#I say this like its a major part of CF when in fact it's mostly just Jake & Vincent annoying the hell out of each other

[nowis-scales]

Do you prefer Three Houses or Engage?

Whew, okay. I am happy to answer your question, but please be prepared for me to talk a lot, because I have a lot to say on this topic.

I haven’t played all of the routes of Three Houses. At this point in time, I’ve played Verdant Wind and Crimson Flower. As for Engage, I’ve played all of it (though my playthrough posts sure make it look the other way around, heh). From this perspective, it might seem like there is a possibility for a bit of bias here or there. And while I agree that that could be true…

In this specific case, however, I don’t think it matters. I greatly prefer Engage over 3H.

Now, I should start off by pointing out that some of the stuff I say is going to be hyperbolic. I’m at a point where I’m quite jaded with 3H and many of its fans. There’s only so much discourse and disrespect a girl can take before she becomes a little disenchanted with the subject in question. That being said, though… honestly, none of that stuff affects my overall view. It’s mostly just about the way I might be delivering the message.

The thing to understand about me is though I love video games, if it’s a video game with a story as a major point, it automatically becomes the most important part. I enjoyed both 3H and Engage, but… the best way I know how to put why I would choose Engage over 3H is that while both have their share of writing problems, 3H’s bother me that much more.

To me, it just seems like Koei Tecmo and IntSys had this wide scope for 3H and couldn’t narrow down on what they were doing. And yeah, stones in a glass house comin’ from a Fates fan, I hear the people — but for all that 3H gets called this morally grey masterpiece, half the time it just seems like the “grey morality” comes from the fact that they couldn’t agree whether or not EdeIgard was in the wrong. In developer interviews, Kusakihara of IntSys, calls her the villain. Her route is referred to as one where you bulldoze everyone else to get what you want. It’s not exactly flattering, yet that same interview also states her popularity with the creative team. In my playthrough posts of CF, I know I mentioned to the point of annoyance that she rarely, if ever, faces a proper consequence or sacrifice for what she wants. And in Hopes it only seemed to get worse, with the developer interviews there actually confirming that she is actively happier than she ever was in Houses… Even her ending in Azure Gleam, which is sexist and disgusting, can be read as being in her favour, because how can you accuse her of anything anymore? She looks like a grown woman, but she’s mentally a freshly teenage girl! No more consequences! It feels like they’re just constantly flip flopping between “oh she’s right” or “oh she’s wrong”, which is not something you want from a perpetrator of conflict in the narrative. One minute they’re saying she’s villainous, and the next there’s a convenient & unclear excuse that tries to make her a good person for doing it. If something doesn’t favour whatever the devs wanted to highlight in that moment, it just gets unceremoniously swept under the rug. The Agarthans are proof enough of that. That’s not grey morality, that’s just being indecisive and, quite frankly, the opposite of impartial in Koei’s case.

That’s another problem that gets me about 3H’s story. I hate, hate their supposed “worldbuilding” trick where they just throw out minor details about like, a country’s problem with sexism or a group of people like the Almyrans or the Dagdans and just… never elaborate. I’m particularly interested in the Nabateans and the sexism of Adrestia myself, but are those points that ever get elaborated on? No, because it’s time to talk about crests and the crest system, which could have been an interesting look at classism if the concept actually stood up under scrutiny. It is very difficult for me to believe that there is some specific-to-Fodlan classism issue going on when Crests don’t determine whether you become or stay noble. Byleth is not immediately noble once it’s acknowledged that they have one, and Constance’s house fell in spite of it. Considering the possible marriage option for Ingrid in her paralogue, being nobility is not even the only way to ensure success in society. And all this is without even acknowledging the ridiculousness of the idea that the Nabateans would want to perpetuate a system that was actively soaked in the blood of their own. It just feels like, rather than engaging more clearly with how the crest system would actually work and subsequently be attacked, it just becomes this abstract thing that all other interesting thoughts get sucked into, without any concept that it’s real aside from EdeIgard and Sylvain mentioning it. I don’t feel passionately about it, it’s just kind of something that’s there. It could have been interesting to execute, but the way they went about it just doesn’t make it seem real to me — so, again, any attempt at a morally grey conflict there is lost on me.

And then there’s the problem with tell don’t show. I’ve seen people saying that Engage has this too… but 3H is god awful for this. The whole time I was playing Engage, I just remember thinking how much I loved how naturally emotional everything was. When you fight Hortensia again in the Solmic castle, the fact that she’s crying that she just wants her family back is sad. It’s natural. You don’t feel like the game is holding your hand, trying to make you to feel upset on Hortensia’s behalf. You don’t need to be told that Hortensia is trying so hard to be independent and strong and leaderly. You can just hear it in the way that she instead whimpers about how nobody will give her what she wants. You can tell that she’s angry that she cannot emulate her father or Ivy, and that she can’t get Ivy to do the things she wants her to do when it should have been so easy in theory. The way she reacts to the situation laid out before her shows us that yes, Hortensia has been through a lot the last little while and is getting to a breaking point where we might be able to help her. It’s what makes it that much more cruel when Zephia mind controls her to rip her away from us. 3H’s kind of pale in comparison at times, really.

The best way I know how to explain how 3H kinda flops at this is to continue picking on EdeIgard a little (sorry). I’ve rambled about it before, but presumably in an effort to show the legitimacy of EdeIgard’s suffering at the hands of the Agarthans in Crimson Flower, they put in this scene where she sees a rat and gets scared. The implication is supposed to be that there were numerous rats in the dungeon where she was kept when she was being experimented on, and that she now has a trauma response to them. However, when you actually get to the scene, her reaction is obscenely unrealistic — because it’s about being cute. This is a trauma response she’s supposed to be having, and Byleth can tease her about it. When responding to the stimulus of the rat, she doesn’t even respond with intense fear or anything symptomatic of the actual mental illness she would probably have. She just screams, and then tries to act like it didn’t happen, but of course she gets all blushy about it. It is entirely ingenuine, and I can’t just bring myself to emotionally invest if they only know how to give characters subdued, acceptable reactions or have them just tell me that something made them sad or scared. Just hearing that this character has had a sad life — and, conveniently, almost all of them have had a sad life — doesn’t make me feel emotionally connected to them. Representing the more human parts of that struggle does.

Bottom line, I shouldn’t feel like the game is holding up an “APPLAUSE” style sign that says “BE SAD” whenever the characters talk about things that have happened to them.

These are three big things that I just feel really tamper with my enjoyment of 3H to its fullest extent. The game just makes me feel too micromanaged, like it doesn’t trust me to be smart enough to pick up on the things it wants to say. For all that people say it’s the best story FE’s done in years, I would actually disagree on that. It’s the characters and the lore that carry this game. The story is just not that well-organized, nor is it willing to give you any sort of space.

That being said, I do not dislike 3H! At the moment I am… admittedly incredibly sick of it, but I don’t dislike it. There are plenty of things that it manages to do well! Like I just said, I think the lore is really interesting. The Nabateans in particular have always been a subject of interest for me, because there’s something so intriguing to me about them sort of being a parallel being to humanity, but still being so viciously discriminated against. The conflict between Duscur and Faerghus was also pretty attention-catching, and while I’m not super crazy about how the Insurrection of the Seven is portrayed, I do like that this is a kind of political conflict that they would confront.

In fact, the fact that this game does try to confront the more political side of things is another thing I like about it. Whether it does this well all the time is a different situation entirely, but just the fact that they decided to put this in is something I enjoy. One thing I know that I instantly enjoyed about Persona 5 that was also reflected in 3H was the way it brought up how the socio-political issues were affecting the society that everyone was living in. Each country had its own individual problems, with Adrestians struggling with sexism & classism, the Faerghans with their unstable government and newly developed tendency toward anti-Duscurian racism, and the Leicester Alliance with its imbalance/disagreement between people and the doubt surrounding its new leaders. To have these things helps us better understand what the characters are going through, as well as the causes for a war. It also makes the world feel more alive, because now we know what kinds of things each group is up against. It develops them. I’m still not a fan of how sometimes these things are just brought up and dropped in favour of one thing or the other, but there is often enough thought in them to make it most of the way, and that most of the way is awesome.

As for the characters, they have to confront a recruitment mechanic that completely throws their motives out the window at times just to conform to a specific narrative… and they still turned out pretty good, so that really speaks to how great they are! There is a lot of detail to put into each character’s life, and for the most part, the devs took care to make sure that everyone had a tie to someone. If they didn’t, then that felt intentional in some way. Relationships in particular really humanize characters, and I feel like 3H took that into account. I know I said it eons ago, but I’m still so delighted that we know about Maya Kiersten. Other FE games don’t tend to give these minor characters that a main character loves a name, but here we are, getting all kinds of details about her. Same goes for Holst and Rodrigue. It’s fun, and I really like that this happens. It also intrigues me that some of these characters aren’t total angels, and have their ugly sides as well. I need to put this in big bold lettering, but I do not condone the racism of Hilda or Ingrid. However, I do think that it’s an interesting addition to each of their characters. With the ways they are otherwise portrayed, it is possible that you could get too rosy of an image of the two girls. Their own racism undercuts that, it makes them feel more realistic, because bigoted people aren’t all one-note. They can seem otherwise kind and dependable, and still not be able to separate their head from their ass when it comes to being considerate of others. It fleshes them out. Details like this do add a little more to them, even if I wish they would actually explore them more in the context of the world as well. Racism that doesn’t get improved or worked upon is just racism for realism’s sake, and why should people who experience irl racism have to deal with that? They’re very aware of what the real world looks like, thank you.

The thing about 3H in comparison to Engage is that it just trips so many more times. I didn’t know what it was about Engage that just caught me, but once it had me, it had me. The emotional influence was definitely part of it, which I already mentioned, but I think another thing that I just liked in comparison was the fact that it didn’t try as hard as 3H did for some of that stuff. Thematically yes, Engage is more straightforward and doesn’t pile on the angst quite the same. It’s lighter and doesn’t take itself painfully seriously. Nonetheless, the stuff it does try to do comes out beautifully. It (for the most part — we need to have a whole other post about Alcryst) knows when to make you laugh, when to make you feel sad, and when to instill feelings of suspense or hope. It cares deeply about its characters and seeing them to the end of their journey. I never felt like I didn’t know the thesis of the game, and I almost never felt like there was a moment where I really wished they would just tell that part of the story differently. The whole thing just felt very carefully put together to me, and made for a better impression overall because there were no conflicting accounts of what was meant to go on based on the writer at the moment. I could tell that the game trusted me to draw my own conclusions. It made for a much more fun experience, because I love finding these small things woven in by the developers and mining them out like little gems. That’s part of the reason why I love Fates so much. While everyone else is complaining about how awful it is, I get to be searching for and finding all of these amazing parts that just got totally missed. I love stuff like that.

The worldbuilding in Engage is also something that I feel was a lot stronger. Things don’t just drop off. Tensions between Brodia and Elusia, for example, constantly inform the way the characters approach situations. Even conversations that are supposed to be silly, like that of Étie and Goldmary, are informed by that tension. Characters don’t forgive and forget everything that happened to them in relation to their societies just because they’re working together now. Citrinne doesn’t forgive Yunaka for her assassinations right away, she remains suspicious of her for a long time. When Ivy plays a part in the summoning of the Fell Dragon and ends up being part of the reason why Morion was killed, Alcryst holds a grudge against her — even though Ivy was part of the solution for the rest of the group, and even though Ivy herself turns out not to be a Fell Dragon worshipper at all. Things like these are constantly informing the plot and the characters. They don’t just disappear when it is inconvenient for them to exist. This is just one of many examples, but it really made the conflict feel like it was distinct, and thus was more meaningful when they came together.

I also just generally feel like the cultures in Engage ended up being more unique as well. I’ve played the entirety of Crimson Flower and Verdant Wind, as well as about 8 chapters of Azure Moon, and I’m not sure I could do as much to show how the cultures vary as much as I could with Engage. However, to give credit where credit is due, one could argue that the cultures of the Alliance, the Empire, and the Kingdom are less distinct than Elusia, Solm, Lythos, and Brodia because 3H’s conflicts need to build up to the final concept of uniting Fodlan. Nonetheless, the whole point of the nations breaking up from being just Adrestia is at least partially because the cultures are too different, and even if they weren’t… This would still just be more proof of my point that EdeIgard gets stuff weighted towards her. Therefore, I kinda prefer to think that it is not as much of a deliberate choice because the purposeful interpretation is straight up glorifying the imperialism element of the game. It’s just different in the case of Engage, where the differences and similarities are there with much more explicit purpose. The peace of Firene is played quite like the freedom of Solm, for example. Both nations have this seemingly leisurely thing that they value above all else, and it’s something that they know must make them seem overly gentle or carefree to outsiders. Nonetheless, once you start to spend time with characters like Céline and Timerra, it becomes clear just how viciously they fight to protect their people’s right to having those things in their lives. And this, of course, isn’t the only similarity, nor is it the only difference. If you need to see more of what I mean, emblemxeno made a great post on this that might help fill in some more gaps. It’s stuff like this that makes me prefer the way Engage executes its worldbuilding, because you can feel the way the countries influence each other, as well as the things that come innately from themselves. It’s not quite the same as Fodlan’s sort-of similar cultures. The ideas from each place don’t bounce off each other quite the same, so I find they’re not as entertaining to observe.

I could probably keep going on for awhile longer, but the answer to this ask is like… probably way more than you bargained for when you initially sent it, so I might leave it off at that. Any further, more specific questions can always be sent at a later date! I’m certainly not opposed to getting more asks after all ;)

At the very least, hopefully I was able to shed some light on my opinions on the contrasts between 3H and Engage, and why each one either does or doesn’t work better for me. Thanks for taking the time to ask!

#3H spoilers #fire emblem engage spoilers #fodlan fault-finding #shut up about del

[marengogo]

The Thing Is: - 1 : BALANCE.

Listening to INDIGO by RM on repeat. STILL. YUP, STILL ON THE REPEAT TRAIN 😬.

[Music is a very big part of my life and I’m MOSTLY INCAPABLE of writing without music, so I just thought I'd share what I am listening to while writing this]

–🐺–🐺–🐺–

So this is what I’d like to call an educated rant about Capulates (aka most Taekookers) and Montagues (aka some Jikookers). In fact, this is mostly a rant about the things that both “families” cause on that godforsaken bird app, which apparently we can’t live with but also can’t live without I’ll explain this more in depth in my Ted-Talk. This is a rant about BALANCE and ultimately its lack thereof. That being said, to make it all make sense, let’s begin with some context and, like I always do, let me make it relevant and personal.

When it comes to Jikookers in general, I firmly believe that what I am about to talk about is known by a few, should be known by many but unfortunately is ignored/irrelevant to the vast majority and now that, THAT, is a fucking pity. One of my favourite quotes is “Patience is a virtue, Possess it if you can, Seldom found in woman, Never found in man”. Admittedly, we could stay here and argue about every single word from the Seldom to the man part of this quote, but what I’d like you to please focus on is the ”Patience is a virtue, Possess it if you can…” part. 

I used to be a very silent, and calm, person and with those traits also came an infinite amount of patience; there was a time I used to boast about my patience. Alas, what I didn't know was that Life had made up a whole shitty plan for me. Right from when I was 11 it decided that “you know what? You seem like you could handle a huge amount of different types of shit all at once, and I just so happen to have loads of shit but no place where to put it so… here! You can have some of it!” And so it was that shit was systematically piled on me constantly, and I dealt with it patiently, respectfully and with dignity until I turned 24 when something major happened to me that made me snap and I turned into the quick-to-anger adult that some may know me to be nowadays (for context, I’m in my 30s right now).

The funny, but not-so-funny, thing is that when I snap I do it around those who are closest to me. Snapping has become the way I let out my true self as an unhealthy result of keeping everything bottled in for so long, which was indeed bad handling on my side, but I really didn’t know any better. It must be said though,  that when I snap, I don’t snap at my close friends (... family tho, is a different story …) what I do is let out my frustration with them, which usually goes like this: 

UNOPENED TEXT from Close Friends (CFs) (but thank god for text previews!): Gurl, how was the weekend?

ME: I see there is a text from my close friend/s, but I’m so busy and stressed that I don’t even want to open it knowing that I wouldn’t be able to either hold a proper convo or say anything positive. BUT in the back of my head I know there is a message from the important people in my life waiting: and I add unreasonable “stress”.

UNOPENED TEXT from CFs: send funny images or vocal messages.

ME: I’m still not willing to just open the message to just leave it without a reply, so I keep ignoring. But still I know the message is there, hence “stress” keeps adding.  

finally OPENED TEXT from CFs: Call me when you can or shall we meet this weekend?

So then eventually I make an effort, get out of my head ass, and make time call and …

ME: Gurl, how have you been? … yeah man I’m like super exhausted and [PROCEEDS TO ENGAGE IN THIS UNPROVOKED LONG ASS RANT ABOUT HER WEEK. LIKE REALLY LONG. LIKE A GOOD 30mins AT LEAST, which could have been avoided if I had made time through the week when they actually texted 🙃] … but enough about me, tell me all about what happened to you?

Its hella hypocritic and weird but my CFs know exactly how I am, and how to handle me, and in the same way I also know how to handle their unique traits, so keeping this in mind, I try not to feel too bad about my lack of constant communication and my sudden vomiting of emotions thereafter, it's between me and them, them and me, and if you are not within our circle, you would never now and it is very frankly nobody else's business.

That being said, all things considered, I still somehow tend to be quite patient when it comes to things that are not directly related to me and I’ve also found out that I have an “interesting” amount of self-control. Just like Patience, I do think that Self-Control is a virtue. Both virtues would allow us to reach Balance which I believe is ultimately what we should be aiming for in life and how actually life works. 

Now, where am I going with this? And how does it relate to Capulets & Montagues (C&M)? Does it even relate to Jikook? Gurl, what?!

… Bear with me just a little longer.

Balance. My life has been devoted to finding balance in everything, reason why I love grey so much for example (though my fav color is actually BLUE 💙). When balanced you can confidently move forward, hypothetically causing no immediate harm  and also for example not snap 😬. But what is balance? Following is the dictionary definition pertaining to this subject:

a situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.

Okay. So, the way I see it, there are 2 obvious ways you can obtain balance:

Two opposite but equal forces being applied on an object which will either cause it to stay still in a balanced stop or even move in a balanced way

The application of no force. If an object is not moving it is indeed balanced as its present situation is not altering.

And here is where we finally talk about C&M and Twitter.

Capulets & Montagues respectively believe that their ship is THE ONE and they will resort to any emphasis on the ANY means necessary to battle each other and prove that they are right, be it breach of privacy of the individuals they swear they love and respect, or complete lack of common sense, YOU NAME IT!, if it assures them a winning tweet for the day; they will use it.

Have you noticed how, even though I call them Capulets and Montagues, I do not refer to JK & JM as Romeo & Juliet? They are in a difficult environment, for sure, but I do not believe that their story must end in tragedy. Basically I do not believe them to be star-crossed lovers. HOWEVER most Taekookers and some Jikookers do believe that. C&M are living within the  wrong story, so to say, as in, this is really  NOT Romeo & Juliet but they unprovoked decided that this IS Romeo & Juliet: Do I make sense? But how to blame them? Most Taekookers and some Jikookers are exactly like Capulets and Montagues and like all similarly belligerent parties before them: Blind with nonsensical rage and motivated by misplaced righteousness. 

On a weekly basis Capulates will “find” something damning about Taekook and taunt Montagues about it. Montagues will try if possible to debunk it, hence starting a fight. The following day, Montagues will “discover” their version of something damning about Jikook and taunt Capulets. Capulets will try their very best to debunk it while starting a fight. Oh and solo THV, PJM and JJK will also add to the mix just to add some flare to the already flabbergastingly stupid occurance. All the while, they all will be intently ignoring and completely not caring about this very damning fact: Taehyung loves Jungkook & Jimin, Jungkook loves Taehung & Jimin and Jimin loves Taehyung & Jungkook in ways THEY ONLY KNOW and it is very frankly none of our business.

At this point this might make you recall a couple of things I wrote a couple of paragraphs earlier … such as, yes, BALANCE; a situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions. Capulets & Montagues. One attacks, the other counterattacks and viceversa over and over again, like a very malicious and impeccably accurate Newton’s cradle.The only way to stop ANY Newton’s cradle, would be an external force causing it to stop. A full stop. 

In the C&M case, this full stop would have to come from VMinKook and they would have  to come out and state: “This is how things are…”. However, not only it is absolutely not their requirement to do so, but given that this hasn’t happened yet, we can respectfully deduce that either they can’t currently expose their own current truth (which is a unfortunately a narrative favourable to both C&M alike… ) or that they don’t really care about C&M fights, which I wouldn’t blame them for either.

Now, if you follow me, you know where I stand, right? You know that I do think that there might be something going on between JK and JM, right? So my belief is that this Newton’s Cradle is also being perhaps unwillingly kept in motion by the fact that currently JK & JM as well as Tae are righteously keeping very much to themselves, like I’ve explained in the Loud Art of Silence . There’s been a bit of a change in the VMinKook dynamics since 2019 hasn’t it? Taekook had a heart-to-heart during In The Soop in 2020 after which they successfully started mending the awkward tension in their relationship.

As for Jikook, other than Big Hit/HYBE, group, subgroup and birthday lives, they haven’t been sharing much with us have they? Yet every time we get a glimpse at them, say during concerts or awards ceremonies, they act and interact as we’ve known them to, so one could conclude that it took them a good 6 years but they’ve seemingly finally transitioned into being more private about their relationship. Good for them, truly, applaud them for that but Montagues … Montagues are really not about that life: If Jikook keeps shit to themselves, how are they going to win their weekly Twitter Battles? And mind you this has nothing to do with those Jikookers who rectifyi facts that Capulets constantly go around distorting, which also happens on a daily basis on this blasted bird app.

You know what happened in my brain when I realised that the Boys were gonna go and serve in the military? Aside from the ugly AF crying I realised and accepted that we would most likely get nothing new from Jikook until 2025 when they would all be back together and would supposedly no longer owe anything to any greater entity. This was when I also realised that I would have to be really patient and apply a lot of self-control. I realised that I would miss Jikook interacting, I would miss that a lot, but there would be nothing I could do about it. 

Until 2025 the C&M Twitter Balance will keep balancing and that is just a fact. “Well then bitch stay away from Twitter!” I would, trust me, I wish I could, but the reality is that the bird app is unfortunately the place where you get ANY news in the timeliest of manners and from there it is a battle to figure out veracity of said information. At the end of the day information is power and what you decide to do, as well as not to do, with it also defines character.

Until 2025 patience, self-control and balance, in all their forms are going to be key. As well as constantly reminding oneself that regardless of our beliefs, feelings and speculations Jikook are not a confirmed couple and they owe us nothing. However, y’all best believe that nothing lasts forever, and these are grown ass men, so when they’ll be out of the military their chapter 3 will start and most likely big changes in their lives will also follow and then, right about then, we will get that heavy-ass-hammer-fall-full-stop to the C&M Twitter Balance which might still continue with the deeply cray-cray part of the fandom, right then, truths will be revealed and we will have to accept them. So until then let’s keep reminiscing gratefully and accepting whatever we are given graciously.

… Until then, always respectfully yours 💜💛🫰🏾

Marengo

#Marengo TTI #Jikook #Jikook's Capulets & Montagues #That Blasted Bird App #Of Patience Self-Control and Balance #Marengo Rant

[butwhatifidothis]

So if it is MEANT to be a villain route...Why are the villanous actions NEVER ADDRESSED by ANY of the characters outside of "Huh. I wonder if there was a better way to do this."

Why did they have Rhea go insane and torch a city? Why make potray Rhea as a villain when you could potray her as the hero whos genuinely trying to do good? Why have a majority of the characters still be able to be recruited regardless of if it makes sense? Why have the ending narration mostly be possible? WHY have Edelgard succeed and somehow turn her tyranny into a society that "ensures a free and independent society fot all."

If it's REALLY a villain route, why is there not a single character ending mentioning things like rebellions and conflict? Hell, the ending narration shows not a hint of villainy and potrays its ending as heroic.

"Embracing her newfound power, Edelgard could at last set about destroying Fódlan's entrenched system of nobility and rebuild a world free from the tyranny of Crests and status."

Again, if it was TRULY meant to be the villain route, it would have been POTRAYED as such. Instead of a villain route, we got "A route where one of the villains is made the protagonist and her views and villainous actions are never questioned OR addressed and outside of the conquest and starting the war, everyone is mostly happy."

Alright so this is going to seem like a nonserious answer, but I'm 100% serious when posting this image as part of a genuine answer to this question:

On CF, your actions are never addressed because of ignorance. On the surface, your actions seem like they've helped Fodlan, but as soon as the player looks any deeper it starts to become evident that something isn't right.

If Edelgard made a free and independent society for all, why are the people spied on in Hubert's ending with Dorothea? Why are rebellions secretly being put down in his ending with Shamir? That's not free, in a general sense or from specifically tyranny. That's a direct contradiction from two of the characters that can only be played on CF, and this is only found on CF.

Rhea is portrayed as a villain because she is Nabatean, and Edelgard hates Nabateans, and you are playing a route that emphasizes her ideals - which include wiping out all of the inhuman, bestial, vile, cruel Nabateans that have been plaguing humanity’s world. Rhea goes insane on CF because unlike all of the other routes, where the player and the lord never go out of their way to trample and spit on their enemies' trauma, that's what you are doing the entire time you play CF to Rhea - for months once Byleth returns, and that’s being extremely generous and not counting the entire war. You help drive Rhea and the other Nabateans away from their homes when taking over Garreg Mach - like Nemesis did to Rhea after the Red Canyon Massacre! You're helping someone try to kill off the rest of her people - like Nemesis did at Zanado! You're trying to kill Rhea with the Sword of the Creator, her mother's mutilated corpse - like Nemesis did! You're doing so with the descendent of Wilheim - spitting on the legacy of the one human Rhea could trust during the War of Heroes! You're literally recreating the single worst moment of Rhea's life, all so that you can help the one who views her as less than human.

Portraying Rhea as "the hero who's genuinely trying to do good" goes against Edelgard's viewpoint of all Nabateans being evil, and you're never meant to question Edelgard or make her change her beliefs. You as the player are actively discouraged from talking back to Edelgard, as she will noticeably get upset whenever you do - many times you will even lose support points with her, and this is especially bad for specifically Edelgard because you have to get to a certain support level with her to enter her route, with you having less chapters to do so because she won't talk to you until after Byleth achieves the Sword of the Creator in Chapter 4.

Look at how Rhea, Dimitri, and Claude are portrayed on CF. Rhea and Dimitri are demonized, while Claude is given some leeway from Edelgard. Now notice who of the three of them always speak their minds over Edelgard's villainy to her face, and which of the three of them bends to Edelgard's view of them as the bad guy. Dimitri and Rhea never allow themselves to bend to Edelgard - they call her out and call her actions evil. Claude, on the other hand, will remove himself from Fodlan and then afterwards make himself out to be a bad guy whom Edelgard managed to take down. He puffs up her ego, and he gets to live, while the two that don't must die. Edelgard is the one always out for the kill, and only by submitting to her is anyone allowed to live - which, I don’t think needs to be said, isn’t very heroic of her.

I've had my fair share of complaints over the characters that can be recruited over to CF, but even with those complaints... look at how those characters behave on CF. None of them are Felix levels of negative character development, but they all act noticeably worse on CF vs how they are on the other routes. To name some notable examples: Ignatz goes from wanting to paint Garreg Mach as it stood five years before to preserve its beauty to wanting to paint the violent downfall of the Alliance, Lysithea wants to abandon House Ordelia, which is in direct contrast to her core character motivation, Ingrid is willing to throw away her lifelong dream of being a knight of Faerghus, which she herself says is her spitting on her dead betrothed’s dreams, Leonie works with Jeralt’s killers, etc. etc.. And mind, CF is the route that locks out the most units - there's the obvious ones like Dedue and Gilbert who were already route exclusive, but then there's Seteth and Flayn, Catherine, Cyril, and Hilda. CF is the only route to have even non-exclusive units be completely unavailable no matter what.

Edelgard doesn't make a society that is "free," like I said above - having a secret police monitor the people's actions, or is ready to put down anyone who tries to rise up against her, is literally the opposite of free. Edelgard can and will ban plays she doesn't like - not free. Edelgard only allows state-sanctioned religion, if she does allow it - not free.

CF is a route that wants to make the player believe the lie that you're not the villain, because you are playing from the perspective of someone who herself doesn't think she's the villain, but like. Look at what you're doing. You're invading two countries for the express, explicit purpose of taking them over and making them your own. You're working with someone who's been trying to reunite Fodlan back under Adrestia as early as the prologue when she tried to have Dimitri and Claude assassinated. You're helping TWS. Your Imperial presence makes Church people flee - which, given that Edelgard wants Rhea and those involved with the Church dead, I don't blame them. You're working with someone who is starving her people so that she can carry on with her war.

CF lies to the player - Edelgard lies, constantly. She says she's willing to let Rhea live, but literally the scene before she says she seeks to fuckin' Exodia Rhea. She lies about Arianrhod. She lies - or is flat-out wrong, which isn't much better - about the Church hoarding wealth and about the Church splitting up the Empire. She lies about not knowing about TWS pre-ts. She helps spread the lie of Duscur being the ones who killed Lambert. She lied about not knowing where Flayn was when she was kidnapped. She lies to her people by making them believe she’s making the orders during the war, not Byleth. There's a student who doubts all of what Edelgard says right before the timeskip happens and who isn't sure about his decision to stay, and then there’s a man who calls Edelgard “a tricksy one” on the last explore section for lying about attacking the Kingdom capitol. She’s wrong about the history of Nemesis and Seiros, calling Nemesis killing all of Rhea’s family a “simple dispute.” She lies to her people about an entire war against a group who just a little bit ago were her allies. Lies and ignorance are staple points to CF as a route, it’s baked into it, so the idea of the CF going “oh no you totally are the good guys” literally as the city burns down around the players doesn’t come from nowhere.

And like... the ending narration “shows not a hint of villainy?” Um.

Her stepping on the flags of the Alliance and Church? Her recreating a painting of Napoleon - that little known imperialist - down to the hand of justice? Her denouncing gods constantly and then being ushered in by a statue with heavy resemblance to Nike, Goddess of victory? Hubert plotting away from the sight of the rejoicing people? Yeah, there’s a lot of hints to villainy.

Again, CF isn’t “portrayed” as a villain route because it’s you falling for the lies of Edelgard. You have a wool over your eyes. You accept everything Edelgard says as fact, even when she actively contradicts herself - sometimes as radically as in back-to-back scenes. You view yourself as a savior to humanity, even when you plunge it into darkness. You don’t think you’re the villain, so your actions aren’t going to be put in an explicitly villainous light - at least, not by anyone on your side.

This post showcases the difference between non-recruited characters fighting non-CF!Byleth vs CF!Byleth. Characters are mostly saddened by having to fight Byleth in the former, while they are mostly betrayed on CF. Byleth is very clearly seen as being wrong for having sided with Edelgard on CF by the non-recruited characters - Edelgard’s actions may not be directly criticized (save for by Dimitri and a few others), but it makes no sense for these characters to be this shocked and betrayed by Byleth siding with her if her actions were so good. Leonie deadass calls you a traitor to Jeralt, Ingrid says that you are not fit to rule Fodlan specifically for siding with Edelgard and the Empire after all she and they have done, and Dimitri questions you as to why you chose Edelgard and her “savage, bloody path,” just to name a few notable examples. You, as the player, are being criticized for siding with Edelgard. You say that the villainous actions are “NEVER ADDRESSED by ANY of the characters,” but what else are these reactions but characters addressing your villainous actions?

And like... “a route where one of the villains is the protagonist” bro that’s a villain route. Like. I’m not trying to be mean, but I am genuinely confused as to what you were trying to get at here.

Like. In a vacuum? I might can get the idea of CF not being a villain route a little better, were it the only route available (though even that is a very big stretch). But you have three whole other routes where there’s no conquest, there’s no working with TWS, there’s no using Demonic Beasts, there’s no killing/exiling the remaining (immediately known) Nabateans, there’s no continuous and long-standing lies that never get outed, the lords never stay flat out wrong about the events of the game, non-recruited characters aren’t shooting Byleth up the ass with accusations of being a traitorous lemming who’d follow Edelgard off a cliff... and they achieve peace. Those endings, with Dimitri Claude and “Rhea” (SS ain’t really her route even though it should’ve been but ye), lack the following in any of their endings:

Censorship

Spying on the people

Constantly putting down rebels in secret

State-sanctioned religion

(mind, this last one is in direct contradiction to CF’s ending narration that says that Church is destroyed)

None of this happens on AM, VW, and SS. They all have peaceful endings. They all have Fodlan see the light of dawn, and that is never contradicted in their endings. CF is the only route to have all of these things happen in it - I think that’s enough for it to be considered a villain route lol

#ask #anon #anti edelgard #Anti-edelgard #Edelgard discourse #Edelgard critical #just to be safe #Again really hope I don't come across badly and I'm sorry if I do! #like. I do see where you're coming from! A lot of times villain routes acknowledge you to be the big bad meanie bobeenie! #at least more directly than CF does - because CF does! Through the non-recrutied characters and through the subtext! #sure you can miss out on the former if you manage to recruit everyone but the latter is always present! #Fodlan is in a noticeably worse state in CF than on the other routes and you are actively questioned as to why you joined [lord's] side #by some of the characters you CAN'T recruit (Dimitri; Catherine) #which doesn't happen on the other routes - the other character just wish that Byleth chose them or don't want to fight Byleth #plus there's all of the actions you commit/are complicit in on CF vs the other routes #it just isn't flat out in your face with it because like... Edelgard doesn't view herself as the villain. A Byleth who chose to walk with #her doesn't view her as the villain - even while knowing all oft he heinous shit she's been a part of #so if Edelgard doesn't view herself as the villain and this Byleth doesn't view her as the villain and everyone trusts Byleth's word #who on your side is going to call you out? #hope I'm making sense!

[tanadrin]

How /did/ things change after 2001? I was born in that year and everyone says it was different before, but I've never really gotten a sense of how.

It is difficult for me to emphasize just how different the world you see on the evening news is now, from what it was like before 2001, at least as I remember it. There’s a scene in Farscape, where after years of trying to get home, the astronaut protagonist John Crichton finally makes it back to Earth with his alien friends in tow, and when he’s reunited with his father, he’s shocked to discover his dad has gone from this optimistic, forward-looking, hopeful dreamer to a nervous, jingoistic conservative. His attitude is basically, “yes, there’s dangerous aliens out there who may or may not be trying to kill us--but the galaxy is a place full of wonders you’ve never dreamed of.” His father, in the meantime, has retreated from his hopes for a science-fiction future, and views his new alien friends with suspicion.

It’s not a subtle metaphor, but it’s true. The 90s--at least in the US, at least as I remember them--were a relentlessly optimistic period. Even if things were not yet at their ideal state, there was very much a sense they were heading there; politics was mostly down to what exact flavor of the neoliberal consensus you preferred, Clinton or Bush, and the international triumph of liberal democracy was either a fait accompli (cf. the erstwhile USSR), or just around the corner (cf. hopes for China’s liberalization in the wake of market reforms). Yes, in retrospect, this was kind of a dumb world view. If you actually lived in Russia in the 90s--to say nothing of the Balkans--it was a rough decade, and a lot of the relentless optimism of the period in the United States was down to the privileged position we viewed the world from.

The blunting of that optimism--the reminder that we were still embedded in history, and the final triumph of everything good and just was not foreordained--would not in itself have been a catastrophe. Terrorism was not a strange concept in the 90s, and even Al-Qaeda-style terrorism had its predecessors in attacks on American ships and embassies. 9/11 itself was confusing and chaotic and sad, but 9/11 wasn’t the catastrophe. The catastrophe came after, in how we responded.

I think something broke in America between 1945 and 1991. Something shifted, in a nasty way we didn't realize while we were occupied with communism and stagflation and the civil rights movement. I don't mean to say that America before 1945 was the Good Guys. But the American state and the American political class viewed the world with... humility? Like, sure, the can-do Yankee spirit before 1945 had its own special kind of arrogance (and greed, and hideous bigotry), but it still thought of the world in terms of obligations we owed other countries. By the time the Cold War ended, and the US was the sole remaining superpower, that wasn't how we viewed the world. It was still sort of how we told each other, and our children, what the world was like. We certainly talked a big game about democracy and human rights. But as soon as that principled stance was tested, we folded like a cheap suit. What we should have done after 9/11 was what we had done after every terrorist incident in or against the United States before then: treated it like the major crime it was, sent a civilian agency like the FBI in to investigate, and pursue the perpetrators diplomatically. What we did instead was treat it like the opening salvo of a war--in fact, invented a war to embed it within, to give ourselves narrative justification for that stance--and crank every element of paranoid jingoism instantly up to 11. It has never abated since.

Some of this is the little things. The TSA and the Department of Homeland Security--a name I thought was creepy Orwellian shit right from the get-go. The terror alert levels. (God! remember those?) The fact that airport security--despite being just as ineffective today as it was on September 12--is still routinely humiliating and invasive and just a total waste of everybody’s time. Some of it is the big things. The way security, and the need for security, trumps all other demands including the state’s obligation to protect civil rights. And the fact that this just isn’t even up for debate anymore. 9/11, as Chomsky presciently observed, was a boon for authoritarians everywhere. Suddenly, “counterterrorism” was the magic word that let you get away with anything, like “anti-communism” twenty years prior. At the most extreme end, this led to things like anti-atheism laws being promulgated in Saudi Arabia in the name of “counterterrorism,” but you don’t have to go that absurd to find ways in which the security state has fostered authoritarianism. In every aspect of our lives, this new, fearful outlook on the world justified a gradual ratcheting down of freedom, the gradual empowerment of petty tyrants everywhere, and the weak protests, fading into silence, of people who still believed in liberty as an important organizing principle for modern society. It wasn’t even that you’d get called a terrorist-sympathizer or anything that blatant. It just ceased to be regarded as important. It wasn’t that you were wrong, or misguided, or evil. You were just a non-serious person, someone whose opinion was clearly irrelevant, whose head was permanently in the clouds, if you thought that stuff still mattered. And that never went away.

And I think a big part of what changed between 1945 and 1991 was that the US started to believe its own jingoism. When did this start? Vietnam? Earlier? Korea? I don’t know. It’s hard to pinpoint, given that my understanding of the cultural zeitgeist of the decades before I was born mostly came from my dad’s old Doonesbury collections. I don’t know how to describe what we became--what we, hideously, revealed ourselves to be--except as a kind of machismo. A kind of ruthless, General Ripper-esque us-versus-them psychosis that gripped us where the Soviets were concerned, and never let up. And we still believe it. It still infects every atom of our political discourse. We don’t question the necessity of drone strikes, only who to drone strike and how much. We don’t really question the massive powers we’ve afforded the executive branch to wage war and conduct espionage--including kidnappings and torture--and we’ve kind of forgotten that we still have a prison camp in Cuba full of people who have never been convincted of any crime. In a way, we lost faith in law entirely: by God, we couldn’t try terrorists in American courts! (Why not? What’s wrong with American courts? Don’t we have faith in our own laws, at least?) No, justice wasn’t a matter for the law to decide anymore. Justice was a matter for the military only: justice came in the form of strength of arms. Ergo, shooting Bin Laden in the head and calling that justice; ergo, Jack Bauer; ergo, blowing up Yemeni weddings. Keep America Safe. I can’t begin to tell you how alienating and horrifying so much of the last 20 years has been, if the most consequential news stories of your childhood were the OJ Simpson murders and a discussion of the President’s cum stain.

In my opinion, the seminal text of the post-9/11 world was released in the year 2000. In the original Deus Ex video game, the year is 2150, and the world is a dark, depressing place. You, the game’s hero, work (initally) for a UN counterterrorism agency while a plague ravages the world. You hunt terrorists whose existence has provided the justification for an authoritarian crackdown on dissidents everywhere. You visit a Hong Kong firmly under the control of the CCP, you fight genetically engineered mutants created by huge businesses run amok, FEMA (no DHS then) controls the federal government, and, it turns out later in the game, the bombing of the Statue of Liberty that precipitated the creation of your organization was a false-flag attack used to justify its existence in the first place. Drones patrol the streets of NYC, and the whole thing is steeped in late-90s militia movement-style conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and the New World Order, that look weirdly out of place now that these things are more clearly aligned in the popular consciousness with right wing extremism, when back then they were just seen as kooky weirdos in Montana--but every year since then, we’ve been inching closer and closer to that world, and you know what? It wigs me out a little.

In 2000, Deus Ex was an absurdity, a fever dream of cyberpunk and early-internet conspiracism. It’s a shame that tonally speaking it’s been dead on for the two decades after. But honestly, I think the biggest thing that’s changed about the world since 2001 is our cultural capacity for optimism. I don’t mean in a sentimental way--although if you compare other texts heavily influenced by the post-2001 political milieu, you definitely see a sharp contrast with the optimism of cultural artifacts from earlier eras; science fiction was hit especially hard in this area (cf. RDM’s version of Battlestar Galactica). But I also mean this in a political/ideological sense. We cease to imagine that the world can be made better. We cease to imagine the possibilities that are afforded to us if we are willing to strive for our ideal society, even if we, personally, may never reach it. We make deals with the devil, we let the CIA violate the constitution and federal law six ways from Sunday, we don’t question the prevailing political-economic consensus even if it’s setting the planet on fire and pitching us headlong toward social disaster, because we forgot what it was to feel like those sunlit uplands we’ve been hoping for were just around the corner.

In the same way that my Catholic faith was eventually done in because the ethical principles I was taught were at odds with the manifest monstrosity of the organization that taught them to me and the metaphysics it espoused, my patriotism and my faith in America was done in because when I was a schoolkid, I really did believe that democracy and human rights and equality under the law were important. Some people probably had their illusions--if they ever had any--about the US government stripped away long ago, but I was a white kid from a reasonably prosperous part of town, so it took until the 2000s and my growing political awareness to realize just how flimsy these principles were when they were put to any kind of test. It made me angry; it still makes me angry. I was raised to believe there are some principles that are important enough that you don’t compromise them ever, no matter how scared or worried you are. Just as I was old enough to understand what was going on on the evening news, the United States betrayed everything I had been taught the United States stood for. And as a nation, we never turned back; we never apologized; we never repented. America, as an abstract entity, never was what I thought it was as a kid. But I think it could still become that, if it tried. Alas, very few people seem to believe such a thing is possible anymore. Most days, I’m not sure I do, either.

[siren-theories]

The question of children

Note: ICYMI here is an updated post with all my analysis/thoughts so far.  DIsclaimer: The following includes spoilers of up to and Including Episode 309 “A voice in the dark”. This post was prompted by the following question:

Thank you very much for sending that one in.  I have to admit that this is a question I have asked myself many times, mainly driven by the parallels of Ben, Ryn and the story of the Pownall massacre. And Episode 308 has given those thoughts new form as they exchanged vows at the end of Episode 308. After all, children quite often follow such vows in human relationships. But children are quite a hassle for a TV show. Child actors are problematic to work with and once they exist, they often only waste screentime while bringing very little to the plot. And as they grow up, there is the question of time - having child actors more or less forces the show to use time in a linear manner as the child actors grow up. Though Siren already left itself a loophole with Hope and her growth spurts, this is still problematic for a show that has covered a period as short as a few months in three seasons. (I really need to update the timeline post soonish). 

  A). Can they actually have a child together?

We know that Sirens and humans can have children together as evidenced by the whole existence of Helen and the hybrid cult. 

However, we do know that Ryn has struggled with fertility issues before, which was a major plot point of the later half of Season 2. I do believe however that the fertility problems were mostly related to the males of her species. As the tests showed in Episode 213 “The Outpost” there was nothing wrong with Ryn herself 

(Leave it to the always body-positive Ryn to be proud of such a fact). 

And as soon as they could isolate viable sperm from the male, fertilization of her eggs was no issue at all in Episode 215. Biologically, there should be nothing preventing her and Ben having a Baby.

B). Will they have a child together?

With Ryn was not being in her mating drive during the recent episodes, we probably can rule out any pregnancy as a result of those scenes OP mentioned (unless her change into a human has progressed much further in those episodes, which is possible but IMO very unlikely). However, what happens when her next mating drive occurs? I think this can be safely answered within the context of the previous scenes in the show. There were multiple scenes in Episode 213 where both Ben and Ryn clearly exhibited signs of wanting to have children with each other and one scene in particular where they both had to force themselves not to do so within that episode.

And in 308 Ryn clearly states her wish for having a family with him, during the kitchen table discussion.

Ryn: “I will live on Land. With you.” Ben: “On land. You mean, stay human?” Ryn: “Yes. Here. Together. Human.” Ben: “What about Hope?” Ryn: “She can be with us. As a family.” Ben: “I can’t ask you to do that.” Ryn: “It is my choice. When it is time, I will be human with you.”

After figuring IVF works there is also no reason for Ryn to have more pureblood children just for the sake of her species considering there are plenty of willing alternative candidates (this would also be much better for the future genepool of her tribe).

So therefore, I do believe there is a high chance of them having more children, possibly as soon as Ryns mating drive kicks in again. By now you probably already figured out what the persistent qualifier “more” is referring to. I believe that for all intents and purposes they already have a child together - Hope.

C) Hope as their first child

While Ben is not the biological father, this is no hindrance to Hope being their first child. After all, under the law of many first-world nations Ryn would also not be considered the biological mother since she did not conceive Hope, nor did she carry or give birth to Hope.

Siren is no stranger to these constellations - after all, the best father figure in the whole series, Dale Bishop, is Maddie’s stepfather.

(Sidenote: Contrast how awesome Dale is as a father with Ben’s parents and Maddie’s mother. The show makes the point very early and very often that biological relations are not what determines who your “real” parents are,)

And for all intents and story-telling purposes, Ryn intends for Ben to be Hope’s father. This was signalled multiple times this season, even as early as Episode 305 and seems to be a role Ben wants to take up as well. 

In Episode 305, Ryn returns with Hope to land after her first transformation. And the very first thing she does onscreen is to hand Hope over to Ben in a manner very reminiscient of a mother handing over her child to its father.

(They look very much like a family in that scene, don’t they?) Then, we had Ben saying that he already views her like his own daughter in the same Episode. (Sidenote: rushing into things is a steeple of their whole relationship so this was in character for them).  

Ben: “It’s weird man. Feels like she’s mine. I*m going to help raise her.” Ryn of course also expressed the wish for Hope, Ben and herself to be a family in Episode 308:

Ben: “What about Hope?” Ryn: “She can be with us. As a family.”

And with Hope’s reintroduction in Episode 9, this dynamic was reinforced multiple times - especially and crucially from Hope’s side. And even more important was that Hope’s actions were completely unprompted by Ryn. 

1. Despite Ryn saying in Episode 305 that Hope will not remember her time as a baby, it is shown in Episode 309 that she does remember Ben, signifying the close bond the two already have

Episode 305:

Ryn: “When we meet again, you will be grown. You will not remember this time with me. So I will remember for us both.”

309: 

Hope keeps glancing at Ryn and Ben Ryn: “She remembers you. From when she was a baby.” 

2. And of course, later in the same episode Hope seeks physical contact with Ben - the image projected here is one of Family again.

And Ryn is again very happy about her daughter doing this. For whatever reason there seems to exist a strong, reciprocal bond between Hope and Ben already. 

So as it stands right now, Hope already is their (first) child in my opinion. The writers IMO could not have made that any more clear, especially not with those scenes in 309. 

Assuming she survives the finale (which I very much wish for), I would argue that any other children during the run of the show will be unlikely from a storytelling and logistics perspective. Even should Hope not survive (or have another prolonged period of absence for whatever reason) I do not think there will be another child shown onscreen. In addition to the usual problem with children in tv there is another one in play here: As strapped for screentime as Siren is, I would assume the writers do not intend to introduce further children unless they serve a dramatic purpose. 

D) Children and the Pownall family arc

One such arc where a Baby might prove beneficial for dramatic reasons however is the Pownall family arc.

As I have written at length before, there are parallels between Ryn/Ben and Charles Pownall/his unnamed siren. And the Pownall massacre happened in part because Ben’s ancestor and his siren failed to raise their child together.

("Seperated from her child, his mermaid lost her mind and went back to the water, never to return. Infected by the song and her abscence, Charles lost his senses. He gathered his crew, trapped the mermaids in a cove and slaughtered them.”)

As such, from a storytelling perspective, It would be very dramatic and enjoyable for Ben to have a child with a Siren and hopefully not mess up raising her. Therefore, should Hope not survive the season the odds of them having (another) child onscreen would increase dramatically in my opinion.

If Hope should indeed die, maybe it will not only be Ben repudiating the mistakes of his ancestor, but maybe also Ryn showing that she is stronger than the unnamed Siren. Maybe she would survive and heal after the loss of a child precisely because she has humans standing by to help her?

(And yes, I would think that would include Maddie). However, I do think Hope will survive. Anything else would be just too cruel to Ryn and also a bit odd considering how much screentime was invested in Hope’s “creation” in Season 2.

Either way, while a child would add drama, it is also not necessarily a conditio sine qua non for the story of the Pownall family. And IMO Ben’s attachment to Ryn is already strong enough (cf their "wedding vows” in 308). Therefore, a child would not be needed to prompt him to chose Ryn over his family (a choice he also already made in Episode 215 and which you can read more in detail about in the previously linked post).

Conclusion:

Do I expect them to have more children onscreen, over the course of the series? Probably not, given the above arguments. 

Do I expect them to have more children in the future (including a hypothetical time period after the series finale)?

After the series ends (and assuming some kind of happy end for them) they would probably increase their family as early (or as often) as Ryn’s mating drive and other factors permit. At this point in the story, they clearly want to have a family together and there would be nothing to stop them from enlargening their already existing family should they so choose. 

So I would tentatively argue that yes, they eventually will have more children.

#Freeform Siren #Siren #Ben #Ryn #Ben/Ryn #siren freeform

[incarnateirony]

So I kind of just need a place to let it all out.

If you don’t want to hear me ranting about my truest encounter with the embodiment of male privilege, the stereotype of millennials, and even bad stereotypes about queerfolk - that I’ve ever encountered in a single being - please keep scrolling and /ignore. But it’s better to rant about it here in this contained area than have it wank up in an SM area that is adjacent to a growing business profile. If someone finds it, okay, I have nothing to hide, but still, better to keep clear air over there rather than kick up in main venues.

But holy shit.

Like.

Beware: Much cussing afoot. Minding through this journey this guy is trying to demolish weeks of my work and tried to use my credit card and busting up people’s hubs and turning friends on each other and all kinds of stuff. This is my personal blog and at this point, I’m furious. 

 Okay so I’m going to start with CultFans. Some of you saw some of the work done. Let me tell you a little bit about how CF started. (and before making any judgments about CF because of this dude as described below, read the whole thing and understand how it’s changed now.)

There was a little podcast called Order of the Outpost. The Outpost is a small CW summer show with a tiny fandom, but I watch it because... well, it’s honestly an indie studio getting its first real shot and struggling through a lack of budget to swing with the big dogs and fuck yes I am trash for that kind of content. But anyway, OotO was started by a girl named Kira, who formerly ran The Lit Round Table for the Librarians fandom, and producer Dean Devlin showed up on it at one point. She got to go to set with the others. It was cool! Dean also signed on to support Outpost next to Arrowstorm, so heyyyyy it was just sort of a neat idea, maybe he’ll show back up one day and if not, we can nerd meta talk.

Several people pile in. One is this dude who happened to make semi-friends with a young actress getting a role in the show, who referred a few people to the stream. The problem is, when people got there, the streams went a few hours, it wasn’t structured - but I mean, that’s understandable. It’s a young fan stream in a young fandom, there’s not gonna be a lot of structure. And we don’t want to take over her podcast with a RuEL oF lAW but we see that the last guest got visibly exhausted. In fact, it was bad enough Shea and I left the call because it had run for 2 1/2 hours and that was just ridiculous. But it left Kira and... dude with the one semifriend actress (Tim/TJ). So the call went into eternity.

I felt bad for Josh (the set guy that was there) and thought - okay, I mean, I have the experience to help this keep rolling, but things have to change. You don’t want to change up her podcast but... if you want guests to stay engaged something has to change. So I propose making like, a second feature. This proposal was originally a second piece of content/second show on the same channel, but Dude With The SemiFriendish Actress ran off and, while I was checking my funds to consider investing in a website, registered a separate social media account, already started spamming tags out and alerting people about a change... okay, weird and unnecessary but whatever, roll with it.

He says he likes the idea of a more professional environment so that’s why he ran off and made the separate channel. I ask if he can invest in it at all. He says no. Okay, well, we need better than what we have, if we want any agents to take us seriously, so I drop the hard cash for website, domain, etc etc up front. I let him know it’s gonna be a hard road if he wants to do that kind of thing, he says he gets it and will listen.Totally open to feedback since I know what I’m doing and I’m totally an owner because I’m investing. Cool. So we do our first independent podcast which ends up being like... an hour and a half of him interrupting everything and talking at the guest. Flashbacks to the call with Josh, which dude COMPLETELY blamed Kira for. Even though he was one of two participants. 

I pull him aside, say that’s not okay, that’s still way too long. We’re gonna start scripting it. Nobody’s here to see you talk, dude, or hear your opinion. If you want an opinion stream, go to OotO, you’re supposed to be supporting guests. That’s why they show up - publicity for a small studio. Says he gets it... give him a script. I start working on videos. He visits OotO one more time and drops a GIANT PR BOMB I DARE NOT REPEAT BUT IT COULD HAVE COST SOMEBODY THEIR JOB. (for the record, it’s something it turns out he completely hyperbolically inflated to make himself look good and turned up completely false but this isn’t shit you play around with son, these are careers.) We lock down the OotO stream and scrub it. He does a thousand frowny faces and apologizes and says he gets it. Okay! He’s new to this... will give another chance. 

Now, let me insert, I love Sonalii Castillo to death. She’s talented in every way imaginable and a sweetheart. But she is not a big name. She deserves to be a big name, but she isn’t there yet. Her star meter floats at about the same level as TAW, if that gives you any idea, only she’s not a complete shitlord like TAW - she just hasn’t gotten a lucky break yet. But due to huffing crack from talking to her, dude sets up a patreon. We’re so new we have like 6 subscribers but he makes tiers like “$200/month TJ will add you to PS4 and play games with you.” Who the fuck are you dude??? Who is going to do that??? What the fuck? I tell him to take that shit down.

And... another. Dude, who all are you emailing? Wait, why do we have a new email? Wait, you registered an email on top of my domain? That we don’t have access to? Wait - what? Make a fucking spreadsheet, what the fuck is going on. 

“Make a spreadsheet” - he comes back with this eye bleeding hot mess:

Just... pages of that. (Contacts blacked out for obvious reasons) O-...okay... he’s... he’s trying, I guess? Need contact to the email to see what you’ve said so we can follow up. Wait, you have THREE emails? Okay - he - he let us in one. Good enough for fucking now I guess, despite bitching him out to not do things in private.

Find him sending two page bricks about his aspergers and hopes and dreams to agents when they ask for more details. Uh- that’s... that’s not what they meant dude? “I didn’t realize-” dude there’s aspergers and then there’s just being completely- like- ridiculous. Dude, I have aspergers. And boy did he pitch that as an excuse every chance he got. Either you’re cut out for this kind of work or you’re not.

So I’m going behind, scrubbing on audio and video PR bombs, busted agent rep, vats of what turns out to be HUNDREDS of emails, writing scripts, making videos and even running the live broadcast because nobody else can handle it - oh, and paid for the site, because, you know, it was me saying we needed a better environment to begin with that kicked this off, but I never meant to completely break away but WHATEVER it is what it is. I made a point to keep attending OotO while, unsurprisingly, he dropped them cold.

He convinces a comic shop owner to give him swag for a light sponsorship deal for advertisement-vs-giveaway - cool, that’s cool. Inventory it. But he wants to keep this super rare rogue poster! Did he give it to you as a gift or as a sponsorship? ...For a giveaway. Okay, then you don’t keep that, that’s fraud. [pouty face]

Keep in mind this dude is 25.

He keeps turning up going “look at the stuff I got from the comic shop for giveaways!” and we’re like, dude, stop spending money, we don’t have money, you’re on welfare, knock it off until we get some sort of income. DONT TELL ME WHAT TO DO WITH MY MONEY okay but if that’s your money that’s on you, I’m not taking that as an investment I’m going to have to pay back when we keep saying to stop buying shit. INVENTORY it so we can BUNDLE it and make GIVEAWAYS. Took like a month of me telling him this for him to inventory a grand total of like 12 items. 

So I got him to close his utterly failed patreon and opened one of my own, that stayed in MY management, and he starts bitching for the login. Dude, you didn’t give me yours? You literally won’t give me anything that has a card on it so why am I going to give it to you? We’re not the ones blowing random money left and right? If there’s an expense to pay back, minding of course I’m the one that’s invested triple digits in this and he’s... spastically bought random swag at a comic book store and registered a redundant email on top of my domain that clogs up my ability to use *MY* free email in my package, while paying a few cents a day on it - I’ll fucking paypal you the money dude. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow Shea lives in the same house and can handle it. You don’t need my login creds.

I mean by now, there’s already huge red flags. Add in calling us each and rambling at us three hours a day about jack schitt all nothing while we say we’re trying to do work and mostly just talking about himself, kinda like he does on live air. Serious major narcissism shows, increasing creepiness with female guests, his weird obsession with anything money based, impulse spending, oh and he takes this “I’m the creator” attitude. ???? I... bought everything? And... Shea and I make... literally all of the resulting product? ???? You... ran off early and registered an SM account???? What did you create? Oh, it was “his idea”... right... okay. Yeah, no it wasn’t. Cue arguments and shitfits about it starting up.

But hey, I’m going to stay on point because we have a good thing going.

Again, HUNDREDS of emails. Try to navigate that hellhole of a spreadsheet and eventually just go “Fuck it, I’ll reformat, and make him fill in the other parts,”

Tada, a spreadsheet you can actually like, find shit. Suddenly the other team members could understand what the fuck was going on. I put in a date of contact, and email of contact field (now it’s all uniform now that we’ve cleaned up, but there were FOUR emails bouncing in there that he was doubletapping people from, once I made him type it out). Made him go find his own bullshit and put in dates/emails while haranguing him into giving us access to all but one email, and he pitched a fit saying his personal payment details were on it (because he chose to register the gsuite ON TOP OF MY DOMAIN just because he had limited delegated access to my godaddy I guess. IDK how Gsuite gets signed up for but I’ll just guess randos can’t do it without SOME kind of access)

Well, keep in mind, I’d been spending bare minimum 6, often 18 hours a week resorting emails, ELI5ing basic business or even basic human engagement, on top of my scripting and video work and everything else, because I bought into the “nobody ever gives me a chance” whining. And I’m all about giving people chances to do things they have fire to do. Literally all we’re asking for is to like, spellcheck his work (he was posting things through the blog like “Exlcusive”), not be a PR bomb, and sort out his shit (spreadsheets, emails) so I didn’t always have to clean up over him. Not exactly exorbitant work standards. Also stay relatively on script because, well, nobody wants to attend a stream for 2 1/2 hours, 2 hours of which is him talking at everyone instead of pulling information from the guests or engaging on behalf of an audience.  But he’s trying, I tell myself! Against my better judgment. And, well, at least he contributes to paying imdbpro? 

Well, I thought he did. Until I found out he was on a free trial and that expired. Sooo guess who had to register for the next trial? [this guy thumbs] Guess who started demanding access despite not allowing access before because of payment creds?

Because I’ve worked in stuff before, I run this by an old art director that’s worked on some pretty big shit. She doesn’t know anyone on the stream from Adam but HONES in on TJ. Her “protect the model” instinct kicked in immediately with how he was engaging female guests. “Mouth breathing basement dwelling perv” was the vibe she got off of him, without any prompting, and she immediately skeeved out. “He’s a problem, he’s a huge problem.” And I legit hadn’t said SHIT to her. She apparently saw the look on my face and was like “What?”  so, storytime kicked in. But I did still make excuses for him. He’s an aspie, sometimes we’re weird about how we communicate, our tones are off, it may just be a quirk outside of his control - etc etc. But all this other shit has built up despite my thousand excuses I’ve run for him (and some I’ve completely brushed over in this novel) She also noted he choked on the McNally interview - that we were all nervous but he was squeaky. I said that was my fault, I rode his ass too hard about staying on script, poor baby was trying, that was a my bad. 

And there’s parts I haven’t even touched on, TBH.

But let’s review where we’re at

Original OotO stream

I still attend, he drops Kira cold

He’s bitching in private quarters that he can’t stand her

I still try to refer guests we get to her 

He starts dragging her when off air to blockade her getting guests

I now lose my shit on him

More frowny faces

after PR bombs

after unsorted emails

after the eyebleeding spreadsheet

After wrecking connections to a few agencies

After many long talks

after him running off script for weeks

After an art director spots him as a problem immediately

After I do all scripting, videos, and broadcasting

After Shea does all the graphics

After we made all of the triple digit investment

Dude randomly thinks he owns it because he bolted off to register an SM first

Seriously

But wait, there’s MORE!

Dude starts pitching bitches that I put out deadlines. Because he’s done things like try to bait guests on live air to make commitments to him and all kinds of shit, and I’m hard scripting it now to PREVENT that. But if the artists are gonna get the script in a time they can yay/nay we need to get it to them BEFORE THE FINAL HOUR. So he misses deadlines and then expects everyone to hand him their questions and work so he can be on the whole stream after he fucked off for a week and failed to even SUBMIT A QUESTION TO BE SCRIPTED? Um, NO? Guess who loses his shit about “his baby.” Oh boy, the entire team has a comeapart on him at this point.

He comes forward with telling the story of how the australian version of welfare (I forget what it’s called? Centerpoint? Some shit like that?) is up his ass to get a job but they’re getting “off his ass” because he’s “trying to make a business” and he’s happy about that, so he “might get a part time job, if he has to" but he wants to finally move out, get a two bedroom apartment. Dude, I point out, if there’s ANY money in this at ALL it is a LONG way away so get the fucking job.

He apologizes, says he gets it... whatever. But boy, an older, not-classically-attractive and not-big-name male guest? He suddenly doesn’t give a shit. Like, no questions, outright says he doesn’t care if he’s on it. But - but Jennifer is the week after!! He absolutely has to be there!!! Uh, why? Do you know anything about what a producer even DOES? Well, no. But he’s bouncing on Charan so he should be in the front THERE. Okay, so what are you going to ask her. Oh, he has no idea. But there’s going to be a GIRL on the stream to talk at, so hey!

But here we are right after I say it was my fault he was choking on McNally’s interview and he runs 15 minutes off script on the next one AND tries to talk over me for a SOLID MINUTE during our scripted wrap. I manage to end the broadcast, I drop mention of OotO to the guest and he goes OFF about it being an unbearable stream; like yes I will be honest literally everybody jokes about her laugh but saying “just letting you know it’s unstructured-” isn’t an invite to go off calling her stream a hot mess and yes, once you go off about her laugh everybody’s gonna laugh a bit and chuckle it off and roll long enough to not go off on you in front of an actor but everybody else knew to shut it down with “but Kira’s sweet” and end it. And nothing about her having any kind of laugh is worth HARDBALL BLOCKADING her getting guests. It’s fair to warn them that it isn’t structured like an interview, because, you know - well, let’s not blindside them, but that still WORKS for some personalities. That DOESNT mean you go off calling it a hot mess and all kinds of other shit. And people lightly rolling with it long enough to not make you look like a TREMENDOUS THUNDERCUNT and make a scene in front of an actor they KNOW you will blow up on us in front of does not WARRANT that behavior, catch a clue when everybody’s cutting it off with “But she’s a sweet girl” dude. Or the fact that SOME OF US STILL GO TO HER STREAM. You’re the one that hard dropped her.

But after the last time he dragged Kira I went off on him. I even deadass told him the feedback from the art director finally. I try to sort his vat of emails to cool off, and wake up in the morning to an ENTIRE INBOX full of him shittily forwarding things from his private email we said he shouldn’t even HAVE, full of attitude about me doubletapping a few clients, after HE put the wrong contact date/email in the sheet BY HIS OWN HAND. Like, I’m supposed to psychically know what’s in his fucking private email he won’t cough up when he put the wrong data down.

So here I am, cup of coffee still untouched, put my butt down in the chair, see an inbox FULL of him being a wumbo sized shitlord and he starts calling me on Hangouts, like he must have seen my indicator turn green. Again, keep in mind him being notorious for three hour phonecalls about nothing, and/or arguing. So I decline. He calls again. I decline. He calls again. I answer. “What.”

Long silence.

“I’m not creepy.”

“Come again?”

Long silence. “I listened to the stream. I don’t sound creepy.”

“Dude, a creepy sounding dude isn’t going to think you sound creepy. And it’s not just the art director. I’ve gotten that from a few other viewers.” 

Long silence. He starts trying to argue and I cut him off. Like, no dude. After all of this shit, after ALL of this, after we have literally built and invested in ALL of this when you don’t have a single goddamn skill sufficient for the job and we spend full work weeks trying to mentor you while trying to do other shit, you had the audacity to talk over me during our wrap THEN DRAG KIRA.

“Well I didn’t realize I was doing it.”

“Okay?”

“What do you mean okay?”

“I mean, okay? What do you want me to say to that? If you have something going on in your head that somehow makes you unable to process you’re trying to talk over someone for a solid minute, during a point that has literally been part of a routine for a month and a half, what do you want me to say?”

Long awkward pause. “So how do we fix it?”

“I don’t know, dude. I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried scripting, teaching you metronome, I’ve tried moving your position around in the stream to see if you sync somewhere better, I’ve tried having you watch other interviews, I’ve tried giving you templates. I’ve tried being gentle, being firm, I’ve tried outright bitching you out. And if you don’t even realize you’re doing these things, I don’t know how to make you fix them. I’m a production coordinator, not a psychologist.”

“But... how do we fix it?”

“I... just said I don’t know.”

“Yeah but I mean, how do we fix it.”

“I mean you can keep asking me that over and over but I just told you, I’ve done everything I can even think of at this point to make this work and to give you chances that I am in no way obligated to give you. And you know, through all of this, I haven’t even gotten a single thank you from you? For even giving you a chance to be part of this?”

Awkward silence. “But it’s m-”

“Don’t start that it’s mine shit. There is no universe in which this is yours. And if you want to play that, I can walk with the site, the domain you registered your emails on, my videos, broadcasting software, Shea’s design and my general understanding on how any of this works, like I could have done a month ago from your bullshit, and you can try to do it with a google hangouts and a wix site and see how that works.”

Awkward silence. “Well how do -”

“I swear to god if you ask me how to fix it one more time I’m hanging up. [Brief silence] Okay, so how about you tell me how to fix it, instead?”

He’s quiet a minute. “I don’t know.”

“Okay well if I’ve reached the limit of my ability to think on how to fix it, and you don’t know how to fix it, I’m going to need you to try harder.”

He loops this cycle several times. In hindsight, I’m aware now, he was trying to make me be the wicked witch that kicked him out. But I wasn’t. He came up on his own, “Maybe I should take a step back.”

“Is that what you think will fix it?”

“Yeah. I mean. Maybe. But... if I step back... what do I get out of it?”

“...Come again?”

“I mean, if I step back, what kind of money do I get.”

...????

??????

“Okay, look dude, what money? There IS no money. There’s like 5 bucks in a patreon when I paid out well over 100 bucks in startup costs. These problems, all of these problems, these explosions in the team all have one source. It’s that simple. If you think you stepping back fixes it, I’m not going to stop you, but there IS no money.”

“But what about if you start MAKING money?”

“...what?”

“Like in a few years, this gets big. I mean, I created it and all - I get money, right?”

“What did you create?”

Crickets. Finally, “It was my idea.”

“No, dude, it was everyone’s idea. And even if it was your idea, which it wasn’t, an idea is just an idea. I have an idea that I’d love to genetically splice a lizard back into being a T-Rex but if I have no idea how to fucking do it and someone else does all the work for that, they’re the creator of the goddamn new T-Rex, so you can put that down right now.”

Awkward silence. Says he has to think. Hangs up.

Okay well, I have an interview to prerecord, so we just get to rolling.

He comes back in the NEXT MORNING bitching about money again. And not even just about money. 

So here’s the deal. Yet again, like many a morning recently, I approach with an untouched cup of coffee, sit down... and there is a WALL OF BRICKS in our team chat. Why? Because Shea fucking triggered on him like two hours ago and they haven’t stopped. Shea, a woman with more than 10 years management experience, who was supposed to handle any money we DID get coming in, was out working her 55 hour a week shitty retail job (for the record, due to being physically broken beyond function I am on disability, but I worked until I couldn’t do it anymore, literally, and at least it’s SOME income), when he came in saying, I shit you not, that he needed “that money” because he never wants to have to work retail, sales, or food and he shouldn’t have to get a part time job at Samsung.

What the fuck? Who the fuck are you dude? Needless to say, Shea went postal in righteous anger. And we ALL had righteous anger of our own. Our work, our history in regular work force, our input in this, and asking him what he thinks any of us should get paid for our work or how much he thinks this is going to pull for him to move into a two bedroom apartment. Does only he get paid if we somehow start pulling a few thousand dollars? And is he going to give anything back to Arrowstorm? To Sonalii? How much does he think this digital business is going to be paying in the first year? 10K? 20? or does only him getting a few thousand dollars count? Arrowstorm is indie, don’t just ride their shit to fame as your goal dude, that’s not how this fucking works. Even Stacy, sweetest pea in the pod that hates confrontation, bricked him about the need to respect Arrowstorm and how hard this all is. And what do you even do to justify making all the money? He fills out the imdb spreadsheet, he says. That original hot mess that I had to reformat. And sends emails, that I have to clean up after him. That takes TIME. I bundled it up and did the math like I did and said he was running an average of 1-2 hours a week of work. But he’s super busy. That’s his excuse. We just dont KNOW what his life is like.

Meanwhile we get wind he’s going back to Kira, after ALL THE SHIT DRAGGING HE DID OF HER, and abandoning her stream which I was STILL going to every week. Why? Because everybody’s sick of his shit here, so he’ll go there for convenience, I guess, since he burned everybody up here. And when we confront him about how shitty and gross that is, he tries to justify it but gets reamed. Tries to blame it on how busy he’s been too. Super busy. A wall of busy. And it’s a fantastic busy wall.

Dude goes dead silent on everybody. Kay, well, we have final prep for a live feature with THE ARROWSTORM PRODUCER the next day so we get back to our shit, because we’re sick of him derailing everything. Wake up in the morning to him trying to ultimatum US about the emails we said he shouldn’t have and leaving. So, you know. That was a thing. And we get a notice that he tried to set the FB to delete. Now it becomes a mad dash to password change EVERYTHING. And change all of the recovery options. Luckily my godaddy account was already delegated and restricted access but I go to doublecheck and THIS motherfucker has a domain registration package IN MY CHECKOUT CART. What. The FUCK. Luckily he can’t see or use my payment details but I screenshot that shit. I still have to be live with the producer in a few hours and put on a good face. Like the last interview, it went great without him (barring a tech difficulty that slammed us because of my shitty tech). She said she had a great time. Said she was gonna text the leads in the show (which IS a CW show) to get in contact with us. We smile and wave and thank her and off she goes.

I look back in hangouts and he’s bitching about the emails, I tell him just delete the shit dude, I can register them again, I’m not an idiot and already backed everything up to a zip folder and if there’s downtime it’s the weekend and agents won’t be answering anyway while I put it back up, I don’t give a shit but HEY, while we’re at it, I’m super curious about why I spotted this in my checkout cart and why you pitched a bitch about your access levels suddenly. You know, right before I password locked you out. So are you going from passive fraud of accidentally keeping things from the comic store to active fraud using my card to buy shit? Luckily I’m smarter than you, son.

Oh, the excuses flowed. It was an accident. He didn’t realize, he was just checking how much it would cost (like they don’t show that before you select), IDK, they never found the bodies was probably next.

So I dig in google history to make sure other weird shit wasn’t going on and make sure he was locked out of everything and find that this dumb motherfucker set the group email to be his microsoft account so both microsoft AND google were tracking him and this fuckface was playing more than 60+ hours of random games and bullshit a *week.* And I don’t mean like “might have left it running when he left the house” games, I mean rotating titles every 30-45 minutes was common. You could literally see when he’d try to initiate his three hour google calls, then hang up and go play Marvel, then pick a fight and when people got pissed, turned around and played asphalt, then came back to complain about money, and then when people bitched at him went on grindr or looked up a mix of ageplay and/or pedo porn. Like it’s RIGHT THERE in the tracking history and it’s hard to miss because *he’s the only fucker in australia in the team* and you can track the logins. Mine are all like searching for the acting reels i need or whatever to build their video features then his is like Hungry Sharks > Asphalt 8 > FIFA > Grindr > Some PotC game and so on. The occasional single googling of an article. And you can track this shit going on every day for WEEKS. So I bold ass call that out.

Like, you’re too busy to put in more work or to talk to Kira until it’s convenient to you but you can do [list of 20 apps] for 9 hours a day? On TOP of calling each of us for hours? What the FUCK?

He starts typing to argue back and I’m like, no motherfucker, don’t start. You are literally in here, hoping to work on the actual product being created by people with the work skills making this happen, claiming it’s your creation just because you ran off half cocked and made an SM account you tagged us into and it would look weird to break off AGAIN from OotO, so we ran with it but have literally put in every penny and working hour and bit of product to this and you expect us to wire you any and all cash out of it because what? You LITERALLY have said you just don’t want to work, you LITERALLY have done NOTHING but eat up our time while we give you endless chances, and you’re on here doing [list of 20 more apps] and googling a site once a day as your labor into this expecting cash to just pour into your pockets? Are you on crack?

Typing again, 

No dude, we’re not here to pave your way. 

Delete... typing again.

No, dude, you’re looking to make a quick buck on everybody else’s work and that’s not gonna fly.

Delete... typing again.

Dude, don’t even, it’s RIGHT THERE in the google history.

...[Tim has left this group]

Okay. Whatever. Ding dong the bitch is dead, we have more work to do. I onboard a few friends to help out with my video/transcripting load - not that TIm ever did any of that anyway - and get to work. I just leave it out of public. Keep rolling. In 2 days we get more work done than I usually did in 2 weeks because, guess what, I’m not cleaning up a manchild’s messes and getting called hours on end and having to argue about basic common sense. And I mean tangible work. Like, now we’re literally a month ahead on prep for our content that we were always running to the last minute on, off of a few DAYS of work. The rest is all time to grow and settle in now.

Turn around... find out his ass is subtweeting us. And not just subtweeting, he’s claiming it was discrimination because he was gay.

I shit you not.

He’s out there saying that Grindr was used to “throw his sexuality in his face” despite being on a list of like 20394203942039420394203942039420394 apps he was fucking around with all fucking day while pitching this attitude. *And* claiming someone was “creepy” for “checking out his browsing history.” not that I checked out *our group account history* because he was *trying to spend money on my card and tried to delete our facebook*, but hey. Spin it how you want, I guess?

My friend, who joined the hangout, and by proxy it loaded the chat history, called him on his shit. Who, by the way, is queer. Like no, motherfucker, this is just your own lazy spoiled entitled ass making its own bed, if it was a straight chat site you’d be getting bitched out for doing Fuck All just the same, what the fuck. I don’t care if it was eHarmony listed in there amidst all the games. Deal with your shit. He blocks her. Blocks everyone. Starts messaging people that are liking said friend’s comments on the thread going “I see you noticed the thread-” and trying his bullshit schpiel on them. Sorry dude. These are people I’ve built rapport with for years and know my work ethic, better luck next fucking time.

And the proof is in the pudding. I’ve gone from being entirely MIA and unreachable for weeks at a time drowning in this shit to being a month ahead on work, with said-friend only having to put in like 3-4 hours of useful additions (rather than basically working against us 16~ hours a week) and boom, we’re way ahead of the curve now! I’m talking to people again! Shit called. Mischief managed.

But if you ever want the image of a thousand stereotypes in one ball

a 25 year old white dude that is creepy as fuck with female guests to the point almost everybody picks up on it, lives with his mother, has never worked a job in his life, thinks breathing in his vicinity or playing games with him is reason to throw money at him, thinks he owns anything he looks in the direction of and thinks he should get all the money; and, on the other hand, falls into the (GENERALLY FAKE) stereotype that calls of discrimination against LGBT folk are just excuses (WHICH IS SHIT THAT MAKES IT HARDER WHEN ACTUAL DISCRIMINATION HITS).  *AND* having the audacity to go public about it *AFTER* we tried to quietly let him walk. The literal embodiment of the worst of every fucking stereotype rolled into one, from lazy young generation to men taking credit over the work women do and feeling superior to even attitudes that make honest hard-working LGBT folk have a hell of a time in the world when real discrimination hits.

AND HE WONDERS WHY HE’S UNEMPLOYABLE.

HOLY. SHIT.

...[flips tables]

For the record, here is said friend calling his shit. Some of you may know her, too. 

So there, my rant of the day.

Men. Are fucking. Exhausting. Oh. My god.

But now, we’re ahead. We’re pulling ahead. We’re going to be stable and strong and we’re now poised to even increase our number of guests on the week, especially if those emails from the leads come in. We can take the punches, and everybody’s comfortable on interviews without him being weird on them now, and things are going places.

But christ on a coconut. This is literally *WHY* it’s so hard to get given a chance in the world. Because people like this are given a chance and they just... KSJFKSJDFksjfskdjf

I hate people.

#wank for ts

[geopolicraticus]

A Further Note on SETI’s Charismatic Megafauna

The James Webb Space Telescope has to be tightly folded to fit within the rocket fairing.

In my Centauri Dreams post SETI’s Charismatic Megafauna (which was a revised and expanded version of Parasitic SETI and Parasitic Space Science) I wrote the following:

“It seems pretty weak to me to argue that SETI is intrinsically about ground-based observations, as SETI observations from space-based telescopes would be a great boost for the discipline, if only these resources were made available to SETI research.”

Unbeknownst to me when I wrote this, in December 2018 Lee Billings had an article on the Scientific American website, Finding Alien Life May Require Giant Telescopes Built in Orbit: Scientific American reports on new efforts from NASA and other federal agencies seeking to service and assemble large structures—such as life-finding telescopes—in space.

In this article Billings cites the NASA in-Space Assembled Telescope (iSAT) Study, which has been convened to answer the question: “When is it advantageous to assemble space telescopes in space rather than to build them on the Earth and deploy them autonomously from individual launch vehicles?” 

Building in-space assembled telescopes purposefully for the detection of biosignatures obvious suggests the parallel question of when it is advantageous to assemble telescopes in space to search for technosignatures rather than to build them on Earth and deploy them autonomously from individual launch vehicles. The obvious answer to this is that it is advantageous to do so when you want to build an instrument that is too large to fit inside a rocket fairing, and this is equally true whether we are talking about instruments to search for biosignatures, for technosignatures, or for anything else.

Like most NASA documents, the iSAT Study is presented in the most conservative and circumspect terms imaginable:

“Envisioning the need for future large segmented telescopes to one day exceed the fairing size of existing or even planned launch vehicles, NASA will need to begin considering the in-space assembly (iSA) of these future assets. In addition, robotically assembling space telescopes in space rather than deploying them from single launch vehicles offers the possibility, in some circumstances, of reduced cost and risk for even smaller telescopes. This possibility, however, has not been proven.” 

Given the fact that, the bigger the instrument, the greater the sensitivity, we would obviously like to build enormous telescopes in Earth orbit (or elsewhere in the solar system)—e.g., the James Webb Space Telescope will be stationed at a Lagrange point—so while NASA is talking about reduced cost and reduced risk, which are understandable considerations, what is not being said here is that in-space assembled telescopes could eventually be very large and very sensitive scientific instruments. And when you build a very large and very sensitive scientific instrument off Earth’s surface, this is something that you would want to maintain and improve.

Space-based scientific instruments could be expanded as the ISS has been built out over time (and could still be further expanded with additional inflatable modules). I have several times called attention to the paper, “An infinitely expandable space radiotelescope,” which suggests the construction of an expandable radiotelescope built in space. The modular design of the instrument would allow it to be expanded indefinitely. This upgradable instrument could be made more sensitive as modules are added over time, and wouldn’t have to be as radically rebuilt as is the case, for example, with the LHC, which has to close down for years each time its systems are upgraded.

Eventually—assuming the continued development of our civilization (i.e., assuming that the failure condition is not met)—this is something that will be done. However, something like this is best done when we have space-based infrastructure so that there are astronauts and vehicles and repair facilities in space that would allow either for a continuing human presence on a large scientific installation in space, or a regularly visiting crew to maintain or expand the installation. Thus one of the benefits of the O’Neill paradigm (space-based infrastructure) over the Zubrin paradigm (direct to destination) is that the O’Neill paradigm for space settlement provides for the space-based infrastructure that would allow for the maintenance of space-based scientific instruments (cf. my post The Return of the Space Settlement Vision on the contrast between these two visions of space settlement).

Since large, expandable space-based scientific instruments will be an integral component in the obvious future of space-based infrastructure, why is this being put forward now in such tentative terms? Because now it is getting real. Money may be at stake. There is a real chance of iSAT being incorporated into the upcoming Decadal Survey, which will have an enormous impact on what gets funded and what does not get funded between 2020 and 2030.

The iSAT study—which will mostly be conducted in invitation-only meetings—is part of the maneuvering prior to the next Decadal Survey. Everyone has a project that they would like to see included, and every space scientist has a space science mission that they would like to see included in the Decadal Survey. As I noted in an article that I cited in my Centauri Dreams post about Jason Wright assembling a group to write papers in support of SETI as an integral part of astrobiology—It’s time to start taking the search for E.T. seriously, astronomers say: Some scientists are pushing for NASA to make looking for alien technology an official goal, by Lisa Grossman—this is also about trying to get included in the Decadal Survey.

Scientists need to learn how to work together and be partners rather than rivals in funding their research and missions. The present instance ought to make that clear: iSAT, biosignature, and technosignature methods and initiatives could all be working together to propose the kind of large, visionary effort implied in the above-linked article by Lee Billings, in which Ken Sembach of the Space Telescope Science Institute is quoted as saying:

“I talk all the time to younger researchers, Congress and the public, and they all ask, ‘Why aren’t we thinking bigger?’ People want to support ambitious things.”

A space-based scientific instrument designed to be maintained and expanded over time, and which could be repaired and serviced for decades to come, could be an ambitious project that would garner attention and support and would be an asset to the entire scientific community.

All the sciences can benefit from more data on the universe. Astronomy, astrophysics, physics, cosmology, SETI, and astrobiology could all work together in designing a space-based platform for mutual research. Parasitic, piggyback, or opportunistic research programs should become the norm in science, with meetings between representatives of the special sciences to converge upon common data sets that could benefit all the sciences. And I believe that if many special sciences spoke with one voice in support of a major project, that project would have a good chance of getting the political support necessary for funding. This would be preferable to maneuvering to see who can get included in the Decadal Survey, and whose project ends up in the circular file.  

#SETI #biosignatures #technosignatures #Lee Billings #space-based #Decadal Survey #Ken Sembach

[btsresearchblog]

Dunes, A and Bronner, S - Meaning of Folklore : The Analytical Essays of Alan Dundes, 2007

“Here I Sit” also dealt with one of his experiences—going to bathrooms in Berkeley, where his folkloristic antennae picked up an abundance of written lore. He noted that they were much more common in facilities for men, rather than women, raising gender questions about the praxis of writing verses and sayings he called “latrinalia,” to distinguish it from the more general term “graffiti” for any wall markings… Ever since Dundes’s latrinalia essay was originally published, it has been cited as a benchmark interpretation of bathroom graffiti. See Gonos, Mulkern, and Poushinsky 1976; Stocker et al. 1972; Birney 1973; and Longenecker 1977. While the above citations are mostly of men’s facilities, for an exemplary look at a woman’s bathroom as “community,” see Gordon 2003. For other interpretative essays on folklore using Dundes’s scatological theses, see Fleisher 1981; Mechling 1984a and 1984b; Carroll 1987; Klein 1993; and Bronner 2007. – pg 353-4

B Here I Sit: A Study of American Latrinalia

A ny American male who has ever had an occasion to enter a public bathroom such as one found in a railroad or bus terminal has surely observed at one time or another one of the many traditional inscriptions found on the walls of the facilities. 1  In some quarters, e.g. in the rest rooms of some bars and cafés, one finds the custom has been institutionalized in that a small slate and an accompanying piece of chalk are hanging on the wall. This allows individuals to write freely and at the same time it saves the establishment the expense of continually repainting walls. Despite the widespread distribution of these inscriptions and despite the fact that many of them are demonstrably traditional, one looks in vain for extended collections of published texts and for any rational discussion of them or the practice of writing them. Most histories of the water closet (e.g. Pudney, Reynolds, Wright) do little more than recognize that such traditions exist. Typical is the remark made by poet John Pudney, author of The Smallest Room , who bothers to say (1954:130), “I must here resist the temptation urged on me by several men of letters to quote more freely from this poetry of the smallest room.” Certainly there can be no doubt as to the antiquity of the genre. In the chapter devoted to latrines of John G. Bourke’s classic Scatalogic Rites of All Nations , one finds references to the obscene poetry written in Roman latrines (1891:136). What little evidence is available in print does attest to the age and international spread of this popular form of written folklore. – pg 360

The classic study of the form in America was made by Allen Walker Read who privately published it in 1935 under the euphemistic title , Lexical Evidence from Folk Epigraphy in Western North America: AGlossarial Study of the Low Element in the English Vocabulary . The title page of this eighty-three page monograph announced that the circulation was restricted to students of linguistics, folklore, abnormal psychology, and allied branches of the social sciences. Professor Read’s term “folk epigraphy” raises the question of what to call bathroom wall writings. T he term graffiti is too broad in that it includes all kinds of inscriptions and marks placed on walls. Moreover, the walls may be any walls, not just bathroom walls. Professor Read included in his compilation everything he saw on walls during an extensive sight-seeing trip made in the western United States and Canada in the summer of 1928. Much of his material is traditional in form only, but not content. The various homosexual rendezvous requests with listings of dimensions and telephone numbers are clearly the traditional in form and are surely worth studying as indicators of one of the obvious functions of men’s rooms in a culture which forbids homosexual activities. However, the specific content of these assignation attempts is often idiosyncratic. The  folklorist is primarily interested in those mural inscriptions which are traditional in both form and content. T hus while he or she may record the hapax logomena  or one-time occurrences, he or she is more concerned with those which have multiple-existence, that is, those which are found with almost exactly the same form and wording in many different places. Obviously, a one-time occurrence may become traditional in time, but the vast majority of the nontraditional graffiti are much too localized to diffuse easily. For the traditional inscriptions, I propose the term latrinalia.  This is preferable, I think, to the closest thing to a folk term, “shithouse poetry” inasmuch as not all latrinalia is in verse or poetic form. Pg 360-1

As one writer has put it (Reynolds 1943:171–172), “Stereotyped and crude, our lavatory inscriptions are the measure of our social fixations; and that enterprising anthropologist who is said to be collecting photographs of them in all parts of the world should reveal more of the truth than all of the bombastic historians who will so soon be clothing our grotesque society with dignified phrases and political stercorations, representing its present antics as studied movements, to be explained in terms of high principles and rational conduct.” So then let us proceed with our essay in hard core ethnography! – pg 361

One of the few places where dirt may be displayed and discussed in American culture is the bathroom, private and public. Bathrooms, generally speaking, are status symbols and not infrequently houses are measured in part by the number of bathrooms they possess. – pg 362

It is in the public school bathroom (termed boys’ and girls’ “basement” at my secondary school in Pawling, New  York, though the rooms were not located in the basement) that important social interactions take place. Boys meet there to discuss the problems of the day while girls similarly go there to gossip. It is in many ways a place of comparative freedom from the normal restraints imposed by the T heses on Feces  363 adult world. The necessity of some sexual exposure no doubt contributes to the bathroom’s role as a place of sanctioned license. It is in public bathrooms, particularly men’s rooms, that one finds latrinalia. T he variety of latrinalia forms includes: (1) advertisements or solicitations, normally of a sexual nature; (2) requests or commands, often concerning the mechanics of defecating or urinating; (3) directions, which consist of false or facetious instructions; (4) commentaries, either by the establishment or by clients; and (5) personal laments or introspective musings. These categories are not hard and fast and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A sampling of each of the categories should serve to illustrate the nature of American latrinalia. T he majority of advertisements are probably not traditional in that individuals simply write their own names and telephone numbers. Furthermore, in view of the paucity of published materials, it is difficult to ascertain whether or not a number of items have appeared elsewhere. Typical “want ads,” which may or may not be traditional, include:

1.     2.  For a good blow job, call 777 2024 Bill, don’t call, it’s me, Bob.

2.     I’m big. 9” long, 3” round, and ready to go. (In another hand) How big is your prick?

In view of the nontraditional content of most latrinalia advertisements, I will proceed to the more common traditional category of requests or commands. The following are usually placed near men’s urinals:

3.     Don’t throw cigarette butts in the urinal— It makes them soggy and hard to light.

4.     Please do not throw butts in the urinal. Do we piss in your ash trays?

This is strikingly similar in style to the private swimming pool sign which reads:

1.     We don’t swim in your toilet Please don’t piss in our pool.

The pool sign reflects, of course, the fact that Americans do in fact urinate in swimming pools (just as American infants urinate in their baths)! A large number of urinal latrinalia specifically ask for care in aiming the stream of urine. Typical examples of this “toilet training” tradition include:

5.     We aim to please you aim too please

6.     It is our aim to keep this place clean. Your aim will help.

These are often written by the management. A common request urges men to stand close to the urinal to reduce the chances of spillage.

7.     Stand up close. The next man might have holes in his shoes.

8.     Stand close, the next person may be barefooted.

9.     Stand up close. The next fellow may be a Southerner And be barefooted. (Camp Maxey, Paris, Texas, 1945)

10.  If your hose is short And your pump is weak You better stand close Or you’ll pee on your feet.

11.  Old rams with short horns please stand up close. (Fort Lewis, Tacoma, Washington, circa 1945; cf. Read 1935:20)

An appropriately localized version from New England is as follows:

12.  Puritans with short muskets step up to the firing line. (Damiscotta, Maine, circa 1950) Another example of latrinalia which is posted by the management rather than the customers is one found in diners’ restrooms:

13.  If you shit here, eat here. We don’t want just the tail end of your business. Occasionally, there are blason populaire  latrinalia:

14.  Shake well. Texas needs the water.

For the special case when a man urinates into a toilet rather than into a urinal, special instructions may be found:

15. Be like brother Not like Sis Lift the seat When you take a piss. (New York City, 1924)

16. Be like Dad and not like Sis Pull your lid before you piss. (Camp Maxey, Paris, Texas, 1945)

Some commands are concerned with toilet flushing.

17. Flush your toilets for Wichita’s sake. (Hutchinson, Kansas, circa 1958; cf. Read 935:20) 18. Flush twice: L.A. needs water.

19. Flush hard. It’s a long way to the kitchen.

This insult to the chef is a reversal of the conception that man is a dirt-making machine which transforms food into feces. This conception is illustrated by a latrinalia verse in French which was found in Oxford, England, in 1947: “Ici tombent en ruines les merveilles de la cuisine.” In the above text and the following, the “natural” procedure is reversed as feces becomes food.

20. Don’t flush the toilet. The next man might be hungry. (Chicago, 1960)

21. Please flush the toilet. We  want the niggers to starve to death. (A Missouri café, 1965)

There is also some instruction designed to keep the toilet seat clean.

22. Here is the place we all must come To do the work that must be done Do it quick and do it neat But please don’t do it on the seat.

23. Boys we all must use this throne Please keep it clean and neat Shit down the hole God damn your soul And not upon the seat. (Camp Maxey, Paris, Texas, 1945)

The reference to “throne” recalls the euphemisms in other cultures which speak of going to the place where the king goes on foot or alone (Pudney 1954:97). A common American fantasy technique designed to minimize one’s awe of a great personage is to imagine that individual at stool.

24.  For those in a hurry With no time to sit Please lift the lid For a more direct hit. (Women’s restroom, Berkeley, 1963)

This may refer also to the practice of many women of not actually sitting on a toilet seat but of squatting over it.

One commentary complains about the nature of men’s clothing as opposed to women’s clothing with special reference to defecation.

25.  Women women what a blessing You can shit without undressing But we poor men we sons of bitches We must strip or shit in our britches. (Camp Maxey, Paris, Texas, 1945)

The influence of television programs and such contemporary events as demonstrations by civil rights groups (e.g. the Congress of Racial Equality) is evident in some commands.

26.  Smile, You’re on Candid Camera.

This is usually written on the inside of the door of the toilet stall.

27.  Stay seated. This is a Core shit-in. (University library, Berkeley campus, April, 1964) Some commands or requests are bitter parodies:

28.  Support mental health or I’ll kill you.

In the “directions” category, one finds mostly parodies. In the following text, the accuracy of the first line and of the order of the remaining lines was questioned by the informant. It is, however, an excellent example of a latrinalia verse of the “how-to-do-it-yourself” variety. 29. If you want to shit at ease Place your elbows on your knees Place your hands upon your chin Work your asshole out and in. (cf. Read 1935:51, 73)

30. Directions to get to Texas: Go west until you smell shit, that’s Oklahoma. T hen, go south until you step in it—that’s Texas. (Manchester, New Hampshire, circa 1953)

31. In case of atomic attack . . . 1. Put your hands over your ears 2. Put your head between your legs 3. Kiss your ass goodbye. You’ve had it.

32. In case of attack, hide under this urinal. Nobody ever hits it. (Great Lakes, Illinois, 1951)

There are also false directions which are really a form of what folklorists sometimes call a catch. Repeated many times, each time in smaller writing is the line: “If you can read this come closer.” Then at the bottom right below a miniscule version appears the line: “You are now shitting at a 45° angle.” In similar vein is the sign on the ceiling over the urinal which says, “While you’re reading this, you’re peeing on your shoes.” T he content of the latrinalia commentaries varies. Some are unexpectedly intellectual.

33.  “God is dead.” Nietzsche “Nietzsche is dead.” God  - pg 362-68

By far the best poetry is to be found in the personal laments or introspective musings category. One of the most popular of these is: 54.  Here I sit broken hearted Tried to shit and only farted. But think of the man who took the chance Tried to fart and shit his pants.– pg 369

All these latrinalia texts are representative and they should serve to illustrate the nature of this on-going mural tradition. However, these materials raise a number of questions. Probably the most intriguing questions about latrinalia are psychological. Why are they written at all and why in bathrooms? Why are they so much more common in men’s rest rooms than in women’s rest rooms? T here has been little theorizing about the psychological functions of latrinalia. Reynolds (1943:170) has stated that generations of lavatory wall writers simply write for the pleasure of breaking a taboo, presumably the taboo of referring to body elimination activities. Allen Walker Read suggests that latrinalia probably results from many different motivations. Nevertheless, he notes (1935:17) that, “A principal reason is the well-known human yearning to leave a record of one’s presence or one’s existence.” If this is correct, the question remains, what is the psychological significance of a yearning to leave a record of one’s presence? Allen Walker Read has also observed (1935:17) that writing latrinalia was the same order of activity as the carving of initials or names on trees. Interestingly enough, psychoanalyst Ernest Jones tried to explain the latter custom in his famous paper on “Anal-Erotic Character Traits.” Jones hypothesizes (1961:432) that it may possibly be a derived and sublimated form of what he terms a “primitive smearing impulse,” the desire that infants allegedly have to handle and manipulate their feces, a desire whose fulfillment is invariably forbidden by toilet-training conscious parents. People who carve or write their names are leaving a memento of themselves which may injure and spoil something beautiful (1961:432). Although Jones makes no mention of latrinalia, I suggest that it may well stem from the same impulse to smear feces or dirt on walls. Dirty words are dirt by themselves, independent of the dirtiness of their referents. Certainly this theory would explain why the writing was placed on bathroom walls in particular. The fact that much of the content of latrinalia does refer to defecation and urination would tend to support the assertion that there is some relationship between the acts of writing on walls and playing with feces. – pg 387

A more recent localized bit of latrinalia appearing in Berkeley supports the writingfeces equation: 63.  Don’t write on our walls We don’t shit in your notebooks. T he Regents What’s found in our notebooks is shit anyway T he Students (Main Library, U.C. Berkeley, 1965) – pg 371

T he desire to make one’s mark or to leave something behind  for posterity is also very likely involved in the writing of latrinalia. Defecation as a technique to mark a place for identification is found not only in folk tales (Freud and Oppenheim 1958:38) but among other forms of primate life who apparently demarcate territorial boundaries through urination and defecation (Harrisson). The goal is also perhaps to achieve notice and immortality by producing dirt. – pg 372

Note 1.  T his paper was presented at the 1966 meeting of the California Folklore Society at Davis, California. I am indebted to many of my students and colleagues for contributing examples of latrinalia. Unless otherwise indicated, all materials were collected from men’s rooms in Berkeley and the surrounding Bay Area in 1964. I am especially grateful to psychologist Nathan Hurvitz who provided all of the items from Paris, Texas. My thanks also to Sam Hinton for his suggestion that the paper be entitled “Ars(e) Poetica.” Explanations of the meaning of most of the slang terms appearing in the latrinalia may be found in the works by Read and Sagarin cited in the list of references for this paper. – pg 373

[tanadrin]

@bpd-anon:

I think I agree on some points and disagree on others but mostly I would love an expansion of this part: "I don’t think he actually understands fantasy as a set of generic conventions as well as he thinks he does." Can you explain the parts that he is misunderstanding and what true understanding looks like?  

For some context, I have never seen GOT. I read the first book and it's tied for my favorite book ever but then college and its stress hit and I mostly stopped reading (same reason Blindsight is another favorite book ever but I haven't read Echopraxia). I mostly read science fiction books and I haven't even read the all-important LOTR (mainly because I hear there isn't any moral greyness, sounds boring). 

Martin has said things like this:

“I admire Tolkien greatly. His books had enormous influence on me. And the trope that he sort of established—the idea of the Dark Lord and his Evil Minions—in the hands of lesser writers over the years and decades has not served the genre well. It has been beaten to death. The battle of good and evil is a great subject for any book and certainly for a fantasy book, but I think ultimately the battle between good and evil is weighed within the individual human heart and not necessarily between an army of people dressed in white and an army of people dressed in black. When I look at the world, I see that most real living breathing human beings are grey.”     

“Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?” 

“By the time I got to Mines of Moria I decided this was the greatest book I’d ever read… And then Gandalf dies! I can’t explain the impact that had on me at 13. You can’t kill Gandalf… Tolkien just broke that rule, and I’ll love him forever for it. The minute you kill Gandalf, the suspense of everything that follows is 1,000 times greater. Because now anybody could die. Of course, it’s had a profound effect on my own willingness to kill characters at the drop of a hat.” 

Taken together, Martin is one of the people I’m thinking most of when I say things like “nobody reads Tolkien, only their caricatures of Tolkien.” About the only thing I can say for him is that he’s right on Tolkien being about an external battle of Good versus Evil a lot of the time; though for my part, Martin’s world doesn’t come off so much as Gray versus Gray as Evil versus Evil, and a lot of what he seems to take for “moral ambiguity” to me is perfectly unambiguous: they’re all (or mostly) villains, doing villainy things to each other. Sometimes for quite human reasons; but the best villains have comprehensible motivations beyond pure evil. Doesn’t make them not villains.

First of all, he’s simply nakedly incorrect that Tolkien never considered the difficulties of rule, or never looked at the practical aspects of his worldbuilding. They don’t come in much for emphasis, but they’re absolutely there (most notably in the scenes set in Minas Tirith, in the run-up to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields), and indeed the moral nature of the Orcs, and therefore the correct stance to take toward them, was of deep concern to him, and subject to a lot of later revision as he struggled with the idea of what we would now refer to as an Always Chaotic Evil fantasy race.

Tolkien certainly critically interrogates the morality and moral authority of rulership. In the Silmarillion, he has plenty of figures who cut heroic profiles but make bad (or at least ambiguous) kings, with much resulting conflict; and indeed, that ambivalence is something he’s in part borrowing from his medieval sources! To say that the medievals had a totally black-and-white view of kingship is to betray a lack of familiarity with actual medieval writers, who even (especially?) in the Early Middle Ages are adept at portraying leaders with powerful qualities that turn against them in the wrong situation. Beorhtnoth, the heroes of Njal’s Saga, and Beowulf would have all been extremely familiar to Tolkien, and are good examples I think. Tolkien absolutely understood that people come in shades of gray, and there are various admixtures of light and dark in almost all his characters. Even Frodo for Chrissakes puts on the Ring at the end--and Gollum redeems him. Like, come on! That’s one of the most memorable parts of the main trilogy! But from Galadriel right down to the Sackville-Bagginses, Tolkien is intensely conscious of the moral complexity of everybody in his stories, he just doesn’t need them to say “fuck” in order to express that.

What Martin seems to have confused for Tolkien is, like, the semi-mythic style of Arthurian romance (which... is still not always super black and white?), which is only a small part of the generic conventions Tolkien is drawing on. Tolkien is much more steeped in the conventions of the realist novel, with its penchant for psychological complexity, even as he’s borrowing the setpieces of older literature. I think that’s important because it’s what marks Tolkien out as a fundamentally modern writer, despite his sources; yet people skate over this and like to pretend he was some kind of reverse Connecticut Yankee who stumbled out of the 13th century with medieval sensibilities intact. Which is... weird.

The quote about Gandalf is especially telling. Gandalf’s death happens for extremely clear structural reasons: it provides a climax to Book II (if you’ve never read LOTR: each volume is divided into two “books”; the three-volume split was a post-writing publication decision, LOTR was originally written as a single continuous unit, and the “books” are like mega-chapters), much like, but stronger than, the Flight to the Ford at the end of Book I; it sets up the sojurn in Lorien (recovering from the trauma of the loss of their nominal leader); it helps the narrative transition from the low-stakes, bucolic setting of everything west of the Misty Mountains to the high-stakes dangers of the rest of the story; and it serves the conclusion of the story because without Gandalf’s sacrifice (plus many other events), the Ring never would have made it to Mount Doom. Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but Gandalf comes back, in a way that feels sensible within the world Tolkien has built, and which sets up further development of both the main plot and the the themes Tolkien is concerned with.

If Martin had written Lord of the Rings, Gandalf would have died to a random Orc arrow, would never have come back, and the Ring wouldn’t have made it to Mount Doom at all. And you’d be left feeling like Gandalf dies for basically no reason--and you’d be right. The suspense in Lord of the Rings doesn’t come from wondering who will die (the only major named characters who die permanently are Boromir and Gollum; both similarly serve important thematic and plot functions when they do, but by Martin’s standard, Tolkien isn’t even trying), or wondering how things will turn out--does anyone ever doubt that the good guys will win?--it comes from seeing how they get there, from wanting to experience the emotional and narrative beats of the story, wanting to see the narrative logic being brought to its conclusion. It’s why it’s a good story even if you know the ending! And all of Tolkien’s work is like that: a well-constructed narrative that is perennially satisfying is far better than a one-off surprise that can never be repeated. That’s a mistake a lot of modern media is making right now, which the rise of undue emphasis on spoilers isn’t doing anything to reduce.

More generally: there’s nothing wrong with high fantasy externalizing the conflict between good and evil. That is in fact one of its functions, as a kind of moral metaphor or moral proving ground in the same way that, say, science fiction often serves as moral and philosophical proving ground for ideas around technology or exploration or the alien. It’s not obligatory, but to cite that as an insufficiency of any work in the genre is to fail to understand the genre. Tolkien specifically provides some arch moral figures (Morgoth, Sauron, Manwe, Aragorn), but he also provides some much more mixed ones: Denethor, Saruman, Grima Wormtongue, Boromir, Gollum, etc. (also Thorin, Feanor and his sons, and in fact just like a huge chunk of the cast of the Silmarillion in general), and gives his characters plenty of opportunity to reflect that, even in a conflict with a literal evil spirit, there is room for ambiguity (cf. Sam’s meditation on the Haradrim in Ithilien). And the sum total of the effect in Tolkien’s work is that it actually feels like something is at stake. I don’t feel like that in Martin’s world. I feel like if the Night King were just to destroy all of Westeros that would make as much sense and be about as satisfying as any other outcome, because there’s nothing that feels especially worth preserving there.

In discarding everything about both the moral and narrative structure of high fantasy, Martin’s world leaves nothing for one to hang one’s hat on, nothing to use as a fixed point of reference when it comes to orienting yourself in it; he is writing a critique against many things, perhaps, but not an argument for anything. The result leaves me quite cold.