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laundrybiscuits · 9 months ago

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I've recently been tagged in a few WIP/"last thing you've written" type games, and…to be completely candid, I haven't been writing any kind of fic lately because I've become a little bit obsessed with analyzing the Broadway revival of Merrily We Roll Along.

Not for any particular purpose, I just saw it at the Hudson a little while back and have a lot of feelings about it! In my tiny scraps of spare time, I've been working on an essay about Merrily and inevitability that will probably end up rotting in my google docs*, because that's how I approach writing as a hobby.

There's just so much there, holy shit. I'm focusing particularly on "Franklin Shepard, Inc." because Radcliffe's Charley brings a frenetic, desperate vulnerability to the performance that reads so, so differently from earlier productions. Throughout the show, I was consistently blown away by the heavy lifting Radcliffe, Mendez, and Groff do in shifting the core tension from "art vs commerce" (fine but basic, and difficult to keep modern) to "how people prioritize different types of relationships in their lives."

In an effort to make this slightly less wildly off-topic for this blog: this has gotten me thinking about the way that platonic relationships are treated in narratives, particularly but not exclusively in fandom.

"Found family" is and has always been a popular trope, but I do think its current incarnation trades a lot on the underlying fantasy of relationship permanence. When we recategorize friendships as familial relationships, we're making a claim—whether or not it's justified—about the indelibility of those relationships.

That's not inherently bad (or, god forbid, problematic). I think it's very very natural, especially for those who don't necessarily have a lot of experience with the way adult friendships change over time. Why wouldn't you want something as precious and unique and amazing as a good friendship to stay with you forever?

Certain people can feel like pillars of your world, and it's fucking terrifying to think about that being yanked out from under you—or even worse, to think about your lives slowly shifting like geologic plates until suddenly you realize it's been weeks, then months, then years since you last really talked.

CHARLEY: We're not that kind of close any more, the way we used to be. And a friendship's like a garden. You have to water it and tend it and care about it. And you know what? I want it back.

It's a peculiar, particular kind of grief when it happens, because even though it's a fairly common human experience, it doesn't get socially acknowledged in the same way as e.g. a romantic breakup.

So yeah, it makes a lot of sense that found family is a popular trope in all kinds of media, not just fandom.

However...at this point, I've developed a knee-jerk wariness to the phrase "found family," because I've found it often correlates with a really flat, simplistic depiction of human relationships. In extreme cases, it simply recontextualizes a relationship within the socially acknowledged/acceptable framework of a stereotypical family unit.

This does a disservice to familial and nonfamilial relationships alike. Every family is different, so why do so many found families in media look the same?

(I was monologuing about this to my very patient girlfriend, and she pointed out that this also sets up a success/failure binary condition in relationships, where permanence is the arbiter of success in both romantic and nonromantic contexts. She is of course both beautiful and correct!)

I have friends with whom I can sometimes share a glance and know exactly what they're thinking. I even have a running joke with one friend about the sheer number of times we've said the same thing in unison over the last 15 years. I still need to be intentional about building those relationships, extending empathy when we differ, and carving out time to reconnect. Truly intimate long-term relationships of any kind involve disagreements, conflicting priorities, and negotiating and renegotiating boundaries.

Being "basically the same person" or "sharing a braincell" actually sounds super fucking lonely to me, personally, and it handily elides the difficult, essential process of keeping people in your life.

FRANK: Old friends let you go your own way. CHARLEY: Help you find your own way. MARY: Let you off when you're wrong. F: If you're wrong. C: When you're wrong. M: Right or wrong, the point is, old friends shouldn't care if you're wrong. F: Should, but not for too long. C: What's too long?

That's a more complicated and much more mature narrative to tell than "friendship will save the day!" Because it's not that common and there's not a deep bank of references to draw from, it takes a lot of effort and skill to depict well, and I don't blame creators for not wanting to let it suck up all the air in the room. However, I think it's important to acknowledge that platonic relationships can also be flanderised and flattened.

In the context of fandom, which has always traded heavily in Romance genre conventions, I would really like to see more thoughtful explorations of complicated nonromantic relationships. I'm not even talking about genfic here! I've actually been thinking about Stobin specifically because that relationship (rightly & understandably) tends to show up in any Steve-centric fic, including the vast ocean of Steddie fics, so it makes the issue slightly more visible than I've seen in other fandoms.

I'm not saying I want to see them fight, or not be friends, or not love each other fiercely and near-obsessively in the way that lonely teenagers can. I'm just saying I want them to be distinct individuals who view the world in very different ways, and choose each other anyway. They already have a complicated past; I know from personal experience that it's possible as a lesbian to be best friends with a guy who once made a little speech about how into you he was, but that little layer of history never quite goes away.

I don't want frictionless relationships in my life. I want people who will challenge me and whom I can challenge, in the context of love and trust. I want people in my life whom I have to work to understand, because my life is richer when I do. And sometimes, I want narratives that will reflect the grief of friendships that are no longer part of my life, despite the best efforts of everyone involved.

In Merrily, Charley sings, "Friendship's something you don't really lose—" but Radcliffe's thready, pleading delivery makes it all too clear: Charley already knows he's lying. The audience just needs to catch up.

*Other essays in that particular graveyard: understanding the cast of Peanuts through the lens of anomie, humor and subversive linguistic nationalism in 00s Singaporean TV, how to fix Miss Saigon. WHY am I this way.

#side note: how fucking good was Radcliffe in that role? what a glow-up from HTSIBWRT #all the casting was brilliant but (Tony winner!) Mendez and (Tony nominated) Groff were less of a dark horse #anyway I think...I might start to get a little less rigid about letting myself dump nonfandom or fandom-adjacent posts here #we'll see if I have more time to post and/or write once this busy period at work dies down #recently is a relative term btw. I have been tagged more recently than the cambrian explosion. so that counts.#I appreciate the tags and it's very nice of y'all to think of me though!

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skaruresonic · 4 months ago

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"I won't forget the time another games fan admitted on my old Twitter account that the current fannish climate was such that they were going to limit their Sonic discussion to private channels."

Funnily enough, something similar happened to me on Twitter. Someone contacted me in private because they wanted to talk about CV with me, but "I didn't want to message you so publicly because there are some people who don't like you that follow me"

And my reaction was... cool? Thanks for telling me? I'm not even super active on Twitter and I can count on one hand the amount of times I complained and attracted discussions. I just felt sad that this person treated me like a clandestine. It reminded me back when I was in high school and my friend back then was like "don't help these people, they talk shit about you" - what am I supposed to think, other than "oh :("?

And the CV fandom is all but dead, even the NFCV fandom is certainly more active but currently resting. The Sonic fandom, especially on Twitter, is an absolute nightmare. People really do pounce you for any reason they deem justified, and all sorts of petty discourse is pushed in front of your face for the sole reason of making you angry.

Anyway, I say already what I said: for a fandom who will call you all sorts of names if you don't have the right wholesome opinions on minor characters, they sure have zero mercy for real life minors whose crime is complaining in their corner of the internet. Silly you, daring to have an opinion!

It reminded me back when I was in high school and my friend back then was like "don't help these people, they talk shit about you" - what am I supposed to think, other than "oh :("?

Might be missing some context here, but honestly, that sounds a little backhanded. Best case scenario, they're worried about inadvertently shining a spotlight on you, which just raises questions of why they're hanging around folks who'd dogpile people to begin with.

Like bruh, this is video games fandom, not an illegal gambling ring lmao. Saying "I can't reblog from you because you have cooties" would be more emotionally honest.

To some extent, though, I do have to wonder how much of this is a modern-day fandom culture thing and isn't confined to just Sonic, because patterns seem to repeat across fandoms. Half-Life has settled down AFAIK, but that was after virulent tourists literally called the cops on fic writers for shipping a ship and caused the old guard to disperse. The Silent Hill Reddit, likewise, refuses to hear any criticism of the SH2 remake because you're harshing their buzz. And hey, anything Konami offers us must surely be better than nothing. "Technical limitations" is similar misinformation that gets passed around via games of telephone a la Shadow mandates. I don't need to tell you how Sonic fandom treats unpopular opinions. Don't know what to call it. Toxic positivity? Consumerism? Anti mindset? Clout chasing? Social media-fuelled outrage? All of the above? Whatever it is, it's becoming more prevalent in fannish spaces. Maybe it's because I'm more invested in Sonic fandom than the others, but there I've noticed that there's definitely this added layer of superciliousness to Sonic that just makes the usual fandom wank even more obnoxious. Yes, the HLVRAI stans might lie and say your ship is pedophilia, which is incredibly unfortunate, but nobody was giving them the microphone and saying they ought to be taken as an authority on all things Half-Life. In fact, the old guard pushed for AO3 to separate HLVRAI and Half-Life in the tags for years for this very reason. We weren't all suddenly like "hmm yes, maybe Gordon really was a ~secret pedo~ who thinks of grown-ass Alyx as a child when she flirts with him in-game" because we knew that was fucking ridiculous. But for some reason, we're all supposed to think "IDW!Sonic is Games!Sonic" lest we bu run out of town with torches and pitchforks, I guess.

The worst part is it's hard to tell what people want anymore. You can't say things they don't want to hear even in your own space. You can't say it politely, you can't say it rudely, you can't say it to your friends or to people you're arguing with, you just cannot say it at all without risking a ton of fans going "well you said it, therefore you deserve what you get." And, frankly, fuck that lol.

#asks

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bylerconfessions · 9 months ago

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“so why would the duffers NOT choose to do this? It's bold, but not THAT bold. it's not like making a gay film in the 80s or 90s. gay storytelling is not that uncommon these days.”

To the anon who said this, I’d say you’re right… up to a point. Gay storytelling IS less uncommon, but look at the main contexts it typically shows up:

A. explicitly gay movies like call me by your name/moonlight/crush/love, simon

B) explicitly gay tv shows like heartstopper/young royals/love victor

C) Side characters in non-gay movies, very rarely the main characters or else it becomes a gay movie: lady bird/mean girls/the perks of being a wallflower/american fiction/nope… sometimes these characters don’t even get to kiss anyone or date anyone

D) Side characters in tv shows, very rarely the main characters or else it becomes a gay show: riverdale, bridgerton, locke & key, hsmtmts

E) if there are queer main characters in a non-gay show, they’re usually established in season 1 so people know what to expect (for example, euphoria or chucky or yellowjackets or xo, kitty… which still got a lot of backlash for “suddenly” making kitty bi).

F) Characters in very progressive animated films like Nimona or shows, often ones that get cancelled too, like The Owl House

G) Literally Background characters in mainstream franchises like Marvel and Star Wars… Marvel has had ONE gay kiss on screen and that’s the guy from eternals… it’s had some other queer characters like valkyrie but they never get to do anything gay

H) Modern Disney Channel shows like Andi Mack where Cyrus Goodman became their first gay character… in 2019

There really isn’t anything like Stranger Things: a mainstream, non-gay, coming-of-age, sci-fi/horror show with no explicit, undeniable gay storylines suddenly- from the perspective of the GA- making one of its main characters, who has been in a fairly popular relationship with a girl since season 1, gay. And then going from 0 gay kisses to presumably multiple (including Robin and Vickie), where homosexuality is at the front and center inherently because of Will’s main character arc and Mike’s head. This IS very new. We are not only saying this is happening, but that this has been the plan since the beginning because of secret clues planted in the show.

So that’s where the doubt comes from, I think. Especially when America and the world is getting more homophobic too, not less. Conservatives call us groomers. People still see homosexuality as a sin. SO many of the audience members see Mike as the straightest character of all time and are screaming Mike is not, has never been, and never will be gay or bi.

Byler’s so juicy and it’s so bold, it’s undeniably a straightbait, and it will blindside a lot of the audience who never saw any of the queer subtext in the show and assumed the most they would see is maybe Robin holding hands with a girl or Will having an unnamed bf at the end.

Even just look at the reaction to Noah when he came out from many so-called Stranger Things fans. The show has absolutely attracted a conservative audience. Was that the intention? No, but it’s what happened. Non-homophobic audience members will be chill, but everyone else? It will be a wild time. Do the Duffers really want to make Stranger Things culture war public enemy number one? Time will tell.

All the evidence is in place. The only question. is, will the Duffers REALLY pull the trigger?

That requires a lot of faith.

(from this ask)

yea like stranger things isn't really a romance show in general, so putting a queer couple at the forefront of everything could surprise many

#st #stranger things #st confessions #byler #byler confessions #byler doubt

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brw · 10 months ago

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your post about simon not being someone who knows how to flirt with women made me realize that atp if he isn't gay, he'd just be a misogynist (he can be gay and misogynistic, too, of course, but since he doesn't usually seem to have malicious intent, I'm being generous towards him) and just kind of terrible....rip

Yes you get it, you do. Simon is, at various intervals of his history, a terrible person to the women around him and more specifically the women that are positioned as his romantic interests. He is more than fine and normal around, say, Janet van Dyne, around Rogue, around Tigra, but when it comes to the women he is positioned as a romantic partner of, suddenly his character shifts and he often becomes patronising, cruel, and not at all like the Simon he is normally. And it just genuinely makes so much sense that Simon, someone who is not attracted to women, but knows that he should be (in his own mind) because Vision is, would sort of resent these people for not giving him that certainty he feels he needs. It doesn't justify it–even if Simon is gay I do think he would owe Wanda a very genuine apology for the way he's mistreated her and one to Vision too–but it contextualises it and it suddenly makes sense. Because you're right. Simon isn't someone who seems to genuinely believe that women are inferior or anything (certainly not from the 90s onwards), but he is someone who is not good to the women in his life. In a way that is in direct conflict to someone like Vision! There's a reason why Wanda and Carol have both said they don't actually consider Simon as a genuine romantic option. There's a reason why Wanda vocally says Simon is far more playful and happy around Hank than he is around her. There's a reason why Simon exceedingly rarely ever initiates a romantic or flirtatious angle with the women in his life, and the times he does are awkward and uncomfortable and could easily be read as harassment.

Again, doesn't justify it. But it does sort of slide into some sort of sense when you apply that lens. And I do think it's different from say, Northstar, who is misogynistic to all women in his life regardless of the context of their relationship. Simon isn't that way with the women he's friends with, at least not to the same intensity. But when it comes to his love interests... suddenly he becomes, frankly, the worst person he is capable of being of. Wonder Man 1991, which gave him around 4 different love interests, is the absolute low point of his life. Simon becomes increasingly worse during the course of West Coast Avengers as he is more explicitly said to be in love with Wanda. It just–it makes sense to me! And it doesn't justify it but it is interesting and it's a shame modern marvel is so scared of a complex gay person who can be a bad person because I think it would be a really interesting angle to look at him, but–yeah. Yeah. Either he's gay and his repression and inability to acknowledge this has severely impacted his treatment of the women in his life, or he's just a plain old misogynist 🤷

#asks #anonymous #wonder man #simon williams #ch: the man of wonders!

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adarkrainbow · 2 years ago

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Perrault: What a joker!

@literatureismyentirepersonality asked me about the humor and jokes in Perrault fairytales - because yes, there were lots of jokes in Perrault’s tales! So I put together this little post listing some of the main bits of humor in Perrault’s fairytales.

LITTLE THUMBLING:

# When Perrault says that the woodcutters had seven children, he says “One can be surprised that the woodcutter had so many children in so little time [reminder: the children are said to be ten for the oldest, seven for the youngest], but that’s because his wife always worked really fast.”

# When the woodcutter’s wife cries and complains after they abandonned their children, her husband threatens to beat her up. “But it wasn’t because he wasn’t less upset than his wife [about leaving his children in the woods], he was just as upset as her - but she was giving him a headache [with all her wails] and he was of the disposition of many men, who love a lot women that speak good and true, but find annoying those that said good and true”. (Now the translation I made is a bit shoddy but the idea is that the woodcutter is of those men who praise, love and adore women that say truthful and reasonable thing... EXCEPT if they said it before and basically go “I told you so”, and THEN they find this annoying instead than lovely]

# When the ogre’s wife warns the boys that they should flee since it is the house of an ogre, Poucet goes into a very polite answer about why she should still let them in. “Hey! Madam, what should we do? If you don’t let us inside, the wolves of the forest will certainly eat us tonight. And since we are to be eaten anyway, we much prefer that Mister the Ogre would be the one to eat us ; and maybe he would have some pity, if you were as kind as to ask him to spare us.” (For the context, these are terrified, shaking, muddy, rain-covered, hungry woodcutters boys lost in the woods, and suddenly Poucet goes into this very polite talk about how he would prefer that “Sir Ogre” eats them, because that would be better. The original French sentence really conveys the humor “Nous aimons mieux que ce soit Monsieur qui nous mange”, “We much prefer/we love better, that it is Mister that eats us.”

# As I said in my ogre post, the Little Thumbling ogre loves doing jokes. When the ogre’s wife begs him to spare the boys for tomorrow, the ogre objects that they would be more “mortifié”. Now, in modern French language, just like back then, “mortifié” meant “horrified, terrified” - so the ogre says “Better kill them now, as they’re completely terrified, won’t have time to relax” ; but “mortifié” also means “a meat that is softened” - so basically he also says “better kill them now, their meat will be softer for tomorrow”. Another wordplay comes later, when (after he thinks he killed the boys) he sends his wife upstairs and asks her to “dress the boys up”. The wife is noted to be surprised as such a random kindness - but “to dress up” doesn’t just mean putting clothes onto people, it also means “to dress up the meat” that is to say to cook it and prepare it. And that’s what the ogre meant.

# After the ogre’s wife faint upon seeing her dead daughters, the ogre’s way to wake her up is to throw a bucket of water at her face.

# The fact that the seven-league boots cause the user to become very tired and weary (leading to the ogre’s nap) is actually presented as a joke. You see there is this grand and fabulous description of the terrifying ogre jumping over mountains and rivers... and then he suddenly takes a nap “Because you understand, such boots makes your man tired!”.

# In the “alternate ending”, Little Thumbling is said to have gained his fortune by becoming a messenger at the court, using the magical boots to deliver letters from and to nobles. But Perrault throws a strong critic at the courtly habits by specifying that the Poucet’s best customers/those that paid the most were women who sent letters to their extra-marital lovers, while he discovered that messages sent between legal husband and wife were paid very little, to the point Poucet actually decided to stop doing this kind of transmissions.

# In fact the very existence of this alternate ending comes as a bit of a joke, because Perrault first gives the “popualr” and “well-known” ending - where Poucet steals the riches of the ogre by lying to his wife ; but then the narrator/Perrault himself says “But there are people that disagree with this story, and pretend that Petit Poucet never did such a theft in truth they said that he only stole the seven-league boots so the ogre couldn’t hunt down little children. And these people claim they know it from a very good source, because they had a meal at the woodcutter’s house!”

# And to return a bit earlier, the reason the ogre’s wife gives Poucet all the ogre’s riches (when he is supposedly under death sentence) is because she loves him a lot... And it is said as “Because he was a good husband... even though, you know, he ate little children.”

CINDERELLA:

# To mock the vanity of Cinderella’s stepsisters, Perrault mentions that they spent nearly two whole days without eating before the ball, and that twelve laces were broken in their attempts at corseting their waist to a ridiculously tiny size.

# Once all of the fairy godmother’s animal-transformations are done, with the carriage conjured and the horses and the servants, she says quite happy with herself “Well now you can go to the ball!”. And Cinderella has to point out to her that she is actually still in rags and can’t actually go in such a dirty, ashes-covered appearance.

# Talking about the animal transformations, after turning the mice into horses, the fairy godmother actually wonders what kind of animal she could use for the coachman - and it is Cinderella who suddenly has the idea for the perfect coachman animal. “Let’s take a rat!”. And when they have to select a rat, the fairy godmother picks one with a long, “honorable” beard - to make a decent coachman which, of course, needs to have an enormous mustache (as all coachmen at the time had).

# When Cinderella enters and everybody stops, Perrault write the line: “Even the king, as very old as he was, only had eyes for her, and told the queen he hadn’t seen such a beautiful and charming lady in a very long time”. So yeah, in short, lustful old king unknowingly insults his wife. This is directly follow by another sentence that precises how all the ladies at the ball actually only have eyes for Cinderella... because they mentally make notes of preparing the exact same outfit and hairdo for the following day (a jab at the way people copy each other’s fashion at the court).

# When Cinderella is at the ball, and the prince offers her some oranges, she immediately goes to her step-sisters, to share them with her and have a nice chat with her. The problem is that her step-sisters do not recognize her, and so they are VERY confused as to why this random superb lady suddenly acts as if they were besties that known each other since forever... Mind you, afterward, the sisters simply consider that it is because she is a very kind, polite and wonderful woman - but on the spot they are noted to be very surprised by this mysterious lady’s behavior.

# The two Moralities of the tale are also very tongue-in-cheek. The first one explains that basically, even though beauty is a great virtue and gift, the real thing that gives one power and allows “everything to happen” is actually the way one presents themselves - when you look good, when you present yourself well, then everything is open to you. Perrault even goes as far as to basically say that the real power of the fairies, is the one to give someone a makeover. As for the second Morality, it clearly says “Even if you are intelligent, even if you are brave, even if you are clever, even if you are talented - even with all that, you won’t be able to go far in life, unless you have a godfather or a godmather who will be here to highlight these qualities”. It is basically Perrault’s way of saying “Even if you’re the best, you still need connections to make it into the world”.

TOADS AND DIAMONDS

# The narration precises that the only (and first time) the wicked mother calls her good daughter “daughter” is when she sees her spitting roses, pearls and diamonds.

# The prince that marries the good daughter has... quite unclear intentions. For you see, when he decides to marry her, the narration points out that he thinks the “gift” of the girl is worth much more than what “any other girl could give through marriage” - and this comment follows right away the part where he brutally falls in love with her, right after she told him all of her adventures. So Perrault clearly suggests the “love” of the prince might be motivated by greed...

# The death of the wicked daughter has a bit of irony in it - because she is said to die all alone in the forest... “at the corner of a wood”. That’s literaly what’s writte, she dies “in the corner of the wood”.

# The Moralities are also very tongue in cheek. For example the second Morality claims “Honesty is a hard-working thing, and you must be a bit complacent/flattering in it, but for that you will be rewarded”. Basically, he says that a bit of flattery will always get you everywhere - highlighting how the girls actually got their curse and reward from the fairy based solely on how they talked to her. The good daughter was only rewarded because she was polite with the fairy, not because she was good herself ; and the wicked daughter was only punished because she was rude to the fairy. [The implications of this superficial behavior were actually explored in a famous French parody of this tale “The fairy of the water-tap”, by Gripari, in which a fairy blesses a wicked girl because she was polite out of flattery towards her, and curses a good girl because she was rude to her.

PUSS IN BOOTS

# Since the third miller’s son only has a cat as an inheritance, he plans on eating the beast and making some muffs out of his fur. But this a wordplay - because in old French, to spend the money one inherited was said “to eat one’s inheritance”. And this is exactly what the son is planning to do.

# When the ogre turns into a lion, the cat is scared and flees on the roof, like a real cat would - but the narration points out that, because he is wearing boots, he actually has a hard time doing so. This is Perrault’s way to self-reference the bizarre and weird detail of the boots for a cat.

# When the king is welcomed in the ogre’s castle and takes part in the feast, he is actually strongly implied to get drunk, as he gulps down “five or six” cups of alcohol before suddenly telling the Marquis that he wants him to be his son-in-law, and immediately having him married to his daughter.

# Once more, the double Moralities are just jokes and irony. The first says that inheritance and birth-earned status is nothing compared to the power of talent, knowledge, industrious behavior and hard-work... But the story is literally about a conman of a cat who keeps tricking, lying and stealing from other people, and a passive hero who just blindly follows his cat’s orders and happens to look good enough to seduce a woman. Hardly anything “industrious” in all that. Similarly, the second Morality clearly spells out that “If a miller’s son can gain so fast the heart of a princess, it really means that clothes, appearance and youth have true powers” (It is basically Perrault’s way of saying that despite all the so-called stories about innate nobility and the sacredness of royal blood and all that, in fact if you are just young, good-looking and well-dressed you can get to the top even if you don’t have any “noble” essence in you.) (Which is again told as a joke, or rather as an humoristic tone. Don’t read that seriously.)

BLUEBEARD

# To show that the wife gets accustomed to her new life of “dances, promenades, feasts, hunting parties, fishing parties, snacks and games” Perrault has this wonderful line “She started to think that the master of the house didn’t have the beard as blue as he had before”.

# When listing his belongings, Bluebeard has this funny little mentions “And this key is for the plates and cutlery of gold and silver - that we don’t use on an everyday basis.”

# Bluebeard is maybe a brutal and heartless killer... But after he lets his wife gets some last prayers in her bedroom, on the top floor, he is polite enough to wait for her on the lower floor, repeatedly asking her to finish and get down so he can kill her - in fact this is how she postpone things, he somehow refuses to go up and insists she goes down so he can slaughter her. He might be a murderer - but he is a polite murderer that won’t barge in a lady’s chambers.

# I talked about it previously, but the Moralities are also joking ones. The first Morality says “Curiosity is a thing that only costs regrets and that leads to a too-high price to pay”, when the story literaly shows that, while placing the woman in a dangerous situation, the wife’s curiosity led her to become rich and well-married, her sister to marry the guy she loved, and her brothers to gain new titles at a higher rank... I also told before that the second Morality literaly goes “Ah, we see it is a story of the ancient days, because nowadays it is women that are tyrannical masters” - a pure parody of basically the old guy ranting “Back in my days...”

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

# The very dialogue “Grandma, what long arms you have / what big eyes you have / what big ears you have” can be entirely read as a joke one. I mean... you have this frankly naive (if not stupid) girl who keeps commenting on how everything is abnormaly big in her grandma’s appearance, listing all traits she should be scared of... And it doesn’t click that maybe it isn’t her grandma. It is made even worse by the fact that when she first knocks, the wolf forgets to change his voice, and she is scared by his big, deep voice - but then tells herself “She must have a cold, must have given her a raspy voice”. And what’s even worse... You know the whole thing of “the wolf put on the Grandmother’s clothes”? That’s in Grimm. In Perrault the wolf doesn’t even bother dressing up as the grandma, he just slips in the bed and softens his voice. AND SOMEHOW THAT WORKS. Couple that with the fact the narration explicitely points out Little Red Riding Hood was a spoiled girl who wasn’t taught basic survival skills (like “Don’t talk to wolves”), and you get a kind of funny situation where a stupid girl gets a ridiculous death at the end of a wolf poor at imitations...

SLEEPING BEAUTY

# The old woman with the spindle in the story? Not the wicked fairy in disguise, as later adaptations liked to interpret. She is literaly just an old woman, that somehow had never heard of the interdiction of spindles in all fifteen/sixteen years of the princess’ life, and that was just left alone in a remote corner of the castle, minding her own business while forgotten by everybody else. She doesn’t even seem to recognize the princess as such, since she doesn’t talk to her in a particularly respectful way - so this leads to some questions as to how long this woman lived isolated in this palace that somehow seems REALLY big for such a little old woman to be cut off from the rest of the world no problem.

# When the princess pricks her finger on the spindle, the narration says that it is because 1) she took the spindle with too much energy, because she was one of those too-lively girls 2) she was a bit clumsy of a girl and 3) “and anyway, the fairies had decided it would be so”.

# There is a list of everything people try to do to wake up the princess, which goes from rubbing her face with powerful liquids and shaking her hands, to just throwing water into her face.

# Perrault, with no doubt in a nod to the incestuous relationships of royals, specifically mentions that the prince that wakes up the princess a hundred year laters is NOT from the same family as the sleeping beauty.

# The prince understands that the petrified people in the castle are just sleeping, not dead, because he notes the red-nose of the guards and the empty wine cups by their side, which shows that they’re still drunk. And as he climbs up the stairs, he also notes that other guards are loudly snoring.

# After the beauty wakes up, she ends up talking with the prince for four hours straigth since she was prepared in her sleep to meet and love him, while he is just surprised and baffled at everything that is happening ; but meanwhile, as the rest of the castle wakes up, their first instinct is to immediately prepare cooking because “since they weren’t in love, they were quite hungry.” And, as the prince leads the princess to the feast, he prevents himself from commenting on the fact that the princess is dressed up just like his grandmother... Similarly, during the feast, he also tries to not say anything about how outdated the music and plays are. And when they spend the night together, the narration precises that they did not sleep - “because the princess didn’t need it”. No wonder.

# The whole thing of the ogress-mother asking for her grandchildren to be killed and cook would be fully and horribly terrifying... if it wasn’t for her asking the “Robert sauce” as a mention, which does turn the whole thing into a more grotesque dark comedy. I mean, it is like when you say “I will kill you and eat your heart... with wasabi sauce!”.

# When the prince returns home from war and finds his family lined up in the court, to be killed into a vat of snakes and toads, there is a very awkward moment as he just asks around “What the heck is going on?” and nobody dares to even answer him. So there’s just this very awkward silence as the prince tries to understand what he sees and everybody else is thinking “Oh shit...”. (Well except the old ogress queen, who is so enraged she basically kills herself on the spot).

# And once more, the Morality has jokes in them. For example it says “It is natural to wait a bit to have a beautiful, sweet and wealthy husband. But to wait a hundred years while sleeping - now you don’t find girls like that anymore!” ; and in a second part it says “Usually it is best to wait when you are in love, so that the marriage may be sweeter ; but women are so energetic and put so much effort into loving people, that I don’t have the heart to preach them such a lesson”. I think the meaning is pretty clear...

(There are more tales, but I think these sum up enough the humor of Perrault as a whole)

#perrault fairytales #charles perrault #french fairytales #sleeping beauty #puss in boots #little thumbling #diamonds and toads #bluebeard #cinderella #little red riding hood

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lupinusalbus · 2 years ago

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What did you think of Kit’s Freudian comment at the con? I’ve seen people dismiss it as a thoughtless statement and others say it means he thinks Jon’s previous romantic relationships are abusive. How did you take it?

It’s a very complex question. One of the things that immediately struck me about Kit Harington’s comments was that he was speaking about the characters of Ygritte and Dany in a different context than what I often see written about them on Tumblr. What I mean to say is that Kit accepts both of these women as having been in "love" relationships with Jon Snow, in the sense that Kit thinks that Jon really loved them. During a different question from the one where the reference to Freud came up, Kit said that Jon loved Dany “fiercely”, but then she “turns a corner”, necessitating that Jon kill her. So Kit seems to accept that Jon loved both of them.

As Kit also said during the Q&A sessions, Jon is not a modern man. Because of the cultural context of Westeros, I don’t think Jon ultimately viewed Ygritte as a sexual abuser, as we might very well see their relationship by today’s standards, or in "meta" readings of their relationship. Yet, because of Jon’s youth and personality, and also his status as a kind of spy among the Wildlings, he is definitely the less assertive partner. Kit seems to be saying that there is something about Jon that causes him to be attracted to a “dominant” woman like Ygritte. The reference to Freud means that he is somehow tracing Jon’s propensity back to Catelyn’s treatment of him.

I don’t know though. I feel like a lot of their dynamic has more to do with Jon’s temperament than it does with his “mommy issues.” Think of other characters in the TV version, such as Theon before he was castrated, or other male characters who we might think of as being sexually bold, or at times even coercive or abusive to women (as is so often the status quo in Westeros). They would have had fewer qualms and tortured feelings about sleeping with Ygritte than Jon did, because …Jon is Jon. He seems sexually conservative (and a better person) by nature. He experiences guilt over breaking his vows, is tortured by the thought of fathering a bastard, and so on. It takes someone like Ygritte, who is assertive sexually (like in the cave scene in the TV series) for him to break his vows. (Note: I know the circumstances are somewhat different and more controversial in the books). I’m not sure how much of this has something to do with Catelyn Stark.

I suppose the story would go something like this: Jon’s self esteem or self-confidence around women was so wounded or messed up by his interactions with Catelyn, that he is now attracted to women who are the controllers or the seducers rather than the other way around. But it could also be due to the natural reticence around women that he seems to possess by temperament.

As for Dany: in order to analyze Kit’s remarks its necessary to take him at his word that Jon loved Dany. We only have the show version of Jon and Dany, but there are definitely some parallels with Ygritte. In their first interaction, Dany attempts to dominate Jon by insisting that he bend the knee, hinting that he will become her prisoner, and so on. As the scripts progress, It seems like she is the one who becomes infatuated by Jon first, and then she flies north of the wall to try and rescue him. He may be attracted to her, but he is also kind of the passive one who eventually capitulates. Is this why Kit thinks Jon is attracted to Dany, because of her assertive qualities, where he also seems to be overlooking the aggressive tendencies? Also, the circumstance of Jon suddenly bending the knee when he didn’t have to do it in order to gain Dany’s support seems to add more fuel to this fire. I can only assume that this dynamic, as written for the show, is what Kit is talking about.

In neither of these two relationships was Jon the pursuer. Maybe Kit wants Jon to have a more balanced relationship in the sequel :)

#sorry it took so long to answer #jon snow #anti daenerys #catelyn stark #kit harington #asks

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mornyavie · 1 year ago

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https://www.tumblr.com/unsolids-your-snake/731620210662047744

I just saw this post yesterday, are the Amish actually considered a cult?? From what I’ve seen and read about, they’re a pretty chill group, do they actually punish people who seek to leave?

I'll be real, I am deeply unqualified to talk about this; I encourage you to do your own research. I only commented on that post because it seemed like people didn't realize that "shunning" has a particular meaning in those spaces - like, yes at the surface I can see why people thought it was funny, but in context "shunning" isn't just your friends being a bit mad at you. It's an institutional punishment.

Questions like "what is a cult" are probably above my paygrade, but I feel comfortable answering "are they chill" with "no."

Many public-facing aspects would love for you to think that they're chill, and the chillness definitively also depends on the specific group you're talking about.

(Many people just say "Amish" and call it done, but the Amish are only one of a number of "avoid modern tech" groups, and they all have splinter subgroups with various differences; Mennonites are the other major branch of Anabaptists that do this.)

Ok I really. Don't want to try to get into this whole thing. there's probably a book you can read or something. But I don't want to leave you with absolutely nothing, so here's an Amish-authored explanation of shunning that I found:

link here

This is from a website used to sell Amish-made goods, so I think we can be pretty confident that this is attempting to present Amish culture in the best light possible. Here's some quotes:

"Because of this, being shunned can take a massive toll on a person. It’s difficult for someone to survive without the support they’ve grown accustomed to, and shunning can also make it nearly impossible for a person to earn a living." "This is what makes shunning so effective in keeping the community together and ensuring everyone sticks to the agreed-upon community rules." "The Amish practice shunning out of concern for a person. By shunning someone, they hope to get someone to see errors in their behavior, change it and return to the community." "Sins like fornication, adultery, stealing, and lying are all offenses worthy of shunning. This is to discourage other members of the community from committing the same sin."

So, even when presented in an article specifically designed to make this sound like a nice and reasonable thing, "shunning" is explicitly endangering a person by isolating them and cutting off their income, in order to (1) force them to admit fault and return to following the rules (2) make an example of them to scare other people into sticking to the rules.

This is high-control behavior, to put it mildly.

And that's even without getting into the actual specifics of what the rules are. Remember that these are, fundamentally, traditional Christian organizations. Most of them didn't suddenly become cool about women's rights and gay people. Divorce is one of the reasons that article lists for shunning.

Ok I'm sure I already put my foot in it somewhere and I'm really not an expert here. If you have specific research questions that you stumble on you can come back and ask and I'll see if I can help.

#You're asking a good-faith question so I want to help but this is the most stressful that Blogging has ever been.#I'm a fandom blogger I don't want the responsibility of being (in)correct on the internet.#what do I even tag this as?#cw abuse #let me know how I can tag this to help people filter content like it.

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msclaritea · 2 years ago

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This article is from 2019 and never more important than now. Maybe people didn't take it seriously then. I hope they will, now.

"Shortly after World War II, when Europe lay in ruin and humanity was newly traumatized by the spectacle of organized violence that an authoritarian regime could achieve in the industrial epoch, the Western World experienced a sudden cultural shift. This new regime of thought is sometimes called postmodernism, but that term is obscure and overused; a better way to think about this is that there was no longer a unifying narrative, a guiding thread that united humans in the West. Whereas some countries might have previously had religious bonds, or ethnic bonds, or monarchial bonds, or even political bonds around, say, an authoritarian leader, suddenly there were none anymore — or at least none that were universally believed. Individualism and identity were more important, and politicians and legal bodies would now have to consider how to govern subjects in an ambiguous, pluralistic, multicultural world.

At the same time, it was becoming clear that the forces that shaped the world — the power to organize society, or to exterminate it — were in the hands of scientists and technologists. The atom bomb, the intercontinental ballistic missile, the radio, the car, electrification, the refrigerator and the moon landing all happened in a span of about a hundred years. Science and technology spurred World War II, and led to its conclusion. And as the war receded from memory, it was apparent that the areas of greatest economic growth were all in technical fields — computers, engineering, communications, biotech and material science.

Jean-Francois Lyotard, a French philosopher who studied the condition of knowledge in this new era, realized that technology had changed the way that humans even thought about what knowledge was. Knowledge that computers could not process or manage — for instance, the ability to think critically or analyze qualitatively — was increasingly devalued, while the kinds of knowledge that computers could process became more important. As Lyotard wrote:

The miniaturisation and commercialisation of machines is already changing the way in which learning is acquired, classified, made available, and exploited....The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned... Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as “knowledge” statements.

Lyotard wrote this in 1978, before the modern internet even existed. Today, the idea that computational forms of knowledge — and/or the kinds of people who traffic in that knowledge — are more valuable to our society seems to be universal. Thanks to generous grants from the tech industry and well-heeled nonprofits like the Mellon Foundation, humanities academics across the world have been spurred to do more research in what is called the "digital humanities" — a vague term that often means applying statistical and quantitative tools to data sets that involved humanities research, such as literary corpuses. The tech industry investments in digital humanities fulfills Lyotard's prophecy that society would cease to see the humanities' brand of knowledge as useful; that it would attempt remake the humanities into a discipline characterized by discrete information, rather than a means of analyzing, considering, and philosophizing the world.

In the same essay, Lyotard actually distinguishes between two different types of knowledge: the "positivist" kind, that is applicable to technology; and the "hermenutic" kind of knowledge. Hermeneutics, meaning the study of interpretation, is what the humanities (and to some extent social sciences) concerns itself with. One can see how this kind of knowledge might be difficult for computers to catalogue and use. The idea that a computer could produce a literary analysis of a Vonnegut short story sounds absurd because it is: this is not the way that computers process data, this is not what humans generally regard computers as useful for, and it is certainly not what they are designed to do by the tech companies. Unsurprisingly, then, this type of humanities knowledge has become devalued, and not even considered "knowledge" by many.

So this leads us to a predicament in which slowly, since the postwar era, humanities skills and associated knowledge have been devalued, while STEM knowledge — an acronym for "Science, Tech, Engineering and Math," meaning the kind of quantitative knowledge associated with technology — reigns supreme. One of the most interesting places that you can see this trend is in fiction: the kinds of heroes and protagonists that people admire and look up to in fiction are increasingly those with STEM knowledge, as these people are seen as heroes because we uncritically accept that STEM knowledge is what changes the world. There is a reason that Iron Man is a billionaire technologist, and Batman is a billionaire technologist, and The Hulk's namesake Bruce Banner has multiple PhDs in the Marvel canon, and that the mad scientist Rick Sanchez (of "Rick and Morty") is essentially an immortal, infinitely powerful being because of his ability to understand science and wield technology. We admire these people because they possess the kinds of skills that our society deems the most valuable, and we're told that we, like them, can use these skills to master the universe.

(There is a potent irony here, of course, in that it is artists who write these narratives, and artists who are partly responsible for creating and popularizing this kind of STEM-supremacist propaganda. Weirdly, though, you rarely see a superhero or a super-spy who started life as a painter, or a novelist, or a comic book artist.)

Moreover, in real life, people who possess technological knowledge, primarily the scions of Silicon Valley, are widely adulated, viewed as heroes who will inherently change society for the better. This manifests itself in various ways: some technologists, like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have set up philanthropic foundations to "solve" our social problems — though curiously, the means by which that happens always seems to enrich themselves and their fellow capitalists along the way. Some of them promise widespread social change for the better via their own businesses, as though running a for-profit tech company was in and of itself a gift to the world and a net positive for social cohesion: you see this in many tech companies that advertise themselves as operating "for good," such as in the PR rhetoric of Facebook. Then, there are those who believe that their contribution to society will be helping us leave this planet, and who are investing heavily in private spaceflight companies with the ultimate intention of colonizing space; this includes both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

In all these cases, the idea that people with STEM knowledge are predestined to save the world is an idea has become so dominant we don’t even question it. Some call this attitude STEM chauvinism, though I prefer the moniker STEM Supremacy. The noun "supremacy," I believe, is called for, because of how the idea that STEM knowledge (and those who posses it) is superior to other forms of knowledge has become so hegemonic that our culture openly mocks those who possess other forms of knowledge — particularly the hermeneutic, humanities-type knowledge. There is a fount of memes about humanities majors and how useless their fields are; some of these memes depict humanities majors as graduating to working at low-wage jobs like McDonalds; others mock critical humanities majors (particularly gender studies) as being out-of-touch, social failures.

Such discourse is intersectional with other supremacist beliefs, such as patriarchy, and often these kinds of memes that celebrate STEM knowledge and mock humanities knowledge will simultaneously mock women and celebrate masculinity. It was unsurprising to me when, last year, it leaked that a Google engineer, James Damore, had circulated an anti-diversity manifesto in which he used discredited science to argue that there were biological reasons for the gender gap. He went on to argue that there were reasons men were more interested in computers and in leadership, and women less. Though Damore was fired, he maintains that many of his peers agreed with him. Such incidents speak to the ways that different chauvinist tendencies, one of STEM Supremacy and one of patriarchy, can intersect to form novel noxious political ideologies.

The concept of "STEM Supremacy" relies on a popular belief that STEM knowledge is synonymous with progress. Yet if you take this kind of belief a bit too far, you might be keen to abandon democratic ideals and start to believe that we really should live in a society in which the STEM nerds rule over us. This has resulted in a number of half-baked supremacists within the tech industry who advocate either for authoritarian technocracies or, more bizarrely, monarchy.

I’ll give a few brief examples. There’s Google engineer Justine Tunney, a former Occupy Wall Street activist who now calls for “open-source authoritarianism. ” Tunney has argued against democracy and in favor of a monarchy run by technologists, and advocated for the United States to bring back indentured servitude.

But perhaps best-known among the techno-monarchists is Mencius Moldbug, the nom de plume of Curtis Yarvin, a programmer and founder of startup Tlon — a startup that is backed at least in part by billionaire anti-democracy libertarian Peter Thiel, who famously once wrote he did not believe democracy and freedom were compatible, and expressed skepticism over women's suffrage. Moldbug's polemics are circular, semi-comprehensible, and blur political theory and pop culture; Corey Pein of The Baffler described his treatises as "archaic [and] grandiose," while being "heavily informed by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and George Lucas."

Both of these so-called thinkers constitute parts of a larger movement that calls itself "Dark Enlightenment," alternatingly known as "neoreactionaries." True to its name, the political agenda of Dark Enlightenment includes a celebration of patriarchy, monarchy, and racialized theories of intelligence differentials.

The notion that monarchy is popular again in Silicon Valley might sound absurd. We associate monarchies with stodgy, quaint medieval kingdoms, the opposite of the disruptive, fast-moving tech industry. And yet those in the tech industry who see monarchy as appealing are keen to point out how the hierarchical aspects of monarchial rule are actually familiar to their industry. As Pein mentions in his Baffler essay, Thiel delivered a lecture in 2012 in which he explained the connection:

A startup is basically structured as a monarchy. We don’t call it that, of course. That would seem weirdly outdated, and anything that’s not democracy makes people uncomfortable.

[But] it is certainly not representative governance. People don’t vote on things. Once a startup becomes a mature company, it may gravitate toward being more of a constitutional republic. There is a board that theoretically votes on behalf of all the shareholders. But in practice, even in those cases it ends up somewhere between constitutional republic and monarchy. Early on, it’s straight monarchy. Importantly, it isn’t an absolute dictatorship. No founder or CEO has absolute power. It’s more like the archaic feudal structure. People vest the top person with all sorts of power and ability, and then blame them if and when things go wrong.

[T]he truth is that startups and founders lean toward the dictatorial side because that structure works better for startups. It is more tyrant than mob because it should be. In some sense, startups can’t be democracies because none are. None are because it doesn’t work. If you try to submit everything to voting processes when you’re trying to do something new, you end up with bad, lowest common denominator type results.

The underpinnings of STEM Supremacy are, as I've laid out, complicated to see and stretch back to the end of World War II — but when put together they form a broader picture of where the philosopher-kings of the tech industry are heading, and what they believe. If we continue to live in a society that devalues humanities-type knowledge and glorifies STEM knowledge, this kind of thinking will persist, I fear. And the tech industry is partly responsible for cultivating this noxious worldview, in the sense that their PR apparatuses glorify STEM knowledge and encourage the public to view their leaders as demigods.

This isn't a unique phenomenon. Any situation where a certain ideology is denigrated and another valorized, there will be at some point a corresponding rise in a chauvinism in favor of the valorized ideology. The situation today is made more complicated by the fact that the tech industry benefits from the normalization of STEM Supremacist beliefs. The unearned trust that the public has for tech startups and tech industry ideas, the lack of regulation, and the absurd valuations of companies that continue to lose money — this is all motivated by an underlying belief that these companies are innately good, their owners smart, and their work more vital than other fields. Whether they admit it or not, you can draw a line from the public relations departments of tech companies and Justine Tunney's call for "open-source authoritarianism."

Ironically, the only antidote to all this sophistry is the humanities — the kind of critical thinking that they entail, and the kind of thinking that it is impossible for computers to do. I've often wondered if part of the tech industry's investment in digital humanities is designed to help stave off critical discourse or criticism of their companies. Indeed, by remapping the idea of what knowledge is in the first place, the tech industry is helping to realize a future in which we lack even the language to think critically about their role in society. Or maybe even a future in which they rule over us as monarchial, benevolent dictators — at least in their eyes. Perhaps this was the plan all along. (Oh yeah. It was)

By KEITH A. SPENCER

Keith A. Spencer is a senior editor at Salon who edits Salon's science/health vertical. His book, "A People's History of Silicon Valley: How the Tech Industry Exploits Workers, Erodes Privacy and Undermines Democracy," was released in 2018. Follow him on Twitter at @keithspencer, or on Facebook here.

_______________________________________________

THESE FUCKERS IN SILICON VALLEY WANT A MONARCHY !!

"Few Catholics outside the D.C area are likely familiar with Fr. Arne, who never wrote a book or made national headlines. Yet a list of those who appear in Eberstadt’s book to laud his role among “billionaires and Supreme Court Justices” indicates the breadth of his influence: George Weigel, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, Arthur Brooks, Hadley Arkes, Peter Thiel, and Fr. Paul Scalia, to name but a few..."

"From his perch on K Street at the Catholic Information Center (CIC), Father Arne Panula shepherded some of the nation’s power brokers into the Catholic Church..." Mary Eberstadt

“As recently as 2017, Billy [Barr] was on the board of directors of the DC-based Catholic Information Center, led by the ultraright and secretive group Opus Dei…Its board includes the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, and White House counsel Pat Cipollone..."

*Above thread is chockful of more information!*

#Credit Suisse #Peter Thiel #Mueller Report #Much more #Sorry for the length #Important information

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counttwinkula · 2 years ago

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i gotta say that one of my least favorite things about the modern internet is the ease with which people just accept that an image exists without any thought of its provenance

like, the most obvious cases of this are when an illustration gets turned into a meme and spread across the internet without the consent of the creator

how many times have you seen the original form of a viral image spreading around tumblr with people reacting in shock and awe, "that's what the original said?"

and here's an example that makes my blood boil: remember the iconic "one fear" comic?

do you remember when someone removed the artist's signature, and then dozens of edits were spread with the words "one big meme" in its place?

it's like someone was out there trying to make my point for me: that once the image goes viral and becomes exploitable (as we called it back in the encyclopedia dramatica days) the artist's identity gets filed off of it

but the other half of this issue, which is the part that really just confounds me altogether, is better represented by the sculptor izumi kato. if you don't recognize the name, you may recognize a very specific photo of his work:

this photo of a work by kato (untitled, 2004) accompanied the original SCP creepypasta. in the years since SCP-173 was first posted this photograph and depictions of the character it inspired—a character whose physical appearance was taken directly from kato's art—has been spread far and wide across the internet's horror communities

(yes i know the SCP website has removed the image from the official website and i applaud that decision)

unlike teen comix, where any viewer immediately, if unconsciously, knows that this is a drawing and that therefore someone drew this, i think that the public does not have that same awareness when it comes to photographs

as many art critics have noted since the advent and spread of photography, the photograph occludes not only the concept of authorship (which is beyond the scope of this post), it also alienates the viewer from the idea of context—the image exists for its own sake, separated from the subject of said image

the internet is built on weird images spread without any sort of context, and i get that. i also know that i'm the kind of person who thinks about this stuff and not everybody is

(chris sharp, fire hydrant jack, ca. 2007)

what just makes me crazy is how people seem so willing to look at a picture and just think "i guess that exists" without taking a moment to think "someone must have made that"

and what irks me is how many blogs here—beloved blogs with tons of followers—repost and reblog this content without any thought put toward attribution when the item in question is obviously an art object. the blogs that come to my mind, and i do not say this with any malice, are ones that reframe the subjects of these photos within a D&D context, placing the focus on their "bit" and entirely eclipsing the artists whose works their blogs rely upon for content

the issue of attribution has become even more urgent because the efficacy of google's reverse image search function has plummeted

i cannot tell you how many times i have scoured the internet for any sort of image source for a work of art, wading through scores of pinterest and tumblr links, before suddenly finding the artist's name—or before declaring the whole matter a lost cause

that was when reverse image search was still useful, and nowadays for whatever reason (i am not knowledgeable enough to say why or how) it has ceased to be useful altogether. i have no idea what alternatives we have, and so i really think it falls on us to try to apply some code of ethics to this matter

i'm not saying i only reblog attributed images, i know that's basically impossible, but i am imploring people to at least think twice about this, and i am asking blogs with big follower counts that rely on other people's images to think about the impact they have on further distancing the art from its creator

#long post #art history #image attribution

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2n2n · 2 years ago

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idle thinking on the shape of love, endurance, persistence, and unconditional commitment in this manga.

rapidfur

!!!!! This is amazing! It's a little funny, but I always kind of disliked Akane, but... I feel like you have a knack for really looking deeper into the work and finding connections, and bringing out a complete story! It's a little funny, I think recent western fandom developments have made analysis for this series hard, since everyone is so quick to point out themes of abuse and such... which isn't necessarily bad, but when has real life ever been so simple. D:

HEY THANKS this is probably my... favorite of the posts I’ve made, I!!! even wish it was a little more coherent/organized lol.... but, I’m glad the messaging is there and interesting and got through!! I really-- feel most strongly, about this through line between all arcs!!! My jaw was.... on the floor, as Akane/Aoi happened, I couldn’t imagine their r’ship would also thread all of these themes into it. I also thought the manga would be a little messier, have a few more loose ends, some ‘randos’ if you will. I honestly thought Akane and Aoi would always remain boring to me, and I can’t believe the manga essentially popped me in the jaw about all my assumptions. The ‘twist’ of their personalities doesn’t even feel cheap, either .... I suddenly felt legitimately guilty for writing off Aoi as ‘just some normal girl, friend of Nene, nothing significant’..... I had to deal with Akane going from “god, some goober SIMP out here...” in my mind to “hhihihieeeek... why is he allowed to do hot things omg”

I’ve definitely seen some write-ups try to assert the theme is ‘abuse’, and responses to/conditions of abuse, but by god, if that were true, it sure would be gosche how often this manga uses punches and brutality as either a punchline (what is Akane + Teru in this lol?), or a spicey picante to an ultimately romantic scene

It would be so out of tune for a Manga About Abuse to sooooocapriciously depict the very ropes that symbolize isolation and ownership/control/influence of others as sexually alluring. Boy all the contexts of these, ropes... all these situations....

... but if isolation/ownership/control was at times allowed to be an aspect of some sort of, ultimate love, hmmmmm... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

hmmmm...love....

hmmm... control

hmmmm... influence.....

hmmmm... HMMM

Not to be TOO cheeky, lol, but gosh.... devotional love bleeds through every inch of symbolism in the manga. Hanako himself compares being ‘bound’ to ‘like being in a relationship’ (I can’t... believe you say that....)

Hanako relates a curse to love.....

can’t believe we come all the way back around to this concept, so many chapters later.

ohhhhhh famous bound-boy Hanako-kun can just say being ‘bound’ and ‘being in a couple’ are synonymous by certain definitions? you who are bound? to someone? GEEZ. I honestly hate this manga sometimes. It’s TOO linear. It’s almost blindingly direct.

Which is to say, there's a lot more to appreciate to a character than only thinking theyre worthless because they're annoying... ♡ devotion! I was starting to think AidaIro was writing a really confusing all-over-the-place story, but these analyses are really making me rethink my way of media analysis. Sometimes it's very easy to just parrot what other people say as fact, and not think about things deeper... anyways! Just offering my appreciation again. ☆ミ

thanks again!!! It’s.... rrrgh I’m just one person with one interpretation, in a sea of equally proposed ones, I’m just happy if anything I say feels like it ‘clicks’ or rings true to what you’ve read yourself, personally. If it goes down smoother than other things you’ve tried to perceive in the text.

Its always a struggle for me a bit-- I love DOING analysis-- but I also dislike the way modern fandom tends to convene on analysis and defer to analysis, rather than engaging the manga themselves directly (and trying to interpret it for their own). On one hand I resent the pipeline of some reddit take becoming the penultimate western narrative (usurping the very manga itself), but also I kindof have no choice but to try to assert my own take, too, and influence other’s perceptions (for better or worse, as I’m just some shmuck).

I feel that modern-day fandom is sortof odd, I think social media winds up dominating and creating a singular discussion/interpretation of media .... I saw it so much I did want to at least, prove that someone out there has a different take, that very different interpretations can exist....?

...but anyway, I do think. Love is this manga’s greater unifying factor than anything else. Sincerely!!! Really!!!

#avvy's JSHK

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theculturedmarxist · 1 year ago

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On May 20th, PMC Wagner forced Ukrainian troops out of their last remaining position within the city limits of Bakhmut, consequentially bringing about the nominal end of the largest battle of the 21st century (so far). Bakhmut has been the most substantial locus of military operations in Ukraine for most of the past nine months. Combat there took on a frustrating tempo, with progress often measured in single city blocks. This was a battle that was extremely violent and bloody, but at times agonizingly slow and seemingly indecisive. After countless updates in which nothing of note seemed to have happen, many people were surely beginning to roll their eyes at the very mention of Bakhmut. Consequentially, the abrupt capture of the city by Wagner in May (rather predictably, the final 25% of the city fell very quickly relative to the rest) seemed a bit surreal. To many it likely seemed that Bakhmut would never end - and then, suddenly, it did.

Bakhmut, like most high-intensity urban battles, exemplifies the apocalyptic potential of modern combat. Intense bombardment reduced large portions of the city to rubble, lending the impression that Wagner and the AFU were not so much fighting over the city as its carcass.

The slow pace and extreme destruction has made this battle a rather difficult one to parse out. It all seems so senseless - even within the unique paradigm of war-making. In the absence of an obvious operational logic, observers on both sides have been eager to construct theories of how the battle was actually a brilliant example of four-dimensional chess. In particular, you can easily find arguments from both pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian commentators claiming that Bakhmut was used as a trap to draw in the other side’s manpower and material for destruction, while buying time to accumulate fighting power.

Pro-Ukrainian sources are adamant that a huge amount of Russian combat power was destroyed in Bakhmut, while the AFU received western armor and training to build out a mechanized package to go back on the offensive. Pro-Russian writers similarly seem convinced that the AFU burned a huge amount of manpower, while the Russian army preserved its strength by letting Wagner do most of the fighting.

Clearly, they cannot both be correct.

In this article, I would like to take a holistic survey of the Battle of Bakhmut and adjudicate the evidence. Which army was really destroyed in this “strategically insignificant” city? Which army was being profligately wasteful of its manpower? And most importantly - why did this middling city become the site of the largest battle of the century? Homicide was committed, but nobody can agree on who murdered whom. So, let us conduct an autopsy.

The Road to the Death Pit

The Battle of Bakhmut lasted for so long that it can be easy to forget how the front ended up there, and how Bakhmut fits into the operations in the summer of 2022. Russian operations in the summer were focused on the reduction of the Ukrainian salient around Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, and came to a climactic head when Russian forces broke open the heavy defended Ukrainian stronghold of Popasna, encircled a pocket of Ukrainian forces around Zolote, and approached the Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway. The actual fall of the Lysychansk-Severodonetsk urban agglomeration came relatively quickly, with Russian forces threatening to encircle the entire bag and forcing a Ukrainian withdrawal.

Just for reference, here is what the frontline in the central Donbas looked like on May 1, 2022, courtesy of MilitaryLand:

In this context, Bakhmut already threatened to become a major battleground. It lay at a literal crossroad directly in the center of the Ukrainian salient. As Ukrainian positions in Lysychansk, Popasna, and Svitlodarsk were broken open, the axes of Russian advance converged on Bakhmut.

Ukrainian forces greatly needed to stabilize the front, and establish a stable blocking position, and there was really nowhere else to do this except at Bakhmut. Between Lysychansk and Bakhmut there are no sufficiently robust urban areas to anchor the defense, and there was absolutely no question of failing to adequately defend Bakhmut, for a few reasons that we can enumerate:

Bakhmut is in the central position in this sector of front, and its loss would both threaten Siversk with envelopment and allow Russian forces to bypass the well fortified and strongly held defenses at Toretsk.

The Russian strategic objective at Slavyansk-Kramatorsk cannot be successfully defended if the Russian army controls both the heights to the east (in the Bakhmut area) and Izyum.

Bakhmut itself, meanwhile, was a defensible urban area with dominating heights in its rear, multiple routes of supply, good linkages to other sectors of front, and a peripheral belt of smaller urban areas protecting its flanks.

This set up a rather obvious operational decision for Ukrainian forces. The choice was, all things considered, to either commit reserves to stabilize the front at Bakhmut (a strong and operational vital defensive anchor) or risk letting Russia bypass and sweep away an entire belt of defenses in places like Siversk and Toretsk. Asked to choose between a reasonably good option and an extremely bad option, there was no great controversy in the deciding.

Falling back from the loss of their eastern defensive belt, Ukraine needed to stabilize the front somewhere, and the only suitable place was Bakhmut - so this is where Ukrainian reserves were sent in force, and the AFU chose to fight. Operational logic, indifferent to those things that normally recommend cities to us as “important”, decreed that the Styx should flow through Bakhmut.

Russia came to meet this challenge - bringing as their spearhead a mercenary group, staffed by convicts, wielding shovels, run by a bald caterer. What could go wrong?

Operational Progression

Because the general impression of Bakhmut is characterized by urban combat, it can be easy to forget that most of the battle took place outside the city itself, in the exurbs and fields around the urban center. The approach to Bakhmut is cluttered with a ring of smaller villages (places like Klynove, Pokrovs’ke, and Zaitseve) from which the AFU was able to fight a tenacious defense with the support of artillery in the city itself.

While Russian forces nominally reached the approach to Bakhmut late in June (even before Lysychansk was captured) and the city came under the extremes of shelling range, they did not immediately begin a concerted push to reach it. On August 1, the first assaults on the outer belt of villages began, and the Russian Ministry of Defense stated in its briefings that “battles for Bakhmut” had begun. This date is the most logical starting date for historiographical purposes, so we may firmly say that the Battle of Bakhmut was fought from August 1, 2022 to May 20, 2023 - a total of 293 days.

The first two months of the battle saw the Russian capture of most of the settlements east of the T0513 highway south of the city and the T1302 highway to the north, stripping Bakhmut and Soledar of most of their eastern buffer zones and pushing the line of contact right up to the edge of the urban areas proper.

At this point, the frontlines largely froze up for the remainder of the year, before Wagner set the stage for further advances with the capture of the small village of Yakovlivka, to the north of Soledar. This success can be construed as the first domino in a chain of events which led to Ukrainian defeat in Bakhmut.

Soledar itself serves a unique and critical role in the operational geography of Bakhmut. Laid out in a relatively long and thin strip, Soledar and its suburbs form a continuous urban shield stretching from the T0513 highway (which runs north to Siversk) all the way to the T0504 road (running east to Popasna). This makes Soledar a natural satellite stronghold which defends Bakhmut across nearly ninety degrees of approach. Soledar is also liberally gifted with industrial build, including the salt mine for which it is named, which makes it a relatively friendly place to wage a static defense, full of deep places and strong walls.

Wagner’s capture of Yakovlivka on December 16, however, marked the first sign that the defense of Soledar was in trouble. Yakovlikva sits on an elevated position to the northeast of Soledar, and its capture gave Wagner a powerful position atop Soledar’s flank. The Ukrainians recognized this, and Soledar was powerfully reinforced in response to the loss of Yakovlivka and the anticipated oncoming assault. The capture of Bakhmutske on December 27 (a suburb of Soledar directly on its southern approach) set the stage for a successful assault.

The attack on Soledar ended up being relatively fast and extremely violent, characterized by intense levels of Russian artillery support. The assault began almost immediately after the loss of Bakhmutske on December 27th, and by January 10th Ukraine’s cohesive defense had been shattered. Ukrainian leadership, of course, denied losing the town and wove a story about glorious counterattacks, but even the Institute for the Study of War (a propaganda arm of the US State Department) later admitted that Russia had captured Soledar by January 11th.

The loss of Soledar, in combination with the early January capture of Klischiivka to the south, put Wagner in a position to begin a partial envelopment of Bakhmut.

It was at this point that the discussion shifted towards a potential Russian encirclement of Bakhmut. To be sure, the Russian wings did expand rapidly around the city, placing it in a firebag, but there was never a concerted effort to take the city into a proper encirclement. The Russian advance subsided on the approach to Ivanivske in the south, and over the vital M03 highway in the north.

A genuine encirclement was probably never in the cards, mainly because of the complication of Chasiv Yar - a strongly held rear area stronghold. To fully encircle Bakhmut, Russian forces would have been forced to choose between two difficult options: either blockade the road from Chasiv Yar to Bakhmut, or flare the envelopment wide enough to take Chasiv Yar into the pocket as well. Either option would have greatly complicated the operation, and so Bakhmut was never genuinely encircled.

What the Russians did succeed in doing, however, was establish dominant position on the flanks which accrued three significant advantages. First, they were able to direct fire on Bakhmut’s remaining supply lines. Secondly, they were able to pummel Bakhmut itself with intense artillery fire from a variety of axes. Third - and perhaps most importantly - they were able to assault the Bakhmut urban center itself from three different directions. This, in the end, greatly hastened the fall of the city. By April, it was clear that the focus had shifted from expanding the envelopment on the flanks to assaulting Bakhmut itself, and it was reported that Russian regular units had taken custody of the flanks so that Wagner could clear the city.

Fighting throughout April and early May at last shifted to the struggle in the urban center. AFU units in the city ultimately proved incapable of stopping Wagner’s advance, largely due to tight Russian fires coordination and the cramped confines of the Ukrainian defense - with Wagner advancing into the city from three axes, the firing grids for Russian artillery became very narrow, and the AFU’s static defense - while bravely contested - was slowly ground down.

By early May, it was clear that the city would fall soon, with the AFU desperately holding on to the western edge of the city. Attention soon shifted, however, to a Ukrainian counterattack on the flanks.

This became a rather classic instance of events on the ground being outrun by the narrative. There had been rumors of an impending Ukrainian counterattack circulating for quite some time, advanced by both Ukrainian and Russian sources. Ukrainian channels were predicated on the idea that General Oleksandr Syrskyi (commander of AFU ground forces) had hatched a scheme to draw the Russians into Bakhmut before launching a counterattack on the wings. This idea was seemingly corroborated frantic warnings from Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin that the Ukrainians had massed enormous forces in the rear areas behind Bakhmut which would be unleashed to counter-encircle the city.

In any case, the spring months came and went without any astonishing AFU counterattack, and all manner of material shortages and weather delays were blamed. Then, on May 15, all hell seemed to be breaking loose. The AFU finally attacked, and Prigozhin screeched that the situation on the flanks was approaching the worst case scenario.

In fact, what happened was rather anticlimactic. The AFU did bring a hefty grouping of units to play, including several of their best and most veteran formations. These included units from:

The 56th Brigade

The 57th Mechanized Brigade

The 67th Mechanized Brigade

The 92nd Mechanized Brigade

The 3rd Assault Brigade (Azov)

The 80th Air Assault Brigade

The 5th Assault Brigade

This sizeable strike package attacked a handful of mediocre Russian Motor Rifle brigades, achieved a bit of initial success, and culminated with heavy losses. Despite Prigozhin’s assertion that the Russian regulars abandoned their posts and left the Russian wings undefended, we later learned that these forces - including mobilized motor rifle units - doggedly defended their positions and only withdrew under orders from above. These withdrawals (distances of a few hundred meters at most) brought the Russian defensive line to strongly held positions along a series of canals and reservoirs, which the AFU was unable to push through.

Now, this is not to say that Russia did not suffer losses defending against a tenacious Ukrainian attack. The 4th Motor Rifle Brigade, which was largely responsible for the successful defense outside Klishchiivka, was badly chewed up, its commander was killed, and it had to be promptly rotated out. However, the offensive potential of the Ukrainian assault package was exhausted, and there have been no follow on attempts in the past two weeks.

In the end, the vaunted Syrskyi plan looked rather lame. The counterattack did successfully unblock a few key roads out of Bakhmut, but it did nothing to prevent Wagner from finalizing the capture of the city, it burned through the combat power of several premier brigades, and on May 20th the last Ukrainian positions in the city were liquidated.

So. This was a strange battle. An agonizingly slow creep around the flanks of the city, a materializing threat of encirclement, and a sudden concentration of Wagner’s combat energy in the city itself - all taking place under threats of an enormous counteroffensive by the AFU, which turned out to be ineffective and ephemeral.

It’s not obvious, then, how this battle suited the operational logic of either army, nor that anyone would come away fully satisfied. Ukraine obviously lost the battle in nominal terms, but the Russian advance seemed so slow and Bakhmut so strategically random (at least superficially) that Wagner’s success can be portrayed as a pyrrhic victory. To fully adjudicate the Battle of Bakhmut, we need to contemplate relative losses and expenditure of combat power.

The Butcher’s Bill

Estimating combat losses in Ukraine is a difficult task, largely because “official” casualty estimates are often patently absurd. This leaves us with a need to fumble for reasonable figures using proxies and ancillary information. One such important source of knowledge is deployments data - we can get a general sense of the burn rate by the scale and frequency of unit allocation. In this particular case, however, we find that unit deployments are somewhat difficult to work with. Let’s parse through this.

First and foremost, we need to grapple with the incontrovertible fact that a huge share of the Ukrainian military was deployed at Bakhmut at one point or another. The Telegram Channel Grey Zone compiled a list of all the Ukrainian units that were positively identified (usually by social media posts or AFU updates) as being deployed in Bakhmut throughout the nine month battle (that is, they were not there all at once):

This is an absolutely enormous commitment (37 brigades, 2 regiments, and 18 separate battalions (plus irregular formations like the Georgian Legion) which indicates obviously severe losses (for what it’s worth, the pro-Ukrainian MilitaryLand Deployment Map admits a similarly titanic Ukrainian deployment in Bakhmut). However, this does not really get us close to accurately assessing losses, largely because Ukraine’s Order of Battle (ORBAT) is a bit confused. Ukraine frequently parcels out units below the brigade level (for example, their artillery brigades never deploy as such) and they have a bad habit of unit cannibalization.

Doing some extremely rough back of the envelop math, minimal scratching off of just the 37 brigades could easily have pushed Ukraine past 25,000 casualties, but there are all manner of shaky assumptions here. First, this assumes that Ukraine withdraws its brigades when they reach combat ineffective loss levels (15% would be a placeholder number here), which isn’t necessarily true - there is precedent for the AFU leaving troops in place to die, especially from lower quality units like Territorial Defense. In fact, an Australian volunteer (interview linked later on) claimed that the 24th mechanized brigade suffered 80% casualties in Bakhmut, so it’s possible that a great many of these brigades were chewed up beyond task ineffectiveness levels (that is, they were not correctly rotated out) but were instead destroyed entirely. A recent article in the New Yorker, for example, interviewed survivors of a battalion that was almost entirely wiped out. In another instance, a retired Marine Colonel said that units at the frontline routinely suffer 70% casualties.

We can say a few things for certain. First, that Ukraine had an extremely high burn rate which forced it to commit nearly a third of its total ORBAT. Secondly, we know that at least some of these formations were left at the front until they were destroyed. Finally, we can definitively say that pro-Ukrainian accounts are incorrect (or maybe lying) when they say that the defense at Bakhmut was conducted to buy time for Ukraine to build up strength in the rear. We know this first and foremost because Bakhmut insatiably sucked in additional units, and secondly because this burn included a large number of Ukraine’s premier and veteran forces, including fully a dozen assault, airborne, and armored brigades.

There’s another problem with the ORBAT approach to casualties, however, and this concerns Wagner. You see, one of our objectives here is to try to get a sense of the comparative rates of loss, and ORBAT simply isn’t a good way to do this in the particular case of Bakhmut. This is because the battle was mostly fought from the Russian side by the Wagner Group, which is a huge formation with an opaque internal structure.

Whereas on the Ukrainian side we can enumerate a long list of formations that fought at Bakhmut, on the Russian side we just put the 50,000 strong Wagner Group. Wagner of course has internal sub-formations and rotations, but these are not visible to those of us on the outside, and so we cannot get a sense of Wagner’s internal ORBAT or force commitment. We understand generally that Wagner has a structure of assault detachments (probably a battalion equivalent), platoons, and squads, but we do not have a sense of where these units are deployed in real time or how quickly they are rotated or burned through. Sadly, when Prigozhin went in front of cameras he brought maps without unit dispositions on them, leaving ORBAT nerds squinting in vain trying to extract useful information. So, lacking good insight into Wagner’s deployments, we are unable to make an adequate comparison to the bloated Ukrainian ORBAT in Bakhmut.

There are other ways that we can get at the casualties, however. The Russian dissident (that is, anti-Putin) organization Mediazona tracks Russian losses by tabulating obituaries, death announcements on social media, and official announcements. For the entire period of the Battle of Bakhmut (August 1 - May 20), they counted 6,184 total deaths among PMC personnel, inmates, and airborne forces (these three categories accounting for most of the Russian force in Bakhmut).

Meanwhile, Prigozhin claimed that Wagner had suffered 20,000 KIA in Bakhmut while inflicting 50,000 KIA on the Ukrainians. Concerning the first number - the context of this claim was an interview in which he was lambasting the Russian Ministry of Defense (as is his habit), and he has an incentive to overstate Wagner’s losses (since he is trying to play up Wagner’s sacrifice for the Russian people).

So, here is where we are at with Wagner losses. We have a “floor”, or absolute minimum of a little over 6,000 KIA (these being positively identified by name) with a significant upward margin of error , and something like a ceiling of 20,000. The number that I have been working with is approximately 17,000 total Wagner KIA in the Bakhmut operation (with a min-max range of 14,000 and 20,000, respectively).

However, something we need to consider is the composition of these forces. Among the positively identified KIA, convicts outnumber professional PMC operators by about 2.6 to 1 (that is, Wagner’s dead would be about 73% convicts). According to the Pentagon, however (taken with a large grain of salt), nearly 90% of Wagner’s losses are convicts. Taking a conservative 75/25 split and rounding the numbers to make them pretty, my estimate is that Wagner lost about 13,000 convicts and 4,000 professional operators. Adding in VDV losses and motorized rifle units fighting on the flanks, and total Russian KIA in Bakhmut are likely on the order of 20-22,000.

So, what about Ukrainian losses? The major outstanding question remains: who is on the right end of the loss ratios?

Ukrainian commentators consistently ask us to believe that Russian losses were far worse due to their use of “human wave” attacks. There are several reasons why this can be dismissed.

First, we have to acknowledge that after nine months of combat we have not yet seen a single video showing one of these purported human waves (that is, Wagner convicts attacking in a massed formation). Keeping in mind that Ukraine loves to share footage of embarrassing Russian mistakes, that they have no qualms about sharing gory war porn, and that this is a war being fought with thousands of eyes in the sky in the form of reconnaissance drones, it must strike us as curious that not one of these alleged human wave attacks has yet been caught on camera. When videos are shared purporting to show human waves, they invariably show small groups of 6-8 infantry (we call this a squad, not a human wave).

However, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That being said, the “human wave” narrative has been contradicted on multiple occasions. Just for starters, General Syrskyi himself contradicted the human wave narrative and said that Wagner’s methodology is to push small assault groups forward under intense artillery cover. Witnesses from the front concur. An Australian Army Veteran volunteering in Ukraine gave a very interesting interview in which he downplayed Wagner casualties and instead emphasized that “Ukraine is taking way too many casualties” - he later adds that the 24th brigade suffered 80% casualties in Bakhmut. He also notes that Wagner favors infiltration groups and small units - the veritable opposite of massed human waves.

I found this article from the Wall Street Journal to be nicely emblematic of the human wave issue. It contains the obligatory claim of human wave tactics - “The enemy pays no attention to huge losses of its personnel and continues the active assault. The approaches to our positions are simply littered with the bodies of the adversary’s dead soldiers.” This description, however, comes from the bureaucratic apparatus at the Ministry of Defense. What about people on the ground? A Ukrainian officer at the front says: “So far, the exchange rate of trading our lives for theirs favors the Russians. If this goes on like this, we could run out.”

Ultimately, it’s difficult to believe that the kill ratio favors Ukraine for the simple reason that the Russians have enjoyed a tremendous advantage in firepower. Ukrainian soldiers speak freely about Russia’s enormous superiority in artillery, and at one point it was suggested that the AFU was outgunned by ten to one. The New Yorker’s interview subjects claimed that their battalion’s mortar section had a ration of a mere five shells per day!

The enormous Russian advantage in artillery and standoff weaponry suggests the a-priori assumption that the AFU would be taking horrific casualties, and indeed that’s what we hear from myriad sources at the front. Then, of course, there was the shocking February claim by a former US Marine in Bakhmut that the life expectancy at the front line was a mere four hours.

All of this is really ancillary to the larger point. The enormous inventory of AFU units that were churned through Bakhmut included something on the order of 160,000 total personnel. Taking loss rates of between 25 and 30% (roughly on par with Wagner’s burn rate), it’s clear that Ukraine’s losses were extreme. I believe total irretrievable losses for Ukraine in Bakhmut were approximately 45,000, with some +/- 7,000 margin of error.

So, my current working estimates for losses in the Battle of Bakhmut are some 45,000 for Ukraine, 17,0000 for Wagner, and 5,000 for other Russian forces.

But perhaps even this misses the point.

Ukraine was losing its army, Russia was losing its prison population.

Adjudicating the Battle of Bakhmut is relatively easy when one looks at what units were brought to the table. Bakhmut burned through an enormous portion of the AFU’s inventory, including many of its veteran assault brigades, while virtually none of Russia’s conventional forces were damaged (with the notable exception of the Motor Rifle brigades that defeated the Ukrainian counterattack). Even the Pentagon has admitted that the vast majority of Russian casualties in Ukraine were convicts.

Now, this is all rather cynical - nobody can deny it. But from the unsentimental calculus of strategic logic, Russia churned through its single most disposable military asset, leaving its regular ORBAT not only completely intact, but actually larger than it was last year.

Meanwhile, Ukraine was left with virtually no indigenous offensive power - the only way it can conduct offensive operations is with a mechanized package built from scratch by NATO. For all Ukraine’s bluster, the force commitment at Bakhmut left it unable to undertake any proactive operations all through the winter and spring, its multi-brigade counterattack at Bakhmut lamely fizzled out, and it left its supporters grasping at straws about an immanent counteroffensive to encircle Wagner by a reserve army that doesn’t exist. It was even reduced to sending small flying columns into Belgorod Oblast to launch terror raids, only to have them blown up - discovering that the Russian border is in fact crawling with forces of the very much intact Russian army.

———

I think that ultimately, neither army anticipated that Bakhmut would become the focal point of such high intensity combat, but the arrival of Ukrainian reserves in force created a unique situation. Russia was beginning a process of major force generation (with mobilization beginning in September), and the gridlocked, slow moving, Verdun-like environs of Bakhmut offered a good place for Wagner to bear the combat load while much of the regular Russian forces underwent expansion and refitting.

Ukraine, meanwhile, fell into the sunk cost fallacy and began to believe its own propaganda about “Fortress Bakhmut”, and allowed brigade after brigade to be sucked in, turning the city and its environs into a killing zone.

Now that Bakhmut is lost (or as Zelensky put it, exists “only in our hearts”), Ukraine faces an operational impasse. Bakhmut was after all a very good place to fight a static defense. If the AFU could not hold it, or even produce a favorable loss exchange, can a strategy of holding static fortified belts really be deemed viable? Meanwhile, the failure of the Syrskyi plan and the defeat of a multi-brigade counterattack by Russian motor rifle brigades casts serious doubt on Ukraine’s ability to advance on strongly held Russian positions.

Ultimately, both Ukraine and Russia traded for time in Bakhmut, but whereas Russia put up a PMC which primarily lost convicts, Ukraine bought time by chewing up a significant amount of its combat power. They bought time - but time to do what? Can Ukraine do anything that will be worth the lives it spent in Bakhmut, or was it all just blood for the blood god?

#bakhmut #ukraine #russia #nato #big serge #battle of bakhmut

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fallynleaf · 15 days ago

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(This is an afterword for Fate Unknown, my fic about the limited distribution short film 正体不明 that was produced for 行方不明展 "A Missing Exhibition". Contains full spoilers!)

"人間には行方不明の時間が必要です" , roughly "People need time to be unaccounted for" is a line from a poem by Noriko Ibaragi that has come up repeatedly in Nashi's interviews as an inspiration for A Missing Exhibition. Here's an interview (in Japanese, sorry) where he talks about it.

He says that when most people hear the word "行方不明" (going missing/disappearing/unaccounted for/whereabouts unknown), they tend to think of missing persons, kidnappings, crimes, etc.

But there is also another side to it, which is "社会的な文脈からの解放" (liberation from societal context). This is the concept that A Missing Exhibition is built around.

I think the reasons Kashima and Tsunaka had for wanting to, well, "liberate themselves from societal context" in the original film were intentionally left open-ended so that the viewer could project whatever you wanted onto them.

I think, though, that the interpretation of the characters as gay is included in that, maybe even deliberately, and that it is maybe the most straightforward interpretation, considering how the big twist in the 正体不明 film reframes the whole exhibition as basically one big desperate labor of love that Kashima spends nine years putting together just for the mere chance that he'll be able to see Tsunaka again.

Nashi also talks about how there is either hope or despair in the concept of “行方不明” that the exhibition expresses.

Personally, I feel like rather than an either/or, it’s almost a simultaneous hope/despair, like there’s a despair that drives people to want to disappear from the world, but also a hope that there is somehow a better world out there for them that they can escape to instead. If there wasn’t despair, there wouldn’t be a reason to disappear to somewhere else, but if there wasn’t hope, there wouldn’t be a reason to try for a new world rather than just dying in this one.

With the 正体不明 film specifically, I think the ending sort of lets you choose whether the feeling it leaves you with is hope or despair depending on how you interpret what happens. Like, I choose to believe the characters get their happy ending, and that Tsunaka is able to come back and stay in this world and that he and Kashima can be together and get a second chance at happiness.

I dunno if I’ve ever talked about this here before, but I personally really dislike the isekai genre. I don’t like the concept of death being the only way to solve all your problems and let you live in a world you actually want to live in, rather than having to fight to change the world you’re already in so that it becomes livable.

I didn’t think of A Missing Exhibition in terms of isekai until I saw Nashi bring it up, but the thought that kind of stuck with me is that in some ways, A Missing Exhibition is about the world left behind rather than the world people go to. I realized that concept was just infinitely more compelling to me than the isekai premise. How do the people in the real world deal with the loss of the person who got suddenly isekai’d away? How do you find a way to continue to live in this world?

I love the fact that on the surface, A Missing Exhibition is about a whole bunch of people disappearing to other worlds, but the story in 正体不明 is actually about bringing one person back to this world. That’s just beautiful to me.

I refer to A Missing Exhibition as "horror" because it's a project made by a bunch of creators who are active in the modern horror scene in Japan, but what's fascinating to me about it is that 正体不明 actually isn't really horror (Nashi calls it speculative fiction instead). The story is much more gentle than that, and it's far kinder to the characters than horror tends to be.

I don't know why I find that so fascinating. Maybe it's just that there's something kind of neat about seeing the tools of horror storytelling applied in such a different way. Maybe horror creators, too, need some time where they can liberate themselves from the societal context of being a horror creator.

(Incidentally, Tokio Omori's immediate next project after A Missing Exhibition was producing a BL drama. Well, it was still very much an Omori work...)

I had some amount of trouble titling this fic. I won't go too deep into it because it gets a bit lost in translation, but the whole exhibition has a themed naming pattern around words which end in 不明 ("unknown"), with the two most important ones being of course 行方不明 (literally "whereabouts unknown"), which the exhibition focuses on, and 正体不明 (literally "identity unknown"), the name of the short film.

The actual exhibition was divided into four sections, dealing with missing people, places, things, and memories, respectively:

「ひと」の行方不明 was 身元不明「場所」の行方不明 was 所在不明「もの」の行方不明 was 出所不明「記憶」の行方不明 was 真偽不明

In the interview linked above, they talk about the film 正体不明 as being basically a fifth part of the exhibition.

Seeing that, I thought, "well, my fic is the secret sixth part, then!" So of course I had to choose another 不明 word to fit into the naming scheme. I settled on 安否不明 (literally "fate unknown") because the story I wanted to tell is about what happened to the characters afterward.

Something I kept thinking about as I wrote the fic was about how you can survive a disaster without fully surviving it. There is of course that idea of people going to another world where their fate is uncertain, but I think, too, there is an uncertainty with coming back, like Tsunaka does.

The original 正体不明 film never defines exactly what was so hellish about the world Tsunaka came from, so I decided that his hell was basically a world with even more extreme capitalism and oppressive heteronormative norms than our world.

So then the story becomes, how do you recover from extreme heteronormative capitalist burnout? Can you ever truly recover from that?

I had some trouble writing this part because the short film really doesn't give us a whole lot of context about who these people even are outside of the exhibition. Like, what kinds of hobbies do they have outside of an obsession with disappearing to another world as teenagers? They're both probably extremely done with that concept now after everything they went through, haha.

I came up with birdwatching as a hobby for Tsunaka through kind of a roundabout way.

One of my Japanese study buddies had written about a book called How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, which had helped get him into birdwatching. I thought maybe having Tsunaka get into birdwatching would be a way to give him something to do while also maybe offering a bit of a balm to the harms inflicted on him by capitalism, so I actually paused working on my fic to read How to Do Nothing to see if that would give me some ideas, and it ended up being way more thematically appropriate than I had even considered.

The book actually literally addressed basically the same impulse that drives A Missing Exhibition: the whole desire to leave the world.

Here's an excerpt from the book:

One reaction to all of this is to head for the hills—permanently. In the second chapter, I look at a few different people and groups who took this approach. The countercultural communes of the 1960s in particular have much to teach us about the challenges inherent in trying to extricate oneself completely from the fabric of a capitalist reality, as well as what was sometimes an ill-fated attempt to escape politics altogether. This is the beginning of an ongoing distinction I’ll make between 1) escaping “the world” (or even just other people) entirely and 2) remaining in place while escaping the framework of the attention economy and an over-reliance on a filtered public opinion.

So the birdwatching in the fic is basically literally a replacement for disappearing to another world. It both offers the characters a way to heal and also helps treat the root cause of their pain and help them live in this world.

On a more technical writing level, it was also a great boon to me because I realized I could use it to create settings that closely parallel settings relating to people disappearing (an abandoned house, the beach, etc.) but give the characters a different reason to be there.

Also, this is a VERY subtle/fine-grained point that I don't expect anyone else to pick up on, but Kashima and Tsunaka actually have fundamentally different understandings of/approaches to birdwatching. Tsunaka sort of has Jenny Odell's approach (he actually gets into it in a very similar way to her: she started out observing crows at her house), and Kashima is stuck in basically "pokemon collecting" mode, haha. I think it's tied to the fixation on collecting he had to develop when making the exhibition. So he still has a ways to go before he's able to find the kind of peace in it that Tsunaka has found.

I had planned from the start for Tsunaka's PTSD to be a big part of the story, but something I actually didn't realize while planning but realized during the process of writing was that Kashima actually has some secondhand PTSD/survivor's guilt as well from all those years he spent researching people's disappearances. And just as the birds help ground Tsunaka, they also help ground Kashima a bit in those moments.

I had to spend some time researching birds in Japan in order to write this, and because this fic has a very specific timeframe, I also had to make sure the birds would be actually viewable in the places the characters were during the months that the fic takes place, so I spent some time browsing databases and also looking at Japan in iNaturalist. I found out about the short-tailed albatross and immediately knew that I was going to have to feature it in some way.

At this point, the fic started to veer more ecology/conservation focused, but I asked myself "what would Omori do?" and concluded the answer was "put more politics in" fgkdjhg so I ended up just embracing it. Sure, I'll turn A Missing Exhibition into a gay romance with overt anti-capitalist/ecological themes, why not?

Regarding the actual creators of the actual exhibition, I had a bit of trouble trying to reconcile the canon of the kayfabe creator of the exhibition (Kashima) with the actual creators (primarily Nashi and Omori, though Kondo was involved as well), who were themselves sort of part of the kayfabe.

Nashi, for instance, shows up as an onscreen character (as himself) in the first video for A Missing Exhibition, and he even got mentioned at the beginning of 正体不明 and was thus intended to be canon in some way in that work. I don't think Omori ever showed up onscreen for this project, though he has appeared in his own works in the past and clearly doesn't mind reality and fiction being mixed in this manner.

Even still, I actually didn't plan on them showing up in the fic, haha. It happened for a few reasons, one being that there really are not very many characters in this work, so I needed someone else for Kashima to interact with, and also this was another moment where I asked myself "what would Omori do?" and the answer was obviously "put himself in the work".

In any case, I'm grateful to the real creators for making A Missing Exhibition, and for them being extremely kind and welcoming to me when I reached out as a random LGBTQ fan overseas for whom their work resonated with.

I'm glad I started to become familiar with their work through this project, and I hope one day that more of their stuff makes it into a format that's accessible to an English-speaking audience.

Oh, by the way, there will be a book (in Japanese) coming out soon for A Missing Exhibition, though no word yet on whether or not it'll contain any new canon for Kashima and Tsunaka, or if its focus will just be on the actual physical exhibition.

I think I'd actually prefer it if the book was just the 5k characters of text from the actual exhibition, plus photographs of all the exhibits, and if it mostly left the canon from 正体不明 untouched. At most, I think I'd like just a small easter egg, like a photo of Kashima and Tsunaka together in middle school or something like that.

Though it would be nice to get proper full names for them...

#a post about the impulse to disappear from the world; why i hate isekai; horror that isn't horror; and blurring fiction and reality #A Missing Exhibition #行方不明展 #fanfic

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