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danwhobrowses · 9 months ago

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I've kept myself contained and (mostly) quiet as I consumed all of Downfall - knowing that each part would alter my previous perspectives and assumptions - but man, there is so much to discuss. Finally it's time to talk about it!

Spoilers for all 3 Parts of Downfall below

The TLDR of this essay is that it was awesome and it has both unraveled so much context while enshrouding so much more lore in mystery. The long answer is long so stock up on cake - but not Brennan's cake, he's very protective of it - or something to keep the energy up.

Let's start at the beginning: Tengar. What a start that was! The destruction of Tengar really does reframe the Gods from the get-go. They were lights, they were refugees, they watched the destruction of their home and the loss of their family just as mortals would in life, war, and Calamity - but in a place where those things had only just come into being. It poses many questions too; were they what the Luxon scattered themselves into? Is Dunamis the remnants of Tengar? Was Predathos - assuming that the 'fruit' was Predathos - a purposeful creation or one that got out of hand? We knew of two gods that it ate but there was more (Unless Predathos is Edun? It's definitely a theory). The prologue shows how the Gods ended up being forced into shape, how their traumas limited their possibility as they careened towards proto-Exandria. There's a parallel to be made with the Lights' response to escaping Tengar's destruction and several PCs', especially Bells Hells who are able or attempting to rise above their pre-defined traumas and unhealthy coping mechanisms, development and growth - compared to the gods who found themselves stuck in place: doomed to play the role and domain they became shaped into. It also makes me wonder about the Founding, Creation, and the Schism itself; did the Primes start creation in order to keep an essence of home (all the divine trees planted across Exandria could be parallel to the Orchard)? What are each Betrayer's views on mortals? Asmodeus and Lolth clearly have disdain for them, but Asmodeus hurts mortals with a 'jealously kicking down your siblings' legos' vibe whereas Lolth likes to make mortals look as ugly as she already sees them. In cooldowns it was mentioned that had Melora been willing to walk away from Exandria she might've been a Betrayer, so I wonder if all Betrayers are simply mortal-hating or some are just willing to just leave mortals behind? I remain super curious over what the Primordials' side of the story is too; asking Rau'shan and Ka'mort should be considered eventually, given how they have knowledge and experience with sealing Predathos, but how did they see the events leading to the Schism; was there a deal that was broken? Did the Primordials hate mortals? Were they aware of Tengar before the Founding? Did they aid the gods in adjusting to their fixed forms and domains? And did they treat them like children like the gods treat mortals? What in history is lies and what in history is lecture?

Then of course there's the mission itself, which commits to its title in many areas; the Downfall of a civilization and culture within Aeor, the Downfall of (more) Wizard hubris with the Factorum, the Downfall of splinter factions trying to end the war by thinking they're doing what the gods want, and the Downfall of the Primes' infallible reputation as their armies and followers felt abandoned by them, no longer willing to accept the 'I am the parent, you are the child' justification. In the end only the Betrayers succeeded because the city falls and mortals died, but they don't succeed enough because they didn't get the Factorum - and the Primes still cared enough for mortals to try and save them - and thus the Calamity resumes, which I suppose is another Downfall: they were once family and wanted to be family again, but the truce wasn't real. The Betrayers were planning to use the Factorum to win the war (perhaps the two who didn't show had a change of heart?), they wanted to go where the Primes would not because, at that moment, winning and being right was more important than family.

The characters to nobody's surprise are all fantastic; Ashley's Trist (Saranrae) and Noshir's Emissary (Proxy of Erathis) had my heart in a winch for all three episodes, reminding me of it every so often with a big squeeze of emotions. Laura's Emhira (Matron of Ravens), Taliesin's Asha (Wildmother), Abubakar's SILAHA (Corellon) and Nick's Ayden (Dawnfather) all flourished as their characters too, alongside Brennan's variety of NPCs both as mortal gods and Aeorians. I loved Trist's boundless compassion and her constant struggle with having to do something cruel to many for the sake of saving the people she loved, as well as being forced to choose between her mortal family and her infinite ones, I loved how Asha was prickly and cutthroat as Nature can be in desolation but also not without her own regrets, longings and her gradual softening towards the Emissary, I loved how Ayden was an embodiment of the Dawnfather's purest hope and desire to protect people - contained in the body of a teenage boy, I loved how SILAHA loved Aeor's culture and people so much that he couldn't even be angry at the archmages using their gift to build a weapon that could destroy them, I loved that Emhira played cold and detached in an effort to bond with her siblings but found that her connection to them shone greater in the more human moments, and I loved the Emissary's innocence, how with so few words you had an earnest encapsulation of what he was thinking or feeling, and how in death the deep bass became a childlike lightness when meeting the Matron in her domain. The short arcs each of these characters undergo was amazing to see and the combat the more they became divine was insane - like seriously Trist hit 500 damage from a Guiding Bolt! And Ayden's Sunburst killed 3 Dragons and more AT THE SAME TIME! And btw throughout all 3 parts the dialogue has been outstanding, good grief! You could make a small book of all the amazing, thought-provoking, and downright emotional quotes packed in these three episodes. These are true tour de force players, guided by Brennan painting a gallery of scenes as if he was speaking at the Globe Theatre.

I like that the Factorum Malleus is pretty blatantly an allegory to a Nuclear Warhead. With the problem being that dropping a nuke will only beget the sobering conclusion that it can be done again, by others too - much like the Ritual of Seeding: once you make god bleed, everyone will try to cut them. The Factorum should not exist just as Nuclear Weapons should not exist, and that plays a part in the horror of seeing Cassida present it to Trist as if it was a gift to win the war rather than a tool to kill her family, just as Oppenheimer saw the bomb as a means to end all wars until he realised after that it was just a new escalation to warfare.

We also found room for important non-God NPCs, mainly the tragic success and failure of two Aeorian Archmages: Selena Erenves and Cassida Previn. Both display acts of humanity which end tragically; Cassida fell into faith to save her son and was given the chance to try and erase the knowledge of the Factorum so that people could survive, but her good intentions was prey to Asmodeus' cruelty and she was tortured and killed for information that, had he maintained the Arcadia guise, would've been handed over willingly, then on the other side there's Selena, who accepted death and consequences before attempting to activate the Factorum while also successfully spreading the knowledge of its construction to every wizard in Aeor, effectively forcing the Primes into having to destroy the city, only to be embraced by Corellon, forgiven, spared, and left to live with her actions. It's ironic that Cassida was punished for her humility while Selena was spared for her hubris, and the only real reason for their fate is which god they were stood before at that moment. The celestials Garathran and Acastriel were solid obstacles for Brennan to flex his dialogue of embitterment and demonstrate humanity in characters deemed otherworldly but not so much human, Garathran's suicide was very visceral even if them killing themselves in front of the Death Goddess was dumb, and Emhira and Ayden both using themselves to shield a blow from Acastriel was great symbolism to pay off their arc of bonding as siblings. They and the Archmages also acted as a harsh reality for the gods that their 'children' don't want to be coddled anymore, they've grown enough to want to understand, and have at least a voice on the table. On the lighter side of NPCs, Slitch was a lot of fun, I hope he managed to survive - maybe ascending with the Matron since Emhira did willingly relinquish her mortal form rather than it being destroyed in the crash - and still serves the Matron somehow, he's just a funny lil' guy. Brennan playing as children is always gonna be heartwrenching too, but the Everchildren Haylie and Topher were both sweet and also so brave; they have their mother's courage, as well as her divine spark.

For the mortal god NPCs Brennan rightfully didn't have Arcadia (Ioun), Zaharzht (Torog), Umleta (Lolth) or Tishar (Grummsh) outshine the main cast, often guiding the story along or cracking wise with them, but that could not be helped when it came to Milo Cowst. Brennan's Asmodeus is spectacular, absolutely untouchable, and when I say that I mean every time he does something I want to punch his smirking shit-eating face so hard that my hand appears on the other side of his head, because fuck that guy! The continual torment he does not just to mortals but to his own family is just some absolute peak villainy; he conspired with the celestials to entrap Ioun and was willing to sacrifice her, his own sister, to get what he wants. He as Arcadia tried to convince Trist to go after her family, telling her 'I love you' just as Imri did before heading into the fire, knowing KNOWING that he was luring her away from Cassida - one of the few followers she had left - to try and run away with the knowledge of the Factorum, and then donning Trist's husband's shape while he revelled in getting Cassida to allegedly renounce her before eviscerating her at his feet for Trist to find, all this while he had already sent his forces to murder all the refugees in Hawk's Hill - targeting Trist's mortal family especially while this all happens - I hate him so much. As a side note, it's interesting how Brennan and Matt establish two different Major God villains in the world: Brennan's Asmodeus and Matt's Tharizdun. It's not a bad thing to have two godly villains, I shudder to think what would happen if they worked together (at least before the inevitable power struggle), especially since their villainy is in two different departments: Asmodeus is a villain to beings while Tharizdun is more a villain to the Material Plane, you could also relate that to Predathos who uses both of their methods in their own way. Since Tharizdun doesn't get as much in-person appearances atm Brennan's Asmodeus does truly feel like the absolute villain of everything right now, but Matt does have way more time than Brennan does to get his godly villain across.

The three episodes each had a unique flavour to them; Part 1 was very much about establishing the dynamics and setting the scene: Aeor in its militarized dystopian state and the characters as mortal avatars of a pantheon of siblings and lovers, refugee lights of Tengar, in a truce. Part 2 however flaunted the positives, negatives, and defiance of mortality; the Ars Elysia was wild as it was beautiful, SILAHA's monologue with Emhira was engrossing, and the episode excelled in showing the weight of knowing how many innocent, faithful and/or good people there were, paired with the horror of knowing how many lost faith in the Gods there also was, and the lengths both the devout and the undevout would go because of the Calamity's toll on them. And then Part 3 ramps up the tragedy to like 15: the dystopia dystopes again, the destruction destroys, and the disaster disasts, and we reach the boiling point of conflict for an episode that was a mammoth SIX AND A HALF HOURS! The visual of the gods slowly being forced to break from their mortal shells to keep fighting their creations, and each other, to different ends showed the physical and mental toll the mission had done to them, Ayden rapidly aging the more his divinity courses through him and Trist continually trying to hold onto mortality if but for a single second longer, and reaching a point of no return: a choice between sacrificing, at that point, one unknown god to potentially find a way to spare the rest of Aeor - as they had desired to do - or save their entrapped sibling - having already lost so many to Predathos and the Matron having replaced another - but doom all of its people by not stopping Selena's Wish, which she believed would be a victory rather than a damning of her city. Heartbreak after heartbreak, sacrifice after sacrifice, and betrayal after betrayal, but even in the dark and desperation there was still a faint measure of hope; a mother seeking to erase the scrolls to save not just her son but all families in her home, Primes seeking only to destroy a weapon and as the city falls offering acts of compassion where they could, and a Slingshot firing a Sending Stone across the sea like a shooting star so that a mother could protect her children one last time. It is the fact that the hope still existed that makes it a tragedy: it could have been prevented, but because of the way mortals are, and because of the way the gods are, it couldn't end that way. By Part 2 I was intrigued by the fact that the idea of the Divine Gate had started to take shape this early, the Calamity after all would last another century, but it was a greater surprise learning that by the end of Part 3 Aeor wasn't the start of the conversation but the conversation, the last straw. Everything leading up to the Divergence was the Primes attempting to corral their siblings - and the Chained Oblivion - so they could lock themselves away from their second home forever, for the sake what they had built, which was chronologically the final layer to the tragedy. The theme that will complete the trinity of tragedies would be the theme of sacrifice. The Emissary was Erathis' sacrificial lamb, how biblical it was that she sent her 'son' knowing that he would die because she was unable to defy her laws nor bear to watch her lover come to harm, just as biblical is how Pelor sent the best and most hopeful qualities of himself to try and help people, Asha sacrificed her mortal form to embrace Zaharzht even when he hooked and clawed her form away, SILAHA sacrificed saving Aeor like he wanted in order to save Ioun, and then all the Primes resolve to sacrifice their presence in order to protect what was left of what they made. The theme of sacrifice will be compared with the weight of whether it was worth it, but it's not something you can say was justified either way, Downfall doesn't feel like it should be about sides; it was always a Trolley Problem, it is a current fey-absorbing, war-criming, land-sundering elf mage who is trying to make it about sides.

On that note, we must wonder how Bells Hells feel about watching all this. I did like many others think about their reactions throughout; did Imogen think of her mother when watching Trist and Cassida? Did Orym relate to Asha given how stretched thin and pining for Erathis she was? Did Ashton perhaps relate to Trist a little having also felt broken and powerless, kept going by the support of their family? I know we joke about Braius probably having to be silenced for cheering and hollering for Asmodeus but did he really agree with all that? And will Fearne now worry about seeing Asmodeus' true nature, which she should (call them lawyers Dorian!), given how she has unwittingly (and I maintain that it was not said to be a pact, Fearne clearly didn't know it was one and Nanna Mori, who is versed in pacts, called it an 'invitation to trade') bound her soul to him for Dominox's dusty wikipedia page - which is more a redirect to a 2-line section in 'List of Demons Unaccounted for Since the Calamity' - that yielded less info than a Speak with the Dead spell with an Aeorian corpse did. Outside of individual thoughts, I wonder if the Hells collectively related to other events the Gods underwent; the loss and lack of a home, tension caused by one of them thinking they knew better, the constant attack of their sense of morality by others? Ayden's character may invoke an interesting pause - since the Dawnfather has been pretty cold and unkind to the Hells, mainly Team Trauma, and Deanna lately - I wonder if they acknowledge or soften towards this new light (pun not intended but welcomed)? I know he didn't show and wasn't gonna but I also wonder if the Hells kept looking to see if FCG was there, if only to get another glimpse of their fallen friend, or if any of them managed to spot FRIDA - who while we know is canonically present wasn't explicitly mentioned either.

I must admit though I'm in the camp of 'what does this achieve for Ludinus?' because Matt said in the Cooldown that there was parts that proved him right but honestly I don't see it. History knows that the Gods united to drop Aeor, but if anything the footage makes most of the Gods more sympathetic, even to the god-adverse Hells. Showing how they have been just as messed up, traumatized and conflicted as they are as they tried to limit the loss but in the end get put in a crossroads where they choose their family, without discarding or disavowing their creations because of it, isn't gonna endear them to Ludinus' already ill-thought plan. Honestly the only Prime Deity that seemed overly brutal was the Stormlord and like, why would you even try to use Control Weather in a storm made by a Weather God? In interviews Taliesin has mentioned that Ashton has conflicted thoughts on the humanizing of the Gods, though again I don't think it's in the way Ludinus expects - I anticipate that it's more of an 'it was easier to hate them when they were all-powerful, all-arrogant entities that ignored our prayers' kinda thing, having sympathy for someone they had grown accustomed to disliking - so I wonder if other members of the Hells have conflicted feelings and whether it smooths over their aversion or whether their resolve remains the same. I'm not saying they will, but imagine if the Hells decide to be more open to allying more with some of the gods because of this? Seeking the temple in Aeor to converse with them and get on the same page. They all seem pretty respectful towards the Matron already, but perhaps some focus on Corellon - if only to see if he rebuilt the Ars Elysia elsewhere for a post-Ruidus rager XD - and Ioun would be an interesting route; the Knowing Mistress would have answers for those seeking history and information, and the Arch Heart could have answers in curious and divine magics. In addition, imagine if the Everlight gains more followers through the Hells? She helped revive Laudna through Pike so the Hells shouldn't really have any negative feelings towards her, honestly I just think she deserves more followers after seeing all of this. Plus if they could get some of that Divine Prowess (Vitality and Potency at the least) for the final fight we could be in for some blockbuster and creative damage feats! Again, I don't see it as likely, but it's a thought. We could also entertain learning more about the non-god characters that survived; did the blood of the Everchildren continue to this day - there are theories they're tied to the Clay family? What did Selena do post-Aeor? Is Cassida's body still in a protective shield? These are questions fans would want answered that isn't 'was the silver dragon's name Bolo?'.

One has to wonder too if this presentation framed as validation for the atrocities he's committed just shows how divorced from reality Deludinus is. Was the point that 'they're family so they'll choose to save each other over entire cities'? Because many mortals would do the same in their position, the Hells themselves have inferred at times that they would prioritize each other over everyone else. You know what's not a way to avoid that dilemma? Unleashing a god-eating entity the gods even at the height of their power are afraid of! Because of this, Ludinus is painted as someone blind to the fact that it's his machinations that are trying to push the world into an even worse and bloodier Calamity than what he endured as a child, with him weakening the measures put in place to avoid such a thing rather than preventing it. Also he is almost like the Primes in that the people he's allied with secretly seek to remove him from the equation, though I think he's just arrogant enough to believe he can handle them. On the topic of whether Ludinus is Hallis Previn - spared by the Matron after having been healed by the Everlight - I'm not sure, it is possible but I don't think he needs to be Hallis, in fact it would probably be more interesting if he wasn't - since you'd have to jump through a fair amount of hoops to even begin explaining his motives and mindset.

But now we have to ask a question: what do we do now? The mission was to take down Ludinus, and we could still achieve that given how it's 10v1; but Orym isn't in the best of shape health-wise, the Toothy Maw and Dominox fights did cause a lot of the group's slots to be used up and Ludinus only really used 2 spells (Gate and Counterspell) since being encountered, deluded he may be but weak he is not. Laudna's haunting will permanently track him anyway and if he shows this to the world it'll likely emit similar results we and the Hells are having; some faiths may be shaken sure but others may be more supportive of the Gods. Right now there's no real reason not to show this footage. I suppose we could kill him and show the footage anyway - I mean it doesn't need to be shown by him explicitly - before handing it to Vassalheim or the Cobalt Soul's archive, honestly I would live for it if the first thing Bells Hells did after seeing the footage was Orym or Ashton just calmly walking up to Ludinus and decking him in the face, but the encounter in Aeor does feel designed for either Ludinus or the group to escape rather than fight to the death. Between the two, it would favour more for the Hells to stay; Aeor still feels barely scraped for them and Essek, who hasn't given Ashton any tangible answers about Dunamancy that he couldn't have gotten from a book yet - plus wild magic is rife within Aeor heck a beacon could be here, won't have much reason to stick with the Hells if they leave. If they don't use Essek's 'emergency escape' measure he's hinted at there could be something devised to let the group linger here a bit more such as finding the temple, the Ars Elysia, or another special room simply to explore more of Aeor - freeing the Stasis bubbles may not be the smartest or merciful option right now, given that all wizards within know how to make the Factorum. In terms of Ludinus, it'd be good to kill him now from a mission standpoint because he's the head honcho and the Hells need a big, convincing W to kinda make up for Otohan (which was more Matt's fault for rolling so high), but if we eliminate too many Exandrian enemies like Ludinus, providing that Liliana won't 180 again with him gone...which is a possibility, the endgame battle can risk turning into a more ugly Exandria vs Ruidus conflict rather than Life vs Predathos. So perhaps Ludinus should simply escape this time and we'll save the next major enemy to kill for Zathuda or one of the Five Imperium leaders.

Overall, and this won't be the last time we'll have to say it because some people have short memories and impulsive reactions, this is a prime example towards why we need to let CR cook. Yes, C3 has been scattered a bit, but this plot is a worldwide threat, which means you must show that it affects the whole world: this is a convergence of storylines from all 3 campaigns AND spinoffs, everything has its place and while we can be irked about the timing of things what we get is still pretty awesome. Just like the CK intermission, Downfall was an incredibly intricate and well-performed piece of narrative important to the main plot which honestly, as much as I still miss the Hells, could've gone an episode longer. Where we go next becomes further interesting because we have a greater grasp on the lore and characters of the gods, and it opens the door for more lore - such as what Corellon's strand of hair he left behind is - and context to be discovered in later episodes in this and/or later campaigns.

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miirshroom · 8 months ago

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Reading between the lines on a narrative (Realm of the Elderlings)

Speculating on some possibilities that are hinted at, but that don't get explored because FitzChivalry is not an omnipotent narrator and sometimes makes observations without grasping the meaning. Mostly involving the way that the magic system interacts with the psychology of various characters in the Farseer trilogy, and that there isn't really enough context for a reader to understand until after also reading the Tawny Man Trilogy. One example involving the Wit, and one involving the Skill.

1. Duke Brawndy of Bearns knew that Fitz was Witted (and saw that as a favourable trait)

Brawndy met Fitz only once and afterwards had a surprising interest in marrying him into the family. In the second trilogy it is discussed how the Wit is a secret kept in the nobility and implied that Brawndy's daughter Faith might be Witted herself. At the end of Royal Assassin Brawndy speaks on behalf of Fitz and has very specific terms: "Prove to us...that FitzChivalry is Witted, and that he used the Wit to kill King Shrewd, and we will let you put him to death as you see fit". And if Regal cannot prove that Fitz used the Wit to kill King Shrewd then Fitz shall have the stewardship of Buckkeep. Brawndy tacitly declared that Fitz having the Wit alone is not a dealbreaker. If Brawndy knows the Wit including its powers and limitations then he believes that he has set Regal an impossible task - a Wit Beast might kill a person but the Wit itself can't kill and leave no mark as was done with King Shrewd. There is also the implication that the Dukes are paying attention to the physical damage done to Fitz, thinking that should provide him a measure of protection.

But still Fitz is a pawn and though the most desirable outcome is that 1) Regal gets impatient and just goes away to Tradeford, which leaves FitzChivalry effectively the leader of the Coastal Duchies, it is more likely that 2) Regal kills Fitz against their wishes and the Dukes get what they wanted anyways - confirmation that Regal will not follow due process and is no true king to the coastal duchies. It's a win-win for the Coastal Dukes - the schism between the Coastal and Inland Duchies was an inevitability anyways. In that case, Brawndy's blindspot would be that he doesn't count on the 3rd option from Regal's use of the Skill. He doesn't know what Fitz knows - that Regal can and will use the Skill to make him speak lies naming Brawndy's own daughter a traitor and more. Brawndy sees Regal as a creature of the Inland Duchies and a coward. He doesn't understand Regal's special brand of selfish insanity that leads him to actively sabotage the Coastal Duchies chances for survival. If Brawndy is familiar with the ways of the Old Blood then he understands how a healthy predator might cede territory to a rival rather than waste the effort to hold onto it, but doesn't comprehend that Regal has more in common with the Forged Ones who are more like rabid beasts. And so Fitz's options are narrowed to requiring his death.

As for how Brawndy could know that Fitz was Witted, that is fairly straightforwards - it's a much more open secret than Fitz thinks that it is. Black Rolf explains to Fitz that he doesn't guard his thoughts to Nighteyes in the way that is taught among the Old Blood. It follows that Fitz has been doing this for all his life and so any Witted person in his proximity is picking up on signals that he doesn't even realize. Fitz recalls and records the ways that he screwed up in keeping his secret of having the Wit, such as when wolf tracks were found in places where he had been fighting Forged Ones with Nighteyes, the time when Nighteyes attacked Justin with the Skill through him, and the time when the girl in Neatbay saw him in the company of a wolf and believed him to have transformed. He can't record what he doesn't know, and the volatility of his status as a royal bastard could have been such that none of the Old Blood nobility were willing to make him aware of themselves in the way that they later would with Prince Dutiful.

2. Chade was Skill-imprinted with a command to be loyal to King Shrewd (and the hidden mechanics of skill-imprinting are one of the most understated drivers of conflict)

Skill imprinting a command seems to be such an intuitive use of the Skill that at least 3 characters have done it accidentally - Chivalry to Galen, Verity to Fitz, and Fitz to Dutiful. Fitz speculates that Galen's coterie must have been Skill-imprinted to serve Regal so completely as they do, in place of the true King Verity. It takes Fitz a long time to break Galen's imprinted command that he has no Skill ability and should kill himself. If he ever truely broke it - considering that he never describes a moment like Dutiful had where he found the command and deliberately severed it. And then Fitz himself incepts it into Regal's mind that he should be loyal to Kettricken and her heir, which seems to bookend the skill-imprinting sub-arc.

King Shrewd was once strong in the Skill, and the only fully trained Skill user in the narrative other than Kettle. Chade always laments not being trained in the Skill, but he does have the ability to learn it, and it is often shown that Skill users have the easiest time reaching the minds of other Skill users. There is nothing stopping Shrewd from long ago using the Skill to subtly command Chade to never even think of doing harm to Shrewd or his offspring. Creating a councillor and assassin with absolute loyalty to Shrewd - but only as long as he remains ignorant of the true power of the Skill. It could explain how Fitz has such a hard time getting his usually sharp mentor to pay attention to the threat presented by Regal. It's only after the death of Shrewd that Chade starts being a more active force in the world. It could be that such Skill commands quietly dissipate once the originator dies, but that echoes of them remain in mental pathways. And would persist unless directly confronted. There's a hint of this near the end of Fool's Fate where Chade is eager to carry out the command of the dragon and Fitz notes that it is normal of Chade to justify a reason for why he's not following an order but instead doing something that he wanted to do anyways. As if such thinking is a habit for him.

It would beg the question of why the Skill coterie would remain loyal to Regal past the death of Galen, if Galen did indeed command them to be loyal to Regal. Probably a few factors. Firstly - Verity burned out the ability of their leader, and then proceeded to hold the remains of Galen's coterie at a distance. Verity had not the time or the ability to undo what Galen had done to break them to his will, just as he and Chivalry hadn't known how to undo the skill command on Galen. Even if the coterie was imperfect, it was thought to be better to have any amount of far distance communication than to have none. Verity gave them reason to hate and fear him and then never made any attempt to reclaim their loyalty. Fitz was given the attention by Verity needed to work through the block created by Galen's Skill command, and it's the Skill link to Verity as much as the kindness that keeps his loyalty to Verity strong.

Secondly, Galen had time and opportunity to master the ability to imprint commands. He had no students for many years so he had little more to do than think about the command implanted in his mind by Chivalry. Consider from every angle how that kind of magic may work, and find ways to close or open loopholes. Fitz understands that skill imprinting can be used in obvious ways like Verity's "Come to me" or his own "Stop fighting me" to Dutiful, but he never seems to unpack that it could be done more subtly. Even Galen's hasty commands to Fitz were more subtle than either of those examples, and Galen could probably do much better if given time and a pliable subject. Extrapolating further, it may even be that failing all other methods Galen realized that Chivalry's death was the last element required to break his Skill command to Galen, and managed to convey to Queen Desire that her ambitions for Regal could proceed after Chivalry's assassination.

Lastly, by the time that the coterie was whittled down to Will, Burl and Carrod they despised Fitz for their own reasons that could only reinforce any prior imprinting by Galen. Fitz has attacked Justin and had killed Justin and Serene. Fitz is an enemy and Fitz is loyal to Verity (who they still hold a grudge towards), therefore they were right to stick with Regal. Regal feeds their hate of Fitz and in return they serve him despite all evidence that he is a cruel and abusive person. They make up their own logic to justify why Regal deserves to have their loyalty. Probably even on some level realizing that they crossed a moral line long ago, and fearing what Verity will visit upon them in retribution if he succeeds in rousing the Elderlings.

#farseer trilogy #tawny man trilogy #Realm of the Elderlings #media analysis #It interests me that the cost of magic is having a the brain be wired differently #Like in a non-magical world people are too complicated to figure out what they're thinking from what little information is on the page #It takes more time and effort to pry an honest account of a person's life story from them and deduce how that influences their thinking #But if magic has a psychological component then knowing the rules of a person's magic gives insight into the way the person thinks

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squidwardisanoctopus · 7 days ago

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accidentally remembered Maximum Ride exists and now I have Thoughts on fixing this mess

first of all 6 kids is too much for the main cast. Iggy and Gazzy get smooshed together to form an explosion loving 10 year old who is Angel's older brother. The experiments that resulted in Angel were first tested on him and that's why he is blind. He loves his sister so much but he is also a child and makes bad decisions sometimes. He sometimes clashes with Max about her leadership.

Max is our first successful hybrid and a proof of concept. It took a lot of testing to make Max work, but once they knew she was going to survive long term, the lab began developing more variations of bird kids based on her. She is Dr Martinez's biological child but all Dr Martinez did was sell her eggs in her 20s with no knowledge of what would happen. Dr Martinez is an otherwise normal veterinarian. Max is visibly not white.

Fang is the second successful bird kid and only a little younger than Max. He is very loyal but not a natural leader and the process they used to make him is different than the one used to make Max and the other kids. This only becomes important later when the lab decides they want a breeding pair and aren't sure if Max and Fang could reproduce. He is Nudge's editor for HER blog, he himself is not interested in internet fame.

Nudge is a wannabe influencer. Max won't let her post her face, but she is an avid social media user and eventually learns to leverage her audience to her advantage by leaking secret science information and eventually begins posting about the flock as a unit to her adoring fans. Max hates this so much until it becomes useful. Nudge no longer hates herself, she just feels like a liar for having to hide who she is.

Angel is the "perfected" bird kid. She has extra abilities compared to the rest of them and Nudge and Iggy/Gazzy are considered failed attempts to create what Angel became. She gets preferential treatment by the scientists at the lab and is sometimes a shit about this. She also thinks shes better than regular humans.

All the bird kid powers are related to actual things real birds can do, such as mimicry and having an internal sense of where North is. Angel being telepathic is not a bird kid power but the result of the scientists testing out a new wave of enhancements. Max and Fang, being early successes, don't have a lot extra. Max has a crazy dive from her hawk DNA and Fang gets enhanced pattern recognition. Nudge gets her emotional sense, which is considered a failed attempt at telepathy, and Iggy/Gazzy has his mimicry but nothing psychic.

We follow a 3 book structure in which we gradually become aware that the lab they escaped from is not unique, but a branch of a secret monopoly company set on an eco-fascist takeover. All the kids were grown from eggs sold to evil "fertility clinics" by young women who had no idea what was going on and may or may not want to reconnect with their bird-progeny. The evil plot is that humanity as it exists is too disconnected from nature and corrupted by modern society, so we need to induce a global disaster to wipe out the population and rebuild with our mutant army. The Flock, having had to run and hide for their whole lives, are initially attracted to this plan until they make real connections to people like Dr Martinez and decide they can't let humanity be killed. There is a brief schism in the group over this but they all come together in book 3 to blow up labs and fight back. Ultimately, it takes Max's leadership, Nudge's exposing everything online, Iggy/Gazzy's love of pyrotechnics, and found family love to expose the plot and destroy the laboratories, while freeing mutant kids they meet along the way.

With the secrets exposed and a bunch of mutants released into the wild, Max and co. are now free to just exist without fear of being hunted. Max and Nudge both get to spend time with their moms, but the rest of the group were not wanted by their biological parents and bond with other mutant kids instead. Maybe they all go to school on a government grant or something. I don't feel like adressin the later books at this point this post is way too long as is

#maximum ride

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misstrashchan · 9 months ago

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When it comes to predicting what happens with Carpenter and Faulkner in the last episode, I can't help but think back to S2 with Carpenter and the homesick corpse.

Carpenter's final talk with the homesick corpse is much more relevant to her character than I think people give credit for

The homesick corpse died because someone in the parish of tide and flesh, a sibling, turned on him, and he was hunted down, just like Faulkner turning on Carpenter and how she's been hunted by the people of the faith she once belonged to.

HOMESICK CORPSE:

I never learnt who turned me in. I knew it must have been a sibling of the faith, one of the families I had most frequently visited or one of the hidden pilgrims who offered food and shelter along the roadside. Someone who would have known who I was and where I was going next.

I spent many of my final days turning the names over in my head, trying to guess - who might I have offended, who might have wished me dead, amongst my friends along the road?

In the end, I stopped wondering. I wished to die with love in my heart: not doubt, not enmity.

Carpenter was reeling from Faulkner's betrayal and turning it over in her head, why did he do it, how could he, hating him, loving him. Also the dying in enmity bit. Emnity means to oppose or be hostile, to die in emnity is to die spitefully in opposition of something or someone in your final moments. Paige's god is defined by dying to spite and oppose their oppresors. Faulkner's schism of the Trawler-Man is defining themselves by their struggle against those same oppresors and those in higher power with more authority, including those in their own faith like the inner council of the high katabasian, hence why he snapped at the idea of their god being legalised and killed Mason.

Silence. CARPENTER digs.

CARPENTER:

(More roughly)

What do you regret?

THE HOMESICK CORPSE:

That I did not speak my love out loud often enough.

I had so much love in my life - it was offered to me as freely as rain.

I felt it so deeply, but I did not speak of it. I knew it only through ritual, through shared meals and the chanting of crowds, through the oration of new words to old friends and the applause that followed.

I should have told them all how much I loved them.

CARPENTER chokes, a little, because she recognises the sentiment.

Then there's Carpenter and the Cairn Maiden, and the homesick corpse, speaking to her of dying with love in their heart instead of emnity. If Carpenter does die this season, I think that will be what's in her heart in her final moments. Though, I think it's much more likely Faulkner will die, who instead of sacrificing his siblings to the Trawler-Man or killing them for his own sake, he'll sacrifice himself to protect Carpenter from the remaining Parish of Tide and Flesh's wrath.

Speaking your love aloud more often and struggling because you only know how to do so through ritual clearly resonates with Carpenter, her faith in the trawlerman was how she stayed connected to her loved ones, even after they died, and that's why she decides to go back and tell Faulkner, her brother, that she loves him in the S2 finale. She never gets the chance to, but despite everything done against her, I think the love is still there. What Faulkner did to her wouldn't hurt so much if it wasn't. And still she hasn't spoken of that love aloud, at least not to him.

The Cairn Maiden also speaks to Paige of how they will bury the beasts (the gods that starve and die) with more comfort and kindness than they deserve, which I think will be what Carpenter does for Faulkner if he does die, whether that's him dying to protect Carpenter, or her putting him out of his misery, or him committing suicide. She'll bury him with more comfort and kindness than he deserves.

CARPENTER picks up the withered body and lays it down in the dirt.

Then she shovels the earth over it, in silence.

As she shovels, she begins to pray. It’s different, this time - the words come jolting out of her, they come strong and hard and she feels their weight.

She chokes, and she sobs, but she keeps on speaking them all the same.

CARPENTER:

This is the place.

This has always been the place.

You were always walking towards this moment.

There’s nothing left to hold on to.

There’s nowhere left to go.

There’s no need to worry any more.

Her voice breaks on the final line

She breathes hard, struggling not to sob.

There is also that one hopeful part of me that wants to believe Faulkner would want so badly for Carpenter to kill him, to offer up his life to her for atonement, and her to be furious at the very idea that he thinks he can escape the weight of what he's done by dying, by putting that blood on her hands. For her to convince him to live with what he's done and move forward instead. Which personally I think would end up tying into the theme of finding the opposite of a sacrifice, of trying to break the cycle, but, *shrugs* who knows what could happen?

Ultimately whatever way it ends for them the one thing I am certain of is that I will be a crying mess on the floor.

#THAT'S IT LAST PROPER ANALYSIS/PREDICTION BEFORE TOMMORROW #the silt verses #tsv season 3 #tsv spoilers #tsv meta #tsv predictions #sister carpenter #brother faulkner

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melmedardasworld · 8 months ago

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I read your metas and loved them! What is your opinion about the Traveller's storyline? I really thought that we would get more Bennett history since it was revealed that Qetsiyah is one, but it was mostly focused on the Parker family, really.

First off, thank you for your kind words and taking the time to read my thoughts! The Traveler storyline certainly had a lot of potential, especially in relation to Bonnie’s rich family history. It was a shame how they wrapped it up so quick and just made a mess out of it. It didn’t help that we got the love triangle being dragged and forced once more to come to the conclusion that true love doesn’t exist; it was just a spell to break a 1500+ year old curse. I know TVD is a romance show, but come on…. It was corny to me.

While the show introduced significant lore surrounding the Travelers and the witch community, through Qetsiyah and Silas, it did more to explore the Parkers than the already established Bennetts. No surprise it was around the same time JP had plans to kill of Bonnie for good but Kat convinced her that there was more to tell, we would have gotten Liv as the go to witch for the MFG. Considering that the Bennetts are a prominent witch family with a deep-rooted history in magic and set the TVD lore of the universe for us, it was a missed opportunity not to delve into their family's connections with the Travelers.

Qetsiyah and her descendants: Qetsiyah stands out as one of the most powerful witches in the universe. If her storyline had been more entwined with her descendants, too, we could have expanded on how her actions created ripples throughout supernatural history. Her creation of the Immortality Spell led to significant schisms for magic, the impact of which could have been explored through Bonnie’s bloodline. This could have included infighting among offshoots of her bloodline or even other Traveler branch clans (like the Parkers or Silas’s family, for example) who either supported or rejected Qetsiyah’s actions. It’s what we the show so often popularized as the Balance of Nature aka the Spirits. I believe this relationship dynamic could have been enriched by introducing Bonnie to (distant) family members who did adhere to the strict ideals to not use magic without rules (the Spirits / Spirit Magic) or those betrayed by their forebears for cursing them. Also, her having zero interactions with Bonnie?? Nah that’s some bs.

Potential for Infighting: I also think this would introduce a narrative where the Bennetts’ bloodline suffers from centuries infighting due to differing ideologies about magic and the use of their powers. The show could have introduced family members who either aligned in favor of Qetsiyah’s actions (replacing Markos and his group) or fiercely opposed them (we already had the Spirits and we only saw the Bennetts at the forefront of it), providing more depth to Bonnie’s character development and the complexity of magic and it’s lore.

The Travelers Curse

The origin and implications of the Travelers’ curse were also somewhat convoluted to me when it was revealed tied to Stelena and true love not actually being true love or destiny. As I said, we also got a whole new witch family introduced when the Bennetts were right there. Onto my thoughts about how the plot could've gone.

Historical Context: When Qetsiyah created the immortality spell, it caused a schism within the Traveler community. Many of the branch family’s (Parkers and Silas’s) already feared the power of Qetsiyah and her family. They knew they were powerful, and Qetsiyah was a step above that too. But with her true immortality spell and defying Nature itself for love, they believed that this family's seemingly unlimited power was a threat to them. Keeping the Balance was just an excuse they could use to strengthen those fears and cripple her and her family. So even after Qetsiyah’s brother killed her to redeem his family, the other Traveller covend insisted on further measures—leading to what is known as the Traveller’s Curse placed upon Qetsiyah’s descendants. Again, this introduces some intrigue and infighting in one of the earliest witch covens.

The Curse’s Mechanism: To prevent future disruptions by his family, Qetsiyah’s brother promised the other Traveler families to limit the power his bloodline, forcing it to scatter whenever they attempted to congregate as large coven. If they did, this resulted in disasters and plagues or their death, effectively suppressing the extraordinary abilities and potential of Qetsiyah's descendants. The Bennett witches today may be known but remain unaware of their full history—their curse hidden and forgotten even from them.

Living Bennett Witches: Contrary to the show’s narrative, which suggests very few Bennetts are left, I feel it’s important for the story to recognize that their bloodline is significant and widespread. Even on an individual level we get so much of their feats, inventions and spells. This concept would open the door for multiple lines of the Bennett family, allowing Bonnie to discover relatives with diverse views on magic, some aligned with tradition and others breaking away from it.

Thematic Depth and Character Development

The motivations behind magic use in TVD could have been explored more deeply. The recurring theme in the TVD universe was witches maintaining the balance of Nature often felt hypocritical and biased and even bitter. Yet the Bennetts frequently disrupted it with their feats.

Nature’s Perspective: The concept around Nature as an entity that puts things back into balance is intriguing. Rather than being strict overseers, the witches could have been portrayed as part of a wider supernatural ecosystem, where even supernatural beings like vampires, hybrids, and werewolves might eventually be normalized instead of abominations and whatnot.

Potential for Conflict: By aligning the story with Bonnie's journey, we could have seen infighting not just among the Travelers, but also among witch factions within the Bennett line—those adhering to Nature's rules versus those who pursue Qetsiyah's radical legacy, even if that wasn't her intention at all. Such tensions could have elevated Bonnie’s journey as she navigates her identity, her ancestry and power.

I know you said you’ve read my metas but below some links on my theories and the travelers / Qetsiyah and the Bennetts specifically.

My Love-Hate Relationship with the Travelers

Qetsiyah's Legacy

Modern Bennetts and Nature

#bonnie bennett #qetsiyah #bennett bloodline #the bennett bloodline #tvd meta #this was a long one #hope it isn’t all over the place #the travellers tvd #bonnie bennett au

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corallapis · 1 year ago

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The Time Lords entered, moving clockwise around the colonnade that marked the perimeter of the room until they found their place and shuffled out onto the floor of the Camber. […] Everyone already knew precisely which part of the amphitheatre they should be standing in. They clustered in the usual groups determined by elaborate equations of seniority, office, family ties, college allegiance and personal acquaintance.

She knew the names of everyone standing around the President: the Magistrate and the other Ministers, the Castellan, the Co-ordinator of the Maxtrix, half a dozen Cardinals and a couple of cowled representatives from the religious orders. Larna found it difficult to believe that now she was a cog in the same intricate clockwork as these people, that she was beginning to acquire titles and duties of her own.

Each generation felt this way, each thought that they would usher in an age of revolution and a better way of doing things. Somehow, somewhere along the way, the dust and cobwebs and routines got into the blood, the desire always cooled. What had been energetic had always become ossified. Worse still, those who retained their fervour into adult life had become tyrants, intent on power whatever the cost.

A phalanx of the Chancellery Watch was practising the drill for the morning. They were in full ceremonial uniform, crimson, striped fur, breastplates and cloaks. They’d formed a neat square, and were marching up and down, boots clacking against the marble floor as regular as the tick of a clock. They’d done these drills for thousands of years — literally in the case of many of the soldiers. Long ago they must have exhausted every creative possibility there. That was the point, wasn’t it? They weren’t thinking, they were doing something that came as naturally and easily to them as breathing.

Gallifrey’s nameless sun rose over the Capitol Dome, as it had done since the first days of the universe. No sunlight penetrated the Dome itself, but the Oldharbour Clock that stood in the Eastern parts of the Capitol marked the occasion by chiming Nine Bells. On the ledge beneath the vast clock face, an intricate mechanical ballet began, as life-sized animated figures emerged from their positions and set about their daily routine. They were gaily painted and beautifully dressed, certainly symbolic of something, although even the few Gallifreyans that had noticed them couldn’t agree what it might be. One of the problems was that the clock had never been built. Not in this timeline, anyway. It was a paradoxical survivor from the Time Wars, probably the only vestige of its parallel Gallifrey still in existence. It had just appeared one day, no one remembered when. The analogue Time Lords that had built the Tower had imbued the clockwork figurines with a degree of sentience and the capacity for self-development. Now, unknown to anyone, the clock people were the most intelligent beings on Gallifrey. Their social interactions were complex, if perfectly regulated, and they had developed a complex framework of philosophy and etiquette to explain their world and their actions. It would be some time yet before they realised that they were just characters on a long forgotten clock face, but the discovery would come. When it did there would be dissension, schism and war. But still they would circle each other in perfect orbits, moving their limbs in perfect arcs.

Life in the Citadel normally ran like clockwork, everything in harmony, the same every day.

The chimes of the Clock Tower rang out over the hexangles of the Eastern side of the Citadel. The Time Lords and Technicians began to emerge from their quarters and glide smoothly to their work and their leisure. Lord Henspring and Lady Genhammer passed each other by the living fountain, three members of the Watch marched past, on their way to lay a wreath at the Monument to Lost Explorers. A small group of students stood around discussing the cultivation of roses and chess endgames. Deep within the Citadel, the TARDISes sat in their cradles, surrounded by humming machinery, as they had done for hundreds of thousands of years.

Nothing had changed, because nothing ever changed on Gallifrey except over geological timescales. Nothing was better, nothing was worse.

— The Infinity Doctors

#gallifrey/time lords as clockwork moving in a fundamentally unchanging pattern 👍#dw #(from 'the infinity doctors')

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nicklloydnow · 5 days ago

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“Although it spanned decades and influenced the course of two superpowers, the rivalry between Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, America’s great cold war strategists, merits equivalent hyphenation. Brzezinski-Kissinger was to US geopolitics what great pairing is to sport. Their core difference was over whether to sustain cold war détente — easing the strains — with America’s mortal rival or to resume ideological struggle with the USSR.

Kissinger won the battle of celebrityhood. In my view Brzezinski won their cold war dispute on points. Kissinger was wrong to presume the Soviets would be a permanent feature of the landscape. Brzezinski correctly saw the USSR’s dormant nations, including Ukraine, as its Achilles heel. Either way, their clash over how to manage the cold war mattered as much as today’s schism between those in Donald Trump’s world who laud his wish for détente with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and those who see both imposing a Munich-style disaster on Ukraine.

On the fate of Ukraine rests the future of war and peace. A key distinction from the Kissinger-Brzezinski era is that no one today can match either’s intellectual creativity, public reputation and diplomatic weight. America’s missing strategy, in other words, owes something to the absence of grand strategists.

What did they have that eludes their lesser-known heirs in today’s America? The simplistic answer is that Kissinger and Brzezinski were immigrants. Newcomers often value America’s freedoms more than its native-born and are statistically far likelier to start companies, win Nobel Prizes and indeed launch schools of thought.

(…)

A richer pointer can be found in the tales of their emigration. It was no accident that a 15-year-old Heinz Kissinger arrived in America a month before Neville Chamberlain’s infamous 1938 betrayal of Czechoslovakia in Munich. A few weeks later, a 10-year-old Brzezinski caught his first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty having left Europe’s shores two days after Hitler completed his occupation of the Sudetenland.

Each had been raised in the “bloodlands” of interbellum Europe. One was a Jewish-German refugee whose extended family would be wiped out in the Holocaust; the other was the son of a Polish diplomat whose country would be razed less than a year later when the Soviets and Nazis spliced Poland in history’s ugliest vivisection.

They were marked in different ways by the harrowing fate of those they left behind. Given a choice between order and justice, Kissinger said he would always choose order. His people were liquidated amid history’s most brutal disorder. Brzezinski would have chosen justice. Wounded Polishness — a sense of amputated history — was the launch pad of his ambition.

Crucially, though, they shared a burning sense of the tragic. “As immigrants, we knew about the fragility of societies and we had an instinct for the transitoriness of human perceptions,” Kissinger told me in 2021, four years after Brzezinski died aged 89 in Virginia and two and a half years before Kissinger himself passed away in Connecticut having recently turned 100.

Kissinger was among the sources for my full biography of Brzezinski, which comes out next month. The difference between the two, in Kissinger’s view, was that Kissinger came from Germany but had not been defined by it, while Brzezinski had been defined by Poland, although it had “not set limits on what he became”.

But Kissinger wanted to stress what they had in common. Together, though with Kissinger as the pioneer, they supplanted the old Anglo-American elite. Figures such as Averell Harriman, Dean Acheson and John McCloy conducted diplomacy as a second career or part-time obligation. Kissinger and Brzezinski, on the other hand, were brash professionals who lacked the social ties of the Georgetown wise men. In Acheson’s words, the former were “present at the creation” of the US-made postwar order. Kissinger and Brzezinski grappled varyingly with the existential threat to that order.

More important, however, was their exposure to societal breakdown and the eternity of geopolitics — an experience that no Wasp could emulate. “The question is whether Americans can ever understand that we are living in a continuous experience that has no end, and that you can never segment life into different problems,” Kissinger said. “[As Europeans] we knew that we were living in a continuous history. It never comes to an end.” He might also have quoted the great American novelist William Faulkner, who said: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

The worldliness of these two modern-day viziers was also manifested in very different ways. Kissinger was seductive, a master of flattery and a maestro of the press conference. Brzezinski was better at making media enemies. His theory of the case — that the USSR was a gerontocracy in terminal decline — barely wavered. Kissinger, on the other hand, was strategically amorphous. He perfected the art of illusory action — “motion without movement”, as he called it. But he always gravitated back to his 1815 Congress of Vienna lodestar; a world in which great powers strove to be in balance. Brzezinski��s worldview was filtered through the smaller players — not just his native Poland but the myriad national groups within the USSR whose separatist inclinations he sought to awake.

(…)

Kissinger was a juggler; Brzezinski a boxer. When the latter accused Kissinger of “acrobatics” during the Nixon years, they nearly fell out. In spite of their often irascible disputes, the Republican and Democratic sparring partners never stinted on dinners at Sans Souci, a French restaurant (since closed) near the White House. You went there to be seen. “One always learns more from ‘friendly critics’ than from uncritical friends,” Kissinger wrote to Brzezinski after one such meal in the early 1970s. It is hard to imagine such a garrulous frenemyship in today’s Washington.

The subject of tariffs never arose. Theirs was a time when the US was opening markets and laying the foundations of globalisation. On that, the two strategists absent-mindedly agreed — economics was not either’s strong suit. Today, Trump is bludgeoning that project into reverse.

Opening to China was a central feature of both Kissinger and Brzezinski’s careers. Does Trump yet have a China strategy? Notions of Trump pulling off a “reverse Kissinger” — bringing the Russians into America’s orbit, much as Kissinger exploited the Sino-Soviet split in the other direction — are fanciful. Steve Witkoff, the New York property developer, now Trump’s all-purpose envoy, has recently proved no match for Putin. A reverse Brzezinski — cutting ties with China and recognising Taiwan — is thankfully hard to foresee even with Trump’s unpredictability.

(…)

Having all but gutted Kissinger’s détente, Brzezinski became known in China’s media as the “polar bear tamer” — the bear being Deng’s nickname for the USSR. Kissinger had wanted to keep an “equilateral” distance between the US, USSR and China. Under Carter, they became de facto partners.

Either way, it is hard to imagine Trump plunging into countless hours of tactical back-and-forth with China’s President Xi Jinping or Putin. Nor would Trump be likely to give his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, or secretary of state, Marco Rubio, anything close to Kissinger-Brzezinski latitude.

(…)

How would each handle today’s Russian war on Ukraine? In spite of their differences, it is a good bet that neither Brzezinski nor Kissinger would have advised Trump to offer concessions to Russia ahead of peace talks. Sweeteners are meant to be dangled not gift-wrapped in advance.

Both would have been mortified by Trump and his vice-president JD Vance’s Oval Office humiliation in February of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. As a seducer, Kissinger caught most of his flies with honey. Razor sharp and occasionally prickly, Brzezinski was closer to a Venus flytrap. Neither would have seen Zelenskyy as prey, still less in front of the cameras.

It is impossible to imagine either speaking about Putin in the manner Witkoff recently did to the Maga broadcaster Tucker Carlson. Witkoff disclosed that Putin had said he had prayed for Trump in church after last summer’s assassination attempt. The Russian leader also presented Witkoff with a flattering portrait of Trump. Putin was “enormously gracious”, said Witkoff. “It takes balls to say that,” Carlson replied. Whatever becomes of Trump’s Russia-Ukraine peacemaking ambition, Putin seems to have a better read of Trump than Trump of Putin.

Late in life, Kissinger and Brzezinski nearly swapped their Russia positions. In a 2014 op-ed for the FT, Brzezinski argued for the “Finlandisation” of Ukraine, which would make it an unallied, though pro-western, buffer state between Russia and Nato. Even more startlingly, Kissinger endorsed Ukraine’s Nato membership following Russia’s 2022 invasion. Kissinger’s U-turn can probably be attributed to his habit of keeping within the bounds of consensus, one linked to the needs of Kissinger Associates, his thriving business. Access to the White House and other chancelleries was vital to his consultancy.

(…)

Critics of Kissinger and Brzezinski have plenty of material to play with. “Henry Kissinger, war criminal, beloved by America’s ruling class, finally dies,” was Rolling Stone’s obituary headline. Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia, his backing of Pakistan’s bloody suppression of the uprising in what was to become Bangladesh, the US-backed coup in Chile and wiretapping his own staff dogged Kissinger for the rest of his life. Yet he also negotiated the first nuclear arms control agreement and came close to clinching a second. Détente was no chimera. The older he got, the more Kissinger was treated as an oracle.

Brzezinski’s time in government left no blood on his hands. Carter was the only postwar president never to order soldiers into combat, although eight servicemen died in the aborted Iran hostage rescue attempt. Brzezinski did help lure the Soviets into Afghanistan in 1979, although it was obviously Leonid Brezhnev’s decision to invade. “They’ve taken the bait!” Brzezinski allegedly told an aide on hearing the news. The origins of global jihadism can partly be dated to then. But claims that Brzezinski played “godfather of al-Qaeda” are an absurd leap. The terrorist group was formed seven years after Carter left office.

Some argue that today’s conditions make it far harder for a Kissinger or a Brzezinski to emerge. In the digital age, geostrategic manoeuvring is so much more difficult to execute. Their by no means overlapping detractors say it is a good thing they lack contemporary equivalents. Yet, to paraphrase what one of Trump’s favourite movie characters, Hannibal Lecter, said of his interrogator, the world was more interesting with Kissinger and Brzezinski in it. And to edit-quote someone else, competing strategies beat no strategy.

When Brzezinski died, Kissinger was surprised how bereft he felt. The two had first met in Harvard 67 years earlier. “How central Zbig’s presence had been to my image of a world worth living in and defending hit home with an unexpected force,” Kissinger wrote to Brzezinski’s family on learning of his death. “I felt as if a sustaining pillar of the structure of the world I cared about had disappeared . . . We shared, I like to think, a cause, if not always our ambitions.”

In death, more than life, these two naturalised Americans seem to get along. As their era recedes, and as America repudiates the world it made, both figures deserve study.”

“America may have been temporarily chastened by failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, as it was after Vietnam. But there’s no reason that fresh, exuberant ill-judgements on the scale pushed by Rice and Bundy won’t again be made, and soon. After all, those deadly fiascos were just the worst blunders in decades of U.S. foreign policy miscalculation.

Why do such bad ideas get injected into the making of U.S. foreign policy, particularly with an ease rarely found in other advanced democracies?

Much is due to the political appointments system which the country uses to staff its government, including the national security apparatus. The White House has the responsibility to fill roughly 4,000 senior jobs throughout the federal departments and agencies. When it comes to roles concerning foreign policy and defense, such appointees from outside the executive branch often have more experience in academia, law firms or in business than on the front lines of world affairs. (The same method is applied to staffing at other departments, like Commerce and HUD — except bad ideas at Commerce or Labor are unlikely to cause international catastrophe.)

This freewheeling approach imposes inexperience, compels urgency, courts risk and foments illusions of being able to manage the ethnic, ideological and political concerns of other nations.

“I didn’t think it would be this tough,” Rice concluded on Iraq, echoing Bundy who came to admit of Vietnam that “this damn war is much tougher” than he had anticipated. The system — in which Rice and Bundy, among so many others, have flourished — creates all the wrong incentives when devising foreign policy even as it raises the risk of being gamed by rivals overseas. Of course, not all appointees have such flaws, just like not all career officials have real foresight. But it’s difficult to see why the outcomes of jousting with China, waging proxy war against Russia and courting a showdown with Iran would be any better than the results of past turmoil.

Furthermore, the problem with the system of political patronage goes deep: The influence of cabinet members and nearly all ambassadors can be secondary to that of their subordinates who structure and execute decisions day-to-day at State, the Pentagon and on the NSC staff. Unlike in any other serious country, these hands-on operating roles of government are all open to political patronage, including key positions affecting war and peace: undersecretary of defense for policy, counselor at the State Department, assistant secretary of defense for international security, ones at State for political-military affairs. Also in the mix are assistant and deputy assistant secretaries in both departments for all regions of the globe. Various office directors and senior staff add their weight.

Some slots require Senate confirmation; most not. Appointees from outside federal departments and agencies may be fewer in one administration, more so in another. But the result is always a kaleidoscope of new arrivals and random talents. Meanwhile, embers are drifting down on powder kegs.

America wasn’t always so reckless in the world. It took Kennedy’s thousand days in office to make incaution systemic.

(…)

Why the sudden shift? During the Kennedy presidency, every form of U.S. military power was multiplied. Appointee positions expanded geometrically, and vigorous men of all backgrounds quickly filled them. Professors, previously for the most part advisers to the departments dealing with national defense, suddenly became line practitioners. Kennedy moved his national security adviser — Bundy, who appointed people of his own — into the West Wing and promised a “long twilight struggle year in and year out” against ruthless, godless tyranny. The youthful and energetic men who came to power in January 1961 saw few limits and acted accordingly.

Later administrations kept the illusions of what U.S. political-military clout could accomplish, along with the habit of deploying professors and think tankers in hands-on roles, with no better results. To be sure, great accomplishments have surrounded the many self-deceptions. America defeated the Soviet empire, created sound alliances and had a short, focused, effective intervention in Kosovo, as in Kuwait. Yet the record as a whole is chilling: not just the failed wars but all the befriending of murderous sheiks and shahs, an illusory détente in the 1970s that buttressed Soviet Russia, to be followed in the 80s by upholding Saddam Hussein, later capped by nation-building in places where nations barely existed. And worst of all, the country keeps repeating its follies on a colossal scale.

Today, the Office of Presidential Personnel fills about 635 jobs at State and Defense, and several hundred more at Homeland Security and elsewhere that address foreign policy. At the NSC, which has a staff over 300, roughly 20 percent of the most senior people are appointed, the rest being detailed from the military and a range of government agencies.

Stephen Hadley, who succeeded Rice in 2005 as national security adviser, defended this approach after a lecture I gave in Washington, in 2019, on foreign policy shortfalls. Much is due to the executive branch structure’s depending on one figure being in charge. Accordingly, a president most effectively exercises power by personalizing the instruments of state right down to the level of daily implementation — especially in foreign affairs where, constitutionally, the president has vast latitude.

Basically, in this view, spirited, clever and well-schooled individuals then get pulled into the system. They are people like current national security adviser Jake Sullivan, a lawyer who had entered government in 2009, becoming Vice President Joe Biden’s chief national security aide; he then spent four years teaching and policy consulting during the Trump years, until Biden became president. Or like Rice, who in 2001 returned to Washington for a second stint in government — having spent two years at the NSC during the George H. W. Bush presidency — after a decade at Stanford. And people like Bundy too, who was new to public life when coming to Washington at the start of the Kennedy administration, after a dozen years teaching at Harvard.

(…)

These representative careers are emulated by other men and women with establishment credentials, stellar political networks and ambitions to enter America’s civilian national security cohort, or to attain foreign policy roles in general. They arrive from law firms, universities, think tanks, congressional offices, business and journalism, and they include former career professionals who’ve left government, then to return with political backing. In all, the actual number of years they serve in the executive branch is low compared to Foreign Service officers and civil servants who’ve risen in the merit-based ranks.

(…)

It’s a unique approach. In Europe, Japan, Brazil, Russia and China, ministries are filled instead by permanent, though frequently rotating, career officials. Career diplomats and foreign policy professionals hold important roles sometimes effectively up to cabinet level.

Ideally, the Washington way assures a valuable tension between an administration’s more original, politically-savvy appointees — alert to the short term — and an ongoing, knowledgeable, inherited staff attuned to longer challenges. However, what ends up happening in practice is that the country’s civil service and Foreign Service are diminished: Political appointees from outside the federal departments, relatively untried on the frontlines, tend to hold the decisive, career-enhancing roles like deputy assistant secretary and above. Chances of serious misjudgment increase.

Part of the tragedy is that most anyone whose life included years of mediating between warlords in N’Djamena, or equally dismal tasks during decades of actual responsibility, could have told professors Rice or Bundy that war was going to be “tough,” and could have said so before the thousands of body bags started arriving home.

That sort of gritty, practical, career-long experience exemplifies the Foreign Service, among other parts of the federal merit-based hierarchy. It fosters an expertise that’s hard to acquire elsewhere, even if a lawyer or professor or think tank researcher has more than one or two forays into government.

Questions of relevant, practical experience among many political appointees is one of several problems with the patronage system.

During 2001, for example, the Bush administration’s new undersecretary of defense for policy — a huge job that involved managing the Defense department’s international relations — arrived from a six-man law firm. In his memoirs written after he left for a think tank in 2005, this recent enthusiast for invading Iraq and thereby transforming the Middle East derided the country’s diplomats for their inclination to “fret about the risk” of war.

Forty years earlier, it was Bundy — with no more useful experience than this undersecretary — who mocked the professionals at State for lacking “energy” when harsh decisions of escalation and regime change had to be made on Vietnam. Unsurprisingly, in the run-ups to both Iraq and Vietnam, it tended to be those experienced, long-serving professionals — men and women required to know something of history, foreign cultures and languages — who doubted that America could recast entire cultures overnight.

A second limitation arises from the relatively short stints in government among these appointees. Institutional memory becomes spotty as they come and go. Those confirmed by the Senate stay in office for an average of 17 months. Below them, others may serve slightly longer, before returning to private life. It’s a form of unplanned obsolescence.

(…)

A system which depends heavily on short-term officeholders imposes a sense of urgency on itself. And urgency is dangerous when, say, negotiating arms accords — or deciding just how to evacuate Kabul or Saigon. Appointees — often focused, clever and determined people — are able to push their priorities through bureaucracies that are less certain or obsessed. These officials may be comparative amateurs. Yet they must act right now before competing urgencies are tabled, or their administration is swept from office.

A third limitation of many appointees — shared by cabinet members — is the recurring belief that America can pretty much shape entire geostrategic environments, like the one around Beijing.

(…)

Today, after a debacle with many similarities, retired General David Petraeus — always politically attuned, and sounding like a just-appointed assistant secretary — writes of what should have been done to “manage” Afghanistan on a “sustained, generational” scale. Words like that say a lot, and they parrot a half-century of high civilian officials. This isn’t merely shorthand for a robust foreign policy. It’s a small step to assuming that Asia or the Middle East can be smoothly administered, or fine-tuned, if the right tools are applied.

Here too a difference has long existed with professional diplomats who are skilled in non-coercive persuasion. Seldom are Foreign Service Officers, who are frequently marginalized anyway from the big decisions, to be found among the “global architects” of whom novelist John le Carré writes. Those are officials at the top who are busily crafting “a secret tuck here, and a secret pull there… and a destabilized economy or two” to save democracy everywhere.

Worst of all, the appointee system is a gateway to power for a certain type of political figure. These are people whom the opportunities offered by the modern state tempt into an eternal trifling with danger and extremity. And it’s to the excitements of war and peace that they are drawn. Nineteenth-century historian Jacob Burckhardt called them “emergency men,” and the genre has abounded in Washington.

During the discussion with Hadley, he asked me what I meant by “fine-tuning.” A successor of his, John Bolton, who served 18 months under President Donald Trump, offers an example. Bolton is a true amateur, and fits Burckhardt’s description. He’s spent only 14 divvied up years of a nearly five-decade career working on these matters in government. Law firms, politicking, early domestic duties at the Justice Department and think tanks consumed his time. (Nor do TV interviews and op-eds issued from research centers compare to owning a problem while in office, however briefly.) Yet he tells of staging coups during stints of public service — pointless acts if even true, really, because there’s little chance that Washington will be able to control what comes next, whether Saigon in 1963 or Cairo in 2013, or who-knows-what tomorrow.

To boast in 2022 of staging coups recalls another national security adviser who described himself in 1972 as “the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into town.” Each man was daydreaming of uncanny abilities.

Henry Kissinger held that slot at the time. President Richard Nixon, who knew much about foreign affairs, observed that Kissinger was one of those people who foment crises “to earn attention for themselves,” adding that the Harvard professor — in his first government job — would have set one off over someplace like Ecuador had Vietnam not been in play. Many crises did erupt, and worse: bungling in Cambodia and in Pakistan that abetted genocide, and so too in East Timor which he believed to be Muslim, not Catholic, and “in the middle of Indonesia,” plus bolstering a disastrous right-wing coup in Chile, just to begin. Meanwhile, Kissinger imitated Kennedy’s own NSC adviser, McGeorge Bundy. “The defect of the State Department is low energy,” he advised Nixon.

As would Kissinger, Bundy embodied emergency: Any resolute action had to be superior to restraint. An early hawk on Vietnam, he saw bloodshed during his first visit to Asia in 1965. The U.S. commander in Vietnam recalled Bundy developing a “field marshal psychosis,” and America then intervened big.

Political appointees aren’t the only ones to blame. Generals, legislators, carefully sieved Foreign Service Officers and their counterparts in the civil service, as well as at CIA, can push foolish notions too. (CIA has few appointees, and its problems instead occur from a decades-long hermetic insularity.) It’s the brass, after all, which keeps assuring politicians that the silver bullets of airpower will deliver a decisive edge: drones in the Middle East, helicopters in Vietnam and B-29s in North Korea. Yet these aren’t the men and women who are driving decisions day-to-day.

(…)

But there’s a thin line between hopes of “shaping” the world and trying to exert open, direct control over what other countries might or might not do. Watch old habits unfurl as dangers mount, whether from Russia, Iran or from China, forever “on the march.”

The language of public debate is getting loud, and it’s unoriginal. “Vacuums of power,” “emboldened opponents,” “Munich!,” of course, and “a test of US resolve,” as well as “shaping” this or that vast entity. Excitable professors join Blinken’s new Foreign Affairs Policy Board who write, actually in italics, of “ruthlessly blocking an opponent’s way forward” and explicitly urge a new Cold War. Meanwhile, civilian control of the military, which depends on a keen sense of what can and cannot be accomplished by force, hasn’t improved in any way at all.

Victory has been called the ability to face greater problems without fear. The steadiness which makes that possible can be seen in the case-hardened, enduring qualities that the U.S. Navy brings to refueling its ships in a storm: “Not easy, just routine.” These are strengths of focus, of deadly seriousness about the country’s needs, and of seasoned professionals who work with few illusions. In contrast, to keep indulging White House patronage is like playing dice at the heights of foreign policy making.

At best, the political appointee-to-career personnel ratios might change, though in fact little will be done to improve the staffing problem. Foreign and defense policy has become a trellis on which the well-connected grow careers, and too many influential figures profit from revolving doors, as do the companies where they cash in. Yet knowing of these failings might induce a healthy skepticism toward what journalists label the “national security establishment,” and also toward our country’s commitment, as stated in the latest national strategy document, to “defend democracy around the world.”

Ultimately, America’s peculiar approach to selecting talent undercuts the ability to handle strategy, let alone grand strategy, which entails unifying long-term ends with the most broad-based means. For a lifetime, with the fewest of exceptions, what passes for considered policy has instead been a twisting sequence of ad hoc decisions, hammered out under the stresses of domestic politics. How could results be otherwise?”

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myths-tournaments · 1 year ago

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Awful Characters Round 3 (8/8)

Propaganda under the cut!

MAKIMA

The number of times I've seen people call others 'groomer apologists' or questioning if they actually like Makima for 'proper reasons' and aren't just sexualizing her are astronomical. She's truly a diabolical and fascinating antagonist. And yeah she's hot too. Who gives a shit if I like her character And her unsettling cryptic mommy energy? I have eyes. I have needs. I have love for Makima and I am not ashamed to say it.

ZHOU ZISHU

He's got that "villain of another story" swag, he's dating a fellow villain, and their clown shenanigans and body count have captivated me. That said, he's done some shit, though which of his crimes are The Worst is something me and the ppl-who'd-call-you-bad-person-for-liking-him disagree on. I personally think that creating an above-the-law organization that does assassination and spying for the government is objectively the worst, like if this was real world this would impact generations of people, and this setup just asks for abuse of power - basically, this is 100 times worse than any harm he's ever done to individual people. But thankfully he's fictional and thats why I can be like 'secret police assassin man hot' without a problem. (cw rape, sexual slavery, drugging for the next paragraph) The twitter-brained population however likes to forgo this in favor of focusing on that one time he kidnapped a teenager, drugged him, and sold him into sexual slavery - all to implicate a political opponent (who was the one buying teenage sex slaves, tbc). Which I mean for sure is bad but like, this harmed several individuals, not created an instrument of oppression that would harm countless people for years to come. And if you are rolling with the second thing because hes fictional, why do you draw the line on the other, objectively less impactful atrocity?.. He also has other crimes like war crimes (organized public execution of foreign diplomats during war time), and that time he murdered a 4yo kid he previously not only knew but like looked after and played with, along with her whole family, which got slightly less oomph compared to previous two but I'm adding them for completion's sake. As for ppl calling u bad person for liking the character: so this novel has gotten a live-action series adaptation a couple years ago, which heavily edited the worst of Zhou Zishu's crimes (and also replaced his whole personality, and made him be somehow both less of an asshole AND more awful to his bf). And then some people went to read the novel(s) and found out about The Crimes and u can imagine how it went. Someone tried to make a whole hashtag #NotMyAXu (A-Xu is his nickname) about how they rejected the novel version! So yeah this is one of the reasons for a schism between novel fans and show fans in this fandom. They cant handle our awful fictional bastard.

#awful characters tournament #tournament poll #awful characters round 3 #chainsaw man #csm #makima #faraway wanderers #tian ya ke #tyk #priest novels #zhou zishu

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aladaylessecondblog · 6 months ago

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Red Mountain Waffle House pt. 16

DAGOTH FAMILY SCHISM! BRUTAL PUNISHMENT FOR UNKNOWN INSULT!

Sources close to the Dagoth Family state that Dagoth Gilvoth has fallen out of favor with the rest of his kin. When asked why, one source said, 'He thought he spoke for Lord Dagoth, and he pays the consequences. Not permanently - this House does not dispose of useful members - but retribution comes regardless.'

One has to wonder what grave sin could prompt such a thing considering the general state of the Sixth House, but more than that the source refused to say.

-----------------------

Helseth was a man prone to paranoia. Anyone who had the foolishness to count him a friend knew to walk slowly when beside him, for he always had an ear out to hear little sounds of expected assassins or eavesdroppers. Or to listen out for things that might be useful to himself...

...every unknown factor was potentially useful or potentially deadly for him. He had made his rise this way, and so, he imagined, he might avoid his fall.

So it was rather galling, he thought, when he saw his mother's retinue approaching with a stranger in tow. He looked over her with no small amount of consternation, glared even, but she didn't seem fazed by it. Perhaps a bit tired. The woman lowered her gaze and gave a slight bow, and that was all.

Helseth greeted his mother, "Your journey was delayed, I was beginning to worry."

"A rough blight storm struck while we were sailing back, and we had to take shelter for a time. This young woman--"

"You aren't taking in urchins again, are you, mother?" Helseth grumbled, "You know that can be dangerous."

"I am not an urchin!" the new woman protested, and then realizing her rudeness, added, "Your grace."

"Really...what are you then?"

"Only another Hlaalu--" Her voice choked slightly there, "--taking a job offered to me by the Queen Mother, your grace."

"I see. Well, expect your background investigated, as with any job. This is the palace, not some backwater--"

Barenziah gave the woman a look. The latter nodded, and kept her gaze downward.

Then his mother looked back at him.

"I can spare you the time and the trouble. This is Sadara, the missing woman whom the papers have made such a fuss over."

"The Dagoth bride?" Then Helseth looked harshly back. "Why are you here?"

"Avoiding those who do not wish to see me, your grace," Sadara went on. "The family made it clear I am unsuitable and all I want is to be left in peace, until the annulment goes through."

"...I see. You may go - but my people will be keeping an eye on you."

His gaze lingered on her as she walked along with Barenziah down the hall. The Dagoth bride, clearly so dear to the House itself, seemed to be under the impression she was unwanted. The schism within the House...and Nerevar, being now alive, clearly looking for her...she was dear to at least some of them. To keep her there in Mournhold could be handy, to ensure House Dagoth cooperated.

If Lord Vivec could not find a way to keep the Dagoths on a leash, then it was up to him.

Helseth decided he would welcome the woman.

-----------------------------

VIVEC CAUGHT CHEATING! ALMALEXIA HUMILIATED - SEE SECRET PHOTOS INSIDE!

[The picture is taken from a distance, from the back. Vivec is leaning into a kiss with someone inside the building, grasping a boxy necklace of theirs to pull them into it. Nothing of the person's face can be seen except a Dwemer-fashion beard.]

Almalexia was many things, looking at that picture. Furious foremost among them - but humiliated? No. No, she was never that, that was for lesser women. Women like HER did not slow their schemes long enough to be petty things like humiliated.

No. She would not be cast down like this, she would find a way to take vengeance. What did it matter if Vivec had thrown her over for that atrocious first love of his? What did it matter that Neht had done the same?

She was so consumed with the headline she didn't hear the footsteps that approached the newsstand she was standing near. She did hear the voice that followed.

"I'm here for the Queen Mother's order."

Almalexia whipped around--

Sadara? What was THAT woman doing HERE? She'd thought the woman wouldn't be leaving Red Mountain - the headlines said she was missing, but those hadn't been paid much attention.

"The Queen Mother can't resist Black Marsh cigars, can she?" the clerk laughed, and once Sadara produced her identification and the paper detailing Barenziah's order, in turn produced a fancy looking box with a Black Marsh seal on the top. "She's paid ahead of time, so no need for extra now."

"Thank you, serjo," Sadara said. She bought a pack of gum, turned--and paled when she saw Almalexia. "L-Lady Almalexia."

"And WHAT--" Almalexia's tone went and stayed sharp, "--are you doing HERE, exactly? Do the Dagoths give you nothing, and force you to make a living on your own?"

"Why should they be giving me anything?" Sadara asked. The woman was shaking. "I don't want any trouble, my lady, I'm simply trying to stay out of everyone's way. The Dagoths don't want me there because they've got Nerevar, so I've got to make a living somehow."

"Don't want you there? But they're l--"

Almalexia paused suddenly, and then let a falsely genial smile spread across her face. On a septim she turned.

"The Dagoths are a rather brutish house, aren't they? They dangle the promise of love in front of you and snatch it away the moment you think you have found your place. Come, I bear you no ill will--we can start afresh, you and I."

Oh, this will be EASY, Almalexia thought to herself.

#morrowind enquirer headlines lol #fanfiction #morrowind #nerevarine #helseth #almalexia #tes #tesblr #elder scrolls #mournhold #dagoth ur #vivec

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teecupangel · 2 years ago

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saw the Joker!Desmond idea & the tags about the LoA & a bunny emerged! so here u go for the bunnyvault: Desmond reborn as Talia Al Ghul's twin brother. it would be a little nightmarish with the Leader of Assassin Group Father (with extra crazy) in a death cult, but there would be room for funny bits. like Desmond just Judging Talia's taste in men. *gestures to ALL of Bruce's everything* WHY? R U into this man? doting on/teaching damian the Creed in secret. accidentally leading a schism in the League. * over 200 yrs & what have we actually accomplished "Dad"?* bullying his sorta brother in law. idk

The ask that inspired this one about Joker!Desmond AU which had these tags:

#ngl #the idea of desmond being the leader of the league of assassins #would be a fun idea #especially if we set this before cassandra runs away #so we can have a mentally unstable desmond #try to raise a socially awkward cassandra #it would be both funny #and also a bit tragic

So… Desmond went from one fucked up family to another fucked up family. XD

I think it could be debated on who is a worse father, Ra’s Al Ghul or William Miles lol.

Anyway, he would have a strained relationship with his family, not just with his new father. For one, he and Talia would have grown up being pitted against one another and their competition would be ‘nourished’ by their own father. Talia would probably respect him and care for him as her twin brother but loathe him as her rival because he was a prodigy in the eyes of the League.

Desmond, for his part, would try to be the nice brother (relying heavily on Ezio’s Bleed for help) but Talia can be quite a handful when she feels like it so there’s a bit of annoyed older brother vibe to how Desmond deal with Talia sometimes.

Which would be funnier if Desmond is actually the younger of the twins XD

Also, let’s not forget that the Lazarus Pit is used to ensure that they do get to live that long so… Desmond’s mental state post-Bleeding Effect? It definitely takes a hit every time he uses the Lazarus Pit.

The first time it happens, Desmond didn’t know the extent of the Lazarus’ Pit powers. He had grown up in an isolated ‘community’ (again) and in an unknown world (let’s say that Desmond’s world doesn’t have DC in it) so he just figured it’s one of those long honored tradition.

Then he emerged from the Lazarus Pit and… he sees Altaïr in the crowd of league members…

He doesn’t go to the pit regularly. Not as much as their father but…

He sees them… walking around, always near but too far at the same time.

Then an accident happened and Desmond was dunked into the Pit once more. He was too valuable to let die after all (and maybe… Ra’s Al Ghul did care for him in his own twisted way but, then again, so did William Miles).

When he emerges from the Lazarus Pit, he could hear them.

They talk to him now.

They support him, give him tips and suggestions…

They make him feel… warm.

A warmth that he rarely felt in this place. A warmth that he had only felt maybe once or twice from his father, more times with his twin but they would be so short they felt like they were already fleeting by the time Desmond felt it.

He knew then and there that the Lazarus Pit was dangerous.

Because he also knew… his body had grown stronger.

He had become more.

But the worst part? Desmond didn’t realize that he and the whispers he hears… they were being stripped of their moral compass little by little by the Lazarus Pit.

Desmond does his best not to go to the Pit. But, at the same time, he hears its call. He starts to wonder if the next time he goes to the Pit, he would be able to feel them. To touch them.

Then…

Bruce Wayne came to the League and asked to be trained.

He was… an interesting fellow, to say the least.

He could feel the sexual tension in the room whenever he and Talia were together.

And Desmond tried to keep his distance, more because Talia hates it when Desmond takes her ‘things’ even if Desmond didn’t intend to do it or didn’t even know they were her things from the very beginning.

None of that mattered.

But Bruce saw him.

And among the best of the Leagues, Bruce knew he was the one most challenging of all. His movements were erratic and random but they always strike true. It was like fighting multiple opponents at the same time, weaving in and out of different stances and fighting techniques like flowing water.

And Desmond was, by far, the most normal of the Leagues. As long as Bruce ignored how it always seem like Desmond is looking elsewhere as if someone who wasn’t there was talking to him or how he sometimes nods or makes noises that signify he was listening even though no one was speaking.

Then…

It all came crashing down.

Bruce became Batman and became a thorn in the side of the League.

And Gotham City becomes a beacon to the Leagues.

It’s not all bad though.

Desmond is more or less amicable to helping Batman if it interests him or benefits him in any way. Among the Leagues, he’s the one who Batman could trust the most. Batman knows Desmond has plans of his own for Gotham City and he has no qualms killing those he perceive as evil but Desmond could be reason with… to an extent.

Then… Jason Todd died…

Talia took his body and revived him in the Pit.

And Desmond watched as Jason tries to control himself as he stayed in the League. He was Talia’s though and Talia hates to share so…

He goes to him in secret. Only when they are alone and Desmond is sure Talia would not know of it later on. He tries to teach him how to channel his rage and that primal urge that seemed to come from being revived by the Pit. He teaches him the Creed and what it means to be an Assassin. Not one of the League’s assassin but an Assassin.

When Jason leaves the League, he bears a burn in his left ring finger and Desmond realized…

There was no need to continue to stay in the shadow, quietly and swiftly undermining the plans of the Leagues he didn’t agree with.

He just… needs to take matter on his own hands.

That’s when Desmond starts growing his own faction in the League itself. His moral compass skewered enough that he believes he can ‘fix’ the League and turn it into a real Assassin Brotherhood. He takes in Lady Shiva and his sister. Becomes Cassandra Cain’s guardian later on after the tragedy that pushes Cassandra Cain’s life was unraveled by Desmond himself.

Then Damien was born and Desmond couldn’t help himself. He sees himself a lot in Damien and he knows his sister enough to know she would fuck him up. He does not, however, realize that he wasn’t any better after all. He’s better in hiding it but… the Pit has affected him as well.

Damien would remember his kindness and would be the least inclined to go against Desmond even when he dons the cape of Robin and makes it his own. Desmond would always be the kind uncle who smiled at him and patted his head. The one who thought him how to kill men five times larger than him and how to care for eagles so they would be loyal to him. Desmond gave him a childhood that seemed both normal and strange. Damien would see how easy it was for Bruce Wayne and his family to care for him and feel a pang in his chest because that was the kind of love he felt from his uncle. And yet… his uncle stayed in the League and still continue to smile at him and tell him he’s doing well even when they’re on different side. Damien knows the League is wrong and that he’s doing the right thing but, at the same time… his uncle made him think that maybe… just maybe… No. Damien can’t think that. His father would be disappointed in him if he did.

Damien does not know that Bruce harbors the same ‘maybe’ in his mind. Every time he sees Desmond, he wonders if the League is beyond saving. But, unlike Damien, he does not hold Desmond with rose-tinted glasses. He knows how dangerous Desmond is.

So when Batman and his allies hear that a civil war has erupted in the League, one faction led by Desmond and another faction led by Ra’s… Batman can’t help but question if a League led by Desmond would be a good thing. A better alternative to Ra’s? For who? The League? The world? Himself?

Talia stays with their father, of course, she does. She does it not out of loyalty for their father but because she will always stand against her brother. That was how they were raised.

The Batfamily tries to stay away from all this. But some of them do tend to lean towards Desmond’s faction more. Mainly because Desmond is the ‘nice one’.

It would be Dick who reminds everyone that just because Desmond is nice to them doesn’t mean that they should lower their guard.

They must always remember.

Desmond… is an Assassin.

Unorganized Notes (this is gonna be short):

Red Hood would keep his connection to Desmond a secret. All Bruce knows is that Jason was with the League for a while but Bruce also knows that Talia thinks of Jason as hers because he’s Bruce’s and Bruce was hers.

Among the Batfamily, Red Hood and Robin would definitely be the ones to easily team up with Desmond’s Brotherhood.

Cassandra Cain doesn’t become Batgirl or Black Bat in this one (or, if you want her to be part of the Batfamily, not yet). She’s raised by Desmond and has a better childhood this time around although… okay, it’s a better childhood compared to canon but it’s still an Assassin childhood. She’s loyal to Desmond and sees him as her father figure. Although, she’d also grow close to the Batfamily as they team up some times.

Among the Batfamily, it would be Tim Drake who would be more willing to go along the more ‘violent’ plans that Desmond’s Brotherhood may do. Tim Drake is also the one who advocates that it’s better for Desmond to lead the League.

Dick is the one totally against it and some would say that he has no plank to stand on considering he became a Robin to get revenge but Dick is past that entire thing. He doesn’t support Ra’s faction as well and he’s more on the side of, whichever wins, the world would take the fall. The others (Babs, Stephanie, Kate and Duke) are on the fence about this and are waiting on what Batman would do.

Desmond is quite amicable to a few of Batman’s Rogue gallery. Poison Ivy is one of his staunch supporters as their end goal tend to align most of the time. Because of this, Harley Quin likes to call him their ‘bestie from another screwed up family’. She also knows that something is ‘wrong’ with Desmond but she doesn’t pry because ‘that’s not what friends do!’

Desmond likes to loudly say that Catwoman is a better match for Batman just to annoy Talia. He does not necessarily ship Batman with either his sister or anybody else because of Batman’s (gestures to ALL of Bruce’s everything) but annoying Talia is a favorite past time of his.

I absolutely did not include non-Batman characters because then I’d be writing this for far too long than I should but he hates Lexcorp. It reminds him too much of Abstergo XD

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posttexasstressdisorder · 2 months ago

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All By Himself

Eric Carmen Was a Power-Pop Legend. Then He Vanished

In the final years of his life, the musical genius behind songs like “Go All the Way” and “All by Myself” was estranged from much of his family — and went down a rabbit hole of far-right conspiracies

January 19, 2025

A s soon as he answered his phone, Clayton Carmen knew he was getting bad news. It was March 2024, and by then, nearly a decade had passed since he had seen his father, Eric Carmen — the power-pop trailblazer and Raspberries frontman best remembered for the hits “Go All the Way,” “All by Myself,” and “Hungry Eyes.” Clayton’s stepmother, Amy, was on the other end of the line. The 27-year-old hadn’t seen her since his high school days, when Clayton knocked on the door of the house that Amy shared with his dad in an attempt to finally reconcile their differences. Carmen and Amy responded to the overture by closing the curtains, calling the police, and reporting a trespasser.

“I remember going, ‘Oh, boy, if you’re calling me, I can’t imagine this is good,’” Clayton says. “She told me, ‘Your dad died yesterday.’”

Eric Carmen’s brother, Fred, received a similar call from Amy. Fred hadn’t communicated with his older brother since 2016, even though they were as close as siblings could be for the first 55 years of his life. Fred blames Amy for inspiring a series of lawsuits that separated Eric from his brother, his son, and 24-year-old Kathryn Carmen, Eric’s only other child. He had some questions.

“I said, ‘Was he sick? Were there issues?’” Fred says. “She said, ‘No. We went out to dinner the night before and he seemed fine. We watched TV before going to bed. The next morning, I ran some errands while he slept in, like he always did. When I came home, he was gone.’”

“I’m not commenting on my husband’s death, but that is not what I said to Fred Carmen,” says Amy Carmen, who initially declined to be interviewed for this article, but eventually responded to a list of inquiries.

In search of more details about his brother’s passing, Fred says he phoned the coroner’s office in Maricopa County — Carmen had lived in Paradise Valley, Arizona — to ask for a copy of the autopsy report. He was told it wasn’t available, and later learned that Amy had filed a lawsuit against the police, fire department, medical examiner, and the county’s public-health office to prevent the report’s release, even to Carmen’s children.

“We should all get the respect of being remembered for our accomplishments during our time here,” Amy says, “not the most personal moment in our lives — the time we leave this earth.” (Last September, a judge agreed with Amy, stating that the release of records relating to Carmen’s death would cause Amy and the estate “substantial grief and harm.”)

On Eric Carmen’s official website the day after his death, a vague announcement informed fans only that he had died “in his sleep, over the weekend.” Eleven months later, the exact cause of Carmen’s death at 74 is just one of many questions about his enigmatic life that linger. Why did the singer, fiercely private, go so public in his support of Donald Trump during his final years, posting furious MAGA missives that horrified many longtime friends and fans? Why did he almost completely abandon his music career after scoring worldwide hits in the late Eighties? What caused him to sever ties with his only children? And how did the family schism widen to the point that Amy is now accusing Clayton and Kathryn of once plotting their father’s murder, in one of multiple lawsuits Amy has been involved in following Carmen’s death?

In an attempt to answer these questions, I spent the past six months reporting on Carmen’s life through interviews with family members, his former manager, close friends, bandmates, and fellow musicians who drew a lifetime of inspiration from his work. The complex portrait that emerged varies wildly, depending on who’s doing the telling. His bandmates and friends who stayed with him to the end describe Carmen as a kind and generous suburban dad, happily retired, madly in love with Amy, and shattered by the loss of his relationship with his kids. His brother, children, and ex-wife, Susan, describe a bitter, paranoid conspiracy theorist haunted by the past, lost in the face of shifting musical tastes, hopelessly addicted to alcohol, and manipulated by Amy to turn on his family.

Amy strongly denies turning Carmen against his children, and claims they wanted nothing from their father besides his money in the last decade of his life. “I loved Eric and stood by him through the tough times, unlike his brother and his children,” she says. “Eric had every reason for wanting to be estranged from [his family]. But please, be sure to blame the new wife.”

The one thing nobody disputes is that Carmen was a perfectionist and musical genius. “After he died, I saw he hadn’t made music in over 25 years,” says Steven Van Zandt. “I was like, ‘Goddamn!’ It’s such a shame, because I can tell you as a writer, performer, arranger, and producer, his records were some of the greatest ever made. They were right at the top. Right at the top.”

The final arc of Eric Carmen’s life began in 2014, when he came across the Facebook page of a former NBC-affiliate meteorologist in Cleveland. It was Amy Murphy, who was then living in Arizona. Carmen, still in Cleveland at the time, began an online and then in-person courtship with Amy, ultimately marrying her in 2016. “I received a Facebook direct message from him,” Amy said at Carmen’s memorial service last year. “It simply read, ‘Did you know you were my favorite weather girl when you were in Cleveland?’ ”

Before long, the couple moved into a new house together in Cleveland. From the start, Carmen’s children, Clayton and Kathryn, didn’t take to Amy. “The comparison I always make is to The Parent Trap. I always think of her as the evil stepmom/girlfriend,” Clayton says. “When my dad was around, she was very smiley, happy, and sweet. But my sister and I knew from the very beginning that she was really, really, really bad news.

“My father was just a very manipulatable, paranoid, isolated person,” he continues. “And suddenly someone comes into his life and, instead of his kids, who will push back on him, she’s a sycophant. She’ll say yes to whatever he wants. She’ll agree with him on his zaniest, most deranged conspiracy theories. She was just what he wanted.”

Amy emphatically denies this categorization of their relationship. “I never asked him for anything,” she says. “Unlike the other barnacles in Eric’s life, I didn’t need anything.”

A page from Kathryn’s diary, dated Feb. 12, 2016, when she was 15, reveals her state of mind while living part-time with Amy and her father. “I can’t stop dwelling on how much I hate them,” she wrote. “Clay and I have discussed killing Eric and driving his Jag to California. Our plan sounds better and better … I got so angry tonight I couldn’t stop shaking. I can’t be responsible for my own actions at this point.”

The diary entry was cited as evidence that Kathryn and Clayton were “planning Eric’s murder” in a recent legal filing by Amy’s attorneys. “Amy took multiple photos of my diary to drive a wedge into the relationship with my father,” Kathryn writes in an email to Rolling Stone. “These antics started as soon as she moved into the home. She would often comb through my brother and I’s rooms looking for anything that could harm a parent-child relationship. I am truly saddened that Amy would try to publicly misuse the private ramblings of a child who was experiencing so much heartbreak and pain at home.… Of course my brother and I never had any intention of causing physical threat to our father as she’s suggesting.”

In April 2018, Carmen and Amy left Ohio to resettle in Arizona, but withheld telling the other members of the Carmen family; they resisted any attempt by Clayton and Kathryn to reconnect, as well. “This was Eric’s choice,” Amy says. “Eric had no desire to reestablish contact with any of them. Eric’s legal counsel and all of his close friends know that they individually and collectively made his life a living hell.”

According to their close friends, Carmen was extremely happy in the final six years of his life, and even drastically reduced his drinking, a problem with alcohol that had plagued him for much of his career. “[Amy] was really good for him,” says Raspberries drummer Jim Bonfanti. “She was a different person than Eric, but she’s smart, and she really loved him. He was as happy as I’d seen him.” Bernie Hogya, who co-wrote the 2011 biography Eric Carmen: Marathon Man with Ken Sharp, echoes Bonfanti’s assessment. “I’d never seen him happier,” he says. “She really grounded him.”

The start of Carmen’s relationship with Amy happened to coincide with the political rise of Donald Trump. Carmen became one of Trump’s staunchest celebrity defenders on Twitter, especially when Covid began, which he saw as a conspiracy to undermine the then-president. “Unemployment skyrocketed, the ‘lockdown’ crashed Trump’s economy, teachers don’t want schools to open,” he wrote in one tweet. “People lost businesses they worked their whole lives for. All to hurt Donald Trump. We’re just collateral damage. And the REAL point is mandatory vaccination with an ID for all.”

When Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Carmen had a public meltdown on Twitter, slamming the “mainstream media.” “It is time to turn off the MSM, en masse,” he wrote when the networks reported Biden had defeated Trump. “Watch Newsmax and OANN … The entire MSM has called the election for Biden. Not surprising, since they were all part of it. Please, President Trump, do not concede.”

In the tense weeks that followed, Carmen started to tweet slogans associated with the fringe-right QAnon movement, like “the storm is coming,” along with absurd lies about Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines rigging the election, and fevered, Alex Jones-style declarations about an impending apocalypse. “I know all about ‘The Great Reset,’” he tweeted on Nov. 17, 2020. “I’m wondering how they intend to accomplish it. I’ve been thinking more along the lines of taking out the power grid and the financial system in one massive cyber attack. Whatever it is, it will make Covid look like a small bump in the road.”

Some of his friends did their best to ignore Carmen’s online outbursts. “When he went sideways politically, we just didn’t discuss politics,” says Van Zandt. “That’s what I do with all my friends when we differ. We may differ politically, but I don’t write people off that way. I’m like, ‘Hey, we see things differently politically, and that’s OK. Let’s not make that part of the conversation. We got plenty of other things to talk about.’”

Back in Cleveland, Carmen’s kids were aghast. “The most I can make sense of it is that he did struggle with depression,” says Kathryn. “He wasn’t religious, and I think he was almost vulnerable to that sense of belonging later on in life that Trump provided. Our jaws were on the ground as we saw everything unfold with his politics.”

“The more that Trump appeared on my TV, the more I would pick up on certain little things about him that reminded me of my dad,” says Clayton. “Just as much as you look at Trump as a textbook narcissist, my dad was a narcissist to the most textbook degree.”

There’s no denying the musical talent of Eric Carmen. Even before he entered kindergarten, the Cleveland Institute of Music recognized something in the boy. His aunt, Muriel, was a world-renowned viola player in the Cleveland Orchestra, and it was clear her tiny nephew, who loved to hang out in the theater whenever she rehearsed, soaking up the music like a sponge, inherited her gift. “He was playing piano before he could walk,” says Fred Carmen. “I could bang my spoon on a steel bowl and he’d go, ‘C-flat.’ He literally had perfect pitch.”

When Carmen was just three and a half, the Cleveland Institute of Music offered him an enrollment. (To this day, by all accounts, he holds the record as the youngest student in the 104-year history of the organization.) It didn’t take him long to master a multitude of classical instruments, including piano and violin, but he switched to guitar as a 14-year-old after seeing the Beatles perform on the The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. “I took guitar lessons at the same time,” says Fred. “It was very frustrating for me, because I was going through one book every three months. He was going through three books every three days. He just had incredible natural talent.”

His proficiency on guitar helped him stand out in a school where he very much felt like an outsider. “He had a complex about being the Jewish kid with very curly hair,” says Kathryn Carmen. “He saw the Beatles with their straight British cuts. He really, really wanted that hair. And I think he just became obsessed with trying to get it straight.” (Getting his hair just right was a lifelong quest. By the late Eighties, he toured with a large suitcase devoted solely to hairbrushes and sprays.)

In the late Sixties, Carmen became a local teenage legend for his ability to take complex songs like “Walk Away Renee,” “Sloop John B,” and “The Kids Are Alright” and re-create them onstage. He played in various bands at Hullabaloo clubs and bars all across Cleveland and the surrounding suburbs, eventually teaming up with the cream of the local scene: drummer Jim Bonfanti, guitarist Wally Bryson, and bassist Dave Smalley. They called themselves the Raspberries, not after the fruit, but the slang term for blowing air out of your mouth as an angry retort. “Eric knew exactly what he wanted the band to be,” says Bonfanti. “He wanted us to have something different and special. He was on a mission.”

A big part of that mission was eschewing the excesses that had crept into rock by the early 1970s. To Carmen, pop music peaked around the time of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the Beatles’ Revolver, and he had no interest in drum solos, 10-minute songs, or anything that felt even remotely like prog. “I remember Eric saying, ‘You won’t hear any flute solos in this band,’” says Bonfanti. “We wanted to be the next Beatles, which was a pretty lofty goal.”

They took at least a step toward that goal in 1972, when they released their self-titled debut album on Capitol Records, the same label as the Fab Four. Carmen, Bryson, and Smalley, all still in their early twenties, each came to the sessions with songs they’d written on their own, but Carmen’s stood out, especially “Go All the Way.” Inspired by the Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” it’s a three-and-a-half-minute blast of guitar and layered vocal harmonies, with lyrics told from the perspective of a young woman urging on her boyfriend. “He heard the whole thing in his head,” says Bonfanti, “and he relayed what he was hearing to us.”

“Go All the Way” slowly climbed the Billboard Hot 100 through the summer and fall of 1972, eventually peaking at Number Five. But Capitol had no idea what to do with the Raspberries. The first LP came with a sticker that smelled like a raspberry when you scratched it, and they were marketed to tweens in magazines like Tiger Beat. Their first tour was sponsored by Carefree Sugarless Gum and played largely to high schools. “The label never figured us out,” says Bonfanti. “And our big mistake was not finding the right manager. We handled everything ourselves, and that sort of screwed us.”

The Raspberries’ second LP, Fresh, hit just seven months after the first. On the cover, they look like an early disco band in matching white suits with giant black-tab collars. Once again, all the best songs were Carmen originals, notably “I Wanna Be With You” and “Let’s Pretend,” both power-pop classics that pulsate with a Brian Wilson sense of sorrow and yearning.

The critics, however, were underwhelmed. “After listening to this for a month,” sniped Robert Christgau, the so-called dean of American rock critics, “all I remember is three songs.”

Van Zandt says the reaction was unfair. “The Raspberries were like the Who meets the Beatles,” the E Street Band guitarist says. “And now when you look back, you realize they were inventing power pop.”

But by 1973, just one year after “Go All the Way,” the Raspberries were falling apart due to personality conflicts, poor management, and differing musical visions. When the dust settled, Bonfanti and Smalley were out, and Carmen and Bryson limped forward with two new bandmates, bassist Scott McCarl and drummer Michael McBride, to cut the optimistically titled Starting Over in 1974. Even then they weren’t on the same page. “He was really into the Beach Boys,” says Bryson. “I didn’t see the point in that. I didn’t think you could beat the Beach Boys at their own game.”

With his Capitol deal on the line, Carmen poured everything he had into a new song, “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record).” It had been two very long and frustrating years since he’d had a genuine hit record, and the five-and-a-half-minute mini opera was a plea for recognition told from the perspective of an outsider — which is most decidedly how Carmen felt. At 25, he was in danger of becoming a one-hit wonder.

What happened instead to the Raspberries isn’t unique in rock history: Their influence wasn’t recognized until long after they ceased to exist. The band went on to inspire significantly more successful groups, like Cheap Trick and Kiss, and even motivate Bruce Springsteen to lean into pop when making The River in 1979.

“One of my favorite records that summer was the Raspberries’ Greatest Hits,” Springsteen said in 1998. “They were great little pop records. I loved the production, and when I went into the studio a lot of things we did were like that. Two-, three-, four-minute pop songs coming one right after another.”

Springsteen borrowed Raspberries song titles “I’m a Rocker” and “I Wanna Be With You” (both written by Carmen) and used them on new songs he cut for The River. “Bruce is not shy,” says Van Zandt. “He believes in my philosophy, which is you’re only as cool as who you steal from.”

Susan Carmen, Eric’s then-wife, happened to be in the Los Angeles studio where Celine Dion was busy making sure the Carmen family wouldn’t have to worry about money for a very long time. It was the mid-Nineties, and Dion was working with producer David Foster on songs for her hugely successful album Falling Into You. Susan was brought in by songwriter Diane Warren to say hello to Dion, having no idea that the French Canadian singer was recording vocals for “All by Myself,” Eric Carmen’s 1975 hit.

“Celine was having some difficulty with hitting some of the notes,” says Susan, who was married to Eric for more than 20 years. “David Foster came in and jokingly said, ‘If you can’t hit that note, Whitney’s two doors down.’”

That was all the inspiration Dion needed: She hit the note, and “All by Myself” became inescapable on Top 40 radio during the late Nineties. The recording made Carmen millions — money that went very far in the Rust Belt town of Cleveland. “Celine Dion did us a lot of favors,” says Kathryn Carmen. “I grew up very, very privileged.”

The story of “All by Myself” goes back to 1975, right after the Raspberries imploded and Clive Davis considered signing Carmen as a solo artist to his new label, Arista. His interest grew considerably once he heard a piano ballad Carmen had written about the loneliness he felt after the Raspberries split, drawing musical inspiration from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (so much inspiration, in fact, that the Rachmaninoff estate squeezed him for 12 percent of the song’s publishing). “All by Myself” “captured that feeling that everyone has had, at one time or another, and I purposely tried to keep the lyric very simple and conversational,” Carmen told biographers Sharp and Hogya. “Like I was talking to a friend, or just thinking out loud. I guess it all worked.”

The song reached Number Two on the Hot 100, and when the follow-up ballad, “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again,” hit Number 11, it looked as if Carmen was going to become a genuine pop star.

But much like what had happened with “Go All the Way” three years earlier, the brief flash of success was followed by a long period of turmoil and bitter frustration. The problem began when Carmen realized that Arista expected a second album of songs similar to “All by Myself.” “Clive said that ‘Once you go pop, you can never go back,’” Carmen told Sharp and Hogya. “I assume he meant that you can never be considered a ‘serious rock artist’ again. I wish he’d have mentioned that to me before I signed my contract, because if he had, I wouldn’t have signed with him.”

Carmen envisioned his second solo album as a grand artistic statement on par with Abbey Road — he even unsuccessfully attempted to recruit Beatles producer George Martin — and the songs he wrote told the story of a life filled with loneliness and heartbreak. He called the album Boats Against the Current, taking the title from the last line of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

But working in London with producer Gus Dudgeon, who helmed Elton John’s best Seventies albums, Carmen failed to finish a single song. He returned to America with hefty studio bills and, according to Fred Carmen, an addiction to cocaine. “He stayed at my house for six weeks after that,” says Fred, “until we were able to get him back to normal.”

Carmen then headed to Los Angeles to produce the album himself, with musicians like Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro, guitarists Richie Zito and Andrew Gold, and Rolling Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys. The Beach Boys’ Bruce Johnston helped arrange the background vocals and coaxed Brian Wilson into the studio to sing on the Beach Boys-inspired “She Did It.” When all was said and done, Carmen had spent $400,000 (or a little over $2 million in 2025 dollars) on Boats Against the Current.

Hoping to make that back, Davis insisted on adding background vocals to the sparse title track to gear it toward radio, a move that horrified Carmen. Davis also tore up Carmen’s carefully crafted track sequence. “It’s completely backward from what Eric wanted,” says Hogya. “He said to me, ‘If you listen to it backwards, it’s my biography. It’s my life story. But if you listen to the way Clive decided to track it, it doesn’t make any sense.’”

Despite all of Davis’ meddling (or perhaps because of it), the album was a complete stiff, peaking at Number 45 on the Billboard 200. A 33-date tour was booked, including quick runs opening for Elvin Bishop and Hall and Oates, but half were canceled. Only years later would Boats Against the Current be recognized as a classic. “It has an overall kind of a melancholy to it that feels real and sincere,” says Brian Wilson bandleader Darian Sahanaja, who grew close to Carmen in the Nineties. “Like Brian did on Pet Sounds, he’s trying to capture this loss of innocence, and a yearning for acceptance.”

Carmen would never again have that much freedom in the studio. On 1978’s Change of Heart, he succumbed to Arista’s demands and added tacky disco sounds to many of the tracks — but bookended the album with the orchestral ballads “Desperate Fools” and “Desperate Fools Overture.” “The album starts and ends with this really sorrowful song about being in L.A. and being broken,” says Hogya. “That was a lament of him being forced to do what’s going to come in between those songs.”

Two more failed albums followed, and Carmen went into career hibernation. “The music business changed into something that he wasn’t familiar with so much, and didn’t love,” says Fred Carmen.

It took two of the most successful teen movies of the Eighties to bring Carmen’s career back from the dead. The revival began in 1983 when he co-wrote the Ann Wilson-Mike Reno smash duet “Almost Paradise” for the Footloose soundtrack, and continued in 1987 when he agreed to cover “Hungry Eyes,” written by John DeNicola and Franke Previte, for Dirty Dancing. The Patrick Swayze movie became a cultural phenomenon, and its soundtrack spent an astounding 18 weeks at Number One on the Billboard 200. To capitalize on the success, a Dirty Dancing tour was put on the road in the summer of 1988 that visited 90 cities in just three months.

Carmen hit the road with model Susan McClurg, whom he started dating after noticing her on a billboard in Cleveland, but the glamorous rock & roll tour she imagined quickly became a grind. “It was also really rough on his voice. Well before midway through, he was getting injections in his vocal cords because his throat was bleeding,” Susan says. “He got a little sloppy, too. He would have too much to drink, and he would forget the words to the songs. It wasn’t ideal.”

Carmen was forced to bow out, leaving him with bitter memories of life as a touring artist. But he did have a new song, “Make Me Lose Control,” that Arista released on a Greatest Hits package designed to cash in on “Hungry Eyes” mania. It became an even bigger hit. Momentum was starting to build again, but Carmen hit the brakes when he learned that Davis expected him to work with outside songwriters for his next album.

Two years passed, the alt-rock revolution was on the horizon, and slick pop hitmakers were falling out of fashion. Carmen all but vanished from the public sphere. After a few years of living with Susan in L.A. and attempting to write hits for others, he moved back to Cleveland to start a family.

“He just didn’t know where he fit in the pantheon of music stars anymore,” says Fred Carmen. “That frustrated him greatly, and he just retracted.”

Unwilling to compromise his vision and bend to record-industry demands, Carmen turned his attention toward his family. His son, Clayton, was born in 1997, and Kathryn followed three years later. “To young kids, he was great,” says Susan. “He adored them.”

He took a brief break from suburban-dad duties in 2000 and hesitantly returned to the road after he received an offer to join Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band, alongside Jack Bruce of Cream, Simon Kirke of Bad Company, and Dave Edmunds. Carmen worked meticulously to learn every nuance of the classic-rock set list. But his drinking problem, which Susan first noticed on the Dirty Dancing tour a dozen years earlier, had grown into a major issue on a tour that, according to a Starr dictate, was 100 percent dry. “Ringo was a tough taskmaster,” says Susan, who remembers Carmen’s manager David Spero calling her on a few occasions to warn, “He’s about to get kicked off the tour.”

“I think it was very important to Ringo to have everybody on the same page,” Spero says. “We had guys like Jack Bruce, who was obviously a heavy drinker. But he would go to a different bar than the hotel bar, and he would do it on his own. But you don’t bring it to work, and Eric brought it to work.”

The Ringo tour, including a triumphant hometown show on the Cleveland lakefront, lasted a mere eight weeks. When it resumed the following summer, Roger Hodgson from Supertramp was given Carmen’s role as the band’s keyboardist.

Around this time, whispers of a Raspberries reunion were in the air, but bringing the idea to fruition took years of false starts and nearly hit the skids when Carmen made it clear that he wanted a larger share of the spoils. After months of rehearsals where he obsessed over every note, Carmen and the Raspberries finally booked dates in November 2004, at the opening of the House of Blues in Cleveland.

“I get goose bumps thinking about it,” says guitarist Paul Sidoti, who was plucked from obscurity for the shows by Carmen, three years before Taylor Swift hired him as her guitarist and bandleader, a position he holds to this day. “We were so excited. From the minute we opened with ‘I Want to Be With You,’ we were floating. You just felt the love in that room.”

The feedback from fans and the press was ecstatic, with many calling it one of the all-time-great reunion shows in rock history. For Carmen’s kids, it was their first real opportunity to see their father perform live. “We didn’t really understand how much people loved him,” says Kathryn. “It was mesmerizing. It was so funny to see my teddy-bear dad as a rock star.”

The one-off gig turned into a small series of shows in 2005 and 2007. “I remember going to the House of Blues in Hollywood,” says Sahanaja. “We all couldn’t believe we were hearing these songs live.”

But the reunion burned out in April 2009, when the Raspberries agreed to play a lone date at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on the weekend of the induction ceremony. Sidoti was helping Swift prepare for a tour, so the Raspberries hired multi-instrumentalist Paul Christensen to take his place. In rehearsal, he worked up a sax solo to play during “Overnight Sensation.” “Guess what happens when we get to that part of the song?” Bonfanti says. “Wally played a guitar solo over the sax solo. I looked over at Eric. He looked over at me. I knew it was done.” Bryson doesn’t recall this incident but does remember it being a very tense evening. “Eric’s ego could fill a stadium,” he says. “And he kept interjecting with suggestions at soundcheck. I told him to ‘shut the fuck up.’”

The Raspberries never played again. But two years before the Hall of Fame gig, there were already signs that things were not well with Carmen. “I went to see him after the L.A. House of Blues show in 2007,” says Sahanaja. “He was completely tanked. He kept talking and talking about how much he loved a song of mine. And I was so, so uncomfortable. I actually had to leave, because it was like, ‘I don’t like seeing you like this.’”

The headline on TMZ read “Hungry Bloodshot Eyes.” Below it was a two-and-a-half-minute dashcam video of Carmen in 2008 stumbling through a field sobriety test in Orange, Ohio, after running over a fire hydrant. When the cops showed up, there was a half-empty bottle of vodka in the front seat. His blood alcohol level was .23, nearly three times the legal limit.

It was Carmen’s second DUI in just two years, and a judge sentenced him to 30 days in jail. His marriage to Susan was in shambles. “He used coke early on,” Susan says. “By the time the kids came around, it was just alcohol. When we lived in L.A. [in the early Nineties, before they married], he went to Betty Ford. It was a condition of the marriage. He spent six weeks there, but he just couldn’t maintain it. And as soon as his father died in 2007, he just went off the rails.”

“I almost mark my time with him into two periods,” adds Clayton Carmen. “Before my grandfather died, and after my grandfather died. It almost felt like anything before then was just childhood. And anything after that point, I feel like I became so much more clearly and keenly aware of his problems that he has, with drinking obviously being a big one.”

Carmen’s brief attempts at Alcoholics Anonymous went nowhere. “He was a pretty stark atheist,” says Kathryn. “AA requires you admitting that there is a bigger force in play, and kind of taking a back seat and being humbled. And my dad couldn’t get with the program, quite literally. He didn’t believe in it.”

This all came to a head in 2007, when an inebriated Carmen caused the band to miss a flight to a show on the West Coast. “He kept losing his boarding pass,” says Bryson. “He was really out of it. It seemed a little immature to me to get so drunk.” According to Susan Carmen, this incident was followed by one of many interventions that ultimately went nowhere.

This is not an easy topic for Bonfanti to address today. “I did all I could to help him,” he says, wearily. “I supported him as much as anybody could. But it was hard.” (Amy Carmen doesn’t deny that Eric had a significant drinking problem before they met. “Eric claimed that the sadness and toxicity swirling around him during those years ‘would drive anyone to drink,’” she says.)

Carmen’s alcoholism was his family’s primary concern, but they were also worried about his mental health. Conspiracy theories had interested him to the point that Susan claims he once filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get materials about the Kennedy assassination from the Warren Commission. As time went on, they occupied even more of his time. He became especially fixated on chemtrails, the baseless notion that the government is using airplanes to add toxic chemicals to the atmosphere. “A jet would go over our house and leave a little white trail,” says Susan. “He’d look up and say it was an effort to sterilize people.”

“It was very hard to get him off of the topic of chemtrails,” says Fred Carmen. “I would show him the articles that debunked all of that stuff, but true believers are true believers. There was no talking him out of it.”

Chemtrails even came up around 2013, when Carmen worked with Sahanaja and his group, the Wondermints, on “Brand New Year” for the Essential Eric Carmen collection, which would end up being his final song. “I left the room to set up some mics,” says Sahanaja. “I came back and heard the word ‘chemtrails.’ Our guitarist Nicky [Walusko] was kind of a conspiracy guy himself, and they were getting real enthusiastic about it. And I had to say ‘Guys, we have to work …’”

(Amy disputes the notion that Carmen was a conspiracy theorist and says she never heard him refer to chemtrails. “Eric was a voracious reader and was up on all current events, topics, and controversies,” she says. “He liked engaging in conversation about such controversies, but that did not make him a ‘conspiracy theorist.’ People who want to disparage Eric by claiming this most certainly have their own agendas in doing so.”)

Eric Carmen also refused any offers to perform live. “He could have been a huge casino act,” says Spero. “But he was afraid of failure. He was afraid he’d be playing in front of empty houses.”

Around 2005, Spero approached him with what he calls a “heavy-six-figures” opportunity to play “All by Myself” on TV in France. “I said, ‘Hey, four first-class tickets to Cannes, a week in an A+++ hotel, and a shitload of money,’” says Spero. “‘All you have to do is play “All by Myself” with an orchestra, and you will own the master. You couldn’t ask for a better deal.’ He wouldn’t do it.”

No member of Carmen’s family had heard this story before, but they aren’t surprised. “We never went anywhere, really, because Eric didn’t want to travel,” says Susan. “He became very reclusive when we were in L.A. in the mid-Nineties, and then grew more intensive. We could never plan a vacation where he would ever have to get up before noon,” she adds. “No activities. He wouldn’t go to things at the kids’ school if it was in the morning.”

According to Clayton, Susan, and Fred, Carmen spent most of his daytime hours in his office trading stocks online or reading the fan forum on his official website, often posting himself. “That was the perfect scenario, because he could communicate with people, but he didn’t have to leave his chair in his office, and no matter what, at the end of the day, the focus always came back to him,” says Clayton.

To put it mildly, Clayton doesn’t feel that Carmen was a very good father. “There were just certain really classic all-American-dad things that I didn’t get from him that I did really want from him,” he says. “I would beg him to go outside and play catch with me, and most of the time it was like, ‘Oh, it’s too humid out, it’s going to mess up my hair.’ There was always an excuse. He was very, very different from your standard paternal, father-figure archetype.”

“There should be no mistake that he loved Clayton and Kathryn,” Fred Carmen says of his brother. “But I don’t think he really had a concept of what it was to be a parent.”

By everyone’s account, Carmen and Susan’s divorce, which began in 2009, was brutal, stretching out for roughly a decade as they battled over money and custody of the children. They eventually reached a shared-custody agreement that left no one satisfied. “There wasn’t much communication between the two of them,” says Kathryn. “I was getting into that age where I was like, ‘Please don’t make me bring my duffel bag to school.’”

Carmen eventually moved into an apartment near the Beachwood Place mall on the east side of Cleveland. He tried to date women online, but it didn’t go very well. According to Clayton and Fred, he met a woman online named Nancy, who claimed to be decades younger than him. They spoke on the phone nearly every day for almost two years, often for hours at a time. But they never met, despite some close calls where she canceled at the last minute. “She concocted this whole elaborate story about how she had been a nurse in Afghanistan, and returned with some sort of rare illness that doctors couldn’t figure it out,” says Clayton. “My dad took it upon himself to do this research and identified some sort of rare disease that he thought she had. My sister and I basically told him for eight months, ‘You’re getting catfished.’ And he was completely in denial about it.”

“I remember printing out an article that said ‘Top 10 Ways to Know You’re Being Catfished,’” adds Fred. “She checked every box, and he refused to believe it.”

Not long afterward, Carmen met Amy, and as they dated and eventually married, he slowly became estranged from his brother, his ex-wife, and both of his kids. Fred Carmen says that was by Amy’s design. “The plan was to first pull me away from Eric and then pull the children away from Eric, so that she was the sole source of everything, and that she would control him,” he says. “To her credit, she was very effective. Again, Eric is a conspiracy theorist. She made him believe his entire family was engaged in a conspiracy against him.”

“We were excluded from their lives,” replies Amy. “As soon as everyone thought the money train had ended, Clayton, Susan, and Kathryn were all about getting whatever they could get.”

In the early days of the marriage, Amy says, she was a devoted stepmother. “I [tried] to include Clayton and Kathryn in our lives,” she says. “I was very happy to help both of them with their homework, and prepare meals. I straightened Kathryn’s hair before school, as she ate the breakfast I prepared for her, and I welcomed and taxied their friends. I helped Eric cover the ceiling of Kathryn’s bedroom with red and white balloons to surprise her on Valentine’s Day.”

Both sides of the Carmen family divide cite a wild party that Clayton threw at Eric and Amy’s house when they were out of town as a turning point in their relationship. “I should have had you charged with breaking and entering, and vandalism,” Eric wrote to his son in a 2018 email.

“From that point on,” says Susan, “neither Clay nor Kath could go over to the house unless they were invited. It was like they were strangers in their own home.”

At this same time, Eric Carmen filed a lawsuit against Fred, alleging mismanagement of his finances, improperly using money to provide care for their mother, and excessively charging him legal fees throughout the divorce period. Fred says he first got wind that this might be coming when Carmen and Amy were at his house for a party. “My nephew came to me,” says Fred. “He said, ‘You need to watch out for Amy. I just heard her say to my dad there was no way you could have paid for your new deck on your own.’ That was the kind of thing Amy was saying to him to make him conclude I was stealing from him.”

Amy says this is completely inaccurate. “I only saw Fred’s deck one time, and frankly it wasn’t that impressive,” she says. “I never told Eric or concluded that Fred ‘was stealing from him.’”

Fred denies any wrongdoing. They wound up settling out of court.

When Clayton graduated from high school and planned on enrolling at NYU, he says, he learned that his father wasn’t willing to pay for it. Per what Amy calls “a very questionable prenuptial agreement” with his ex-wife Susan, Eric had to provide tuition for an in-state school. But Eric wouldn’t pay for Ohio State, either, leading to a legal battle between the father and the son. “I never, ever, ever wanted it to come to that,” says Clayton, “but those were the options I was facing, and it was like, this isn’t little, menial shit, this is my college education, and this is something that gives me the basis to start the rest of my life.”

Amy says that Clayton never took his academic career seriously; he was once penalized by the school’s Committee on Academic Misconduct (Clayton doesn’t deny this: “I fully fucked up,” he says). She provided an email Eric sent to his son regarding college housing. “Right now the only achievement I’m interested in is you getting good grades and graduating in eight semesters,” Eric wrote. “We are talking about your college education. The education for which I am paying.”

Clayton’s tuition bill remained a point of acrimony. He claims that Eric and Amy instituted grade minimums, and forced him to live in the cheapest dorm and use the skimpiest meal plan. “The two of them really terrorized me for my first couple years of college and made me jump through hoops,” he says. Amy scoffs at this. “If begging Clayton to sign up for classes or for on-campus housing, so their father could pay for them on time, is making someone ‘jump through hoops,’” she says, “then [he has] a severely skewed view of the rest of the world today.”

The details of Carmen’s death remain shrouded in mystery, but some of his friends weren’t surprised when they heard the news in March. Says his former manager Spero: “He didn’t take care of himself. Towards the end, he’d gained a lot of weight.”

Fred and Clayton say they heard similar stories from Amy about him taking too many vitamins in the final weeks of his life, and essentially overdosing on them. “Amy said Eric was taking 200 supplements in the morning and 200 vitamin supplements at night,” says Fred. “And he had lost 11 pounds because he was taking Ozempic.” (Amy doesn’t deny her husband took supplements, but says, “I never told anyone that Eric took ‘400 supplements a day.’”)

When Clayton and Kathryn asked about a memorial service, Amy was initially vague. They learned the details secondhand: She had organized a private ceremony at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix for April 20, 2024. “Please,” read a note attached to the invitation, “do not forward or share details of the celebration with anyone.” To make sure Clayton, Kathryn, and Fred wouldn’t come, she stationed armed guards outside the doors.

“At what point does a person take a step back and say, ‘OK, I literally hired armed guards to keep my deceased husband’s children away from attending their father’s funeral?’” says Clayton. (“I chose to have a beautiful but private celebration of Eric’s life,” says Amy. “I unapologetically did not invite anyone who was disparaging or hurtful to my husband.”)

The bad blood continued on Aug. 8, when the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame held “Eric Carmen Day” and posthumously awarded him a key to the city of Cleveland. For the first time in years, Amy was in the same room with Susan, Clayton, and Kathryn. “Kathryn had been told she’d have time to share some remarks she wrote,” says Clayton, who recently took a job at the talent agency CAA, in the music brand-partnerships division, “but Amy threw a tantrum backstage and delayed the ceremony by 45 minutes, so my sister and I watched from the crowd without any acknowledgment and had to watch Amy speak and accept the award on my dad’s behalf.” (Amy says that any delay in the ceremony was not due to her, and claims it was the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, not her, that opted to pull Kathryn from the program at the last minute.)

Nobody in attendance had any idea there was backstage rancor. Heartfelt video testimonials were delivered by some of the biggest names in rock & roll: Kiss’ Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, Van Halen’s Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony, Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander, John Oates, the Beach Boys’ Al Jardine, Foreigner’s Lou Gramm, Peter Frampton, Clive Davis, and others. “I only wish he were here to accept this award and to see this amazing crowd of people who loved him and loved his music,” Amy told the crowd, fighting back tears. “Although, I have all day felt him with us in spirit.”

The word that comes up most often when people talk about Eric Carmen is “perfectionist.” He was a perfectionist when it came to crafting songs in the studio, refusing to settle for anything less than the music he heard in his head. He was a perfectionist when playing live, insisting on months of rehearsal prior to every tour, where he instructed every musician on exactly how to play their instrument and their parts. And when things didn’t go exactly his way, Carmen preferred walking away to accepting anything short of his exact creative vision.

It was an attitude that produced stunningly brilliant pop music that will endure for generations. It also caused him to abandon his career, and retread inward in the latter years of his life. But despite all of the heartbreak he left behind, on both sides of the Carmen family divide, his loved ones are working, some with help from therapists, to focus on the good times and his enormous gifts.

“Eric was, on balance, generally, a good person,” says Fred. “There were things that Eric did that made you scratch your head or say ‘That’s just not the way you should be handling this stuff.’ But did he have a bad heart? No, he didn’t have a bad heart. He had a good heart.”

“His God was music,” says daughter Kathryn, who is in the process of finishing up her schooling and working as a buyer for a clothing store. “He told me music was the only connection to something divine he ever had in his whole life. I would watch him sit at the piano and just lose himself. I got to see so much of that. And I do feel so, so lucky. Despite the past seven or so years, I wouldn’t trade any of it for a normal childhood.”

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