#train derailed but re: the first point. its so hard for me to actually feel like people care and want me around.

[madaracore]

[akatokuro]

The Inevitable StS Rewatch, Episodes 37-38

Aiolia, are you like... okay? (HE IS NOT, IN FACT, OKAY.)

- Last time, I meant to write about these eps but I got hard-derailed with the need to scream at the walls about Milo. This seems to happen to me pretty often. It might be a problem.

- This whole Shaina-->Seiya subplot is still stupid as hell, and the way Seiya treats Shaina here is condescending as hell, but to be very very generous Seiya is at least perceptive enough to not fight back seriously because he understands Shaina essentially has a death wish. Sanctuary will fuck you up hard, dude. The mask issue is yet another way to approach the fundamental ways the entire institution of Sanctuary will break people over its knee.

- Hahaha, I love the way Aiolia enters the scene here, so ominous and terrifying! It's a great contrast to the very mellow, normal dude in the back Aiolia is framed as in his earlier cameos. HEY, SHAINA, DID YOU AND THE OTHER SILVERS REALLY FORGET I WAS A GOLD FUCKING SAINT WELL GUESS WHAT HERE'S A REMINDER

- Lia, are you... having fun sloooowly lifting Shaina into the air first - totally not to terrify her or anything, nope, no grudge here, what are you talking about, hahaha!

- I'm going to be repeatedly gushing about this through the next couple eps, but holy shit, Aiolia's Japanese VA is SO FUCKING GOOD.

- The way he's animated here is so good too! The combination of his flat tone as he introduces himself, his flat expression, and the way only his eyes move when he greets Seiya specifically - it really conveys a sense of tension and Lia being in very, very forced, tight control of himself right now.

- "lmao not even the gold saints knew that there were TWELVE ZODIAC-THEMED CLOTHS! like! twelve zodiacs! god! not just leo and sagittarius! who would ever have guessed!" yeah this is the most obvious thing for the broader lore to instantly fucking throw out the window because no.

- It's a semi-common fanon thing to regard Aiolia as "stupid", but honestly, he's never struck me as such - I like this moment where he's sizing up Seiya's answer re: Sagittarius, and comes to the conclusion that he's telling the truth. But still, murder mission means murder gon happen!

- Aiolia has problems with self-control--his emotions sometimes get the better of him and he can't help himself when he really needs to punch something because he's just SO FUCKING ANGRY--but that's a different thing altogether than just being stupid, especially since I think Lia is pretty self-aware about that aspect of himself.

- I love how Aiolia TOTALLY came here to murder the shit out of these kids, too. Like, think about the contrast with Milo later, when Milo offers to spare Hyouga for Camus's sake - Lia is apparently close friends with Marin, but does he extend the same courtesy? No. That Seiya is Marin's student doesn't fucking matter. He's here to perform a very baggage-ridden mission for Sanctuary, and that is what he is going to do, because Aiolia would really like to turn himself into a Good Saint Robot.

- And again, even as he's warning Shaina, Aiolia comes across as very tightly controlled and very short, played up as frightening and intimidating. His expression and tone doesn't change as Shaina pleads and he points out her emotional shortcomings. Aiolia can run very hot, but he can also turn himself very cold, and the combination of the two feeding into each other is what can make him potentially scary as hell, especially when you remove his inhibitions via a bit of brainwashing!

- That little detail of Lia clenching his fist and his fist shaking as Seiya accuses him of being another assassin from Sanctuary is really good. It should be clear from Lia's VA taking a BEEP BOOP BOP approach to his lines here, but Lia is internally struggling a lot already, and trying to press it down.

- Not struggling with internal conflict about his orders per se, mind you. Moreso struggling with not losing his shit over how fucking mad he is.

- And when Seiya tries to explain the situation to Aiolia, he gets this.

- Aiolia isn't actually stupid, but this is why he's interesting. He dumbs himself down because he feels he can't trust himself - both his actual thoughts and instincts, as what happened with his brother proved to him, and his ability to restrain himself. So what can he do but commit himself to his orders and the rules, especially knowing that he's already walking on a very thin tightrope compared to most people because of his TRAITOR'S BLOOD? (lmao, thanks Milo! Clearly the best friend Aiolia could ever hope for!) There might be a temptation to write off Lia as the "good boy" of the Gold Saints, since he's pushed as the protagonist figure amongst them, but he's really not. He's pretty complex.

- Lol considering how hard Shaina was shitting on and disrespecting Aiolia in earlier episodes... is seeing her so frantic and then flattening her effortlessly a little bit cathartic for you, Lia...? Just a little...?

- Lia's expression still not changing as he turns his FLATTEN BEAM onto Seiya. Truly the TermiLia right now.

- I love Aiolia's response to Seiya bleating off about his brother and why Lia is so loyal to Sanctuary. He is obviously trying to appeal to Lia emotionally by hitting what he knows are emotional weak spots and Lia is not having any of that shit. you are literally just making him madder seiya

- These sure are the words and expression of a very, very bitter man!

- Aiolos isn't exactly an interesting character to me as he is, because the series is by and large mostly interested in him as a straightforward admirable martyr figure - but he could be if you re-interpret him under a more critical lens. His treatment of Aiolia is kind of... something. I don't actually remember him ever offering a truly kind word to his little brother. Like, ever.

- There's even a fun ambiguity if you want to his line in this flashback about "You should be able to do this, because you have the same Cosmos I do - because we're brothers." Yes, it could be read as encouragement - as Baby Lia is obviously doing here - but it's also setting forth an expectation.

- Oh shit, this is some of the stuff I was planning on going through in my upcoming EIGHTEEN PAGE AIOLIA META. Uhhhh....... man, this situation sure sucks for Lia, being left behind like that! Aiolos! Issues! Probably! Yeah!

- Fucking Silvers!

- I'm glad Lia states that he hated Los and used that for fuel in terms of becoming a strong Saint, and also vaguely suicidal. You can totally see it. Leo Aiolia is a cold and hateful person in a lot of ways! It rules!

- Okay Seiya you deserve to be punched for this one

- lol Lia narrowing his eyes in response too hoo boy

- seiya why are you stripping that's shiryuu's deal

- ahhhh shit aiolia's va is SO GOOD! he was already pulling the "flat, controlled tone" before but after seiya hit him with THAT garbage he goes extremely low and dangerous and outright monotone, very audibly you're on thin fucking ice you little shit

- One of the little things that I like about Lia and how he subverts your first impression of "oh, this is the nice, protagonist-y Gold, right?" is that when you piss him off, he gets vicious and downright venomous verbally. Aiolia is capable of outright dripping with contempt for people in a way that's totally "oh, this is what he's been thinking the whole time, he was just holding it back." Like here, when he's practically sneering about "Oh, so this is all you've got after six years training with Marin, huh? You fucking scrub loser."

- Damn, I like Seiya crying as he attacks Aiolia again, knowing that it's hopeless! That's a nice touch. A LITTLE SCARED, HUH SEIYA?

- Lia, you totally should have been able to see Shaina moving and jumping in front of Seiya like that in time to pull back. You really should have. Is your mad getting the better of you? I know Seiya kicked it up several notches, but damn, man.

- yeah i do not think this is the face of someone who is actually going to be losing that much sleep over """"accidentally"""" punching the shit out of shaina

- And Seiya calls out Aiolia for not stopping his attack when he totally had the capability to do so, lmao

- Hahaha, so Lia lets Seiya punch him to let off some steam and goes: "Yeahhhh, my bad. Eh."

- I also like the detail that Lia can heal with his Cosmos! (And lol that Lia was originally going to just leave her there before Seiya called him out.) It's not an ability you actually see a lot of Saints have, including the Golds.

- Lia asks Seiya why he's doing this. Seiya starts to explain, but then Lia immediately cuts him off with THE POPE'S ORDERS ARE ABSOLUTE. aiolia are you like.... okay... i mean you asked him and he was answering y... all righty then. i mean i know that's what you've convinced yourself to cope but

- Then the shitty Silvers show up, and even these guys continue to shit on Lia for his TRAITOR'S BLOOD. Lia gets visibly mad and reiterates his determination to fulfill his mission and murder these damn kids. The Silvers ignore him, and obviously enjoy twisting the knife about being able to ignore him!

- Aiolos decides he's had enough of his bath and decides to give Seiya a hand! Wow!

- okay seiya really rocks the sagittarius cloth though. better looking than aiolos in it. sagittarius seiya is the best looking gold saint tbh. shiryuu is really hideous in libra unfortunately

- And this is Aiolia's face when Seiya puts on the Sagittarius Cloth. WHAT COULD HE BE THINKING? HMMMM.

- I love Aiolia, but he definitely has that smug Gold Saint arrogance running through his being as much as anyone else. "FOR THE GOLD CLOTH TO CHOOSE THE LIKES OF YOU..."

- But this whole thing is great, too. He was willing to let Seiya go - for the day - out of respect for Shaina and okay yeah he did feel a little bad about that, but now that Seiya's put on a Gold Cloth? Nah, you little shit. Sorry Shaina, looks like it's right back to murder o'clock for Leo Aiolia!

- Seiya, with Aiolos's help, manages to land a punch on Lia. He is very cute in his excitemement about this! AIOLIA IS NOT.

- THE TERMILIA HAS UPGRADED TO A NEW, MADDER MODEL. You'll note the feel of this whole thing is REALLY CLOSE to the intimidation of vicious, brainwashed Aiolia later on. All of that was legit in him. That's why it's still interesting as a facet of his character.

- Lia throwing out the "kono Aiolias" left and right. Considering his earlier talk about how much he hated his brother and wanted to surpass him, are we projecting a little bit onto this new kid wearing his Cloth, Lia? Maybe... maybe a little?

- "Aiolia, why are you so loyal to the Pope!?" "BECAUSE I AM DEEPLY TRAUMATIZED--I MEAN, BECAUSE, UH, HE'S A GREAT MAN! YEAH! FUCK YOU!"

- Lia's face when Hyouga and Shun arrive on the scene. YIKES.

- And here when he effortlessly blocks Hyouga and Shun's attacks, with a "lol, you're really going to try to fight KONO AIOLIA, the gold saint?" Again, the contempt and sneering just drips off of him - he's actively mocking them - in a way that is totally, one hundred percent consistent with the way he acts when he is brainwashed, and against Hades's mooks much later. Again, holy shit, I would LOVE to get actual insight into Lia's brain re: his opinion of Milo and the Silvers.

- It is sort of sad, though, as the more pissed off and frustrated Aiolia is obviously getting - jesus christ he just came here to murder some kids out of self-loathing, and then this bullshit with Shaina, and then that bullshit with the Silver Saints, and then the MEGA FUCKING BULLSHIT of Seiya putting on his brother's Cloth and actually hitting him, and now THESE little shits show up and complicate things even more - it feels like he more forcefully repeats those rote robot-lines about "as a saint, for justice, in the name of Athena, pope is like a GOD." Aiolia has issues, man.

- As the Bronzies keep challenging him, we get another shot of Aiolia's shaking, clenched fist. Once again I must emphasize that his VA is doing a fucking amazing job of continuing to escalate Lia's various shades of mad and the various levels of "I am seriously point two seconds away from ripping you little shits apart"

- Yes, Aiolia is refusing to listen and obviously repeating lines he's been "fed" - but once again, I don't think it's stupidity, per se. It's thirteen years of trauma where he had to crush out any personal doubts in order to survive in the environment he was in. But god these kids are making it HARD and reviving OLD FEELINGS and that's PISSING HIM OFF so they GOTTA FUCKING DIE because SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.

- Hi Saori! Thanks for showing before everyone died!

- Leo "Fuck you I don't have time for this bullshit" Aiolia vs Kido "Fuck YOU I don't have time for this bullshit" Saori, go!

- I like how Lia refers to Aiolos by his name here, and as "the traitor Aiolos", though we see how in private, in his head, he still called him "nii-san" and he reverts to "nii-san" fully once he knows the truth. Aiolia had a hard life.

- thanks for the unnecessary flashback, episode, this writeup is already getting too long doot doot doot

- It's very hard to be told that "welp, I coped and doubted myself and twisted my thoughts and sense of self for thirteen years for nothing huh!" And I appreciate that Lia doesn't instantly believe her - he needs hard proof, because otherwise it means pretty much his whole life and everything he "worked" for just falls apart. He wouldn't be a bad fit as an Umineko character, really! <_<

- Saori selectively leaving out that Mitsumasa was also a horrible person but okay BABY SAORI IS CUTE AS FUUUUUUCKKKKKKKK

- God I love that Aiolia was totally willing to murder this young girl, too, to test if she was bullshitting him about being Athena. He was really going to try to punch her fucking head off. Aiolia owns.

- I LOVE SAORI FOR CALMLY AGREEING IT TOO HAVE I MENTIONED I FUCKING LOVE HER AND THAT SHE IS THE COOLEST?

- Lia's response to Seiya's outrage at the way he demands "proof." Even though it's brief, you really do get a sense of the weight of what Lia has been struggling with since Aiolos was framed, and how hard it is for him to just throw it all aside. And his "I need it!" re: proof.

- The ghost of Aiolos finally shows up, after all this time - exclusively to shit on his little brother. Hoo boy.

- It REALLY feels like twisting the knife for Aiolos to shoot him with basically "You're not only unworthy of being a Saint, you're unworthy of being my brother! You fuckup! You moron!" Like, again, if this is an indication of Aiolos's parenting methods with training Lia, uh... no wonder Lia has such deep-set issues...

- Like, Aiolia has legitimately suffered a LOT because of Aiolos's actions all this time, so to not have a single shred of compassion and only a very stony "you fucking failure" is pretty. Uh.

- Not that Lia challenges this himself, of course, as he cries over the fact that Los wasn't a traitor and "still fights for justice." Fully indoctrinated, after all!

- "I'm not suicidal over these developments or anything. Nope. Totally not running off here to get myself killed in atonement, encouraged by my brother's ghost who was yelling at me over what a sin I've committed. Not at all. Pay no attention to the sad lion behind the curtain!"

- Doesn't escape Saori's notice, either, as she quietly asks Lia not to die as he heads off.

- And Leo Aiolia exits the episode just as he entered it: in desperate, desperate, desperate need of some serious fucking therapy.

[avelera]

On Criticsm, Deserved and Undeserved, of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”

This latest tragic Amtrak derailment has me thinking about, of all things, the book “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. In part because, in that book, the increase of train derailments was a sign of the nation’s crumble into communism due to the theft and control by low-achieving but powerful thieves in government and the brain drain of John Galt’s movement. 

I grew up in a conservative household so naturally I was introduced to this book. It is, in essence, a near-future sci-fi novel which meant I could both read something mildly interesting and something my father approved of me reading, so it was a win-win. I ended up reading it twice in my lifetime, though both times I skipped the 60 page speech at the end in favor of getting back to the character drama. It wasn’t until adulthood that I came to understand how reviled the book was by the Left and it was a little after that when I understood why, and began to see the book’s flaws. 

It’s been on my mind on and off for awhile to compile my thoughts on that book, because I actually feel that while much of the criticism for it is valid, and I will address that too, there are some places where the vitriol of the criticism feels... well, rather sexist. For a young woman, there actually were some valid lessons I took away from the book which I see constantly ignored, usually by people who have not read it. By contrast, I find it darkly amusing at best and offensive at worst how many people who claim to love and live that book, especially in the right wing, are precisely what the book was preaching against, something they would know if they had actually read it, or had spent even a millisecond of their time on self reflection. There are also elements of the book I will touch on briefly which make the book’s overall application to real life--as so many conservatives have-- utterly ludicrous, because the book itself doesn’t interact with real life, and yet they still use it to justify their world view. This is the more common criticism of the novel, but I’d still like to add my spin on it without the usual venom it receives because of the critic’s loathing of the book’s “fandom”, rather than its content. 

I don’t expect many people to read this essay. Most people in my audience have not read Atlas Shrugged, and if they’ve even heard of it their ideas tend to be fixed whether or not they’ve read it based on their political upbringing. I was in a strange place of being completely politically uninvolved when I first read it (at age 14) and somewhat in the middle politically when I read it again years later. It’s also an 1,000 page long book, which is why I think both its promoters and its critics will often pay lip service to having read it, when they’re really only parroting another’s analysis (and that analysis inevitably leaves out huge swathes of the book’s content in order to promote a certain agenda and reading). 

First, I’d like to mention the good in this book, only because it is the aspect I see most ignored by both sides. Atlas Shrugged actually has a strong feminist message, which the Left tends to ignore in favor of criticizing its overall hyper-capitalist message, and which the Right tends to ignore because they don’t want to think about the fact that Ayn Rand was also pro-abortion, anti-religion, and called Ronald Reagan a communist. She at one point wanted to have a “good” priest be one of the POV characters in the novel, but ultimately found that she could not find a single spin on the character that would actually fit her world view. I’m very glad she didn’t, as I think it would have only poured gasoline on the fire of the current right wing theocracy. 

But back to its feminist message, in which we’re going to need to invoke death-of-the-author and let the text read for itself. Given Rand’s own dislike of the Feminist movement, I find it ironic how much she embodied it. Another side-effect of growing up in a conservative household was assumptions around gender roles. Even while growing up in a relatively non-religious household, and encouraged in my studies, there was just as much pervasive patriarchy as anywhere else. Certain feminine roles were assumed. This included endless selflessness as a virtue on the part of women. 

Dagny Taggart is the unquestioned main character of Atlas Shrugged. While other male characters like Hank Rearden, Francisco D’Anconia, and John Galt may make appearances, its always comes back to Dagny’s journey. This alone does not seem to get mentioned very often by either side. This central novel of conservative thinking is by a woman and about a woman, with the men in it as supporting characters. This alone of course does not excuse a book, but Dagny’s journey is also about freeing women from the shackles of the utter self-destruction by selflessness that the world demands of them to this day. One more reason Ayn Rand would be horrified to see what the small men of the right wing have used her novel to justify-- namely, the legal infringement of any kind onto the personal life of an adult or on the relationship between consenting adults.

For a young woman who had every corner of the world telling her that the greatest thing in life is to grow into a role of self-sacrifice, be it for the man in her life, or for children, or that being a caretaker was the most noble role she could ever hope to achieve even at the expense of any personal dreams, Dagny Taggart was a role model. She was a railway executive who had climbed her way up through the ranks from childhood to adulthood, spending long hours and working hard because it was what she wanted to do. This wasn’t a traditionally feminine industry either. Unlike Sex in the City, which was popular at the time I was re-reading the novel, I remember pointing out that even in such a female-centric show which was deemed progressive in how it showcased working women, they were still largely in roles deemed acceptable for modern women. Fashion, PR, art, and even certain practices of law wouldn’t cause even the most raging chauvinist to necessarily bat an eyelash if it’s where a woman ends up (before she meets her man and settles down to raise a family). But Dagny had no interest in a family, she took lovers as interested her without even a flicker of shame, did not sacrifice herself or her happiness for them and actively rejected those who asked her to give up what she loved for them. But most inspiring of all, she worked in railways, because she loved it and she couldn’t imagine any other life. 

What Ayn Rand had to say to women about denying selflessness and self-sacrifice in favor of personal and career self-actualization seems to be the one element no one wants to talk about. She gave a role model for young women interested in working, and more than most literature to this day, gave a role model for if they wanted to work outside traditionally feminine fields. She told them not to sacrifice themselves for the men or the families in their lives just because it was expected of them. She told them they could and should take lovers without shame, without sacrificing themselves just because some man wants to turn them into their personal domestic slave. She gave a roadmap for denying those men so you could live your own life. I find the Left curiously silent on this point, I can only assume as I said above because they haven’t actually read the book. The Right is silent on this point too, though I imagine for different reasons, like their male dominance and the number of them that seem to curiously think Rearden or Galt (who barely appears in the novel) are the main characters. 

That, however, is where my praise of the novel ends. I think as a woman in a man’s world, Ayn Rand had the authority to speak as a professional, a writer, a refugee, and an intellectual on the topic of Dagny. She could provide that role model for other women. Her knowledge of economics and markets, however, leaves something to be desired despite the fact the so-called economy obsessed right wing would put her worldview on a pedestal. 

I called Atlas Shrugged a sci-fi novel for a reason. That it is not shelved as one is unfortunate. In a sci-fi novel if you ignore sweeping aspects of the real world in favor of making your point or creating your alternate world, the reader generally understands that and the world and author don’t generally try to pretend that is is actually realistic and representative beyond its key points. For some baffling reason, conservatives think that the economy in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” has even a passing acquaintance with reality, and that it could somehow be mapped onto reality. As I said above, I think that Ayn Rand has some profound things to say to young, unattached women looking to establish themselves in the world. I’m not sure what she has to say to everyone else.

The world of Atlas Shrugged cannot possibly represent the real world because it doesn’t actually contain major elements of the real world which are key to its own worldview of a hyper capitalist society. All the industries represented are commodities and utilities, such as copper and steel, transportation and energy. There are little to no references to structural cultural barriers. Indeed, culture in general is limited and only to prove the point. I cannot speak to all industries but the most damning absences from the narrative to me are the absence of marketing, the global economy, and of children.

I may not work in a commodities or utilities, but I have worked in marketing. Ayn Rand dreams of a world where the best product wins, unless an unfair government is putting its finger on the scale. And that might be true, again if we were only talking about commodities and utilities. But there is no mention of consumer products. There is no mention of how the sophistry of marketing and advertising can be used to make the lesser product seem the better one. There’s no mention of how humans may be convinced through lies and half-truths as to which product is higher quality. There’s little mention of food quality control, or the fact that it’s all well and good to say the market will prevent people from putting out poison products, but that doesn’t really help to boycott a company in the future if your baby just died from spoiled milk. She does not at all reference that successful titans of industry can become successful and stay successful by selling sub-par products that bury the higher quality products through cheaper production costs.

This is a huge oversight when you try to apply her world to ours. And it’s not like she couldn’t have known this, already products like Edison’s diamond-tip gramophone with its superior sound had been buried by cheaper-made models with the help of marketing. But the fact she doesn’t address it is fine as a sci-fi author, it’s not fine when right wing thinkers take her word as gospel. 

Atlas Shrugged also shares with many post-apocalyptic sci-fi stories the total absence of a wider world. Just as we asked in The Hunger Games why isn’t anyone intervening in the fallen U.S., where did everyone go, we’re wondering in Atlas Shrugged why no one is making cheaper products for import, even if it’s by slave labor. The case within the novel is that the whole world, the entire world has fallen back into the Dark Ages because of communism, with only the U.S. hanging by a thread. At the very least it’s western hemisphere-centric, with the only other action we actually see taking place in South America when Francisco D’Anconia’s mines get nationalized (and he murders people in retribution, let’s not forget that). 

But just as Rand doesn’t talk about marketing, she also doesn’t really talk about the availability of natural resources, or any kind of impact on the environment. Resources in her world are essentially infinite, if one is only a strong enough personality to go find them. There is no long-term damage that we can see. There are no toxic chemicals to be spilled and poison local communities. That’s because there are, in essence, no communities at all. Cities just sort of exist as a capitalist function, as do countries, there is no pooling of knowledge and resources for any other successful purpose than personal financial achievement. It ignores an endless amount of actual history (which is barely mentioned in her world), or anthropology, or the natural world, or sociology, which are usually only brought up in order to be dismissed.

But I think the most glaring and purposeful absence in her books are children. It’s because that’s where her world breaks down entirely. As a childless unmarried intellectual, Ayn Rand didn’t move in many circles where children were central. It allowed her to write a book where children and infants are occasionally glimpsed in order to make a point about poisoning the next generation, but the actual work of childrearing goes largely ignored. It may be one more reason that the men of the right wing don’t even see how much these books don’t work in the real world, because they’re still allowed to sit outside that process and treat their ability to do so as a personal achievement rather than a privilege.

None of the men or women in Ayn Rand’s book worry about the capitalist market poisoning their children. They don’t have to worry about maternal leave, or sexism towards pregnant women. They don’t have to take the time out of their day for pre or post natal care, or take their kids to school, or take a day off from work when their children are sick. As said above, there are no communities in her world. Presumably, everyone makes enough to have a nanny to tend their children, but how does the nanny make enough? Rand is silent on these points. And I must assume she knows what she’s doing, because she knew that to show the natural “communism” of the family unit would be to water down her message.

And let me reiterate, as a sci-fi author it’s fine if you don’t show every aspect of the real world if it would water down the point your sci-fi novel is trying to achieve. I can’t help but notice that Rand is fairly unique in the criticism she receives for not creating an exhaustively complete alternate universe, that there are flaws in her argument when you show that the world of Atlas Shrugged is not rigorously functional. Asimov, Rodenberry, and Heinlein don’t get nearly as much flack. (I can’t help but notice the gender of these writers, and I think the Left needs to be a little more self-reflective of why Rand is allowed to be gleefully torn down with such vitriol, whereas many male writers on the same topic are given respectful consideration.) But then again, those male writers are shelved under sci-fi, whereas Rand is one of those rare “lucky” sci-fi writers who was graduated from that “lower” genre to the vaults of literature because we arbitrarily decided her book is important enough to belong there. Despite the fact it literally contains magical machines, sonic bombs, futuristic metals, and a post-apocalyptic global wasteland that wouldn’t be out of place in any number of zombie apocalypses.

I could go on to discuss the fact that many right wing thinkers in government more closely match the jowly, spoiled, ignorant villains of her book than they do the titans of industry that are her protagonists. Someday I’ll put together a proper analysis along with sources and a more recent re-read pointing out just how many of the people who thump Atlas Shrugged as if it were their Bible fit exactly into the archetype Rand was denouncing, while they in turn denounce those who fit her vision. But that’s not Rand’s fault, that’s her fandom’s fault. 

The more important lesson is, people can’t continue to treat the sci-fi world of Atlas Shrugged as some sort of model for the real world, any more than they should do so with Asimov’s Foundation, or Herbert’s Dune. Those were contemporary sci-fi works talking about their own time periods. For goodness sake, Ayn Rand doesn’t even predict America’s trucking or aviation dependency, the fact that the world takes place in what can only be termed locomotive-punk should alone disqualify it as a model. But I do think we are unfair to her about the topics that she was qualified to pontificate on, and for that I give credit to the whole rambling, sprawling, pseudo-researched mess for giving me Dagny Taggart, the first an only unapologetic female titan of a male-dominated industry main character I’ve seen to this day.

[shaizstern]

Article from WSJ: The Secret to Asking Better Questions

Most bosses think they have all the answers. But the best bosses know what to ask to encourage fresh thinking. Here are six ways to build that skill.

L.J. DAVIDS

By Hal Gregersen

May 9, 2019 

It is often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different outcome.

Well, the same can be said of questions: Keep asking the same kind of question, and it is insane to think you are going to get a different kind of answer.

If you want a dramatically better answer, the key is to ask a better question.

In that one simple statement I have found a career’s worth of research, teaching and advisory work. No one raises an objection when they hear it—who could argue with the value of brilliant reframings? But at the same time, that statement alone is rarely enough. Most people want to be handed the five paradigm-smashing questions to ask.

Unfortunately, that isn’t possible. But what is possible is creating the conditions where the right questions are more likely to bubble up. To that end, here are some clear, concrete, measurable steps that any boss—or anyone, for that matter—can take to come up with those paradigm-smashing questions we all seek.

1. Understand what kinds of questions spark creative thinking.

There are lots of questions you can ask. But only the best really knock down barriers to creative thinking and channel energy down new, more productive pathways. A question that does has five traits. It reframes the problem. It intrigues the imagination. It invites others’ thinking. It opens up space for different answers. And it’s nonaggressive—not posed to embarrass, humiliate or assert power over the other party.

One CEO I know is aware that his position can get in the way of getting honest information that will challenge his view of things. Instead of coming at his managers with something like, “Competitor X beat us to the punch with that move—how did we let that happen?” he gets more useful input with questions like, “What are you wrestling with and how can I help?” He asks customers and supply-chain partners: “If you were in my shoes, what would you be doing differently than what you see us doing today?”

Think about how these questions change the whole equation. People don’t start off defensive. The problem isn’t already tightly framed. The questions are open-ended, and the answers can be imaginative—rather than telling the boss what he wants to hear.

If you want to turn this first point into a trackable activity, how about this: Start noting in a daily diary how many questions you’ve asked that meet the five criteria.

2. Create the habit of asking questions.

Many bosses simply aren’t used to asking questions; they’re used to giving answers. So in the early stages of building your questioning capacity, it’s helpful to start by copying other people’s questions. It’s the equivalent of practicing your scales. Once you’ve got the scales down, you can start to improvise.

You could do worse than to follow the questions asked by management thinker Peter Drucker, who liked to jump-start strategic thinking by asking: “What changes have recently happened that don’t fit ‘what everyone knows’ ”?

Another example: A leader in a consumer packaged-goods company constantly asks: “What more can we do to delight the customer at the point of purchase? And what more to delight them at the point of consumption?”

Again, think about what that does. Sure, the CEO could constantly repeat that the company wants to satisfy consumers. But by asking this question, it builds the habit of thinking in questions. And that, in turn, leads to daily inquiry about matters large and small, and an organization that keeps pushing its competitive advantages forward.

3. Fuel that habit by making yourself generate new questions.

Don’t stop with that generic question set, no matter how well you think it covers the bases. It will become just another activity rut reinforcing today’s assumptions if you and others become too familiar with it. Your goal is to generate new and better questions, not to cap your questioning career at the level of playing flawless scales.

Instead, every day, note something in your environment that is intriguing and possibly a signal of change in the air. Then, restrain yourself from issuing a comment on it—or if it’s your habit, a tweet—and instead take a moment to articulate the questions it raises.

Then share the most compelling of those questions with someone else. Engage with it for a minute. To some extent, this is doing “reps,” exercising your questioning muscles so they’ll be strong enough when the occasion demands. But it’s also more than that, because chances are it will actually be one of these many, seemingly small, questions that yields your next big breakthrough.

Let me offer a well-known example. Blake Mycoskie was in Argentina when by his account he noticed a lot of children running around barefoot. He didn’t need to ask why they didn’t have shoes—obviously they were poor—but here’s the question it brought him to: Is there a sustainable way to provide children with shoes without having to rely on donations? And thus he launched the social enterprise Toms, with its famous “one-for-one” business model.

4. Respond with the power of the pause.

When someone comes to you with a problem, don’t immediately respond with an answer. This is harder than it sounds, because you have probably internalized a sense long ago that you’re the boss because you’re decisive and have good judgment—in other words, you have the best answers.

Instead, make it your habit to respond with a question—ideally one that reframes the problem, but at least one that draws out more of your colleague’s thoughts on the matter. I’m not talking about the cop-out rejoinder of, “Well, what do YOU think we should do?” Help the person think through how the decision should be made, with questions like: “What are we optimizing for?” “What’s the most important thing we have to achieve with whatever direction we take?” Or: “What makes this decision so hard? What problem felt like this in the past?”

The payoff here comes in two forms. You’re teaching the colleague the value of pausing to get the question right before rushing to the answer. And nine times out of 10, you’re going to wind up with a better answer than the one you would have blurted out with less deliberation.

5. Brainstorm for questions.

This is an idea that is so simple, and involves an exercise so fast, that it constantly surprises me how effective it is. Whenever you or your team is at an impasse, or there is a sense that some insight is eluding you regarding a problem or opportunity, just stop and spend four minutes generating nothing but questions about it. Don’t spend a second answering the questions, or explaining why you posed a certain one. As in brainstorming, go for high volume and do no editing in progress. See if you can generate at least 15-20.

Eighty percent of the time, I find, the exercise yields some new angle of attack on the problem, and it virtually always re-energizes people to go at it with renewed gusto.

Here’s an example from an innovation team in a consumer-goods company. Struggling to come up with a new concept to test, we tried one of those question bursts. It started with, “What if we launched a response to [a competitor’s product] and did it better?” But soon enough it arrived at, “Are we stuck on assuming a certain price range? What if a customer was willing to give us 10 times that—what could we deliver that would be that valuable to them?” Bingo—the team zeroed in on that question as having real juice in it, and started generating more exciting ideas.

6. Reward your questioners.

Finally, keep track of how you respond when someone in the room asks a question that challenges how you’ve been approaching a problem or feels like it threatens to derail a solution train already leaving the station.

I remember hearing from executives at one company that the boss always surprised his top team by being willing to hear out even the craziest ideas. When others in the room were shaking their heads and hastening to move along, he would be the one to say, “Wait, say more…” to find the part of that flight of fantasy that could work.

If there’s one constant theme here, it’s the idea that bosses should reconceive what their primary job is. They aren’t there to come up with today’s best answers, or even just to get their teams to come up with them. Their job is to build their organization’s capacity for constant innovation.

Their enterprise’s future—and their own career trajectory—depends on their resolve to ask better questions.

[impurelight]

Far Cry New Dawn - Peak Far Cry

After playing Far Cry New Dawn I have to say it is the best of Far Cry, and it is also the worst of Far Cry. Let's unpack that. First the good. This is undoubtedly the most fun I've ever had with a Far Cry game.

"Why?" You ask. Well, it's because of the setting. New Dawn takes place after the bombs fall. So there is no money in this game. Instead you have a handful of different materials you trade with. Things like wire, titanium, circuits, and ethanol. It can be a bit ridiculous running around with 100s of titanium bars in your pocket but it's Far Cry.

With all these new materials they added crafting and a bunch of RPG mechanics. And they doubled down on the RPG mechanics hard.

There are 2 major reasons you want materials. The first is to upgrade your base. It's basically like Far Cry Primal's base upgrades just like actually good. Your base (Prosperity) has a few different places you can upgrade. You can upgrade the medical place for more health, you can upgrade the garage to get better vehicles, you can upgrade the weapons place to be able to craft better weapons, you can upgrade the cartography place to be able to buy maps, etc.

There's also weapons. There are actually 4 tiers of weapon. Level 1, level 2, level 3, and elite. This 4 tiered ranking system is used everywhere in the game. Enemies appear in these levels. Also missions and outposts use them although not the elite tier. Elite tier enemies can also only be tagged until you lose line of sight on them for some reason. You can't attach components to weapons like suppressors manually like in previous games. There is an upgrade mechanic but it only upgrades the firepower by 5%. And the overpowered suppressed sniper rifle is a level 3. It's even more overpowered now because enemies will not know where you are even if they get shot.

Then there are 2 ways to get materials. First there's raiding outposts. You can also reset outposts. Resetting outposts gives you some ethanol and allows you to retake it meaning more ethanol but enemies come back stronger until the outpost reaches level 3 (it starts level 1 then goes 2 and then 3). You can also get armour pieces which are just aesthetic. Not really sure why you'd want them as you hardly ever see your character.

Also there are the raids. Basically they're sort of like giant outposts at certain locations. A bridge, an aircraft carrier, an amusement park, Alcatraz which I suspect is a modified Watch Dogs 2 asset, etc. So you fly there with a crazy french dude, locate a package, and signal for extraction by helicopter while waves of enemies come after you.

It's pretty fun. The only problem is there's no real reason to do it. I had low level gear until almost the very end. It was just this boss fight that was too hard so I had to upgrade my gear. If the missions were harder then it would give me more incentive to actually do the cool stuff. I know people will complain that Ubisoft is forcing us to buy the microtransactions just to progress. And those people need to just shut up and do the side content.

So that's the good. Now the bad. It's the story mostly. The story is just not good. Far Cry is known for having its ridiculous villains. So the New Dawn villains are quite a shock to say the least. They're just evil. Why are they evil? Dunno. They just are.

And the protagonist is no better. You play as the 'Captain of Security' and they are just the most generic character. It's basically the same premise as in Far Cry 5. But in 5 you play as a rookie (rook) and you sort of understood the character. You have this team and you went through this disaster. In New Dawn the game opens with your train derailed, and you're thrust into Hope County not really knowing anyone or having any reason to be there. You're just there. No backstory. No friends. Well, one friend. This guy called Thomas Rush, but he hardly talks to you so it doesn't really count. And there's no reason to keep going. It's just 'do this for us' and 'do that for us'.

All this makes the game feel super generic. Every other game has a hook. Like 3 it's tropical islands. Blood dragon it's the future. 4 is Napal. Primal it's the stone age. 5 it's this American location. And all the music and stuff was always themed like that. But New Dawn has none of that. It's set in Hope County but it could literally be set anywhere, well apart from the occasional US flags. It's not as bad as Odyssey's super repetitive locations but it is pretty generic.

As for the plot itself it is just stupid. Remember all the crazy supernatural stuff from 5? Well, we're going to do it again just it's even more crazy. And the things the protagonist does just for one hostage. It's so stupid it made me want to facepalm so hard.

Other than that it's basically an extended version of the Far Cry 5 experience although without any planes oddly enough. There's pepper stashes, convoys, and tasks (kill this animal, use this weapon, etc). The usual.

And you better get those pepper stashes quick because you start off with nothing: 2 weapon slots and not even a grapple which is essential at some locations. But once you do a bunch of tasks you'll have like 50 skill points and just keep on upgrading the same thing over and over. Yeah, some skills can be unlocked multiple times.

Also there's a new random event where a supply drop appears. Supply drops: they're going to be the thing in 2019. And all the enemies have healthbars now. Pretty unnecessary. They just highlight how absurdly bullet spongy some animals are. But I guess it makes sense if you're going to have 4 tiers of enemies.

Also new is your AI companions can drive you. You can even use the mounted gun while driving. You can also only have one companion at a time and when they die you need resources to revive them. Which is a pain when they die due to a physics glitch.

There are also resources to collect at locations. It's a reason to explore them, but not a good reason as those crazy french guy's quest give you far more resources. And outposts are clearly visible on your map by their smoke trails even if no one pointed out their locations to you yet which was a major annoyance I had with the previous game.

You know I was playing the Division 2 open beta and it actually made me realize how good Far Cry 5 is. With respawn locations that are actually close by and fun shooting mechanics and missions that don't constantly kill you. I think looking back New Dawn will be when Far Cry peaked. Not to say that it's perfect. They could definitely add more to it, but no other Far Cry game will be that much better than New Dawn. I probably won't be writing anything on The Division 2, but if I did it would be titled: Division 2 - Hold F To Open Doors.

[papaculture]

The Railway Children

I’ll confess I never read, watched or in any other way experienced The Railway Children as a kid. Which is odd because, like most children, I was a serious trainspotter (an urge that I hasn’t wholly faded, but which I’ve learned to suppress.) I first stumbled upon E. Nesbit’s tale when trying to derail Child One’s train obsession from Thomas onto more rewarding routes.

I’ve already written about Ivor The Engine, but it’s worth mentioning Graham Greene’s The Little Train (vividly illustrated by the great Edward Ardizzone), in which a branch line locomotive heads off to see the big smoke, only to realise he was happier at home.

We came to The Railway Children via a condensed Ladybird Classic, which was still a little dense for our then two-year-old. Better was a simplified Usborne version, which reduced the story to around 20 colourful pages.

Flagging and fainting

There was one page that fascinated our first daughter. It was the same image used on the cover — a young girl stood astride the tracks, flagging down a steaming engine. This, of course, is the story’s dramatic climax, in which brave Roberta and her two siblings prevent a terrible railway disaster. For months afterwards reading this, Child One would re-enact this scene, complete with Roberta’s faint once her courageous task is accomplished.

I think this moment of heroism was appealing for a number of reasons.

One, it was a rare example of a young girl facing — and overcoming — physical peril.

Two, she does so without sacrificing her femininity (more of that in a moment).

Three, it’s a recognisable, prosaic sort of adventure: even allowing for the old fashioned steam engine, the idea of having to flag down a train feels more accessible than, say, facing off against pirates or aliens.

Four, she faints.

This faint — and our child’s obsession with it — troubled me for a long while. Just as I’ve been troubled by how she enjoys re-enacting Sleeping Beauty’s century long coma (actually quite a useful performance if you have things to do around the house) or numerous princesses being chained up by evil princes or Jabba the Hutt. Given how hard we’ve pushed as parents to break down limiting gender norms, where had this fascination with oppressed (or unconscious) women come from?

The bravery muscle

What Child One was doing, of course, was displaying an innate understanding of drama. She had instinctively picked out the most dangerous, desperate moments for the characters she connected with. Which, unfortunately, tended to be when they were at their most damsel-like. A reminder, if one was needed, that representation matters.

But I’ve also come to understand the faint from a different perspective. It’s not a disappointing moment of weakness on Roberta’s part, but a reassuringly human one. Heroes, particularly heroes in children’s stories, are expected to be flawlessly brave. This approach paints bravery as an innate characteristic. You are born a hero, with reserves of courage that will allow you to overcome whatever hardship a storyteller should put your way.

Even as a child, while I liked to fantasise I would be as brave as Batman or Doctor Who, part of me feared that I wouldn’t. In a moment of crisis, I would discover my reserves or courage were empty.

What Roberta’s faint suggests instead is that bravery isn’t innate, but an exercise of will. Just as you can force yourself to run faster to win a race, collapsing in a breathless paroxysm at the finish line, you can force yourself to be brave – and fold into a heap when your job is done.

Roberta is a hero not because she is naturally braver than her siblings (including brother Peter), but because she identifies the necessary course of action and exerts muscles of courage we all possess – and might develop further with practise.

Feminine and fine

I said above that it’s important Roberta doesn’t sacrifice her femininity in her moment of heroism. This is a complex point which I’ll attempt to do justice. On the face of it, this is reinforcing the sort of tired gender norms that I strive to avoid in parenting.

But I’ve also seen how, from the moment she first opened a book, Child One would immediately identify the (usually scant) female characters. She was looking for people who looked like her. This has meant a lot of identifying with characters who are passive princesses, fantastically evil fairies or simply mute. People who get chained up or should be chained up. Once again, representation matters.

Due to the Edwardian setting, Roberta is recognisably — stereotypically — feminine. But this doesn’t prevent her being the most sensible and heroic character in the story.

There is a temptation when resisting gender norms to (often inadvertently) dismiss feminine archetypes as being inherently inferior to their male equivalents. When a female character becomes a hero she is required to essentially become more like a man. In The Famous Five, George is far more proactive than Anne, but she isn’t really identifiable as girl. Indeed, she longs to be considered a boy and insists on having her hair cut short in the hope that people will mistake her for one.

I absolutely don’t mean to suggest that women should be feminine. Gender is a construction, after all. (I should add that George is my favourite member of the Famous Five). But I worry the way we often tackle this is to privilege masculine characteristics simply because they are more associated with agency. Heroes are masculine, therefore you need to be masculine to be a hero. Roberta is proof that you can be a girl — complete with the affectations by which our society identifies one — and still be a hero.

A new family

Indeed, much of the appeal of The Railway Children lies in its strong (and rare) female focus. Although set prior to the Great War (I try not to think what might have happened to Peter in the years that followed the story), there is a sense of life in wartime here. The father has been sent away (in this case wrongly imprisoned), leaving the women to fend for themselves. And fend they do.

Roberta keeps the household together and ultimately rescues her father, but her mother is far from passive. She’s an appealingly complex character, whose great pragmatism does not prevent her from living a rich creative life. Having moved the family to a cheaper, rural existence, she supports them by writing stories for publication. She, like her daughter, is an intellectual.

It would be easy to criticise the story for its outdated values, particularly in relation to ideas of class, or its portrait of a monochrome little England. But I feel its antique mores are largely confined to set dressing, while the themes of familial love and responsibility don’t require too much stretching to fit our modern world.

Some might also find the story somewhat slight. Not a lot happens. What is most remarkable about Roberta’s moment of heroism – the dramatic climax – is that it happens halfway through the book. But I think peril and drama is often overrated in children’s fiction.

Consider Swallows and Amazons, an adventure story where there is no danger at all. Instead, the action revolves around an imagined conflict, a war game between two friendly tribes of sailors. I think that sort of gentle adventure speaks more powerfully to kids than we realise. The stakes are somehow more vivid for being smaller.

The Railway Children has its moments of high excitement, but privileges connection and character over incident. A mystery is solved, a danger overcome, yet the most important thing that happens is that a family learns it can rebuild a shattered world. In losing a parent (if only temporarily), the children discover their own strengths, look outwards, and reshape their family into a stranger, stronger community.

The Book

There are countless editions, but I recommend the Usborne versions. There are three and we’ve read them all at different ages and stages. The first, illustrated by Alan Marks, is the simplest, easily read within five minutes. There’s then a slightly more complex version of this adaptation, running to around 25 minutes and split into chapters. The big lure here is that this edition comes with a CD of the audiobook, which helps your child read the book for themselves (I’m a big fan of audiobooks and the Usborne series are tremendous). We’ve also purchased Usborne’s unabridged edition, which contains a different, somewhat prissier set of illustrations.

On screen

There are three existing screen adaptations, all of them starring Jenny Agutter. The first is a black and white BBC series from 1968, which is more than a little creaky. The most recent is another TV adaptation from 2000, which didn’t grab me. For me, the 1970 film (starring Bernard Cribbins as Stationmaster Perks) is the definitive. Beautifully shot in warm Technicolor (the blu-ray has a stunning transfer), it boasts a flawless performance from Agutter as Roberta. Child One has watched this at least half a dozen times and none of us is tired of it yet.

On audio

There’s a fantastic two part BBC radio play from 2006, which has kept Child One busy for a couple of hours at a time. Simple narration makes it easy to follow, even for younger kids.