CHARACTERS THROUGH THE EYES OF A CHILD. (For example, in The Little Mermaid, King Triton's opposition to Ariel going to the surface world is presented in such a way that he seems extremely harsh when, in reality, he is father trying to keep his daughter safe. True, he DOES overreact, but remember, Ariel is only sixteen--not even LEGALLY an adult--and wants to run off with some guy she hasn’t even had a conversation with. But kids can relate to overbearing parents who, in a moment of disagreement, seem like they are being "mean," so that is how the audience sees Triton.) Peter Pan, especially, with its protagonist(s) as a child/children, really magnifies this perspective to the point where, unfortunately, some of the characters become almost caricatures of themselves. When children are legitimately afraid of something, they react one of two ways: Either they run from it/avoid it altogether, or they make-believe that whatever is frightening them is actually a lot less terrifying than it is so that they appear brave. I remember when I was younger, I used to be TERRIFIED of Monstro, the whale from Pinocchio. I couldn't watch the film without getting nightmares. But I didn't want to be afraid of watching the movie, so with my overactive imagination, I decided that I could fix that by turning him into a less scary version of himself and making him into an imaginary friend who more closely resembled Willy the anthropomorphic opera-singing whale from Make Mine Music than the terrifying creature we see in Pinocchio. Anyway, getting back to the point--I overcame my fear of the character by choosing to imagine that he was less scary than he was. This is what a lot of children do, and I think it's why Disney's Hook comes off as being comical.

The first time we see Disney Hook on screen, he actually comes across as pretty terrifying. He literally shoots his own crew member just because he didn't like the guy's singing! Rarely do we actually see Disney villains successfully kill another character on screen, but Hook does not even five minutes into his introduction. Immediately, we get the impression (or at least, a child should get the impression), that Hook is a genuinely dangerous guy. He also seems to regard his loss of a hand as "a childish prank," which further gives us the impression that he apparently has a pretty high pain tolerance and isn't afraid to do horrible, gruesome things to his enemies. If chopping someone's hand off is "childish," then what sort of serious damage does he inflict on his victims? However, this is Disney, and rather than having Hook gut someone or do something else which might scar a kid for life, we soon see he has a weakness...the crocodile. At this point, the Darling kids have been watching Hook for several minutes from their perch up on the cloud and are, probably, starting to have some second thoughts about fighting real pirates when they seem so scary...so what do they do? They do the same thing I did and turn him into a less-scary version of himself. They find his weakness and latch onto it. And since we're viewing things primarily from their perspective, that's how WE start to see Hook too. Hook's fear of the crocodile becomes comical for the audience because the Darling kids are trying to focus on that aspect of him so that they are can forget how terrifying he really is. We see this more frightening side of Hook come out a few more times, such as when he plans to blow up Pan's hideout...and at this point, we even catch a brief glimpse of the more sinister part of Smee when he asks Hook if it wouldn't be more humane for them to slit his throat...AND THIS IS SMEE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE!!! The LEAST frightening of the pirates in ANY version. But I think Disney throws this in just to remind us that Smee is still a pirate, and if HE'S willing to do something THAT bad, Hook is a thousand times worse. However, for the most part, Hook still remains a rather softened, comical version of himself because we are viewing him through the child-lens. Remove that lens, though, and things become more complicated.

Forget, for a moment, that we are supposed to be rooting for the Darling children and Pan, and look again--not as a frightened child who is trying to laugh in the face of danger but as an adult who can feel Hook's pain. I remember one time when I was driving back from the airport in a busy city in the dark and the road was icy...I'm not used to driving in ice, and I'm a naturally nervous driver...At one point, I skidded into the next lane... I literally spent about the next hour hyperventilating, practically rocking myself back and forth, praying, and trying not to cry because I knew if I did I wouldn't be able to see the road. It was horrible... Take that sort of feeling, and I believe it's what Disney Hook is experiencing when the crocodile shows up. Through the "child-lens" it may be funny to see a frightening character in a vulnerable situation, but viewing it as an adult who understands just HOW helpless and terrified one feels in such a situation, you can't help but empathize with Hook. Every move he makes, every tremble in his voice, every look of absolute horror in his eyes tells you that he is not mentally or physically really functioning at the moment. He's on autopilot--he's in survival mode like a wild animal that freezes in hopes that it won't be seen by the approaching predator. Take away the crocodile's obviously silly "theme-music" and Hook's slightly overdone expressions, and you're left with something similar to what we see Hook experience in the novel near the end of the chapter, "The Pirate Ship." ("Very frightful was it to see the change that came over him. It was as if he had been clipped at every joint. He fell in a little heap...he crawled on his knees along the deck as far from the sound that he could go...'Hide me,' he cried hoarsely.") Now we can start appreciating him for the tragic villain that he is supposed to be.

Viewed through the eyes of the Darling children, Hook represents all that is frightening and bad about the grown-up world. If Peter is ice cream parties and summer vacations and catching fireflies in the dark, then Hook is cancer and broken dreams and being worried about being able to make enough money to put food on the table. Barrie, however, tells us that there is much more to both characters than that. Peter has a dark side--a selfish streak that forgets all pain at the cost of never learning from the past, never growing from his experiences and becoming a better person. He is stagnant not only in physically growing up but also in mentally facing reality, which is just as damaging as Hook's attitude of regretting a childhood apparently gone too soon. Hook, too, has a lighter side that loves soft music and flowers and other such things (representative of the good things about being an adult--falling in love, pursuing one's passions in a professional sense, having children of one's own). Disney, of course, doesn't quite do this to the same extent as Barrie since we're given a skewed view of the characters, but it DOES still make a few points which, when stripped of the "child-lens" effect, gives off a similar impression. Peter, for instance, brags to the mermaids at one point about cutting off Hook's hand and feeding it to the crocodile. Though we never get to hear him finish the tale, it is rather unsettling to think that Disney's Pan is capable of such horror. (Personally, no matter WHAT the circumstances of the situation were, I think any real-life child who took such great pleasure in slicing off a body part of another person and then having the presence of mind to feed said body part to a dangerous wild animal would probably be considered a psychopath in need of some SERIOUS counseling.) Disney, of course, glosses over this little inconvenience by having Hook show up before he can really get any further into the story. Again, the child-lens is going up; Wendy doesn't want to see this side of Peter, and neither does the child-based audience, so they choose to look away. However, we see a brief glimpse of this side of Pan again at Skull Rock. First, we see it resurface when he hands Smee a gun and then flies up directly in front of Hook--knowing that he can move out of the way in time. Again, through the child-lens of the audience, it seems funny to watch Smee doing his best (and failing terribly) to aim at Pan...but when you think about it from an adult's perspective, it's actually pretty disturbing. Peter legitimately wants Hook dead and doesn't care if it happens to be at the hand of one of his own crewmen (and arguably, in the Disney universe, Hook's only real friend). When Hook "dies," Peter simply takes the hat and says nonchalantly, "What a pity, Mr. Smee. I'm afraid we've lost the dear captain." It doesn't even phase him that a man might have just died and poor Smee is probably feeling absolutely HORRIBLE because it was (sort of) his fault. Even Wendy's child-lens falters a little here... While Peter is celebrating Hook's death, she at least, has enough of an adult's heart to have compassion on their fallen enemy and turn her face away with an, "Oh, how dreadful!" It happens again a few moments later when Peter is getting ready to kick Hook's hook off the ledge so that he falls into the waiting jaws of the crocodile. (The captain, at this point, is of course, squirming like--to use Peter's phrasing--"a codfish on a hook.") Again, Pan has no sympathy, but Wendy, who is starting to gradually open up her eyes to the truth that maybe staying a child forever isn't all it's cracked up to be and maybe adulthood isn't entirely bad, is losing her "child-lens." Not entirely. Not to the point where she doesn't continue to view Hook as comical to keep from being afraid. But enough to know that what Peter is about to do is wrong. She expresses this verbally when she shouts, "Oh, Peter, NO!"

It is at this point, shortly after the crocodile chase, that we start to see Hook become more of a legitimate threat (and a legitimately sympathetic character) again. Why? Because Wendy, as the protagonist and the one whose eyes we are looking through even more so than Pan, is starting to grow up and face reality for what it is--scary or not. As she sings "Your Mother and Mine" and tells her brothers that they NEED a mother--that Neverland has been fun but they NEED to go home--Hook is throwing Tinkerbelle in a lantern and planning to kidnap the kids and blow Pan to smithereens. And then we get the "slit his throat" reminder (mentioned above)... Also, as a side note, when Hook is ill after the crocodile chase, we hear him lamenting how Pan has made him look like a fool yet again. This is also something that I think we can appreciate more as adults. All Hook's crew wants is to go back to haunting the Spanish Main, but Hook refuses to leave Neverland because he feels that he has to remain there until he can regain his pride...which in and of itself is admirable, since many people who have been played the fool simply hang their head and walk away in shame. Here's this guy who has been bested by a child no more than twelve or thirteen--and possibly much younger... How must that feel? I have been in an emotionally abusive relationship where I was constantly reminded how I couldn’t do anything right, and it felt SO degrading. I literally just wanted to go hide away in my room and cry because I felt so incompetent and useless and just plain stupid. So how does Hook feel? Probably the same way. But he doesn't give up. If there's one thing we can say for sure about Disney Hook, he's a fighter. So, I guess you could say that, in part, one reason I find Disney Hook so sympathetic and tragic is because I can identify with him in his crippling reaction to fear and admire him for his bold attempts to reclaim his pride.

Anyway, getting back on track with the storyline... As we near the end of the film, Hook once again appears to lose face at the final showdown. At first, this doesn't seem to make sense if Wendy is, in fact, beginning to lose the child-lens. However, although Hook is defeated, we are never actually shown that he dies (and obviously, from the second film, in the Disney universe, he doesn't). I remember reading somewhere that when they were originally working on Peter Pan, Walt Disney chose to keep Hook alive and just have him "going like hell" rather than actually dying because, "the audience will get to liking Hook." And by this point, we have...those of us still looking through the child-lens love to hate him as a character we can laugh at, and those of us who are more grown-up love him for being just like us--an adult who is STILL growing up, in some ways, who is STILL afraid of certain things and hasn't always learned his lessons and isn't perfect but also isn't willing to give up even when everything is against him and everyone is laughing at him and nothing seems to go right.

Now, I said that at first, it doesn't seem to make sense for us to view Hook in a comical light in this scene if we are viewing the movie primarily through the eyes of the Darling children--particularly Wendy, who is starting to grow up and realize that adults are supposed to feel things like compassion for one's enemies. However, Wendy is still a child. She IS still afraid of growing up. In fact, she's terrified. And that comes out when the kids are all mocking Hook. He's still frightening to them. They still need the security blanket of pretend sometimes, of focusing on his more comical, vulnerable side...but they don't defeat Hook by killing him in this version, and I think that's significant. As representative primarily of the "scary" parts of growing up, Hook is temporarily cast aside and shoved to the back of their minds, but he IS NOT DEAD. The kids (and even Pan) know he may come back. They know he isn't gone for good. One day, they will have to face adulthood. One day, Hook--in the guise of mortgages and taxes and wars and sickly older parents--will return. But for now, they have defeated him...not just by pretending but by choosing to accept the responsibility of growing up eventually, in their own good time. Even Peter starts to reflect this theme by beating Hook, "man to man" without the use of flight. Wendy, who wants to be the good grown-up but who isn't quite ready to let go of childhood, warns Peter against it, thinking that it may be a trap. She even goes so far as to shout at him to fly when he has the chance even though he has promised not to. But Disney Pan is a bit more mature than some (maybe Wendy's better judgment is wearing off on him), and he keeps his word. He beats Hook "like a man" NOT like a boy. Pan's victory here symbolically reflects the Darling children's decision to face adulthood by going back to London. Thus, Hook is defeated because adulthood is no longer an obstacle which causes a fear is so crippling that the kids can't face it. When Wendy returns home, we get one last glimpse of this truth in Mr. Darling--the real-world representative of all things frightening and frustrating about growing up and, as I'm sure you know, also (significantly) voiced by Conried--who has done some "growing up" himself. Mr. Darling, it seems, is willing to allow Wendy a bit more time to enjoy life as a child, remembering his own childhood fondly, even as Wendy has chosen to accept the responsibility of growing up. Mr. Darling, who much like Hook, was viewed previously by the kids (and by extension, the audience) as a bit of a bully and an object of ridicule, is now the object of Wendy's affection as a mutual understanding is reached. Adulthood is frightening in many ways, but Wendy has also come to realize that it is necessary to take responsibility for one's actions and feel compassion for others just as Mr. Darling has realized that sometimes, it's okay for kids to be kids and enjoy the moment. Essentially, what I'm saying is--borrowing the idea that Hook and Mr. Darling are two sides of the same coin--Hook in Neverland, chased away by the crocodile, appears as comical in the last scene only because he effectively gets one last serious scene through his London counterpart, staring wistfully out the window with a loving wife and child by his side. Wendy isn't quite yet grown up, so she still sees through the child-lens on occasion, but she is learning, gradually, to embrace that which she once feared. She no longer needs Hook, an imaginary figure, to personify that fear. She now has her father back, and though she now RESPECTS what he stands for, she is no longer so terrified of growing up that she can't appreciate the GOOD side of the future (such as having a husband and a family of her own someday) and look forward to it.

[secretmellowblog]

I just wanted to let you know that I absolutely LIVE for your Javert analyses. They are amazing!!!

Ahh thanks so much!!

Tho i do want to stress that I Don’t Actually Know what I’m talking about......... like Javert is terrible and Complicated(tm) and obviously has a lot of Baggage attached to him, and I’m just rambling about my complicated completely subjective emotions, lol. A lot of the times I even disagree with myself, which is probably why I write so many posts about him. (I mean even Javert thought Javert was too Complicated to deal with, that’s why he threw himself off a bridge.  :/) 

Idk I just feel like Javert is a very layered/complicated/tragic villain, and it sucks that adaptations often flatten him in a way that sucks the power of the story’s anti-police message by placing the blame on One Bad Apple(tm) instead of the entire police force as an institution. Anyway.........yeah I just have a complicated emotional relationship with javert

[ben-the-hyena]

So on Discord the pals and me do like The Power of the Dark Crystal but it has so many plotholes, copy pastes from the movie, retcons and wasted potential we just can't take it fully canon but semi canon, and we rewrote it collectively keeping what we thought made sense and changing or developping what we judged to be necessary (More details about the fanon rewriting : https://ben-the-hyena.tumblr.com/post/189964908852/so-i-do-like-the-power-of-the-dark-crystal-i)

One of the major things that changed under our minds was making the Commander (who was basically Javert to these teens Kensho and Thurma being ruthless, bigotted and violent while also being sincerely faithful to Jen and Kira and THAT WAS FUCKING WASTED BY HAVING HIM BE A RACIST NAMELESS BIDIMENSIONAL BULLY WITH NO BACKSTORY WHO JUST DIES ALONE LIKE A PIECE OF CRAP AND WHOM "WISE JEN" DOESN'T THINK ABOUT SAVING) named Jara and be Jen and Kira's son who grew paranoid after havint listened to stories of Darkening and Skeksis all his life and thus has preventive extremist ways in order to overprotect the Crystal and his parents, and the reason why they are so absent is not out of dreamfasting fests (THAT WAS SO OUT OF CHARACTER, THEY WERE SO CARELESS ABOUT THEIR KINGDOM BECAUSE IN LUUUUURVE) but because even though they do not approve with his harsh ways of acting they wish he should practice as a ruler and realize his ways are not the right one. He particularly hates Kensho and Thurma not only for the shard disaster but alsl because his Seladon is showing and despite how he spent his life being a protector to his parents and how they ruined everything, they still are tender with them. Unfair !!! He also doesn't die because Jen saves him and goes back to the castle with him, but he lost a leg and got into a deep depression for having failed as a protector. But his mother, Aughra's philosophy and the Mystic chants helped soothe him and soften him up and starting reconsidering his ways about ruling for the Crystal. In the end, Jen and Kira don't get young again nor leave Thra (BECAUSE THAT MAKES NO SENSE THRA IS THEIR HOME THEY PROTECTED IT AND THEY FELT SAFER FAR FROM THE URSKEKS-) but abdict and become hermits, and Jara and Kensho have to share the throne one for being their son and the other for being a new symbol of hope now he was resurrected like Kira had been. Jara would HATE the situation and not trust these meddling kids, and we planned for the rewriting of Beneath the Dark Crystal (I didn't read it yet) to have him be the secondary antagonist to them wanting to work alone and being sure they are as bad as the villain, but he would have an arc of him finally accepting them and making peace with them ; even liking them but shh. Don't tell anyone

He is tall like a Drenchen. Decided to give him Vapran hair and Grottan ears to enhance the heritage theories if they are true, and again I love the idea of Hup being Ydra's husband. He was a good grandpa ready to lend over his spoon but lil Jara only wanted a sword

[myfandomrambles]

An Analysis of Villianey

( This is Part 1b, Part 1a here)

Section II: Tragic Backstories

This is another super common way to make villains sympathetic. Giving someone a terrible childhood is a short cut to make someone feel bad for someone. Tragic backstories are super common and sometimes making the villains the most compelling character in really good ways. Both to make the characters truly a person who is empathetic or just understandable. There are three ways I think this can be done really well.

You can make them a redeemed character like Zuko (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Megamind (Megamind) or Peridot (Steven Universe).

An anti-hero/grey characters who don’t join the light side but acts heroically but on their own code. Wade Wilson (Deadpool), Dexter Morgan (Dexter), Punisher (Marvel), Harley Quinn (DC)  or Don Vito Corleone (The Godfather)  

A  bad guy who remains bad at the end, we know why they are bad but aren’t ever fixed. EX: Merrin Meredith (Septimus Heap), Morgana (BBC Merlin), Voldemort (Harry Potter),  Bane (DC), Or Davros (Doctor Who)

One important thing about writing these stories is to be done right you do have to choose the end game. How the character acts in relationships during the story changes which outcome is compelling and even feels possible. Things to consider:  rather they have any guiding belief system if this backstory includes trauma how the heal from that, their relationship to the power system, and how much they change their actions to move towards saying sorry and becoming better. Not every character is written in a way where a character can become better, or even should. The Diamonds (Steven Universe) keep having their characterization, actions, back story, and relationships altered leaving a confused story arc. The Diamonds are also on a list of characters who should not be redeemed because of the severity of their actions. They are written as space fascists no matter how sad they are it’s problematic to pretend the trauma of a dead love excuses attempted genocide.

A revolting part of this trend is tragedy porn. Stories of violence, poverty, mental illness, child abuse, disability, domestic abuse or sexual assault are exploited for shock value and making money from real pain. This is used to create a reason for a character to be broken or evil. A cheap gritty story of how our villain got there instead of writing an interesting motivation or taking into account the cultural and psychological damage of associating trauma and mental health with villainy. This also plays into the trope of mental illness being dangerous or a problem of morality. If it’s just because they are too broken you can kiss it away and fixing the trauma fixes the problem of horrible acts of violence.  If you do write traumatic backstories as motivation for their actions have the behaviours actually track with trauma. Catra’s (She-Ra 2018)  trauma is inherently tied to her motivation as the villain and essentially to her role as the deuteragonist of the narrative. But they show how and why this trauma matters, and choose to display the abuse in a way that while explicit and horrific isn’t exploitive and the refrain from showing realistic physical abuse that too clearly mirrors real life trauma. Her narrative of becoming the antagonist makes sense with her history of indoctrination, betrayal, fear of violence, and psychological trauma. It mirrors the narrative of the hero as well throwing off their primary abuser in both instances making it possible for this story to not demonize trauma. Another important thing to keep in mind when writing these kinds of narratives is to do research and represent any mental illness at least mostly accurately.

Another frustration is when people use these backstories to form a “well they could never have done/known better” and therefore they did nothing wrong mindset. This an oversimplified reading of good storytelling and the reading for poorly written characters. The idea that no one could ever know better is used in defence of characters like Kylo Ren (Star Wars), Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Billy Hargrove (Stranger Things), Draco Malfoy (Harry Potter). However this excuse really only extends so far it tracks best with children when we see them alter perspective when exposed to other ideas and when the behaviours mirror what was done to them. Abuse and trauma don’t always make angry violent people and the majority of people who do become angry hurt people but not murders. Then you do have indoctrination but there is a reason the Nuremberg defence doesn’t excuse everything.

This excuse also falls apart somewhat when you can point to another character [or real life person] in the same or similar situation who did change. This whole way of viewing things become an exercise in letting people who have hurt others go without their actions analyzed and without being held responsible. In a literary analysis standpoint it’s lazy and in reality, it is dangerous to do this with anyone who was hurt in the past. Empathy and understanding are always important, understanding why people end up where they do is key to life. Some people do horrific things with no trauma, and who did know better searching for a sympathetic reason doesn’t help make things better. And even more so those who have been abused or manipulated and did wrong should be helped to work through trauma and learn to understand and change from they have done in the past not have all of their behaviour excused with a handwave. People shouldn’t be taught that abuse forgives abusing, later on, they should know they never deserve to be treated poorly and they can’t love abusers better.  And of course, this is often applied enviable around factors like race, gender, power level and perceived hotness.

Anti Heros I think are criminally underrated wanting them to either be good or be bad. We romanticize the ones we should see as good [usually hot people] or demonize the ones it’s easier to see as all bad. Anti-heroic characters are hard because the lines differentiate these from redeemed people and real villains are connected to personal morality. But making them black and white is rationalizing when they make choices that are truly harmful as part of their “good” actions. Making them all bad strips the way they are often societal outsiders and the way they learned in the stories to move and act in life. This is the grey morality people claim to want in characters, and claim to see in their faves but people don’t appreciate it when they happen.

Constant manipulation of tragic backstory to say a character didn't really do anything bad, or they deserve redemption excuse also strips away truly tragic stories like the life of Inspector Javert (Les Miserables). Fall from grace stories can be really interesting like Walter White (Breaking Bad) or Harvey Dent (DC). Because sometimes life does eat someone up and they can’t find it in themselves to act in a different manner. Tragic stories are still okay, villains aren’t always going to be the good guys because they are meant to be just that villains. That is how they were written and how the best fit in stories and tell the story wanting to be shared. Sometimes villains made to many choices to hurt other people to be capable of total transformation to hero. These characters can still be three dimensional and interesting but they aren’t people who “done nothing wrong”. They did do something wrong and in the story that is fine, it’s what works in the narrative. Not every person can be healed with forgiveness and a hug.

The concept that Deserving redemption is tied to how sad their life was before but it isn't, it's based on the actions they do during the story.  a careful narrative that shows the path a person took to get the right place, the ways they changed and what influenced it is much more important. Let's use Tony Stark (Marvel) most of Iron Man 1 and iron man 2 are dedicated to him trying to be a better person, to use his remaining life to make the world better and atone for his wrongs. Tony Stark starts off as an unrepentant war criminal allowing the way he was groomed to ignore harm and gain power as an excuse to never address any of what he did was harmful. He drowned his trauma with addictions, shallow relationships. Yes, his trauma as a kid and during the narrative are driving pieces but why he is so heroic, why his phoenix narrative is one of the best in history is the choices he makes with what to do with that pain, he uses it to be earth's greatest defender. You do have some snapshot redemption stories that are good namely Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader (Star Wars) but I think [save the ret-cond Anakin force ghost] this wasn't so much meant to be proving he is a good person, but just acknowledging that no one is truly dark or light side. Anakin’s life is more told as a Shakespearean fall from grace, but even if this arc comes out of nowhere it works because the actions are narratively and thematically done correctly.

People who are obsessed with redemption also often don’t do a real analysis of societal structures, cultural history or context. It’s not that they really are deconstructing societal factors, or understand trauma, mental health or what really causes crime and antisocial behaviour when they try and justify via trauma and no other choice. I think starting to create and analyse content on a wider more holistic standpoint would be a good exercise to apply empathy to real-life crimes of desperation, end the killer = crazy myth, and stop letting people blame hate crimes on white kids being bullied.

[other posts on this topic: Zuko and good redemption arcs, trauma and justification of violence, Catra, Adora & trauma part 1 & 2, the diamonds still suck ]

[thelittlepalmtree]

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My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Okay here's the thing. I refuse to classify Silco as 100% unredeemable villain.

First of all the people that were saying that he is a bad dad or an abusive parent there is literally no evidence of that. In terms of him parenting jinx he clearly is doing his best to help a very traumatized child and accept her for who she is. He did not manipulate her he did not abuse her there is no evidence for that. Maybe there will be later but like he seems to have been a very good parent to a very difficult child to parent.

Okay secondly his life philosophy is really not that different from most of the anarchists that I know. Setting the fact that he's a drug dealer a side, how many of you pretty much completely agree with everything he says and believes? I am not an anarchist and I see the flaws in his logic but I don't think that he's coming from a place of selfishness. I can see that he genuinely believes that what he's doing is helping people. And honestly I think Silco is a great example of how radicalism and an inability to understand the cost of violence leads to horrible ends. Like his biggest character flaw is the fact that he is willing to sacrifice anyone and anything for a revolution. How many times have you seen people say stuff like that who you agree with and who you believe in and Trust? People on this site talk about revolution all the time. Who do you think gets killed in revolutions?

Now thirdly the drug dealing. This is the thing that I think makes most people really willing to just completely write him off as a villain. But honestly I think that if you look at his ethos and you understand his moral code, you can understand how he does truly think that Shimmer is a choice and that people should be allowed to make that choice. Also it is very clear in the show that Shimmer has uses Beyond just overdosing. Like multiple times small wounds or fatal wounds are healed from Shimmer. And there is an indication that he's trying to improve the formula to make it less lethal because the doctor is still working. However that willingness to sacrifice people is what makes him okay with something that hurts people as much as it does.

Do I agree with silko's actions? No. But I don't think that he is a bad person in that I don't think he is abusive or cruel unnecessarily or selfish. I think he is a person whose morals are incredibly flawed. But they don't really seem to be self-serving. Like you have a lot of villains whose whole thing is basically that they're javert and they have a really strict moral code that just upholds the social structure that they happen to be on top of. Silco's morals are those of Justice. He is trying to make the world a better place and end oppression. It's his methods that make him a villain. The personal relationships that he has with people are very strong and I think they're pretty healthy personal relationships. He has clearly felt betrayed and experienced trauma but there is definitely a level of emotional maturity to him that is not common in other stories. He is not the Joker. And Jinx is not Harley Quinn.

And I think that's the key to the thematic Center to the story. Because in a world without the horrible disproportionality between the undercity and Topsiders, Silco would be a good person. His willingness to do horrible things to the people that he wants to liberate is a direct result of the oppression that the undercity faces. The fact that he is willing to sacrifice people to a bigger cause is because he truly believes that their current existence is worse than what Shimmer does to people. And this is underscored by the fact that he really does care about people. And that choice that he has to make between Zaun and Jinx is the whole point of the show. he has to determine whether he is willing to sacrifice someone close to him for his dream of Justice and sovereignty. he's willing to sacrifice strangers, he's even willing to sacrifice his friends, but he truly loves Jinx because she is his daughter so he's unwilling to sacrifice her. ultimately he truly cares about people.

So I'm ending this by saying that I do not think that his actions are justifiable. I just don't think that you can look at him through the lens that we typically look at villains through. If you think that motivation doesn't matter then I understand why you would see him only as a villain. But personally I think that motivation is the only thing that matters. I think that he is meant to have us question the status quo and the things that are used to maintain oppression. Who would silco be without the oppression of the upper City? That is the whole points of the show. To get you to ask that question.

39 notes • Posted 2021-12-09 00:44:18 GMT

#4

I love how Guillermo Del Toro will put like one detail into the story to be like yes it was all real. For example in Shape of Water, Elisa is a mermaid and you know that because she mentions she was found by a river with scars in her neck and when she joins Amphibian man he puts his hands on those scars and they open up to become gills. Which implies that she was always an amphibian/mermaid person. 

Likewise in Pan’s Labyrinth, Ofelia is always alone when she’s using magic. It’s always explainable as her imagination which makes the end seem like it was all a dream. However, when she steals her brother from the Captain, she encounters a locked door and the only way she is able to get into the room is with the magic chalk. If the magic was all imagined she would never have been able to get into that room. Which seems to imply that the whole thing was actually not imagined and that the magic she is experiencing is real. 

49 notes • Posted 2021-02-04 21:28:49 GMT

#3

Okay so you know the "you're hot cupcake" scene. the one that all us lesbians died for. Do you guys think about the fact that the only reason Vi did all of that is because she wanted Caitlyn to be occupied while she talked to her contact there. she's like "go seduce your way into some information" but Caitlin didn't get any information from that scene. Vi full on just wanted to be incredibly gay.

51 notes • Posted 2021-12-11 02:49:47 GMT

#2

Lil Nas X really said

52 notes • Posted 2021-04-01 03:01:19 GMT

#1

A lot of people are talking about Montero in terms of the backlash but after taking the look at the lyrics I think we should talk about the meaning.

The narrator is clearly talking to someone closeted and basically saying they don't care. It's interesting that this narrator is clearly out (I cannot pretend) while their love interest is conflicted.

I think the video reinforces this point by using the biblical story of man's fall. That is the classic story of temptation and in the video the singer is the one doing the tempting. I think that's what makes viewers uncomfortable, they're not used to seeing men as sexually tempting. But what's more interesting to me is the fact that in that temptation the narrator takes power. It goes back to "you live in the dark" vs "I cannot pretend". The narrator's strength is that he is unapologetically himself. What reinforces this in the video is the pivotal lap dance. The Narrator makes no illusions even whispering "fuck it" into Satan's ear. Satan is into it too, you can see him reaching out but he's also stony faced, unwilling to show that he enjoys himself. This determination not to react is what gives the narrator the opportunity to kill him and take his power.

So what does this mean? Well, I interpret this as being Lil Nas X's story of being a more flamboyant gay man. There is a deep prejudice in more femme-presenting men in the gay community. Not only does Lil Nas have to contend with being a gay black man he is the temptation to closeted gay men. He is "one of those gays" out and proud and unapologetic and exactly what closeted men may never admit to wanting. However the song isn't sad, it's about finding power in his identity. He doesn't care that his partner won't be out with him, he loses no power by being that person's secret. And in a way it's a little snide, a little judgemental, a little "you can't hurt me."

There are a lot of little things I think tie in but that's my general thoughts.

163 notes • Posted 2021-03-29 15:42:58 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

This is honestly tragic.

[tomupside]

The Review You Deserve: The Avengers: Infinity War

Infinity War? More like Infinity Bore!

 [searches for high-fives]

 [finds none]

 Okay, that’s harder than Infinity War deserves. It wasn’t boring. That’s a positive that I can give it. But let’s face it, I saw it once, and that’s all I needed. In short: Infinity War was . . . better at doing particular aspects, but, overall, was on the same level as the lowest-common-denominator Marvel film out there.

 Spoilers ahead . . .

 Infinity War isn’t a single film, but three or four separate films stitched together by a single theme: how all these heroes tried to stop Thanos, and failed. Or, really. it’s a film antholgy trimmed down to a single Abridged movie.

The plot for Infinity War is simple: Thanos wants the infinity gems (or “stones,” as they’re called in the movie-verse) because there are too many people in the universe, and there needs to be a culling. This is the motivations of an insane person driven as such by past tragedies, but because this is Disney, we get all of this in exposition and are informed that he is a “tragic villain” through monologues over sad violins.

(Tangent: Loki was a great villain because the writers and director of Thor understood Shakespeare! You, Disney, do not! Fucking stop it!)

The heroes need to stop Thanos because they’re told that he wants the Infinity Stones for “Bad Things.” Well, that’s the surface-level reason. For the most part though, the heroes all find a reason to want to stop Thanos for personal reasons: Tony, because Thanos caused his PSD; Gamora, because he adopted her after slaughtering half her planet.

We start the story with Generic Uber-Bad’s Generals and Thanos, having just killed all of the surviving Asgardians, trying to get Infinity Stones from Thor and Loki . . . and in the most clumsy of sequences, they do. But they didn’t get them all, and with his final breath, Heimdall sends Hulk back to Earth (leaving Thor, Loki, and the Tesseract – the one thing Thanos was killing your people for – behind, because that totally makes sense as a dying gesture.)

Thanos then kills Loki after getting the Tesseract, and blows up the Asgardian ship and, supposedly, Thor with them. (Though don’t worry, he manages to survive the vacuum of space for just long enough – that being at least a few hours, if not days – to be saved by the Guardians of the Galaxy.)

 Hulk lands, conveniently, in the Sanctum Sanctorum, where he warns Doctor Strange of what’s going on. That’s when Thanos’ minions show up to get the Time Gem –

– which happens to be when Tony Stark is giving his heart-felt Two Weeks to Retirement speech. Spidey happened to be friendly in the neighborhood too, and the three of them wind up on the Minion Ship when Strange is kidnapped.

Later, the remaining minions try to get to Vision when and his mind gem while he’s with Scarlet Witch (because Bulma Briefs invented frikin’ Infinity Stone Scouters for them, apparently?) but get thwarted by Captain America, Falcon, and Black Widow (the *most powerful* Avengers out there.) They convene at Avenger Compound, where Bruce Banner is waiting with Rhodes (because that makes sense?)

Meanwhile, Thor tells the Guardians “Thanks, but fuck off” and, with Groot and Rocket Raccoon to forge a new hammer, while the rest go off elsewhere.

Then we start following the segments: Section 1: Peter Quill and the remaining Guardians try to stop Thanos themselves before he can get the stone from The Collector.

Section 2: Thor, Rocket, and Groot try to forge Mjolnir 2.0.

Section 3: Earth tries to protect the Infinity Stones that they have.

Section 4: Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange try to take the fight to Thanos.

Spoilers: They all fail. In some cases, for the most spectacularly dumb reasons imaginable.

Double-Spoilers: This is the first part in a two-parter, so guess who doesn’t beat the bad-guy in his goal to destroy half the life in the universe.

The film had potential. That Disney still refuses to get any real red blood on its hands is a small reason why it failed. The real reason it failed is because so many decisions were made not because they were logical to the characters or to the moment, but because they had to happen so the story could reach the next plot point. SO much of the story could’ve been solved if someone had just pulled the trigger when they had the chance! And you can’t use the whole “Well, they’re super heroes, so they have rules against killing . . . “ NO! Every one of these cretins has killed, whether blatantly or indirectly. But they had to be frikin’ idiots, because otherwise Thanos would’ve been stopped not even forty-five minutes into the movie!

And I don’t get it! I don’t get why, in a two-and-a-half hour film, you can’t dedicate at least ten minutes to show what could have been so bad in Thanos’ past that he would think wiping out half the life in the universe is a good thing, rather than have him tell us in almost five separate fucking monologues? Fucking five?! It creates a greater emotional connection for the audience when we get to feel that moment once and at the same time as the character. They obviously knew this, because they fucking showed that tender  moment when Thanos  kidnapped Gamora as a kid so she wouldn’t be slaughtered by his own kill-squad! Otherwise, we might not have cared as much when he threw her off a  cliff so he could get the Soul Stone! See! THAT made us feel for Thanos! That worked! We got why Thanos was crying, and why he kept being choked up through the film about her death, because we were there when he found her as a kid! Wouldn’t it have been nice to have that same goddamn moment instead of him  saying why he thought killing half the universe would be something good for everyone?

And of course – of course – Disney can’t let a somber moment be somber! “Oh, hi Thor! You just saw your brother be strangled in front of your eyes and your entire people slaughtered? Well, let’s have a goof-off with Peter Quill and you constantly call Rocket Raccoon a rabbit! Isn’t that great!” Or how about half the Earth population being dusted like in Buffy in the worst tragedy ever, but have Samuel L. Jackson almost get off a trademark Muthafukka? Wakka wakka fart joke!

It’s called “timing!” you repugnant rodent! Learn it!

We, the fan boys, got a bit of what we wanted. We got to see Thor with the Guardians of the Galaxy. We got to see man-child Peter Quill geek a bit with child-man Peter Parker. We had a snark-off between Stark and Strange. We got to see Robert Downey Junior phone-in impotence jokes at the expense of Bruce Banner-nee’-Hulk in a moment that shouldn’t have had jokes because Jesus Christ movie just let us have a serious moment here! But so much of the film’s progression necessitated everyone either taking a free-action to explain everything to us or to act completely out of character! Spoiler Alert: Nice job fucking things up, Andy Dwyer! Your plan to save the Universe was perfect except the part that involved you!

The directing was passable, but barely. The action scenes were cluttered at times, but for the most part, not as messy as they could’ve been. But overall, that’s all the directing was: passable. No scene passed along any sort of emotional weight, nor hinted at anything deeper than they were expressing. Even the harder moments, up until the end, didn’t hit. For example: When Gamora died . . . I felt nothing. There was no emotional impact. Thanos threw her off, we saw how sad it made Thanos . . . and then the corpse. Mufasa had a better fall-death! Hell, Inspector Javert had a better fall-death!

Also, the ending . . . which was just that: an ending. Which, I get it, it's how the comic book The Infinity Gauntlet ended. Good job, writers, you read a trade paperback! It gave no indication that there was going to be anything coming, like with Empire Strikes Back. It was just . . . and end. A "Fuck You." (And no, post-credits don't count! They never count! Stingers are post-sex cuddling!)

Now, there were a LOT of clever misdirects that kept things interesting: the reveal of Gamora’s Swiss Army Knife, which everyone in the audience was made to believe was going to be used to kill Thanos, but wound up ultimately being used as a set-up to failure, being one of the better ones. There were nice touches! And some of the parts that set up Person A being on the Infinity Kill List, but only to show that it was Person B or Person C instead, were nicely done.

But I don’t care. Because I know that these deaths are all going to be undone in the second part. In a universe where everyone can and has come back to life (coughcoughGrootcoughcoughColsoncoughcough) all of these dustings have as much impact as any comic book death or pro wrestler retirement. Plus, they didn’t kill any of the A-listers. All of the original Avengers made it to the end. Only the Second Wavers bit it.

People will say that Disney took a risk with this one. This won’t be true. Every person who died will be brought back. All the consequences will be reverted. Timey-wimey will save the day. And thanks to the Magic Space Beeper which Nick Fury apparently had the whole fucking time, we will now have our new Captain Mary Sue to come and save our day soon. (Which honestly pissed me off most: if you had a magic space beeper that could summon a space Captain Marvel to come save anyone at any time, why didn’t you use that in the first Avengers film, Fury?! And even if she did show up, what the Hell could she do now? Spin the Earth in reverse faster than the speed of light, and turn back time twenty-four hours?! Thanos won! You’re dusted! Game over, man!) I’d say the only parts of this film worth watching are the fights, but even then, that’s only on occasion. Again, so much of the action depended on contrivance (“Oh no, his space weapon somehow prevents me from phasing, especially in this scene where I’m not being attacked! Thank god Black Widow is strong enough to block it with her not-super strength, which I have, and with her weapons made of regular material, and not from Vibranium, which is the unbreakable material that I’m made from!”) that I kept expecting Thanos to reveal that he had fabricated the events from Reality Stone out of bored curiosity the whole time.

And what the Hell, Disney? You own Industrial Lights and Magic, one of only two special effects studios in Hollywood! So why do you keep phoning in the CG? Seriously, the fight between Thanos and Hulk looked like something out of a first-generation World of Warcraft cinematic! And I can’t be the only one who noticed how obviously rotoscoped Bruce Banner was in the Hulkbuster armor at the end! Vaporwave videos had less shifting! And don’t tell me “Look at how awesome they made Thanos in all the close-ups!” because that’s just proof of what they can do when they decide to do it, the lazy assholes!

Infinity War is typical Disney, which is now synonymous with glitter-rolled bullshit! There are parts which are worth paying attention to, but is, on whole, worth ignoring. The motivations were superficial; the drama was lip-service; the characters had almost no consistency; and nobody in the audience seemed to care, because that’s what we’ve come to expect from the studio that brought us Dog with a Blog.

Final Score

Rating: 5.5/10

Xowie: 2

Half-Life: 15 months

Nelson Ranking: Laundry Film

Tom Upside

- Up until the end, Thanos, himself, only kills two people. And one of those people he kills is technically a villain. Now somebody go back and confirm this, because this film is too bullshit for me to care.

[accretion--disk]

Les Mis Brasil - my review (LONG POST - MIGHT AS WELL BE THE BRICK)

So, about a month ago I went to São Paulo to watch the brazilian Les Mis. It’s the second time in sixteen years that the show is performed here and I was more than excited to watch it, since Les Mis was my first musical, and my favourite one as well. I wanted to make this post a while ago, but I got lazy, so why the hell not do it now.

As soon as I walked into the theatre I felt my knees getting weak and my heart beating faster. I swear I was about to cry even before it started. This was the third Broadway musical I ever watched live, and my expectations were really high. I wasn’t dissapointed  - though I must admit that it was not perfect.

First of all, the song’s adaptation to portuguese was incredible. I was afraid they were going to screw up with the translations (like they did with Rocky Horror) but I was pleasently surprised to discover that the translations were actually pretty damn good. Some of them were more literal, and sticked to the original english lyrics (Look Down, for example, was very literal), and while others did change a bit from the original, their emotion and meaning was still the same (On My Own was one of those that had some parts distant from the original, but with the same intense feeling and meaning). Two songs I did not enjoy were Stars and Bring Him Home. Both of them were quite astray from the original, and in those cases, it did bother me a bit, because they became vague and not as impressive (those are probably two of the most meaningful songs of the musical, and loosing that did cause some damage - I’ll get to that in a minute). Specifically for Bring Him Home, I simply couldn’t understand what the actor was singing - and he was the brazilian actor, Leo Wagner and not Daniel Diges, the spanish actor who also plays Valjean here.

One of the things that this version brought to us and I don’t think was very clear on other editions of Les Mis was the parallels between Fantine (Kacau Gomes, who I believe was the best choice for the role. Her voice is soothing, pleasent, very maternal sounding) and Éponine (Laura Lobos, who played little Cosette at the first edition of the musical here). Both of them suffer from a frustrated love, in very different manners, didn’t live wealthy lives and also had a great attatchment to Cosette - willingly or not, both their deaths had to do with granting Cosette a happier life. And in the translations of their songs, there were some phrases or sentences that were repeated, and for me, as a fan of both the book and the musica, that was deeply satisfying and an interesting viewpoint. Also, both their ghosts greet Valjean when he dies, and I thought that was really nice - specially since Valjean and Éponine interact a bit. She is the one who delivers him Marius’s note from the barricade, and Valjean tells her to take care of herself.

Many things reminded me of the book. Marius (played by Filipe Bragança, who is only SIXTEEN years old) and Cosette (Clara Verdier) acted like very awkward teenagers when they first meet at the garden, and it was the cutest thing. Their chemistry was amazing, I almost forgot the actors weren’t actually a couple. Clara’s singing performance was a bit disappointing though. Her voice didn’t reach the high notes, that are very characteristic of her character, and that cause her to be off-key some times, which was noticed by many people I talked to. 

The Thénardiers were the comic relief, as usual, but they were also the most constant villains - their evil side was very clear to us and it was quite scary how much we could actually sympathize with Mr. Thérnardier, due to the actor’s witty and amusing performance. He kinda reminded me of the hyenas from The Lion King, who were always afraid of Mufasa - whenever Valjean would speak his mind, Mr. Thénardier hided behind his wife. All their scenes were funny but also had a more serious, deep tone beneath it, and that’s the whole point of their characters in the book. 

Now, focus on our favourite so called villain: Javert. Javert is the character we love to hate, and for me, he just didn’t do it in this version. He could sing very well, but his perfomance seemed kinda rushed at some moments. It happened very quick and we didn’t have time to appreciate his character’s purpose. “Stars”, which is the song in which we start to care and understand him a bit better, wasn’t very good as I already mentioned, and because of that his character just became sort of one-dimentioned and flat. The Confrontation scene was interesting, as were his other physical confronts with Valjean, because the actors would get very physically agressive and we could feel the tension. At times, they were yelling at each other and the whole theatre went silent. Those were certainly powerful moments I enjoyed. Javert’s suicide was a good scene/song too, because the actor expressed his emotions very passionately and it almost fixed the lack of empathy and interest during the previous scenes.

Let me please, highlight one of my favourite parts of the whole thing: The revolution. That has always been my favourite part of any Les Mis adaptation. And of course, my favourite character is Enjolras, and I was extremely excited to watch what they were going to do with my sweetheart. 

Enjolras. Was. Fucking. Awesome.

The actor who plays him, Pedro Caetano, is basically what book-Enjolras should be: passionate, intense, idealistic, charismatic. As soon as he walked on stage, he caught everyone’s attention and he stole my poor heart. His voice fits the character perfectly and, should Hamilton for some miracle reason ever be translated and acted in Brazil, I want Pedro Caetano as Laurens. Not only does he look like Anthony Ramos, but his voice also resembles his. It’s like Aaron Tveit, Anthony Ramos and Daveed Diggs had a beautiful son. That was our Enjolras. He was not only the cold asshole that leads the revolution, he was also a friend to his fellows barricade boys. He seemed to care about every single one of them, and was basically restless during the whole thing. During Bring Him Home, while Valjean is singing, Enjolras could be seen sleeping standing up. He picked Gavroche up during Red and Black, and in his death, his body was put next to Gavroche’s in a wagon.

Also, GRANTAIRE. He is also one of my favourite character, and brazillian Grantaire was simply sad. There’s no other way of describing this portrayal of our drunk revolutionary: Grantaire was sad, depressed even. His skepticism was clear throughout all the songs, he just sat in a corner, drank and made annoyed/sarcastic faces while Enjolras talked (also- Grantaire standed very close to Enjolras during the entire Red and Black, quietly hoping for his attention). Drink With Me is one hell of a song, and Bruno Girst (the actor who was performing Grantaire the day I saw it) did a great job making me cry like a baby. He sang his lines not as someone who was in love and realised he was going to loose his muse in a few hours. No, he was angry at Enjolras, but yet hated himself for not being able to disobey him. I could have sworn they were going to start a fist fight during that song, because as Grantaire is singing “Will the world remember you as you fall/Could it be your death means nothing at all?”, Enjolras approaches him looking pissed and three guys have to hold them so that they don’t punch each other. Right after that, Enjolras goes to talk to Grantaire, calmer and worried, but Grantaire just runs to the corner of the stage and fucking weaps. And you know what’s best? Gavroche is the one holding Grantaire and comforting him.

Also, kudos for Gavroche! That kid was AMAZING! He showed his middle finger to Javert, Grantaire and Enjolras basically act like his dads during the entire play. When Éponine dies, he stands beside her with Grantaire. He takes her little hat and gives it to Marius. The revolutionaries sing “We’ll fight for Éponine”, and that’s when I started crying and I didn’t stop until I was inside the taxi going back to my hotel. Gavroche’s death was pretty impactful, as usual, specially beacause it was Grantaire who cared for him, and Taire just holds Gavroche’s body during half of the battle scene, before laying him down, still weeping, and going back to fight.

As I mentioned, the actor who plays Marius is sixteen. He does look older, and his voice is very deep for a 16 year old, but he was great in the role. It somehow made the whole thing sadder - during Empty Chairs at Empty Tables, we can see how hurt he is, yet he is very young. It’s the very impact we get from his character in the book and it was heartbreaking. Also, in the translation, he sings “My friends, don’t fade away”, as the ghosts of the revolutionaries blow out their candles (I couldn’t stop thinking about Rent during that scene, but that’s off topic).

Well, that’s basically what I have to say in the more technical/deep analysis of the play. Now, some random notes:

- Master of the House was downright dirty. Lots of cursing and bad words that made me laugh like an idiot. Madame Thénardier makes lots of dick jokes and says that Mr Thénardier has a “butthole brain”. Classic Thénardier.

- Éponine kicks Montparnasse in the balls. Twice. Great hommage to book Éponine.

- Cosette and Éponine quickly interact at the garden.

- One Day More gave me the chills. I thought I was going to faint, it was SOOO GOOD.

- A weird/questionable translation during Drink With Me was right at the first verses. The boys sang “Here’s a toast to the lips I’ve kissed/ Here’s a toast to the breasts I’ve touched” and I was almost laughing because that’s SO RANDOM AND YET WEIRDLY ACCURATE. Though I can’t imagine Prouvaire grabbing a girl’s boobs.

- Do You Hear The People Sing was split between all of the ABC’s friends, not focused only on Enjolras, and it was quite awesome.

- “Grantaire, put the bottle down” changed to “Grantaire, STOP DRINKING!”

- Honestly, Pedro Caetano is one of my favourite Enjolras. I reccomend you follow his instagram because he is a beautiful guy and very talanted too.

- Actually, the whole cast is adorable. They hang out together and are basically the Modern AU I dreamed of.

[andrewdburton]

Identity economics: Who are you? And how does it affect your spending?

“Who are you?” my cousin Duane asked me on Saturday afternoon. We'd spent the day playing nerd games together and were taking a break for pizza.

“What?” I said. I wasn't expecting a philosophical question over supper.

“I don't think you know who you are,” Duane said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don't think you know who you are,” he repeated. “You write about money and frugality, yet you spend $200 on dinner.” Duane was referring to the fancy meal we'd had in May at a Michelin-star restaurant in France. I knew it had been bugging him, but he hadn't said anything about it until now. (And that meal cost $267.41 for the two of us, not $200.)

“You paid $1900 for your used pickup, but you don't wash it. It's filthy. You buy new clothes that you don't need, but you leave your old clothes on the floor so that your cats pee on them.” It's true. Kim and I have a cat that will, from time to time, pee on my clothes.

“You say you don't like attention, that you don't want to be a celebrity, yet you're always taking on new work that puts you in the spotlight. You're thinking of doing a course for Audible, for instance, and you're talking about doing more speaking gigs — even though you hate speaking gigs,” Duane said.

All of these things were true. I couldn't argue.

“Who are you?” Duane asked. Well, that's a mighty fine question, Duane. That's a mighty fine question.

A Digression

In 1862, French novelist Victor Hugo published Les Miserables, one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. Long and sprawling and full of digressions (just like Get Rich Slowly!), the book explores the many facets of human nature: the good and bad, the humorous and poignant, the ordinary and sublime.

Les Miserables wasn't popular with critics when it was released, but everybody else loved it. It sold well when it was published and continues to sell well more than 150 years later. The book has inspired several several film and television adaptations. And, of course, it's the source of one of the most successful stage musicals of all time.

Turns out PBS recently aired a new six-part Les Miserables miniseries written by the always-awesome Andrew Davies. It's on my watch list.

Although Les Miserables contains a ginormous cast of characters, two stand at the heart of the story:

Jean Valjean is the novel's protagonist. Arrested for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's seven starving children, he spends nineteen years in prison (five for the original crime, fourteen more for various misdeeds). Upon parole, he assumes the identity of Monsieur Madeleine. As Madeleine, he builds two factories, becomes rich, and is appointed mayor of a small seaside town. Valjean is a good man who occasionally finds himself on the wrong side of the law.

Javert is the novel's antagonist. (It's not right to call him a villain. Nothing about him is villanous.) Born in prison to deplorable parents, he grows up to become a prison guard — then police inspector. Javert is obsessed with upholding the law, which includes pursuing and punishing Valjean for his past misdeeds. His worldview is shattered when he realizes that not all laws are moral, that sometimes the moral course is not the lawful one.

What's fascinating — mind-blowing, actually — is that Victor Hugo based both Valjean and Javert on the exact same real-life person. They're both loosely modelled on Eugène François Vidocq, a French criminal turned criminalist. (You should open that link in a separate tab for later reading. Vidocq's life is fascinating. Among other things, he's regarded as the first-ever private detective and the “father” of modern criminology.)

That's right: Both the protagonist and the antagonist of Les Miserables were inspired by the same man. And, even more mind-blowing? Vidocq was also the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. (Go read that article!)

Who Am I?

The amazing thing (to me) is that Jean Valjean himself is two people! He is Jean Valjean, yes, but he spends years posing as Monsieur Madeleine. As the latter, he's a wealthy factory owner, he's mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. He is a force for good in his small world. He is, at once, both Valjean and Madeleine, just as Vidocq is at once both Valjean and Javert.

In a 2012 New Yorker piece praising “the persistent greatness” of Les Miserables, Adam Gopnik wrote, “Hugo believed in, relished, luxuriated in, contradiction — he thought that we show ourselves most truly when we are seemingly most opposed to our double natures.”

When I posted about this on Facebook in April, John from ESI Money observed that this adds a whole new meaning to the song “Who Am I?” from the musical.

“Who am I?” Valjean sings as he's forced to reveal his identity in order to save an innocent man. “Who am I? I'm Jean Valjean!”

Yes, that's true — but Jean Valjean is also police inspector Javert.

True story: I'm a devoted fan of musical theater, and “Who Am I?” is one of my favorite songs from any show. It induces frisson — it gives me goosebumps — every time I hear it. Every time.

What I like about this clever bit of character creation from Victor Hugo is how it highlights our inherent dual natures. We, as humans, are inconsistent. We are complex creatures. At the same time, we can be both good and bad. I truly believe that most of us do what is right most of the time — but each of us also sometimes makes poor choices. We do things that seem to go against who we say we are and what we believe.

In Valjean and Javert, we get to see human nature dramatized in two men forever at odds, just as we are each forever at odds with ourselves.

Me, Myself, and I

As I was walking the dog this morning, I found myself meditating on my own personal duality. I am at once the hardest working person I know…and the laziest. I am the smartest person I know…and the stupidest. I am the kindest person I know…and the meanest.

Recently, I've grown increasingly frustrated with my seeming inability to “do the right thing”. I know that there are certain actions I could take (and should take) to improve my health, to build this website, to maintain relationships with my friends. Yet I do not do these things. I actively avoid them.

Why is this?

Here's an example. I could solve a whole host of problems if I were to get regular aerobic exercise. Over the past year, I've done a fine job of strength training, but for some reason I've become allergic to sweat. I do whatever I can to avoid running or biking or otherwise increasing my heart rate.

It's not that I can't do these things. I know I can. And I like them. I've run half marathons (and walked a full marathon). I've completed a century ride — one-hundred miserable miles on a hot and windy summer day. I did Crossfit for five years. I'm capable of strenuous exercise, and I know it.

But I'm not doing that exercise right now. I'm avoiding it.

Three months ago, as the sun started to show its face here in Portland, I wheeled my bicycle from the bottom of the hill to the back office. I wanted to make it easy to hop in the saddle and go. But you know what? I've ridden the thing exactly once this year. The bike is just sitting there, pleading with me to ride it.

The same goes with the website. You all know that I can crank out an article a day. I did it for three years between 2006 and 2009. I did it for the first three months of 2018. When I put my mind to it, I can write well without sacrificing quality.

Yet, for some reason, it's tough for me to publish even once a week lately. My mind is elsewhere. I have no inspiration. This wouldn't be so bad if I were at least handling other site maintenance chores, but I'm not. The site redesign is nearly finished, but it isn't live because there are still things I need to do. I'm not processing guest articles. I'm not posting to social media.

I've no doubt that some of this malaise stems from my chronic depression. But I also know the best way to shake the self-loathing is to actually do something, you know?

Which leads me to fundamental question I find myself facing: If I know what is right, why don't I do it?

I have no answer.

Impossible Expectations

This year, as every year, my depression and anxiety became especially strong during the spring. What's different about this year is that I sought out a therapist.

A few weeks ago, she asked me about my writing. We hadn't talked about it before. “What does success look like for you when it comes to your work?” she asked.

“Success means publishing three articles per week,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because then I'm giving my readers lots of material. I'm helping them. When I give them a lot of material, they want to come back more often. When I publish more material, more people find the site by search. When I publish more material, I make more money.”

“So, you want to publish three times per week?”

“I guess so,” I said. I thought about it a little. “But I hate the pressure that pace puts on me.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I don't enjoy it. I don't do great work under time pressure like that. I want to take my time. If I decide to write an article on, say, the history of retirement, then I want to read a book on the subject. Maybe two or three. I want to think deeply about it. Then, I want to take the time to write the best article out there about the history of retirement.”

“You realize you've just told me two very different things, right?” my therapist said. “You've set up contradictory goals for yourself. Plus, you're asking yourself to be the best. That's a tall order. No wonder you're stressed. You have impossible expectations for yourself.”

When I think about it, my therapist is right. I do have impossible expectations for myself — on a lot of things. I have contradictory goals. It's as if there's a Jean Valjean inside of me and an Inspector Javert. And they want different things. Neither is wrong — but they can't both have their way.

But to which do I yield? Am I Valjean or Javert?

At the end of the session, I lamented my dual nature. “I tell other people to be proactive,” I said, “to take charge of their own lives, but I have a hard time doing that myself.”

“Do you think that makes you a hypocrite?” my therapist asked.

“No,” I said without hesitation.

“Good,” she said.

“I think it makes me human,” I said. “I write about the things I struggle with personally. When I started writing about money and getting out of debt, that's because I needed to get out of debt. Now, when I write about tracking spending or having a sense of purpose, that's because I need these things.”

Mindful Spending

So, this is all very interesting on a philosophical level, but what does it have to do with personal finance? Lots, actually.

We make our purchasing decisions based on who we are and who we want to be. If we're not clear on who we are and who we want to be, our choices tend to be arbitrary. They're spontaneous and not based on anything other than immediate desire.

When you're clear on who you are and what you want, it's much easier to practice mindful spending, to be deliberate about the things you buy and own. If you identify as fitness-conscious, for instance, you'll be much less likely to be tempted by cookies and snacks in the grocery store. If, like me at the moment, you identify as a “lapsed” fitness junkie, well then it's much easier to succumb to temptation.

Who we want to be also affects how we spend. In fact, I suspect that much wasted spending — not just for me, but for everybody — is what I'd call “aspirational”. It's not based on our actual habits and actions but on what we wish we did.

Take my bike, for example. I bought it last year but have ridden it only three times in fifteen months. Like I mentioned earlier, it simply sits there, pleading with me to ride it.

I have a good friend who once decided he'd like to learn woodworking. His father had always built and repaired things around the house, and my friend aspired to do the same — even though he had never done so in 35 years of life. He bought a stack of woodworking books, then acquired several expensive tools. He never used them. These were aspirational purchases, based on somebody he wanted to be, not the person he was.

From what I've seen, a lot of folks do this sort of thing with cookbooks. They want to try new recipes and new cuisines, so they gradually fill a shelf with cooking manuals — cooking manuals that they seldom use.

It's because of this relationship between money and identity that I'm so insistent that GRS readers write a personal mission statement. When you're clear on your purpose, it's much easier to make sure your spending is aligned with your values, that your financial decisions are based on who you are instead of some idealized version of who you want to be.

Identity Economics

In their fascinating (if dry and academic) book Identity Economics, George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton explore how our identities shape our work, wages, and well-being.

“In every social context,” the authors write, “people have a notion of who they are, which is associated with beliefs about how they and others are supposed to behave. These notions…play important roles in how economies work.” Our identities determine how we earn a living and how we spend our money.

Akerloff and Kranton say that large portions of our identities are shaped by the environment:

Identity, norms, and social categories may appear to be abstract concepts, but their reality is both powerful and easy to see. Norms are particularly clear when people hold an ideal of who they should be and how they should act.

Here's an example: Many folks who discover the early retirement movement do so through the awesome work of Mr. Money Mustache. He has a strong voice and a popular website. Over the past few years, he's accumulated a passionate army of followers who call themselves Mustachians.

When a person identifies himself as Mustachian, he subscribes to a certain set of values, to particular ways of working with money. Driving is frowned upon. A high saving rate is encouraged. Thrift is a prized virtue. This is identity economics in action.

Akerloff and Kranton are careful to note that our personal identities are not static. They change. Our larger identities change slowly over time, but we can also shift roles rapidly in daily life.

The latter is easiest to see. “Over the course of a day,” they write, “a woman may see herself as a mother at home and a professional at work.” I'd add that she might see herself as an athlete in her running group, a civic leader as a member of the city council, and a Mustachian when she's hanging with her financial friends online.

Each of these is a different identity — or perhaps a different facet of her overall identity. And each affects how she works, saves, and spends.

People change over their lifetimes too. From the book:

People often make decisions that come back to haunt them. We overeat, we smoke, we spend too much, and we regret it. [This is due to] time inconsistency. People have different selves at different points in their lives. The new self could regret the decisions made by the old self…

Sometimes these transitions are anticipated, and people plan accordingly. But often, people only imperfectly anticipate who they will later become.

Look at my own life over the past decade. Who I am today is drastically different than who I was ten years ago. And twenty years ago. Sure, the core J.D. remains the same — once a nerd, always a nerd! — but my values, which are constantly evolving, have morphed and my day-to-day life is sometimes unrecognizable.

During the past ten years, much about my personal identity (and my resulting financial choices) has changed:

I deliberately chose to purchase a small home in “the country”.

I drink beer. I drink coffee. I ride a motorcycle. All of these actions are new.

I lost fifty pounds through years of exercise and healthy eating. Then I gained back forty of those pounds through years of neglect.

I sold Get Rich Slowly — then I bought it back.

These changes, large and small, all affect how I manage my money and how I spend my time. As my identity changes, so do my financial habits.

Related reading: In a strange coincidence, The Guardian published an article on a similar subject last Saturday: “Are you really the ‘real' you?” This piece, which is terrific and well worth reading, looks at how some people change their lives entirely — and why.

Order and Light

At the end of the Les Miserables, after Jean Valjean frees Javert instead of killing him, the police inspector faces an existential crisis. Victor Hugo writes:

He saw before him two roads, both equally straight; but he saw two; and that terrified him — him, who who had never in his life known but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory. One of these two straight lines excluded the other. Which of the two was the true one? His condition was inexpressible.

Inspector Javert's moral certitude proves to be his undoing. Like many folks who are certain they know what is real and what is right, Javert spends years ignoring evidence that controverts his beliefs. He thinks he knows the truth but in reality is blind to it.

When, at last, Javert recognizes that he's been in error all this time, that things are not as black and white as he believed them to be, it's too much for him to bear. Rather than face a world filled with ambiguity and uncertainty, he takes his own life. He jumps in the river and drowns.

Before he kills himself, though, Javert has a sort of revelation. He realizes that Jean Valjean and his alter-ego, Monsieur Madeleine, may have seemed like two different people, but they were one all along. They were two sides of the same person. Valjean was both criminal and hero.

It's all well and good to want to be a fixed, constant person, to have an identity that never changes. But that's not how healthy people work. Healthy people learn and adapt and grow. Who you are today is not the same as who you'll be tomorrow — or who you were yesterday.

As you change, your values will change too. Your goals will change. Your spending will change. What you want to do for work will change. And, yes, there will be many times when you are internally conflicted, when like Javert you are faced with two parallel roads, both of which are “true”.

Summing Up

Who am I? That's a great question.

I'm a guy who writes about money and frugality, but I'm also a man who is willing to — once in a lifetime — spend $267.41 to experience a Michelin-star restaurant in rural France. That's a clear example of mindful spending: I planned the meal weeks in advance and looked forward to it with great anticipation.

I'm a guy who can't bring himself to purchase a new car, so I buy a 25-year-old pickup for $1900. And I don't wash it. I value the vehicle but see no sense in spending the time, money, and energy to clean something that will never look pretty.

I'm a guy who buys new clothes from time to time — don't we all? — but who, yes, is careless enough to leave them on the bedroom floor even though I know my cat likes to pee on them. (Stupid cat!)

I'm a guy who hates public speaking and who doesn't want to be the center of attention, yet who has a deep desire to teach people about personal finance. (Especially the personal side of it all.) This leads me to do things that seem incongruent with what I say I want. I take on months-long projects that stress me out. I agree to fly across the world to talk to people. (Just yesterday, Paula Pant and I had a conversation about how the hassle of attending events is worth it for the friends we make.)

Who am I? I'm J.D. Roth.

The post Identity economics: Who are you? And how does it affect your spending? appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/identity-economics/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[andrewdburton]

Identity economics: Who are you? And how does it affect your spending?

“Who are you?” my cousin Duane asked me on Saturday afternoon. We'd spent the day playing nerd games together and were taking a break for pizza.

“What?” I said. I wasn't expecting a philosophical question over supper.

“I don't think you know who you are,” Duane said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don't think you know who you are,” he repeated. “You write about money and frugality, yet you spend $200 on dinner.” Duane was referring to the fancy meal we'd had in May at a Michelin-star restaurant in France. I knew it had been bugging him, but he hadn't said anything about it until now. (And that meal cost $267.41 for the two of us, not $200.)

“You paid $1900 for your used pickup, but you don't wash it. It's filthy. You buy new clothes that you don't need, but you leave your old clothes on the floor so that your cats pee on them.” It's true. Kim and I have a cat that will, from time to time, pee on my clothes.

“You say you don't like attention, that you don't want to be a celebrity, yet you're always taking on new work that puts you in the spotlight. You're thinking of doing a course for Audible, for instance, and you're talking about doing more speaking gigs — even though you hate speaking gigs,” Duane said.

All of these things were true. I couldn't argue.

“Who are you?” Duane asked. Well, that's a mighty fine question, Duane. That's a mighty fine question.

A Digression

In 1862, French novelist Victor Hugo published Les Miserables, one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. Long and sprawling and full of digressions (just like Get Rich Slowly!), the book explores the many facets of human nature: the good and bad, the humorous and poignant, the ordinary and sublime.

Les Miserables wasn't popular with critics when it was released, but everybody else loved it. It sold well when it was published and continues to sell well more than 150 years later. The book has inspired several several film and television adaptations. And, of course, it's the source of one of the most successful stage musicals of all time.

Turns out PBS recently aired a new six-part Les Miserables miniseries written by the always-awesome Andrew Davies. It's on my watch list.

Although Les Miserables contains a ginormous cast of characters, two stand at the heart of the story:

Jean Valjean is the novel's protagonist. Arrested for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's seven starving children, he spends nineteen years in prison (five for the original crime, fourteen more for various misdeeds). Upon parole, he assumes the identity of Monsieur Madeleine. As Madeleine, he builds two factories, becomes rich, and is appointed mayor of a small seaside town. Valjean is a good man who occasionally finds himself on the wrong side of the law.

Javert is the novel's antagonist. (It's not right to call him a villain. Nothing about him is villanous.) Born in prison to deplorable parents, he grows up to become a prison guard — then police inspector. Javert is obsessed with upholding the law, which includes pursuing and punishing Valjean for his past misdeeds. His worldview is shattered when he realizes that not all laws are moral, that sometimes the moral course is not the lawful one.

What's fascinating — mind-blowing, actually — is that Victor Hugo based both Valjean and Javert on the exact same real-life person. They're both loosely modelled on Eugène François Vidocq, a French criminal turned criminalist. (You should open that link in a separate tab for later reading. Vidocq's life is fascinating. Among other things, he's regarded as the first-ever private detective and the “father” of modern criminology.)

That's right: Both the protagonist and the antagonist of Les Miserables were inspired by the same man. And, even more mind-blowing? Vidocq was also the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. (Go read that article!)

Who Am I?

The amazing thing (to me) is that Jean Valjean himself is two people! He is Jean Valjean, yes, but he spends years posing as Monsieur Madeleine. As the latter, he's a wealthy factory owner, he's mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. He is a force for good in his small world. He is, at once, both Valjean and Madeleine, just as Vidocq is at once both Valjean and Javert.

In a 2012 New Yorker piece praising “the persistent greatness” of Les Miserables, Adam Gopnik wrote, “Hugo believed in, relished, luxuriated in, contradiction — he thought that we show ourselves most truly when we are seemingly most opposed to our double natures.”

When I posted about this on Facebook in April, John from ESI Money observed that this adds a whole new meaning to the song “Who Am I?” from the musical.

“Who am I?” Valjean sings as he's forced to reveal his identity in order to save an innocent man. “Who am I? I'm Jean Valjean!”

Yes, that's true — but Jean Valjean is also police inspector Javert.

True story: I'm a devoted fan of musical theater, and “Who Am I?” is one of my favorite songs from any show. It induces frisson — it gives me goosebumps — every time I hear it. Every time.

What I like about this clever bit of character creation from Victor Hugo is how it highlights our inherent dual natures. We, as humans, are inconsistent. We are complex creatures. At the same time, we can be both good and bad. I truly believe that most of us do what is right most of the time — but each of us also sometimes makes poor choices. We do things that seem to go against who we say we are and what we believe.

In Valjean and Javert, we get to see human nature dramatized in two men forever at odds, just as we are each forever at odds with ourselves.

Me, Myself, and I

As I was walking the dog this morning, I found myself meditating on my own personal duality. I am at once the hardest working person I know…and the laziest. I am the smartest person I know…and the stupidest. I am the kindest person I know…and the meanest.

Recently, I've grown increasingly frustrated with my seeming inability to “do the right thing”. I know that there are certain actions I could take (and should take) to improve my health, to build this website, to maintain relationships with my friends. Yet I do not do these things. I actively avoid them.

Why is this?

Here's an example. I could solve a whole host of problems if I were to get regular aerobic exercise. Over the past year, I've done a fine job of strength training, but for some reason I've become allergic to sweat. I do whatever I can to avoid running or biking or otherwise increasing my heart rate.

It's not that I can't do these things. I know I can. And I like them. I've run half marathons (and walked a full marathon). I've completed a century ride — one-hundred miserable miles on a hot and windy summer day. I did Crossfit for five years. I'm capable of strenuous exercise, and I know it.

But I'm not doing that exercise right now. I'm avoiding it.

Three months ago, as the sun started to show its face here in Portland, I wheeled my bicycle from the bottom of the hill to the back office. I wanted to make it easy to hop in the saddle and go. But you know what? I've ridden the thing exactly once this year. The bike is just sitting there, pleading with me to ride it.

The same goes with the website. You all know that I can crank out an article a day. I did it for three years between 2006 and 2009. I did it for the first three months of 2018. When I put my mind to it, I can write well without sacrificing quality.

Yet, for some reason, it's tough for me to publish even once a week lately. My mind is elsewhere. I have no inspiration. This wouldn't be so bad if I were at least handling other site maintenance chores, but I'm not. The site redesign is nearly finished, but it isn't live because there are still things I need to do. I'm not processing guest articles. I'm not posting to social media.

I've no doubt that some of this malaise stems from my chronic depression. But I also know the best way to shake the self-loathing is to actually do something, you know?

Which leads me to fundamental question I find myself facing: If I know what is right, why don't I do it?

I have no answer.

Impossible Expectations

This year, as every year, my depression and anxiety became especially strong during the spring. What's different about this year is that I sought out a therapist.

A few weeks ago, she asked me about my writing. We hadn't talked about it before. “What does success look like for you when it comes to your work?” she asked.

“Success means publishing three articles per week,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because then I'm giving my readers lots of material. I'm helping them. When I give them a lot of material, they want to come back more often. When I publish more material, more people find the site by search. When I publish more material, I make more money.”

“So, you want to publish three times per week?”

“I guess so,” I said. I thought about it a little. “But I hate the pressure that pace puts on me.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I don't enjoy it. I don't do great work under time pressure like that. I want to take my time. If I decide to write an article on, say, the history of retirement, then I want to read a book on the subject. Maybe two or three. I want to think deeply about it. Then, I want to take the time to write the best article out there about the history of retirement.”

“You realize you've just told me two very different things, right?” my therapist said. “You've set up contradictory goals for yourself. Plus, you're asking yourself to be the best. That's a tall order. No wonder you're stressed. You have impossible expectations for yourself.”

When I think about it, my therapist is right. I do have impossible expectations for myself — on a lot of things. I have contradictory goals. It's as if there's a Jean Valjean inside of me and an Inspector Javert. And they want different things. Neither is wrong — but they can't both have their way.

But to which do I yield? Am I Valjean or Javert?

At the end of the session, I lamented my dual nature. “I tell other people to be proactive,” I said, “to take charge of their own lives, but I have a hard time doing that myself.”

“Do you think that makes you a hypocrite?” my therapist asked.

“No,” I said without hesitation.

“Good,” she said.

“I think it makes me human,” I said. “I write about the things I struggle with personally. When I started writing about money and getting out of debt, that's because I needed to get out of debt. Now, when I write about tracking spending or having a sense of purpose, that's because I need these things.”

Mindful Spending

So, this is all very interesting on a philosophical level, but what does it have to do with personal finance? Lots, actually.

We make our purchasing decisions based on who we are and who we want to be. If we're not clear on who we are and who we want to be, our choices tend to be arbitrary. They're spontaneous and not based on anything other than immediate desire.

When you're clear on who you are and what you want, it's much easier to practice mindful spending, to be deliberate about the things you buy and own. If you identify as fitness-conscious, for instance, you'll be much less likely to be tempted by cookies and snacks in the grocery store. If, like me at the moment, you identify as a “lapsed” fitness junkie, well then it's much easier to succumb to temptation.

Who we want to be also affects how we spend. In fact, I suspect that much wasted spending — not just for me, but for everybody — is what I'd call “aspirational”. It's not based on our actual habits and actions but on what we wish we did.

Take my bike, for example. I bought it last year but have ridden it only three times in fifteen months. Like I mentioned earlier, it simply sits there, pleading with me to ride it.

I have a good friend who once decided he'd like to learn woodworking. His father had always built and repaired things around the house, and my friend aspired to do the same — even though he had never done so in 35 years of life. He bought a stack of woodworking books, then acquired several expensive tools. He never used them. These were aspirational purchases, based on somebody he wanted to be, not the person he was.

From what I've seen, a lot of folks do this sort of thing with cookbooks. They want to try new recipes and new cuisines, so they gradually fill a shelf with cooking manuals — cooking manuals that they seldom use.

It's because of this relationship between money and identity that I'm so insistent that GRS readers write a personal mission statement. When you're clear on your purpose, it's much easier to make sure your spending is aligned with your values, that your financial decisions are based on who you are instead of some idealized version of who you want to be.

Identity Economics

In their fascinating (if dry and academic) book Identity Economics, George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton explore how our identities shape our work, wages, and well-being.

“In every social context,” the authors write, “people have a notion of who they are, which is associated with beliefs about how they and others are supposed to behave. These notions…play important roles in how economies work.” Our identities determine how we earn a living and how we spend our money.

Akerloff and Kranton say that large portions of our identities are shaped by the environment:

Identity, norms, and social categories may appear to be abstract concepts, but their reality is both powerful and easy to see. Norms are particularly clear when people hold an ideal of who they should be and how they should act.

Here's an example: Many folks who discover the early retirement movement do so through the awesome work of Mr. Money Mustache. He has a strong voice and a popular website. Over the past few years, he's accumulated a passionate army of followers who call themselves Mustachians.

When a person identifies himself as Mustachian, he subscribes to a certain set of values, to particular ways of working with money. Driving is frowned upon. A high saving rate is encouraged. Thrift is a prized virtue. This is identity economics in action.

Akerloff and Kranton are careful to note that our personal identities are not static. They change. Our larger identities change slowly over time, but we can also shift roles rapidly in daily life.

The latter is easiest to see. “Over the course of a day,” they write, “a woman may see herself as a mother at home and a professional at work.” I'd add that she might see herself as an athlete in her running group, a civic leader as a member of the city council, and a Mustachian when she's hanging with her financial friends online.

Each of these is a different identity — or perhaps a different facet of her overall identity. And each affects how she works, saves, and spends.

People change over their lifetimes too. From the book:

People often make decisions that come back to haunt them. We overeat, we smoke, we spend too much, and we regret it. [This is due to] time inconsistency. People have different selves at different points in their lives. The new self could regret the decisions made by the old self…

Sometimes these transitions are anticipated, and people plan accordingly. But often, people only imperfectly anticipate who they will later become.

Look at my own life over the past decade. Who I am today is drastically different than who I was ten years ago. And twenty years ago. Sure, the core J.D. remains the same — once a nerd, always a nerd! — but my values, which are constantly evolving, have morphed and my day-to-day life is sometimes unrecognizable.

During the past ten years, much about my personal identity (and my resulting financial choices) has changed:

I deliberately chose to purchase a small home in “the country”.

I drink beer. I drink coffee. I ride a motorcycle. All of these actions are new.

I lost fifty pounds through years of exercise and healthy eating. Then I gained back forty of those pounds through years of neglect.

I sold Get Rich Slowly — then I bought it back.

These changes, large and small, all affect how I manage my money and how I spend my time. As my identity changes, so do my financial habits.

Related reading: In a strange coincidence, The Guardian published an article on a similar subject last Saturday: “Are you really the ‘real' you?” This piece, which is terrific and well worth reading, looks at how some people change their lives entirely — and why.

Order and Light

At the end of the Les Miserables, after Jean Valjean frees Javert instead of killing him, the police inspector faces an existential crisis. Victor Hugo writes:

He saw before him two roads, both equally straight; but he saw two; and that terrified him — him, who who had never in his life known but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory. One of these two straight lines excluded the other. Which of the two was the true one? His condition was inexpressible.

Inspector Javert's moral certitude proves to be his undoing. Like many folks who are certain they know what is real and what is right, Javert spends years ignoring evidence that controverts his beliefs. He thinks he knows the truth but in reality is blind to it.

When, at last, Javert recognizes that he's been in error all this time, that things are not as black and white as he believed them to be, it's too much for him to bear. Rather than face a world filled with ambiguity and uncertainty, he takes his own life. He jumps in the river and drowns.

Before he kills himself, though, Javert has a sort of revelation. He realizes that Jean Valjean and his alter-ego, Monsieur Madeleine, may have seemed like two different people, but they were one all along. They were two sides of the same person. Valjean was both criminal and hero.

It's all well and good to want to be a fixed, constant person, to have an identity that never changes. But that's not how healthy people work. Healthy people learn and adapt and grow. Who you are today is not the same as who you'll be tomorrow — or who you were yesterday.

As you change, your values will change too. Your goals will change. Your spending will change. What you want to do for work will change. And, yes, there will be many times when you are internally conflicted, when like Javert you are faced with two parallel roads, both of which are “true”.

Summing Up

Who am I? That's a great question.

I'm a guy who writes about money and frugality, but I'm also a man who is willing to — once in a lifetime — spend $267.41 to experience a Michelin-star restaurant in rural France. That's a clear example of mindful spending: I planned the meal weeks in advance and looked forward to it with great anticipation.

I'm a guy who can't bring himself to purchase a new car, so I buy a 25-year-old pickup for $1900. And I don't wash it. I value the vehicle but see no sense in spending the time, money, and energy to clean something that will never look pretty.

I'm a guy who buys new clothes from time to time — don't we all? — but who, yes, is careless enough to leave them on the bedroom floor even though I know my cat likes to pee on them. (Stupid cat!)

I'm a guy who hates public speaking and who doesn't want to be the center of attention, yet who has a deep desire to teach people about personal finance. (Especially the personal side of it all.) This leads me to do things that seem incongruent with what I say I want. I take on months-long projects that stress me out. I agree to fly across the world to talk to people. (Just yesterday, Paula Pant and I had a conversation about how the hassle of attending events is worth it for the friends we make.)

Who am I? I'm J.D. Roth.

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