#virtuous victimhood

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

In the postmodern religion, the "god" is the worship of oneself as a victim. No reason, no logic, no evidence will dissuade the believer, because it's based on faith and the need to feel significant.

Like any religion, they have a right to believe what they want about their faith, but we're not obliged to play along.

[indigosfindings]

one of the craziest fixtures of Internet Debate is that thing where people goad others into insulting them so that they can leverage "being insulted" as evidencing the virtue of their argument

[existingtm]

I think one of the reasons I'm absolutely insane about Jun Mochizuki's work is because she's the only person I've seen do a perfect execution of the "abused becomes the abuser" trope.

All of the characters in Pandora Heart and Vanitas no Carte are incredibly morally complex. They're heart wrenching, relatable, endearing, aggravating, and endlessly flawed.

MochiJun puts us in the uncomfortable position of confronting that victims can be perpetrators, that those who are hurt can hurt others, that sometimes, people you love are bad, and sometimes you love bad people.

Abuse is never justified; it's handled by different characters in a variety of ways. It's repressed, reciprocated, passed on, and stopped. MochiJun shows victims become awful people, not inherently because they were abused, but because of who they are as people and how that shapes the way they deal with abuse.

She shows victims as the complex people they are beyond victimhood. There are characters who are just and kind after facing abuse, and ones who are twisted and cruel. Most delightfully, she brings us characters who are both.

The heroes of her stories choose love, gentleness, compassion, and mercy. She shows that our choices matter, that our relationships are integral to who we are.

I think of how some of the characters, in spite of these forgiving traits, are not required to forgive their abusers in order to be seen as virtuous figures. They're allowed to stand their ground, even if it's violent to do so.

I think of how, at the same time, some characters are loved despite being abusive, because a tender character sees more in them than evil. Because abuse comes from people, and people are endlessly complex.

I think of how the heroes of the story tear themselves apart for the violence they inflict, and are shown the most painful love in return. How that love often comes in the form of calling them out on their bullshit.

I love the love in Pandora Hearts and in Vanitas no Carte because it's painfully human in the face of horrors beyond mortal comprehension.

I love the flaws in the characters because they're painfully human despite some of these characters' otherworldly natures.

Jun Mochizuki doesn't show us the abused becoming abusers to give us the idea that abuse is an unstoppable cycle, but rather to show that it is stoppable. To show that people have a choice in who they become. And that's one of the most wonderful and terrible things about people.

[applepie2523]

" HOTD's Issues Writing Women Part 2: The Whitewashing of Rhaenyra

**This is part 2 of my analysis on the issues with the writing of the two main female characters. If you haven’t already please read my part 1 post where I analyze Alicent’s character assassination which you can find on my profile.** I think many fans on the Blacks and Greens and in between regarding HOTD have been concerned and disappointed with the way the two main female characters: Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower have been written in HOTD seasons 1-2. This is very understandable. Female characters in general in HOTD and I think a lot of Hollywood films nowadays are not being written as well as they used to be and could be. Go on Youtube or Google and you'll find many film reviews/tv show reviews that critique the Mary Sue and Girlbossification or just poorly written in general female characters that are taking up a chunk of characters in Hollywood. Rhaenyra and Alicent to me were such great characters in F&B. They were two different kinds of medieval women in a fantasy setting. One, the medieval queen who gains power/influence through her relationship with men and advocating for her son. Two, the medieval queen who sought power in her name and defied some norms that make her compelling but also immoral in their eyes. They are two deeply flawed and complex characters fighting on opposite sides of a dynastic civil war.

This post is here to address the main issues of whitewashing when it comes to writing Rhaenyra Targaryen.

\***Some disclaimers: This is no issue with the actor themself. Emma D'Arcy while I may disagree with their opinions from time to time, they are a wonderful actor who is doing the best they can with the scripts they're given, so this is by no means a critique of them. I am going off of the show canon although the book will be mentioned.**

**So firstly... What is whitewashing?**

The modern definition of white washing is to cast in a show/movie or rewrite a character of a minority and make them white. For example, if someone decides to do a movie about Rosa Parks and they cast Emma Stone. However, white washing has another definition. It means to essentially remove or hide negative unpleasant facts or traits of a person or thing. I think Rhaenyra Targaryen suffers from this problem as many of her written negative traits or deeds so far are either not shown, projected onto another character close to her (Daemon Targaryen mostly), or severely downplayed. This results in a character that is almost too virtuous and bland for the setting she is in and a far cry from who she should be. A character whom doesn't seem to fit in the ruthless at times immoral world of Westeros. A character whom is almost a close to a Mary Sue. As I am very much on the belief that flaws versus virtues are what make a character compelling and human.

**I will say not every change made to Rhaenyra story arc and personality are necessarily all bad. Some are good ideas just poorly executed (ex - exploring more of Rhaenyra's hinted bisexuality, as there are hints in F&B that her close relationship with Laena may or may not have been more than platonic) and others are just good changes in general.**

*1. Victims vs. Villains - Biases in Writing Female Characters*

In the words of the iconic Grey's Anatomy actress Ellen Pompeo, “Women are one of two roles. You’re either the victim or the villain. But the victims are only victims because they don’t have what it takes to be the villain.” I think she states the major issue with writing female characters nowadays that HOTD has an issue with. Women must either be victims or villains. The character assassination of Alicent and white washing of Rhaenyra to me stems from this: Alicent is the villain in Rhaenyra's story to Rhaenyra's victimhood.

*2. Rhaenyra's Negative Traits: Arrogance, Hot Temper, Frivolity, and Bad Decisions to Peace-Loving and Plainness*

Rhaenyra had many great qualities in the book but it is only when coupled with major character flaws are we truly compelled. She was a loving mother, passionate, intelligent to a degree, etc. However, she was also very ambitious and power-hungry, arrogant at times, quick to anger, slow to forgive, and frivolous at times. **As a writer myself, I firmly believe that characters are truly humanized and compelling when they have major character flaws coupled with their virtues. Flaws they either have to overcome or use to their advantage. Flaws that make them who they are. Flaws create layers of complexity in a character. Or Flaws that help foster the characters downfall.**

I'm not saying the Rhaenyra in the show isn't flawed. She is! For example, I think what's great is that a flaw they gave Rhaenyra is something show Viserys also had: the ability to ignore or downplay potential conflicts or hard truths versus facing them head on. Viserys refused to see the potential conflicts in naming Rhaenyra heir or pretending her elder three children are trueborn. Rhaenyra in the show refused to listen to Jace whose concerns regarding his parentage as her successor and the dragonseeds were ignored or dismissed. The issue is thought, Rhaenyra is not given the flaws that she most certainly had, **flaws that helped lead to her downfall**. She's not flawed the way she's supposed to be.

Similar to many other Targaryens including her half-brother Aegon II, Rhaenyra was quick to anger and slow to forgive. We have some brief moments where we see Rhaenyra's temper and quick witt, but we don't see the major moments where her major character flaws are shown. Alicent provokes Rhaenyra for example in season 1, having her take Joffrey to her moments after he is born. We never see Rhaenyra provoke Alicent back. Any times where we should have seen Rhaenyra's sharp temper at the slightest of remarks are not shown.

Rhaenyra's actions herself were also very whitewashed with how they were portrayed. We either see their negative consequences downplayed, not shown, or the actions were projected onto another male character. In the books due to how similar Laenor and Rhaenyra were in looks (I mean they were both white) there was still a tad more ambiguity as to whether or not Jace, Luke, and Joffrey were bastards. Race changing the Velaryons made it even more obvious her elder three boys were bastards. I took issue with the writing of Rhaenyra's dialogue and that of the characters around her, not truly showcasing why having bastards, especially as a woman, is a truly egregious thing. The potential chaos Rhaenyra could cause was completely downplayed.

A few actions for example that were incredibly violent and evil were butchered. First example being the murder of Vaemond Velaryon. I was disappointed with this scene. Firstly, we only see Vaemond protest Luke inheriting Driftmark which sets it up as more so an ambitious second son seeking power versus a man who doesn't want his house to be run by someone not of his blood. We don't see other Velaryons protesting with him. After Vaemond made his little speech, Rhaenyra orders him dead and Daemon kills him on **her orders**. She then viciously has his corpse fed to her dragon Syrax. I think this scene was crucial as it foreshadows the danger Rhaenyra would be in the future to House Velaryon and sow more seeds of discontent that are crucial to the house's eventual turn to the Green side. Not only is Vaemond killed more viciously, Viserys orders the tongue removal of even more Velaryons who sided with Vaemond with Rhaenyra's consent! Instead, the show projects this entirely onto Daemon. Daemon goes Rogue (see what I did there) and kills Vaemond on his own accord. Rhaenyra stands there shocked and doesn't even order the body fed to her dragon. Rhaenyra is absolved from all blame to Vaemond's unjust execution without trial.

The thing about B&C is Rhaenyra was paralyzed with grief for her son, Luke. The moment her child died was the moment where her descent into madness and powerful wrath began to truly manifest and she would stop at nothing. I was very disappointed in the fact that she has one episode of grieving and then continues to be so level-headed. I couldn't feel her grief, rage, and resentment towards the Greens for her son's death that makes the war even worse. Daemon tells Rhaenyra that he would avenge her son. I loved the acting of Matt and Emma during their argument about the aftermath. However, I felt like Rhaenyra wasn't acting on character with the book. I don't think book Rhaenyra was 100% okay with a child dying as her vengeance, but I do feel with how angered and filled with grief and hatred Rhaenyra should be, Rhaenyra should be a bit more hardened. She should have not been so sorry about the child's death.

I also think that one of Rhaenyra's most controversial and evil decisions in the future are going to either not be included, blamed on someone else, or downplayed. It's very clear at the end of season 2 episode 8 that my favorite dragonseed Nettles is being cut and given to Rhaena who had her own plot and dragon hatchling. After Ulf the White and Hugh Hammer betray her, Rhaenyra's paranoia goes overload and declares that all the dragonseeds are traitors. Corlys advocates for Addam Velaryon and Nettles and Rhaenyra responds by having him arrested. He warns Addam, and is then bound, beaten, and thrown into the black cells. One of her most powerful allies is now thrown in the black cells. This causes the fleet of House Velaryon to turn against her. Later, she attempts to violate guest right, which is sacred in Westeros (which is why the Red Wedding was so horrific to Westeros even more so), by plotting to have Nettles murdered. As Nettles is being cut, I doubt they'd show this truly negative action as Rhaena can't have Nettles's complete plot. Rhaenyra's unjust arrest of Corlys and House Velaryon turning from her from what they're doing so far might just be blamed on someone else, have a different excuse that is not the one that the book gave, or not shown whatsoever.

I also think they might just be setting her up to be innocent of the torture of Tyland Lannister. After the Greens flee with most of the treasury leaving Rhaenyra in Kingslanding pretty broke, he refused to tell her where the gold was sent. Under Rhaenyra's orders he was tortured and castrated and blinded and disfigured to point of being disgusting. They might just have him be tortured by Mysaria or Daemon on their own accord without Rhaenyra's orders, leaving her innocent, or they will have him tortured by the Triarchy or something. Maybe after Mysaria and/or Daemon torture him, they'll frame it as vengeance for Jace and then Rhaenyra might let him go to appear merciful to an audience. As they cut Maelor whose murder was the breaking point that caused Helaena's suicide, we might not see how another child under the war was murdered by her faction. I worry that they won't show how how her cruelties that she did on her own accord caused her to be hated just as much if not more than her half brothers Aegon II and Aemond. They might not truly set the tone and show actions that lead to her being "Rhaenyra the Cruel" and "Maegor with Teats" they might not show the actions, or blame them on someone else or something else. They might not have her tax into oblivion the smallfolk or send her knight inquisitors to execute dozens upon dozens of supposed or proven Green traitors. I was also confused by the characterization of the smallfolk as these naive little lambs who will follow whatever. There is no famine or riot against the Greens at the point the show showed it. I was pleased with the fact that we saw the book-accurate support the smallfolk gave to Helaena after her son was murdered and how angered they were at Rhaenyra and the Blacks. However, days later they are singing her praises. It makes no sense to me that they would forget something so easily. Of course, I argue in another post on my profile why the riot and famine made no sense. So they might continue to get rid of her all of her negative actions.

**These evil actions make her even more compelling and even more realistic in a violent medieval world. It shows how both sides commit great evils as both Rhaenyra and Aegon II were not remembered fondly by their own descendants, smallfolk, and nobles alike.**

I also hate how they hardly showed just how feminine almost girly Rhaenyra was. Rhaenyra notably loved fashion and wearing beautiful intricate gowns that always showed off her beauty and figure. She dressed very richly as befitting her station, wearing gowns of purple with maroon velvet and Myrish lace. Her bodices often had pearls and diamonds. She always wore rings on her finger that she'd play with and turn when anxious. I honestly found these traits very endearing and relatable as someone who is a girly girl. Finally, a "strong female character" who is a leader who is also very feminine and girly. She doesn't need to be a tomboy and wield a sword to be a badass. But no... we don't see that. Yes the costumes Emma D'Arcy wore were nice I guess on the show but they didn't feel like something book Rhaenyra would wear. I get they had budgets but still... you couldn't have made something else? Like where is the purple and maroon? She's mostly wearing just red and black. No rings. No nothing!

*3. Unequal Screen Time and Too "Modernized": Rhaenyra is the Main Modern Girl*

I feel like HOTD has a problem with perspective. GOT had it perfectly done! The original ASOIAF were written from the perspective of multiple characters so we got a perfect ensemble cast with writing that highlighted the stories and perspectives of many different characters. Jon Snow's narrative didn't overtake Daenerys's screen time and vice versa which is just how it should be. However, I feel HOTD makes a mistake especially in season 1 with framing. Rhaenyra as the main with secondary-main perspectives of Alicent and Daemon. We get most of season 1 from Rhaenyra's perspective and to a lesser extent Daemon and Alicent when the show should have been formatted like GOT as multiple perspectives were given in F&B. We should have gotten an ensemble cast with equal development and perspective from multiple characters, especially an equal development of both Aegon II and Rhaenyra. We get both of Rhaenyra's weddings, two births, her raising her children, many scenes with her dragon, her perspective, and her interactions. Our first intro to her sets her up in a more heroic light as she's a beautiful princess riding her dragon. We don't get Aegon II's wedding or Alicent's. No birth scenes for Alicent or Helaena. We hardly get their perspectives compared to Rhaenyra. We should have seen more of Aegon II's childhood and perspective versus just him being a bully and later a rapist. While they improved perspective a bit more in season 2, it's not enough to take away from what was done in season 1. Rhaenyra is the protagonist and **THE main character versus A main character.**

What I think they should have done is showcase the real dynamic of Alicent and Rhaenyra more. They can start off with their friendship but then transition it to the dynamic that both women had at court: competition. Both women wanted to be First Lady of the Realm and first priority to King Viserys. The Queen vs the Princess and named heir.

Rhaenyra does at times come off as more modern than she should be. I think her and even her aunt Rhaenys. For example, in the book Rhaenyra is at times very homophobic by our standards to Laenor. When she discovers she's to marry Laenor Velaryon in the show, we see her initially not too excited about it, but not fully antagonistic. She in fact has a very decent and friendship like conversation where she uses the metaphor of preferring roast duck to insinuate she understands and accepts Laenor for being gay, deciding to do their duty and support one another, while pursuing their own pleasure with each other's consent with whomever that may be. They appear to be very supportive of one another times, at least on Rhaenyra's end. She compliments him deeply when he says he wishes he were different.

While I'm sure on some level Rhaenyra wishes Laenor was bisexual at the very least so they can have more than a friendship and have trueborn kids together, Rhaenyra is almost too accepting for her medieval context. In the medieval world, same sex relationships were a HUGE no-no. In fact being gay was considered a mental illness and sickness up until the 20th century! Rhaenyra appears too accepting of Laenor, appearing too modern in just how accepting she is. In reality, while I'm sure Book Rhaenyra cared for Laenor on some level and had some kind of respect for him and affection, it wasn't this deep and this accepting. Laenor did mean something to her on some level, after all he is still the man she married, and very important to her storyline---however Rhaenyra in the book as a much more medieval reaction and medieval view on his sexuality. She was notably very unhappy about her betrothal to him. It took serious threats from King Viserys to remove her from the line of succession in order to get her on board and she did so reluctantly. She notably even said that "My half brothers would be more to his taste." This is a very cutting and almost homophobic statement. I mean her half-brothers were still toddlers. However, we never get any true antagonism, frustration, or even subtle or outward homophobia on Rhaenyra's end. While this statement is mean and homophobic, that is a more medieval response. It's sad, but it's true. Rhaenyra is a medieval woman in a medieval setting. She is a product of what her society raised her to be, which is being gay isn't something one should accept.

The same issue occurs with Rhaenys having an almost too modern point of view or opinion that doesn't fit with her medieval setting. When she discovers her husband Corlys Velaryon has bastard children, Addam and Alyn of Hull, she is neither furious nor disappointed or horrified. In fact, Rhaenys advocates that they deserve to be "raised up and honored not hidden in the tides." This is an incredibly unrealistic and unfitting reaction on Rhaenys's end. In our modern day society, even, if a woman finds out her husband cheated on her and sired kids off his side chick, she'd be furious. Of course, I think a moral modern woman wouldn't take her anger out on the children, but still. Rhaenys's reaction is almost too modern and too gracious. Characters are products of their circumstances. Despite Westeros being a fantasy world, we feel how medieval the characters are through their beliefs and behaviors. Catelyn Stark or Cersei Lannister's reactions to their husband's bastards is far more realistic---specifically how Catelyn and Cersei hated what their husbands had done and felt it was an affront to them personally. Corlys in the books was terrified of Rhaenys finding out as it would dishonor him, her, and their dead children together which is why he tried to pass them off as Laenor's no matter how ridiculous is sounded. Rhaenys should have been more realistically horrified at Corlys and angry. She shouldn't be advocating for them to be anywhere near her house or imply they should have been raised amongst their own trueborn children.

I think this does two things: 1) Makes it though Rhaenys is fully on Rhaenyra's side when raising her bastard children of Harwin as if they are her trueborn grandsons and 2) Modernizes her too much. That is a main issue. The show attempts to modernize her and make her appeal to a more modern audience. However, there is a way to do that without modernizing her so much that she doesn't seem to fit with her medieval context.

was very disappointed when I heard that the directors told Olivia Cooke to portray Alicent as "woman for Trump" and Rhaenyra is this "punk-rock Hillary Clinton." Modern day politics and movements and ideologies have little to no place in the way Westeros should be written as its a **realistic medieval setting with realistic medieval characters in a fantasy world**. Rhaenyra is too modern in her interactions and beliefs that she doesn't seem to fit well in Westeros. Rhaenyra as well is also presented as this more feminist character.

*4. Two Things Can Be True At Once: Women Can Be Victims of Sexism AND Still Do Terrible Things, Be Self-Serving, and Wield Significant Amounts of Power*

**What I ultimately believe that Condal and the HOTD production seem to get wrong is that in a medieval setting like Westeros, women are ALWAYS overlooked and dismissed and cannot take so much significant power. I feel like they believe that women can't do terrible things in the patriarchal system of Westeros while being victims of sexism.**

Women in the real middle ages and Westeros in Martin's story are not feminists by our definition. At times we see women take advantage of and gain power from the sexist patriarchal society they live in. We see it with Cersei Lannister, Margaery Tyrell, Daenerys Targareyen, Catelyn Stark, Olenna Tyrell, Ellaria Sand, Lysa Arryn, Melisandre, Arya Stark, Sansa Stark, every woman in the original GOT series were victims of sexism and an oppressive patriarchal system of Westeros just like real women of the Middle Ages AND YET they still were able to wield some power and do terrible or morally gray things. We can view them as victims of a horrible system but still see how they take advantage of it, gain power and agency as they have no choice to use the system versus fight it, do horrible things, but still view them as victims.

Rhaenyra is one example! I will say that this is partly more so the interpretation of the modern casual audience versus a writing issue, but it is still a writing issue that there are people who believe her to be a feminist. She's not! Of course just because she isn't one doesn't mean you can't root for her, but don't root for her if you think she's a feminist. We might never see the moments where Rhaenyra herself is denying women rights of inheritance from Lady Stokeworth to Lady Rosby. We should have been emphasized that Rhaenyra is not the closest thing to a modern day feminist. She is not advocating for women's rights or to make the world better for women, but to be an exception to the rule. Like most medieval woman in power, she takes advantage of the patriarchal system and gets power from it. Laena Velaryon is older than Laenor. She takes advantage of patriachal rulings to install her (bastard) "son of Laenor" as future Lord of Driftmark versus advocating that the eldest child, Baela Targaryen, daughter of Laena Velaryon, the elder sibling, to inherit Driftmark.

Victims can be villainous too! Soft power. Rarely in the Medieval world do we see women wield a hard power in their own name. Of course we have outliers, but in the end most medieval women wielded a soft power---gaining influence and power through manipulating their relationships with men (their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, etc.). Did real Medieval women know they were oppressed? Perhaps they did, and perhaps they accepted it. Did real Medieval women make efforts to change it? I wouldn't say so. Many women upheld the status quo of men being dominant.

For example, in keeping with British history that Martin is so inspired by, going off of blood-ties alone, Lady Margaret Beaufort had a stronger claim to the English throne via her Lancastrian blood than her own son Henry VII, and yet she advocated for her son not herself to be the next ruler of England. Queen Elizabeth Woodville had three daughters (Elizabeth, Cecily, and Mary) before she had her son Edward V. Like any medieval woman with three daughters alone there was growing pressure to secure her husband's line and her own position by producing a male heir. She never tried to name any of her elder daughters over her son once she had him nor did she ever try to advocate to her husband King Edward IV that he didn't need a male heir, he had his eldest daughter Elizabeth of York.

Rhaenyra Targaryen as well is presented almost like she's pursuing power to make Westeros better and that she has more altruistic and kind intentions behind her actions. I mean this weird "Aegon Prophecy" contributes to it. I think we should have seen a more realistic medieval and Westerosi character by having Rhaenyra, just like Alicent or Aegon II, pursue power because she can! Pursue power and queenship for the sake of having it and because she believes herself entitled to it versus these more "virtuous reasons." I mean in the book she never considered accepting the peace terms despite how generous they were because she refused to renounce her claim and back down! She wanted power because felt entitled to it and because every character in Westeros wants power to some degree. Ambition is a theme and characteristic that unites every character in Martin's world.

**My Takeaway? The Writers are Biased and Fail to Understand the Medieval Context of Westeros and Martin's Female Characters. Don't implement modern politics and biases into a medieval show**

I love that Martin tries to write his women the way he writes his men. He has explicitly stated that he writes his women the way he writes his men. He states that women are people too. They can be driven by the same things men are in Westeros and/or the real world: love, anger, hatred, a desire for power, vengeance, grief, guilt, bringing glory to their name and themselves, a desire to protect their family, etc.

Most of all: **Westeros is a realistic medieval world with realistic medieval characters in an unrealistic fantasy setting.** So you have to look at it from primarily a medieval lens in order to fully understand it and its character. While its okay to analyze using some modern concepts and lenses (ex - analyze how Daemon is a pedophile) you have to couple it with a lot of grace and understanding of their medieval context and morals that impacts the way the characters behave as we are products of our own historical context (ex - remembering that pedophilia and child grooming isn't much of a concept in the medieval world. The moment a girl has her first period, they are a consenting woman in his context).

So I find it disingenuous to write off all of Rhaenyra Targaryen's negative traits as just nothing but maester propaganda and due to sexism. I disliked how they downplayed her ambition, arrogance, rage, and cruelties to make her appear more modern and peaceful and the most virtuous character on the show. Yes, perhaps sexism could have had some tie into how Rhaenyra was viewed in Westeros. However, historians in the real world can't just dismiss reports about what a medieval woman was like simply because of the sexist world they were living in. By that standard, perhaps a woman like Queen Anne of Brittany wasn't all that bad or Margaret of Anjou. By that standard anything that was negative about the personalities of any medieval woman in power is all just rubbish and not true.

I felt we should have seen more of the kind of women that Martin writes. The kind of women that fit with his medieval-fantasy narrative that showcases how pursuing power at all costs leads to nothing but ruin. We should have seen layered women. We should have seen a more book-accurate Rhaenyra. We shouldn't have to settle for a lackluster story where Rhaenyra is nowhere close to her book counterpart.

**And most of all, the HOTD team shouldn't subtly or outwardly bash the original source material as nothing but sexist propaganda to excuse the lackluster writing of the female characters being nothing like their book counterparts or subtly or outwardly write off critics and fans like myself as toxic for pointing it out.**

**If you like this analysis, read on my profile my part 1 when I delve into the issues with HOTD’s Alicent.** "

[transhawks]

sorry for the cringe ask pls ignore if you want but with these chapters of the todofam do yuo think it is like "wrong" to not see anything poetic/pretty/anything like that about the family and mostly touya and endeavor situation? ive seen all these texts (not here though) abt how touya loves his father and is a Liar™ while also ignoring most of what he went through and his feelings of anger and bitterness i mean... sure there is/was love behind the hurt but i feel like i read the story wrongly

Okay, let's break down your ask a bit because it's not that I think you read the story wrong, it's that there's a missing component that I see a lot of people miss when it comes to stories like this:

you can love your abuser.

you can love your abuser.

most of us love our abusers.

Now, and I think this is something I believe that uhh I've argued with my friends over - I don't know how much parents who abuse their kids "love" them. It's complicated and a case-by-case basis, but I want to say that often it's love for what they want the child to be, not the child themselves. I've said it a few times over the years: out of the all the Todoroki children, the only child that got Enji as an actual father from the start was Touya. Toddler Shouto is scared of him, Enji seemingly didn't interact much with Natsuo as a baby or toddler, maybe to avoid the issue he had with Touya. And, well, bluntly, Fuyumi was essentially a baby sister for Touya's sake. Add to that the Japanese tradition of male primogeniture, and you get a very, very strong reason for why Touya loves his father and hates him at the same time, especially since this is met with apathy from Enji's end (as Touya thinks). As @pikahlua said recently, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. The actions and desperations of Todoroki Touya to be seen by the man he loves, no matter if the man in question doesn't deserve this adoration, are signs of a child yearning to be loved by his father, not ignored. Now, let's break down your ask: "Poetic/pretty"

Abuse isn't poetic or pretty. It's abuse. It's messy, and it creates rifts and broken, messy people who don't make sense and move through the world breaking things further. I know that's quite a harsh thing to say about other victims like this, but I'm not going to candy-coat it - victimhood is not virtuous. Being abused and victimized doesn't automatically make you good person or a better person, and you are not a better person for having struggled. In fact, honestly, trying to do good will be that much harder. And this is exactly why cycles of abuse are replicated.

Touya is both a liar and he isn't - because he's abused and that creates irrational feelings about the abuser and what happened. His lies are mostly to himself. That's how you get Touya maniacally making a video decrying all of hero society propping up abusers while trying to murder his younger brother in sheer jealousy that he wasn't abused the way he was.

I'm going to use the same words I use for Hawks: when are you people going to understand people who are fucked in the head are fucked in the head?

To me it makes sense that Touya has conflicting thoughts and feelings because people, especially mentally people who got there due to abuse, have conflicting thoughts and feelings. That's what you go to therapy to fix. (no one in BNHA goes to therapy) So, where does that leave you, anon? I think it's again about a greater question of what kind of stories you want to read. I will always agree we need more stories where child abuse victims walk away from their families and get to be happy about it. I get that the reconciliation stories like Encanto have their place, but for so long that's been such a big narrative in why people like me have to continue to have ties with people who hurt us. But BNHA isn't bucking that formula.

Horikoshi's own experiences and perspectives on abuse want wish fulfillment. And in his wishes, he wants the abuser to say sorry. Most abusers never get to where Enji has gotten. However, a good chunk of people don't want Enji to even say "I'm sorry" in the first place, and that's where I feel the story was just not written with them in mind. So, if you read the story wrong, it's because you wanted something different from it. You wanted a different type of narrative of abuse. Neither Horikoshi or you are wrong in wanting or writing this sort of story, it's just that the story is not for you. And accepting that will make you a happier person in the long run. Sometimes stories just aren't for you. I keep beating this like a dead horse; a large amount of the fandom, especially among my fellow villain-stans, didn't heed my warnings that the story wasn't going to end with what they wanted and they'd end up frustrated and angry at spending so much time for something that feels flat to them because they couldn't adjust their expectations. Lo and behold, it's too late now and now people are in their feelings about something they could have simply dropped or accepted. I'm sorry the story isn't for you and I hope you find a manga that suits you better in the future.

[nothorses]

😭 Y'all, can the previous anons be normal about smokers? Part of life and existing in a community are people will unknowingly incovenience you and piss you off, even when they're doing nothing wrong. Its not a moral, ethical debate, it barely qualifies as interpersonal conflict. Let this man smoke in his goddamn yard where few are around, and let OP complain about it and then go on with his day. This is not a big issue, gang.

People on this website get annoyed and immediately look for reasons to back that feeling up with some kind of moral/ethical argument so they can justify being angry as Virtuous and Victimhood rather than, like, a kinda ugly but ultimately run-of-the-mill human emotion. and it is fucking exhausting.

[sybaritick]

In response to recent posts I've seen discussing "people on tumblr lying about being working class when they're clearly not/people on tumblr claiming they're regular middle class when they make 200k a year": it's true this is extremely annoying, but i really think this problem exists on EVERY website and also in real life (feel like one can meet working-class-larpers at every US university, but more so the more elite the university is).

People build an identity around an image of their social class, both current and past, and that can be for political reasons (they're a leftist and don't want to be one of the bad rich people) or just because they want to have a bootstraps success narrative around themselves or whatever else. But that identity they build can be completely disconnected from the material reality of their upbringing.

My parents were definitely well-off: my dad was a software developer and my mom also had a tech-adjacent job. Because we lived in a very expensive area, people still made fun of me for class-related reasons as a kid and my parents struggled with financial stuff at times (like having to move out of the house we lived in and switch to renting a smaller condo). However I would still never make the claim I am just some average American, because as a kid my family's income was definitely in the top ~15% in the US.

The thing is though... I think some people either 1) Solely base their perception on the people around them, and if you do that you'll probably think of yourself as average, or 2) have a load-bearing element of their personality that depends on them having been working class background or at the very least have come from an "average" background.

I think the problem here is people building their identities so hard around what their ideology "demands." It's not easy to solve but it's something you have to be honest with yourself about. There is a huge strain of online Tumblr-type-leftism that demands you perform a sort of victimhood/background of oppression or be considered inherently a bad person, and the result is that some people will fake it, but they might not even believe they are faking it, it's part of their self-image.

Don't buy into this idea that victimhood is virtuous.

The first step is do not apologize for any advantage you have and do not feel guilt over any advantage you have: the advantage is good. it lets you do more, gives you power, gives you time or money or connections compared to the average. Everyone has at least some advantages in life, even if they are as simple as "It's an advantage that I was born in at Western country," or "it's an advantage that I'm not blind or deaf." You will never accomplish anything useful, politically or personally, by feeling bad for these things. (You cannot give another person your advantages, or remove your own advantages, by feeling guilty. you CAN use your advantages to help disadvantaged people-- but not through guilt or performative hand-wringing!)

You should feel good and happy about the things many on Tumblr call privileges, because they mean it will be some amount easier for you to get further and climb higher and do more. I love being American. I love being able to do this many pull-ups. I love being male-passing. And I love money. Build from there.

[girlonthelasttrain]

I don't exactly know what Wheel of Time is trying to do by suggesting that Liandrin was subjected to so much (gendered) violence as a girl. I don't know that this show can support a complex plotline about a victim ultimately turning into a perpetrator without falling into oversimplification. (The fact that they made up a secret son as a backstory for Liandrin does not bode well, imho. Talk about clichés.)

The most generous interpretation I can give is that Liandrin has lived all her life in fear and mistrust of everyone, essentially bargaining with and finding loopholes in oaths and institutions in order for her and her child to survive (born into a family that mistreated her -> forced into a violent marriage -> escapes to the White Tower which however won't allow her to keep her son -> eventually swears oath to the Dark). Her allegiance is not with any place she's been in, although her belief in the Red Ajah's "mission" is likely sincere; there's always, however, a more basic math at play I think. The Tower forced her to live without her son, and so Liandrin will never put the survival of the Tower, much less its rules, above her own. As a related note, I think the power of what Lanfear offers to Liandrin is precisely that it is, for once, more than survival through nominal observance of random rules. Lanfear already knows everything there is to know about Liandrin, so Liandrin doesn't need to fear discovery anymore. If she lets all her other secrets go (her fondness/animosity for Moiraine the most prominent among them), then Liandrin will be unfettered—although still bound by her oath to the Dark. But Liandrin has never known an oath-free life, has never lived without someone having the power to force her to obey. There's never been a true way out for her, so a little more (apparent) wiggle room is incredibly tempting for her.

The ungenerous interpretation is that this whole thing will turn into a sketchy distinction between two types of victims, the good virtuous ones and the bad ones, Liandrin belonging to the latter. Maybe there's a case to be made about victimhood being weaponized (I feel like it matters here that Liandrin is played by a white actress), but is it something that a fantasy show like WoT can do well without falling into easy moralizing? Again, I don't know.

ETA: I'm allowing reblogs now, but please keep any eventual addition on topic; also I kindly ask to not minimize my concerns in additions or in tags.

[uselessheretic]

w here do the ppl who share these dumbass takes even COME from... how is trying to wreck the ship in the middle of a massive storm killing everyone and himself and threatening ppl at gunpoint NOT violent... and how is any MOC being depicted as a 2D caricature of "Flawless and Virtuous Victimhood" (totally never a loaded concept) the only alternative to racist violent/impulsive/hyper-emotional stereotypes (that's not just a dif way of dehumanizing characters of color). and y r u SAYING all this just bc of like. shipping wars over a high-concept sitcom on the internet. wack. new types of ppl on earth every day.

it's so crazy because it really is a complete lack of media literacy which ik is a statement overused but dear fucking lord.

people have no idea how to actually analyze the role poc play within a narrative, contextualize it within both a narrative and historical framework, and apply an antiracist lens from there! things are so much more complicated than just having "good" representation of poc where they're never violent or angry or abusing substances. that's simply not the reality for many poc, especially queer poc who are in communities that are chronically traumatized.

ed's just? so complex and nuanced in a way that characters of color are rarely allowed to be. he isn't vilified by the narrative! he's given depth and time to explore the reasons why he's like this. and then instead of being written off as a lost cause, he's afforded kindness from others and a space where he's able to better himself.

[fiercestpurpose]

Hiii Matthew re: that post you just reblogged about harrow as both achilles and hector, I would love to know how you feel about palamedes as diomedes

I may not be the bestttttt person to ask bc I’m not as into the Iliad as some people, but I can give it a go!

My understanding is that Diomedes is Athena’s favorite. He’s maybe not the best Greek warrior (not in the superlative way Achilles or Ajax is) but he’s definitely among the best Greek warriors and also someone known for having wisdom. He’s a pretty stand-up guy by the standards of the ancient Greeks, and he’s able to go against the gods themselves because of his favor from Athena. He’s not angry implacable Achilles or wily tricksy Odysseus, he’s a wise, sensible, virtuous guy. I’ve said before that the shocking thing about Palamedes Sextus is how like. morally upright he is, in the midst of Ianthes and Silases and Cythereas. And the association with Athena makes a lot of sense for the Sixth House duo.

“Palamedes” is an interesting other name for the character if he’s Diomedes because in myth Palamedes does represent like a moral compromise for Diomedes, where Diomedes either helps Odysseus kill him or stands by and allows Odysseus to kill him. I kind of like the victimhood that using the name “Palamedes” gives to Sex Pal. Google assures me that the Palamedes story is not in the Iliad, so it may be optional for an understanding of Diomedes’s character. Wikipedia tells me that the mythological Palamedes is associated with the invention/development of writing, which is fun!

I don’t know how far you can go with the comparisons, since they’re ultimately different works with different characters, but Diomedes does make sense to me for Pal.

[utilitycaster]

not to put on my CR goggles for your general post about canon/fanon but I think this part of why it rubs me the wrong way when people decide that fanon-agreed-upon features are real and better than the official art. I appreciate creative takes but when people start to pushback against the official designs it feels off because it's not like these characters were market-tested or overdesigned within an inch of their life. The cast was like "hey here's some guy i made and want to play for 3+ years"

Hey anon!

Honestly I didn't have fanon physical depictions in mind here, though obviously I've voiced my distaste with several of those (and kept quiet on several more I also dislike). Honestly, what actually irritates me the most is a combination of 1. none of you have ever been to a lifting gym OR a library, huh and 2. the sameness of it all. Like, if there were a diversity of canon digressions from how a character were depicted, I can't promise I'd be into it but at least it would be visually interesting, but what gets me is that it's always like, the same exact digressions, and so the argument that it's creative or whatever has never held weight. It's still copying someone else's idea; people just act like it's better because it's one removed from the actual originator of the character.

But if you don't mind me jumping off from this point, I really do think this is the problem: the takes aren't creative. Not that creativity can't be drawn from your own life - obviously it can - but I happen to think that if you see a character who is deeply drawn from someone else's life and say "how can I make them more like me" then that's not terribly creative. I mean, write what you know, but maybe make an effort to know things. Read what you don't know.

I keep sort of hinting at this but it feels like some people don't actually want their headcanons or ships to be canon, because there's this smug sense of combined superiority and victimhood if they can point at canon and say "they were cowards, and I could have done it better." But they also don't like those headcanons or ships to be explicitly noncanon. Anyway this is why I think a lot of people who got mad at Critical Role re: both character depictions and ships said "anyway, stan NADDPod"; the depictions and the ships of NADDPod have for the most part been kept relatively vague. And to be clear, I love NADDPod, but like, I think there's a subset of people in fandom who want to feel virtuous and smart for headcanoning characters to tick off certain boxes instead of seeking out works with explicit representation because then they, the fans, can take credit. They want the ship to be vague so that people who don't ship it aren't right, but they aren't wrong.

Like, I do enjoy creative takes, and transformative works, and I like people exploring what-ifs and alternate possibilities, but the people who do that in the most interesting way, in my opinion, are typically people who love the canon and want to play with it, rather than people who are interested in winning some kind of competition on who has the best and most correct thoughts, because the latter group must by necessity disregard canon lest they concede victory to the creators.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Yascha Mounk

Published: Dec 21, 2024

After Donald Trump won reelection, scores of Americans once again failed to make good on their loudly shared and oft-repeated plan of moving to Canada; but a good number of them did partake in a different, rather less cumbersome, exodus. Complaining that Twitter had been unrecognizably transformed under the ownership of Elon Musk—whom they also blame for supporting Trump—hundreds of thousands of progressives decamped to Bluesky.

Widely touted as a “kinder, gentler” alternative to X, Bluesky aims to emulate the up-to-date news and specialized information-sharing in which Twitter has traditionally excelled. It also promises to cut all the toxicity. In the past weeks, the platform announced plans to quadruple the number of moderators it employs. "We’re trying to go above what the legal requirements are, because we decided that we wanted to be a safe and welcoming space,” Aaron Rodericks, the head of the Trust and Safety Team at Bluesky Social, vowed.

The platform has some features that really do put the user in charge in appealing ways. In traditional social media networks, the executives of profit-driven companies control the algorithm that governs the content which is presented to individual users. Especially on micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, this feature—since well before Musk turned it into X—meant privileging controversial posts that elicit angry debate over milder, more consensual ones. On Bluesky, each user can choose between a great variety of open-source algorithms, which theoretically makes it possible to curate a less rage-inducing experience.

When Bluesky launched, I hoped that it would succeed. But the platform has quickly shown that it is hard for any social network to deliver on its promise of being the place for a kinder or gentler discourse. At its best, Bluesky has become a giant progressive echo chamber, with Blue MAGA accounts freely sharing “misinformation” such as the notion that the vote count in the 2024 election was fraudulent because millions of Democratic votes inexplicably went missing. At its worst, it openly revels in violence—so long as that violence can make a claim, however tenuous, to defend or avenge righteous victims.

In accordance with the platform’s policy of moderating content much more aggressively than X has done under Musk, Bluesky’s moderators have been quick to act when users flout the site’s ideological consensus. In the last weeks, both small accounts with few followers and well-known writers with an established audience have seemingly been banned for such trivial “infractions” as suggesting that the Democratic Party leaving X would be a counterproductive form of “purity politics.” And yet, it was on Bluesky that prominent journalists—including, but not limited to, the infamous Taylor Lorenz—openly rejoiced in the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. As long as progressives perceive the victim of a crime to be morally evil, the moderators on Bluesky appear to believe that threatening violence against them is justifiable.

More recently, Bluesky users with major followings reveled in the prospect of violence against Jesse Singal, a center-left journalist who has ended up in progressive crosshairs because of his reporting about detransitioners and involvement in other heated debates regarding trans issues. Some consisted in crude death threats: “I think Jesse Singal should be beat to death in the streets,” one wrote. But a surprising number explicitly justified calls for violence as being necessary to defend themselves against the ways in which he supposedly put them at risk. “Jesse Singal and assorted grifters want us dead so i similarly want him dead,” another user wrote.1

Though they blatantly violated Bluesky’s restrictive community guidelines, the platform hardly took action against such accounts. It even failed to ban users who shared what they believed to be Singal’s private address or made especially graphic threats against him. Evidently, the people making decisions for the kinder, gentler platform don’t mind actual death threats—as long as they are directed against those who, in their judgment, have it coming to them.

What can possibly explain the descent of a platform populated by progressives who claim to abhor all forms of violence into an echo chamber that revels in violence against anyone who defies its taboos or threatens its ideological conformity?

Some of the dynamic likely has to do with the nature of social media in general, and of microblogging platforms like Twitter and Bluesky in particular. There is also an ideological element—a justification of violence has been interwoven with far-left ideology for well over a century. But as I puzzled over the strange transformation of Bluesky, I was also reminded of a series of interesting social science papers published over the course of the last years. They suggest that the tendency to justify violence by the need to help virtuous victims serves a strategic purpose that is less than benign—and may even have worrying psychological roots.

-

Traditionally, most people have wanted to avoid being seen as a victim.

In ��honor” societies, like the aristocratic milieus of early modern Europe, the impression that you could not defend yourself spelled dishonor and invited further attacks. When someone failed to pay you the respect to which you believed to be entitled, you did not claim to be a victim; you challenged them to a duel.

The same aversion to casting yourself as a victim persisted even after feudalism gave way to capitalism, and aristocratic “honor cultures” transformed into bourgeois “dignity cultures.” For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, people who were maltreated in some way would insist that such forms of disrespect did not have the power to undermine the dignity we all have as humans. If the duel is the canonical encapsulation of honor culture, the canonical encapsulations of dignity culture are an adult’s determination to keep a “stiff upper lip” in the face of adversity or a child’s resolve that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words shall never hurt me.”

But as Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning have argued in The Rise of Victimhood Culture, we are now entering a new era. Dignity culture is waning rapidly. In its place, we are witnessing the rise of victimhood culture. This new dispensation “differs from both honor and dignity cultures in highlighting rather than downplaying the complainants’ victimhood.” Under these circumstances, people who portray themselves as victims enjoy an elevated moral status. And that, Campbell and Manning write in one of their papers, “only increases the incentive to publicize grievances, and it means aggrieved parties are especially likely to highlight their identity as victims, emphasizing their own suffering and innocence.” (Anyone who has spent time on social media—whether it be Bluesky or Instagram or TikTok—in the decade since Campbell and Manning first wrote that line can’t help but feel that it has proven to be prophetic.)

Ekin Ok and three co-authors from the University of British Columbia pick up on this thread in a 2021 paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Because of the spread of egalitarian values and the paramount importance they give to alleviating suffering, Ok et al argue, contemporary Western democracies have become highly responsive to people who are perceived as victims. Under these circumstances, making a claim to victim status may allow a great variety of people “to pursue an environmental resource extraction strategy that helps them survive, flourish, and achieve their goals.” As a result, “claiming one is a victim has become increasingly advantageous and even fashionable.”

But being a victim may not be enough. Even in contemporary Western societies, the perceived moral status of the victim is likely to influence how much assistance they will receive. As Ok et al demonstrate, for example, respondents are more likely to offer financial assistance to a man who gets shot while volunteering at a charity softball game than they are to a man who gets shot while patronizing a strip club. For “victim-signalling” to have the desired effect, it needs to be accompanied by “virtue-signalling.”

Some people, of course, really are “virtuous victims.” They have suffered genuine injustice. But since managing to establish your status as a virtuous victim is potentially lucrative, it also stands to reason that others will falsely claim to fall into this category. As Ok et al write, some people “intentionally and repeatedly convey their victim status as a manipulative strategy with the explicit aim of altering the behavior of receivers to the signaler’s advantage.”

The authors of the study even have a hypothesis about who is most likely to do that. People with Dark Triad traits such as narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, they argue, are especially likely to engage in “self-promotion, emotional callousness, duplicity and [a] tendency to take advantage of others.” Narcissists seek the limelight. Machiavellians are obsessed with gaining and exercising power over others. Psychopaths don’t care about social norms and disregard others’ emotions. People with all three traits are thus likely to be hugely overrepresented in the “subset of the population both adept at and comfortable with using deception and manipulation to attain personal goals.”

In a succession of clever tests, Ok et al provide plausible evidence that their theory is borne out by reality. Their first striking empirical finding is that people with dark personality traits are also more likely to falsely portray themselves as victims. In one of their studies, they ask you to imagine that you are an intern who is asked to work closely on a project with a peer who is competing for the same full-time job. The other intern is friendly to your face but you get a bad vibe from him. He doesn’t take your suggestions seriously, and you suspect that he may be talking badly about you behind your back. How do you respond?

That seems to depend on who you are. Asked to report on the behavior of the other intern, most participants in the experiment shared some negative opinions but refrained from making false or exaggerated statements. Respondents who had scored high on the dark personality triad, by contrast, were more likely to falsely report that the other intern had engaged in discriminatory behaviour such as making “demeaning or derogatory comments.”

The paper’s second striking empirical finding shows that the tendency of people with dark personality traits to falsely claim being a virtuous victim may also give them cover for engaging in bad behavior. In another experiment, they asked respondents to play a simple coin flip game, which was manipulated in such a way that its participants could easily use deception to increase their monetary payoff. It turns out that people who have portrayed themselves as virtuous victims were far more likely than their peers to lie and to cheat.

This helps to explain some of the features about Bluesky and other social media platforms that might otherwise feel puzzling. The kinds of claims to virtuous victimhood that are so common on that forum don’t just create cover for manipulative people to serve their own ends; they also seem to create license for disregarding moral norms—whether these consist in a prohibition of lying about others to ostracize them or (apparently) even calling for them to be killed.

-

When the study by Ok et al first came out, it made some minor waves. My fellow Substacker and recent podcast guest Rob Henderson argued that people with dark personality traits do what they can in any particular social environment to obtain benefits like prestige or material wealth. In current circumstances, he concluded, “those with dark triad traits might find that the best way to extract rewards is by making a public spectacle of their victimhood and virtue.” The psychologist and podcaster Scott Barry Kaufman put a similar conclusion even more starkly: “Some people,” he wrote, just “aren't good-faith actors in this ‘victimhood space.’”

At the time, I found the paper by Ok et al to be intriguing. And I knew that both Henderson and Kaufman usually have a good nose for bullshit. And yet, I have refrained from writing about its findings until now. After all, social psychology suffers from a serious replication crisis. Time and again, findings that are a little too neat or pleasing—from the idea that a child’s ability to resist the temptation of eating a marshmallow predicts later life outcomes to the promise that striking a “power pose” can set you up for success in a job interview—turned out to be dubious or outright false. And isn’t there something a little too neat about the idea that all of those people attesting to their superior virtue are secretly just narcissists and psychopaths trying to manipulate you?

It also seemed to me that a piece of the puzzle was still missing. Some of the people who target others on social media really do portray themselves as virtuous victims. They claim that they are part of the group which the victim of their attacks has supposedly targeted. And many of them clearly have self-serving goals, ranging from increasing their social clout to asking followers to donate cold, hard cash. But others who gang up on, or even threaten violence against, anybody who breaks perceived community norms don’t claim to be victims themselves; rather, they invoke the existence of supposed victims as an excuse to engage in cruel behavior. For all of its strength, there is something about the phenomenon I’ve been trying to make sense of that Ok’s paper can’t quite explain.

But then my research assistant sent me a new paper about the same subject. In a major effort, Timothy C. Bates and five of his colleagues at the University of Edinburgh set out to test whether the finding by Ok et al would replicate. Based on a larger dataset and employing alternative ways to measure key concepts like virtuous victim signalling, they came to an unambiguous conclusion: virtuous victim signalling really does seem to be driven by what they call “narcissistic Machiavellianism.”

More importantly, the paper by Bates et al also adds the missing piece of the puzzle. The “willingness to assert victimhood,” they hypothesize, may also “be amplified by the motive of sadistic pleasure in the downfall of weakened opponents.” In other words, the people who invoke the need to defend victims in order to justify treating others poorly don’t necessarily have a concrete strategic goal in mind; some of them do so because they are looking for a socially sanctioned outlet for their sadistic instincts. In those cases, the cruelty is the point.

To demonstrate that this is indeed the case, Bates et al use a standard battery of questions to measure respondents’ tendencies towards sadism, asking them such questions as whether they would be willing to purposely hurt people if they didn’t like them. They then test whether people with such sadistic tendencies are also more likely to score high on what they call the “victimizer scale,” which asks them to report on such questions as whether they have recently “enjoyed helping cancel someone;” whether they have “joined in on the persecution and condemnation of an individual or group accused of victimizing others;” and whether they have “sought to hurt the reputation of someone accused by others of victimizing.”

Two things are especially notable about this. First, not all sadists claimed that they themselves were virtuous victims. But second, the claim that they were acting on behalf of such victims—whether themselves or others—was the crucial fig leaf they needed to get away with their behavior. This finding, Bates et al argue, supports

the suggestion that sadism may be adapted to exploit strategic opportunities, specifically the legitimization of punishing and inflicting harm on individuals or groups which is created by successful virtuous victim signalling. If individuals high on Machiavellianism and narcissism exploit the resource-release response of nonvictims, sadism appears, as predicted, to exploit the opportunity created by victims in the form of the moral license granted by non-victims, legitimizing attacks on the victimizer by removing moral protection from those accused.

-

Many people really do suffer genuine injustices. It is on the whole a good thing that contemporary societies are much more likely to give people who claim to have suffered undeserved misfortune a respectful hearing than they might have gotten in the past. While trying to keep a “stiff upper lip” may have its uses, we certainly wouldn’t want people to fear advocating for a more just society, or coming forward about ways in which they have been maltreated, because doing so might undermine their dignity or bring shame upon them.

But to be sensible and sustainable, every social dispensation—whether it consists in an explicit set of rules or an implicit set of norms—must protect itself against bad actors. When a platform or political subculture allows anyone to portray themselves as victims without any real evidence, bad actors will recognize an opportunity to swoop in. And then these bad actors will quickly weaponize false claims to victimization as an excuse to harass or physically threaten people who supposedly have it coming to them. In a culture of victimhood that has no inbuilt defenses against bad actors, things will—as the recent blowup on Bluesky reminds us—always eventually get out of hand.

Every community, however noble its stated intentions and however progressive its purported values, needs a mechanism for defending itself against the small minority of people who are prone to exploit and manipulate their social environment. If yours doesn’t have one, it’s inviting the sadists, the narcissists and the psychopaths to run the show.

-

1 Like many of the things that are said or written about Singal, this claim of course lacks any basis in objective reality.

==

When victimhood is currency, expect counterfeiters.

We must fully depreciate "victimhood" as a form of social currency.

[didanawisgi]

“Gratitude can be an elixir for victimhood. Gratitude is not the naive insistence that the world is a perfectly delightful place and that everything is going to go well. Gratitude is a practice. It is a moral virtue. The virtuous part of gratitude is the courage to find light in even the darkest place that can guide you through. The willingness to and the understanding of that is a practice.” -JBP

[ms-boogie-man]

☦︎17TolucaLake☦︎

Here are the only reasons the Democrat party supports the above:

Divide and conquer

Promoting their side of the aisle to look virtuous

Destruction of 80% of the human race

Tax burden on normies

Expansion of the federal government

Enable hits on 1st Amendment freedom of speech, and eventually freedom of religion and gathering

Creation of more victimhood and a ready-made voter base

Indoctrination and brainwashing of children

Separation of children from their parents

Promoting CPS for the use in child trafficking and sexual abuse

Fooling women into killing their babies

Fetal body parts for the black market

Adrenochrome

Eventual intervention of the UN to step on 2nd Amendment

Give me another 5 minutes and I am sure I could come up with 14 more The Democrats never have just one agenda in any action

*end lesson

[antigonewinchester]

The protagonists of our fairy realm do not embrace heroics. This poses a practical problem: if power degrades those who seek it, how can protagonists ever become skilled enough to defeat the enemies of good? In answer, YA novelists have converged on a compelling solution: the defining character trait of a YA hero is that she must be forced into heroics. In these stories, the heroic role is a product of either accidental circumstance or supra-human destiny. The protagonist may be a “chosen one,” identified by ancient prophecy. She may be dragged into the shadow world by chance. Or she might embrace heroics to save a loved one. In no case does she desire fame; her virtue is to shirk acclaim. Though she will change the world, this not a role she desires. Her calling cry is the normal life; every few chapters she will repeat an earnest wish to settle down to some quiet place where she need not strive for victory nor fear defeat. It is precisely her unwillingness to be a hero that makes her virtuous enough to become one. Yet outside of the modern fairy realm, power is not given, but created. The morality of the twenty-first-century fairy tale is in fact a road map to paralysis. Its heroes begin as the playthings of manipulative and illegitimate authorities, their goodness made clear by their victimhood. But faced with this illicit order, nothing can be done: even rebellion can be trusted only to unwilling rebels. Our fairy tales imagine a world where only those who do not want power are deemed fit to use it. Translate that back to reality, and we are left with a world where all power is, and will always be, deemed illegitimate. No magic curses justify the power of our managerial class; ultimately, their legitimacy rests on how well they wield it.

from the same article I just posted. to make some of my own generalizations, this part stood out to me in terms fandom trends of downplaying character actions or agency and creating character sympathy through passivity.

[myprofessormadememakethis]

Harriet Jacobs, Rhetorical Extraordinaire

In 1861, Linda Brent led a rhetorical master class while recanting the mortifying realities of her twenty-seven years of enslaved life in her slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. In the narrative, Brent cleverly traverses the immensely restrictive discourse of being labeled a Jezebel, mammy, or sapphire by completely reducing how autonomy in enslavement is viewed. Brent recalls how, instead of peacefully submitting to the wishes of her master to build a lodging near the main house for easy access to Brent, Brent decided to let another white man impregnate her. Her choice was vindictive, promiscuous, and by any account of the time, anti-Christian. But Brent refused to lose her audience, the pious white women in the North who would pity a young girl like Brent being prayed on and therefore engage conversations about abolition, so Brent framed the event as if she had been cornered by the possession of her master and the only way she could protest was through the use of her body, the penultimate object of his violence toward her. Brent details her terror for the reader, saying, “O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave…you never shuddered at the sound of his footsteps” (Brent), and while I completely believe Brent’s master captivated her with terror, Brent effectively absolves herself of her vindictive actions against him by invoking the powerlessness of her enslaved state, despite exercising immense autonomy by deciding to sleep with another man and verbally deny her master’s advances. Weaponized victimhood is a tool today that is almost exclusively reserved for white women, as Black women are almost always assumed to be complicit in their oppression. I believe this can be partly attributed to Brent and slave narratives as a whole, because the effectiveness of the slave narrative actively combats propaganda and willful ignorance (two concepts that are currently contributing heavily to the genocide of Palestinians), and also contributed to the downfall of the most insidious system in American history and was spearheaded by headstrong Black women like Brent.

—Arria Haigler