#so many of the worst outcomes can be handwaved away by like

[baejax-the-great]

Listen op... What about rivalmances á lá Dragon Age 2... But it's Mass Effect instead? How'd you think it'd go?

Ohh, this is an interesting question.

So definitely some of the romantic interests favor a renegade or paragon path, right? Like, Garrus, Ash, and Miranda are arguably renegade choices, Kaidan generally argues in favor of paragon choices. But there's no approval system (beyond some ME1 stuff). Everyone is always willing to bone down if you ask.

The truth is, I didn’t love rivalmances in DA2. It’s an interesting concept, being in a toxic relationship with someone who doesn’t share any of your beliefs and possibly doesn’t believe in your humanity, but I don’t know man. Like Merrill deserves better actually. I’ve never actually seen the Isabela rivalmance but just those words together put a bad taste in my mouth.

While I find it odd sometimes that your decisions in ME don’t affect how your companions respond to you (you can say some seriously anti-alien shit in ME1 for example, with your alien companions standing behind you just shrugging), I think the context for the major decisions is pretty different.

Most of the paragon/renegade decisions early on don’t directly affect your companions. They are frequently ethical, but not political. Killing the rachni queen doesn't invalidate biotics as people or even speak of Shep’s beliefs regarding other species. Everyone agrees the rachni are a dangerous unknown who almost wiped out the other races. Kaidan might disagree with killing her, but if you go against his advice, you aren't indicating you think he should be imprisoned for his abilities (as a templar-aligned Hawke might when making their decisions).

The decisions that I think the companions would have the most emotional response to (the genophage? Rannoch?) occur in ME3, when everyone is at all-out war with the Reapers. And you can, uh, utterly destroy relationships with the people directly involved in those quests. For everyone else, Shepard is making decisions on the fly about how to defeat the Reapers, and frankly any fallout from those decisions would probably happen after the dust had settled.

And honestly, I think some of that would be great to explore. Can Shepard live with themself with the consequences of the destroy ending? With the consequences of their genophage cure? If they side with the geth on Rannoch and then choose destroy? Like... the war was won, but as Kaidan says, you have to live with how it went down. I would not be shocked to find out Shepard and their LI break up in peace time.

At some point in Mass Effect, everyone is just maxed-out emotionwise, and they aren’t in a place to judge wtf Shepard is doing. Companions and other NPCs routinely admit to Shepard they have no idea what they would do in their position. And again, I think the fact that Shepard is a (very successful) leader in a war against a specific enemy vs just some very sexy hick from Lothering fucking up Kirkwall for the hell of it changes how the companions are going to see their decisions. Doing something because it’s strategically the right call in the fate of the galaxy even if it’s fucked up is not the same as dicking around Lowtown trying to scrounge up cash.

For my own personal preference, I’m glad there isn’t a rivalmance, though I think I wouldn’t be opposed to some sort of approval system (some of these thirsty companions come on a LITTLE strong in ME1 like wow cool your jets). The ME romances are built on respect (mostly). In DA2? It's like, okay, your very actions go against my core beliefs as a person and threaten my safety/autonomy, but you're so sexy aha.

But hey that’s just me.

Okay nonnie I wrote this whole thing and then thought about your  actual question-- how would it go?

So now I’m trying to imagine Liara who like, despises Shep but still wants to embrace eternity and like... how does that go? “You’re so stupid, please let me see into your mind. Goddess, it’s so empty, I have never felt such peace.”

It’s harder with Garrus because he is SO amenable to being swayed by paragon Shep. He’s practically begging to be realigned, and we know he likes it when women are a little bit mean to him. I don’t know that it’s possible to rivalmance this cricket.

Kaidan frankly seems like the one most possible to rivalmance. Like, fuck, you go against every moral value I hold, but you are so stupidly sexy and somehow everything always works out anyway and I’m angry about it. Eat this steak you absolute monster.

I have no idea how you would rivalmance Sam without just being mean to her. Hard pass.

I also think rivalmancing Tali would... be ugly. I don’t like the idea. Like getting her to face the very warped history her people taught her, sure, but siding with the Geth every time, or witholding the things she needs to succeed, or breaking her trust on her loyalty mission... idk man. That just seems toxic. And I am pretty sure if you fail Thane’s loyalty mission, you can’t romance him, so I’m guessing that’s true of Tali, too.

The ME2 companions don’t... totally give a shit what you are up to? Like Jack, Jacob and Thane come to mind as not having a very strong stance on most of what you are doing. You’d have to completely retool their characters to suddenly have very strong opinions on a lot of random shit. (and like, why *would* Jack care if you rewrite or destroy the geth hub? Also don’t rivalmance Jack????)

So... I dunno, there is potential there for sure, but I think having so many romanceable characters and a game that doesn’t revolve around a single moral issue makes it harder.

#Nadia would eat Hawke alive #I'm trying to think if there's some horrible choice I've forgotten that would directly threaten a LI who isn't Tali #Having never played as broshep I also feel like I'm missing some context for some of the male-only romances #so many of the worst outcomes can be handwaved away by like #the task was impossible in the first place #like oh you lost half your squad? #guess that's why we called it a suicide mission #now would it be funny if you made a bunch of shit choices and people stopped fawning over you? #a Shepard with fewer war assets is just less sexy #but again I think the hopelessness of the situation just cushions any true blowback #in me2 if you rival someone they just die

[arcticdementor]

Social Justice, in its current form, has a structural anti-Semitism problem. It’s not that the Social Justice people hate Jews. At least I don’t think they do, as far as I’m aware. It’s deeper, because it results from the structure of some of the indoctrinations within Social Justice itself. Let’s look closely at some of these indoctrinations, see how they interact, and draw up some possible ways the Social Justice tribe might fix the problem, structurally speaking.

Puzzle Piece #1: “You Didn’t Earn That”

“You didn’t earn that” is an indoctrination deeply steeped within Social Justice, and it erupts in many different forms, which all tend to reinforce each other. Please note, I’m not talking about the Obama “You Didn’t Build That” argument, which simply states that independent business owners are actually quite dependent on the government. Nor am I referring to the Animal Farm style Marxists who don’t think rewards should be meritocratic at all, because these are rare outside of secret Antifa dens or the streets of Portland. I’m referring specifically to the mainline Social Justice approach, which is more layered.

First, they adopt the position that people are blank slates, and all features of personality or competence are installed by society. This leads to the belief that IQ isn’t real, or at most is simply the result of a racist test. It also leads to the belief that differences in socioeconomic outcome between races must be due to environmental factors, since no other factors exist. These environmental factors are defined to be “privilege.” You didn’t earn that wage gap, you were given the wage gap because you are male, or white, or similar.

…

Puzzle Piece #2: “Racism = Prejudice Plus Power”

This stipulative definition of “racism” was first postulated by Patricia Bidol-Pavda in 1970, six years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and two years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. It is now the dominant definition employed by Social Justice. By this definition, a prejudiced act isn’t racist unless the prejudicial person wields power over the person they’re prejudiced against. We might call this the Sarah Jeong Defense

…

Puzzle Piece #3: “Intersectionality”

The roots of modern intersectionality come from Kimberle Crenshaw, and in application, work somewhat like this. Print the above grid. Circle the “identity” that describes you on each line. The more circles you have on the right-hand side of the grid, the more marginalized you are. This approach is already deeply baked into academia, and rolled out for freshman orientation at places like Cornell.

…

Build the Puzzle

The theory then goes like this. IQ isn’t real, or if it is, it’s just a result of a racist test. You didn’t earn that. Socioeconomic outcomes are due to privilege. Marginalized people have less privilege. People who are marginalized in multiple ways have even less privilege than people who are marginalized in one way, and theoretically have even worse socioeconomic outcomes due to the intersectionality of their marginalization. But like all theories, this theory is testable, and falsifiable, and when you start testing it on Ashkenazi Jews, you get problems.

…

Does this trend of largely vandalistic hate translate to worse economic outcomes? Definitively, no. Jewish people earn more money than any other religious affiliation, including whites of European descent. An astonishing 44% earn six figures, over double the national average. They also make up 25% of the 400 wealthiest Americans despite only being 2% of the total population.

As someone who has adopted the indoctrinations of individualism, I don’t find these numbers difficult to explain. The Jewish folks I’ve met are usually smart, funny, successful, responsible, good looking, healthy, and good with the money they earn. But this doesn’t fit the Social Justice worldview, which equates marginalization with worse socioeconomic outcomes. The theory fails the test.

When a theory fails a test, the theorist adjusts the theory, and it won’t take too much longer for Social Justice theorists to adjust this one. When they do, they’ll have three possible paths to resolve it, and I fear they’re already heading down the worst path.

Path #1: Jew Privilege

I don’t like this one. Not one bit. But it’s the easiest one they could adopt, because it requires very little re-working of their belief system, and they seem to already be going down this path. The resolution works like this:

Move Jews from “marginalized” to “privileged” in the intersectional matrix of oppression.

This allows the Social Justice tribe to keep all their other indoctrinations intact, and their theory matches the data. They can say Jews have better socioeconomic outcomes because of their “Jewish Privilege,” instead of the measurably higher IQs Jews have, or other racial traits which don’t fit the tabula rasa ideology. And it’s already happening. You can see it in the ongoing drama with the Women’s March.

…

“Jews as white people” is language that clearly intends to adjust the Jewish position on the intersectionality matrix.

…

This is very bad, because the Bivol-Pavda racism definition would mean anti-Semitism suddenly becomes “woke,” and Social Justice, to borrow from their own lexicon, will itself become Literally Hitler.

But there are some other options they might use to avoid their anti-semitic fate, if they take a wider look. As we mentioned before on HWFO, Social Justice is a religion-like-thing with the unique and captivating feature of being crowdsourced, which means that the crowd can monkey with the indoctrinations however they like, to fix the system if it’s broken. They need to start doing this more intelligently, and with a systems analysis approach. Here are two alternate options.

Path #2: Dump Bivol-Pavda Racism

This would be the hardest one for Social Justice to adopt, but would be the one I would personally prefer. If the Social Justice crowd were to pivot away from the idea that “racism” is only something that privileged people do to non-privileged people, and instead acknowledge that racism is a universal condition that any race or group can apply to any other race or group, then anti-semitism would always stay “racist” and never gets “woke,” no matter how much privilege the Jews are assigned in the matrix of oppression.

This would pivot the rules of behavior for Social Justice away from where they’re at today, and back towards “judging people not by the color of their skin, nor their intersectionality-matrix-location, but by the content of their character.” I think this would make the world a much happier place. I speculate that MLK would also agree.

But I don’t anticipate they’ll do this, because they’d have to give up their own racial prejudices to do so, and giving up racial prejudices is hard. It would also deprive them of one of the weapons in their arsenal, namely their ethos that it’s okay to be racially prejudiced to white people in the name of equity.

Path #3: Acknowledge the Jews Might Have Earned That

Another way for Social Justice to avoid becoming Literally Hitler would be to acknowledge the science that IQ is heritable, and that IQ is heavily responsible for socioeconomic outcomes. Further, that races have different median IQs, and Jews are at the top, followed by Asians.

This will also be a tough pill for Social Justice to swallow, because it opens the door to the possibility that not all racial inequality is due to systemic racism, and that universal racial equity may not be a realistic objective. But it’s still probably an easier pill to swallow than giving up their racial prejudices, and at least it doesn’t lead to them becoming “Literally Hitler.”

Or they could bail on the whole program, but I don’t consider that to be particularly likely.

…

What Social Justice needs now, more than anything else, is a new leadership to rise which A) understands Social Justice’s religion-like nature, B) understands systems analysis, and C) is brave enough to tinker under the hood and fix some of the broken things within it. It needs reform. Badly. The “Woke Anti-Semitism Paradox” is only one example of many.

#bj campbell #medium.com #read the whole thing

[pinchtheprincess]

I keep seeing all these happy, bouncy, positive posts about Belle and OUAT

And I just don’t see it. I won’t reblog them and proffer my bewilderment, my point-of-view, because it won’t be wanted. I can see that. 

BUT. I. DO. NOT. GET. IT. 

Many fans are acting like 6A’s crazy plot has all been explained. Hallelujah, they’ve seen the Light! Belle’s behavior all makes sense, now . . . in that her poor choices are being focused on and, inexplicable though they are, she thought she was doing the right thing. Um, what? 

Am I the only one who wants to scream that the Emperor is still fucking naked? 

I don’t see her taking responsibility for arranging the kidnapping of THEIR baby (not “hers”; the baby was theirs)---nor its horrific outcome. I see no apology for trying to hurt her husband so deeply as to rip another child away from him to another realm. Fathers deserve to be in their children’s lives, and even the show creators have reminded us that Rumple is a great father. I see her making no apology for the pain she inflicted with her needless hurtful words. I don’t see her puzzling over how she could have possibly believed that nonsense she was given in her dreams. I don’t see the absurd behavior all making sense with the plot now anymore than I did, before, because they’re still working from the same narrative they always have: Rumple bad, Belle blameless. 

Where is this? 

I know he’d never want to hurt Belle this way, but I think we need to revisit this. I see the Belle of 6x11 wallowing in self-pity, but refusing to accept the harm she’s done her husband and their relationship. She’s accepted some blame for Gideon, but doesn’t seem to give a solitary thought to the potentially irreversible harm she’s done to their marriage . . . and how that damage may have, or already has, affected the outcome with Gideon. Rumple has mentioned---numerous times, now---working together to try to fix things. Not once has Belle accepted this offer, nor ever suggested it herself. Does she seem relieved he’s willing to offer an olive branch? Nope. It barely registers.

Twice in 6x11, Belle expressed that she didn’t know if Rumple wanted to help Gideon kill/wanted Gideon to succeed in killing. Who is this Belle? Where did this pod person!Belle come from?! This Belle doesn’t have the first clue who Rumple is. How could she be that far removed from knowing him? 

I don’t know if it’s Emilie’s acting, or what is striking such an odd note for me in her scenes. Belle seemed insouciant at the well, similar to how she came off at the well in “Broken Heart” (5x10), when she met Rumple there to break his heart. “I know you’ve just become what I always said I wanted, but I no longer want that! See ya!” 

I can’t find the GIF, but I’ll never forget this scene and her mocking duck-lips (the still on the bottom left happens to stop on the nanosecond where she actually looks sad; the GIF shows how much it looks like she doesn’t have two fucks to rub together). Then, the incomprehensible return that night, the exhaustive makeup sex, followed by the problems in 5C, culminating with the sleeping curse. I’ll never forget the scenes in the pawnshop in “Heartless” (6x07), where she curled her lip and told him how his weakness was worse than pure evil. Okay, Milah 2.0, that’s enough! 

I did NOT start writing this to be an anti-Belle post, but I just can’t seem to help it. I had to examine what I felt was wrong with “Tougher Than the Rest” (6x11), which is best done by comparing her behavior and dialogue from before. It’s best done by looking at how little Belle’s motivations are explained, or how they’re handwaved away with “Rumple, EVIL”. I was only going to express my puzzlement at what seems like 95% of the fandom which is giddy with joy. Are they faking some of it? Agreeing with the Emperor to come off as “good fans” or perpetually positive ones? 

Where’s my joy? I loved Belle. They took everything about her that made her special and soured it. She’s not compassionate; she’s cruel. I hear her spout things that I’ve only heard from Rumple-hating fans. I feel robbed. I feel tricked. Where’s my joy? Belle’s a hypocrite, embracing the worst of Storybrooke and giving them a free pass---but not Rumple, saving all her judgement for him. I hear you saying,”Well, can’t Belle have flaws, too?!” Yes, but it would be nice if they meshed with her earlier characterization. People have excused the banishment with the trait “impulsiveness”. Okay, but, upon reflection, where was the regret? How is impulsiveness even recognized if no questioning of one’s actions occurs? (There was that brief moment at the well in 4B, but Regina made her forget that, so---never mind.) Instead, she doubled-down on insisting she was right and consorting with her husband’s long-time enemies. Earlier Belle had a deep streak of curiosity that was almost reckless. Where were her questions for her husband in season 4 or season 5 or season 6? What happened to digging into the puzzle that was him? 

Where’s my joy? I think it left when OUAT started doing everything they could to destroy Rumbelle, and to embrace this nonsensical view of morality and “heroes and villains”. Life isn’t black and white, kiddies. It never has been. OUAT purported to be “twists” on fairytales. I expected shades of gray, unlike traditional fairytales. I thought we had that, but OUAT left that behind.

The writers have ruined canon Rumbelle for me, and they’re not even on the road to fixing it. I have no hope they will fix it, since they couldn’t find that road with their own, personal, dedicated satellite system.

#anti Belle #anti Belle Gold #anti Belle French #Rumplestiltskin #Rumpelstiltskin #OUAT analysis #anti ouat writers #kitsowitz fuckery #OUAT spoilers #long post #anti ooc belle #pod person belle