#we love someone who is unrepentant in their manipulative nature

[cryinglittlepeople]

reading wuthering heights and transferring cathy's entire character to olive

[nothlits-archive]

Zoe lunarsystem13 / lunar_system13 / lemonscenteddaves / zazberry is a dangerous person.

Other names they may go by are Raven, Cassandra, Luna, and various other system member names but they primarily identify themself as Zoe or the Lunar System and frequently use the number 13 and blue and purple heart emojis as an identifier. As far as I know they are only active on tiktok now, but do have Twitter and Instagram accounts under the above usernames.

This isn't to get attention or to be petty about anything. I just want to be fully open about my experience and I want to be able to explain my feelings concisely in one place. The biggest reason I'm writing this is because I am scared that Zoe will do to other people what they did to me, because they've shown themself to be unrepentant. I attempted to bring things up with them privately when we were still on speaking terms and it resulted in gaslighting about past situations and a complete refusal to listen to or speak to me ending in uninstalling discord to avoid me.

Content warnings for abuse, gaslighting, disordered eating, hospitalization, drugs, alcohol, sexual harassment, cheating, mentions of death. 

Zoe and I dated for about two years from 2018-2020. We broke up in January 2020 and were on speaking terms until early May. We initially broke up amicably because I felt emotionally neglected and wanted to give Zoe the space they needed to work on some personal problems they'd been struggling with for some time by that point. We agreed they needed more time to themself and didn't have the energy to expend on both self betterment and a partner. I wanted to stay friends with them and stop letting myself get hurt by an absent partner. 

A few weeks after breaking up, Zoe and I got into an altercation where it came out that Zoe had, for the entire duration of our relationship, felt that I would never have been able to meet their needs emotionally no matter what I did and elected to never share this with me or end the relationship. They told me they would eventually just make up for my shortcomings by "getting another partner". Zoe and I were both polyamorous, but this is NOT how I practice polyamory and I didn't think it was how they practiced it either. This totally broke me. 

After this, Zoe blocked me on Twitter and discord. Without apologizing to me for anything, they began messaging every friend of mine they had contact info for, "apologizing" for hurting me and trying to spread a narrative that I was telling people the wrong information about them to make them look bad. Some of the people they messaged were people I did not talk to about my personal life and who had no idea that we had even fallen out. Some of them were my closest friends, who thankfully knew Zoe was full of shit and blocked them. They messaged my boyfriend and told him that they thought I'd only started dating him to get back at them for not reading my fanfiction, a claim that absolutely gutted me as it was never something on my mind and I would NEVER commit to a relationship for the sake of petty revenge over a fanfiction. 

I had to message them from a second Twitter account to ask them about what to do with all of their belongings I still had and tell them not to worry about returning mine. I also messaged them that way to explain that what they'd done and said had devastated me and to reprimand them for messaging my friends weird shit about our personal business. They initially completely ignored me for multiple days until I texted their phone and asked them to let me know if they'd read my message so that I could move on and stop worrying about it all. 

When they finally responded, it was with hostility and they only stopped slinging accusations about me when I told them I didn't see them as a bad person (a statement soon to change). We tentatively made up after they did one of their infamous 180s on me and apologized profusely to me, claiming they understood what they did was wrong now. Debatable.

This is where I think it's important to go into the content of our relationship. At the time of it all happening, I felt our relationship was healthy and stable. But red flags are hard to see when you're in it. 

Zoe is a highly manipulative and narcissistic person. If you look up covert narcissism, they fit the bill 100%. They lie intentionally and consistently in order to make themself look innocent. They gaslight people to play the victim. They repeatedly put me into positions where my only option was to comfort them while ignoring my own feelings. If I stood up for myself or got upset at their behavior, I was told I was being cold or they would throw a tantrum about how traumatized they are and how they can't help it. I entered into a second relationship about a year into ours. Zoe was fully aware of and initially supportive of this, but after some time, any time I would bring up my other partner, Zoe would dissolve into accusations that I was going to leave them, accusations that I was ignoring them for my other partner, complaints that because of their disabilities they weren't as good (a repeated subject for them, which I always, always reassured them was not the case and it never was): all of this in order to obtain comfort from me over the existence of someone else in my life. 

At one point, my boyfriend was considering moving out of his unhealthy home to live with a family member over an hour away from me and Zoe went off the rails to both of us, telling us it wasn't fair for us to be near each other in person if they couldn't be there, how they'd been dating me longer so it was their right to be with me first, how my boyfriend should have to stay where he was even though it was a bad environment for him. This was not a plan. It was a vaguely mentioned idea. Nothing ever came of it. Zoe apologized for this, but their possessive behavior never stopped. This interaction made me feel like an object, not a person they supposedly loved. 

Another time, after visiting me, Zoe began harassing me over needing to be able to house them so they could move down to be with me permanently. They expected this to happen in a matter of months. Zoe is disabled and cannot work and at the time did not receive any government assistance. I work in retail and at the time was living with a friend's family. I did not have my own place. I could not afford to singlehandedly support myself, let alone two people. I told Zoe this, and they told me that if I didn't figure it out they were going to die. This devastated me. I cried for hours because of how bad they were making me feel over something out of my control. I could barely type out responses to them besides asking them to stop and apologizing, but Zoe kept telling me that I was acting like I didn't care and was choosing to give up on them.

After this passed, they did what they always did and flipped to affection flooding me: "I'm so sorry baby, it's okay, you didn't do anything wrong at all, I love you so much and know you're trying so hard". 

This sort of on/off behavior was constant. I never knew what was real, or if I'd actually done something wrong, or if Zoe was going to go off on me over the slightest thing. I brought this up to them multiple times. A lot of the time it was met with "I can't help it." Other times, they would apologize and then continue the same behavior. 

I first started telling them I was feeling neglected in October 2019. Nothing changed. When we broke up in January 2020 they told me I never gave them the chance to change or fix anything. They then told me the problems I was having were inherent to their dissociative disorder so it wasn't their fault. They also told me that me breaking up with them made them feel like there was no reason to go on, presumably to make me feel guilty for ending a clearly toxic relationship where they clearly still weren't learning what they were doing was wrong. 

Zoe would frequently accuse me of things I hadn't done and then behave as if those accusations were true. Not limited to: agreeing to mod a discord server my boyfriend made just to keep them out of it on purpose (the link was shared publicly on Twitter where they followed both of us and the server was 3 hours old when they confronted me), abandoning them and not talking to them at all for a week when I was extremely busy every day (I spoke to them at length every single day that week and was not unreachable at any point), many many instances of only being with my boyfriend because I saw them as not good enough due to disability (never true, ever). This led to me never being able to understand my own behavior because Zoe always acted as if I was doing something wrong regardless of whether I was or not. I was guilt tripped a lot for things I didn't even do. I believe Zoe is delusional and genuinely believed these things to be true, but that doesn't change that it hurt and scarred me to be treated this way for so long.

Zoe lied to me about their whereabouts and health frequently. Zoe has DID and many physical health problems they haven't been properly diagnosed yet because of the complex nature of their symptoms. I will not deny Zoe is disabled mentally or physically. But they often used this as a way to get pity or to guilt trip me. Near the end of our relationship, they would disappear for sometimes 14+ hours at a time with no warning. Because of this, I stopped reaching out to them about my feelings or trying to talk to them about anything serious because I had developed a sort of learned helplessness. If I felt that my partner was unreachable, I would spare myself the pain of reaching out and being ignored. My mental health was very poor at this time and I was struggling with my pet being sick and nearly dying. Zoe would tell me they were just sleeping a lot. I knew they were sick and often slept long periods, so I didn't push it but I did keep to myself. They became angry at me for not reaching out to them and told me they couldn't be there for me if I didn't reach out to them and that I didn't want them around. It was a cycle, and I'll admit that I contributed to it, but I did it to protect myself. This is all important because one of Zoe's alters soon told me that Zoe had been lying to me about sleeping and was actually just trying to intentionally keep me from knowing what was really going on, which I won't share because it's not relevant. Finding out my partner was lying to me when they were already being very absent in my life was a hard thing to handle. 

Zoe would also go on to lie about intentionally not eating when they'd told it to me as being physically unable to keep food down because of their Celiac's and lying to me about the length of a serious decline in health that ultimately put them in the hospital. When my pet rabbit, who is like a human child to me, was on the verge of death, Zoe messaged me telling me they were scared they were about to die. When I told them bluntly that they needed to go to the hospital if they truly felt that way, they told me I hurt their feelings and that they didn't literally think they were dying and only said that to me so I'd tell them they weren't dying. While they knew I was in a crisis over potentially losing a pet I consider to be my main emotional support for nearly a decade. Their selfishness is truly limitless and if they think anyone or anything is infringing on their victimhood, they will do whatever they can to get pity and attention.

I cannot confirm that this is a lie, but I have my suspicions about it and it's a toxic situation regardless of whether lying comes into play or not. When Zoe visited me for the first time, they were determined to get and use my thc vape pen. In the past, Zoe told me that weed (and specifically thc) caused them to have seizures and so they did not use it anymore. Because I'd been fed this narrative of how scary the seizures were and how dangerous it was for them and how they couldn't have it anymore, I refused to give them my pen. When I realized how desperate they were, I even hid it. I had to go to work for a few hours one night while they stayed in my home (again, where I live with a friend's family). They became unstable and were essentially begging me to use the pen. I repeatedly said no, saying I wasn't going to be responsible for them having a seizure. They still kept pushing me. Eventually they moved on to threatening to drink alcohol in the house that did not belong to me. They threatened to walk to a liquor store (there isn't one within walking distance and they were all closed). They were unrelenting about the pen. Eventually I gave in because I loved them and they were hurting. They did not have a seizure. I know that now they smoke weed constantly. There's no real proof that they lied to me. It's possible they were misinformed or their health has changed. But they have a long record of lying to look like a victim, and it still stands that they guilt tripped me and cried to me and begged me to give them a substance they had told me would make them sick until I gave in to them. They have openly admitted to intentional automatic lying and see this as being to their benefit.

Despite claiming to be asexual now (they did not for the duration of our relationship), Zoe sexually harassed both my boyfriend and a close friend of mine who I won't name for their privacy. Zoe would send sexual messages to both and sent images and shared nsfw content with one of them without considering boundaries or discomfort of the recipient. They badly triggered my boyfriend and ruined their relationship with him by being predatory. I mention this because I don't want the label of asexual to make anyone think Zoe isn't fully capable of being sexually inappropriate with people. They have a short track record of it. After the incident with my boyfriend, Zoe told me that THEY felt like their heart was being broken and that my boyfriend had manipulated them by being triggered by Zoe's predation. They expected me to comfort them over this and I refused. The entire scenario was brought up to me vaguely with Zoe refusing to give details and trying to simultaneously act as if they were the worst person who'd ever existed and like they were the one being hurt and deserved pity and comfort for being inappropriate. Despite the polyamorous nature of our relationship, I do consider going behind my back to be sexual with my boyfriend to be cheating. Zoe has in the past been accused of cheating by their first ex. They maintain that they didn't, but knowing what I know now about their issues with boundaries, I'm not sure.

In May, I finally decided to try to confront Zoe about the ways they'd hurt me. I brought it up to them in the context of wanting to make them aware of the ways their behaviors could hurt others going forward. Zoe has always been at least outwardly very about doing better and believing people about trauma and trying to fix your mistakes (yes, I realize how stupid I was to believe this now). I thought they would be open to listening to me so they could try to avoid hurting someone else the way I felt hurt. The way this conversation ended up going gutted me worse than anything else has with them. Worse than being told I'd never be good enough. Because it was like the person I knew was just completely gone and I didn't know them at all anymore. 

I brought up the on and off flipping behavior, the emotional manipulation, I provided a screencap of the conversation where they backed me into a corner about needing to figure out how to house them as an example. They responded by telling me I misunderstood the conversation and should've just apologized to them more and been nicer so they wouldn't feel like I didn't care (again, I'd been sobbing uncontrollably and could barely type responses which were mostly "stop", "I'm sorry"). Zoe refused to listen to me about my own trauma. They shut me down. The conversation ended with them telling me I was making them too angry and they'd be back later. They ignored me for four days and, I found out later, uninstalled discord completely to avoid having to read my messages. Instead of having a real-time conversation where we could actually hash things out and I could feel heard if not understood, I resorted to typing up all of my feelings in one message, telling them this was the last I'd be speaking to them because I couldn't keep torturing myself thinking we could be friends, and sent it. 

They replied to me via Twitter days later with a non-apology about how I just don't understand what it's like to have DID and telling me that they don't spend any time thinking about me or what they did to me because they are just so sick that they can't manage it.

This broke me, completely.

Figuring all of this out has been an ongoing process. I truly believed our relationship to be healthy until I began examining things while trying to heal, and realizing the wound just kept going deeper and deeper and deeper. It's been months now since we've spoken and I still can't process everything. I am constantly remembering more fucked up things they said or did to me or my friends. I don't feel like I need to document all of it, especially since it spans such a long time, I only need to give examples of repeated problem behaviors they have given no indication of changing. 

They are gaining a sizeable following on tiktok and that's what scares me. They are so manipulative and cruel and blind to other people's emotions or boundaries. They are self-important and refuse to be told that they're wrong about anything. They will do whatever they can in order to look blameless and innocent. They now claim an identity of self-actualization and I've seen a video where they try to posit that my life is "going poorly" because I don't believe in their religion and listen to a specific podcast about debunking pseudoscience. This is funnier than it is upsetting until you realize it's the same "your life sucks because you don't have the same belief system as me" argument Christians use constantly. Zoe made this statement knowing the trauma I went through regarding religion in childhood. So thanks for that one. It's minor comparatively but it's incredibly tone-deaf and a great example of their eagerness to seem like others are beneath them for arbitrary reasons. 

Zoe does not, as far as I know, have friends, really. All of mine dropped them once they realized what a manipulative person they are. But just knowing they are on a public platform worries me. I am an adult who has been severely traumatized repeatedly and I still fell into their trap. I don't want to think about what they could do if teens or otherwise more impressionable people came to be around them. They are big into social justice and try to seem harmless and allied with minorities to seem even less dangerous, but they absolutely are toxic and unable to acknowledge their wrongdoings in any real way. The last they told me, they were isolating themself to work on things. I don't know if this is true and I have no way of knowing.

I want to end this with self-accountability. I was not and am not perfect. When my relationship with Zoe began, I had just gotten out of an extremely traumatizing situation. I had acute severe dissociative episodes as well as hallucinations and very unstable mood in general as I was adjusting back to being in a safe(r) environment than I had been for the past year. I acted out and lashed out a lot. All of this was apologized for in the best way that I knew how and I have done my best to change my behavior going forward. I consider myself to be in a much better space now mentally. I am always willing to work on problem behavior as long as I'm made aware it exists. There are things I did wrong in this relationship, and I've thought a lot about it, questioning myself and catching myself in old ways of thinking to correct myself now in all of my relationships. I didn't write this to pretend like I did nothing wrong. I am not innocent. But not being innocent doesn't mean these things didn't happen to me, or that they couldn't happen to someone else if I don't at least try to warn people. 

Please don't message Zoe and definitely don't try to argue with them. Just don't engage with them. They've been given a chance to address their behavior maturely and they turned it down in favor of continuing to play the victim in public. Anyone trying to instigate anything with them is just going to give them more fuel to act that way. 

I have already been treated like a liar for some of this information or had people believe Zoe over me on whatever accusations they'd like to make about me. That's been damaging but there's nothing I can really do about it. I'm open to answering any questions but I'm also going to ask that if you do message me about this, please be civil about it. I'm putting myself in a vulnerable place by writing all of this and I am already scared of the outcome. But I routinely convince myself that I'm making things up because of the nature of being gaslit so much. So I needed a written record of that even if Zoe doesn't like it. 

If you read this, thank you. I've been internalizing a lot of things. Getting my experiences out somewhere concise will hopefully help my healing process. 

[grimoire-of-geekery]

Wicked: a Gamer’s Look at Morality

(pic is from an Etsy store, I really want these dice, they’re freaking gorgeous)

A few years back, I was one of a handful of admin on a roleplaying sim on Second Life, and I was put in charge of teaching basic roleplaying skills to people new to our game.  There’d been a shift in our rule structure, a move towards a more formal rule set very similar to Dungeons and Dragons, and I had to adapt my workshop to reflect that.

Some of you who know me are already cringing on my behalf.  Yep, I’m one of those gamers who loves tabletop roleplaying games, but just... really dislikes D&D.  A lot of my friends already know about my laundry list of complaints (unrelatable magic systems, the ridiculous idea of “evil gods,” unrealistic rules... it’s a long list), and I’m not going to dig too deep into it for this story.  Suffice to say, I have some opinions, and we’ll leave it there.

Ordinarily, I leave my list at home, and just try to avoid playing standard D&D.  This time, however, I had a bunch of friends counting on me to help our players adapt to the new rules, and that meant dealing with some of my prejudices, and turning some of my objections into experiments.  One such experiment, and arguably the most successful one of the set, was an experiment in D&D morality alignment.

I should preface all of this by saying that I told this story in a shorter form on a Facebook group I follow, a DnD players’ group, and that’s what got me thinking about it and wanting to share it with all of you.  Yes, I do realize the irony in being a member of a group centered around a game with which I have so many issues.  I’m a geek, we’re allowed to be inconsistent in the pursuit of our fandoms.  Anyway, someone asked about alignment, and it brought up the whole story for me again, so I’m sharing it with you now (and I’ve also shared it on Facebook), as I feel it’s kind of relevant these days.

Now, those of you who are familiar with D&D already know what the alignments are, but for those new to it: every character you play gets a moral alignment based on a combination of two sets of three traits- Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic, and Good, Neutral, or Evil.  You can play a Lawful Evil character, a Neutral Good character, a Neutral Neutral (called True Neutral) character, a Chaotic Good character, and so on.

Dungeonmasters and storytellers and writers have expounded for years on what those alignments really mean.  Before we nerds had “what is your Hogwarts House?” quizzes and discussions, we had “what D&D alignment are you?” debates.  And frankly, I always hated the whole system.  What rational person would willingly choose to align themselves with “evil?”  How the hell are you going to find someone who’s objectively “good,” or “neutral” for that matter?  And how about the whole “lawful” vs. “chaotic” concept?  These are none of them rational or practical character motivations or personality frameworks, and they afford players the ability to become unrepentant murderhobos far too easily, to the point where there’s a whole genre of roleplaying centered around that mentality called “hack n slash.”  Like, that’s part of the appeal for some people.  I don’t get it, I don’t enjoy it, and it bothers me enough that I decided to change things around with our new players.

We had a character sheet and some various “character HUDs” that allowed players to use abilities like in a video game, with special effects and such.  They came with an alignment choice.  That alignment choice was set up with a grid of nine cards, each with two letters.  Lawful Good wasn’t spelled out, it was just “LG.”  Likewise, Neutral Evil was “NE.”

This gave me an idea.  A WICKED idea.

I sat my players down, and said to them, “forget what you know about alignments, I’m changing the rules.  We’ll choose your alignment after you design your character.”  They went about the business of designing who they were going to play in our game.  At the end, they were to choose an alignment, based solely on what they thought those letters meant.

They chose.  One guy chose LE because he wanted to play an evil character who still played by the rules.  Another girl chose CN because she wanted, and I quote, “to do whatever she wanted without concern for morality.”  All of the players finished their choices, and that’s when I unveiled the surprise.This is what I told them:

Those of you who chose an E, congratulations, E= Elphaba.  You each get a small starting advantage of some kind- a power boost, like a feat or an extra cantrip.  It’s small, but useful.  However, you also gain an uncanny mark which puts you at a social disadvantage, causing people to vilify you or be intimidated.  Good for intimidation checks, bad for making friends.

Those of you who chose an N, N= Nessarose.  You get a physical disadvantage that causes people to infantilize you.  You may choose a magical method to circumvent the physical side of that disadvantage, but you can’t get rid of the social aspects of it.  Bad for intimidation, good for getting people to feel sorry for you.

Those of you with a G, congrats, you’re all Glinda.  You get a social advantage with strings attached, and a single fatal mental flaw, causing you to miss certain information and misjudge things.  You will be good at making friends and manipulating people, but you’ll also be dependent upon them.  Choose what social group you’re connected to now.

My final declaration: your letter determines what kinds of options you have.  Glindas can’t make decisions that are only available to Nessaroses or Elphabas, and vice versa with all three.  You are limited in your scope, and you will have to deal with the consequences of your actions in a way that’s in keeping with your alignment.  And no, you can’t just choose a new alignment, you’ll have to change it in character through story.

Suddenly, I had a bunch of players who thought they were done with their character creation, scrambling to figure out how to revamp their sheet and make their characters playable.  Naturally, I got a number of “it’s not fair” complaints, and one player stormed out and threw a tantrum.  Eventually, though, we had a large chunk of people with characters which had a lot more intricacy and detail woven into their design than they had previously attempted.  We had players who were actually excited to play with the others, because they no longer knew which way their character would go.

I had left the whole “lawful/neutral/chaotic” thing alone, so people could use it as a touchstone in their behavior choices.  I also gave them the option of changing their alignment in character, with the understanding that the changes would cause them to lose whatever advantages their previous alignment granted them.

The axiomatic side of things actually helped some of the players understand character motives and moral choice, which was awesome.  They learned that the letters are in that order for a reason- Lawful Good instead of Good Lawful, because the axiomatic aspect was about choosing for oneself, and the moral aspect was for how one deals with one’s consequences.

People who are good aren’t people who only ever do good.  People make mistakes, they screw up, they lose their footing or have bad judgment or get confused or experience temporary states of insanity.  People who are evil aren’t people who only ever do evil.

Being “good” is about accountability, about accepting that not everything is about us.  A “good” person is someone who chooses to accept that their choices affect the world in ways they cannot always predict, and that they will one day have to pay the piper for their actions.  They accept their accountability for their actions, they endeavor (rationally, and in a way that serves them as much as anyone else) to make the world a better place for everyone, even if it’s just in small ways.

A “neutral” person is someone unconcerned with consequences.  Maybe they just are in it for the experience, maybe they see no moral quandary with their actions or their situation.  Maybe they’re not able to see the longer view, or they haven’t had a reason to look yet.  Maybe they’re not in a phase of their life where they’re interested in responsibility.  Neutral isn’t a way to drive though.  It’s the setting in your car for “not going anywhere.”  A person is neutral when they’re reactive, and they’re often not thinking about whether their reactions are acceptable or not.

Conversely, an “evil” person is someone who refuses to be accountable.  They don’t just ignore consequences, they aren’t ever wrong, and their constant efforts are towards advantage and maintaining their position at the top of the heap.  They don’t have to answer to anyone for anything they do, not even themselves.  Maybe they have a nihilistic “nothing matters anyway” philosophy about the world.  Maybe they’re convinced that the ends justify the means.  The difference between them and the other types is, their choices are corrupting and make the world a little harder to live in for everyone involved.  Not that they care, they sleep just fine, thanks.

Now, I have been all three of these people at one point in my life, and I’ve learned that there aren’t good or evil people, just choices and consequences and how you deal with both.  I’ve learned that I’m pretty much never okay with being a neutral person, it stresses me out.  I’ve also learned that I’m not fond of evil at all, because I genuinely like life and the world we live in.  So, good it is, as often as possible, even if it’s just in small ways.

I think it’s important, especially now, for us to recognize that chaos can be good, that law can be evil (and obviously vice versa), and that being neutral is rarely the way forward.  Nobody who strives to make the world better for themselves or those they care about ever thinks they’re doing evil.  And, they’re right, because they’re not doing evil or good.  Good and evil are in the consequences, they’re in how they’re going to deal with the fallout of their mistakes, or how they’re going to handle their success or good fortune.

Those of you looking for good in the world?  Do good, even if it’s small.  Don’t worry about being perfect, focus on making a small difference and making the world a better place.  I promise you, it’s never a bad choice.  And if you have to get a little Wicked to do it, that’s fine.  Chaos can be good.  So can law.  And only those who don’t value good would not try to make good out of both.

Addendum: maybe this is important, maybe not, but out of twelve players I instructed in that class (I went back and counted names in my records), none of them ever tried to change their alignment.  They all became very fond of their character’s personality and identity, and felt no need to change what they’d fought hard to develop and understand.  When a person’s identity is in question, it can often become a fight for survival to change one’s behavior.  To be different means that the old self dies, and nobody takes death well.  I think that might be useful information for some of us right now.  For me, I’m keeping in mind that good and evil are about consequences, and I’m striving to make sure that any fighting I do, whether for my own identity or for the safety of what I love, will be towards making this world a better place, especially for those who have a hard time finding safety or hope.

[legobiwan]

So i was just daydreaming of SW and fics & i was imagining two characters on opposites sides of light and dark both trying to turn each other bc they think they are right(don’t they all?). But i feel like sidious and maul and plenty of sith knew that they weren’t necessarily the ‘good’ guys, no matter their reason for why they ended up on the dark side. I think sidious knew he wasn’t a good person & was well aware of the ‘bad’ nature of the darkside and how it can corrupt a person entirely 1/

I think dooku was as well even though he thought he was doing the right thing & making change. Even Anakin knew in his own twisted mindset that despite why he turned, he wasn’t on the side of the good guys no matter their reason for why they ended up on the dark side.I think sidious knew he wasn’t a good person&was well aware of the ‘bad’ nature of the darkside and how it can corrupt a person entirely. I think dooku was as well even though he thought he was doing the right thing&making change.2/

But how would you convince someone that turned bc they thought they could keep it controlled. Revan himself turned thinking he could prevent the darkside from corrupting him entirely&we see how that turned out. What about people who just genuinely think that they are more free (they aren’t) on the darkside and just want to BE on the darkside and think that it’s not inherently bad. Bc some sith fics make it sound not that bad but we know that it actually really is very bad by nature ¾

I guess my question is how does someone who thinks they can have everything they want and not loose themselves, who is ruled by the dark side to the point of sith eyes, become convinced that going that far isn’t actually the right path to be on? 4/4 Sorry this is so long

Wow, anon, this is…a complicated question. (And off-topic, but daydreaming about SW fics totally got me through some horrible jobs a few years ago. Star Wars daydreaming ftw.)

For me, it comes down to what your definition of “light” (read, good) is. And I think either side, light or dark, taken too far to one extreme ends up wrapping back to the other, a kind of ouroboros. Too much light, as we saw with the Jedi, can lead to dark consequences. Too much dark, in a weird way, will lead to revolt, to a balancing. 

It’s thermodynamics, taken to a philosophical extent, where your variables seek equilibrium but there is only so much energy to share between them, as it cannot be created nor destroyed. 

But let’s extricate ourselves from such tangled webs, shall we, and take this analysis character by character. 

Sidious: Sidious is an unrepentant, manipulative bastard. I mean, the absolute worst, the whole shebang. I doubt there would be anyone who would have had the ability to pull him into the “Light,” just the ability to thwart his plans. Evil genius, psychopath, bereft of empathy, etc. Let’s just say Rey’s existence, at least from the first generation, was likely not an act of love. 

Dooku: Oh Dooku. My favorite bad guy is a lot more complicated. His motivations were idealistic and to some degree, justified. The Republic and the Jedi were failing certain underrepresented systems, the Republic bloated on corruption and the Jedi more and more backing themselves into a protective corner until they had no room left to move. His execution of the whole thing…well, that’s where his hubris (and nihilism) led him astray. And I still contend we see this darkening of Dooku between AotC and RotS, especially in TCW. The dark side won in Dooku, pulled him under its tide so perhaps by the time of RotS he just wasn’t able to see - or admit - Sidious’s plans for him. 

Now, would Dooku have been redeemed? Yes, but only under circumstances and I would say he would less be redeemed than returned to grey status. 

But what would possibly convince our resident iconoclast to renounce some of his ways? 

Or more, who?

Qui-gon or Obi-wan. Or both. Lineage is so important to Dooku, a man who felt the loss of his family, who felt he was alone in the universe, who, unlike Anakin, went out of his way to avoid close connections, to relieve everything of his past except his title and all the expectations that came with it. I mean, imagine that. You are raised a Jedi, taught to believe attachment is, if not bad, at least problematic. And then you leave that religious order to return to your homeworld where you inherit a title and presumably a million problems and identities and histories that come with said title. And Dooku knows none of these people but to rule them, but he does know the ones he has raised and the ones who they raised. Which leads me to believe that an alive Qui-gon (who, let’s face it, wouldn’t have been 100% light side) and/or a more convinced Obi-wan (who should have listened to Dooku on Geonosis but that is a whole other discussion because that was a Hail Mary by Dooku and the more I think about it, the more I believe it was a ballsy-as-ass move on his part) might have convinced him to realign himself.

Anakin: Ohhhh, Anakin. Anakin, who fell because he felt he had to, in order to save everyone he loved. Anakin, who was burdened with false expectation after a traumatic childhood. Anakin, who made so many bad choices and it’s both his fault and not his fault, a tragic combination of circumstance and proclivity. The thing is, we know Anakin is torn between the light and the dark, even after he turns. Anakin as Vader is kind of like the person who says, “Oh I ate 2 cookies, might as well eat the whole bag because nothing matters.” (Side note, I am a total supporter of eating the whole bag of cookies if that is the heart’s truest desire. Speaking as someone who has downed many bags of cookies in their lifetime.) Anyway, it’s the mindset that’s the problem. And Anakin does redeem himself in the end, when he finds something/someone to fight for and fight against and isn’t that so him, always fighting against something?

Look, dark side characterizations are fun. But there’s always something else behind it, and it is a big deal to abandon your principles, your ideals, your health, your everything to this festering, opaque disease that lives in your deepest gut and at times takes the controls, much to your horror (except if you are Sidious, in which case, the horrible darkness is always at the controls and that is by design). I, personally, like to explore the darker sides of these characters but also the why - what made them fall, why are they hurting, and what is the fallout of their actions?

Yes, it’s easy to hate, to fear - I mean, we see this in the real world on an everyday basis. What’s less easy is to be alone, and I mean truly alone. And I think minus extreme examples like Sidious (who, let’s admit, created clones to cheat death and kept a vast amount of servants so even he was not ever truly alone). If I might get a little existential for a moment, what I like about Jedi philosophy (and in all seriousness, I had a major breakdown about this a few years back and Jedi philosophy, weirdly enough, was a large part in saving my sanity) is that we are never alone, that we are all part of the Force, of life, of the breath and heartbeat of the universe no matter what corporeal form we take or not. The Sith see themselves as alone, but as we can observe, so many of them are motivated by connection, could possibly be spurred to change by connection in the correct circumstances. 

And by this, I don’t mean the Jedi were 100% correct. I feel like the version of the Jedi we got by TCW had been pushed to some extremes due to the Ruusan Reformation (gdi, that had better get recanonized, asap, because it is a pivotal moment and a HUGE explanation of why the Jedi ended up as they were by the time the Prequels rolled around and it makes So Much Sense), the emergence of Dooku, the war, etc.) There is something to be said about the Grey Jedi, not that they necessarily embraced light and dark - but perhaps so - but that they did not fall to one extreme or the other. And this is where I feel Qui-gon succeeded over many other of his peers, despite his myriad of other personality flaws. Possibly this was why he was able to access the Whills and pass on what he had learned, to the point of where we see Yoda in TLJ, who is a lot more philosophical about everything than he had been in life. 

So to answer your question - there is no making someone turn back to the light, as much as there is any way of forcing a sentient being to do anything. Once can only pave the way and forge relationships, and the rest is up to that person. I think a lot of our Sith friends knew they were going down a dark path but also saw no alternative and felt a need to vindicate themselves, to strike out in anger against their circumstances. I get it, I think we all have that urge sometimes. And I suppose the answer might come in having something to fight for as opposed to fight against, as ridiculous as that sounds. 

But then again, I am but a simple lego floating around the internet. :)

[sociopath-analysis]

Sociopath Profile: Johan Liebert

From the manga series Monster (1994-2001) and its anime adaptation (2004-2005) Voiced by Nozomu Sasaki (JP) and Keith Silverstein (ENG) Requested by @1997roses

Where do we even begin with this pretty boy? Well, for starters, he’s the eponymous “monster.” And let me tell you, he friggin’ lives up to that title.

[SOME SPOILERS BELOW]

One aspect he handles exceptionally well for someone so inhuman in nature: superficial charm. Johan is able to come off as a soft-spoken, mild-mannered young man easily while hiding deeper machinations underneath. And not to mention, this facade never drops as he does some horrible things, such as burning down a library! That stoic face did not change except for a small smirk.

This comes in handy for another important aspect: conning and manipulation. He is a master at this. Johan is able to make you do just about anything with nothing more than a few words. He also makes good use of his ability to pinpoint what someone cares about to make them suffer enough to kill themselves. That’s right! He doesn’t even need to physically harm you to kill you!

As far as lack of empathy goes, he does have his own way of loving his twin sister, Anna. And she’s the only one who is able to break Johan’s stoic facade. However, it never mitigates the countless other lives he’s either ruined or ended due to his pursuit to get Tenma to kill him. And need I remind you, it has been a lot of terrible stuff. Killing for him is as natural as breathing and carries about as much emotional weight as brushing his teeth.

He’ll kill just about anyone. People who have helped him. People who have hurt him. Good people. Bad people. People trying to reform. People who have never done anything wrong. People who are guilty of more than he is (if they even exist). Even his foster parents! Yes, every time he and Anna got adopted, he’d eventually kill them at random.

His reason for doing all this stuff? Well, often times, it seems like it’s for no other reason than the fact that he can. Other times, it seems that he just wants someone to kill him for being so horrible. Basically, his idea amounts to throwing the world into a state where everyone wants to kill each other at the drop of a hat. Much of his philosophy seems to run on nihilism.

“There’s nothing special about being born. Not a thing. Most of the universe is just death, nothing more. In this universe of ours, the birth of a new life on some corner of our planet is nothing but a tiny, insignificant flash. Death is a normal thing. So why live?”

While this isn’t represented in many fictional sociopaths, he does show signs of sociopathy in his childhood. In the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, it is usually necessary to include the presence of a conduct disorder before the age of fifteen. He got 50 children and instructors in Kinderheim 511 to kill each other as he watched the place burn. And he killed his foster parents every time he got a new set. That should say enough.

And any time an explanation is given for his current state, it is eventually undermined. Either by showing his childhood behavior or by showing others who have gone through worse actually being compassionate like Anna. In the end, all it amounts to is the fact that Johan is an unrepentant, shameless vessel of unadulterated evil.

See more profiles here.

[darthrena]

(Your Kisses) Taste like Come what May

Excerpt:

“I promise you will love her.  She’s funny, smart, absolutely gorgeous–Just one date is all I am asking.”

“What has gotten into you all of a sudden.  Is this girl on the run from ICE or something?”

“Armie asked me to marry him.”

Ben felt his world collapsing.  His mild amusement long forgotten under the weight of a thousand unspoken words, missed opportunities, and imagined confessions.

Rose’s voice seemed to come from far away.  "Ben?  Aren’t you going to say anything?“

Ben swallowed, forced his throat to produce sounds other than screaming, or worse, a sob.  Oddly, when his mouth felt capable of speech, it was a faint rasp, no hint of the tempest which roiled within.  "Congratulations.  You deserve to be happy.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

Summary:

Ben, Rose and Hux grew up together.  Ben loves Rose, but Rose and Hux are together.  After Rose and Hux become engaged, Rose tries to set Ben up with her friend Rey.  He reluctantly agrees to go on a date.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

A step over the threshold and the familiar creaking of wood, weakened by time and salt-air, and aroma of hearty chowder and ale engulfing his senses, Ben knew he made the right choice.

Nestled between a trendy Korean tapas place and a shoe repair shop with flaking blue paint Ben could recall from his childhood, Takodana was sedate even on a Saturday night. Eclectic knick knacks ranging from a Rico Petrocelli bobblehead, a 1984 Bruce Springsteen poster yellowing at the edges, a carved wooden mask allegedly depicting a warrior of Venezuelan origin, to vibrant weavings of alpaca wool, lined the walls and cluttered the entrance way. Questionable decor aside, the whiskey, unpretentious beef stew, fries and a decent chowder on the menu had long ago made it Ben's favorite bar.

The proprietress, Maz, eyed him from beneath thick rimmed glasses and a bevy of judgement as he slipped into his favorite booth across from the bar. "Ben Solo," she drawled, giving little reassurance in either tone or posture, hands on hips and brow arched.

"Hey Maz," he greeted warily, as Maz stepped from behind the counter.

At last the petite lady put him out of his misery. "I ran into your mother the other day. Said you haven't been home since Christmas."

Right. It wasn't like Ben was avoiding his mother, at least, anymore than usual.  After quitting his job, and getting away from Snoke's insidious manipulations, it had been cathartic almost, reconciling with his mother and Uncle.  your father would be proud, his mother's voice hoarse with tears of grief and pride.  As lovely and neat as the story would appear on the cover or told over dinner parties when his mother was three Merlots in and giving him meaningful, tearful glances--prodigal son returned home and joined his mother's firm--things were still a bit strained.  Their specialties of law differing as they did, weeks could go by without seeing his mother at the office.  Ben made a concerted effort to call his mother once a month, or at least have Kaydel order her flowers or a bottle of wine when he couldn't bring himself to.  "I've just been busy," he mumbled, unable to summon even a modicum of coolness in the face of such obvious disapproval.

Maz tutted at the flimsy excuse, but seemed to relent slightly, moving back toward the bar.  "It'll be the usual then?"

"Yeah."

Silence reigned but for the hub of other patrons chatting and the slight clink of glass as Maz's weathered hands deftly prepared his usual starting drink, an old fashioned.

Maz brought him his drink, laying it down on a lacy, crocheted coaster.  "You want the stew?  I also have a Saturday Chowder."

Ben twitched a smile.  "What makes it a Saturday Chowder again?"

"It's Saturday, isn't it?"

"So just the regular chowder then?"

The spry old lady made a swatting motion with a ladle nowhere near impacting him.  "Don't be fresh with me, Benjamin Organa Solo."

"Oh I wouldn't dare."  Ben took a savoring sip of his old-fashioned.  It was perfect as always.

Maz was shaking her head, a gleam in her eye that should have been a warning of the subject she had been warming up to.  "Just like your father, you are."

Ben forced himself to keep his shoulders from tensing.  It was easier now, breath in, breath out.  When he spoke, however, none of the grief and anger that had once roiled like an summer storm within him escaped.  "I guess so."

"You should go next week, Ben."  Maz's voice was so very gentle.  "Your mother needs you."

"I'll think about it."  Ben cleared his throat.  A burning feeling was crawling up his chest to gouge his eyes.  A judicious sip of his drink doused it slightly, but a distraction was welcome.  "I'll think about the Saturday chowder too.  Hux is joining me though, so I'll wait for him to order."

"Alright then."

After a brief pat against his shoulder, Maz went to attend to a middle aged couple across the bar, and Ben was left alone.

Three gnomes and a tarnished silvery ash tray shaped like a crab on the table beside him were his only company.  Ben spared them a slight smile touched with nostalgia.  The crab shaped ashtray had been a favorite as a child, tagging along with his Dad to Takodana on sweltering afternoons.  A whiff of tobacco, his father's gravely voice and lopsided smile, Don't tell your mother we came here instead of the zoo.

Ben had never minded.  Maz gave him coloring books and the best lemonade, sweating over lace doilies.  Uncle Chewie would drop by, ruffle his hair and tell stories about Mara, the Chieftain of Coquivacoa, who fought the Spanish Conquistadores, or of stomping through the rainforests of Java, weakened by Dengue fever and harangued by monkeys.

There was the sound of the bell ringing, a familiar red head ducking beneath a bright colored talisman.  Dark circles starkly shadowed Hux's steely green eyes, but he still lit up in a smile as his long strides brought him to the seat across Ben.

"Solo, sorry for running late.  Rose was piqued at the sudden boys night, and decided to distract me until I divulged the nature of our evening.  Alas, despite her efforts I kept mum."  Hux regarded him with raised eyebrows, a satisfied grin softening the highhanded tone.

Ben tried not to think too hard about the nature of the "distraction," while remarking dryly, "Easy enough when I haven't told you anything to divulge."

Hux remained unfazed.  "I had high expectations the lovely Rey would be featured."

Absurd though the impulse was, Ben felt a current of displeasure to hear his friend say her name so casually.  "You've met her?"

"Of course.  Rose has had her over several times.  As a fellow countryman, naturally I approve, but she's delightful company and holds her liquor well."

He thought back to the other night, of Rey, six drinks in straddling his face as he ate her out.  "That she does."

Old friends that they were, Hux allowed the topic to drop momentarily, waving over an only too happy Maz to place his order.

Food orders taken (Saturday chowder for Ben, the stew for Hux, with fries to share), Maz drew a IPA from the tap, while fixing her eager sights on Hux.  "'heard you finally made an honest woman of your girl.  Congratulations, dear.  Shame Rose couldn't come tonight."

Hux grinned back, the same beatific look he'd been sporting ever since Rose accepted his proposal lightening his naturally haughty features.  It was easier to focus on his glass and slowly diluting brown liquid as the ice melted, than Hux cheerfully accepting Maz's congratulations.  "--tonight's just us.  Rose sends her love."  Shooting Ben a wink he could do without, Hux continued slyly, "Perhaps next time we'll be back on a double date."

Fuck.

Maz swiveled with super human speed to bring the full throttle of her bespectacled gaze upon himself.  "Started seeing someone?" She cooed with feigned casualness than fooled no one.  Already Ben could sense the gears turning--Maz wasn't one for smartphones, but in the next 24 hours he imagined she would be calling on his mother for tea, or using Takodana's ancient rotary if she deemed the matter too pressing.

While glaring at an unrepentant Hux, Ben hurried to deescalate the conversation.  "It's nothing serious.  Hux is just giving me a hard time."

The man himself merely smiled innocently.  "Rose made it sound different.  Perhaps I misunderstood."

Maz seemed a little disappointed, if skeptical, but she left them to bring their orders to the kitchen.

Finally left alone, Hux dropped all pretense.  "Sorry, I had to tease you a little.  But you know Rey would love this place."

Rey would fit right in to Takodana.  It was easy to imagine Rey cozying across the booth, a tequila neat or a Belgian white ale in hand, cheeks flushed and hair loose as she gossiped with Maz and laughed too loud with Rose.  She would love hearing Uncle Chewie's tales that sounded half like fiction.  He could imagine her asking in that charming lilt about all the odd bops and bits in the shop, and telling her about the time he spilled a customer's beer over the velour bar seat or the time first he snuck a sip of alcohol and Dad had just laughed and Dad--

Dad would have loved her.

"Yeah, she would.""Ben..."  He glanced up at the rather serious tone, and solemn look Hux was sporting.  "Did you mean that?  About it being nothing serious."

Did he mean it?  He thought of Rose, smiling sadly as she told him, So do you, you know.  Of Rey's knowing hazel eyes.  You have feelings for Rose, don't you?

"I don't know," he admitted.

There was a sound of huffed laughter from his side.  "Dude, you have it bad."

Ben grimaced.  "Please, don't say Dude."

"Hombre."

"Please stop talking."

"Homie?"

The next couple hours passed in a blur of warm food and easy conversation.  Hux let Ben off the hook for the most part on the subject of Rey.  After Hux had drunkenly complained about the wedding planning for thirty minutes--"Why do we need to have a rehearsal dinner and a wedding?  Why must the party favors match the bridesmaid dresses?"-- Ben surprised himself by bringing it up.  Although, alcohol likely had somewhat to do with it.

"I don't know what to do about Rey."

"You should just call her, mate," Hux slurred with exasperation.

"And say what?" he snapped back.

Hux shrugged.  "I like you.  I want to date you?  Doesn't seem all that complicated."

"Easy for you to say," he muttered under his breath.  His head felt muddled under the weight of alcohol and confusion of his emotions.  "On our date, I told her that I'm not looking for a serious relationship."

"And?"

"And now I don't know what to do."  Hux was poised to argue again, so Ben cut him off hastily, "I don't know what I want to do."

After a moment's pause, Hux rubbed his face blearily.  "Look, Ben, I think you're overthinking this.  How do you know she's looking for a serious relationship?  She's what, 25 years old?  If you want to see her, tell her you want to see her.  If you want to date her, tell her that."

That seemed...reasonable.

Hux was right.  He didn't have to have everything figured out just yet.

If he wanted to see Rey again, then he should just ask her.

Which was how he found himself standing on the corner as he waited for his cab, dialing Rey's number.

It rang a few times, a length sufficient for Ben's anxiety to stir to life restlessly, before a sleepy voice answered at the last ring.

"Hello?"

"It's Ben."

"Ben!"  The voice sounded much more awake now.  There was a low chuckle that sent a warm, molten pulse through his veins.  She must have been sleeping.  Ben wondered idly if Rey slept bare as she had in his company, or if she wore a ratty t-shirt over panties, if her nipples pressed through the thin fabric.  His fantasies were interrupted by Rey continuing with obvious amusement, "I was following the advice of all those Just Seventeen magazines I read growing up, and planned to text you in the morning.  Seems like it paid off."

"Oh."  Ben considered this information for a moment.  "I read mostly read F&SF.  The fantasy and science fiction magazine.  They didn't offer much dating advice."

Now Rey laughed full out.  "No, I'd imagine not," she replied after catching her breath.

"I want to see you again."

Inebriated though he was, Ben could detect the smile in Rey's voice.  "We literally just saw each other this morning."

"Technically it was yesterday."

"That should tell you something of the appropriateness of your phone call."

Oops.  "Sorry."

There was another huff of laughter over the receiver that briefly whited the sound.  "Look Ben..."

That beginning was not promising.  Nerves bubbling up his gut, Ben was helpless against the flow of babble as he cut her off: "I can't stop thinking about you.  The way you taste.  Your cunt clenching on my tongue, the sounds you make when you come.  And the way you laugh.  Whether you like green tea tiramisu or hate IPAs."

"Fuck, Ben."  There was a weak laugh on the other end, overwhelmed and something else his alcohol impaired brain couldn’t translate.  "Are you always like this?"

"No," he breathed back.  "Not at all.  Never."

"Ben."  Her voice was a sweet sigh.  There had never been a more lovely sound than her lips around his name.  "I want you too.  It's just, well, what about Rose?"

"Rey."

His mind was in free fall.  The ground beneath his feet had slipped away.  What about Rose?  He loved her, didn't he?  He grasped at bits of thoughts, stray feelings, a warmth that was Rose's smile and nose scrunched in glee, and a smoldering burn that was Rey's lips parted in ecstasy--but those sum of parts defied revelation, no, he refused to summate them.  He was vaguely aware of his panicked breathing, but remained in paralyzed impasse.  When Rey spoke, her voice was tentative and gentle and far better than he deserved.

"Ben?  It's alright.  I understand."

"You understand?" he repeated dumbly.  How could she make sense of what he barely comprehended?

"Yes."  There was a pause, and a hitch in Rey's breathing.  "Well, you want something more casual.  I get it.  We had a lot of fun together.  But if you don't mind, I'd like to think it over.  Maybe you should too, when you aren't drunk."

No, that's not what he meant.  Tell her now.  Open your mouth.  "Oh," he said.

"Yeah."

"Oh."

There was a pause that stretched on and on.

Then.

"Goodnight, Ben."

His name spoken like a caress lingered in his mind long into sleep.

Also posted on AO3

[silentauroriamthereal]

I hate Mary Morsan too

When I first saw this, I thought about just saying something like, “yay, high five!”, but then I reconsidered. Expressing hate for any woman, even a fictional one, is always a bit troubling for me. I truly am a feminist to the core of my being, and as someone who is known for writing the character of Mary as I truly see her in the canon, I’m already uncomfortably aware that people see me as a Mary hater. Johnlock shippers have been getting this since 2014 now: if you hate Mary, it’s only because she gets in the way of your ship, and the Johnlockers hate all of the female characters in Sherlock.

The second is patently untrue. That said, I’ll allow that Moffat and Gatiss are notoriously poor at writing female characters. (This has been well covered in many articles.) They, Moffat in particular, have a troubling way of aligning the concepts of female power with abuse (Irene uses sex to extort people for the terrorist she works for, Mary shoots people when they threaten to show her for the assassin and criminal that she is, even Molly and Mrs Hudson resort to violence in so-called moments of “strength” - Molly with her slapping and Mrs Hudson pulling a gun and handcuffs on Sherlock before having a bunch of men throw him into the trunk of her car). Moffat and Gatiss have an issue when it comes to writing a well-rounded, believable female character whose entire purpose doesn’t revolve around the male main character(s) and doesn’t come off as… well, a man trying to write a woman. That said, filling things out and making them work is also part of the joy of writing fanfic, and I, along with many other Johnlock writers, have definitely done my best to do that. I’ve even given several women on Sherlock their own stand-alone stories, told from their points of view, even Mary! If you’re curious: 

Janine POV: The Green Carnations

Mary POV: Moving on/Making do (split between Mary and John’s POVs), Stand-in, Want (split between Sherlock, John, and Mary’s POVs)

Molly POV: The Red Roses, The Clouded Eye (split between Molly and Sherlock’s POV)

Sally Donovan & Mrs Hudson POV (first and last sections of Inappropriate)

Irene (not her POV, but definitely featuring her): From the Bottom of the Well

I’ve done my best to round these women out and give them credit where credit is due, whether or not I personally like them. I didn’t make them two-dimensional. And I didn’t write them the same every time (for those whose POVs I wrote more than once), either! Molly in The Red Roses is vulnerable, strong, self-sacrificing, and brave. Molly in The Clouded Eye is manipulable, jealous, possessive, yet (I hope) still understandable, pitiable. The point, ultimately, is the same as with any character: to be able to see their complexities, their depth, and to observe their actions objectively. 

People wanted so badly to like Mary. They wanted to love the strong woman that John Watson chose to marry. I didn’t see any hate leading up to series 3 at all, neither toward the character of Mary Morstan, nor toward the person who played her. I saw open-mindedness and a wiliingness to take her into the collective fandom heart. For me, I was always wary, I’ll admit. I thought from the start that it was a mistake to take such a miniscule role from the original canon and make it such a big deal. I thought then that Moffat and Gatiss were trying to stomp out the Johnlock ship and rumours of their queer-baiting. Surely if John got married, we couldn’t possibly see it as gay anymore, right??? I saw their choice of actor as a deliberate attempt to parry the natural chemistry Benedict and Martin have onscreen, and I thought then that it was an overly desperate attempt. I maintain that to this day: I think it backfired. But that generosity of spirit was there toward Mary, even after series 3, for the most part. I saw many, mahy Johnlockers try to include Mary as part of a newly-formed OT3. I saw them identifying with Mary, trying their very best to love her. 

Many of them still may. I don’t. For me, feminism means being seen as a human being first, and if a person’s experience as that type of human being has meant some kind of persecution or prejudice or abuse, it helps understand their actions. But not to excuse them. It doesn’t make it okay to murder people if you manage to look cute while doing it. It doesn’t make it okay if you did it to protect your own interests. That’s just selfishness, and defending it isn’t feminism. That’s just making excuses. Mary is a person who, in some unexplained backstory, chose a career wherein she kills and gets paid for it. She worked, to quote her, for the highest bidder. It wasn’t something she did out of a moral position, for love of country, for self-defense, for a cause, however just, as a cog in some great war machine. She didn’t do it do defend people she loved, or innocent bystanders, or children, or people too weak to defend themselves. She didn’t do it for some satisfying and long-deserved vengeance: she did it for money. Tawdry, dirty, blood money. And then she built a mountain of deceit, fed it to a man who was grieving, his trust broken and all but lost, and sold him a house of lies. And when his clever best friend discovered her, she shot him in cold blood, threatened him while under the influence, and hunted him down like an animal to put an end to him. 

Pardon me if I don’t find that “cute” or “strong” or anything I feel like modelling myself after, anything I would want young women or my own nieces to look up to and admire. 

I’ve talked about this before, but Mary is also extremely problematic in terms of blurring where the moral centre of Sherlock and John is. The thesis of the show has always been that Sherlock and John are damaged, problematic people, but ultimately good men. Ultimately, they’re on the side of the angels. Mary isn’t. Mary is on the side of the terrorists. She’s on the side of whoever will pay her the most to be on their side. In a way, that’s almost worse. Sherlock may “flirt” with Moriarty or Irene (though I always saw it as pretty one-sided on the latter) in the same way that he flirts with danger, with addiction, with obsessive behaviour, but he would never align himself with any of them. He may admire a clever plan, but his far greater fascination and draw is to the plain goodness of John Watson, extraordinary in its very ordinariness, yet it’s hardly ordinary, either. John can pull off making it look ordinary, but for someone who’s been through what he’s been through, it’s amazing that he IS still, ultimately, despite his own problematic behaviour, a good man. He and Sherlock both are, and it’s what they admire in each other, calling one another things like the best and the bravest and the kindest. That’s what they both seek, temporary fascinations with the devil they face every day in their line of work notwithstanding. Mary and Irene are both faces of this evil that Sherlock and John oppose. It’s the way things are: Sherlock and John are on the side of the angels. Mary and Irene work for the terrorists. Having Sherlock and John align themselves with Mary is incredibly problematic. 

I maintain that everything about Mary Morstan was a mistake. It was a mistake to bring her onto the show, a mistake to try to make her 1000% more interesting than she ever was in the original canon, and certainly a mistake to have had John go back to her, to have had him and Sherlock put themselves on her side, to have made themselves accomplices to her crimes by the very act of helping bury her past. It was a mistake to then not see her arc through the way it began, her irritating ghost appearances bearing no resemblance to her canonical behaviour, and her proprietary brokerage of Sherlock and John’s friendship completely out of place and undeserved. 

So yeah: in a response that’s probably 5,000 times longer than you were hoping for (apologies!), it takes a lot to make me admit that I hate another woman, even a purely fictional one. But Moffat and Gatiss succeeded on this one. I do hate Mary Morstan. I hate her because she’s an unrepentant murderer and liar, a narcissist whose only motivations are what she wants and feels would be good for her, and did everything in her power to tear Sherlock and John apart, and failing that, to outright kill Sherlock or manipulate him into killing himself. I see absolutely nothing admirable about this character and am just so glad she’s off the show. I wish she’d never been there in the first place. 

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Depart From Me, I Never Knew You

By Mike Gendron

The most terrifying words any professing Christian could ever hear would be the Lord Jesus declaring: "I never knew you, depart from me" (Mat. 7:23). On judgment day those words will be heard by many who once made professions of faith and claimed to be followers of Jesus. Yet very few evangelical leaders appear to be concerned. Our churches are filled with people who are headed to hell and don't even know it. Who are these false converts and how were they deceived? What lulls so many people into this cruel deception?

Two Kinds of Deception

Scripture describes these false converts as victims of deception. They are either deceived by false teachers or they deceive themselves. Some are victims of a false gospel or an unbiblical method of evangelism (Gal. 1:6-7). A false gospel offers the natural man what he wants: good feelings, healing, riches and success. The true Gospel offers him what he needs: forgiveness of sin, redemption, perfect righteousness, reconciliation with God and the power to live a victorious life.

Those who deceive themselves are people who hear the Word of God but do not do what it says (Jas. 1:22). Since obedience to the Word is a divine requirement of every believer, the disobedience of those who deceive themselves is marked by a lack of con- cern for God's will and His commands. They have little desire for God's people, His Word or His glory. They are self-absorbed and self- centered and love themselves more than they love God (2 Tim. 3:2-3). Paul gave a stern warning for the self-deceived who reject what the Word says: "The wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience”(Eph. 5:6). They perish because they failed to love the truth (2 Thes. 2:10).

Ignorance and Pride Can Be Fatal

Tragically, the many warnings given in the New Testament about spiritual deception are not taken seriously. People are so comfort- able in their church or religion that they have no hunger for spiritual truth. Deluded by arrogance, they deny their ignorance of God's Word. Many Christians have only a superficial knowledge of the Gospel. They know Jesus died for the sins of the world, but they don't know why He had to, or why it pleased the Father to crush Him (Isa. 53:10). They don't know the divine punishment for sin is death (Ezek. 18:4). They don't know the only way God will forgive sin (Luke 24:47; Acts 26:18; Eph. 1:7). They don't know God op- poses the proud and justifies only those who know they are ungodly (Rom. 4:5; Luke 18:9-14; James 4:6). Religious pride keeps people in spiritual darkness. Many hold to a form of godliness but deny the power (or the necessity) of the Gospel (2 Tim. 3:5). Their self-conceit leads to self-deceit and their self-righteousness damns them to everlasting shame.

Failure of Self-Examination

A major cause of self-deception is the fail- ure of self-examination. Some professing Christians go through life without ever examining their faith through the lens of Scripture. Paul exhorts us, "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine your- selves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you fail the test?" (2 Cor. 13:5). Probably the best way to guard against self-deception is to abide in God's Word, passionate for truth and invite the Holy Spirit to bring conviction and illumination.

Man-centered Evangelism

What happened to the God-centered method of evangelism that calls sinners to repent and believe the Gospel? For the last 100 years people have been told to repeat a prayer, come forward, sign a card or get baptized to be saved. Many of them have lived with a false hope because none of these methods are found in God's Word. The deadliest deception of Satan is to convince a person he is saved when he is not. The devil's ongoing strategy is to corrupt the church by planting tares or false converts where God has planted wheat. He knows he can be more effective in attacking the church from the inside than from the outside. Jesus described tares as "sons of the wicked one." The one who sowed them is the devil (Mat. 13:38-39).

Well-meaning Christians who use a man-centered approach to evangelism by manipulating people to make a decision are helping the devil plant tares. They promote easy believism with no call to repentance or discipleship because it produces quick results that people can see and measure. The unanticipated results of their actions are devastating: God is not glorified, the sinner is not saved, the church is not sanctified and the devil is thrilled and delighted. The best way to produce true converts and reduce the number of tares coming into the church is to follow a biblical, God-centered method of evangelism. We must quit seeking quick results and instead glorify God by make disciples and faithfully proclaiming His Word until the sinner asks, "What must I do to be saved?”

Strong and Weak Foundations

According to Jesus, true Christians build their houses (which represents their lives) on the solid rock of Christ and His Word (Mat. 7:24-27). False Christians build their house on shifting sand which is made up of traditions, opinions and teachings of men. When the storms and trials of life come, a true Christian continues to trust and act on God's Word while a false Christian gives up and suffers shipwreck of his faith. When his faith is tested, it is exposed as shallow, spu- rious and short-lived. He is the man who hears the Word and immediately receives it with joy; yet when affliction or persecution arises, he falls away (Mat. 13:20).Jesus said there are only two paths to eternity (Mat. 7:13-14). There is a narrow road which is hard to find because false teachers are blocking the entrance and pointing people to the broad road. This is why Jesus said, "Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able" (Luke 13:24). People must strive to enter because of Satan's fierce opposition to the Gospel. The only way to determine which door is the true door is to search the Scriptures. The narrow door is difficult to enter because unconverted sinners must be set free from the snare of the devil and repent (2 Tim. 2:25). They must have a heartfelt sorrow for sinning against their God and Creator (2 Cor. 7:9-10). The narrow road is by grace alone through faith in Christ alone which means no one can enter in their own righteousness or by their works or merit (Eph. 2:8-9). They must leave every- thing behind and enter with empty hands of faith. The other path to eternity is the broad road. It is marked "heaven", but it leads people to hell. It is easy to find - just follow the crowd because many are on it. They are the ones who are trusting their own righteousness and good works and see no need to repent.

Living and Dead Faith

Anyone can profess to be a Christian but genuine faith will be evidenced by how a person lives. Likewise, people are known more by what they do than what they say. James asks the probing question: "What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works?" (Jas. 2:14). He concludes that a faith which does not pro- duce any evidence of a changed life is a dead, spurious, worthless faith. Those with empty confessions profess to know God, but they deny Him by their works, being abominable and disobedient (Titus 1:16). "Everyone who names the name of the Lord is to abstain from wickedness" (2 Tim. 2:19). In other words, it doesn't matter what you profess to be, what really matters is how you live. Those who have living faith are born of God. They are new creatures created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand for them to do (Eph. 2:10).

Right and Wrong Motives

Both true and false Christians follow Jesus, but for different reasons. Unconverted people seek Jesus for selfish motives or wrong reasons, usually for material bless- ings. Jesus said, "You seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled" (John 6:26). These false disciples withhold true allegiance and submission to Jesus and retain control of their own lives. They allow their own opinions rather than Scripture to control what they do and how they do it. True converts respond to the Lord Jesus in adoration, praise and worship (Mat. 2:11; 14:33; 15:25; 28:9, 17). They submit to Christ as Lord and obey His Word out of love and gratitude for all He has done and is doing. They are known by how they respond to sin - with conviction, sorrow, confession and repentance.

Christ is living water for those who thirst for righteousness (John 7:37). He is living bread for those who hunger for eternal life (John 6:51). He is the only mediator to those who want peace with God (1 Tim. 2:5). Jesus is the only redeemer for those who want to be purchased out of the slave market of sin (Titus 2:14). He is the way for those who are lost, the truth for those who are deceived and the life for those who are dead in sin (John 14:6). He is the only Savior for those who know their hopeless and helpless condition (Eph. 2:12; Rom. 5:6). His blood is the only cure for those who know their sin will end in eternal death (1 John 1:7). His perfect righteousness is the only passport to heaven for those dressed in filthy rags (Isa. 64:6; 1 Cor. 1:30). Jesus is the Sovereign Lord who reigns over His people in love and will rule over unrepentant sinners in terror on judgment day (Rev. 20:11-15).

A Christian's Responsibility

How should we counsel those who say they have been sanctified by the truth but cling to false teachers? How can we help profess- ing Christians who are not bearing fruit in keeping with repentance (Mat. 3:8)? We must intervene because a Christian who "turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death" (Jas. 5:19-20). We must lovingly confront them with the truth of God's Word and encourage them to examine their faith. Then we must encourage them to consider the exhortation of James. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you" (Jas. 4:8-10). Repented sinners, who bear the fruit of the Spirit, can be sure they will never hear terrifying words from Jesus (Gal. 5:23).

[sinceileftyoublog]

Live Picks: 3/4

Sudan Archives

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Post-metal and post-punk highlight tonight’s live picks.

Cult of Luna, Emma Ruth Rundle, & Intronaut, House of Blues

Last year, Cult of Luna finally released their proper follow-up to 2013′s great Vertikal. Even longer and more epic, A Dawn to Fear is less concept-driven (I mean, you can’t get more concept-driven than mirroring Fritz Lang’s Metropolis) though no less cinematic and dark. Moments of quiet are just as important as the clashing metal dirges. Squeaky, foreboding droning guitars introduce “The Silent Man”, gorgeous, sliding guitars bringing it to its logical conclusion. Guitars buzz to silence at the end of “Lay Your Head To Rest”, contrasting the lawnmower pulls at the beginning. The longest track on the album, “Lights on the Hill”, is mostly creeping and quiet; “Nightwalkers”, which purportedly took forever to write, builds around a repeated main riff. I didn’t expect Cult of Luna to center around so many circular rhythms or doomy slow-burns, but they prove another side to themselves on A Dawn to Fear. “Sleep, sleep, sleep / Our eyes are shut, my hands are shaking / Bodies aching,” Johannes Persson sings on the lurking “We Feel the End”, finding the appropriate words of demise to match the structure of the songs.

We previewed Roadburn 2020 co-curator Emma Ruth Rundle’s set at Empty Bottle two years ago:

“Singer-songwriter, guitarist, and visual artist Emma Ruth Rundle has released her opus. On Dark Horses, inspired by her move to Louisville and musical and life partnership with Evan Patterson of Young Widows/Jaye Jayle (who we profiled earlier this year), is about anxiety, dealing with pain, and escaping trauma, but it’s also about being enveloped by love. Its songs are sludgy and slow-burning, anthemic and emotional all at once. The verses chug and the choruses crash, the core band of Patterson on guitar and piano, Todd Cook on bass, and Dylan Nadon on drums providing tension between darkness and light. At the center of it all is Rundle’s weary, empathetic voice, addressing a loved one’s trauma on ‘You Don’t Have To Cry’, the perfect complement to Patterson’s baritone on love duet 'Light Song'.”

Intronaut’s Kurt Ballou-produced sixth album Fluid Existential Inversions was released last Friday, five years after their previous record. Parts of it were written immediately after the release of 2015′s The Direction of Last Things, but the band took a break instead of rushing into recording it. Adding drummer Alex Rudinger and working again with producer Josh Newell and guitarist Ben Sharp on a couple songs (“The Cull”, “Sour Everythings”), the album is progressive and thoughtful, per usual. Instrumental opener “Procurement of the Victuals” ascends into chaotic drumming and riffing, laying the foundation for buoyant guitar-heavy songs like “Contrapasso” and the groovy “Check Your Misfortune”. Best, though, are the songs where guitarist/vocalist/lyricist David Timnick shines. “Tripolar” was inspired by a nightmare of his. “Pangloss”, referring to the character in Voltaire’s Candide, bemoans blind optimism. So does the anti-xenophobia anthem “Speaking of Orbs”; lead vocalist Sacha Dunable sings of the current world where “austerity bites...Luddites try as they might / Disconstents appear in every face / And dwell upon every tongue.” It’s not a political diatribe as much as a plea for a spiritual revolution. “We miss the forest for the trees,” he warns on “Sour Everythings”, arguing before on “Cubensis” that “shadow and substance / its depth knows no bounds,” that critical thinking is the one thing that can save us all.

Wire; Photo by Graham Duff

Sudan Archives, Sleeping Village

Sudan Archives’ Athena was our #8 album of last year:

“On her debut album Athena, violinist/singer Brittney Denise Parks–better known as Sudan Archives–directly explores and conveys her sexuality. Adapting church hymns and delivering classical music-inspired interludes, among honest songs of love and relationships, she manipulates the violin to convey all-encompassing emotions and physicality. 'I realize I lost my mind,' she sings on opener 'Did You Know?' next to staccato plucks. 'Confessions', on the contrary, features lush, weeping lines over a panning click beat. And violin textures provide even percussion on the resonant 'House of Open Tuning II'. The best songs, though, are confrontational. 'Do you wanna go play outside? Do you wanna go down?' Parks poses to a lover on 'Green Eyes', a song that begins stark with a low-mixed flange effect but eventually juxtaposes synth and violins for maximum depth. And on the finger-snapping 'Limitless', towards the end of the album, she addresses someone changed for the worse by an unhealthy relationship. 'What happened to your dreams? All you care about is things,' she asks, the alternate to this materialism the spirited love and lust she’s presented throughout Athena.”

Canadian hip hop duo Cartel Madras opens. The show is presented by WLUW.

Cult of Luna; Photo by Silvia Grav

Wire, Metro

British post-punk band Wire’s latest album Mind Hive succeeds, ironically, when it abandons post-punk. While sharp, staccato tracks like cynical opener “Be Like Them” and propulsive, synthy “Primed and Ready” are heavy, it’s the poppier and softer songs where Wire achieve something new. Take “Cactused”, which centers around a simple chorus but is nonetheless smartly catchy, the sky-high melodies of slow ballad “Unrepentant”, or the jangly sunny-to-dark “Off The Beach”. These are songs you wouldn’t have expected to hear on a Wire album in 2020 based on aesthetics alone. Juxtaposing lyrical dread with gorgeous hues and textures takes it to another level. On “Shadows”, Colin Newman sings about mass execution. More subtly, on the 8-minute, noisy, minimal “Hung”, he repeats a story too often heard on the news these days: “The jury was hung / In a moment of doubt / The damage was done / Trust was lost / And the wheels had spun”. On Mind Hive, misery comes in equal parts from societal structures and the chaos of living. Both appear on closer “Humming”. “Spy the Russians / Brushing scandals / Under oligarchy rugs,” sings Newman, topically, before Graham Lewis moves on to the random nature of trouble, independent of location. “I’ve been robbed in Roma,” he sings, “Gutted in Glasgow / From the Rockies to Chicago.” That’s one way to certainly relate.

Tonight, opening for the band is a member of Wire itself, spinning some tunes before they take the stage.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Here is the thing about Ben Reilly in Clone Conspiracy.

Hypothetically the idea of someone who has to an extent led Peter’s life but who’s been so damaged that they are now a villain, but their villainous acts still come from a place of misguided altruism is an interesting idea. It really is.

But there are several problems with the way Slott realized this through Ben Reilly (for the sake of argument lets pretend Ben27 is the legit Ben Reilly) in Clone Conspiracy.

First of all the most glaring problem is that whilst this was not inherently a bad idea for a villain the fact is the character was being set up to be what all observations indicate to be a redeeming hero or anti-hero. Ben Reilly Scarlet Spider the series appears to be about someone not actually being a villain but at worst someone who’s doing bad things for good reasons.

And we’ve already had that before in the past with Spider-Man.

Superior Spider-Man.

Venom.

Kaine.

Some were better than others and they might’ve been different to Ben but the point is this is not a fresh idea, at least not entirely.

Worse is the that whilst up top I said this wasn’t inherently a bad idea for a villain, giving him his own series removes him as a villain in Spider-Man’s world. Like even if he is an outright villain it is meaningless unless he is actually actively going up against Spider-Man himself. 

Its one thing to follow Kaine on a redemption tour it’d be another thing to follow the adventures of Ben Reilly who is a bad guy but is deludedly thinking he is doing the right thing. That’s basically 90s Venom sans Marvel outright pretending he is actually a good guy. With Kaine, there was no delusion, he was genuinely trying to be good but stumbled and struggled along the way.

Then you have the fact that Ben in Clone Conspiracy just went full on evil mad scientist and tried to mass murder a lot of people. At best this is cliche, at worst this is a rip-off of the Jackal from Maximum Clonage, ever a good thing. It is also way too MUCH of a leap from who Ben was to how he is now. Maybe you could justify it on the grounds that he’s insane and therfore it is not unrealistic. But is it not a lot more interesting and rewarding if you can draw a clearer line between his life and experiences and his actions even if they are crazy.

Case in point. Doc Ock was bullied and belittled by many people growing up but his mother hammered into him how special and intelligent he was. And in fairness he was immensely smart lending validity to her claims, claims which would be taken to heart not just because he was a kid but because she was his mother and the person who gave him the most unrepentent affection throughout his life. Consequently Doc Ock is mentally and emotionally unhealthy because he is walking around beleiving himself to be superior to everyone else, has some proof that validates that belief, and has a burning desire to prove it to everyone who ever hurt him. When he loses his fiancee and his mother and is hurt in an explosion and on top of that gets clear PHYSCIAL power too he goes over the edge and lets his ego run loose. You could even argue his inhibitions are gone now. He wants to hurt the world as he has himself been hurt but also wants them to appreciate his genius and respect his power so he is never hurt and bullied again. This leads him to doing stuff like causing a nuclear meltdown in order to stop it or detonating a nuclear bomb to prove how dangerous he is even if it’d kill him too.

These are insane and irrational but by looking at Doc Ock’s life and by extension getting into his head you can understand how and why from his warped point of view he would do those things even if they do not entirely make sense.

Similarly you can understand why Ben Reilly would clone a load of dead people and even insist they are the real deal. MAYBE you could even understand why he’d try to kill Peter upon his refusal to ally with New U. But mass murdering people? No. That is just evil crazy bad guy does evil crazy thing because he is evil and crazy. 

And that isn’t the only example of that with ben. A shitton of his actions honestly do have to be explained via ‘he’s crazy’. Now arguably given his experiences this is not unrealistic but for the reasons I outlined above it is bad writing. 

From a creative perspective having a character be crazy generally isn’t enough as a justification for them doing anything and everything. You have to both be more specific and at least allude to a clearer line of reasoning between their mentality and their actions. You can even do that with the 1990s Jackal in Maximum Clonage. The idea and execution might’ve been godforsaken but it wasn’t like it made no sense for the Jackal to try and pull that plan. Miles Warren obviously has a God Complex and through his cloning can to all intents and purposes create and manipulate life itself. He effectively brough back a dead person, replicated a living person, replicated himself the very being who created those people and in characters like Spidercide he even managed to create something more powerful and dangerous than the original being it was based upon. The idea that he’d thus want to eradicate life and replace it with his own creations actually seems entirely logical from his own warped point of view. You can follow the line of reasoning once you understand the context of where he is himself coming from and the beliefs he holds.

However that doesn’t change how it was still a reductive direction to take the Jackal in both because of the concept he was originally created for and also the context of Spider-Man’s world. This applies to Ben as well.

To begin with the notion that Ben would attempt to make Peter feel better by bringing back all the people who’s died in his life is far less powerful coming from a place of twisted brotherly love as opposed to if Ben did in a sense think of himself as the real deal Peter Parker. If this was essentially yet another clone of Spider-Man, or maybe even someone who’d somehow come to beleive themselves to be Peter Parker and their actions were coming out of a warped perception or misinterpretation of who Peter was and Peter’s own thoughts and feelings that’d be a powerful examination of who Peter is. It’d highlight the guilt he feels but also showcase his ethics as this warped version of him crosses boundaries the real Peter never would.

But in the story as presented Ben Reilly basically ‘resurrects’ everyone for Peter’s sake not his own. His goal was to alleviate Peter’s guilt and was thus a step removed from being truly powerful. After all there is little to no emotional resonance to Ben Reilly resurrecting Jean DeWolff, someone he never even met, because he knows someone else feels sad that she died. Compare and contrast to the hypothetical that a clone of Peter believing itself to be Peter or at least acting out of warped emotions inherited from Peter brings back Jean DeWolff due to the tormenting memories he has of her? Way more poignant right? This isn’t even getting into how it makes little sense for Ben to resurrect VILLAINS who’ve died in Peter’s life like Bart Hamilton or Jason Macendale. These were not people Peter OR Ben had much of an attachment to, nor were they people who’s deaths’ either one felt guilty about.

But moving on perhaps the biggest problem with CC Ben Reilly is how his portrayal throws away everything Ben was before, aside from the vague idea he has a brotherly bond with Peter.

Sometimes these radical departures can work, but only when they are egrgiously additive, or because the original concept was so weak or things of that nature.

But compare this to Mary Jane’s character development from the 1980s. That worked with some ideas that’d been hinted at as early as ASM #122 at the very least. It also didn’t ground up change her to the point of her being unrecognizable. The development was a slow burn that came from realistic, common and organic stimuli. 

For Ben even if you take his experiences to be metaphorical for something that could happen in real life, he was essentially tortured into madness whereupon he acted little-nothing like he did before. Torture was more or less an in-universe soft rebooting of the character. It was too quick, too abrupt and at the same time too uncommon in real life to carry any true meaning. Even Peter Parker’s own change in personality in the pre-Clone Saga era (where he ran around referring to himself as ‘the Spider’) was a slower and more justified change from an execution point of view. 

To go back to Mary Jane, whilst she acted somewhat differently after we learned her backstory than she did before or back when she was originally created she could still do all the things she did before that made her popular but now with added dimensions. Dimensions which made her an even better match for Peter in all the ways she was before and more, thus adding to the narrative and enhancing the point of the series. It wasn’t a soft rebooting of her character as was the case with Ben.

But let us look at another point of comparison: Harry Osborn.

A good supporting character turned into a  great villain before that led to his destruction.

Why, might we ask, is this acceptable but Ben’s turn is not? To do that let us examine Harry’s character for awhile.

Well for starters Harry was not an invaluable supporting character and his history dating back to the 1970s and arguably even before that very much invited the idea of him going on a path of self-destruction. Thematically this made for a POWERFUL short term story arc that not only added more dimensions to him as a character and briefly provided peter with a true Goblin nemesis after so long (and one aruguably better than any before him). It also enhanced the overall mythology of the Spider-Man storyline as it paid off seeds planted long ago with Norman’s character.

Now sure, we briefly got a great villain with a fitting end, but lost a less good but still good supporting cast member. So was this not a reductive trade off? Or are villains just more important than supporting cast members. 

To the latter the answer is that some villains are more important than supporting cast members and some supporting cast members are more important than villains. Good villains are worth their weight in gold but Flash Thompson isn’t as important as Doc Ock and Otto isn’t as important as MJ. More on this later though.

For Harry his role as supporting character whilst good was not something invaluable to the series the way Peter’s relationship with MJ or Aunt May was. Harry’s primary role was that of Peter’s best male friend who had Daddy issues from his old man being a psychopath. Issues which by the way were hardly a constant in his history. Such a role could’ve been filled pretty adequately by Flash Thompson, especially after DeMatteis established he was abused by his father and like him had become an alcoholic. Substance abuse+Daddy issues+animosity turned friendship with Peter Parker. It sounds an aweful lot like Harry, even down to the idea of there being a cycle of abuse, something which was introduced to Harry’s story only in the mega arc which resulted in his destruction. And of course Harry’s ghost loomed over the series therafter and could’ve done so more had the writers made better use of it.

Although they weren’t really slouching as Harry’s death was a massive motivator for Norman Osborn’s return and renewed rivalry with Peter. Norman is the best Spider-Man villain there ever was so Harry’s death bringing him back is a pretty good trade off.

Furthermore Harry’s progression into villain (and by extension removal as a supporting character) and MJ’s own development were very much earned by the writers through a slow building narrative.

Now lets compare this to Ben’s case.

For Ben the change from what he was to what he is now was abrupt. Essentially one issue’s worth of torture broke his mind to allow him to be whatever the plot demanded of him. This is not an earned change.

But moreover it does not add to Ben’s character so much as wholesale changes it. 

Ben Reilly as well meaning yet ultimately unethical super villain seeking to take Peter’s mantra to extremes is an entirely different concept to Ben Reilly man who’s Peter Parker had his life gone down a different road, man who’s struggled to balance being Peter Parker and his own man and accept that he is entitled to his own humanity despite the circumstances of his birth. And above all man who truly loves Peter as his brother.

You could argue the same is true of Kaine but not really when you break his character down. Kaine was driven by physical pain and inadequacy to help Peter in violent ways and to hurt Ben out of spite. But he and Ben grew closer over the course of several stories and accepted one another as brothers. In a sense this is a great reverse pay off of Peter and harry’s relationship and makes a lot of sense to do when you consider Kaine’s animosity was wrapped up in Ben being the real Peter Parker and he himself just being a pale imitation of him. In light of Ben ACTUALLY being a clone after all Kaine and Ben’s relationship changing makes a lot of sense and is justified by virtue of Kaine originally being conceived of as an ongoing villain for Ben Reilly when Ben was going to be the lead character of the franchise. Since that wound up not being the case there is greater justification for Kaine’s role changing. And in a narrative where Ben didn’t even exist having Kaine become the Scarlet Spider is incredibly fitting.

Returning to ben though, not only does Clone Conspiracy radically alter him but it does so in such a way that really is unnecesarry.

The interesting and poignant character moments and ideas behind this villainous take on Ben Reilly could’ve been achieved as effectively had he been substituted with another character, perhaps another clone of Peter’s, perhaps even Spidercide, or perhaps someone who simply has come into the possession of Peter’s mind, memories and emotions.

Through all these methods you’d come out with the same interesting conception for a villain, that of someone who has a warped interpretation of Peter’s beliefs and is willing to go to unethical extremes to achieve them, not unlike Jason Todd when he was first brought back to life as the Red Hood. But you come out with this conception without throwing away Ben Reilly as we knew him.

Looking at Clone Conspiracy there were seldom any moments of true poignancy which required it to be Ben specifically rather than a generic clone of Peter’s. If the Anubis style Jackal had unveiled himself as simply another clone of Peter’s and explained his life of never ending death and abuse at the hands of the Jackal Peter might still have been sympathetic to his cause and briefly been tempted by his offer. After all it wasn’t really the fact that the Jackal turned out to be Ben that tempted Peter so much as the idea that he could bring back Uncle Ben. This hypothetical other clone of Peter might even have struck a chord with Peter by appealing to him as a brother reminding Peter of Ben, or perhaps might even have deliberately brought up Ben in an effort to make Peter sympathetic to him.

Now true, this would water down a dramatic reveal and reader’s emotional investment in the character since it is not one they already know. Similarly there would be less irony to Ben Reilly affecting a scheme not dissimilar to Miles Warren’s his creator.

However these aspects as presented were poorly executed, unnecessary or indeed could’ve still been dramatically effective even without it being Ben specifically in the role he was in.

Revealing Jackal to be a clone of Peter would still be a shocking twist even if it was a new clone instead of Ben. Indeed revealing this to be a reformed (in more ways than one) Spidercide could’ve still carried a shock for older readers.

The disintegration of Ben’s brotherly relationship with Peter and Kaine would’ve been mostly lost but few readers liked that in the first place and to make that point as an argument in favour of this being Ben is the equivalent of arguing there would be no weight to One More Day if it was not Mary Jane who Peter was parting ways with. 

Finally the irony of a clone of Peter affecting a plan and methodology not dissimilar to Miles Warren would not be devoid of irony even if it was not Ben Reilly. Like Ben this new clone could’ve been abused by the Jackal (Ben was abused in the back up stories of Power and Responsibility) and would still have a metaphorical father/son relationship with Warren. Potentially this new clone of Peter’s would also have Peter’s memories of the Jackal thus acting like him would still carry weight to it.

Indeed in this scene we see little reference to Ben’s own life rather than the memories and experiences he has in common with Peter.

Even if one were to argue that not making this villain Ben Reilly would nevertheless not be AS effective as going ahead with the story as was could one hand on heart say that the Ben Reilly we got in this story was worth trading in the one we used to have.

I already talked about what Ben was above but nothing else is it not more poignant to have a character who is a true brother figure for Spider-Man rather than another villain?

Spider-Man has lots of villains and lots of good ones at that. And whilst good villains are invaluable, the series clearly has never NEEDED one of the variety Ben provided in Clone Conspiracy, as potentially interesting as he was conceptually.

So the question is do we supplant an established well developed and multifaceted character with a unique and irreplaceable relationship with our hero with a mentally deranged yet interesting villain to join the ranks of Peter’s already substantial rogue’s gallery?

Or to put it another way should we get rid of Spider-Man’s one and only legitimate brotherly relationship and supplant it with another villain who knows his identity and who represents a corrupted friendship?

The answer is patently obvious.

[thecounterplan]

The Trump Era and the Death of Hypocrisy

by Brice Ezell

Politicians are a lot like lawyers: even though we know that they’re important to society, the invocation of their job title usually comes with a host of negative adjectives. Just as lawyers are slimy and deceitful, politicians are power-hungry and manipulative. Where once television shows like The West Wing depicted politics as a noble enterprise maintained by flawed if aspirational people, now the hit political show du jour is House of Cards, where Machiavelli is filtered through a questionable Southern accent. The vision of politics illustrated by House of Cards puts a von Clausewitzian spin on the enterprise of governance: politics is a continuation of scamming by other means. 

Of the many negative attributes given to politicians, “hypocrite” is perhaps one of the most common. One need only look to the most recent presidential administrations in the United States to see examples of this. Barack Obama ran on a campaign of repudiating the militarism of George W. Bush, only to then maintain interventionist foreign policy through the increased use of drone strikes. The Republicans claim to be fiscal conservatives, but their new president just proposed the building of a border wall -- whose efficacy is dubious at best -- that will cost the US taxpayers (not Mexico) billions of dollars. George W. Bush was also supposed to be fiscally conservative, yet his spending decisions look far from conservative. In fact, as Derek Thompson notes for the Atlantic, compared to Reagan and Bush, Obama looks like a fiscal conservative, despite Republican claims that he represented a new era of government lavishness and excess.

These are just three examples, and it is not difficult to find more in both of the major political parties in the United States. Hypocrisy, it seems, is just a part of the game: “it’s only wrong when the other guy does it” is a common critique of both parties.

What is disheartening about the frequency of hypocrisy accusations is that they have inevitably lead to normalization. If both parties accuse each other of hypocrisy regularly enough, the accusation loses any force. Hypocrisy is so rampant in Washington DC that it has diminished the moral charge of hypocrisy, which should be no small accusation. Because being morally inconsistent is the norm, inconsistency is the new consistency.

Tracing the extent of hypocrisy in DC could (and, I think, should) be the subject of a doctoral dissertation, research grant, or book-length study. I couldn’t hope to cover the breadth of that subject in this single post. What I will claim is that in 2017, beginning with the presidency of Donald Trump, we have reached peak hypocrisy, meaning that hypocrisy no longer has any moral charge in US politics. Calling someone a hypocrite is no different than calling him a congressman.

On his own, Trump is a major problem for US governance. He has zero political experience, and his incompetence has already begun to show just weeks into his presidency. During 15 February press conference -- a spectacle of ineptitude -- Trump was asked about a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in the US, to which he gave a non-answer mostly about how substantial his Electoral College victory was. (Predictably, his comments about that substantiality were false.) He has refused to disclose his tax returns, which if revealed would help make apparent his numerous conflicts of interest that should render him ineligible for the office he holds. Trump’s unrepentant mendaciousness, as evinced by his repeated lies about voter fraud and attendance at his inauguration, is a disgrace to the office of the presidency. Tellingly, those two lies aren’t in the realm of truth-stretching so commonly occupied by politicians, such as lies told to exaggerate the benefits or harms of a particular policy. (E.g. “The rollout of Healthcare.gov was great!” “Tax cuts are always good for business!”) Those lies of Trump’s are only about making him look good, and making him appear loved by his population even though he faces bleak approval ratings in the polls. That kind of lying cribs more from the tactics of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un than it does the spin doctoring that goes on in Congress. 

The follies of Trump have been widely acknowledged by individuals all across the political spectrum. One doesn’t have to be a Democrat or a lefty to find Trump’s behavior abhorrent. But, shockingly enough, Trump isn’t the biggest problem in DC at the moment. The real problem is the party that has leveraged him -- despite all the ways in which Trump clearly clashes with its (supposed) ideology -- for the benefit of majority power. The real problem is the Republican Party.

David Brooks, a famous conservative commentator for The New York Times, recently wrote, “The Republican Fausts are in an untenable position. The deal they’ve struck with the devil comes at too high a price. It really will cost them their soul.” Like Norman Orenstein and Thomas E. Mann did during the end of Obama’s first term, Brooks has made a clear break with the (ostensibly) conservative party of his country. In his words, “Sooner or later, the Republican Fausts will face a binary choice. As they did under Nixon, Republican leaders will have to either oppose Trump and risk his tweets, or sidle along with him and live with his stain.”

Brooks accurately explains the position Republicans found themselves in with Trump. Despite Trump being targeted by many of the Republican candidates for president in the 2016 primary -- among them Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Rick Perry (who now works for Trump) -- the Republicans didn’t work at all to counteract the Trumpish rise, and for an obvious reason. The party’s strategy, Brooks writes, “was at least comprehensible: How many times in a lifetime does your party control all levers of power? When that happens you’re willing to tolerate a little Trumpian circus behavior in order to get things done.”

“Tolerate a Trumpian circus” is an understatement on Brooks’ part. In order to embrace Trump for the strategic benefit he provides, the Republican party has to accept the following, among many other things:

1. Trump has been married three times, has openly bragged about past infidelity and sexual assault (the “grab her by the pussy” comment). This, despite the fact that the party treated Bill Clinton like the worst human being in the ‘90s for his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

2. Trump’s “bring jobs back to America” plan involves giving government deals to companies like Carrier in order to save US jobs (even though the money Carrier saved on its “deal” with Trump will go in part to automation, which will render future US jobs obsolete). This, despite the fact that a repeated line of Republican criticism throughout Obama’s presidency was that the government shouldn’t “pick and choose favorites.”

3. Trump, when asked anything about the Bible, gives answers that wouldn’t fly in a second grade level Sunday School class. This, despite the fact that the Republican party claims to be the party of religion and Christianity. 

I could go on. In accepting Trump to be the face of the party, despite all resistance to him throughout the primaries, the Republicans tacitly accepted his tactics as legitimate, as acceptable. There are contingents of #NeverTrump Republicans, or of non-GOP conservatives who are fighting against Trump -- 2016 independent candidate Evan McMullin being a key example. But the #NeverTrump faction is now the minority. By electing Trump, by supporting his cabinet picks, and by utilizing Trump’s demagoguery to its advantage, the Republican Party has made its allegiances firm: the GOP is the party of Trump. Conservatives who want to distance themselves from Trump either have to stage an inter-party coup or form a new conservative party. As many commentators have noted, despite Republican opposition to Trump in the primary, Trump is the natural consequence of Republican anti-governance during Obama’s term. The GOP spent years treating Obama like an illegitimate president, blocking his every move even when it confounded reason; should it be surprised that its newest president is someone who stubbornly refuses to accept the factual details of his own election?

The flagrant cases of hypocrisy listed above are but a small part of a now ever-growing catalogue. Since Trump has been elected, the duplicitousness of the GOP has swollen to almost comic proportions. The GOP arrived into the White House a shell of itself, and it is only getting more hollow with each passing day. In so doing, the party represents the culmination of the hypocrisy normalization trend that plagues DC. Hypocrisy is dead, and the Republicans -- who once, amazingly, were understood to be the party of a “Moral Majority” -- have killed it. 

“Unprecedented” Obstruction: It is not controversial to call the Obama-era Republican party obstructionist. It is a fact. The party’s frothing at the mouth over Obamacare -- a policy that was initially conceived by Republican legislators in the ‘90s, and then utilized in Massachusetts by 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney -- is the focal point for its irrational anti-governance. Right now, the GOP is struggling to “repeal and replace” Obamacare without facing political blowback, and a key anti-Obamacare Republican, Paul Labrador of Idaho, asked the question that no Republican had the stones to ask during Obama’s term: “Something Republicans need to be concerned about is if we’re just going to replace Obamacare with Obamacare-lite, then it begs the question, ‘Were we just against Obamacare because it was proposed by Democrats?’”

In the face of the Trump administration’s many unqualified cabinet picks, the Democrats have at times postured toward obstruction, though by and large most Democrats have voted for Trump’s cabinet picks. (With respect to “unqualified,” one need only to Rex Tillerson, whose role as Secretary of State is being for oil what Dick Cheney was for military contractors, or Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon who turned down a post in Health and Human Services because he believed himself “unqualified” only to take a post in Housing and Urban Development, where he has zero experience.) The Democrats have also suggested potential obstruction of Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, who will fill the spot that should have gone to Merrick Garland, a widely recognized consensus pick by both parties, whose only fault is that he was nominated by Obama and had to be confirmed by an obstructionist, Republican-led senate. 

Ideally, America could operate without obstruction. But in utilizing an obstructionist strategy during Obama’s presidency, the GOP legitimized obstruction. Mitch McConnell attempted to justify the reprehensible denial of Obama’s appointment of Garland on the nonsensical grounds that “the people should have a say,” even though they did have a say when they elected Obama for a four-year term, which included the year 2016. The GOP’s total contempt for democracy was made even more apparent when John McCain announced that if Hillary Clinton won, Senate Republicans would block any of her Supreme Court nominees. Did he not get McConnell’s memo about “the people having a say?”

Now that the Republicans are in charge of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, their tune on obstructionism has changed. McConnell claimed that the Democrats’ resistance against Trump’s cabinet picks -- milquetoast as it was, in many cases -- "has reached new extreme levels... [an] historic break with tradition.” This, as the BBC points out, is false, as thus far Trump doesn’t even come close to beating the timespan on Obama’s cabinet confirmations. But more importantly, even though the timeline argument McConnell made was false, the main issue is that Republicans have zero grounds to criticize obstruction. To the detriment of the country, obstruction was the GOP’s winning strategy in 2016. They can’t act surprised when others try to draw from that playbook. 

Trump’s Benghazi: Imagine that, in 2016, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton conducted a hastily-planned raid on a group of al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. The result of the raid was the death of an elite Navy Seal, nearly 30 civilian casualties, and the destruction of a 90 million dollar plane. How would the GOP react? Would they calmly call for an investigation to see what could have been done better, and perhaps to see if anyone should be held accountable?

If you answer falls under the thesaurus entry for “no,” you are correct. The Jon Stewart clip above shows the failing of a conspiracy theory touted by the GOP in Obama’s second term: namely, that the 2012 tragic attack at at US government building in Benghazi, Libya -- which resulted in several American deaths -- was the result of a cover-up by Obama and Clinton, whose malevolence led to Americans dying at the hands of terrorists. Multiple Congressional hearings and reports later (reports, mind you, helmed by Republicans), it was revealed that while some things could have been done better with Benghazi, the event was not in any way caused by criminal negligence or conspiratorial maneuvers by Obama, Clinton, or anyone else in the executive branch. 

So how did the GOP react to the not-so-hypothetical raid in Yemen I just mentioned, which Donald Trump greenlit? The White House reacted predictably, drawing from Trump’s Fisher-Price “My First Dictator” playbook, saying that any critique of the raid “emboldens the enemy.” Trump took special aim at McCain -- a decorated war veteran and former prisoner of war -- after McCain said, like a reasonable human being, “I would not describe any operation that results in the loss of American life as a success.” 

Some Republicans have defended the raid. Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said the raid “was worth the risk.” A select few Republicans, namely Rand Paul (of Kentucky) and Mike Lee (of Utah) have asked for a formal investigation into the matter, along with some Democratic senators. Yet while it’s too early to say that the raid was clearly Trump’s fault, as not enough evidence has come in, it’s worth asking why Benghazi -- an attack which had similarly ambiguous details -- gets ultra-politicized, and Yemen is treated with either hushed tones or a “wait and see” sensibility. 

The answer is not so difficult. Brian Beutler, in an aptly titled article called “Never Believe the Republican’s B.S. Ever Again,” notes that

by Republican standards, [the Yemen raid] should be a major, impeachment-worthy scandal. Unless there’s some arbitrary minimum number of U.S. casualties (greater than one but less than four) above which administrative heads should roll, there’s no standard by which Benghazi should have become the subject of a vast, conspiratorial inquest, but the botched raid in Yemen should not.

“Draining” the Swamp: One of the better comedy sketches of this recent political season was performed on Saturday Night Live. The sketch features Bryan Cranston, who reprises his Breaking Bad role as Walter White. In the faux interview segment, White is revealed to be Donald Trump’s pick for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). “I like [Trump’s] style,” White says, “He acts first then asks questions later.”

To borrow a phrase from the short story author Justin Taylor, let that sketch serve as synecdoche for the rest of Trump’s cabinet. Like many ultra-wealthy GOP candidates before him -- Mitt Romney and all members of the Bush family especially -- Trump utilized the “blue-collar billionaire” narrative, which is anchored on the questionable premise that people who come from massive, dynastic wealth are first and foremost concerned about the plight of the working class. As far as con games go, it’s not subtle, but to Trump’s credit, it worked. But rather than try to keep the con up as he took office, Trump immediately raised taxes on middle-class homeowners on his first day in office, and then proceeded to pick a cabinet whose combined wealth is larger than the wealth owned by a third of American households. 

As someone whose academic research in part deals with the confidence game and its manifestations in American culture, I’m fascinated by Trump, a con artist who makes his con obvious as he’s performing it, and then once he’s achieved his con he immediately starts undermining it. It’s a bit like imagining Ocean’s Eleven where the thieves tell the casino owner they’re going to rob him, and after successfully robbing him despite making the thievery obvious, they then dump the money in the casino pool and start swimming it Scrooge McDuck-style -- all the while never being held accountable. It’s not as fun a movie, but it is more baffling.

“Hypocrisy is a third-rate political crime,” writes Buetler. “But it isn’t just that conservatives apply different standards to different politicians on the basis of partisan affiliation; it’s that their appeals to like-minded voters are fraudulent. National security, rule of law, and religious faith are supposed to be central facets of conservative identity. Presumably some Republican voters around the country are genuinely motivated by conservative views on these issues.”

Buetler’s first sentence, calling hypocrisy a “third-rate political crime” is a predictable if sad proclamation. That hypocrisy is an expected feature of US politics -- and, perhaps, politics in Western liberal democracies more generally -- is a sorry statement about the way we get things done. I imagine some would read the title of this piece and think, “’The death of hypocrisy?’ Was hypocrisy ever a concept in the halls of Washington?”

I have no Sorkin-esque visions of a politics of grandeur based on sharp intellect and sound principle. “The good old days” never were. Graft has always existed, and politicians have always sold out their values. I also have no illusions about the other major party in the US. Although socially liberal on many issues, in terms of the major structural facets of the US government -- namely, neoliberal economics, imperial global influence -- the Democrats have a lot in common with the Republicans across the aisle. The Democrats try to make claims to being left, but contradict their own supposed values. My case here is not meant to suggest that hypocrisy is unique to one political party.

But never have I seen hypocrisy so cravenly embraced as it is by the Republican Party. It’s one thing to be hypocritical, as so many politicians are. It’s another to ostentatiously display how little one cares about being hypocritical. Consider the many lies told by the Trump administration: Trump only losing the popular vote because of “illegal voting,” supposedly widespread instances of voter fraud such as people “being bussed in to New Hampshire from other states,” the murder rate being the highest it’s been in 47 years, refugees from Middle Eastern countries being able to “just walk in” to the United States, refugees from the countries on the travel ban “posing a threat” to the United States, the Democrats are engaging in “unprecedented obstruction”.... I could go on, but it’s exhausting. And it’s only been just shy of a month.

The thing about all of those lies is that they are easily disprovable. Their untruth is so open that only those ideologically uncritical of Trump could accept them. There are none of the vagaries, equivalences, or obscurities that come with politicians trying to sell the public on a policy or on a candidate. These lies are just that: lies. Not “alternative facts.” Lies. It is one thing for Trump to deal in these lies: as a con artist, it is his purview. But for the Republican party -- supposedly principled, supposedly the party of values -- to embrace Trump and his lies in this way, is to admit that all the party really stands for is the pursuit of power. If principles get in the way of that, damn the principles. If a candidate conflicts with party ideology... well, as long as he gets the party a Supreme Court seat, all’s well in the end. 

To say that politics is a pursuit of power at any cost is not a new claim on my part. As far back as Seneca, writers and thinkers have illustrated the follies of government, and how given over to so much power people can become grotesque versions of themselves, corrupted into the very thing they sought to avoid becoming. But with the election of Donald Trump, the Republican party took an especially precipitous moral fall, unlike anything in the past century of American politics.

I write this not as someone who belongs to a political party, or someone who ascribes to a particular political ideology. I write as someone who is concerned about what it means to be moral, what it means to live in a good society -- “good” here not just a practical but an ethical term. It’s one thing to joke and watch TV shows about scheming politicians and ominous negotiations in shadow-striped corridors; it’s another thing to, without any repentance or self-reflection, cast hypocrisy aside as an irrelevance. Fealty to principles doesn’t matter, as long as you get what you want. At least the Frank Underwoods of the world take to secret rooms to sell out everything they claim to believe. 2017 Republicans make no effort to hide the abandonment of their core platform, one on which they staked their entire opposition to Obama.

In response to this piece, I expect conservative supporters of Trump would say, that I’ve taken in too much “fake news”; I have a “liberal bias”; I’m not “hearing both sides.” There are no “two sides” to lies. They are just lies, and hypocrisy is hypocrisy. I don’t identify as a conservative, but everything I say in this piece could be argued by a conservative; many #NeverTrump critics have rejected lies, relativism, and the other moral failings of the Trump GOP. Can conservatives, who for so long have stressed that character matters in a politician (hence why someone like Bill Clinton can never be forgiven), honestly embrace a man who lies like it’s all he’s done his life? Can conservatives support a man whose idea of “bringing jobs back to America” involves the kind of government intervention and “picking favorites” that Republicans have decried for years? The damage Trump has done should matter greatly to conservatives, for his toxic politics have now permanently tarnished the conservative bonafides of the GOP. 

If conservatives truly stand for the importance of character and the importance of being a good person, they cannot “Yes, but...” with Trump. No “Yes, Trump is a liar, but we at least got a Supreme Court seat out of it, and now Roe v. Wade might be overturned.” No “Yes, Trump has bragged about sexual assault and routinely disrespects women, but at least Obamacare might be repealed.” Statements like that can be translated thus: “Right and wrong do not matter, as long as I get X, Y, and Z goals.” What makes that statement even worse is that there is no guarantee those goals will come about. Although conservatives have been chomping at the bit to get a conservative majority court to overturn Roe v Wade, most forget that it was a conservative court that gave the Roe verdict, and it was a conservative court that upheld Planned Parenthood v. Casey. By playing the relativism game in backing Trump, the GOP sold its soul, all for only the possibility that it might get its way this time around. Perhaps the GOP will get what it wants. But like Faust, the party has forgotten that, eventually, the devil comes to get his due. 

There’s great if minor scene in the first season of Community between the characters Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) and Ian Duncan (John Oliver). Winger has returned to community college in order to earn a bachelor’s degree after having faked having a degree to be a lawyer. Disbarred and itching to get back into law at the earliest possible moment, Jeff believes he’s found an opportunity to skate by during his return to college: have Duncan, an old friend and professor at the college, steal the answers for all of his tests. Jeff and Duncan meet to discuss the possible theft:

DUNCAN: Suppose I was to say to you it was possible to get those test answers. JEFF: I would say go for that. And could have said so in a text. DUNCAN: I’m asking you if you know the difference between right and wrong. JEFF: (Beat) I discovered at a very early age that if I talk long enough, I could make anything right or wrong. So either I’m God, or truth is relative. And in either case, boo-yah. DUNCAN: Interesting. It’s just that the average person has a much harder time saying “boo-yah” to moral relativism.

I wish I had the faith that Duncan does in the average person. But for now, I live in Trump’s America. Boo-yah. 

[mrmichaelchadler]

Thumbnails 2/8/19

Thumbnails is a roundup of brief excerpts to introduce you to articles from other websites that we found interesting and exciting. We provide links to the original sources for you to read in their entirety.—Chaz Ebert

1. 

"Morgan Saylor on 'Anywhere With You,' 'White Girl' and 'Novitiate'": The astonishingly versatile actor chats with me at Indie Outlook about her latest role in Hanna Ladoul and Marco La Via's new indie romance, "Anywhere With You," now available on Digital and On Demand.

“[Indie Outlook:] ‘The five-minute shot of your face on the beach is absolutely mesmerizing, as Amanda goes through a near-operatic roller coaster of emotions. Was that scene always meant to be shot that way?’ [Saylor:] ‘No it wasn’t. Phone calls are always very technical on film. You have to figure out where the person on the other line is going to be, or if they’ll be there at all. The take we used was the first one we filmed. I don’t think we planned to do the second phone call in the same take, but I did it anyway and it worked. They really liked the idea of both calls being in one shot. We originally thought that we’d have Jake in the background calling to me, but there was also the problem of losing light. These are the sort of not-so-fun things that happen onset. I actually remember being very unsatisfied, performance-wise, with that scene, but now in retrospect, I’m quite pleased with it. It’s just so stressful and weird when you have only thirty minutes of that perfect sunset light to work with, and you don’t have the right people as the voices on the other end of the line. It’s really difficult to react to that, but it ended up being one of those magic things. The assistant director was like, ‘Should we call cut? Should we not?’ And they just kept going, and that’s what made it in the final cut. That scene has been talked about a lot, and I think that’s cool.”

2. 

"How Caleb Deschanel Became the Surprise Oscar Nominee for 'Never Look Away'": According to Indiewire's Bill Desowitz.

“Like everyone else, Caleb Deschanel was taken by surprise with his sixth Oscar nomination for German-language nominee, ‘Never Look Away,’ about the horrors of war and the artistic process. The legendary cinematographer, best known for ‘The Black Stallion,’ ‘The Right Stuff,’ and ‘The Natural,’ now becomes the sentimental favorite to win his first Academy Award. ‘People kept coming up and raving about ‘Cold War’ and ‘Roma’ and I sheepishly told them that I had a foreign-language film and they said they had the DVD somewhere,’ Deschanel said. Clearly, enough branch members (bolstered by the large international bloc) were swayed by Deschanel’s exquisite cinematography to give him the nod. ‘Never Look Away,’ directed by Oscar winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (‘The Lives of Others’), fictionalizes the life of experimental abstract German painter Gerhard Richter, who finds his artistic voice in the film after falling in love with a fashion student whose gynecologist father has a secret past as a Nazi eugenics leader.”

3.

"Sundance Film Festival 2019: 'Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile'": In her review posted at A Reel of One's Own, Andrea Thompson voices her issues with Joe Berlinger's controversial Ted Bundy biopic, though they aren't what one might expect.

“The goal with ‘Extremely Wicked’ also isn't to show or glorify the murders, or even to explain why Bundy committed them, with not a flashback to his childhood to be found. Instead, the movie shows how he was able to get away with them for so long. It's much easier with a lead like Efron; it isn't just his incredible performance and charisma that makes his take on Bundy so compelling. It's his image and status as one of the most popular actors working today. ‘Extremely Wicked’ dares audiences to resist his charms, even if it constantly reminds us not only what Bundy was, but what he was capable of. We recognize him as human even as Liz notices small moments that reveal his inhumanity. He remained unrepentant until the last minute, probably only revealing at least some of the extent of his crimes in the hopes of prolonging his life. Bundy expertly manipulated the media, nearly everyone around him, and escaped authorities multiple times. Yet he also needed to believe his own lies, daring others as well as himself to imagine that this smiling, seemingly easygoing man could do such things. The issues the movie has stem from the fact that this is a story based on a memoir by Liz herself, and ‘Extremely Wicked’ is written and directed by men. As such, there's little exploration of the more complex gender dynamics that led to many young women attending his trial.”

4. 

"After years of disrupting Hollywood, Steven Soderbergh finds an unlikely ally in Netflix": In conversation with Mark Olsen of The Los Angeles Times.

“‘We're always looking for inefficiencies that can be addressed,’ Soderbergh says a few hours before his Slamdance tribute. ‘I want to be rolling as often as possible; the goal [in my filmmaking] is to be rolling camera, so I'm on the lookout for things that are getting in the way of that. The good news about this job generally in my mind is that every project is completely different and has a new set of demands and needs,’ he says. ‘And so already in my mind it throws open the idea of, ‘Well, how do we want to do it this time?’ I'm always looking to have an experience, that if it doesn't annihilate the experience that I just had, at least there's some aspect of it that's in contrast. So I feel like it's fresh.’ Though it may seem odd at first glance that Soderbergh would premiere his new film at Slamdance — or perhaps characteristically idiosyncratic — he has a longstanding relationship with the festival. As Slamdance president and co-founder Peter Baxter tells the story, the festival’s very first opening night, a 1996 premiere screening of Greg Mottola’s ‘The Daytrippers,’ which Soderbergh had produced, was nearly derailed when the projectionist had a heart attack (he lived) and the projector broke down as well. After someone else was electrocuted trying to fix it, Soderbergh, screwdriver in hand, got the projector running.”

5. 

"11 Influential Facts About 'A Woman Under the Influence'": Eric C. Snyder of Mental Floss celebrates the genius of John Cassavetes' 1974 masterpiece. 

“Cassavetes gave a long interview to journalist Judith McNally at the New York Film Festival, after he'd spent 18 months trying to find a distributor. He was also burned out on making four movies in a row without studio help. ‘I can't like making films anymore if they're this tough,’ he said. ‘The pressures are too unnatural. I'm not crying, because I enjoy it. But I am saddened by the fact that I have physical limitations.’ Yet working with profit-minded studios was hard, too, since Cassavetes refused to bend on his artistic principles. ‘If that means I'll never make [a] film again, then I'll never make another film again," he said. McNally followed up. ‘You don't have any plans at all for another film?’ He replied: "Right now all I can hope is that [‘A Woman Under the Influence’] is extremely successful. And if it isn't, I won't make another one—that's all. Which in itself is no great tragedy.’ He did, in fact, go on to make five more films before his death in 1989.”

Image of the Day

At Vulture, our own Donald Liebenson spoke with "The Critic" co-creator Al Jean about his five favorite episodes of his uproarious and all-too-short-lived show, including the one from season two starring Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert as themselves (who else?). 

Video of the Day

The Top 11 Funniest Siskel and Ebert Reviews are ranked by Doug Walker, a.k.a. the Nostalgia Critic of ChannelAwesome.com, who makes an impassioned argument for why these gems of witty discourse deserve to be preserved for future generations. 

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