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#like....the cognitive dissonance and contradictions are incredible
ineffable-endearments · 7 months
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When you (generic, universal) talk about theories about the end of Season 2 and Aziraphale going to Heaven, you often run up against either:
taking everything at face value to the point of ignoring that some details contradict one another
or
accidentally nullifying major emotional, plot, and character beats by implying that they Didn't Really Happen.
A lot of the differences in analyses, especially ones that I like (LOL), can be explained by the fact that we're analyzing a character who is experiencing massive cognitive dissonance and believes a number of contradictory things at once.
Nobody is wrong to point out Aziraphale's need to Belong to a Good Cause, which makes his acceptance of the Supreme Archangel position entirely in-character; nobody is wrong to point out Aziraphale's anxiety around the Metatron, which indicates that he may have been coerced.
Did Aziraphale go back to Heaven because he's afraid of what will happen if he keeps refusing, or because the Metatron made an implicit threat? Did he go back to Heaven because he's vulnerable to flattery and wants to feel important? Did he go back to Heaven because he thought it would be a way to be permanently safe with Crowley? Or did he go back because he missed belonging to something Good, something bigger than himself? All of the above. It's all of them.
Yes, even though it's incredibly dissonant to believe a system that he KNOWS is dangerous and coercive can accomplish true Goodness, that is in fact his belief.
Admittedly, this is no one I follow - just random comments I see around from people I don't know very well - but it seems like some people out there are assuming Aziraphale can't possibly be making any plans to do anything remotely intelligent, because this would mean that he is already aware that Heaven is bad and would therefore leave no room for character growth.
Except no, that's not necessarily what it means. In fact, the cognitive dissonance is the main thing he is going to have to resolve. Having that dissonance - the belief that Heaven's ideals are genuine, along with the understanding that Heaven is dangerous and needs to be carefully manipulated - is what will move his plot forward. Mindless obedience wouldn't progress his story any more than magic brainwashing coffee would, and it would be equally inconsistent with his story and motivations so far.
The dissonance is the point. And part of the dissonance is that he already knows Heaven is dangerous - he just hasn't accepted what that means yet. It would make sense for him to simultaneously try to work within Heaven's system and watch his own back.
Also, only partly related: Neil might write a story about how the worst people exploit the need to belong and to be Good. He might write a story about how we have to become our own greater good. He might write a story about how to rebuild after you discover your greater good is not so great or good after all. He is not going to write a story about how having any faith or trust in something objectively bigger and stronger than yourself makes you a stupid clown who is wrong about literally everything and shouldn't have even tried.
Let Aziraphale fuck up. He needs to and he will. Whatever plans he was making in that elevator won't actually succeed. But give him credit where it's due.
Edited to add: And you know what? When he fucks up, he's going to get through it. And then he's going to do the right thing. And he's going to get it right when it matters the most.
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canonizzyhours · 3 months
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What nobody wants to admit is there’s a reason OFMD fandom has a big divide over how to interpret Izzy and it’s simply that Con is playing against the scripts.
Con DOES play Izzy like he and Ed have a profound warrior’s bond and their relationship was actually a positive thing up until Stede appeared and Izzy’s jealousy made him briefly go a little bit insane, but once he recognized that Ed truly needed to be with Stede to be happy Izzy was able to let go because his love for Ed is genuinely selfless. People who see that in Con’s performance aren’t wrong.
However this makes no sense as an interpretation of the actual STORY. The scripts write Izzy as someone whose “love” for Ed has been selfish and controlling and abusive (in ways that, yes, echo Ed’s relationship with his father) since long before Stede was in the picture, and is mostly based in the fact that he craves power and manipulating Ed is how he achieves and maintains a position of power – plus the whole deal has this creepy undercurrent of psychosexual obsession. This was obvious back in season one but there’s zero remaining ambiguity about it at this point now that the show literally had Izzy tell Ed “I’ve been terrible to you for years” and “it was me who needed Blackbeard.” 
The way he’s written, Izzy has to let go of both his ambition for power AND his fucked up crush entirely before he can stop obsessively trying to control Ed’s life and be normal enough about him to start building an even remotely healthy relationship, which the two of them never had before. Both djenks and other writers have said this in interviews - what Izzy needed was not to realize Stede was good for Ed, it was to let go of his obsession with controlling his boss’ love life entirely before he even COULD realize that.
This contradiction isn’t Con’s fault, or really anyone’s. If you’re an actor it’s your job to come up with headcanons that make sense of your character’s motivations even if they’re not super clear in the scripts, and the scripts do not focus all that much on Izzy’s internal motivations. (It’s clear from his interviews that he got only vague high-level overviews from the writing team about their intentions for Izzy’s overall arc too, which is normal for a supporting character - not only has he mentioned scenes where he struggled to figure out the motivation on his own, he didn’t even know the show was gay for four episodes, meaning the writers and directors didn’t tell him about Izzy’s gay crush on Ed, the thing he plays as Izzy’s core motivation!) And it’s usually a good idea as an actor to come up with an interpretation that lets you sympathize with your character. So Con went with the most sympathetic read of Izzy he could come up with. It doesn’t make sense of the overall narrative arc of the show, but that’s not his job, his job is figuring out a motivation that gives him a foundation for feeling like he understands Izzy’s perspective in the scenes he’s playing.
So if you pay the most attention to Con’s performances and ignore the narrative framing of the scripts, you end up with basically the canyon read on Izzy’s character. If you pay the most attention to the story the scripts suggest and mostly ignore the performance, you end up with the non-canyon one where Izzy’s a really really bad guy up till s2e5 and he’s manipulative and emotionally abusive toward Ed. Neither one of those is really “canon Izzy.” They’re both present in canon and they directly contradict each other.
This is what led to the fandom getting incredibly weird. Because people most interested in Con’s performance take it as the primary lens through which they interpret the whole show - but it’s an interpretation that fundamentally cannot make sense of the story as a cohesive whole, so they keep running into cognitive dissonance, and they try to resolve it by coming up with increasingly contorted interpretations of the entire narrative arc of the show (including parts that aren’t even directly about Izzy) and getting angry when other people bring back the cognitive dissonance by pointing out how nonsensical those interpretations are. 
People who prioritize the scripts as their main interpretive lens don’t have quite the same problem, because if they notice what’s going on in Con’s performance there’s an easy way to integrate it: assume that the way Con acts is expressing Izzy’s own point of view, BUT IZZY IS WRONG ABOUT ALL THAT. Izzy THINKS he really understands Ed but he doesn’t. Izzy THINKS his feelings for Ed are selfless love but a lot of abusers think that, it’s him lying to himself about his motives being benevolent. And the thing is, this angle makes Izzy look REALLY FASCINATING but also WAY WORSE than the basic read where he’s just being selfish, it turns him from an ambitious manipulative schemer with a weird little crush into a horrific obsessed stalker with a creepy daddy-knows-what’s-best-for-you complex about Ed, a grown-ass indigenous man who never asked his white employee to control his life “for his own good.”
It’s no wonder everyone’s fighting all the time.
#88.
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punisheddonjuan · 30 days
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Not to be a guy who asks "are the zionists okay" but I scrolled through the blog of one who I used to know in irl and he's??? Reblogging from troll accounts that are disguising fucking blood libel as pro-Zionist between actual legitimate Zionist posts completely uncritically?????
Honestly anon? No I don't think that they are okay. The longer this drags on and the more that the images and videos from out of Gaza (or the West Bank for that matter) run completely counter to the U.S./Israeli propaganda narrative, the greater the cognitive dissonance that is necessary to claim the usual liberal Zionist talking points like "Israel is only acting in self-defense" (then why have they killed hundreds in the West Bank where Hamas is not in power), that "things would be better if the Palestinians just embraced non-violence" (they have on multiple occasions, the Israelis keep fucking killing them), or how the "IDF is the most moral army in the world" (then why is there mass looting of Palestinian homes by IDF soldiers). The collapse of these narratives has been so swift and so complete with every new things we learn about what happened on October 7th and afterwards that I think it's really short-circuited a few people's brains. There's been the revelation that many civilian deaths were the result of IDF following orders to institute the Hannibal directive, the forty beheaded babies story being a lie dreamt up by a fanatic, to the collapse of the NYT story on mass rapes (turns out the lead journalist was former Israeli intelligence), the story that Al-Shifa Hospital was some sort of terrorist base, and the lie which has had the most consequence: that UNRWA workers were directly involved in Oct. 7th the evidence for which is so flimsy as to be laughable if the consequences hadn't been so dire.
The speed at which these narratives have collapsed and how quickly Israel has run through any goodwill following Oct. 7th is honestly astounding. It took the Americans around two years give-or-take following 9/11 to exhaust the world's goodwill, Israel managed to speed-run this in less than two months. When boomer left-libs like my parents are starting to say things like "I don't know what's wrong with the Israelis" that's a new thing. I'm a little older than many of my followers so I remember things like the 2006 Lebanon War and watching it thinking "this seems excessive, what aren't they telling us?" It took years before the existence of the Dahiya Doctrine became known. And the images from Operation Cast Lead in 2008 (the conflict which was impetus for me to really dig into researching the conflict) weren't coming this fast or this graphic. This has got to do numbers on your psyche if you're a typically "progressive" person but also supporting the Israeli cause. It's like that Eli Valley cartoon riffing on the Incredible Hulk. I think the way some of them are coping is by telling bigger and bigger lies, becoming more extreme, retreating into more closed off bubbles. It's fear, fear of being wrong.
If you ever want to read some truly delusional posts I recommend checking out the "jumblr" tag (there are also some very brave and very intelligent anti-Zionist Jews also posting in that tag who have my admiration and respect for fighting the good fight, I've followed several of them in the past weeks) where you can find Zionists making such convincing arguments as "what Israel is doing to the Palestinians isn't genocide because a genocide requires intent and incitement, and Israel hasn't expressed intent, besides the word genocide has lost all meaning anyway because of leftist anti-Semitism, it's really more like ethnic cleansing which can be voluntary". An assertion contradicted by the words and actions of Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, senior Israeli military officials, members of the Knesset including the deputy speaker, Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, an open Kahanist, the Hebrew language media, Israeli civilians, Israeli artists, active duty personnel in the IDF, Mossad run Telegram channels, President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They also like bringing up the existence of Arab Israeli citizens "oh they have equal rights!" (an easily disprovable claim) as a shield against the charge of genocide. It gets ugly too, I came across a post the other day of some American Zionist claiming that Hind Rajab could not possibly have been killed by the IDF because there would be no benefit in it to them, she must have been killed by Hamas who then blamed it on the IDF.
And because it's Tumblr it's all so frequently delivered in either that cutesy and twee cry bully tone of "oooh but I'm just a small little guy =uwu= and everyone is being mean to me!" or in the voice of the condescending gifted child "I am much smarter than you and this is why". It's frequently paired with a picrew avatar and queer identity flag. A few of them have "leftist" or "BLM" or "antifa" in their bio without a whiff of self awareness (no guesses as to the political ideology undergirding one of the groups from which the ruling Likud party claims descent). I'm not as hostile to identity politics as some leftists are, I think they can be a valuable tool to agitate for the needs of specific groups, but I can't help but see it as a damning indictment of the shallowness of the sort of "progressive" identity politics popular on here. It was developing a politics rooted in material analysis that lead me into criticism of Israel and if you don't have that, well, shallow identity politics aren't going to save you from being on the wrong side of history.
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lakesbian · 8 months
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its like. re "alec would be so bad around post-wretched victoria" post. alec is really really resentful and envious that other people get to have Normal Families who Care About Them and he expresses that thru wildly out of pocket anger. he does have some contradicting thoughts going on where he's deeply wordlessly furious at his dad and fully aware that his childhood was unfathomably terrible but he's so repressed that How terrible it was is unfathomable even to him, and subsequently he doesn't really have the self-awareness to categorize himself as a victim or survivor of anything specific. he doesn't even have the emotional literacy to recognize that he's traumatized beyond the occasional vague thought of "hm you know i wonder sometimes if dad fucked me up. like it's probably not normal that i act and think this way? oh well who knows. anyway."
all of which is to say that i think he'd be really bad around anyone who had a normal life and just lost it and is being upset about that fact. because it would kick in his "well i NEVER HAD a normal life and I don't act Like This about it in fact i would have killed someone to have even a DAY of what you've been taking for granted this entire time but i'm not even whiny about not having it. Like you are." brand of resentment. all of which is totally unconscious of course that's a given. but it means he would not respond very nicely to seeing someone whose social role in brockton bay is "the extremely normal all-american nuclear family girl next door" in the midst of trauma responses. like he associates vulnerability over trauma w/ weakness and guards himself by being nasty and ironic and he would fully project that onto victoria and see her as weak & whiny for caring abt anything tattletale said. also i think watching her entire life and psyche explode bc of sexual assault while he's walking around convinced he's Totally Chill would, despite him not really perceiving himself as a sa survivor, result in some incredible cognitive dissonance. and he would respond to the Cognitive Dissonance Wheels grinding in the back of his brain by rejecting the entire subject as swiftly as possible, quite possibly by being an infernal cunt to victoria and then (subconsciously) going "tch obviously i'm not like her. because that upset her but it wouldn't have upset me. so i'm still fine." do you see what i mean here.
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burningvelvet · 3 months
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I love your posts about Mary Shelly, I'm currently studying Frankenstein in school and reading The Last Man.
A bit off topic, but in the spirit of awful takes about old authors, I saw a post on here about Oscar Wilde, saying something along the lines of "Lmao dont sue someone for saying you commited sodomy when you did commit sodomy" and went on to say in the tags that they think Oscar Wilde was a "mean theatre gay". Okay I'm sorry I'm just petty but not only does this person not understand how incredible homophobic 1800s Britain was but they also seem to not know what homophobia is like. In general. I think that stereotypes and tiktok are the bane of my existence
Thank you! And I completely agree. I hate the way anti-intellectualism proliferates online, and I fear for people my age and younger than me.
Every day I think that the majority of our ideological, cultural, and social problems could be solved by a better and more accurate understanding of – and appreciation for – history (not just global history, but personal, ancestral, local, evolutionary – all of it). But that requires the ability to accept the complexities and nuances of the world, and to humbly admit to your own lack of knowledge, and to seriously question your values, morals, and beliefs, and to tackle all of the Unsavory Stuff of Life. Most people don't have the strength to do any of this because it's complex and confusing and uncomfortable.
I'm not a historian, but I am a huge fan of all things history, and every day I try to implement historical context and knowledge in every aspect of life. Like all people willing to admit it, I still struggle in my own self-education process, and with the various cognitive dissonances and implicit biases I've discovered in myself thereby. I understand many things are subjective, and everyone is tinged by their own biases built by their individual experiences.
With Wilde, he's an incredibly fascinating thinker and cultural icon, especially in LGBT+ history, and yet he's still so divisive even among progressive types for various reasons. He doesn't fully live up to 21st century Western standards of morality or ethics. As an economically privileged white man in the 1800s, of course he was raised to hold some prejudiced opinions when it came to race, religion, gender, etc. - yet, overall, he also was still far ahead of his time in these and many other regards compared to everyone else back then. He's contradictive, and knew it, and wasn't afraid to show it. He can't be easily defined, and people don't like that. But he's still an important historical figure and always will be, and I don't think he or his works should be burned. It's not reasonable to hold historical figures to modern standards or stereotypes. Context is key.
Also: if you didn't know, a lot of The Last Man was semi-autobiographical! A lot of interesting things have been written about this aspect of it.
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rainbowsky · 2 years
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I always like taking anti's arguments into consideration in any fandom. But then, the antis here said that the reason why there was that voice saying "give it (the scorpion) to WYB" as seen in this video, was because, and I quote, "XY hates WYB and that's why his staff wishes to give him a scorpion". That's when I knew that it was now pointless to listen to them anymore. When people provide such ridiculous arguments to counter a particular idea, you find yourself believing in said idea even more. Anybody confident in their position as an anti would've just said "well, it seems they are still friends, and the second sentence referring to him as husband is debatable", not immediately jump on the hate train. It was funny to see some solos become really confused, though.
Thanks, Anon. You just made my day. That has to be the most hilarious thing I've heard in ages. Seriously, I truly LOLed. My God, they really don't recognize their own absurdity, do they?
At least they acknowledge that it is DD's name in that clip! 😅
Unfortunately there is no limit to how much people will pretzel their logic to try to avoid the cognitive dissonance that happens when one is faced with information that contradicts their reality/beliefs. And this isn't even the most outrageous thing I've seen from fans.
There are people who would rather believe the ridiculous and offensive idea that there are forgeries, CGI deepfakes and hired impersonators misrepresenting their idol than that they were simply wrong about what he thought and felt.
It's startling to think how far down the rabbit hole some people go for their fandom. That's why I believe it's so important to be honest with ourselves, think critically and always examine and self-reflect.
Having said all of that, I think it's extremely inadvisable to 'take anti arguments into consideration' when approaching a fandom. This growing idea in society that we must 'consider all angles' regardless of how hateful and absurd they are, is dangerous and incorrect.
Antis, by their very nature, aren't acting in good faith, nor are their ideas based in logic, fact or rational thought. They are acting out of a desire to destroy something, and they'll do so by any means necessary. Often they involve shrewdly crafted black PR messages, created with the intent to manipulate people into believing false and harmful things.
Taking hate-based perspectives into account will not bring you closer to the truth, it will only distort and mislead you.
There is no internal logic to the idea of, "I don't want to be misled or have distorted ideas, so I'm going to dig deeper into the distorted and misleading ideas of a hate group."
We've seen globally how inadvisable that approach is. We've seen how it's only led people deeper and deeper into conspiracy theories and hate groups/ideologies.
And when it comes to fandom, this is a major risk every fan takes when digging into something they love - that if they aren't careful about how they approach fandom, they can have their experience of fandom completely destroyed, and sometimes they can even become antis themselves.
I talked about that in detail, and explained some of the reasons why it's inadvisable to dig into anti stuff a while back in this post, which I urge fans to read, because I think it's an incredibly important bit of intellectual self-defense all fans could benefit from.
Avoiding hateful people's twisted ideas is not tantamount to becoming a credulous idiot who accepts all ideas - no matter how crazy - either. It's possible (and I would say, necessary) to be very intellectually rigorous about things, without digging into anti rhetoric.
Use your common sense
Learn about critical thinking and logical fallacies
Question, question, question
Discuss your doubts with people whose rationality you trust
Self-reflect and be ruthlessly honest with yourself
Take a step back when you find yourself getting in too deep
As I've said many times in the past: You do not need to know what hateful things are being said about GG and DD in order to be a 'good fan' or in order to 'truly support them'. In fact, it's better not to go there, for reasons I explained in the post I linked earlier.
Also, just as a final note, fandom should be fun. Nothing takes the joy out of fandom quite like antis. If you'd rather focus on clowning than on intellectual rigor, that's totally fine and entirely your choice. Everyone should do what is best for them (as long as it isn't harmful to you, to others, or to your idols).
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thosearentcrimes · 1 year
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We like to talk about political opinions because they're designed to be talked about. The thing is, as far as I can tell most people simply do not have political opinions. Not just in the sense of most people being a lot less interested in politics than most of us are, though. Even the people who at least care about politics mostly seem not to have political opinions. What they have are political sympathies.
Political sympathies are often maligned. People deciding their political opinions on the spot, to agree with people they sympathize with or to contradict people they do not sympathize with, are regarded as the problem with political discourse, as subjects of irrational "tribal" impulses not fit for polite society. And certainly it is irritating to show up expecting a serious discussion about some important matter and discover that your interlocutor is merely spewing a couple rehearsed talking points and has nothing material to say about the topic.
The problem is, I don't think we'd get anywhere politically if we resolutely demanded everyone have object-level opinions. It's rare enough for people to be politically conscious at all as it is. In fact, unless you are going to pay a great (and frankly, excessive) deal of attention to political matters you are probably going to be more correct by sticking to sympathies rather than getting mixed up with the specifics. The sympathy heuristic is fairly inaccurate but it's better than the opinion heuristic would be with the usual level of intellectual investment. On a similar note, it does actually make sense to judge politicians on character as well as on policy, given that people are better judges of character than of policy on average. I mean, they're absolute dogshit at both, but you know.
Political sympathies are how you get things done. You do not improve the conditions of a group by getting them all to understand the intricacies of economic policy, however enthusiastic we are about the prospect of universal political education. You improve the conditions of the group by raising class consciousness, by getting them to consider themselves a group with shared interests and shared enemies and allies, and convincing them that you can represent those interests and deal with all the boring opinion stuff. Now, this is tricky because your enemies can pull the same trick with some bullshit alternate class like "nation" or whatever, but regardless there's no escaping the fact that this is how politics works.
But the thing is, political sympathies do not apply only to the masses of opinion-not-havers. Opinion-havers usually have sympathies too, even though some of us pretend we don't (there are opinion-havers without sympathies, they are incredibly weird people). They're harder to find, because any time you ask an opinion-haver about politics they'll almost certainly give you their opinion and not their sympathies, but there are tricks to figure it out. Consider, for example, a situation where two parties are arguing, neither particularly espousing the opinion a person has but not really contradicting it either. The opinionated sympathizer will attribute their opinion to the party they sympathize with, because of the tendency to assimilate opinions to sympathies and vice versa. We can observe the same phenomenon from the opposite direction when people form their opinions.
One of the interesting thing about political sympathies is that it seems to me like people who don't have opinions are more aware of their political sympathies than people who do have opinions. Repeatedly I've seen people with political opinions apparently sincerely misdescribe their political sympathies, typically making their sympathies out to be much more aligned with their opinions than they actually are (the same tendency to assimilate opinions and sympathies). Why should political opinions make you less self-aware? Cognitive dissonance or whatever, I guess. Maybe the apparent phenomenon is merely an illusion. But it seems to be the case to me, at least.
Here's a question. When people make political decisions or other decisions with significant political implications, and they have both opinions and sympathies, which of these will be more influential in determining the course they take?
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byjillianmaria · 1 month
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madame selene, cleo and rihannon for the character writing meme! ✨
Madame Selene
Madame Selene is, mentally, simultaneously existing in every possible timeline at once. She's also able to perceive every possible thing that might happen in the future. Understandably, there's always something a bit distant about her. She's never 100% present in the moment.
For every one thing she manages to say, there's about fifty things she doesn't. She doesn't really think in words, she thinks in images and concepts. And she's usually following multiple trains of thought at once, so it's hard to vocalize things. They get combined, or mixed up, or lost in translation.
(This never came up in canon proper, but did inform how I wrote her!) Even before being cursed, Madame Selene was very perceptive. She was one of the few people able to see past The Mistress's magic to recognize that something very sinister was happening behind the scenes, and she was trying to convince the authorities to get involved when The Mistress got wind of it and snatched her.
(Again, this wasn't ever canonized, it's just a concept that I imagined when I was writing her.) Madame Selene was the eldest of several children. Elizabeth reminds her of a younger sister who has since passed away.
Cleo
Cleo believes that she is just, like, cosmically doomed. She sees even minor inconveniences as proof that the universe has it out for her. She finds it hard to get her hopes up for anything, because she doesn't see the point in getting disappointed. Incredibly pessimistic.
She also feels a tremendous responsibility for people around her. She thinks it's her job to keep bad things from happening. The fact that this slightly contradicts the earlier bullet point causes a lot of cognitive dissonance for her.
Cleo is a teenage film nerd. There's a certain level of pretension and melodrama in how she filters the world around her that especially comes through in her narration. Her snark is endearing or frustrating, depending on who you ask.
Cleo will often revert to thinking of things in... "film terms?" Imagining them written out in a script, or shot through a camera. This is her way of detaching herself emotionally from the world around her.
Rhiannon
Rhiannon is what I call a "practical pessimist." Like Cleo, her first instinct is to think of how things will go wrong, but rather than let that stop her from trying, she tends to try to find solutions and contingencies.
While she has strong opinions about things, she's always letting new information change and impact the way she views the world. She doesn't cling to beliefs for the sake of being stubborn when evidence proves her wrong.
Good at seeing the connections between things that others might miss. Can read between the lines of what people aren't saying, often coming up with the right answer just by filling in the gaps between context clues.
Will intellectualize her emotions rather than feeling them. Grief is the exception, and she struggles with it, because grief by its nature is so weird and difficult to predict.
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tribal mentality - my love hate relationship with it
this is about to get a little personal.
Being born and raised hindu, my inner wirings are religious at heart and it's frustrating to realize year after year after year.
like my go to first reaction to information that contradicts my worldview used to be "that's against my worldview it must be stupid or have no value whatsoever" and realizing the worth of opinions that aren't ones I already hold was a process that took time for me.
the impulse to believe in something, not because I can prove it, but because the belief is comforting is something I find myself doing day after day. The impulse to believe that I wasn't a real female. The impulse to believe female liberation is inevitable. The impulse to believe that God exists. The impulse to believe that the café was still open even though it was 12am.
All existed to comfort, not because I thought they were true.
cognitive dissonance...well it's a fact of life. the truth is we humans cannot survive as a society without it, due to our tendency domination, we are violent as a species, due to our sensitive hearts, we cannot bear it. But it's...strong in me. The fact I believed males could become females proved that much.
The impulse to trust other people who happen to share my views, that is the nature of being a social animal. The impulse to trust labels that I think describe views, such as radical feminist, similarly is an innate part of human nature.
It's part of why I'm incredibly glad to have received the radfem followers I have, though I like to think the other reason if your guy's based takes. Thank you, all of you, I would follow you all but the dashboard is too much for me as is.
It's why I'm beginning to realize that in my life, all I do is switch from tribe to tribe, wanting desperately to be a person who thinks and then makes an honest attempt to learn the truth of the world, and decide my path from there, rather than the other way around, but growing more and more doubtful that it's the kind of person I am.
I guess when I have to confront the fact that I literally believed in something as insane as the idea that a male can become female, and that a female can become male, it's...hard to trust myself.
Like...I've not gone through much for a female. I had been pressured into femininity, of course, I have had boys make weird comments, par for the course, but I've never been raped, never been abused in a romantic relation.
I've never...suffered that much for a human really, let alone a woman, I literally have the liberty to pursue music as a fucking profession. I don't think it gets much more lucky than that.
I guess my biggest conclusion from this long, pretentious, rather ridiculous rant is...it's hard to think critically, and I'm learning that day by day. And I desperately want to continue, because I don't want to be who I used to be, believing whatever would make me happy.
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When people take the accountability away from women and decide to place the blame on men like nearly most of the Modern Western Feminists™ for literally ALL of their problems, then they aren’t empowering women; what they are doing is basically relegate women to a victimhood, helpless position and make men have power over them by not holding women accountable for a damn thing. Ironic, isn’t it? 🤔  
#anti sexism#anti misogyny#anti misandry#text#like do these so-called feminists not realize wtf they are doing?#also they have devalued everything female-related and feminine so women wouldn't be valued unless they do something#'masculine' or 'male-centric' like....the amount of sexism in that logic is off the charts but it's perpetuated by people who want to#supposedly help women by reinforcing in them the idea that being a woman just fucking sucks that there is no escape from utter suffering#abuse trauma and silence and that their lives would be far better if they were just men#this is the shit women have been fed for years now#i'm fucking pissed#in their quest to 'help' women they end up fucking them over more than the 'patriarchal' system#when you relegate women to being nothing more than victims of grr Evil Men >:( then what the fuck you bitches are doing?#you are taking the power away from them and give it to men which is what the fuck a lot of y'all say you OPPOSE#like....the cognitive dissonance and contradictions are incredible#god the more i read about their ideology the more i realize how fucking full of shit western feminism really is#western feminists don't even help women they just use us for ideology and attacking Evool Mens >>:(((#fuck them this is why i don't fuck the modern feminist movement it's full of a lot of bs and rampant misogyny aside from misandry#when you really analyze a lot of the viewponts they hold of womanhood and femininity#which they think is inherently patriarchal traumatizing and evil like wow ok misogynist#i don't fuck with sexists that's why i don't fuck with a lot of this so-called female empowerment movement when it tells women#they need to stfu and learn their place IF they dare to have a different opinion and just accept the fact that they are women and that's a#very horrible thing because of all the shitty things that come with it#what a great way to empower women...#🙄🙄🙄🙄
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teaboot · 4 years
Note
Do you not believe in biological sex? I’m confused.
Hoo, boy. Apologies in advance, but this is gonna have a long answer.
The thing about "biological sex" is, it's a complicated science with a lot of nuance involved, and people who don't actually know anything about it love to use it to mean "penis is boy, vagina is girl".
Which, on the surface, makes sense to a lot of people. Its what we're taught our whole lives, and it's difficult to listen to any argument that contradicts our worldview. It's scary and confusing, and people automatically resist scary and confusing things.
The thing you need to know, though, is that what we call "Biological Sex" can actually depend on a range of factors: 
First off, primary sex characteristics: the bits directly involved in reproduction, what most people consider the defining indicator of gender.
Primary sex characteristics include the penis and testes, which are predominantly associated with men, and the vagina and uterus, associated with women.
This seems fairly simple on the surface, scientifically speaking, but bodies aren't that simple. People can and are born with combinations of these things and live long, happy, healthy lives with few or no medical complaints. Many don't even know they have undescended testes or ovaries at all, and only find out accidentally through unrelated procedures. Is a mother of three who's known herself to be a woman her whole life suddenly a man because she has 'male' sex characteristics? No? Then why should any other woman?
Someone who is still new to this might be experiencing a cognitive dissonance right now, trying to reconcile "penis is boy, vagina is girl" with "people can have both (or neither)", and they may try to do this by saying, "Well, this could be caused by mutations or deformities, so intersex people (people with mixed characteristics) are outliers, not to be included with "valid" genders."
Which brings us to the next factor: hormones.
Testosterone is Boy, Estrogen is Girl. That's what people know, so they don't want to accept any different. Different is confusing, confusing is scary, scary is bad.
But, like primary sex characteristics, these things can fly in the face of common understanding.
A woman, for example, who considers herself cisgender, who has breasts and a vagina and a uterus and all that, might have high testosterone. Because people have both! And because testosterone can give people body hair, among other things, this woman has chest hair and a beard. She LOOKS a lot like what we think of as "male", so do we tell her she's wrong about her gender? 
On the flip side, plenty of cis men with a penis and testes can have high estrogen for any number of reasons, and can develop breasts- does that mean they're women, now? 
Of course not. We have to listen to them to tell us what their pronouns are, what their gender is, and how is that any different from someone who's trans? It would be incredibly ride to tell anyone that "oh, you SAY you're a man, but you look like a woman to me, so I'm going to ignore everything you tell me and call you a woman until you can prove to my satisfaction otherwise."
So if primary sex characteristics aren't the final word on gender, and secondary characteristics aren't either, then what's left? DNA, right? Genetics don't lie, everyone knows that.
So, chromosomes, then. The barest evidence of human biological sex. XX means "female", XY means "male", forget all that mess about vaginas, breasts, and testes. Our chromosomes are the holy gospel of gender.
Except, again, nature isn't that simple.
Picture in your head a cisgender woman. She hits everything on our personal little checklist: breasts, vagina, uterus, minimal body hair, small jawline, high voice, everything. But she has XY chromosomes. 
Because, surprise! That happens! And it happens more often than you think! People can and do go their entire lives not knowing it! Because it isn't important to how we view our gender. We don't care. 
If you went to a lab today, got tested, and found that you had the "wrong" chromosomes- would you suddenly be fine with Becoming A Different Gender? Being treated like you're a different gender? Having to dress different, talk different, redefine your sexuality, because your DNA says you're wrong about your identity? How would that feel? Probably pretty shitty, huh? 
So, when we get down to it, what is the one true indicator of gender? We can't trust genitalia, because it presents on any number of variations and combinations. Secondary sex characteristics are out too, because hormones do whatever they want without rhyme or reason. Chromosomes do whatever the hell they want, fuck them, they're useless.
If we are to open our minds to what the science is telling us, then, what is it saying?
If we are to put our faith in "Biological Sex", then what does is dictate to be the truth?
That physical sex isn't just "boy or girl", it exists on a spectrum. It's not "pink or blue", it's magenta, mauve, violet, lilac, periwinkle, cyan, cobalt, or vermilion, and our idea of "boy or girl" is almost entirely a construct of our imaginations, of the society we live in. It's an illusion that dictates how we experience our lives, how we're treated, what makes us happy and comfortable or how we feel at ease.
Biological sex cannot dictate gender because they're different concepts with different rules grounded in separate realities, and no amount of pointless fussing can force them to cooperate. 
Sex is one spectrum, gender is another, and they don't know each other.
You can accept what the science says, or you can find excuses to justify the beliefs you're comfortable with. It really doesn't matter. 
Just don't be a dick about things that make you uncomfortable and the world will keep on spinning.
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sokkastyles · 3 years
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In your last post you talked a lot about how Zuko respects Iroh. Could you give some examples of that? Because I'm feeling like Zuko doesn't really respect anyone, he (understandably) has an ego and thinks he's above everyone, even if he's working on
It is such a shame that Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005) was cancelled after two episodes.
Lol, now that I've got that out of my system, I'm gonna assume you aren't just a troll and treat this like you actually want a serious answer, because it gives me an opportunity to meta about Zuko and Iroh's relationship.
I would say that the Zuko we are introduced to has a pretty big ego, yeah, and thinks he's above everyone else. He's incredibly disrespectful to most everyone he meets, including his long-suffering uncle. When I started the show I knew through cultural osmosis that Zuko would get redeemed, and from the first episode I was like "alright, I'm ready to see how the show is gonna make me like this asshole." I especially did have a negative reaction to the way he treats Iroh in the beginning, because Iroh is one of the first characters I loved. I also was sympathetic to Iroh because I'm an adult, and an adult who works with kids. If any of my students said to me some of the stuff that Zuko says to Iroh I'd be like, yeah, okay, detention for you young man.
It's also pretty clear from early on though that Zuko's ego comes from a deep insecurity and low self-esteem. That doesn't make the things he does any better, and yes he is incredibly disrespectful to Iroh, especially when Iroh contradicts him about his mission. That's also related to his deep insecurity and trauma surrounding his father, of course, because Zuko needs to believe that he can win back his father's acceptance to cope with what his father did to him, but that doesn't excuse it.
He says some incredibly nasty things to Iroh. In the first episode we see him respond angrily when Iroh won't teach him more advanced firebending, and Zuko responds, as he does several times, by trying to imitate his father's brand of coercion and intimidation. Iroh is like, not impressed, and he puts up with a lot of crap from Zuko but he also doesn't let it get to him because he's a responsible adult and he wants to support Zuko in the way he can. Which also means telling him off sometimes because dude.
Zuko thinks Iroh is lazy and a failure, and resents the fact that Iroh is keeping him from what he says he is "more than ready" for, and tries to bully Iroh when he doesn't get his way, but then we see in the third episode, "The Southern Air Temple," Zuko's fight with Zhao. We see that for all Zuko's complaining about Iroh's teaching, he does what Iroh taught him to do, he sticks to his basics, and he wins. Iroh says that Zuko is honorable and we see that Zuko appreciates Iroh's support. It's also implied by the way Zhao mentions humiliating Zuko in front of his uncle that Zuko wants Iroh to be proud of him, that it's obvious to Zhao how close they are.
Another example of the show letting us know that Zuko cares more about his uncle than he lets on is when he threatens to leave Iroh behind in "Winter Solstice" but then comes back for him to find him gone, and goes out of his way to search for him, even setting aside his hunt for Aang. Zuko fights the earthbenders to save Iroh and Iroh compliments his form, to which Zuko says Iroh taught him well. This episode does a lot to develop Zuko as a character and his relationship with Iroh because not only do we see that Zuko cares for his uncle, but that, contrary to his rudeness and dismissiveness in episode one, Zuko does respect Iroh as a teacher and a bender.
There's a lot of examples like this where Zuko says one thing but does another, because Zuko is a character who, at the beginning of the story, carries a lot of cognitive dissonance and guards his real feelings about things. His relationship with Iroh is an example. This isn't very surprising because it's pretty common in child psychology. Especially with kids who have been abused, they will rebel against an authority figure and push back in any way they can to see if they can find a breaking point. Iroh's endlessly patient and supportive but solid and firm presence is something Zuko is not used to and doesn't know how to deal with. But it's very clear that Zuko relies on Iroh as a father and mentor, even when Zuko doesn't realize it yet.
"The Avatar State" in another episode that shows how much Zuko relies on Iroh. At the beginning of the episode Zuko is sitting apart and it's implied that he's not happy with Iroh relaxing and getting a massage, but Zuko also opens up to Iroh about his feelings about his father. Zuko also is dismissive and rude to Iroh again in this episode, criticizing Iroh for collecting shells and also insulting Iroh when Iroh contradicts him about going with Azula, but then Zuko is happy when Iroh goes with him to Azula's ship, and we get that flash of the image of Ozai with his hand on Zuko's shoulder. This tells us that Zuko sees Iroh as the kind of mentor figure that he wishes his father were, even if, again, Zuko doesn't quite realize this yet. There are many other examples like this where Zuko is frustrated by not getting Iroh's approval on something because he wants Iroh to be proud of him. Like when he steals the teapot and gives it to Iroh and Iroh is not interested in stolen items. Zuko's clearly hurt by not having Iroh's approval, which is a big part of why he left Iroh, and Iroh knows that Zuko is struggling to find himself but also still needs his support.
Then you have "Bitter Work," the lightning bending, and Zuko's look of total admiration when Iroh is bending lightning and teaching Zuko a move that he invented himself. Like I said before, it's clear that Zuko respects Iroh as a powerful bender. This is also echoed in that scene in the book two finale when Iroh is about to breathe fire and Zuko has this look of "wow my uncle is going to beat you so bad this is going to be great!"
There's also a lot of little stuff in the Ba Sing Se arc that show that Zuko respects Iroh and values him as a mentor figure. He lets Iroh do his hair for his date with Jin! It looks terrible! Zuko has no idea how to behave on a date so he's like um, uncle said to give you this coupon! Look how smart my uncle is! Of course the culmination of that arc is Zuko's fever and his awakening which gives him a renewed respect for Iroh, and he actually makes an effort to show Iroh how much he values him. He still betrays Iroh in Ba Sing Se but it's not the "I hate you and you smell!" thing that the play portrays it as. One of the reasons Zuko was so confused there was because he felt like his uncle was telling him contradictory things, and he couldn't reconcile his uncle's wisdom with what he'd been taught to believe by Ozai.
But it's finally losing Iroh as that pillar of support that makes Zuko truly realize how much he does value his uncle. It still takes him a while to get there, and he again pushes back against Iroh when Iroh won't talk to him in prison and blames him for his own internal turmoil. But when he does finally get there, it's such a slap in the face to Ozai that Zuko on the Day of Black Sun tells him to his face that Iroh is his real father, that Zuko is going to fall to his knees and beg for Iroh's forgiveness, because Zuko has realized that Iroh is the one who really deserves his respect. Not only does Zuko tell Ozai that he, in fact, did not teach him anything about respect, but the respect Ozai tried to get from his son through cruelty and control is something Zuko will freely give to Iroh.
Then Zuko spends the next several episodes constantly talking about how great Iroh is, how much he misses him, how good he is at making tea and telling jokes, how wise he is, and what an ass he, Zuko, had been to him. He follows Iroh's advice and humbles himself because Iroh always said he didn't think things through enough, he works hard to make himself into someone his uncle would be proud of. Then when he does meet Iroh again he asks for forgiveness, but he says that even if Iroh won't forgive him he would try to make it up to him. He's completely humbled himself and it's so satisfying because it's the fulfilment of their relationship arc, and you can feel the love and respect that these two characters have for each other. And it's directly meant to contrast with what Ozai said about respect, because Ozai is full of shit.
And then Zuko just like automatically assumes that Iroh will be the Fire Lord and Iroh's like "Zuko did you forget that you are the crown prince?" And Zuko, bless his heart, is like "but I made so many mistakes."
I'm sorry, but if you're gonna keep arguing that Zuko, at this point, still "thinks he's above everyone else" then you are just being willfully obtuse.
Not to mention the fact that Zuko's crowning moment as Fire Lord is him giving a speech about how he wants to serve others, to heal the world, and even the applause and praise that he, in the beginning, wanted from others is something he doesn't accept. He tells everyone that Aang is the real hero. And Aang is a hero but like, Zuko is a hero, too, by showing heroic qualities like being selfless and humble and caring towards others. And then his last scene is not him as Fire Lord, but serving tea to everyone dressed in Earth Kingdom clothes.
And who does he serve tea to first? Uncle.
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stdio2020 · 3 years
Video
youtube
Rosi Braidotti “Posthuman Knowledge”
In this lecture Braidottie establishes that the critique of the universal begins not with the postmodernist thinkers but is established and follows parallels to the idea of humanism itself. She confronts the ongoing fixation with defining the term ‘human’ as a process of definition by negation e.g. to be human is to be man. man is not woman, man is not animal, man is not nature. And that really the term only serves to index an axis of power. 
Braidotti postulates a kind of convergence she describes as the Posthuman Convergence Phenomenon: Which is the meeting of post humanism (the critique of man) and post anthropocentrism (the critique of the Anthropos, the idea of species supremacy in which aside from all sociological variables the species grants itself access to every living organism and body)
these two ideas run parallels but don't necessarily intertwine until the convergence which can be seen as a set of interrelations that zig zag, plateau. a nomadic set of events that are carried by the two main events that characterize historicity; the fourth industrial revolution, the knowledge economy AKA cognitive capitalism and on the other hand the sixth extinction, the death of the species, and of the planet. 
“These two events are happening simultaneously, it is not as though we have climate change on Monday and AI and synthetic biology on Tuesday. How do we think about this simultaneity of boom and bust on this scale, multi scale or multi dimensional is the Post Human challenge. It is causing a great deal of panic on the one hand and excitement on the other. These are really the best of times and the worst of times” 
^^This relates to by previous writing about the confusion and contradiction in expression throughout by work caught between optimism and cynicism, irony and sincerity
How to think about such dissonant almost opposite events demands skills of endurance, of imagination, and of transversal connectivity. Transversality is the key term here, you need to draw lines across events that are not at all parallels. the future is in the transversality of almost everything. 
We now need to look at these two phenomena, look at the chain of socialogical, theoretical, political effects that they are causing and draw a course of navigation that provides something productive, propositional to offer. In saying ‘we’ is unitary, we needs to be grounded according to the politics of imminence, grounded in feminism, politics of locations, anti racism, anti facism, indigenous epistemology, perspectives. These are ways that we can ground ourselves against universalism without falling into Relevatism. ‘We’ is not one in the same but ‘we’ are all in the posthuman convergence together. Perspectivsm requires your own analysis of your point of entry. 
Lets do away with the Anthropocene, it has become an Anthropos meme, gone berserk. It is too fluid and misses the point of the convergence effect, that we not only need to pay attention to the extinction, the end, but also the incredible period of growth and amazing scientific revolutions with all the consequences that it entails. 
“Swinging moods is an element of the Anthropocentric landscape. An imaginary disaster that the Hollywood machine pumps out. There is really money in extinction, money in catastrophe. and it is always the same template; White man, dog, rifle, pickup truck. This is a format that codes the social imagining of disaster that prevents us from looking forward at all the other elements of a  complex effective landscape.” We cant do much with the Anthropocene but we take note of the mood, the anxiety, the fear. The melancholia, the “why bother”
Enter the discussion via a critique of the necro political character of cognitive capitalism. The wealth disparity at a time like this causes an enormous ammount of problems, but lets not be sentimental about this, lets take stock of the contradictions of the fourth industrial resolution and the sixth extinction. We owe it to our intelligence to celebrate our technological advancements. 
COGNITIVE CAPITALISM
Cognitive and bio-genetic advanced capitalism and media and information technologies. Capital today = the informational power of living matter itself, its immanent qualities and self organizing capabilities. Profits generated from scientific and economic comprehension of all that lives. re. ‘Bio-piracy’(Shiva, 1997) a system that profits from all living this (this includes death, the necro political) - amongst this, great things are happening, the post human convergence and critical thinking is about this oscillating of ‘yes but’
The posthuman is an indicator of our historicity, and also a navigational tool (as Deleuze would say, a conceptual persona) that helps us illuminate what is happening to us, where we are at. Foucault’s question “what kind of subjects are we becoming?”
Posthuman scholarship has a tremendous focus on the non academic, the aesthetic, design and media for knowledge production. 
The queer, feminist, racial, postcolonial, film, art, subaltern studies do the work of exposing the connection between rationality and violence, reason and exclusion. Theses are ways of showing the knowledge that is being produced by the voices of the excluded. 
The critical posthumanities no longer assume that the knowing subject is homo universalis nor Anthropos but rather a complex embodied and embedded non unitary but relational affective transversal subjects collaboratively linked to a material web of human and non human agents. 
Collaborative morality is the ethics we get from Spinoza. Great introductory research into the kinds of scholarship that is born out of posthumanist thought 
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mybg3notebook · 3 years
Text
Gale: Hypothesis and Analogies – Part 2
Here, I will compile several hypotheses that are pretty common to find around and I will express my opinion on them showing what EA has given us so far to justify them or not. 
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
Disclaimer about interpretations of Real Life concepts: I’m not a fan of bringing real life issues into plain analogies/allegories in a game which intention in doing so was not made explicit, but the fandom seems to like this aspect and therefore I would like to share those opinions here as well since some seems reasonable despite not being of my taste. This topic may be sensitive for some people. Be aware of it.
Hypothesis: Gale is a gaslighter
Concept
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgement. It may evoke changes in them such as cognitive dissonance or low self-esteem, rendering the victim additionally dependent on the gaslighter for emotional support and validation. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction,and disinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilise the victim and delegitimise the victim's beliefs. 
A gasligther's ultimate goal is to make their victim second-guess their choices and to question their sanity, making them more dependent on the abuser. Fandom does an incredible misuse of this word (and similar ones), that over-magnifies situations which don't have those dimensions. For example, it’s pretty common to read in this fandom that Wyll “gaslights” Tav when he denies that his eye is a sending stone. Gaslighting and lying are not synonymous at all. 
Then, what's the difference? A person usually lies by either withholding or concealing information, or falsifying information and presenting it as true.
Gaslighting is similar to lying, but a gaslighter will also be attempting to confuse the other person by flipping a situation and putting the blame onto them, making them doubt their perception of events and second guess themselves. Typically the gaslighter is either trying to avoid taking responsibility for something and they want someone else to take responsibility, or they are trying to gain control over someone because they have an agenda.
So basically, gaslighting is about flipping, attacking, confusing and blaming, gaining power over another, and trying to get someone else to take responsibility for their bad behaviour. But lying doesn’t involve flipping, attacking or blaming and the liar isn’t trying to get someone else to take responsibility for their behaviour, they are merely hiding information for personal reasons. 
Inside the context of BG3
Honestly, nothing of this is happening with Gale, not even with Wyll and his denial about the sending stone. Gale and Wyll are hiding personal information, but without any interest to control Tav. In fact, the one holding power is Tav: the leader of the group that no companion questions. It's clear for any player that Tav has so much power over the group that they can kill any of the companions without consequences. 
Unlike an average gaslighter, Gale is well aware that his dire situation is the product of his own mistakes; the folly of his young self who believed that Mystra's love would last forever. We also learnt in the Loss scene that he deeply regrets this situation and during the Revelation scene he makes it clear over and over again that the only one to blame is “the silly wizard who did not accept a no from a goddess”, while being quite oblivious of the power imbalance his young self was in (here is where the grooming interpretation comes. Read Part 1 for details). Gale never disrespected Tav's opinions, confusing them or dismissing them. Gale can agree or disagree with Tav, and be very clear about it, but like an expected scholar, his disagreements are done with sensible touch and respecting Tav's individuality. In the only moment where Gale is aggressive due to dissidence is during the conversation after the goblin party or in his final scene before leaving the party when he is very low approval. But it's more than understandable since Tav forced him to be part of evil acts he did not want to participate in (after all, he is a good-aligned character, as Sven said it in PAX). 
Even Wyll, lying straight to Tav's face about his stone eye, is not even gaslighting. Gaslighting is about power, control, and submission of the other. I would really like the fandom to learn the context of the words they use. 
Hypothesis: Gale is a narcissist
Concept
Another word that fandom can't grasp and misuses so lightly. The difference between a narcissist and a cocky person or a high self-esteem person is big. 
A narcissist is not just someone who loves themselves in excess and has a big ego. A narcissist is a person that has very specific character traits, the three main are: having a sense of entitlement, being exploitative, and being empathy impaired, or having a complete lack of empathy for others.
Sense of entitlement: A narcissist views themselves as superior and special and better than everyone else, so they think they should be treated that way. They have delusions of grandeur and a sense of omnipotence and grandiosity that makes them feel entitled to have whatever they want.
They see their needs and desires as a priority and more important than anyone else’s; they are ruthless in getting them fulfilled. They crave admiration and adoration and will demand attention, but they will not give anything in return. They’ll punish others if they don’t get what they want. They don’t care about the consequences because they don’t believe consequences apply to them, since they think they are above reproach.
Being exploitative: Because of their sense of entitlement, the narcissist needs to exploit and use others to get what they want. Exploitative behaviour includes: intimidation, manipulation, control, plotting, conspiring, strategising, teasing, bullying, threats, being aggressive and passive-aggressive. They take advantage and treat people unfairly . They do only what is best for themselves in order to achieve their own goals. Due to their lack of conscience they will not feel any remorse or concern for the person they use and exploit. Instead they will just feel excitement and pleasure at having gained what they believe is rightfully theirs.
Lack of empathy: Empathy is the ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes, and imagine what they are feeling, understanding those feelings. Narcissists lack this ability, so they do not concern themselves with other people's feelings, showing little compassion for others. This lack of empathy means they have no problem taking advantage of people or hurting them when they exploit or degrade them for their own means, and they have no conscience or awareness about the pain they cause in others. This is the reason why they can't offer comfort or reassurance. Another big sign that someone might be a narcissist is if they have trouble being told ‘No’. Narcissists lack boundaries and they don’t care about other people’s boundaries, so trying to set a boundary simply by saying no to them, may provoke a very strong reaction in them.
So, the difference between a narcissist and a cocky or high self-esteem person are clear: 
A person with high self-esteem greatly respects themselves. Self-esteem is confidence in one’s ability to think, make choices, and act on those choices, as well as feeling deserving of happiness and benefiting from one’s hard work and accomplishments. Above all, it means valuing the facts of reality and reason to guide one’s life. A lapse in knowledge or a mistake won't threaten their self-esteem. In fact, they embrace facts, whether those facts come from themselves or someone else, because they know that knowledge will help them in their life.
People with high-self esteem rarely (if ever) evade facts or rational advice because they know reality is their survival tool and means of achieving and maintaining happiness. They may be cocky at times, but they have tact and empathy to understand their own mistakes and the effect that they may cause on others, accepting the blame.
Narcissism is the opposite of self-esteem. Narcissists act as if they know everything, and anything that contradicts what they believe is either evaded or rejected out of hand. They’re not interested in facts that contradict what they feel or want to be true. They feel they must be right all the time. Their charm and show-off is usually aimed to belittle people. They always want to remain blameless. 
Inside the context of BG3
Gale is certainly confident in his knowledge and he is proud of what he does; he spent many years learning under many tutors; his skills are a product of hard effort and a privileged education (wizard education). 
Gale: I'm a wizard of considerable acclaim, and scholar of exceptional accomplishment.
Lae'zel: You strike me as cleverer than most istiki, Gale. Multiple tutors I should guess. Gale: Many a wise man and woman, indeed. Waterdeep is the home of myriads of scholars. 
Gale: Benefits of a wizard's education, you see. Of course my considerable talent didn't hurt either. Well... That depends on who you ask, I suppose. I may have summoned things rather more exotic than a winged cat.
This is not mere fake, because the scene of Ceremorphosis shows that Gale has a deep understanding of the process, compared to the knowledge that any githyanki has (Lae'zel or githyanki Tav). What Gale continues stating are facts:
Tav: And what makes you the expert? Gale: Study. 
He is far from being the typical obnoxious scholar who enjoys making people feel small and inferior. Unlike the archetype, Gale doesn't enjoy mocking Tav's ignorance, on the contrary, the excess of explanation can be seen as a typical vice of a teacher (which is confirmed after the Weave: Gale has been a teacher for some students even though his patience was thin). But in the same way Gale states the fact that he knows a lot, he is also well aware of his limitations, and he doesn't hide that fact: during the scene of ceremorphosis, he acknowledges that his “knowledge fails him” when he tries to understand the anomalies they are experiencing. 
During the Weave scene, he acknowledges the obvious: 
Tav: You’re a good teacher. Gale: I Know.
Annoying? yes, but true. After all, the game allowed a non-wizard Tav to channel the Weave, a unique experience for non-magical users. They are casting the Weave for the first time thanks to Gale's good instructions (and some luck with the dice). 
Another situation can be seen during the scene of the consumption of the artefacts.
Tav: Thanks don't get me that artefact back Gale: I myself am a much more powerful artefact in your arsenal. Rest assured of that.
His comment may be cocky, but it once more displays a fact: a functional wizard (with many spell slots) is more valuable than the power that those artefacts give to Tav (usually one spell alone). It’s also worth noting that none of his show-off comments tries to dismiss or belittle Tav. 
Because of his habit of over-explaining, Gale tends to be considered a mansplainer. I would see it that way if his excessive explanations would only happen with female Tavs. But the truth is that he is explaining too much to anyone, even to fellow wizards that may know all that stuff already. After all, it makes sense: he has the [sage] tag; he read all his life, he knows a big amount of things, and he was a teacher: a terrible combination that justifies a character with a tendency to over-explaining.
But Gale is not even that cocky, in my opinion. Many of his scenes have a level of teasing that implies more a hidden joke than high self-esteem. This is a pattern that can be seen in several opportunities: Gale uses this fake cockiness to put some levity in the moment, showing his joking intentions by context or explicitly with words:
The scene of Ceremorphosis starts with him observing his own reflection. When Tav asks him what he is doing, Gale answers: “Indulging in a spot of vanity. Handsome devil, aren't I?”. He deflected the raw context of the answer with teasing. He was not indulging into vanity, what he was truly doing was to observe any change in his physiognomy, and he attempted to levity by teasing. This is explicit later, when the topic of the conversation focuses on the changes that ceremorphosis causes. Even the handsome devil comment has teasing implications: according to some idiom dictionaries, the expression handsome devil “it's usually used playfully or flirtatiously”. Again, a teasing. 
During the Stew scene, Gale puts some levity before introducing the dramatic conversation about the artefacts he needs:
Gale: Curious time to be dieting. Especially with a chef like myself around. 
When meeting the Myconid, Gale will talk with fascination about the ability of this species to raise the dead through spores.
Tav: Sorry, but I don't share your fascination for fungi. Gale: Nobody's perfect. 
Tav can be a bit dismissive with his response, to which Gale will reply with one of his typical teasing/jokes, implying the ridiculous idea that a perfect person should always be interested in fungi. It’s a joke.
Another attempt to levity despite fearing to turn into mind flayers that night:
Gale: More blood. That's a pretty sight. Give it to me straight, how do I look? Tav: Like your handsome self, Gale. Gale: Thanks, that's what I thought.
During the Loss scene, in the romantic path of “more than friends”, we have this silly, teasing/cockiness which lacks belittling intentions. He is just playful. That can be seen because he doesn't let the situation last more than a moment, immediately calling himself “insufferable”. A narcissist, under no circumstance, would call himself as such. 
Tav: When I said we could be more than friends, you answered “perhaps”. What does that really mean? Gale: If I recall correctly, the Waterdhavian Dictionary of the Common Tongue of Faerûn defines it as an adverb that conveys the meaning of “It may be that”, or “possibly”. Sorry, sometimes I just can't help being quite insufferable. In seriousness, I'm glad you asked that question. [...] 
When the joke/teasing finishes, his words change immediately returning to the “serious” note of the conversation, doing it explicitly: “In seriousness”. Meaning he was joking a moment ago. He is painfully explicit. 
The same exact teasing/joke happens during the scene of the consumption of artefacts:
Tav: Let's hope this was the last artefact I had to part with. Gale: Come, come, these are mere fabled objects of great to enormous value. My continued presence though – quite priceless! On a more serious note, I do not wish to give you false hope. We're only treating the symptoms, not the cause. [...]
After the teasing, Gale explicitly says “talking on a more serious note”, meaning, the previous moment was a joke. Again. 
Another example of teasing/cocky joke:
Wyll: Between the orb and the bug you've got more than your fair share of unwelcome passengers. Gale: What can I say. Mother always taught me to be a gracious host. 
Gale claims to be a gracious host, but the context surrounding this... just makes it into a joke. This is why I insist so much in the Context.
This happens during the “Revelation” scene too, when it's Tav who attempts to use this teasing to relax the tense situation with a joke:
Tav: When you put it like that – no one can say no to me. Gale: After all, even I am only human. (Gale Approves)
It's painfully obvious they tease one another. After all the conversation of Mystra and the orb, some Tavs may want to opt for this option to answer Gale, and he even would approve this attempt of levity, because it's the same exact, silly thing he does as a pattern. He also approves it because he likes confidence. Again, I will repeat myself, but it's clear that Gale is char with high self-esteem, and likes people with that same trait. We know this because during the party when Tav accepts his out-of-nowhere “thank you”. Gale immediately says: “There's that confidence I like”.
During the scene after the party, we have some extra silly, cocky moments that could be the result of wine in Gale's system, or the messiness of the scene itself, since it’s so unpolished:
Tav: I think that sounds delightful Gale: That's because I'm full of delights
Tav: You’re a good kisser. Gale: I’m of the opinion one should try to excel at everything. 
Tav: Thank you for a wonderful night. Gale: Like I said; I try to excel at everything.
I would like to highlight this line because the way it's said shows a level of confidence that is not related to an excess of ego, but to a high self-esteem behaviour: he says “try”. Meaning, he knows he may fail. His past is proof that he can try to excel at things that he would never be able to manage, and unlike a narcissist, he acknowledges his limitations once more. 
Another interesting exchange is after that night: 
Gale: A night to remember. It was wonderful, wasn't it? Tav: Oh, I've had better. Gale: I had a goddess, but you don't hear me complaining. [After apology] Tav: We should do it again sometime. Gale: We absolutely should, after all I need to undone the misconception that you had better. 
Tav can question Gale's performance, and after repaying that rudeness with his comment on the Goddess, (again, Gale is a character that will pay you with the same coin [18]) he accepts the criticism and promises—with a teasing—to do it better. Again, an impossible gesture in a narcissist.
But not only in these teasing/joking situations we see his high self-esteem: in bitter or aggressive reactions, we see he uses it to enrage his rude/violent interlocutor:
During the Weave scene:
Gale: What did I think about seeing my head on a spike? That I still looked as handsome as ever, that's what.
Gale is hurt of being depicted beheaded (we know he fears death, the scene with Nettie shows it). His answer is, of course, rude after such a gore image projected in his mind. But instead of resorting to plain aggression, he pretends that it did not have the effect that Tav wanted to cause. To do so, he shows off.
The scene of Mirkon displays both styles of teasing: Gale started using his teasing/cocky attitude with a clear intention of sharing something personal with Tav, who has just done an action that it's important for Gale (saving children/youngsters of their own mistakes [5, 12b], a concept that echoes in Gale's background).
Gale: Benefits of a wizard's education, you see. Of course my considerable talent didn't hurt either. Well... That depends on who you ask, I suppose. 
Tav can ignore this silly cockiness and engage in what Gale wants to share, leaving the moment at that. But if Tav opts for a rude comment, Gale will answer with a degree of rudeness too, using a condescending tone (but it’s very light if we compare it with the level of aggressive condescending he displays with an evil Tav). We need to remember that Gale is a char who follows the philosophy of giving people their own medicine [18]. That's what he does:
Tav: Considerable talent. Are you always this full of yourself? Gale: Only when the occasion suits. That's mostly a synonym for 'yes', by the by. Anyway-- 
Gale is a very confident character, but his high self-esteem is not that broad. It is limited to his knowledge and appearance, but never to relationships. Exactly it's there where he becomes less confident and when his emotions and abandonment issues conflict with his good sense.
Don't get me wrong, Gale's ego is there, I'm not denying it. But like everything in this fandom, some groups tend to over-magnify what the game gives in EA. Gale has a very well founded self-esteem in academic and researching fields: he has been a prodigy of the Weave from a young age (probably very close to a Weavemaster, skill referred in the novel Dead Masks), and a remarkable scholar with artistic attitudes in poetry. He worked hard for years to amass all that knowledge (he has a [sage] tag for a reason) and then he became, briefly, a Chosen one (not a small feat) which catapulted him to an status of archwizard. He could be so immensely obnoxious, aggressive, and dismissive as Fane is in DOS2. Still, Gale remains in a low level of a playful ego that only surfaces when the situation requires a teasing/levity or when it is a bitter tool against an aggressive and rude Tav. Considering him a narcissist is to over-magnify this trait out of the chart. He is a lore-content character; that character that in many rpg games will accompany us while explaining the context of the fantasy world we are playing in; therefore it is natural and obvious that he will over explain like no other companion so far. 
Of course, all this is EA and may change by the time the game is released. But so far we should analyse what has been given to us. 
I personally don't like this trait of his, but I think it's part of his many flaws. After all, he is the embodiment and the concept "humans are fallible", and he is very aware of that every time he speaks in seriousness.
Hypothesis: Gale is a manipulator
Concept
I suggest reading the post about "Context, persuasion, and manipulation" for the definition and understanding of the concept.
Inside the context of BG3
On this aspect, I won't repeat myself, and I will recommend to read the series of posts I've done about "Gale: Manipulation, Lies, and Trust" which explains in detail the Stew Scene, the Loss Scene, the Party Scene and extra scenes (death protocol and dreams). This series focuses exactly on the degree of truth and lies that Gale shares with different Tavs (depending on their choices). As a broad conclusion I can say that Gale is not a manipulator as a main trait in his personality, and may (or not) withhold information if romanced (depending on Tav’s choices). 
He is not even a liar, since he has always made clear his boundaries and never denied to have secrets. Earning his trust to open up takes its time and good actions, and only in a romantic path there is a more messy approach: the scene pretends to create a “great betrayal”, when there is little since all the information concerning the “orb” has been given in broad strokes previously. The information that Gale has been withholding was personal and private but said in a bad timing making it of poor taste. The whole scene is very unpolished, not reacting to the amount of information that Tav can have from previous scenes. It presents two apparent conflicts: 
The “orb”, which danger has been stated since the first moment we met Gale, and it was reinforced in most scenes; so there is not a great revelation in it by the end of EA. 
The other conflict is apparently Gale's past lover: Mystra. Which can be surprising for a Tav, but not so much for a player who knows the lore background. In any case, the scene offers poor options to react to all this: or it ignores all the information that Tav can know by that time (information given by Gale himself), or gives over-reactive options, pretending that Mystra and the Orb are informations that never were informed in the game. 
So far in EA we see that Gale could withhold personal information not because he wants to have power over Tav, but as a consequence of his visceral fear for a second abandonment. Gale suffers from abandonment issues that make him prone to making bad decisions when confronted with that situation. 
As I said before, for a real and detailed analysis read the post "Gale: Manipulation, Lies, and Trust", which is summary of the posts 
'Stew' Scene    (extensive)
Loss Scene ( extensive )
Party Scene ( extensive )
Extra Scenes: death protocol and comments on dreams
Hypothesis: Gale makes you "cheat" your LI
I won't repeat myself so I recommend to read the post Gale proposes you to 'cheat' "
Hypothesis: Gale still loves Mystra
I recommend reading the post Does Gale love Mystra?.
Hypothesis: Gale has no Tadpole
I recommend to read the post of "The Tadpole"
---
Sources for both parts:
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( 5V)
Some concepts were summarised from: https://melcrowecounsellor.com www.d2l.org/child-grooming-signs-behavior-awareness/
This post was written in June 2021. → For more Gale: Analysis Series Index
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sinistercacophony · 3 years
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Okay I got a take. I see a lot of posts saying Aaron hating Neil is justified and i have to say I mostly disagree because in these posts its usually something like "youre a stressed med student and then this trouble maker suddenly shows up and starts dating your brother" and hating someone cuz youre stressed or cuz theyre dating your brother is very unfair, if Aaron hates Neil cuz he causes trouble then thats valid but it seems like more than that. Most people say its becuz Aaron thinks Neil 1/2
Will hurt Andrew and that's the idea I got from the books too given what Aaron says when he confronts Neil at the cabin. But this is the same reason Andrew hates Katelyn right? And I think if this is true then both Andrew/Aaron are unjustified becuz their hatred is purely based off of how they perceive the other to be without substantial evidence. In fics for Neil & Aaron to be friends its always Aaron who needs to come to the realisation that he was wrong about Neil.
okay so the thing about this is like,,, i don’t think aaron really needs justification to not like neil?? sometimes you just don’t like people. i think the context surrounding aaron’s frustrations with neil is important, but also i think as personalities they just,, clash. aaron is very similar to andrew except in the ways that he’s not 
andrew has acknowledged and accepted that he will never fit into the mold of what society deems ‘normal’ and aaron does the opposite, he tries very hard to pretend that he is just a normal dude living a normal life and can go to college classes and have a girlfriend and not have shit to do with the mafia or murder or whatever the hell. 
but the thing is. aaron is deeply traumatized. aaron grew up in the household of an abuser and an addict and someone i strongly believe had undiagnosed and untreated bipolar. and she was his mom and he loved her and it’s so fucking easy for people from the outside to go ‘oh well she hit you so you shouldn’t love her’ but the fact of the matter is that it,, doesn’t work like that. you can’t just decide to stop loving someone because someone else tells you to. so obviously when andrew kill her he’s fucking upset because that was?? his mom. like i’m very frustrated with the fandom dismissing this as a traumatic event for aaron. he’s allowed to feel grief. he’s not ungrateful or selfish for having a hard time separating the mother who hurt him from the mother who loved him. people are allowed to have complicated relationships with their parental figures, especially parental figures who died before they even got out of highschool and were adult enough to actually process their emotions about them in a place that had distance and time. 
and you’re right neither andrew nor aaron are right in their hatred of their siblings significant other. but it’s also more complicated than that imo. andrew hates katelyn partially bc he doesn’t trust women (slutty slutty women) but also partially bc like, she represents the fact that aaron doesn’t take their deal seriously. but aaron doesn’t take their deal seriously because andrew is uncommunicative and vague about what he means, and seems to contradict himself at every other turn. and also andrew killed him mom. andrew thinks in terms of black and white, aaron thinks solely in shades of gray. but imo they’re both wrong, and they’re both right. 
their conflict is incredibly compelling and realistic imo, because they’re both having completely different conversations. and of course, neil is the main character, and neil cares about andrew, so he takes andrew’s side. so we get neil’s perspective on things, which is a little warped and also a little ironic that he’s like ‘aaron shouldn't’ be sad his mom is dead bc she hurt him’ and then makes excuses for his own mother bc it was to protect him, but that’s cognitive dissonance for you. 
aaron resents neil bc andrew is a hypocrite who wants to have his cake and eat it too. how come andrew is allowed to form a bond with somebody outside of their circle and aaron isn’t? how come andrew is allowed to pick up strays like neil and kevin while aaron has no fucking friends and no fucking social life??? how on earth is that fair?? and andrew very carefully doesn’t categorize neil and kevin in his mind as friends but that doesn’t mean?? they aren’t?? and aaron knows that and he’s fucking lonely and isolated and surrounded by people he doesn’t particularly like. 
and aaron thought andrew was unbreakable and invulnerable and then got evidence that he was not in maybe the most traumatizing and graphic way possible, and then he killed a dude. and now he sees andrew getting attached to neil, sees the way that neil the choices neil makes actively put them in danger, sees how fucking affected andrew was when neil went missing, and concludes (the exact same way that andrew concludes, actually) that neil is dangerous and is in a position where he could very easily hurt andrew very badly. 
and that doesn’t make his stupid little shovel talk right. it was still a hugely awful thing to say, and he shouldn’t have said it. but aaron will kill for his fucking brother, regardless of whether or not they get along, and he said it because he was testing if neil had that same protective instinct (he does) 
idk its just a very complicated set of relationships between the four of them. not a single one is necessarily incorrect for feeling the way they feel or making the decisions they do but they also are all just,, dysfunctional assholes who say and do awful things bc they don’t know what else to do. 
i think that neither of them particularly is ever going to take steps to repair their relationship. they have an understanding, and i think they get closer eventually, mostly bc neil sees how important aaron is to andrew and vice versa and even if he doesn’t like aaron, he cares about what andrew wants. so he tries to help them with his manipulative shit bc thats the only way neil knows to solve problems and it??? kinda works a little maybe?? idk i think they get there someday. 
also neil is just kinda obnoxious sometimes aaron is right 
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The use of color in The Last Of Us Part II: Symbology and parallelism
(This short analysis is intended to focus on the symbolic meaning of colors, alluding to the emotions and psychology they convey to us. Color Theory is not an exact science and its meaning varies according to culture, but I will try to explain my thoughts on what the ND team wanted to convey with this cinematic resource. However, I am always open to [healthy] debate and get different opinions about it. If you want to add your own thoughts, feel free to do so.)
(Most of the illustrative images, such as the gifs that we will see below, are not my property. Thanks to @userjen, @nikolai-stavrogin, @boozerman, @harringtonbuckley, @neillblomkamp, @bahtmun, @ifans and @gameplaydaily for your contribution.)
It’s been eight months since I finished TLOU II for the first time, and every day the game, the themes it deals with, how it does it, its infinite of symbolisms, the characters and their development, hover at in the back of my head like a pack of hungry wolves (in a good sense). There are many analyses of The Last Of Us Part II, but unfortunately I didn't find any focused on this particularity, so in the last days I set out to talk about this, even if it was only a little bit, scratching the surface, for later conclusions of other people, as is the use of color in this game.
The monochromatic of The Last Of Us Part II is supported by the gray color for various reasons: It represents the desolation and devastation of a ruined and silent world. The gray color could also speak of the human being and their moral nuances. No one is good enough to be called a hero, nor evil enough to be called a villain in the eyes of the whole world. There are exceptions like Sarah or David, but here we are talking about Part II.
If we go a little deeper, perhaps gray is part of the soul narrative that tries to convey the game, which tries to tell us that the path that Ellie is taking isn't the most appropriate to find peace; A color that tries to tire the player and makes them want to end all this.
On top of the grey colour, two highly distinguished and easy to see colour spheres are superimposed because they lack the neutrality of grey:
The first colour dial I would like to highlight is the RGB (reg, green and blue). According to my interpretation, this code in color theory would represent Ellie, the Wolves and the Seraphits respectively: The Wolves' military vests and outfits are light green, while the Seraphits usually wear brown vests, color that comes from red. Both colors, green and red, are opposite colors on this chromatic dial, two sets facing each other. Ellie, on the other hand, who wears blue clothes, finds herself in the middle of this war and must fight with both enemy groups to survive. In this case, this range of colors would represent the three main factions of the game: Wolves, Seraphites and Jackson.
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The next chromatic dial is RYB (reg, yellow and blue), which forms a triad centered on the two main characters, Ellie and Abby.
Ellie (light)
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Abby (abyss)
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The yellow and blue colors go far beyond the dichotomy between good and evil (or moral light or moral darkness). These two colors reinforce the idea of the enormous parallelism that exists between the protagonists and their respective character arcs.
Both, without pretending to, begin a path to redemption, although with different methods and results. This time the blue or yellow colors aren't defined to represent one or the other protagonist, but sometimes they are exchanged according to the moment in which they are each. Ellie is sometimes defined by yellow or blue, and so does Abby.
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(I must thank a reader with whom I exchanged views on the game and shared the latter, but incredible detail with me).
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Before continuing with the complementary colors, I must mention one last color that both share: red. This red in The Last Of Us Part II is characterized by covering all the shots of the scene in which it finds itself, with some degree of saturation to reinforce the idea of violence, anger and even discord. Personally, these scenes are one of my favorites in the game for their great recreation and excellent combination of cinematics and narrative gameplay.
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Coming back with the colors yellow and blue, I think there is a clear reference to light and darkness as such. In both Part I and Part II, "Look for the light" is used as an analogy for seeking hope, or a purpose in life. In our first game we see this boat in the middle of the fog, being impossible to see what is beyond because we can't distinguish the horizon or where we are. It's almost oppressive, like a veil that keeps us from seeing at all. For me this is talking about the psychology of Abby and especially of Ellie, who is self-decepting on this trip and her trauma makes her suffer cognitive dissonance and contradicts herself as a person.
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The fact that she have to get to the bottom, to this very beach, to the abyss, in order to regain what little humanity she has left, her light, as it was to remember the promise she made to Joel, is absolutely poetic and beautiful to me.
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What She Had to Do.
...
If you’ve made it this far, congrats! Here, have a candy!
In the future I may, and I may only, I’ll write a thematic analysis of the Part II soundtrack and I may also finish and publish my own analysis of the game and my thoughts on it.
(It will take longer than Joseph Cooper to save the Earth).
Thank you so much for reading!
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