#〘 We each make decisions according to our own moral compass and we have to live or die by those decisions 【Ｃｕｒａｔｏｒ】 IC Interactions 〙

[ms-mcb]

“I am the Curator. The Curator of stories. Stories of love and hate… greed and beauty… life… and death. You see, we each make decisions according to our own moral compass, and we have to live with those decisions, or die by them. But you shouldn’t fear death. It is, after all… inevitable."

[the-perfect-violation]

Adagio

Ash x Reader

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Summary: Ash dreams of you and you wrestle with priorities.

TW: Smut, Angst

Rating: 18+ Mature

Word Count: 3,100

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A/N: This is my first fic and it was written sans beta, so please let me know if you see anything worth fixing.

Ash has always been a favorite of mine. My despair at finding so few pieces on him finally drove me to write my own. That's my way of saying that this is unapologetically self-serving haha.

Enjoy nevertheless!

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Link to AO3 if you'd prefer read there.

Gif is my own.

Someone is gathering every crumb you drop.  These mindless decisions and Moments you long forgot. Keep them all. Let our formulas find your soul. We’ll divine an artesian source in your mind, Marshal feed and force. Our machines will Design you a perfect love Or better still A perfect lust.  O how glorious, glorious: A brand new need is born. Now we possess you. You’ll learn that. Now we possess you. You’ll learn that in time. Now we will build you an endlessly upward world.  Embrace you for all you’re worth. Is that wrong? Isn’t this what you want? - The Hymn of Acxiom

///

The storm had begun to pick up again as your automated car wound its way through the city streets towards your office. The sun barely rose at all this time of year, and the sharpness of the ensuing cold was made all the worse by the dark and damp that hung eternally over the city. It was supposed to snow again today. Who would have thought you’d end up on Thedus of all places? At least the job paid well. And you only had a few weeks remaining before you went back to Earth.

Weyland-Yutani practically owned the planet and almost every of the meager two million residents were employed by them. You included. A trained psychiatrist, you had been asked to spend six months on the mining planet to help prepare a handful of synthetics for different jobs they would be completing for the Corporation. What those jobs were exactly was high above your paygrade. You were sure the synthetics you worked with had no idea yet, either.

According to Weyland-Yutani, instilling their machines with a well-balanced emotional spectrum was essential to their success. That’s where you came in. You worked with your synthetics regularly, showing and talking to them about what they were feeling and how to respond accordingly. Most of your patients had been blinding successes and had been shipped off on their missions already.

Only one remained - a Hyperdyne Systems 120-A/2 named Ash. Today was your last day together. Then, he would be deployed and you would finish writing up your reports alone over the remaining weeks. Saying goodbye to the others had been relatively easy. Your relationship had developed only so far as to be considered professional acquaintances. 

But Ash - something about the way he watched you, hung on your every word, smiled slightly when he first saw you each day… You thought he might have developed some sort of crush. That was a stark contrast to how he had been when first activated. Programmed to be aloof, cold, a strict rule-follower, he had been all of those over the first few months of your relationship.

You found you actively looked forward to your time with him now. He was collected, intelligent, and had a dry sense of humor that never failed to make you laugh. While the others had been a professional responsibility, Ash had become closer to what you would call a friend, although that was as far as your moral compass would ever let things go.

The two of you could talk for hours about history, philosophy, or the latest scientific journals. He would ask about your life, too, just as much as you would enquire about his. Maybe living on a sparsely-habited planet in the outer rim had had more of an effect on you than you had thought, but it felt nice to have someone like him to work with and talk to. That made the knowledge that you likely wouldn’t see him again after today all the more painful.

The car pulled up out front of the monolithic Weyland headquarters, interrupting your musing. You pulled your coat tight around you, adjusted your scarf, and grabbed your briefcase. Your heels echoed steadily as you made your way through the tall, angular hallways towards your office. It appeared that most of the staff had decided to work from home for the day - which was no surprise for a stormy Friday - but it made the already brutalist building seem almost hyperborean.

The room they had given you was nothing special - although it did have a wide bank of windows looking over the city for which you were grateful. You had a few built-in shelves filled with archaic books you had collected over the years and had negotiated to have come with you to Thedus. Behind your desk, the wall held only a print of Böcklin’s Die Toteninsel that you had been gifted before you departed Earth. You liked to keep everything dim, and chose to only light the room with a few lamps placed around the room.

You set your briefcase down and lit a small stick of incense to chase away the smell of the mining plants that had eeked its way in with you. After taking off your coat, you checked your watch. Ash should be here at 15:00, giving you time to get a report or two off your desk. You settled down and dove into the work laid out before you.

///

Two sharp knocks pulled you out of your work-induced trance.

“Come in!” You called out, standing and slipping your glasses into your blazer pocket as your patient entered. Like always, he was wearing his officer uniform and smelled faintly of cologne.

“Good afternoon, Ash,” you smiled at him and motioned toward one of the two facing chairs by the window.

“Hello,” he responded with a slight smile.

He moved to take his regular seat and you sat down in the chair opposite.

“How are you?” You asked.

“I’m well,” he responded quickly, glancing out the window and rubbing his hands on the arms of his chair in what seemed to be nervousness. “You?”

“Fantastic - I like it when the building is empty like this,” you said. “And I can never hate a good snowstorm. How was your evening yesterday?”

“It was good.”

"You ship out tomorrow, right?"

"At 08:00."

"Do you have any idea what you'll be doing yet?"

"None. I know my ship is called the USCSS Nostromo."

You stared at him, hoping he would continue.

“Ash, is everything alright? You seem distant. I know this is our last session together, and I was hoping we could end on a positive note.”

“I know - I... I’m sorry. I just didn’t sleep well is all.”

You knew he was deflecting. Synthetics didn’t need sleep like humans did. Most did try to sleep each night in order to maintain a more human schedule, but if he weren’t able to get rest it shouldn’t have any effect on how they acted the next day.

“It’s alright - I'm sure you're under a lot of pressure right now. It happens to all of us," you said, deciding to avoid the confrontation. “Did you get any sleep at all?”

“A little, yes.”

“Did you dream?” You had been going over dreams with him lately, walking through what moods they might represent and how to handle them.

You caught a flicker of something - uncertainty? - in his eyes before he answered. “Yes.”

“About what?” He only stared at the wall behind your shoulder.

“Or whom?” You added and watched as that flicker of uncertainty passed over his face again. Now you were getting somewhere. He was trying to conceal something from you, you knew. That hadn’t been a problem before. The pause lengthened and you prodded him again.

“Ash, I -” 

“I dreamt about you.” He said a little too quickly, as if it were an admission he was glad to have off his chest. His green eyes finally met your grey ones.

You realized he had been embarrassed before, something you had misinterpreted as nervousness. Good, you thought approvingly. You had heard that the idea of embarrassment had been a bastard to program so it was a relief to see that you had finally brought it out. But you showed none of this satisfaction, and instead stared at him across the room, crossing your legs. He went back to avoiding eye contact, preferring to study the wall just over your shoulder.

“What did you dream about me?”

You watched as a blush crept up his neck and into his face and he held his tongue. His eyes moved to your face and he looked at you as though begging for mercy. Realization hit you like a crashing wave.

Oh .

It was your turn to freeze. Guilt rose up in place of surprise and you turned your head to look out the window instead of at him. You knew it was your job to give him some sort of motivation, a sense of home. You knew that drive alone could make a person - synthetic or not -  do almost anything. But the last thing you wanted to do was to play with anyone’s romantic feelings. You hadn’t realized that a synthetic’s feelings could even develop that far.

You reminded yourself that playing with synthetic’s feelings was the majority of your job description and you were being paid very well to do it. That only made the guilt worse.

I mean, who’s to say these are romantic feelings at all? You argued with yourself in desperation. This could be a physical impulse alone. He was programmed to have those needs. He was a science officer after all. He knew sex was a necessity in any living being’s life. That his creators had given those needs to some synthetics to help them fit in well with the humans around them. There was no reason he would be embarrassed about the act alone. There was clearly more going on here, you realized and your heart sank.

You heard your pulse in your ears as you turned back to him. He had been watching you closely.

“What do you dream about me, Ash?”

There was a long pause before he began. “I’m - we’re here. It’s late. We’re doing an extra session. To help prepare, you know, before I leave. When we finish, you walk me back to my room.”

Most Weyland-Yutani androids on Thedus were housed here, in this concrete pillar the company used as a planetary headquarters. Each was given a small room, more akin to a storage closet, that had a bed and a kitchenette. Although synthetics didn’t have a need to eat or sleep, the Corporation thought it would be good for them to get used to living in human environments. As if what little they were given could be called that. The thought made you feel a twinge of sadness. 

“I kiss you.” You are brought back to the present with a jolt as he continues. “I think it surprises you because you don’t respond right away. But then your hand comes up to the back of my head and I push you against the wall.

I feel like I can’t breathe when you open your mouth and moan into mine. I can’t keep myself off of you. My hands are trying to touch all of you at once. I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you, I need you so badly.

I pick you up and you wrap your legs around me as I carry you to the bed. As I lay you down, I position myself on top of you and begin to kiss your neck, just below the ear. You moan my name and I know I’ll do anything you ask me to. You begin to run your hands over my chest and I take my shirt off. I pull myself off of you slightly as you help me remove your suit. It looked very much like the one you’re wearing today,” his eyes scanned your figure briefly before he spoke again.

“I know I’ve never seen anything so beautiful as you lying underneath me, blushing and staring up at me,” he stops there and swallows thickly. “Even now I see it and I know.”

Thick snowflakes begin to fall outside. You sat, unmoving, as he continued. 

“I pull your undergarments off slowly before kissing each porcelain breast individually and revel in the feeling of your nipples growing erect against my tongue. One of my hands trails down to the heat between your legs. My fingers gently trace the sensitive skin there, causing you to gasp. My touch is hesitant and you moan, your body urging me to continue. I take the cue, my fingers exploring further as my lips return to yours. You moan for me again.” 

You were blushing hard and it felt almost impossible to breathe. Ash watched you intently. You were sure he could see the effect his words had on you as you struggled to maintain composure. This can’t be happening.

But it was, and he kept speaking in a low voice.

“Your hips buck into my hand, urging me to continue. I pull my head back slightly to watch, entranced, as a blush creeps up your neck and you say my name under your breath. My eyes never leave yours as I begin to move my fingers in a steady rhythm. My other hand comes up to cradle your face, my thumb gently caressing your cheek. Your breath quickens as the pleasure builds, and you wrap your arms around me tighter, pulling me closer. The world outside the room fades away, leaving only the sound of your breathing and the gentle movements of my fingers.

You climax, your body shuddering with pleasure, squeezing my fingers within you. I hold you close, my fingers slowing as you come down from the high. After you catch your breath, your hands move to remove my pants. I say a silent prayer that you will find me pleasing. My heart races as you guide me closer to you, my tip gently brushing against your entrance. I look into your eyes, seeking permission and you nod, inviting me in. Relieved, I push myself into you, filling you completely. I have never felt ecstasy like this. You let out a shuddering groan as I begin to move slowly, carefully, my hips rocking back and forth as I try to find a steady rhythm. 

My arms snake behind your shoulders, holding you tight to me and giving me access to your throat. As I rut into you, I can feel myself nearing the edge. I breathe your name into your neck, my heart racing as I bring myself closer to the brink. I push myself up to look into your eyes in the final throes.

When I climax, I cry your name. I collapse onto you, my breathing heavy and ragged. You hold me close and the room is filled with the scent of sweat and desire.

As your breathing begins to slow, I slide myself out of you and tuck us under the covers. Curling around your back, my arms wrapped around you, I know I will never let you go. Not for anything.”

///

He stood and looked down out the windows. “There. Tell me what you think that means. I think I have a good guess.”

You rose and walked towards your desk, facing him again as you leaned back against it. The added distance between you helped clear your head.

He turned towards you slowly, the dim lights illuminating his face only partially. “I’m in love with you. I want you. I need you more than anything I know.” 

“You know that is impossible, Ash," You could feel something like panic beginning to set in. It wasn't supposed to go like this. Still, you held your ground and attempted to talk him down. "Don’t-”

“I’ve wanted you since we first met,” he interrupted. “That first day here in your office. You sparked something in me that won’t go away.” He was spiraling and you were helpless to stop it.

“We could be happy . I could make you happy,” he said as he began to stride towards you resolutely.

“Ash, you have to understand that this is what happens between a doctor and patient when-”

He kissed you then, and ignited a war inside you, a million thoughts crowding their way into your head as he pressed his lips to yours.

You wanted him, too, you realized. You wanted what you shared now to go on forever. You wanted a friend to laugh with, a companion to grow old with, and a lover to keep your bed warm at night. He could be all of that. He wanted to be all of that. All it would take was a word. For a second, your thoughts trailed off, lost in a future you knew would never come.

But pragmatism had always been your strong suit and it wouldn’t fail you now, however much it hurt. Feelings like this were normal between a psychiatrist and their patient. It was proof that your job had been well done. You were going back to Earth soon and he, well, he was the property of The Corporation to do with as they pleased. You knew you couldn't change that, however much you might want to.

So as his kiss continued, unlike in his dream, you didn’t respond. 

“Please don’t,” was all you said as he pulled away. Those few words took everything you had left to give.

He stood there, fixed to the spot. You could see him trying to process what to do next. He hadn’t thought it would go like this. “I’m sorry,” was all he said.

You knew what had to be done next, although you didn’t want to do it. You reminded yourself that you were a Weyland-Yutani employee, hired to complete a task. That sense of duty was your motivation. You would be Ash’s.

“Don’t be,” you said. Your voice had become strained and you cleared your throat. “I’m your doctor, Ash. A relationship like this would be inappropriate - however much we both might want it.” His eyes filled with hope at the implication and you felt your heart sink. It was almost too cruel.

You continued, knowing that you were forever damned anyway. “I go back to Earth in three weeks. Find me there, outside of all this mess. We can start again. But first we both have jobs to do. Once they’re done, we can try this again. I'd... like to try again.” 

He gave you a slight smile and nodded, moving towards the doorway. He paused before he walked out.

“I’ll see you on the other side, then," he said, glancing back for the last time.

“I’m looking forward to it already.”

“As am I.”

With that, he turned and disappeared into the dark hallway.

You never saw him again, never knew what happened on his Nostromo. But you were haunted with the guilt of those empty words until the end.

[agapewizard]

➝ Do No Harm — AHIMSA — Sacred Feminine and Natural Moral Law. 🔑

We have the free will to choose to integrate with the current system we are living in or to refuse to cooperate with this system that is enslaving people. We either do not follow Natural Law or we follow Natural Law regardless of the deception people are living in. The responsibility lies on our shoulders, each one of us as an individual is the way out of our current condition of suffering. We need to understand principles of Natural Law, right and wrong, claim personal responsibility and stop making excuses in order to develop true sovereignty and self-governance.

The answer is in the mirror. We are the answer through the expansion and evolution of our consciousness in true education. Spending our time and paying attention on raising ourselves because we were not properly raised, to raise our conscious awareness and understanding of ourselves and reality. This is the requirement for us to advance, change and evolve as a species up the ladder of consciousness and breaking the chains of our current condition into a new world peace, harmony and prosperity.

Acting against truth is the same as acting against ourselves because what is right, good and true is what is best for us; our freedom, prosperity, peace and everything good. We are in opposition with our own self. Internal disorder creates external disorder. The internal is reflected onto the external through the Hermetic Principle of Correspondence. The state of internal anarchy is someone not ruling themselves and their own house; a condition of internal confusion, opposition, contradiction, adversity, non-accordance, inconsistent, incoherent, incongruent, nonintegrated, disunited, disharmony, and duality.

The less we are in a capacity to rule ourselves (lack of knowledge, internal opposition) through attainment of truth to bring us the clarity and understanding to make right-action decisions and choices, the more easily we can be manipulated from without into taking wrong-action and choices.

With Knowledge Comes Responsibility; to Understand; and with Understanding Comes Responsibility; to Act; In Accord With That Knowledge.

We must begin to make better choices and treat each other, the other creatures who share this planet with us, and this planet we call home with greater respect and compassion.

We seem to be living in a world that is getting less hospitable every day. Look closely at any endeavor our species has engaged in and it appears we are unaware of the harm we do, we ignore the harm we do, we intentionally do harm for our own gain, or sadly in some cases we do harm for our own pleasure and enjoyment.

Sadder still, our children bear witness to our actions and never learn to do no harm themselves. Above allelse we must teach our children, by example and instruction, this basic moral principle of life.

We believe that the first and most basic moral law is, “Do no harm.” Because we can feel pain and suffering, we can imagine the pain and suffering of others, and we can act accordingly to minimize the harm we cause.

What does “do no harm” mean? Ultimately it means to give thoughtful consideration to our actions. “Do no harm” simply means to consider how our actions may affect the world we all share, to be compassionate in our dealings with all creatures, and not to thoughtlessly despoil our planet.

The principle of non-aggression, non-violence, doing no harm and ahimsa can be referred to through the symbolism of the “Sacred Feminine” to not engage in actions that create, generate or manifest evil, immoral, wrong or negative outcomes for other innocent beings.

This includes not only abdication and negation from participating in such actions, but also in not supporting these actions indirectly.

The principle of justice, doing what is right, self-defense and the defense of others, can be referred to through the symbolism of the “Sacred Masculine” to act in defense of moral truth violations where violent actions are creating, generating or manifesting evil, immoral, wrong or negative outcomes for other innocent beings.

This includes not only having the self-“love” and self-care for yourself, your moral concerns, and your rights to not be violated, but also of caring for others, their concern for life and liberty, and their rights to freedom and to not be violated, to be free from harm.

Think and learn more correctly. Learn about the moral truth. Learn about what is occurring in reality and in your own consciousness that allows you to support evil. Say NO and put a full stop to the creation of evil that you and others do.

We can choose the Wisdom of Right-Action.

We can choose to alter, change, improve and better ourselves ingreater degrees of embodiment with these two components of Moral Truth that we are all capable of developing. We need to dig deep to the root causal core foundational factors that have usengaging in wrong-action, and no longer support these flawed foundational axioms that we think are “right, good and true”, but are instead lies, deceptions and illusions.

Take the higher, realer, truer path and way of life to actualize, realize and individualize greater potential Moral Truth into your core being, actions, behaviors and way of living.

Alignment, Integrity, Unity, Harmony and Embodiment with Moral Truth and Moral Law

We, humans, are the ones creating the aggregate suffering in the world. We are the only ones who can stop being cowards and fearing the shame, guilt and the moral judgment of our actions. Freedom or slavery. Anarchy or chaos. Truth or consequence. Be right, or go wrong!

As a sovereign, self-ruled, self-controlled, self-governed individual, you know where your boundaries are by knowing the boundaries of Natural Law. That is why the Actions & Behavior are the Boundary for Self. The Wisdom of Right-Action is the alignment and harmony with Natural Law limits of Right and Wrong.

“The Liberty of man consists solely in this, that he obeys the Laws of Nature, because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever.” – Mikhail Bakunin

Right and Wrong

Understanding Natural Law enables a deeper level of comprehension of the objective difference between what is right and what is wrong, between what is true and what is false. Unfortunately most people have a hard time distinguishing the difference because of the degree of moral relativism in our civilization.

Right = Correct = True = Moral = Natural Law = No harm done = Good

Wrong = Incorrect = False = Immoral = not Natural Law = Harm done = Evil

What is right is correct, accurate, true, moral and based in Natural Law with no result in harm. What is wrong is incorrect, inaccurate, false, immoral and not based in Natural Law which does harm. Right, good and true brings the clarity of understanding. Wrong, bad and false brings the obfuscation of confusion.

Something based in truth can be represented through the words right, correct, accurate, etc. 2+2=4 is true, right, correct, accurate, etc. Right is also used to represent moral action: “that was the right decision to make.” A decision or action is right and moral when it is based in Natural Law and not harming another living being. Actions are right to take when they do not result in harm. Conversely, wrong is associated with what is not true such as 2+2=5 is false, wrong, incorrect, inaccurate, etc. An action someone does not have the right to take is a wrong action because they result in harm to other living beings. A right is most easily understood in the negative apophatic sense to demonstrate what we do not have a right to do because there are far too many actions which do not result in any harm to bother listing them all. Understanding what we do not have a right to do enables us to understand what we do have a right to be. Defining what we do not have a right to do enables us to understand and affirm what we do have a right to do.

It is simple to understand once you have all the pieces to construct the puzzle or paint an accurate picture. Something based in truth is based in principles, Natural Law and will not result in harm. Something based in non-truth or falsehood is not based in principles of Natural Law and will result in harm. The simplicity of how this functions can only be expressed and spoken about, we cannot force anyone to accept it if they are not at a level of conscious awareness to be able to understand it.

To test if an action is in compliance with Natural Law, imagine this scenario where there are only two people, such as the previous law and tax example. An action that is wrong for one being to take against another is the same as one person or group of people having the right to take that same action in a world of 7 billion people.

A conscience is the ability to distinguish right from wrong. From the Latin com meaning ‘together’ and scire ‘to know; to understand’. Conscience is to know together, to be mutually aware of. In other words it is common sense knowledge, a sense of right and wrong that we all share in common. We’re supposed to recognize right and wrong by having a developed conscience, but our conditioning into falsehoods, deceptions and believing fantasy as reality distorts our innate capabilities to align ourselves with what is right instead of what is wrong.

When someone uses force against another who is violating (with violence) another being’s volition and rights, that first person is not being violent; they are correcting a violent act against Natural Law rights, with the use of force. You are indeed “exerting against something that resists” which may result in “damaging” effects, but you are not violating the violence (evil). It is a just use of power, energy, and strength. The initiator of violence using unjust (against Natural Law rights) force is the one violating and being violent. That is also a violation of the Sacred Feminine principle of nonviolence and nonaggression. Using force to stop that violence is not violence, but right-action based in Natural Moral Law to stop a wrongdoing from continuing unabated. This is the Sacred Masculine being rightfully used to defend and uphold the Sacred Feminine.

It does matter who initiates the first act which they did not have a right to take. They are the initiators of the violence, the undue use of force, violating someone else’s free will and volition to not be harmed. The Sacred Feminine is being crushed, destroyed, broken, etc. and the Sacred Masculine needs to step in to set right-action into manifestation. When someone violates someone else’s rights, they lose their own rights. If you choose to violate someone’s Natural Law rights, you are giving up your own rights under Natural Law.

Force is protecting and defending Natural Law rights against a violation of those rights. Dark occultists, dominators and controllers don’t want people to step up and physically defend themselves against being violated. They want to pacify the Sacred Masculine of self-defense. Our current society’s growing police state is demonstrated by Alex Jones and others where we see state sanctioned thugs using violence against those who exercise their right to free speech. This is the case at the G-8 and G 20 summit protests. There are people who protest the political scheming of the power structures in the world and are harassed, pepper sprayed, tasered or beaten for exercising the force of their voice and speaking information that other people should know about

We have failed in our personal responsibility. We have not morally educated our young, so there happens to be criminal tendencies that develop in various people and then we demand a controller clean things up in society because we don’t want to handle it ourselves. We have handed over our personal responsibility by creating institutions and forces of control because we don’t want to deal with our own house or be bothered and hassled by the problems around us. So people or groups end up with imaginary rights that no one possesses, such as stealing through taxation, violence and coercion that result from noncompliance with taxation or other dictates of man’s law that are not followed, and it is all sanctioned through tacit acceptance into indentured servitude. Proper education is key, not the fear and need to control by having institutions of control to save us from our own ignorance.

Force is voluntary, based in Natural Law and morality to take an action that one has the right to take because it does not violate the Natural Law rights of another sentient animate being. The Sacred Feminine principles of nonviolence and nonaggression is being sustained, aligned with and embodied. Violence is coercive action not based in Natural Law and morality, to take an action one doesn’t have the right to take because they are violating the rights of another sentient animate being, stepping on the Sacred Feminine, without Care.

“They must find it difficult… those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority.” – Gerald Massey

This same story has happened many times in our recent history and further back. There are those who accept claims of authority over other living beings and usurp their Natural Law rights. Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and going back every century into the Roman times and even before that there have always been people who have claimed imaginary rights of authority over others. Those who line up and take orders are automatons imagining that they can give up their personal responsibility for the wrong-actions they commit and claim it’s all just a job and they are just following orders. Excuses, justifications and defensive rationalizations are always employed by those who need to validate the wrongs they are engaged in. People want to claim that they are not responsible for what happens as a result of their actions. But the truth is that they are, they simply want to be irresponsible so that they can continue doing what they are doing without pointing the finger at themselves. Instead, pointing the finger at someone else and claiming someone else is responsible for their behavior.

“Accept responsibility for yourself and your actions, thoughts and words. You alone make choices. You alone are answerable to the consequences of your behavior. The feeble excuse that your boss required it, the establishment expected it, holds no truth or justification. […] What is the point of having principles if you allow others to dictate your behavior? At the end of the day, you will judge your performance and the contribution you have made to Creation. It will not be based on what another expected of you, or what you did because you felt trapped.” – David Icke

Even the controllers and manipulators that create havoc and cause others to suffer are suffering themselves. These psychopaths fear and therefore seek to control. The ideology is that if you can control everything around you then it cannot hurt. They are in fear of being discovered as people who are incapable of feeling the normal range of human emotions. They fear how others would react, so they seek to control in order to survive and protect themselves. They are hurting and take out their aggression on others in complex ways.

Things can be different if enough people care to do the work to understand the causal factors of suffering that originate from within ourselves and care to change. Change is the action that requires courage to overcome our fears. We have free will choice to make decisions even if it leads to more suffering and is against the goals that we want or wish to have. What we create for ourselves is based on our alignment with Natural Law or ignoring it.

Our actions and behaviors towards other innocent sentient animate beings are a part of us, and Universal Cosmic Natural Moral Law applies in everything we do. If we enslave other innocent sentient animate beings, then we are not truly living and embodying Natural Law, Higher Self, Higher Will, Truth, Love, Good, Right, etc. If you think your actions of support, consent and participation in the enslavement, exploitation, harm, suffering, violence or murder of other innocent sentient animate beings is not part of what you do and who you are currently choosing to be, then you do not understand yourself or Natural Law.

We can create wonderful good, and we can also create tremendous evil. There are also grades in between. So long as we embody aspects of wrongdoings and evil towards other innocent sentient animate beings, we are merely living in partial embodiment of Natural Law and are still supporters of slavery. Only Truth can allow you to cross the divide of apathy, ignorance, cowardice and denial about what you participate, support and consent to in your actions and behaviors. Our minds are powerful, and we can delude ourselves about what we are actually participating in.

To Know Freedom is to Know Nature. Living in Harmony with Nature leads to Peace, Prosperity, Knowledge, Truth, Action, and Freedom. Nature Reflects the Order of the Universe. Living in Opposition to Nature leads to War, Control, Ignorance, Fear, Stagnation, and Enslavement.

[tomthomasblog]

Is It Really God's Will? Understanding Choices and Divine Guidance

In our modern world, decisions shape the lives of millions, from everyday choices to monumental decisions made by those in power. One intriguing question arises: how do we determine if these choices align with what we believe to be God’s will? Recently, a speaker asked this exact question to conclude a thought-provoking discussion that focused on decisions made by the president and other leaders. This inquiry resonates with many of us, prompting us to explore the intersection of faith, choice, and divine purpose. Do our leaders act under divine inspiration, or are they merely following their own agendas?

When we examine the choices made by leaders, it’s essential to consider the context in which they operate. Political decisions often stem from a complex blend of personal convictions, public opinion, and party agendas. This mix can sometimes leave us wondering if these choices genuinely reflect God’s intentions. For example, when a president decides on a new law, is that decision rooted in moral considerations, or is it mainly influenced by the voices of lobbyists and voters? This dilemma challenges us to think critically about how much we equate human action with divine will.

Religious teachings often emphasize the importance of free will. Each individual, including leaders, has the capacity to choose their path. However, these choices can significantly impact society. Influential figures who lead nations bear a heavy responsibility. In moments of uncertainty, people may turn to their faith to seek guidance. They pray for wisdom for their leaders, hoping that these individuals will act in accordance with what is right and just. But how can we be sure that their decisions align with God’s will?

The speaker's question invites reflection on the nature of divine guidance. Believers often hold fast to the idea that God has a plan for each person, as well as for nations as a whole. Yet, we live in a world filled with conflicting opinions, values, and beliefs. This diversity can bring about profound moral dilemmas and ethical challenges for leaders. When we see decisions made that seem divisive or harmful, we may struggle to reconcile these actions with our understanding of God’s desires for humanity.

Furthermore, as citizens and members of the faith community, we have a role to play. Encouraging our leaders to seek wisdom and embody compassion serves as a reminder that we too must engage with the moral implications of political decisions. By participating in discussions and advocating for justice, we can influence the choices made by those in power.

In conclusion, the question of whether the choices of our leaders reflect God’s will is complex. It challenges us to examine not only their actions but also our responses as a society. We must remember that while leaders make decisions, we have the ability to advocate for what we believe is right. Let’s not shy away from this responsibility. Instead, let us actively engage in our communities and encourage our leaders to lead with integrity and compassion. As you ponder this question, consider what actions you can take to contribute positively to the discourse surrounding leadership and faith. It’s time to reflect on how your own choices align with what you perceive as God’s will.

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The Scripture Collection Playlist A compilation of 20 uplifting music videos inspired by a different Bible scripture. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoBTz-QtgDhox4diwLqHBjD4W-CtzM-8v

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Website: https://bwpub.net/

I wrote the song "Heaven's Hand or Human Plan?" based on "Does God Choose the President?"

pop, j-pop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEKQp_jVRxs Fast tempos and aggressive rhythms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX_CAJmszSc hang drum, upbeat, techno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1SqRo6Znls

[phantomarchive]

I am The Curator. The Curator of Stories. Stories of love and hate; greed and beauty; life... and death. Stories such as this one.

[thegoodomensdumpster]

ABOUT SHADWELL AND TRACY

OK so. This is probably going to be the meta nobody asked for + the meta that has already existed for 30 years ( I read a bunch of it before the show came out, but I never found one tackling what I’m going to talk about, so chances are it exists but I missed it and now it’ll be impossible to find ). I’ve been wondering, a lot, how exactly the relationship between Tracy and Shadwell was narratively useful. (Especially Shadwell, what is up with Shadwell, really??? Why did he have to be ... the way he is???) Don’t get me wrong : I know perfectly well how nearly everything / everyone in Good Omens mirrors something / someone else. The Four Horsepersons / The Them obviously, a perfect mirror of humanity’s problems (self made be it for Death ) and how to fix them ( with hope, courage, love, and proper education for newest generations who are dealing with passed mistakes… )

And then all the duos echo each other and act as informations about every character . Crowley / Aziraphale Newt / Anathema Tracy / Shadwell So I had the nagging suspicion that Tracy and Shadwell would, perhaps, make more sense to me if I started comparing them to each other and to their counterparts.

After all, that’s how me (and dozens other meta writers) have managed to understand Newt and Anathema.

Newt is reasonable and rationnal, and he is also free and questionning. Anathema has lived a life devoided of surprises, all according to the Great Plan prophecies of a long dead ancestor she can not directly talk to.

Newt and Anathema get together because of the prophecies, but STAY together because they chose to, and Newt is the one to bring that choice to Anathema. Do I need to say which of them echoes Crowley and which of them echoes Aziraphale ? What about Shadwell and Tracy then ?

Welp. Let’s dissect them, shall we ?

Madame Tracy is, arguably, the most formidable character of the lot. OK, I may be a bit bias, I adore the woman. But with good reasons !

Deep down, she’s got one of the – if not the – strongest moral compass of the whole characters cast. She has confidence in her morals and ethics enough to trust a supernatural entity who just invaded her body( after being rightfully offended and scolding him a little ) AND to then go against said entity, an angel of the Lord, when he’s about to do something reprehensible. 

Badass. But on the surface, what is she ? She’s a marginal, a prostitute, a con artist (something that I’m not entirely happy about as I find it morally reprehensible, but it is very likely she pretends to be a medium to be some sort of cheap psychiatrist to people who can’t afford it so… I’ll allow it. But anyway, it is also important that she’s not a parangon of pure unaltered virtue, so this makes sense). She is all the things Shadwell says she is, and in his mouth ( as well as in the eyes of society) they are insults. Worse : she exudes femininity, she is comfortable in her sexuality, she’s a businesswoman, she’s self-sufficent and financially independant (she’s even the one who gives money to Shadwell…). None of this is bad, but most of it is (or, hopefully, was) regarded as bad.

Ok, we got Tracy figured out. Let’s try to understand Shadwell now. Shadwell… Is also a marginal, in a way (he has been to prison, after all, if we include TV Omens canon). But he’s another kind of marginal.

He is not financially independant (again, see : asking money to Tracy, and also, scamming Crowley and Aziraphale for years, which is a way bigger and morally reprehensible con than whatever Tracy is doing with her fake medium act. But tbh, I’m so impressed he scammed not one, but two supernatural entities for funding the same useless organization, I can’t be mad at him. Not for that, I mean.) He isn’t nice, he isn’t polite, he … seems to be everything Tracy isn’t. And, as Tracy is a beacon of light and kindness, it makes sense Shadwell would be a rude blackhole of hatred. But, more than being a lightsucker, Shadwell’s opposition to Tracy makes sense if we shift the way we look at them. Tracy is what society deems morally reprehensible but she isn’t immoral, and more than that, she is very modern. Confident in herself. Taking her fate into her own hands. Turned towards the future.

Meanwhile, Shadwell is entirely turned towards the past, so much so that his traditionnalism is too much by present’s standards, and that is the bit that makes him the most marginal. He wears his sexism and his homophobia as badges of honor, and runs A WITCHFINDER ARMY. A very definitely outdated organization that has for goal : BURNING WITCHES. And gays, too, but mainly witches. This is an activity that was once considered ethical, necessary, ultimately good, but isn’t anymore. Heaven approved of the Witchfinders’ Army on these « morally good » premisses, and Hell approved of it on the cruelty and horror it was actually responsible for. Society has moved on. Shadwell hasn’t. At least in surface . Because, just like Madame Tracy’s activities as a prostitute and self-made woman can raise eyebrows but ultimately don’t define her as a moral person, Shadwell… hnnngh, this is more difficutl to say this about him, but when time comes for him to act on his rotten outdated thrown in our face moral principles, he is actually siding with Tracy. He protects her, he refuses to shoot Adam, he chooses to do what he finds to be morally good, and he and Tracy share the same morals. 

(Also the one time Shadwell thinks he has killed someone he is genuinely shocked, so he is far from being a cold blooded killer. Only when he wants to protect Tracy or prevent Armageddon - and after Aziraphale has shown he isn’t really dead - does he threateningly raise his finger again. ) ((But homophobia and sexism aren’t a good look on him. Or on anyone else, for that matter. It’s not charming. Tracy, why were you charmed ???? WHY ???? ))

And we can only suppose that Tracy, beacon of light that she is, able to see the best even in the scum of the Earth, already knew that Shadwell and her agreed about what was ultimately important. They’ve had, possibly, years of interactions before the plot of GO kicks in, and maybe Shadwell hasn’t been so consistently horrible all this time and showed her a better side ? I hope ??? But, anyway, the thing is : these characters, Tracy and Shadwell, are made to mirror some of the best and worst things coming out of humanity. Tracy being kinda the worst possible carreer and personnal choice for religious bigots, and Shadwell being so deep into bigotry that it made him terrible even by bigots’ standards. Shadwell’s speech would have made him a hero a few centuries ago, now he’s just a lunatic. Tracy would have been burnt at the stake for her life choices. Now she’s… well, not in danger, at the very least, and besides Shadwell, all the GO characters seem to respect her. ( Or fear her, as is the case for Newt. ) ((I’m joking, I think he likes her, but confident people intimidate him.)) So. We’ve got Tracy who has built herself her own moral compass and is confident in the choices she made despite the hostility and difficulties she may have encountered, and Shadwell who lives according to a bunch of bigotted outdated rules he doesn’t actually believe in all that much. HA. Why does that ring a bell, I wonder… For the sake of not letting any ounce of ambiguity floating in the air, I’m going to spell it out :

Shadwell and the Witchfinders’ rules echo Anathema and her prophecies, and Aziraphale and Heaven’s indoctrination. Meanwhile, Tracy echoes Newt and Crowley for their marginality and self-made moral code (ok it’s less obvious for Newt especially if you haven’t read the book but he is the kind to question stuff constantly, to the point he hesitates a lot and has troubles finding his place in the world, but his – tiny - character arc is that he becomes able to question correctly and make decisions and help others make decisions).

The interesting thing is, in a way, Shadwell embodies the worst surface aspect of being a bigot blindly obeying outdated rules, while Tracy is the best possible outcome of a marginal making a life for themself. Newt and Anathema place somewhere in the middle, Anathema being able to let go of the thing that was ruling her life, and Newt is in the process of learning who he is, getting comfortable with that person and finding a place for himself in the world.

As for Crowley and Aziraphale, their long lives has thrown them in morally grey areas for a looong time, but at the end of GO, once freed from Heaven and Hell -but especially Heaven as Aziraphale has the most work to do to also get rid off his endoctrination completely- they are free to join Tracy, Shadwell, Newt and Anathema into finally becoming the most blooming versions of themselves. It is not too late, no matter how dark or how far back they’re coming from.

But !!! I am not entirely done.

The sword. And the gun. Both weapon given - more or less – to humanity by Aziraphale. The flaming sword, given at the very beginning to Adam and Eve hoping they’d use it to protect themselves, and that ends up in the hands of War. The thundergun, not given but required by Aziraphale to be put to use, right as the Armageddon is about to put an end to humanity, and to be used, this time, to kill someone. And, as I mentionned, both Shadwell and Tracy refuse to shoot.

Aziraphale cannot make humanity obey him, now can he ? Because that’s what it is, ultimately. Humanity. And, as always, free will. Because Tracy and Shadwell represent certain extremes and a lot of grey areas of humanity’s morals and diversity of personnalities, they are -almost- perfect ambassadors of humanity as a whole. Good and Evil bear no meaning around them, they refuse to fit neatly into any category, especially when scrutinized through the lenses of different places and eras as ethics shift constantely. Shadwell shows that even garbage trash men can show empathy, Tracy is the most merciful and kind person, which doesn’t prevent her from being surprisingly strong and adamant when needed. Shadwell and Tracy are part of each other’s life, against all odds, and even if it might have been just because they were neighbours at first, they ultimately chose to remain together. All duos chose to stick to their counterpart in the end. All of them represent the many contradictions of humanity, and how love is the ultimate way to live along together. And they use their free will for love. And while I would not, ever, EVER want to interact with a Shadwell IRL, I now see why it was important to make him the way he is depicted. From a narrative point of view, it was important to make him seemingly irreedemable, only for the one character he harrasses the most to trust and love him, because Tracy knows he, actually, isn’t as bad as it may seem. Because people who might seem horrible are not necessarily the ones who are. Because even Shadwell can love and be loved. And because everybody can improve.

Now, I do not know why the sexism and the homophobia had to be the main choices to convey how much of a bigotted idiot Shadwell was (No, I mean, I think I know why: probably because killing witches and gays were the Witchfinders’ Army main goals, but still, it’s tough on modern audiences - whether this should be taken into account by authors is... quite a debate to have, and maybe the main reason it bothers me? idk idk, I’ve already thought too much at this point). Because despite the fact that some of his lines and his excellent actor made him nice to see on screen (or read in the book for that matter), I have a very hard time liking his character. But that might be the point. I don’t know. Only Tracy can love him. But at least now, it makes more sense to me.

[ishkah]

Beyond Compassion and Humanity; Justice for Non-human Animals by Martha Nussbaum

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This is a great essay vegans can draw on for a virtue ethics answer to the question of why do we hold the principle that it's almost always wrong to breed sentient life into captivity?

So for myself and this strain of virtue ethicists it would be because you know you could leave room for other animals to enjoy happy flourishing, being able to express all their capabilities in wild habitat.

Therefore not wanting to parasitically take away life with meaning for low-order pleasure in our hierarchy of needs which we can find elsewhere.

The distinction between this philosophy and consequentialism would simply be if you wished to act this way because fundimentally it’s about who you want to be and who you want to let animal be:

It goes beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living beings, and a wish for their flourishing and for a world in which creatures of many types flourish. It goes beyond the intuitive starting point of utilitarianism because it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain [and interests], but in complex forms of life. It wants to see each thing flourish as the sort of thing it is. . .[and] that the dignity of living organisms not be violated.

Counter-intuitively the author does still cling to a hedonistic view of the right to take life, but hopefully not for much longer:

If animals were really killed in a painless fashion, after a healthy and free-ranging life, what then? Killings of extremely young animals would still be problematic, but it seems unclear that the balance of considerations supports a complete ban on killings for food.

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BEYOND “COMPASSION AND HUMANITY”

Justice for Non-human Animals

MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM

Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals… The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the forms of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case. I shall not attempt to explain these considered beliefs. They are outside the scope of the theory of justice, and it does not seem possible to extend the contract doctrine so as to include them in a natural way.

—JOHN RAWLS, A Theory of Justice

In conclusion, we hold that circus animals…are housed in cramped cages, subjected to fear, hunger, pain, not to mention the undignified way of life they have to live, with no respite and the impugned notification has been issued in conformity with the…values of human life, [and] philosophy of the Constitution… Though not homo-sapiens [sic], they are also beings entitled to dignified existence and humane treatment sans cruelty and torture… Therefore, it is not only our fundamental duty to show compassion to our animal friends, but also to recognise and protect their rights…If humans are entitled to fundamental rights, why not animals?

—NAIR V. UNION OF INDIA, Kerala High Court, June 2000

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“BEINGS ENTITLED TO DIGNIFIED EXISTENCE”

In 55 B.C. the Roman leader Pompey staged a combat between humans and elephants. Surrounded in the arena, the animals perceived that they had no hope of escape. According to Pliny, they then ―entreated the crowd, trying to win their compassion with indescribable gestures, bewailing their plight with a sort of lamentation.‖ The audience, moved to pity and anger by their plight, rose to curse Pompey, feeling, writes Cicero, that the elephants had a relation of commonality (societas) with the human race. [1]

We humans share a world and its scarce resources with other intelligent creatures. These creatures are capable of dignified existence, as the Kerala High Court says. It is difficult to know precisely what we mean by that phrase, but it is rather clear what it does not mean: the conditions of the circus animals in the case, squeezed into cramped, filthy cages, starved, terrorized, and beaten, given only the minimal care that would make them presentable in the ring the following day. The fact that humans act in ways that deny animals a dignified existence appears to be an issue of justice, and an urgent one, although we shall have to say more to those who would deny this claim. There is no obvious reason why notions of basic justice, entitlement, and law cannot be extended across the species barrier, as the Indian court boldly does.

Before we can perform this extension with any hope of success, however, we need to get clear about what theoretical approach is likely to prove most adequate. I shall argue that the capabilities approach as I have developed it—an approach to issues of basic justice and entitlement and to the making of fundamental political principles [2] —provides better theoretical guidance in this area than that supplied by contractarian and utilitarian approaches to the question of animal entitlements, because it is capable of recognizing a wide range of types of animal dignity, and of corresponding needs for flourishing.

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KANTIAN CONTRACTARIANISM: INDIRECT DUTIES, DUTIES OF COMPASSION

Kant’s own view about animals is very unpromising. He argues that all duties to animals are merely indirect duties to humanity, in that (as he believes) cruel or kind treatment of animals strengthens tendencies to behave in similar fashion to humans. Thus he rests the case for decent treatment of animals on a fragile empirical claim about psychology. He cannot conceive that beings who (in his view) lack self-consciousness and the capacity for moral reciprocity could possibly be objects of moral duty. More generally, he cannot see that such a being can have dignity, an intrinsic worth.

One may, however, be a contractarian—and indeed, in some sense a Kantian— without espousing these narrow views. John Rawls insists that we have direct moral duties to animals, which he calls ―duties of compassion and humanity. [3] But for Rawls these are not issues of justice, and he is explicit that the contract doctrine cannot be extended to deal with these issues, because animals lack those properties of human beings ―in virtue of which they are to be treated in accordance with the principles of justice‖ (TJ 504). Only moral persons, defined with reference to the ―two moral powers,‖ are subjects of justice.

To some extent, Rawls is led to this conclusion by his Kantian conception of the person, which places great emphasis on rationality and the capacity for moral choice. But it is likely that the very structure of his contractarianism would require such a conclusion, even in the absence of that heavy commitment to rationality. The whole idea of a bargain or contract involving both humans and non-human animals is fantastic, suggesting no clear scenario that would assist our thinking. Although Rawls’s Original Position, like the state of nature in earlier contractarian theories, [4] is not supposed to be an actual historical situation, it is supposed to be a coherent fiction that can help us think well. This means that it has to have realism, at least, concerning the powers and needs of the parties and their basic circumstances. There is no comparable fiction about our decision to make a deal with other animals that would be similarly coherent and helpful. Although we share a world of scarce resources with animals, and although there is in a sense a state of rivalry among species that is comparable to the rivalry in the state of nature, the asymmetry of power between humans and non-human animals is too great to imagine the bargain as a real bargain. Nor can we imagine that the bargain would actually be for mutual advantage, for if we want to protect ourselves from the incursions of wild animals, we can just kill them, as we do. Thus, the Rawlsian condition that no one party to the contract is strong enough to dominate or kill all the others is not met. Thus Rawls’s omission of animals from the theory of justice is deeply woven into the very idea of grounding principles of justice on a bargain struck for mutual advantage (on fair terms) out of a situation of rough equality.

To put it another way, all contractualist views conflate two questions, which might have been kept distinct: Who frames the principles? And for whom are the principles framed? That is how rationality ends up being a criterion of membership in the moral community: because the procedure imagines that people are choosing principles for themselves. But one might imagine things differently, including in the group for whom principles of justice are included many creatures who do not and could not participate in the framing.

We have not yet shown, however, that Rawls’s conclusion is wrong. I have said that the cruel and oppressive treatment of animals raises issues of justice, but I have not really defended that claim against the Rawlsian alternative. What exactly does it mean to say that these are issues of justice, rather than issues of ―compassion and humanity? The emotion of compassion involves the thought that another creature is suffering significantly, and is not (or not mostly) to blame for that suffering. [5] It does not involve the thought that someone is to blame for that suffering. One may have compassion for the victim of a crime, but one may also have compassion for someone who is dying from disease (in a situation where that vulnerability to disease is nobody’s fault). ―Humanity I take to be a similar idea. So compassion omits the essential element of blame for wrongdoing. That is the first problem. But suppose we add that element, saying that duties of compassion involve the thought that it is wrong to cause animals suffering. That is, a duty of compassion would not be just a duty to have compassion, but a duty, as a result of one’s compassion, to refrain from acts that cause the suffering that occasions the compassion. I believe that Rawls would make this addition, although he certainly does not tell us what he takes duties of compassion to be. What is at stake, further, in the decision to say that the mistreatment of animals is not just morally wrong, but morally wrong in a special way, raising questions of justice?

This is a hard question to answer, since justice is a much-disputed notion, and there are many types of justice, political, ethical, and so forth. But it seems that what we most typically mean when we call a bad act unjust is that the creature injured by that act has an entitlement not to be treated in that way, and an entitlement of a particularly urgent or basic type (since we do not believe that all instances of unkindness, thoughtlessness, and so forth are instances of injustice, even if we do believe that people have a right to be treated kindly, and so on). The sphere of justice is the sphere of basic entitlements. When I say that the mistreatment of animals is unjust, I mean to say not only that it is wrong of us to treat them in that way, but also that they have a right, a moral entitlement, not to be treated in that way. It is unfair to them. I believe that thinking of animals as active beings who have a good and who are entitled to pursue it naturally leads us to see important damages done to them as unjust. What is lacking in Rawls’s account, as in Kant’s (though more subtly) is the sense of the animal itself as an agent and a subject, a creature in interaction with whom we live. As we shall see, the capabilities approach does treat animals as agents seeking a flourishing existence; this basic conception, I believe, is one of its greatest strengths.

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UTILITARIANISM AND ANIMAL FLOURISHING

Utilitarianism has contributed more than any other ethical theory to the recognition of animal entitlements. Both Bentham and Mill in their time and Peter Singer in our own have courageously taken the lead in freeing ethical thought from the shackles of a narrow species-centered conception of worth and entitlement. No doubt this achievement was connected with the founders’ general radicalism and their skepticism about conventional morality, their willingness to follow the ethical argument wherever it leads. These remain very great virtues in the utilitarian position. Nor does utilitarianism make the mistake of running together the question “who receives justice?” With the question “who frames the principles of justice?” Justice is sought for all sentient beings, many of whom cannot participate in the framing of principles.

Thus it is in a spirit of alliance that those concerned with animal entitlements might address a few criticisms to the utilitarian view. There are some difficulties with the utilitarian view, in both of its forms. As Bernard Williams and Amartya Sen usefully analyze the utilitarian position, it has three independent elements: consequentialism (the right choice is the one that produces the best overall consequences), sum-ranking (the utilities of different people are combined by adding them together to produce a single total), and hedonism, or some other substantive theory of the good (such as preference satisfaction). [6] Consequentialism by itself causes the fewest difficulties, since one may always adjust the account of well-being, or the good, in consequentialism so as to admit many important things that utilitarians typically do not make salient: plural and heterogeneous goods, the protection of rights, even personal commitments or agent-centred goods. More or less any moral theory can be consequentialized, that is, put in a form where the matters valued by that theory appear in the account of consequences to be produced. [7] Although I do have some doubts about a comprehensive consequentialism as the best basis for political principles in a pluralistic liberal society, I shall not comment on them at present, but shall turn to the more evidently problematic aspects of the utilitarian view. [8]

Let us next consider the utilitarian commitment to aggregation, or what is called ―sum-ranking. Views that measure principles of justice by the outcome they produce need not simply add all the relevant goods together. They may weight them in other ways. For example, one may insist that each and every person has an indefeasible entitlement to come up above a threshold on certain key goods. In addition, a view may, like Rawls’s view, focus particularly on the situation of the least well off, refusing to permit inequalities that do not raise that person’s position. These ways of considering well-being insist on treating people as ends: They refuse to allow some people’s extremely high well-being to be purchased, so to speak, through other people’s disadvantage. Even the welfare of society as a whole does not lead us to violate an individual, as Rawls says.

Utilitarianism notoriously refuses such insistence on the separateness and inviolability of persons. Because it is committed to the sum-ranking of all relevant pleasures and pains (or preference satisfactions and frustrations), it has no way of ruling out in advance results that are extremely harsh toward a given class or group. Slavery, the lifelong subordination of some to others, the extremely cruel treatment of some humans or of non-human animals—none of this is ruled out by the theory’s core conception of justice, which treats all satisfactions as fungible in a single system. Such results will be ruled out, if at all, by empirical considerations regarding total or average well-being. These questions are notoriously indeterminate (especially when the number of individuals who will be born is also unclear, a point I shall take up later). Even if they were not, it seems that the best reason to be against slavery, torture, and lifelong subordination is a reason of justice, not an empirical calculation of total or average well-being. Moreover, if we focus on preference satisfaction, we must confront the problem of adaptive preferences. For while some ways of treating people badly always cause pain (torture, starvation), there are ways of subordinating people that creep into their very desires, making allies out of the oppressed. Animals too can learn submissive or fear-induced preferences. Martin Seligman’s experiments, for example, show that dogs who have been conditioned into a mental state of learned helplessness have immense difficulty learning to initiate voluntary movement, if they can ever do so. [9]

There are also problems inherent in the views of the good most prevalent within utilitarianism: hedonism (Bentham) and preference satisfaction (Singer). Pleasure is a notoriously elusive notion. Is it a single feeling, varying only in intensity and duration, or are the different pleasures as qualitatively distinct as the activities with which they are associated? Mill, following Aristotle, believed the latter, but if we once grant that point, we are looking at a view that is very different from standard utilitarianism, which is firmly wedded to the homogeneity of good. [10]

Such a commitment looks like an especially grave error when we consider basic political principles. For each basic entitlement is its own thing, and is not bought off, so to speak, by even a very large amount of another entitlement. Suppose we say to a citizen: We will take away your free speech on Tuesdays between 3 and 4P.M., but in return, we will give you, every single day, a double amount of basic welfare and health care support. This is just the wrong picture of basic political entitlements. What is being said when we make a certain entitlement basic is that it is important always and for everyone, as a matter of basic justice. The only way to make that point sufficiently clearly is to preserve the qualitative separateness of each distinct element within our list of basic entitlements.

Once we ask the hedonist to admit plural goods, not commensurable on a single quantitative scale, it is natural to ask, further, whether pleasure and pain are the only things we ought to be looking at. Even if one thinks of pleasure as closely linked to activity, and not simply as a passive sensation, making it the sole end leaves out much of the value we attach to activities of various types. There seem to be valuable things in an animal’s life other than pleasure, such as free movement and physical achievement, and also altruistic sacrifice for kin and group. The grief of an animal for a dead child or parent, or the suffering of a human friend, also seem to be valuable, a sign of attachments that are intrinsically good. There are also bad pleasures, including some of the pleasures of the circus audience—and it is unclear whether such pleasures should even count positively in the social calculus. Some pleasures of animals in harming other animals may also be bad in this way.

Does preference utilitarianism do better? We have already identified some problems, including the problem of misinformed or malicious preferences and that of adaptive (submissive) preferences. Singer’s preference utilitarianism, moreover, defining preference in terms of conscious awareness, has no room for deprivations that never register in the animal’s consciousness.

But of course animals raised under bad conditions can’t imagine the better way of life they have never known, and so the fact that they are not living a more flourishing life will not figure in their awareness. They may still feel pain, and this the utilitarian can consider. What the view cannot consider is all the deprivation of valuable life activity that they do not feel.

Finally, all utilitarian views are highly vulnerable on the question of numbers. The meat industry brings countless animals into the world who would never have existed but for that. For Singer, these births of new animals are not by themselves a bad thing: Indeed, we can expect new births to add to the total of social utility, from which we would then subtract the pain such animals suffer. It is unclear where this calculation would come out. Apart from this question of indeterminacy, it seems unclear that we should even say that these births of new animals are a good thing, if the animals are brought into the world only as tools of human rapacity.

So utilitarianism has great merits, but also great problems.

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TYPES OF DIGNITY, TYPES OF FLOURISHING: EXTENDING THE CAPABILITIES APPROACH

The capabilities approach in its current form starts from the notion of human dignity and a life worthy of it. But I shall now argue that it can be extended to provide a more adequate basis for animal entitlements than the other two theories under consideration. The basic moral intuition behind the approach concerns the dignity of a form of life that possesses both deep needs and abilities; its basic goal is to address the need for a rich plurality of life activities. With Aristotle and Marx, the approach has insisted that there is waste and tragedy when a living creature has the innate, or ―basic,‖ capability for some functions that are evaluated as important and good, but never gets the opportunity to perform those functions. Failures to educate women, failures to provide adequate health care, failures to extend the freedoms of speech and conscience to all citizens—all these are treated as causing a kind of premature death, the death of a form of flourishing that has been judged to be worthy of respect and wonder. The idea that a human being should have a chance to flourish in its own way, provided it does no harm to others, is thus very deep in the account the capabilities approach gives of the justification of basic political entitlements.

The species norm is evaluative, as I have insisted; it does not simply read off norms from the way nature actually is. The difficult questions this valuational exercise raises for the case of non-human animals will be discussed in the following section. But once we have judged that a central human power is one of the good ones, one of the ones whose flourishing defines the good of the creature, we have a strong moral reason for promoting its flourishing and removing obstacles to it.

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Dignity and Wonder: The Intuitive Starting Point

The same attitude to natural powers that guides the approach in the case of human beings guides it in the case of all forms of life. For there is a more general attitude behind the respect we have for human powers, and it is very different from the type of respect that animates Kantian ethics. For Kant, only humanity and rationality are worthy of respect and wonder; the rest of nature is just a set of tools. The capabilities approach judges instead, with the biologist Aristotle (who criticized his students’ disdain for the study of animals), that there is something wonderful and wonder-inspiring in all the complex forms of animal life.

Aristotle’s scientific spirit is not the whole of what the capabilities approach embodies, for we need, in addition, an ethical concern that the functions of life not be impeded, that the dignity of living organisms not be violated. And yet, if we feel wonder looking at a complex organism, that wonder at least suggests the idea that it is good for that being to flourish as the kind of thing it is. And this idea is next door to the ethical judgment that it is wrong when the flourishing of a creature is blocked by the harmful agency of another. That more complex idea lies at the heart of the capabilities approach.

So I believe that the capabilities approach is well placed, intuitively, to go beyond both contractarian and utilitarian views. It goes beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living beings, and a wish for their flourishing and for a world in which creatures of many types flourish. It goes beyond the intuitive starting point of utilitarianism because it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain, but in complex forms of life. It wants to see each thing flourish as the sort of thing it is.

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By Whom and for Whom? The Purposes of Social Cooperation

For a contractarian, as we have seen, the question ―Who makes the laws and principles? is treated as having, necessarily, the same answer as the question ―For whom are the laws and principles made? That conflation is dictated by the theory’s account of the purposes of social cooperation. But there is obviously no reason at all why these two questions should be put together in this way. The capabilities approach, as so far developed for the human case, looks at the world and asks how to arrange that justice be done in it. Justice is among the intrinsic ends that it pursues. Its parties are imagined looking at all the brutality and misery, the goodness and kindness of the world and trying to think how to make a world in which a core group of very important entitlements, inherent in the notion of human dignity, will be protected. Because they look at the whole of the human world, not just people roughly equal to themselves, they are able to be concerned directly and non-derivatively, as we saw, with the good of the mentally disabled. This feature makes it easy to extend the approach to include human-animal relations.

Let us now begin the extension. The purpose of social cooperation, by analogy and extension, ought to be to live decently together in a world in which many species try to flourish. (Cooperation itself will now assume multiple and complex forms.) The general aim of the capabilities approach in charting political principles to shape the human-animal relationship would be, following the intuitive ideas of the theory, that no animal should be cut off from the chance at a flourishing life and that all animals should enjoy certain positive opportunities to flourish. With due respect for a world that contains many forms of life, we attend with ethical concern to each characteristic type of flourishing and strive that it not be cut off or fruitless.

Such an approach seems superior to contractarianism because it contains direct obligations of justice to animals; it does not make these derivative from or posterior to the duties we have to fellow humans, and it is able to recognize that animals are subjects who have entitlements to flourishing and who thus are subjects of justice, not just objects of compassion. It is superior to utilitarianism because it respects each individual creature, refusing to aggregate the goods of different lives and types of lives. No creature is being used as a means to the ends of others, or of society as a whole. The capabilities approach also refuses to aggregate across the diverse constituents of each life and type of life. Thus, unlike utilitarianism, it can keep in focus the fact that each species has a different form of life and different ends; moreover, within a given species, each life has multiple and heterogeneous ends.

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How Comprehensive?

In the human case, the capabilities approach does not operate with a fully comprehensive conception of the good, because of the respect it has for the diverse ways in which people choose to live their lives in a pluralistic society. It aims at securing some core entitlements that are held to be implicit in the idea of a life with dignity, but it aims at capability, not functioning, and it focuses on a small list. In the case of human-animal relations, the need for restraint is even more acute, since animals will not in fact be participating directly in the framing of political principles, and thus they cannot revise them over time should they prove inadequate.

And yet there is a countervailing consideration: Human beings affect animals’ opportunities for flourishing pervasively, and it is hard to think of a species that one could simply leave alone to flourish in its own way. The human species dominates the other species in a way that no human individual or nation has ever dominated other humans. Respect for other species’ opportunities for flourishing suggests, then, that human law must include robust, positive political commitments to the protection of animals, even though, had human beings not so pervasively interfered with animals’ ways of life, the most respectful course might have been simply to leave them alone, living the lives that they make for themselves.

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The Species and the Individual

What should the focus of these commitments be? It seems that here, as in the human case, the focus should be the individual creature. The capabilities approach attaches no importance to increased numbers as such; its focus is on the well-being of existing creatures and the harm that is done to them when their powers are blighted.

As for the continuation of species, this would have little moral weight as a consideration of justice (though it might have aesthetic significance or some other sort of ethical significance), if species were just becoming extinct because of factors having nothing to do with human action that affects individual creatures. But species are becoming extinct because human beings are killing their members and damaging their natural environments. Thus, damage to species occurs through damage to individuals, and this individual damage should be the focus of ethical concern within the capabilities approach.

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Do Levels of Complexity Matter?

Almost all ethical views of animal entitlements hold that there are morally relevant distinctions among forms of life. Killing a mosquito is not the same sort of thing as killing a chimpanzee. But the question is: What sort of difference is relevant for basic justice? Singer, following Bentham, puts the issue in terms of sentience. Animals of many kinds can suffer bodily pain, and it is always bad to cause pain to a sentient being. If there are non-sentient or barely sentient animals—and it appears that crustaceans, mollusks, sponges, and the other creatures Aristotle called ―stationary animals‖ are such creatures—there is either no harm or only a trivial harm done in killing them. Among the sentient creatures, moreover, there are some who can suffer additional harms through their cognitive capacity: A few animals can foresee and mind their own deaths, and others will have conscious, sentient interests in continuing to live that are frustrated by death. The painless killing of an animal that does not foresee its own death or take a conscious interest in the continuation of its life is, for Singer and Bentham, not bad, for all badness, for them, consists in the frustration of interests, understood as forms of conscious awareness. [11] Singer is not, then, saying that some animals are inherently more worthy of esteem than others. He is simply saying that, if we agree with him that all harms reside in sentience, the creature’s form of life limits the conditions under which it can actually suffer harm.

Similarly, James Rachels, whose view does not focus on sentience alone, holds that the level of complexity of a creature affects what can be a harm for it. [12] What is relevant to the harm of pain is sentience; what is relevant to the harm of a specific type of pain is a specific type of sentience (e.g., the ability to imagine one’s own death). What is relevant to the harm of diminished freedom is a capacity for freedom or autonomy. It would make no sense to complain that a worm is being deprived of autonomy, or a rabbit of the right to vote.

What should the capabilities approach say about this issue? It seems to me that it should not follow Aristotle in saying that there is a natural ranking of forms of life, some being intrinsically more worthy of support and wonder than others. That consideration might have evaluative significance of some other kind, but it seems dubious that it should affect questions of basic justice.

Rachels’s view offers good guidance here. Because the capabilities approach finds ethical significance in the flourishing of basic (innate) capabilities—those that are evaluated as both good and central (see the section on evaluating animal capabilities)—it will also find harm in the thwarting or blighting of those capabilities. More complex forms of life have more and more complex capabilities to be blighted, so they can suffer more and different types of harm. Level of life is relevant not because it gives different species differential worth per se, but because the type and degree of harm a creature can suffer varies with its form of life.

At the same time, I believe that the capabilities approach should admit the wisdom in utilitarianism. Sentience is not the only thing that matters for basic justice, but it seems plausible to consider sentience a threshold condition for membership in the community of beings who have entitlements based on justice. Thus, killing a sponge does not seem to be a matter of basic justice.

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Does the Species Matter?

For the utilitarians, and for Rachels, the species to which a creature belongs has no moral relevance. All that is morally relevant are the capacities of the individual creature: Rachels calls this view ―moral individualism.‖ Utilitarian writers are fond of comparing apes to young children and to mentally disabled humans. The capabilities approach, by contrast, with its talk of characteristic functioning and forms of life, seems to attach some significance to species membership as such. What type of significance is this?

We should admit that there is much to be learned from reflection on the continuum of life. Capacities do crisscross and overlap; a chimpanzee may have more capacity for empathy and perspectival thinking than a very young child or an older autistic child. And capacities that humans sometimes arrogantly claim for themselves alone are found very widely in nature. But it seems wrong to conclude from such facts that species membership is morally and politically irrelevant. A mentally disabled child is actually very different from a chimpanzee, though in certain respects some of her capacities may be comparable. Such a child’s life is tragic in a way that the life of a chimpanzee is not tragic: She is cut off from forms of flourishing that, but for the disability, she might have had, disabilities that it is the job of science to prevent or cure, wherever that is possible. There is something blighted and disharmonious in her life, whereas the life of a chimpanzee may be perfectly flourishing. Her social and political functioning is threatened by these disabilities, in a way that the normal functioning of a chimpanzee in the community of chimpanzees is not threatened by its cognitive endowment.

All this is relevant when we consider issues of basic justice. For a child born with Down syndrome, it is crucial that the political culture in which he lives make a big effort to extend to him the fullest benefits of citizenship he can attain, through health benefits, education, and the reeducation of the public culture. That is so because he can only flourish as a human being. He has no option of flourishing as a happy chimpanzee. For a chimpanzee, on the other hand, it seems to me that expensive efforts to teach language, while interesting and revealing, are not matters of basic justice. A chimpanzee flourishes in its own way, communicating with its own community in a perfectly adequate manner that has gone on for ages.

In short, the species norm (duly evaluated) tells us what the appropriate benchmark is for judging whether a given creature has decent opportunities for flourishing.

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EVALUATING ANIMAL CAPABILITIES: NO NATURE WORSHIP

In the human case, the capabilities view does not attempt to extract norms directly from some facts about human nature. We should know what we can about the innate capacities of human beings, and this information is valuable, in telling us what our opportunities are and what our dangers might be. But we must begin by evaluating the innate powers of human beings, asking which ones are the good ones, the ones that are central to the notion of a decently flourishing human life, a life with dignity. Thus not only evaluation but also ethical evaluation is put into the approach from the start. Many things that are found in human life are not on the capabilities list.

There is a danger in any theory that alludes to the characteristic flourishing and form of life of a species: the danger of romanticizing nature, or suggesting that things are in order as they are, if only we would stop interfering. This danger looms large when we turn from the human case, where it seems inevitable that we will need to do some moral evaluating, to the animal case, where evaluating is elusive and difficult. Inherent in at least some environmentalist writing is a picture of nature as harmonious and wise, and of humans as wasteful overreachers who would live better were we to get in tune with this fine harmony. This image of nature was already very sensibly attacked by John Stuart Mill in his great essay ―Nature,‖ which pointed out that nature, far from being morally normative, is actually violent, heedless of moral norms, prodigal, full of conflict, harsh to humans and animals both. A similar view lies at the heart of much modern ecological thinking, which now stresses the inconstancy and imbalance of nature, [13] arguing, inter alia, that many of the natural ecosystems that we admire as such actually sustain themselves to the extent that they do only on account of various forms of human intervention.

Thus, a no-evaluation view, which extracts norms directly from observation of animals’ characteristic ways of life, is probably not going to be a helpful way of promoting the good of animals. Instead, we need a careful evaluation of both ―nature‖ and possible changes. Respect for nature should not and cannot mean just leaving nature as it is, and must involve careful normative arguments about what plausible goals might be.

In the case of humans, the primary area in which the political conception inhibits or fails to foster tendencies that are pervasive in human life is the area of harm to others. Animals, of course, pervasively cause harm, both to members of their own species and, far more often, to members of other species.

In both of these cases, the capabilities theorist will have a strong inclination to say that the harm-causing capabilities in question are not among those that should be protected by political and social principles. But if we leave these capabilities off the list, how can we claim to be promoting flourishing lives? Even though the capabilities approach is not utilitarian and does not hold that all good is in sentience, it will still be difficult to maintain that a creature who feels frustration at the inhibition of its predatory capacities is living a flourishing life. A human being can be expected to learn to flourish without homicide and, let us hope, even without most killing of animals. But a lion who is given no exercise for its predatory capacity appears to suffer greatly.

Here the capabilities view may, however, distinguish two aspects of the capability in question. The capability to kill small animals, defined as such, is not valuable, and political principles can omit it (and even inhibit it in some cases, to be discussed in the following section). But the capability to exercise one’s predatory nature so as to avoid the pain of frustration may well have value, if the pain of frustration is considerable. Zoos have learned how to make this distinction. Noticing that they were giving predatory animals insufficient exercise for their predatory capacities, they had to face the question of the harm done to smaller animals by allowing these capabilities to be exercised. Should they give a tiger a tender gazelle to crunch on? The Bronx Zoo has found that it can give the tiger a large ball on a rope, whose resistance and weight symbolize the gazelle. The tiger seems satisfied. Wherever predatory animals are living under direct human support and control, these solutions seem the most ethically sound.

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POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE, CAPABILITY AND FUNCTIONING

In the human case, there is a traditional distinction between positive and negative duties that it seems important to call into question. Traditional moralities hold that we have a strict duty not to commit aggression and fraud, but we have no correspondingly strict duty to stop hunger or disease, nor to give money to promote their cessation. [14]

The capabilities approach calls this distinction into question. All the human capabilities require affirmative support, usually including state action. This is just as true of protecting property and personal security as it is of health care, just as true of the political and civil liberties as it is of providing adequate shelter.

In the case of animals, unlike the human case, there might appear to be some room for a positive-negative distinction that makes some sense. It seems at least coherent to say that the human community has the obligation to refrain from certain egregious harms toward animals, but that it is not obliged to support the welfare of all animals, in the sense of ensuring them adequate food, shelter, and health care. The animals themselves have the rest of the task of ensuring their own flourishing.

There is much plausibility in this contention. And certainly if our political principles simply ruled out the many egregious forms of harm to animals, they would have done quite a lot. But the contention, and the distinction it suggests, cannot be accepted in full. First of all, large numbers of animals live under humans’ direct control: domestic animals, farm animals, and those members of wild species that are in zoos or other forms of captivity. Humans have direct responsibility for the nutrition and health care of these animals, as even our defective current systems of law acknowledge. [15] Animals in the wild appear to go their way unaffected by human beings. But of course that can hardly be so in many cases in today’s world. Human beings pervasively affect the habitats of animals, determining opportunities for nutrition, free movement, and other aspects of flourishing.

Thus, while we may still maintain that one primary area of human responsibility to animals is that of refraining from a whole range of bad acts (to be discussed shortly), we cannot plausibly stop there. The only questions should be how extensive our duties are, and how to balance them against appropriate respect for the autonomy of a species.

In the human case, one way in which the approach respects autonomy is to focus on capability, and not functioning, as the legitimate political goal. But paternalistic treatment (which aims at functioning rather than capability) is warranted wherever the individual’s capacity for choice and autonomy is compromised (thus, for children and the severely mentally disabled). This principle suggests that paternalism is usually appropriate when we are dealing with non-human animals. That conclusion, however, should be qualified by our previous endorsement of the idea that species autonomy, in pursuit of flourishing, is part of the good for non-human animals. How, then, should the two principles be combined, and can they be coherently combined? I believe that they can be combined, if we adopt a type of paternalism that is highly sensitive to the different forms of flourishing that different species pursue. It is no use saying that we should just let tigers flourish in their own way, given that human activity ubiquitously affects the possibilities for tigers to flourish. This being the case, the only decent alternative to complete neglect of tiger flourishing is a policy that thinks carefully about the flourishing of tigers and what habitat that requires, and then tries hard to create such habitats. In the case of domestic animals, an intelligent paternalism would encourage training, discipline, and even, where appropriate, strenuous training focused on special excellences of a breed (such as the border collie or the hunter-jumper). But the animal, like a child, will retain certain entitlements, which they hold regardless of what their human guardian thinks about it. They are not merely objects for human beings’ use and control.

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TOWARD BASIC POLITICAL PRINCIPLES: THE CAPABILITIES LIST

It is now time to see whether we can actually use the human basis of the capabilities approach to map out some basic political principles that will guide law and public policy in dealing with animals. The list I have defended as useful in the human case is as follows:

The Central Human Capabilities

Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living.

Bodily Health. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter.

Bodily Integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; to be secure against violent assault, including sexual assault and domestic violence; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.

Senses, Imagination, and Thought. Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason—and to do these things in a ―truly human‖ way, a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing works and events of one’s own choice, religious, literary, musical, and so forth. Being able to use one’s mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech, and freedom of religious exercise. Being able to have pleasurable experiences and to avoid non-beneficial pain.

Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves; to love those who love and care for us and to grieve at their absence; in general, to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not having one’s emotional development blighted by fear and anxiety. (Supporting this capability means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial to our development.)

Practical Reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s life. (This entails protection for the liberty of conscience and religious observance.)

Affiliation. (A) Being able to live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another. (Protecting this capability means protecting institutions that constitute and nourish such forms of affiliation, and also protecting the freedom of assembly and political speech.) (B) Having the social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation; being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. (This entails provisions of non-discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, caste, religion, national origin.)

Other Species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature.

Play. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.

Control over One’s Environment. (A) Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life; having the right of political participation; protections of free speech and association. (B) Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), and having property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others; having the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. In work, being able to work as a human being, exercising practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other workers.

Although the entitlements of animals are species specific, the main large categories of the existing list, suitably fleshed out, turn out to be a good basis for a sketch of some basic political principles.

In the capabilities approach, all animals are entitled to continue their lives, whether or not they have such a conscious interest. All sentient animals have a secure entitlement against gratuitous killing for sport. Killing for luxury items such as fur falls in this category, and should be banned. On the other hand, intelligently respectful paternalism supports euthanasia for elderly animals in pain. In the middle are the very difficult cases, such as the question of predation to control populations, and the question of killing for food. The reason these cases are so difficult is that animals will die anyway in nature, and often more painfully. Painless predation might well be preferable to allowing the animal to be torn to bits in the wild or starved through overpopulation. As for food, the capabilities approach agrees with utilitarianism in being most troubled by the torture of living animals. If animals were really killed in a painless fashion, after a healthy and free-ranging life, what then? Killings of extremely young animals would still be problematic, but it seems unclear that the balance of considerations supports a complete ban on killings for food.

Bodily Health. One of the most central entitlements of animals is the entitlement to a healthy life. Where animals are directly under human control, it is relatively clear what policies this entails: laws banning cruel treatment and neglect; laws banning the confinement and ill treatment of animals in the meat and fur industries; laws forbidding harsh or cruel treatment for working animals, including circus animals; laws regulating zoos and aquariums, mandating adequate nutrition and space. Many of these laws already exist, although they are not well enforced. The striking asymmetry in current practice is that animals being raised for food are not protected in the way other animals are protected. This asymmetry must be eliminated.

Bodily Integrity. This goes closely with the preceding. Under the capabilities approach, animals have direct entitlements against violations of their bodily integrity by violence, abuse, and other forms of harmful treatment—whether or not the treatment in question is painful. Thus the declawing of cats would probably be banned under this rubric, on the grounds that it prevents the cat from flourishing in its own characteristic way, even though it may be done in a painfree manner and cause no subsequent pain. On the other hand, forms of training that, though involving discipline, equip the animal to manifest excellences that are part of its characteristic capabilities profile would not be eliminated.

Senses, Imagination, and Thought. For humans, this capability creates a wide range of entitlements: to appropriate education, to free speech and artistic expression, to the freedom of religion. It also includes a more general entitlement to pleasurable experiences and the avoidance of non-beneficial pain. By now it ought to be rather obvious where the latter point takes us in thinking about animals: toward laws banning harsh, cruel, and abusive treatment and ensuring animals’ access to sources of pleasure, such as free movement in an environment that stimulates and pleases the senses. The freedom-related part of this capability has no precise analogue, and yet we can come up with appropriate analogues in the case of each type of animal, by asking what choices and areas of freedom seem most important to each. Clearly this reflection would lead us to reject close confinement and to regulate the places in which animals of all kinds are kept for spaciousness, light and shade, and the variety of opportunities they offer the animals for a range of characteristic activities. Again, the capabilities approach seems superior to utilitarianism in its ability to recognize such entitlements, for few animals will have a conscious interest, as such, in variety and space.

Emotions. Animals have a wide range of emotions. All or almost all sentient animals have fear. Many animals can experience anger, resentment, gratitude, grief, envy, and joy. A small number—those who are capable of perspectival thinking—can experience compassion. [16] Like human beings, they are entitled to lives in which it is open to them to have attachments to others, to love and care for others, and not to have those attachments warped by enforced isolation or the deliberate infliction of fear. We understand well what this means where our cherished domestic animals are in question. Oddly, we do not extend the same consideration to animals we think of as ―wild. Until recently, zoos took no thought for the emotional needs of animals, and animals being used for research were often treated with gross carelessness in this regard, being left in isolation and confinement when they might easily have had decent emotional lives. [17]

Practical Reason. In each case, we need to ask to what extent the creature has a capacity to frame goals and projects and to plan its life. To the extent that this capacity is present, it ought to be supported, and this support requires many of the same policies already suggested by capability 4: plenty of room to move around, opportunities for a variety of activities.

Affiliation. In the human case, this capability has two parts: an interpersonal part (being able to live with and toward others) and a more public part, focused on self-respect and non-humiliation. It seems to me that the same two parts are pertinent for non-human animals. Animals are entitled to opportunities to form attachments (as in capability 5) and to engage in characteristic forms of bonding and interrelationship. They are also entitled to relations with humans, where humans enter the picture, that are rewarding and reciprocal, rather than tyrannical. At the same time, they are entitled to live in a world public culture that respects them and treats them as dignified beings. This entitlement does not just mean protecting them from instances of humiliation that they will feel as painful. The capabilities approach here extends more broadly than utilitarianism, holding that animals are entitled to world policies that grant them political rights and the legal status of dignified beings, whether they understand that status or not.

Other Species. If human beings are entitled to ―be able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature,‖ so too are other animals, in relation to species not their own, including the human species, and the rest of the natural world. This capability, seen from both the human and the animal side, calls for the gradual formation of an interdependent world in which all species will enjoy cooperative and mutually supportive relations with one another. Nature is not that way and never has been. So it calls, in a very general way, for the gradual supplanting of the natural by the just.

Play. This capability is obviously central to the lives of all sentient animals. It calls for many of the same policies we have already discussed: provision of adequate space, light, and sensory stimulation in living places, and, above all, the presence of other species members.

Control over One’s Environment. In the human case, this capability has two prongs, the political and the material. The political is defined in terms of active citizenship and rights of political participation. For non-human animals, the important thing is being part of a political conception that is framed so as to respect them and that is committed to treating them justly. It is important, however, that animals have entitlements directly, so that a human guardian has standing to go to court, as with children, to vindicate those entitlements. On the material side, for non-human animals, the analogue to property rights is respect for the territorial integrity of their habitats, whether domestic or in the wild.

Are there animal capabilities not covered by this list, suitably specified? It seems to me not, although in the spirit of the capabilities approach we should insist that the list is open-ended, subject to supplementation or deletion.

In general, the capabilities approach suggests that it is appropriate for nations to include in their constitutions or other founding statements of principle a commitment to animals as subjects of political justice and a commitment that animals will be treated with dignity. The constitution might also spell out some of the very general principles suggested by this capabilities list. The rest of the work of protecting animal entitlements might be done by suitable legislation and by court cases demanding the enforcement of the law, where it is not enforced. At the same time, many of the issues covered by this approach cannot be dealt with by nations in isolation, but can only be addressed by international cooperation. So we also need international accords committing the world community to the protection of animal habitats and the eradication of cruel practices.

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THE INELIMINABILITY OF CONFLICT

In the human case, we often face the question of conflict between one capability and another. But if the capabilities list and its thresholds are suitably designed, we ought to say that the presence of conflict between one capability and another is a sign that society has gone wrong somewhere. [18] We should focus on long-term planning that will create a world in which all the capabilities can be secured to all citizens.

Our world contains persistent and often tragic conflicts between the well-being of human beings and the well-being of animals. Some bad treatment of animals can be eliminated without serious losses in human wellbeing: Such is the case with the use of animals for fur, and the brutal and confining treatment of animals used for food. The use of animals for food in general is a much more difficult case, since nobody really knows what the impact on the world environment would be of a total switch to vegetarian sources of protein, or the extent to which such a diet could be made compatible with the health of all the world’s children. A still more difficult problem is the use of animals in research.

A lot can be done to improve the lives of research animals without stopping useful research. As Steven Wise has shown, primates used in research often live in squalid, lonely conditions while they are used as medical subjects. This of course is totally unnecessary and morally unacceptable and could be ended without ending the research. Some research that is done is unnecessary and can be terminated, for example, the testing of cosmetics on rabbits, which seems to have been bypassed without loss of quality by some cosmetic firms. But much important research with major consequences for the life and health of human beings and other animals will inflict disease, pain, and death on at least some animals, even under the best conditions.

I do not favor stopping all such research. What I do favor is (a) asking whether the research is really necessary for a major human capability; (b) focusing on the use of less-complex sentient animals where possible, on the grounds that they suffer fewer and lesser harms from such research; (c) improving the conditions of research animals, including palliative terminal care when they have contracted a terminal illness, and supportive interactions with both humans and other animals; (d) removing the psychological brutality that is inherent in so much treatment of animals for research; (e) choosing topics cautiously and seriously, so that no animal is harmed for a frivolous reason; and (f) a constant effort to develop experimental methods (for example, computer simulations) that do not have these bad consequences.

Above all, it means constant public discussion of these issues, together with an acknowledgment that such uses of animals in research are tragic, violating basic entitlements. Such public acknowledgments are far from useless. They state what is morally true, and thus acknowledge the dignity of animals and our own culpability toward them. They reaffirm dispositions to behave well toward them where no such urgent exigencies intervene. Finally, they prompt us to seek a world in which the pertinent research could in fact be done in other ways.

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TOWARD A TRULY GLOBAL JUSTICE

It has been obvious for a long time that the pursuit of global justice requires the inclusion of many people and groups who were not previously included as fully equal subjects of justice: the poor; members of religious, ethnic, and racial minorities; and more recently women, the disabled, and inhabitants of nations distant from one’s own.

But a truly global justice requires not simply that we look across the world for other fellow species members who are entitled to a decent life. It also requires looking around the world at the other sentient beings with whose lives our own are inextricably and complexly intertwined. Traditional contractarian approaches to the theory of justice did not and, in their very form, could not confront these questions as questions of justice. Utilitarian approaches boldly did so, and they deserve high praise. But in the end, I have argued, utilitarianism is too homogenizing—both across lives and with respect to the heterogeneous constituents of each life—to provide us with an adequate theory of animal justice. The capabilities approach, which begins from an ethically attuned wonder before each form of animal life, offers a model that does justice to the complexity of animal lives and their strivings for flourishing. Such a model seems an important part of a fully global theory of justice.

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NOTES

This essay derives from my Tanner Lectures in 2003 and is published by courtesy of the University of Utah Press and the Trustees of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values.

The incident is discussed in Pliny Nat. Hist. 8.7.20–21, Cicero Ad Fam. 7.1.3; see also Dio Cassius Hist. 39, 38, 2–4. See the discussion in Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origins of the Western Debate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 124–125.

For this approach, see Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), and ―Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice, Feminist Economics 9 (2003): 33–59. The approach was pioneered by Amartya Sen within economics, and is used by him in some rather different ways, without a definite commitment to a normative theory of justice.

All references are to John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), hereafter TJ.

Rawls himself makes the comparison at TJ 12; his analogue to the state of nature is the equality of the parties in the Original Position.

See the analysis in Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), ch. 6; thus far the analysis is uncontroversial, recapitulating a long tradition of analysis.

See Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, introduction to Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 3–4.

See the comment by Nussbaum in Goodness and Advice, Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Tanner Lectures (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), discussing work along these lines by Amartya Sen and others.

Briefly put, my worries are those of Rawls in Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), who points out that it is illiberal for political principles to contain any comprehensive account of what is best. Instead, political principles should be committed to a partial set of ethical norms endorsed for political purposes, leaving it to citizens to fill out the rest of the ethical picture in accordance with their own comprehensive conceptions of value, religious or secular. Thus I would be happy with a partial political consequentialism, but not with comprehensive consequentialism, as a basis for political principles.

Martin Seligman, Helplessness: On Development, Depression, and Death (New York: Freeman, 1975).

Here I agree with Thomson (who is thinking mostly about Moore); see Goodness and Advice.

Peter Singer, ―Animals and the Value of Life,‖ in Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays on Moral Philosophy, ed. Tom Regan (New York: Random House, 1980), 356.

James Rachels, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

Daniel B. Botkin, ―Adjusting Law to Nature’s Discordant Harmonies,‖ Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum 7 (1996): 25–37.

See the critique by Martha Nussbaum in ―Duties of Justice, Duties of Material Aid: Cicero’s Problematic Legacy,‖ Journal of Political Philosophy 7 (1999): 1–31.

The laws do not cover all animals, in particular, not animals who are going to be used for food or fur.

On all this, see Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, ch. 2.

See Steven Wise, Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2000), ch. 1.

See Martha C. Nussbaum, ―The Costs of Tragedy: Some Moral Implications of Cost-Benefit Analysis,‖ in Cost-Benefit Analysis, ed. Matthew D. Adler and Eric A. Posner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 169–200.

[silyabeeodess]

Thoughts on Frisk, Chara, and the Player

Besides what I’ve covered briefly in the description of a comic a few years back, this is long overdue; however, since I might make something focusing on Chara in the future, I decided to go ahead and put down my two cents on these two characters.  Since this is effectively a long essay, I’ll have everything below the cut:

One of the most longstanding debates among Undertale fans is the morality of these characters and their relation to the Player.  Some see Frisk and Chara as effectively polar embodiments of good and evil following the Pacifist and Genocide routes while others see the Player alone as the individual in control of all choices with the two characters bowing to that control.�� The truth might be somewhere in the middle.

Let’s cover the most basic thing first.  The Player is you.  Yes, it’s your decisions that take the story in different directions, but you are not a character. You are not a part of the world of Undertale.  You’re an intruder, an outsider, an anomaly--something that the people in Undertale only seem to have a vague understanding of.  Characters like Flowey will break the 4th wall by calling you out for your actions, but it’s often from the idea that you’re still Chara--even if Chara’s own story played out long before you came in.  Chara will ask for your SOUL, but you personally don’t actually sacrifice anything: Even as far as the game’s story goes with the “Soulless Pacifist” route, the most you lose is the time is takes to reinstall the game and play it as you normally would. You can cheat them out of “your SOUL” easily.  They think you’re Frisk.

Most glaringly, however, is that both Frisk and Chara will fight against some of your decisions.  For Chara, you have them not giving you much of a choice with how you end the Genocide route and declaring that you were never in control, amongst other actions like killing Asgore and Flowey. Most people might not notice Frisk’s refusal beyond the fact that we don’t pick their name like we can Chara’s; however, the point where this becomes most clear is during our interactions with Undyne on a Pacifist Run.  When we try to become Undyne’s friend and she insists on fighting anyway after her house catches fire, we have the choice to fight back.  Doing so though results in a weak attack, which Undyne declares as being the result of a lack of will to hurt her.  That isn’t the Player’s decision, and it effectively forces us to spare her whether we want to or not.  

This relationship parallels what we also see in Deltarune, with the Player there also exhibiting control over Kris, but Kris fighting back.  Kris isn’t an empty vessel or puppet for the Player to manipulate, and the same can be said for Frisk and Chara in Undertale. It’s a form of temporary possession, where we--an otherworldly being--take over a host for as long a period as the game’s designers allow. It means that we can’t pin our actions on either Frisk or Chara.  Let’s go back to that second paragraph though.  The other characters don’t really know this, making Frisk/Chara/Kris suffer as a result.      

From a gameplay perspective, this is an awesome idea to tackle. From a story perspective, meanwhile, things get a little complicated.

Here’s the thing about handling it simply as a story: The Player often has to be ripped out of the equation.  Again, you aren’t a character, and the only way the Player can really be present in the world of Undertale is as an OC or persona based on the independent choices of each creator.  Keeping them out means leaving the choices we would normally make 100% up to Frisk/Chara.  Ergo, stop attacking artists and writers for their portrayals of those two when creators have to give them qualities that are entirely up to each individuals ideas and experiences to try and fill in a bunch of blanks.  Beyond Chara’s backstory giving us some information on who they were, which is mostly told to us through other characters, there is no perfectly in-character portrayal of either of them.  

Which I guess brings us to the part where I try explaining my idea of them.  So let’s start with Chara, since again, they have the most background info.

What are some canon points we can cover with Chara?

Asriel describes them as “not the greatest person,” but still cared for them deeply as his best friend. From the recordings in the True Lab, we see they had a good friendship, even if Chara often took a more leading role.

Also according to Asriel, Chara “hated humanity” and had an unhappy reason for climbing the mountain.

It was Chara’s plan to commit suicide, have Asriel take their SOUL, and try to kill humans to break the barrier.

Chara laughed after poisoning Asgore with buttercups. It’s presumed by Asriel to have been an accident, but we don’t know Chara’s knowledge on the situation.

An extended monologue from Asgore has him describe Frisk and Chara as having “the same look of hope in their eyes.”

Asgore considered Chara “the future of humans and monsters.”

They refer to themselves as “the demon who comes when people call its name.”

As of the Genocide route, their goal is the complete destruction of Undertale’s world to join the Player and move on to another. They pin the Player’s actions on their newfound “purpose” to attain power.

Narration in the game is different depending on the route, speaking commonly from a 2nd-person POV on Pacifist and Neutral runs, but 1st-person on a Genocide run. This alludes that Chara is always with us during gameplay.

Chara’s dialogue mimics Toriel’s, hinting to a close relationship following the concepts of mimicry being a form of flattery and a child’s desire to be like a positive adult figure in their lives.

So here’s what I think.  Chara’s hatred toward humanity is supported not only by Asriel’s confession, but also in their actions.  If Chara took control as Asriel described after crossing the Barrier to kill humans and take their SOULS, that willingness to commit murder along with their own suicide indicates not only that general disdain, but also a hefty amount of self-loathing simply for being human.  Whatever happened to them prior to entering the Underground, that hatred was likely only nursed further by knowledge and ideas fed to them from monsterkind: Humans hurt monsters too and monsters are supposedly “made of compassion” while “humans don’t need any.” (They may have even been bullied or faced prejudice for being human, even if it wasn’t from the Dreemurrs, just like how Frisk was constantly attacked on-site.)  This likely led to a monster-centric worldview where all of humanity--and even themselves, to a point--was the enemy.  

I imagine the “Mr. Dad Guy” sweater we find was made by Chara rather than Asriel because of the inclusion of “guy” at the end, since this seems like something more of an adopted child would do than a biological one, maybe not entirely comfortable with the idea yet of calling Toriel and Asgore “Mom” and “Dad.”  I truly do think Chara loved their newfound family and never meant to hurt Asgore: The laugh, while it can’t be confirmed, seemed to be a mark of mental instability rather than something of true malice. With the pressure of being called “the future of humans and monsters” as well, they probably felt like they had to be responsible for humanity’s actions as a whole even if they personally did nothing wrong.  From that perspective, their life--and any other human’s--mattered less than a monster’s, because they had to atone for the crimes of others.  Humanity itself had to atone.  This is why they would be so willing to sacrifice themselves and kill for the sake of breaking the Barrier.

So what happens when the monsters Chara placed on a pedestal start breaking their script?  Asriel stopping Chara from committing murder is one thing: That seemed to be one part of the plan that Chara didn’t tell him about, probably because they knew he wouldn’t agree to it. Beyond that though?  What happens when monsters stop showing that legendary compassion?  Asriel started playing with lives and killed for fun as Flowey.  Asgore declared war against humanity and started killing children.  Toriel left her position as queen and couldn’t protect anyone. Not only was their happy family broken, but monsters started acting like the humans they claimed to be better than through their own “weaknesses” and desire to kill.  They were supposed to be above humanity’s choices, above even Chara’s choices. Vengeance isn’t an excuse anymore: It’s all the same, and it feels like the ultimate betrayal.  

They’re all the same.  Monsters, humans, it doesn’t matter.  It’s an ugly world where only the strong and terrible reign, and it deserves to be destroyed.  There’s nothing left.  There’s no good left.  There’s no hope left... 

Unless, maybe, someone new enters the game. Can they rekindle that hope or will they only prove those dark thoughts right?

In comes Frisk, who we really only know as a blank slate.  We don’t know their history or their desires except to leave the Underground one way or another.   We can’t really say much, so this is where it really is entirely up in the air how we portray them.

A personal headcanon of mine is that they were a bit of a little thief, “frisking” things off of others--which is why we can get G even without killing in the game.  A very morally grey character, fitting the multiple routes Undertale’s story can go and Sans description of them “maybe not being a saint” even if they play as a Pacifist.  Maybe they don’t really know what the right choice always is, but they desire to do their best when possible. 

I can’t say much here because, as I’ve said several times now, it’s up to everyone.  Me?  I like a Pacifist Frisk, even if they struggling and suffer before reaching their happy ending.  Some might have them go through a Genocide route on their own or by Chara’s possession. Some have them with guilt-riddled consciences and others treat them as the purest of souls. Some pick different endings.   

So enjoy your interpretations, your characterizations, and your AUs.  You don’t have to agree with my ideas or anyone else’s: Just don’t bash others for theirs.  Undertale’s gameplay opens things to everyone’s personal experience and should be enjoyed as such. 

[averyrogers83writes]

When A Hero Falls

Title: When A Hero Falls Authors: @shield-agent78 & @averyrogers83 Pairing: Steve Rogers & Andy Barber Rated: NC17 Warnings: Angst Summary: Captain “Steve Rogers” America is on trial for treason so the team hires the only guy they know who can get him off. The best defense attorney around Andy Barber. Words: 2535 Prompt: An anon ask: Someone give me a fanfic where Andy Barber gets hired as Steve Rogers’ lawyer. Squares Filled: On the Run: Avengers Bingo/ @shield-agent78, “this is the fight for our lives”: Star-Spangled Bingo SSB2020/ @shild-agent78, Steve: Withoutadoubt Bingo/ @averyrogerswrites83, In Pain: Avengers Bingo/ @averyrogerswrites83 Author Notes: Another collaborative work by @averyrogers83 and @shield-agent78, anything can happen when these two get together.

@shield-agent78 @averyrogers83​ @asthearrowflies @star-spangled-bingo @avengersbingo @withoutadoubt-bingo 

Day 1: Opening arguments

Andy Barber: Steve Rogers aka Captain America, a man that has put his life on the line for this country more times than we can count. Doing things most men wouldn’t even dream of doing now sits before us accused of treason.  How can anyone even think that a man with such high moral integrity be capable of treason?  As his lawyer, I will prove to you that this man before you is not just a superhero, but also a man that loves this country more than most. I will prove to you that Senator Ross is falsely accusing this American Icon for his own selfish ambitious reasons.

The prosecuting attorney glances over to his client Senator Ross who is sitting with his back firmly against the wooden chair. As opening arguments continue, Senator Ross frowns at Barber’s allegations. He mumbles something quietly to his attorney which only can be guessed however he is waved off as Barber continues.

Murmurs could be heard in the background as Barber accuses Senator Ross of abuse of power amongst other things against Captain Rogers that can only be heard in bits and pieces as the courtroom crowd grew rowdy, causing the presiding judge to call for order in the court.

Prosecutor: Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury while we all agree that Captain Rogers has served his country faithfully it does not allow him to break the laws and statutes set forth by the United Nations. Therefore, the United States Government is asking for you to take these accounts into consideration. The Sokovia Accords lays out a course of action if and when the Avenger team is called upon. Steve Rogers did not take this into consideration when he gathered his team members to his side in order to save the war criminal James Barnes. Yes, this man sitting before you is capable of treason and much more.

Andy can see the veins in Steve’s hands’ contract as he squeezes them together in anger at the mention that Bucky is just a common war criminal. His jaw is set hard enough that it ticks with frustration. More mummers erupt again throughout the courtroom as jurors exchange glances between them. The sounding of a loud gavel erupts again over the gallery as the judge demands order in her courtroom and effectively ending the first day of the trial.

Court TV Reporter:  Smooths hands over outfit as makeup assistant touches up red lipstick “Today’s trial proceedings in the case of United States v Steve Rogers began with opening arguments.  Andy Barber who is the hot attorney for Rogers called his client a man of high moral integrity, while the prosecutor pointed out Rogers aided and abetted the war criminal James Barnes whose trial is slated to begin later this month.”  

Day 2: Prosecutor’s Witnesses:

The Prosecutor had started the day with calling their list of witnesses against Rogers. Those that had suffered some kind of loss from the actions taken by Captain Rogers and his team who ignored the sole purpose of what the Accords stood for.  Protecting the people of the world from rogue superheroes.

Court TV Reporter: Wearing navy sweater  “Day two of the trial against Captain America started off with the prosecution calling their witnesses. First to the stand being the mother of Charlie Spencer; the young man who was killed while in Sokovia doing volunteer work. Miriam Sharpe blames the loss of her son on the arrogance of the Avengers and their lack of realizing the consequences of their actions.

Their next witness Helmut Zemo went on record to state that due to the arrogance of the so called superhero Avengers he lost everything.  His wife, his son, his father, and his home; despite having them evacuate to his father’s home outside of the city caused by the level of destruction.

However, Defense Attorney Andy Barber questioned Zemo about his involvement in implicating James Barnes. He stated that because of Zemo’s actions he had led Mr. Barnes; an innocent man to be brainwashed by the very enemy that he and Captain Rogers fought during the great war. Questioning the integrity of this witness as well as revamping the events he had set forth in action made the count room buzz with activity. The judge had to regain control several times thus causing Mr. Barber to ask for a recess which has been granted until tomorrow.  It was evident from today’s proceedings that Andy Barber has his work cut out for him.”

***

It was evident that the day's proceedings had worn heavy on Steve’s mind and heart. Some of it made him rethink his own involvement in Sokovia and the loss it had caused.  Then a voice in the back of his mind perks up. A familiar voice that reminds him of why he took on the moniker of Captain America in the first place.

“The strong man who has known power all his life, may lose respect for that power, but a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows... compassion. Whatever happens, stay who you are, not just a soldier, but a good man.”

Steve looks at the window of the meeting room and blows out a frustrating breath. “You thinkin’ about jumping out the window?” Andy’s voice is both full of sarcasm and concern. Steve does not take his eyes from the window but decides to look down at the city street itself watching the cars pass.

“Naw, just thinking we are in the fight for our lives, at least mine. Do you think we have a chance at winning this case especially with the media circus?”

Andy straightens his brown tie and strides toward Steve. “The media might actually be helping your case. You have a lot of people that believe in you and what you stand for.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Steve watches as a crowd begins to gather outside of the courthouse holding signs. Some say ‘Free Captain America’ others are not as kind.

Steve really didn’t care about what the public thought of him, really he just wanted the trial to be over so he can either go on with being Captain America or be stripped of all responsibilities of being a superhero and just lead a normal life.  

Day3: Prosecutor’s Witnesses/Defense Witnesses:

Colonel James Rhodes was the last witness for the prosecutor. A hush fell over the chattery courtroom as Rhodes entered the room walking with the use of special designed braces made by the only Tony Stark.  

Steve’s heart sank the moment he saw his friend.  Rhodes was a good and honorable man and didn’t deserve the fate that he was served. Looking at his friend and how he was now partially paralized made him wonder if he shouldn’t be found guilty for treason.  The two teams were pitted against each other because both he and Tony were too stubborn to try and work through a compromise.  

He was more concerned for his lifelong friend and keeping him safe and it didn’t occur to him how his actions may affect the rest of his family.  

Court TV Reporter: smooths red dress and then begins report “The prosecutor has just rested his case against Steve Rogers, now it is up to the esteemed Andy Barber to defend Captain America to the jury. Natasha Romanoff was the first witness who spoke on behalf of Rogers. The famous Black Widow explained in detail how she had supported the Accords at first, but soon her mind was changed when faced with the idea that a war hero such as James Barnes could be guilty of the assissianation of Wakanda’s king.  She went on to explain how Steve had always placed the needs of others in front of his own.”

***

As the day ended on the third day, all Steve could think about was how his actions had hurt those most important to him.  Seeing Rhodes in braces come into the courtroom was too much for Steve to handle.

“Maybe we should just forget the case and I just turn myself in and accept the consequences.”

“No! We’ve come too far to just give up now.” Andy tried to reason with Steve to reassure him that he did the right thing. He placed his hands on Steve’s shoulders. Piercing blue eyes staring into the other man’s identical eyes.  It was almost like looking in a mirror.

Before they left the courthouse Andy made Steve agree to sleep on it and not make a rash decision to give up.  

Day 4: Defense Witnesses/Closing Arguments

The next day began as any other, however a somber mood had fallen over the courthouse. Andy had spent an hour reasoning with Steve about if he should take the stand. “It will either hurt your case or make them see the actual hero and man you are. There’s no inbetween. As your attorney, I think we should let the last witnesses testify and then decide whether or not to bring you to the stand.”

“Right now I’ll go with what you say, but if the jury needs to know I turned myself in and agreed to go on trial only as long as the rest of my team were released and their records erased,” Steve states pulling his long frame up from the chair.

“I’ll handle it in closing arguments. They will know where you stand.”  

Court TV Reporter: sporting red, white and blue blazer  “The fourth day of the trial has begun with hot Andy Barber leading the defense for Steve Rogers. The first witness being called today is Nick Fury, Commander of SHIELD. Commander Fury went on record defending Captain Steve Rogers’ impeccable service record.  Fury eyed the prosecution critically as he spoke about the numerous times Rogers had led his team through the dangers that the American public had no idea about due to national security. While the procustion tried to pressure Fury in answering detailed questions regarding specific cases, he calmly and tactfully told them in true Fury fashion that it was none of their business based on national security.

Based on the information Andy received he was fully prepared to handle Tony Stark as a hostile witness.

Tony walked up to stand and as he was sworn in he looked over at his long time friend and ally and took a deep breath.  Steve was and will always be his friend, no matter what happened in the past.  He could now see from Steve’s point of view after everything that has happened that the Accords would need a lot of fine tuning in order or any of them to continue to do what they did best. Save the world.

He had based his assessment of the Accords due to the attack at the U.N., Sokovia, Washington, and New York.  Yes maybe at the time they needed to have some accountability.  Someone to keep them in check, but after seeing what the division had done to him and the rest of the team; the family.  His anger fueled by the knowledge that The Winter Soldier was responsible for the death of his parents. Not understanding that Bucky had no control over what he’d done. The look on his face showed that. Showed the regret and guilt for what he had done.

***

Closing arguments Prosecution:  Ladies and gentlemen the only question in front of you today is if Steve Rogers is guilty of breaking the laws outlined within the Sokovia Accords. Whether he signed it or not has little consequence in this matter. The law is the law for humans and enhanced individuals. I employ you to look past his good nature and only at the facts. Captain Rogers helped cause a conflict among his teammates and aided and embedded James Barnes. With this information at hand you have only one choice to make, what should be done with this former American Hero.

Closing Arguments Defense: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury the only crime that has been committed is hindering this great man from doing his job, that of protecting the people of this nation as well as others from the threats of this world. We have seen attacks brought upon us in forms we cannot imagine. Now, Steve Rogers sits on trial for treason. Treason for what? Helping others and protecting them from the unrighteousness set into play by individuals and organizations who would harm our nation? Captain Rogers willingly turned himself into the government to be placed upon trial so the rest of his team would be released and their records erased. This is the sacrifice made by not a soldier but a good man. Overall, the prosecution has provided no evidence that this man should be found guilty of anything. This trial ladies and gentleman has been a joke, a witch hunt against a superhero defending the country and world.

A mummbring could be heard throughout the courtroom as the trail was turned over into the hands of the jury for deliberation. Steve now could only wait with Andy to see where his fate lay.

Day 5: Verdict

“Is it normal for a verdict to come in so soon?” Steve asks the guard as he quickly straightens his tie. Andy runs into the courthouse and meets Steve outside the courtroom once he heard the news that the jury had already come back with a decision.  With bated breath the two sat silently waiting for the jury to enter.

The foreman handed a piece of paper to the judge and the whole room went silent, it was like there was no one else in the room but him.  His heart raced and his palms sweat with anticipation. Whatever the outcome he would take his licks like had always done. He was a man of honor and integrity.  He had a deal.  His life for that of his team; his family.

***

Court TV Reporter: Sporting a red blazer and sharp blue paint suit. “Breaking news: a verdict has been reached in the trial against Captain Steve Rogers. We are waiting in anticipation for Andy Barber to address the press.” The camera pans to the courthouse steps where Andy walks out onto the steps.

“Mr. Barber, what was the outcome of the trial? Was Steve found innocent? Where is he? What is your impression of the prosecution? Will you appeal?” Questions rain down upon Andy like a storm.  

***

The trial was a whirlwind that seemed to end quickly. Speculations could be heard throughout the crowd that the outcome could not have been good for the jury to have come back with a verdict so quickly.  A hush fell over the crowd of reporters and onlookers from both sides.

“Captain Steve Rogers has been found innocent.” Andy began.  “Thank you to all the men and women of the jury that has found this man innocent of treason.  They found no evidence that Captain Rogers could be remotely capable of betraying his country.  Once again they have shown that this man is a man of true heroism.”

From the crowd you can hear one last question shouted towards Andy and Steve. “Either or both of you gentlemen free tonight?” Steve and Andy smirk.

[basicsofislam]

ISLAM 101: Muslim Culture and Character: Morals And Manners: Buildinf Good Character

The topic of this book, “adab in practice,” is part of the larger concept of akhlaq, that is, morality. In fact, from one perspective, adab in practice is fundamentally practical morality and ethics. Therefore, the essence of these concepts will be explained first, beginning with a short introduction to akhlaq, and only after this will adab in practice be returned to.

Akhlaq, the plural of khuluq in Arabic, means the character and temperament of a person. The temperament of a person brings either good or harmful things. In the broadest aspect morality means that there is a moral character, that is, morality becomes deeply ingrained in the soul and as a consequence right actions and behavior come naturally and easily from within; then, the per- son with such a character no longer has to struggle intellectually to know what ethical choices to make.

Human characteristics can generally be divided into those that society approves of and those that we disapprove of. Decency, hu- mility, and kindness are traits that are seen in a positive light, while arrogance, deceit, and miserliness are generally perceived as negative human characteristics. To recognize these characteristics and their attendant traits is to understand what is meant here by the phrase “moral character.” Nawwas ibn Saman once asked the Prophet how to recognize the difference between goodness and sin. The Prophet answered, “Goodness is good moral character. Sin is anything that pricks one’s conscience, and which one does not want others to know about.”1 Another narration from Jabir re- ports that the Messenger said, “The most beloved to me among you and the ones who will be closest to me on the Day of Judgment are the best in moral character. And they who are most loathsome to me and will be farthest from me on the Day of Judgment are those who gossip, those with unbridled tongues, and those who condescend.” When they asked him, “O Messenger of God! Who are those who condescend?” he replied, “They are those who are arrogant.”2

Ethics, which is the study or science of morals, can be divided into the theoretical and the practical. While theoretical morality is concerned with those concepts that constitute the principles and rules of morality, practical morality is concerned with the duties that constitute the basis of a moral life. As reported by the Prophet, “God looks not at your outward appearances, nor at your wealth or belongings. God looks only at your hearts and your deeds.”3 For this reason, here we will be mainly concerned with the practical side of morality, and as mentioned above, the pur- pose of this book is to explore adab in practice. At this point, with a view to clarifying the meaning of human responsibility, let us take a closer look at the concept of duty, which is pivotal to devel- oping a good character with adab.

THE NATURE AND TYPES OF DUTY

Duty is the moral responsibility of a person who has reached pu- berty when they have been asked to do something good or help- ful. Accordingly, Islamically there are two types of duty. One is the obligatory (fard) group of duties, that is, those the perfor- mance of which is binding and the abandonment of which is for- bidden. For example, performing daily prayers, fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, and offering prescribed purifying alms fall into this category. The other type of duty is that which, al- though not obligatory, is encouraged or desirable; it is these du- ties that religion presents as being inherent parts of a good moral character. To observe these duties on top of the obligatory ones shows greater spiritual maturity and is worthy of Divine reward; the observation of them pleases God. To neglect such duties would be a shortcoming. An example of this type of duty would be the giving of money or goods to those in need (sadaqa), over and above the prescribed purifying alms (zakat), and generally being kind and polite to everyone.

Duties can further be classified as those fulfilled in the cause of God, or for the benefit of the individual, family, or even soci- ety. From this perspective, duties can be divided into different sorts—divine, familial, and social duties. Let us more closely ex- amine these categories.

Divinely-Ordained Duties

It is incumbent upon every person who has come of age and who is in possession of all their mental faculties that they recognize and worship God. For a human there can be no greater blessing or honor than this servitude to God. One worships God by willingly and gratefully performing acts of worship, such as daily prayers, fasting, charity, and such other commitments that require both physical and financial abilities, like the pilgrimage to Mecca. In ad- dition to these duties that pertain to the personal practice of Islam, safeguarding and defending one’s homeland is also a sacred duty.

Another very important divine duty is to struggle against one’s own evil-commanding soul. Those who cannot discipline their ego or self through moral education will not be able to help themselves, let alone society. Believers, both as individuals and members of soci- ety, need to exert themselves to strive in the way of God in all their actions at all moments of life. This is what Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, meant when he said, “We are re- turning from the lesser jihad (struggle) to the greater,” while he was returning to Medina from the Campaign of Tabuk.4 Emphasizing that they were returning from “the lesser struggle to the greater,” the Prophet directed his Community to this “greater struggle” that is waged against one’s carnal self at all moments of life.

Being this comprehensive in nature, jihad includes every ac- tion, from the simplest act of speaking to remaining silent or per- forming supererogatory acts of worship, such as extra prayers, worship and fasting to attain the good pleasure of God. Likewise, to enlighten our hearts we can read the Qur’an, or to increase the light of our faith we can continually remember and reflect on the Divine Attributes of our Almighty Creator that are manifest all around us.

Individual Duties

Each person has some duties toward their own self as well. Some of these pertain to the body, and some to the spirit. The following are the main duties that fall into this category:

Training the body: For everyone it is crucial that the body be kept strong and clean. Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “A strong and vigorous be- liever is better than a frail and weak one.”5

Caring for one’s health: Health is a great blessing; there- fore, it is vital to avoid things that may damage one’s health and to seek treatment when one is ill.

Refraining from dangerous practices of abstinence or self- denial practiced in the name of spiritual discipline.

Guarding against things that wear down and age the body.

Strengthening willpower: A person needs to develop healthy self-control. This involves learning what is good for the body and partaking of it, as well as finding out what is harmful and avoiding it.

Duties relating to the mind and intellect, such as pursuing learning and enlightenment, awakening higher emotions and positive feelings in the heart, and honing one’s talents and skills.

Family Duties

The family is the very foundation of a healthy society. Each mem- ber of the family must accept some responsibility for the others in the family. Some of the primary duties of a husband, for instance, are to behave kindly toward his wife, to meet her basic needs, and to be loyal to her. A narration of the Prophet says, “The best of you is he who is the best to his wife.”6 A wife who is happy with her spouse will support her husband’s decisions, as long as they do not conflict with religious directives and contribute to protecting the family honor and property. All these are pivotal to happiness in marital relations and to a happy family.

Parents in such an atmosphere commit themselves to nurtur- ing, educating and training their children to the best of their ability, setting them on the path to success in life. Fathers and mothers should treat their children equally, holding them in equal regard and affection. They should be gentle towards their offspring, and raise them in such a way that they will not be inclined to rebel. Parents also have the duty to be models of virtue for their children.

Respect and obedience are, in turn, some of the basic duties of children towards parents who have brought them up according to the principles set out above and with love and compassion, feeding and caring for them. This is why children should not show displeasure or impatience with their parents. A son or daughter who ignores the wishes of their parents and does not heed them nor come to their assistance if they are in need is not a source of blessing for the parents. Such a person not only is not a useful member of society, but will also stand before God as one who is guilty of shirking their duty.

Likewise, siblings have duties toward one another, such as showing affection and compassion for each other, as well as help- ing and respecting each other. There is a very strong bond be- tween brothers and sisters and this should be maintained at all times. Brothers and sisters who cut their ties with one another over finances or property disagreements cannot be considered to be blessed or benevolent. Finally, if a household has hired help, this helper also must be treated as part of the family. They deserve kindness and gentle treatment and should never be overloaded with work that is too difficult for them to carry out.

Social Duties

Human beings have been created as social beings, and as such they live in social groups and have formed civilizations. Socializing is one of our basic needs, and social life involves certain expectations between people. When these are disregarded, society breaks down and people can no longer coexist peacefully or work together. The main responsibilities in this category are the preservation of the following inalienable rights:

Protecting the life of every individual: Every person has the right to life. No one has the right to take another person’s life. According to Islam, one who wrongfully kills a per- son is as guilty as if they have murdered all of humanity; likewise, one who saves one person’s life is as blessed as if they have saved all of humanity.

Safeguarding the freedom of all people: God Almighty cre- ated every human being free and equal. At the same time, it is certain that this freedom has boundaries. We do not have the prerogative to do anything we want; if we had such freedom this would violate the freedoms of others.

The consideration of conscience: When a person has a well- functioning conscience, this allows them to differentiate between good and bad. The value of such a conscience can be better understood if one observes outward consequenc- es. A person who engages in incorrect behavior cannot be said to have a functioning conscience. Islam assigns great importance to having a conscience that helps one to be concerned for the happiness and guidance of all humanity.

To this end, it encourages pity towards those who have a faulty conscience, and tries to bring them to the right way. One can never try to control or rule another person’s con- science; this is the province of God alone. Each person will be rewarded or punished for what is in their con- science. However, this does not mean it is wrong to ad- monish or advise a person who has a bad conscience, if the idea is to help the person.

Protecting freedom of mind: Any thought or opinion, right or wrong, must be approached in a scholarly man- ner. This is the only way for a truth to be discovered, and it is also the only way for society to prove the harmfulness of false ideas.

Protecting the honor and reputation of individuals: In Islam, everyone has the right to maintain their honor and dignity. Any attack against honor or dignity, we have been taught, will be gravely punished. It is for this reason that gossip, slander, ridicule, the cursing of others and saying negative things about others are absolutely forbidden in Islam.

The preservation of other people’s property: It is also for- bidden to usurp the property or possessions of any other person. What is earned by a person belongs strictly to that person. This is essential for the development of a civilized society. It is reasonable and necessary that the individuals who make up a society will have different degrees of wealth, according to their profession and training. In a fair and equitable society all should be grateful for and sat- isfied with their own portion.

[miso-vicious]

RWBY Volume 7 Chapter 2 & 3

SPOILERS

Greetings. Due to me staying up for the full 24 hours for Rooster Teeth Extra Life and surviving on 5 hour energy, chocolate, and water, I got real sick. I lost the will to write an analysis of Chapter 2, especially for an episode that was fairly slow, but still full of information. Which is why I will be reviewing both Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 this week. So for like the 20 something people that will skim read this post, strap in. This was a pretty heavy week.

Same as always, this post contains several SPOILERS. Do not read unless you are completely caught up on the show.

Love Will Thaw A Frozen Heart

We had a beautiful reunion between our second favorite sister duo, which was very heart warming, but we still have to wait for the big Schnee reunion.

And now that Ironwood possesses the first Relic, the group now has the upper hand on Salem. Salem has lost her only Maiden, the Spring Maiden is in the wind, and apparently, Ironwood has the Winter Maiden secured and in “stable” condition. According to Qrow, “She’s no spring chicken.” So that must mean that she’s an elderly woman with declining health. That means we’re back to where we were in Volume 3, they have to secure a new vessel for the new Winter Maiden. Either they will take the gamble and hope that whomever the current Winter Maiden chooses to inherit the power gets the power. Or they will do the soul merger machine plan that they tried to force upon Pyrrha. If we were to take a guess as to who would be Ironwood’s Champion, it would have to be Winter. While Penny does have a soul, there’s no telling what would happen to the power if she were to die. The only other person Ironwood trusts just as much as Qrow or Ozpin is Winter. It’s unclear if the machine could transfer the Maiden power to a male host, but that would be an interesting thought.

I Have No Heart, And So I Must Be Very Careful

Now, Irondaddy has been making his own plans since we’ve last seen him. With Ozpin “gone”, Ironwood has been his own moral compass. The embargo and recall of the Atlas military was only the first step of his master plan. Now that the Relic of Knowledge and Creation and the Winter Maiden are secure, the next step is to reestablish communication between the Kingdoms.

By building a new CCT tower on top of Amity Arena, it will act as a form of satellite. It will float above the clouds, higher than any Grimm can reach, and will still provide global communication even if another tower were to be destroyed. The next step is to tell the world about Salem.

That isn’t one the best plans this show has thrown at us. Ozpin has kept Salem a secret for hundreds of years. Beyond keeping his own shameful part of her evil reign a secret, the other reason was because of the inevitable chaos that would occur if the people found out there was this all powerful Goddess out there hell bent on the destruction of the world. But that’s a gamble Ironwood is willing to take apparently! His military are supposed to run damage control once the inevitable chaos breaks out among not only Atlas and Mantle, but the whole world.

Ruby made the executive decision to keep certain truths from Ironwood. Including Ozpin’s true past with Salem, Ozpin’s disappearance, Jinn being out of questions, Salem being allegedly unbeatable, and her Silver Eyes. With good reason, we have no idea what Ironwood would do with this information. Our heroes almost quit after hearing all of this, Ironwood has the world’s strongest army at his disposal. He might have a more violent reaction, and decide to go after Salem with everything he has. Ironwood is already in a volatile state, Dr. Pietro has already testified to his current paranoia. And based on the opening alluding to Jacques Schnee adding fuel to the fire, Ironwood is being manipulated into putting the needs of Atlas above the rest of the world. Of course, he seems completely level headed now. He even gave the Relic back to Ruby, offered them safe harbor in the Academy, and has basically gave them his blessing to be unofficial Huntsmen.

Ironwood even gave Qrow a super awkward hug, like a man who has never been hugged his whole life but has always wanted to try it.

A New Plan

So the next step is to reclaim an abandoned dust mine that has been taken over Grimm. (It’s insinuated that this is the same Schnee Dust Mine cave in that killed several Faunus, including Ilia’s parents). The dust mine will serve as a launch sight for Amity Arena and the dust inside is needed by the science team, until it’s clear, the CCT tower cannot launch. Why that is, why they can’t just find a new launch sight is not made clear. But this is what we have to work with.

That’s when we get our big glow up reveal, and they all look fantastic. Like, Yang’s detachable pant legs, Weiss’ excessive belts, Ruby’s steel toe boots, Blake’s new hair, I am literally living for this.

Now our team is outfitted with new tricked out scrolls. The scrolls track their vitals and aura levels, and are synced up to one another. So everyone can check on each other on the field. And if Ironwood hasn’t outfitted their scrolls with listening devices to eavesdrop on them, I will be severely disappointed in him. In this episode alone, they have talked about literally everything they’re hiding from Ironwood. Imagine all of the recordings of them being thrown back in their face.

One of the moments is between Ruby and Oscar.

Oscar was left behind at the academy, but before they leave, Ruby entrusts the Relic to Oscar. Claiming that it isn’t a good idea to be toting around an ancient Relic on her hip like a key chain. Good point. Oscar decides to let Ruby know that he’s uncomfortable with the idea of lying to Ironwood, saying it’s just like what Ozpin did to them. While the lies will probably blow up in their face, I still feel that Ruby’s hesitation is validated. She doesn’t know Ironwood, or what he will do with the information, or if he will try to claim Jinn’s last question. Only time will tell if Ruby will come forward herself, or if someone else will do it for her.

Team Chemistry

It’s not totally relevant to the plot currently, but there was a lot of onscreen chemistry between some of our team members. I’m sure aaaaaallll the shippers are losing their minds with the Bumbleby scene. Yang gets all flustered over Blake’s new look, and Blake gets all blushy. While I personally ship Blake/Sun, it’s just nice to see some LGBTQ representation. It means a lot.

Of course, Nora is still pining after Ren, who is either completely oblivious, or just isn’t ready to see his surrogate sister as a potential romantic partner, even if he does reciprocate her feelings. Ren isn’t exactly known for being upfront with his feelings. After losing Arkos, I really hope they get together, and not five minutes before one of them dies.

I’m not crazy, right? There was definitely a vibe here. Maybe Clover is just generally a flirty person, but he was sending those flirty vibes towards Qrow.

You Have To Go Inside

The inside of the mine is full of Grimm, but the main target is a Geist. It has already claimed the lives of several Atlesian soldiers.

They follow it down to the deep depths of the mines, where the Geist merges with the surrounding terrain, which includes big chunks of Gravity Dust. Which means that they have to be weary of attacking it, or they could set off the dust in the Geist, which would have a chain reaction and set off the rest of the dust in the mine, effectively killing them.

So Team RWBY, JNR, and Qrow take a back seat and let the ACE ops take over.

It was a great action scene, the ACE ops got to flex their abilities, and the Geist was effectively dealt with. But there was a very interesting scene between Harriet Bree and Ruby Rose. Ruby notes that Harriet’s semblance is speed, just like hers. But when Harriet tries to run and catch a falling shard of dust…

Ruby beats her by an inch. Harriet makes it a point to tell her that Ruby’s semblance is not speed related, but something different. I always assumed that Ruby had two semblances, the first being her Silver Eyes, and the second is her speed, which mirrors her fast paced personality. Perhaps her speed is merely an extension of another power. Only time will tell.

The Scorpion and The Frog

It was revealed in Chapter 2 that Watts and Tyrian have rolled into town. Watts reveals that while the codes have been updated in Atlas, none of it has been updated in Mantle. He easily takes control of all of Mantle security cameras and traffic lights, which is probably only a fraction of the destruction he can cause. And of course, Tyrian is already causing his form of mayhem by killing people. Even in a place like Mantle, he’s gonna raise some red flags. But subtlety was never Tyrian’s strong suit.

Now, Tyrian has tracked down our friend Forrest, a man who was in the police vehicle when the ACE ops apprehended our team last chapter. Forrest, as we know of now, is just a regular guy caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I don’t think Tyrian is going to care very much. Killing him after finding what limited information he has is just gravy.

Yaaaaaaas, Queen

Now, onto our team’s upgrades.

Aside from Ruby’s more aerodynamic look, Crescent Rose also got an upgrade. It probably has been a long time since this fine weapon has had some fine tuning, what with Ruby always being on the road. And since Ruby makes all her upgrades herself, and it’s only been one episode, the only visual change to Crescent Rose is it is now able to rotate its scythe. Thus giving Ruby one less step to do when slaying Grimm. And the fact that the haircut is slightly reminiscent of bird feathers, much like her uncle’s hair, is so cute.

Weiss is looking like a fucking Winter Queen with her new look. If she doesn’t at some point use that ponytail braid as a weapon to slay Grimm, it would be such a waste. I don’t even care that she has so many unnecessary belts, she looks fire. Aside from her new outfit, Myrtenaster does not seem to have any visual upgrades. Since most of her fighting technique comes from her semblance, I’m looking forward to see if she develops any new skills. Especially now that Winter, her mentor, and Weiss are back together again.

Now that Blake has liberated the White Fang from Adam’s tyranny, as well as conquered some personal demons, Blake has undergone a big change. She chopped off her beautiful long hair, and now has a cute bob. It’s most likely symbolic of her being ready to stop hiding who she is and being more open with people. She also has a newly fixed Gambol Shroud, which has a very noticeable gold streak where the blade was once broken. I’m sure that the scientists could have rebuilt Gambol Shroud with no evidence that it was ever broken in the first place. Meaning that this was a cosmetic change that Blake specifically requested. Again, Bumbleby shippers have been waiting years for actual evidence of Blake and Yang’s feelings for one another. Good for them.

Of course, Yang is living her truth. She is wearing a jumpsuit with detachable pant legs and an aviator jacket. Now I feel the overwhelming urge to buy pants with detachable pant legs. Her prosthetic arm has gotten an upgrade too, now fitted with a matching Ember Celica, balancing out her whole look. But that wasn’t the only thing she got done.

Ember Celica is now capable of releasing small bombs, which Yang can activate from a safe distance. Of course, that means that Yang is toting around bombs on her wrists. Hopefully that doesn’t become a problem.

I went into what Jaune’s upgrades would be last time, but now we’ve seen him in action. His shield, Crocea Mors, now acts as a make shift para-glider, can expand to an even larger shield, and can release shock waves that can knock back large Grimm. Crocea Mors also magnetically attaches to his forearm, much like Pyrrha’s shield did. Ren’s dual pistols, Storm Flower, now has the ability to shoot the blades that are now attached cables, giving Ren the power to move more aerodynamically. There are no visual changes to Nora’s weapon, Magnhild, please leave a comment if I missed something there.

Aces Wild

Clover Ebi, he wields a sort of fishing rod that doubles as a hook sword. His semblance is Good Fortune, the exact opposite of Qrow’s semblance. Good things happen around him. Which did make me suspicious as to how his missed the Geist when he seems to have no problem aiming that fancy fish hook. Maybe it was simply a way to bring up his semblance, or he missed on purpose. Why? Maybe to allow his team an opportunity to flex their abilities and instill the fact that they’re supposed to be the good guys and can be trusted.

Harriet Bree, rocking the classic All Might bunny ear hair style, wears robotic gauntlets to fight hand to hand. But her main feature is her speed semblance. She runs so fast, she is literally charged full of electricity. She ran fast enough catch a falling piece of dust all the way on the other side of the cave, and delivered the final blow to the Geist. She is most likely based off of the Hare from the Tortoise and the Hare.

Vine Zeki, a more mysterious member of the ACE ops. He seems to be the no nonsense type, and doesn’t lay his cards on the table. He currently wields no weapons, relying on his semblance. He is able to project his aura and create elongated arms and hands. Very useful for getting around or holding onto struggling prey.

Elm Ederne, a very overzealous woman, who seems to have good intentions. She immediately befriends Ruby once the dust settles on their fight last chapter, and compliments Team JNR a few times too. She wields a giant hammer, and her semblance appears to be being able to literally plant herself like a tree. Her aura wraps around her feet and attaches to the ground beneath her, making her a somewhat immovable object. For a powerhouse like Elm, I’m sure her semblance makes her a tough opponent to fight.

Marrow Amin, a dog type Faunus who likes to put up a tough front but seems to actually be more puppy than wolf. Being the only Faunus on this elite team, I’m sure that he’s barely tolerated by the Atlas aristocrats. He is astutely aware of how his species are treated as subhuman, and are dispensable to the people in Atlas. But that doesn’t seem to affect his ability to do his duty. Marrow’s weapon is some sort of chainsaw boomerang-rifle. It does not obey the laws of physics. Nor does Marrow obey the laws of time. His semblance seems to be a form of time dilation. With a snap of his fingers, he froze two Grimm centipeetls in midair, but it only affected the Grimm. That must mean that his semblance has a certain range of effectiveness. But it’s still a really powerful semblance.

Agents Of Chaos

As the viewer, who knows just how dire the situation is, everything else seems small. When you see Whitely Schnee screwing over Weiss to get her spot as heir of the Schnee Dust Company, Jacques Schnee’s charade to be the top of the societal pyramid, and just the entirety of Atlas just seems so petty in the grand scheme of things. We are literally the brink of the end of the world. Do they really think Salem will care who has the most money, comes from the oldest family, or has the most dust if she gets all the Relics? We’re finally making some headway. They have two Relics (one in a vault), one Maiden (but still know who the Summer Maiden is), and a girl with the ability to turn Grimm into stone. Leaving us with Watts and Tyrian to worry about. The two of them will be stirring the pot in Mantle, while Atlas will probably be a big enough headache on their own.

If you made it to the end of this post, you are one very determined individual. Please leave a comment if I missed anything, got anything wrong, or if you have your own theories. I’d love to hear them.

[migleefulmoments]

So... Abby responds to her family's intervention by obediently telling them she'll stop (ie. lying to them). She then immediately tries to find ways to keep the blog in secret, hiding behind various usernames, lurking on her coven's blogs, more time deleting posts from both blogs we know about. Meaning, instead of getting help, she spends even MORE time online engaging in more batshit crazy crap to cover her ass. Yeah, sure, that doesn't signal dire need for mental health intervention AT ALL.

It looks like that is what is happening.  We will have to see what the future holds. What does Abby do? 

So far the fandom is flailing. Cassie got a couple of anons- one that reads like those anons Abby used to send herself as it covers all the issues they are most upset about so perfectly well (My comments in parenthesis and italicized:: 

Anonymous asked: Even if I am unsure about CC itself, I don't buy M*arr*n. I just don't. And the other side is using doxing and the fact that you and others say things they don't like about M as an excuse to do so and as a way to detract from the fact that their couple goals have some pretty big, glaring plot holes in their love story. I've not seen anyone on this side of the fandom out or dox anyone publicly as a way of humiliation. M gave up her privacy by dating D, but Abby didn't and they were wrong. Period. 

cassie1022 answered: Nonnie, I swear every time they diagnose us as mentally ill or say we’re bitter hags, an LGBTQ angel gets his or her wings. We all know my beliefs, but there are MANY people that are like you and don’t know for sure about CC but sure as hell know Miarren isn’t a normal, healthy relationship. (Funny thing, I don’t remember anyone diagnosing Cassie as mentally ill. Cassie is alwasy the wallflower that nobody wants to dance with and she tries so hard to be part of the fun people. Last week she was sad because I hadn’t sent her a “hate” message (See comment in last post below) 

Even if I remove D from the situation, I would still think M is a lazy, spoiled toddler with no discernable work ethic coupled with a superiority complex that rivals the Cheeto in Command of the US.

You are absolutely correct. Our fandom just wants to be left alone. We don’t send hateful asks to the other side. We don’t have to. They feel they have the right to dox CCers because they don’t like what we say about M, a woman that would light a cigarette from the flames engulfing them and not call 911 to help them. I mean, honestly, it doesn’t get much lower than mocking someone’s death. Plus, as you correctly said, M put herself in the spotlight “dating” D. If she didn’t want that attention, she would have stayed in the background. There are plenty of celebrities married to non famous people and we don’t see them at every event like we do M. (It is BAFFLING to me that they can’t comprhend something as simple and obvious as the reasaon they “see Mia everywhere” is because they fucking stalk her and they hyperanalzye every photo Darren is in looking for her. If they started stalking Ben Feldman they would see his wife just as much as they see Mia).    

Bottom line is what they did to Abby was deplorable, but, just like their kween, they feel justified in doing whatever they want. This isn’t the first time they’ve crossed a line with regards to my friend, but it was the worst.

notes-from-nowhere Anon, they love to throw the guilt of their actions on our shoulders, it’s how they justify what they do to themselves. They need us to be the bad guys otherwise what is the only option left? (I never know what the hell Notes is trying to say- throw the guilt of our actions on their shoulders? I’d love an example of that. I can’t imagine what guilty action I put on their shoulder. As for needing them to be the bad guys or what do we have left? OMFG are you kidding me? We critcize the cc fandom for being misogynistic, homophobic, bullies who attack  Mia, Darren, Ricky and their own Nonnies. They have viscioulsy attacked people in their own fandom who dared to question them. But the biggest reason we push back is because THEY LIE. All the damn time. So what do we have left? Being on the right side, being correct, not lying, not needing to lie, and the joy of watching Darren live his best life)   

Leka got a couple of asks but her answers were weak, confusing and pointless. It’s clear she isn’t ready to take over as their leader. She repeated Abby’s main talking points, tried to use big words to sound smarter and basically ended up not making a lot of sense:

Anonymous asked: I could be wrong, and I hope I am, but I think the character on the HW poster holding the girl is D's character, it would fit if you look at the other guys on the poster, maybe this is already the first hint to show D's character is not gay and so technically not breaking the no more queer roles rule his team set for him. It won't make it any better because it's still a career on the bag of LGBTQ+ people with it's teams but it's technically not a broken rule. I just really need for things to change, I want them to so bad, it kills me seeing someone so kind in a situation like that, and I truly believe D is one of the kindest people in that horrible town. He deserves better than M, I wouldn’t even mind if he goes onto another beard but she and RR just need to go. I really think it’s crazy people still think everything HW is real and PR relationships don’t exist, I wished that place was just better and had a moral compass, people deserve more it kind of shows just how jaded this situation has made me, I can’t even enjoy amazing promo material without directly twisting it into something negative, I don’t want to be this way and if I feel like this I can’t even imagine how D must feel. He is stronger than I’ll ever be living through hell every day, even if he’s not ok he’s still here and holding on, I don’t know if I could in his position. Sorry for the long message and the unneeded negativity, I guess I just had to vent a little

*********************************

Leka answered: So let’s look at the way HW is described:

“Each character offers a unique glimpse behind the gilded curtain of Hollywood’s Golden Age, spotlighting the unfair systems and biases across race, gender and sexuality that continue to this day. Provocative and incisive, HOLLYWOOD exposes and examines decades-old power dynamics, and what the entertainment landscape might look like if they had been dismantled.”

I do consider this the very intriguing thing about the news. (And it just goes to show that believing everything you’re sold is being utterly and completely ignorant.) Let’s say you’re right because ofc it’s possible. How does R/aymond fit in here? Given the excessive way team shit has pushed that article, a technicality won’t be good enough. There has to be a better plan. This doesn’t match what’s been said in his name.

What I think is this doesn’t necessarily have to mean much. You know very well what you see doesn’t have to be the (full) truth. That doesn’t just apply to the real HW. Especially considering the time period of this show. And let’s not forget the pap pics we got at a gas station. This doesn’t rule out SB as an inspiration. I would advise anyone to read up on him. We don’t know at this point. As we keep saying, the best thing to do is to wait and see. I’m certainly interested in finding out more.

As time goes on, the danger of this situation keeps becoming even clearer to me. D deserves much, much better. He’s incredibly strong, but the most toxic person in his life needs to go and she’s more than welcome to take the jumping jackass with her. That’s definitely the most important thing right now. (I’m curious what the danger of Hollywood is?)

awesome-fanfictionada: @leka-1998I’m just wondering - it must have been D who got himself this job on HW, right? Couldn’t this have been done on purpose to counter that ridiculous statement - which wasn’t even accurate, if the source was that interview where he stated that he wouldn’t want to be a casting director? Could in this case RM be a friend?

leka-1998:  @awesome-fanfictionada Yes, he did that himself. Again. And he said the show’s been sold late in 2018. According to an article that came out later, it happened in February 2019. Not true.

HW has been a thing before that statement was made, which is indeed very different from the answer D himself gave during the interview. That’s what makes the article seem like sabotage by team shit. And standing in RM’s way is never a good idea. So while I will obviously never like him, I’m reserving judgment on his current role until we know more.

Anonymous asked: The underlying issue in general is really that social media has made it so people think they get an accurate glimpse into the lives of celebrities, when in reality social media, like everything else that is publicly released about them, is used as a marketing tool. People are actually more inauthentic than they've ever been because they feel pressure to maintain a certain image for social media at all times. So anyone who decides D is living honestly, it's because they want to believe he is.

Leka: True, nonnie. Just look at the text lines that are becoming more popular again. Not nearly as genuine as people want to believe. In D’s case, what has to be brought up? M. Oh Halloween and her amazing shopping skills praised on SM. The work fam honeymoon pic promoting the place they stayed at. Coa/chella for the H&M ad. Mardi Gras posted shortly after the mockery to promote the designer. I could obviously go on. Most of what we see on SM shows the person the 10 year crew wants him to be. And what looks like a split personality if you compare certain posts. Which brings me back to ‘they want to believe’, as what you’re saying clearly isn’t a secret. Anyone can choose to ignore it but at this point, if that’s the case even though you’re more or less paying attention, it’s really a conscious decision.

Oh btw, there’s a HW IG account now and it already has a D follow. Imagine that. R/oyalties co-stars, anyone?

Flowers didn’t get any asks. Amazing since she has more followers than I do and she bragged about getting more “notes” than me.  She did answer azscc who posted an odd rant that baffles me.  Who the fuck is azscc and who is posting anything about her? I realize I am not the only person in this fandom posting about ccers But I just checked all the blogs that I know of and nobody is talking about her; 

azsc  its so weird how chillarrens call me a bully while i only say something rude towards them if they write bullshit towards me. and its just ironic how chillarrens go around calling people bullies while they are the reason why tons of cc accounts use their accounts private or don’t post their opinions and etc. the real threat to the fandom are people like you. so instead of going around throwing shit on people and calling them “mental, delusional...” get a life. no cc believer goes around hunting for chillarren pics and insult the account owner so why don’t you all grow up and realize no one has to agree with your opinions. every crisscolfer blog/twitter page/insta acc basically stan accs never asked for your opinions on their pages so why don’t you just let it go? no one cares about what you all say or do so why are you forcing it this much?

call me a bully i am pretty much okay with that. its obvious that people are unable to understand basic sarcasm and irony and i am not judging because to actually understand what people say you have to at least have an average IQ level. and if you don’t have it, it’s okay but that doesn’t mean you can twist people’s words and post them all over the internet. but its lowkey really funny that i only had my instagram acc for something like 4/5 months and i received over 300 hate/insult/blackmail/death wish messages and etc. and who are you people to call us bullies? (Nobody is a Chillarren. Darren and Mia are married and Chris and Will are in a long-term relationsihp,  Nobody has to “ship” them in order to believe they are together. In America, we accept that when someone introduces their wife or their boyfriend they are telling the truth. It is customary to address that person as their wife or boyfriend respectively. The crisscolfers on the other hand, must use a fandom ship name because they are shipping two people who are not in a relationship and never were. All evidence indicates Chris and Darren are no long friends; they are nothing more than former co-workers-friendly and polite when they see one another but no longer involved in one another’s lives. Chris and Darren both have denied (more than once) that the were ever in a relationship).  .   

flowersintheattic254 I have never in my whole time here posted an anon to a Miarren account. I have no desire to. I’m confident in my beliefs.

The interesting thing for me is that I’ve been here for about four years now and in that time I’ve seen the head of the fandom disappear, other people disappear because their families have been doxed, established long-term cc blogs with a wealth of history deleted without warning. I myself have had my daughters threatened.  This sort of stuff doesn’t happen anywhere in the fandom but here here. If we are a bunch of delusional crazy middle-aged women then this shouldn’t happen. (Who was doxed? Who dissappered? It’s all “liar liar” with everything ccers say. In the last 4 years Abby has been the only leader of the cc fandom. Michelle left between 4 and 5 years ago because her outrageious cc comments threatened her ability to raise money for her little Klaine-fanfic rip-off movie. I vaguely remember someone asking flowers how her daugther’s would feel if they read what she writes- hardly a threat. If there was something more she never posted any proof. As for blogs being deleted- so was D-Criss News.  It happens. The only cc blog that I know of that disappeared was DisneyPrincessModelWorld’s original blog which had was a hot mess of lies and catfishing. She visciously bullied Mia. Hardly someone to mourn their blog being deleted). 

It’s shocking that an actor may lgbt causes such drama. (HUH?)

Flower’s comment is so disingenuous. While it is technically true -she hasn’t sent me anons, she HAS instead publically ridiculed me and frankly, I can’t see how that is any different? I’d say it’s worse because they wanted their followers to see what they wrote and the only way to ensure that is to post it on their blogs. Flowers and Abby posted many public “Michy” posts.  Here is her most recent: 

flowersintheattic254Oh and I guess Michy sent us all some hate today.

I guess I have way more followers than you and only about 4 that send hate. You haven’t for ages.

I think I have over 70,000 hits currently to my blog. I must be saying something interesting.

He’s been married allegedly for a year and people still doubt. That’s gotta hurt you. Anyway......

✌️

ajw720 Michy told me today today that the outing couldn’t possibly be promo, because JS was only cast in September!  What a moron who clearly doesn’t know how HW works.  Sweetheart, it was ANNOUNCED in September;)

I was waiting for a few more months, but in 4 years, since i have been tracking, i have almost a million! (976,695 to be precise).

It is amazing that so many people care about what us bat shit crazy, irrelevant, psychologically unstable, threatening, hateful tin hats have to say!  And that does not include people reading on their dash or that hit you on the app!  So yep, Michy, clearly what we are saying is being monitored by someone.  And clearing making people think!! But you keep wasting your time writing for your audience of 4:)

cassie102 I feel left out, Michy didn't come at me today. Must hurt like hell knowing you're a joke that perpetuates a bigger joke.

leka-1998 Birds of a fake feather flock together. When the right person says tomorrow’s Christmas, tomorrow’s Christmas. Get ready, everyone.

If I narrow it down to the last six months, about 10,000 btw. Hm strange.

flowersintheattic254 @ajw720 the number of hits you have give me oxygen. If Michy thinks they are haters then she is delusional. People know when they are being sold something fake and they look for answers.

[wolfenm-marveling]

There are three big reasons I have not and don’t want to see Endgame ....

For one, I wrote a lengthy article about that will run in June at Sequential Tart (I'll update this post with the link when it goes live *EDIT* Here it is: The Subject of Character Death, Revisited - http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=3362 ). The other two, I'll talk about here; they involve Steve and Bucky.

I know what you’re thinking: Wolfie, how can you form an opinion on a movie you haven't seen? Well, I do have mental health issues (undiagnosed and untreated because I have no insurance or job, yay), so when the film was released in China, I found someone to spoil me so that I might make an informed decision as to whether or not I could *handle* seeing it, given some worries I had (and especially since 3 hours without a bathroom break was not going to work for me or my companion). I determined from that convo that it would be a Very Bad Idea for me to see the film.

Even seeing the constant posts about it  -- especially ones that called it a  “beautiful” or “perfect” end, etc. -- was triggering anxiety and mental anguish / circular thoughts (admittedly in part because there were similarly “bad” things happening in other fandoms of mine -- it was too much at once). And I'm STILL having massive issues with circular thoughts about it.

This essay isn't meant to tell anyone they’re wrong about how they perceive / feel about the film, BUT, while I know I shouldn't care what other people think, the sitch still makes me feel how I feel: frankly, a bit disturbed that people are loving things that are making me so awful. I feel like I've stepped into some sort of Bizarro world -- like I'm somehow in the wrong universe. It’s very distressing. (I mean ... they call it mental *illness* for as reason, right?)

In this franchise where I once found such great joy, I now find little more than anguish. It’s actually been making me physically ill to see the posts -- or to look on my massive Marvel collection; I've had to box much of it away for now. Hopefully some day I can enjoy it again. (I can't exactly stop using my $60 Captain America backpack I begged for, for my birthday, though. :/)

I find that when my thoughts get like this (like I'm on a runaway train that keeps revisiting the same stations), the only thing that helps even a little is to sort out my thoughts on the page -- even if I’ve done it before, as I have with this in the comments section of friends posts. (You may have seen other people express similar thoughts, too.)  And really, I don't want to rain on my friend’s parades, so I figure I’ll post it in my own space, and then if people ask me my thoughts, I can just point them here. And hopefully this post will help others who are similarly struggling (I know there are at least a few).

As for the old chestnut “It’s just a story/ a fictional character”, well, for one thing, let me repeat: mentally ill here. If I could control how I feel, I wouldn’t BE mentally ill. But also, I'm a writer who feels writing is a sacred calling, so when I feel a story is badly told, I tend to take it personally. Yes, I know my opinion is not the be-all, end all -- if you think it’s a good story, yay for you. Me, I feel betrayed by this story in a way I have rarely felt before (the other biggest instance having happened the week before the film's release, so double-whammy, yay).

Warning: if you read any further, I assume you either saw Endgame or don’t care about Spoilers.

(*edited to add* If you need some solace too, check out @antiendgame to find other people who are upset.)

The first upsetting points for me were the Noble Deaths (and, in Loki’s case, lack of resurrection) -- I hate that trope with the fire of a thousand suns. But that’s what I wrote the article on (including how 2012 Loki’s escape doesn't make me feel any better), so no more on that here.

Now, let me preface the rest of this by saying no, I wasn’t expecting a romantic presentation of Stucky. And as hard as I ship them fanon-wise, I don’t actually hate Steggy -- I adore Peggy in her own right (and like the idea of them  being a threesome with Bucky).

What I DO hate is that Steve abandoned Bucky for her.

Aside from Steve’s moral compass, Bucky was the impetus behind pretty much *everything* Steve did in his trilogy. He found the missing soldiers because Bucky was amongst them. Bucky’s death broke him -- and finding him again in Winter Soldier seemed to give Steve, who was clearly depressed, new life. Despite Sam insisting Bucky was Gone, Steve wouldn't kill Bucky to save the world. And in Civil War, Steve fought other dear friends, and was willing to throw away his own freedom, to protect his best friend. So how the FUCK is them being *separated pretty much forevermore* a satisfactory end to that story???????

TL;DR, the Captain America movies were about the repeated separation and reunion of Steve and Bucky … and yet we barely got to SEE them together before Steve said sayonara to the man he’d been best friends with for over a for over a decade, to go be with a woman he’d known for about a year. 

A woman who’d already had a family without him.

Yeah, we can say her family still exists in the original timeline -- but I have seen soooo many different explanations of how the time sitch works out, it’s not even funny.

Really, that’s the third reason I don't want to see the movie: I HATE time paradox, and this movie sounds riddled with it. Also, as I understand it, the writers and the Russos are saying different things, with the Russos saying it’s a different timeline (which apparently Steve would be going *back* to after the shield pass, for some reason, and yeah, that bothered me, that he didnl't even give his best friend that momento, and sent their last onscreen moments together talking to SAM), and the writers saying no, the alternate timelines were only a thing when the Stones were in play. So yeah, Steve could spend the rest of his life with Bucky then ... but that means he also would have erased Peggy’s family (and maybe her work). Unless he was the man she married all along.

Either way, it would mean that Steve let Bucky suffer, and let HYDRA infiltrate SHIELD, neither being things I could see him doing.

And if it IS a branched-off timeline, I LOATHE that time theory, because it means NOTHING WE DO MATTERS. There’s always a version of us that’s our worst selves, and people who suffer because of it. That’s hella depressing. (Even if it would explain why I feel like I'm in the wrong world.)

At any rate, the ONLY end I really wanted was to see Steve and Bucky get to be together, no matter how -- “just friends” would have been fine. It was literally the thing I wanted most in the whole damn MCU franchise (aside from seeing Loki be redeemed and then fight alongside the Avengers. *sigh* At least I didn't have high hopes there ...). I would rather Steve had taken Bucky back in time WITH him, even if Steve still married Peggy; time paradox issues aside, I could have lived with that -- yes, even if it meant we didn’t get The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. (And honestly, how much am I supposed to look forward to that anyway, when Sam has been such an *inexplicably* uncompassionate asshole to Bucky in WS and CW? A guy who runs meetings for people with PTSD holds a grudge against a guy who was brutally mind-raped? It's like they made him OOC for the lolz!)

As for “Oh, but Bucky knew and he was okay with it!”

Uh, if he was okay with it, it's just because the writers *wrote* him that way for their own convenience, so they could do this ending. I have been besties with someone most of our lives. We broke up a few times, but we managed to keep finding our way back to each other. We don't live in the same state, so we rarely see each other, but at least we DO sometimes, and we write each other. If this person said they were going to go live somewhere with no way to communicate with me ever again, so they could be with someone they loved, of course I wouldn't want to say don't leave, because I'd want them to be happy, and wouldn't want to stand in the way … but that doesn't mean I'd be “okay”. in the slightest. And I wouldn't WANT other people I care about to go through such pain, much less think it beautiful to watch.

Plus, as I always say, this is fiction -- I don't need *that much* “reality” in my escapism. Temporary angst is my bread-and-butter -- it’s cathartic -- but I need a happy ending to be the payoff. To me, A TRULY happy ending for Steve -- and the one that would have been the best payoff for the narrative we’ve spent a decade watching -- would have been for him to not have to choose between the two people he loved most.

Edited 5/11/19 to add: For all those who are all “Oh, they’re just friends, they aren't gay”, I am more or less fine with sexual Stucky staying fanon; they still love each other platonically, are SOULMATES, ACCORDING TO THE SCREENWRITERS THEMSELVES (Christopher Markus and Steve McFeely), who wrote this as part of the intro to the graphic novel Captain America: White - “…Of course, this is still a rollicking adventure tale, and no adventure is complete without a love story. And yes, these books have one – the longest, most tortured one in Marvel history, in fact. We’re talking about Steve and Bucky, without smirking or innuendo or raised eyebrows. Platonic though the relationship may be, from the meet cute to the tragic separation, their bond has all the elements of a classic romance.  These two men love each other – as any pair of friends who faced exclusion, combat, inhumanity, and death would. Their bond stretches across half the twentieth century. The loss of it gnaws at Steve throughout the modern day, and it slices his heart in half when the Winter Soldier rears his tormented, homicidal head. Just as Jeph and Tim’s earlier Daredevil: Yellow, Spider-Man: Blue, and Hulk: Gray all dealt with the major love interests in the heroes’ lives, so too does Captain America: White. Steve and Bucky are each others’ soulmate, if you will, because no one on Earth understands what either of them has been through as well as the other does. The book deals deftly with the strengths and weaknesses that relationship engenders. As the Red Skull himself says to Bucky, “The captain has a … ‘soft spot’ for you. A spot I intend to put a bullet through this very evening.” Soldiers fight for their country. They fight for themselves. They fight for each other. And sometimes they die for these things, too.  The ones who don’t carry the memory of the ones who did for the rest of their days. Steve Rogers is no different.”

So he's gonna leave his soulmate (no matter the nature of their love) behind forever? FUCK THAT NOISE. I am completely baffled ow two writers who see Steve and Bucky that way would go on to give them that ending.

And retouching the whole for Bucky “knows and is okay” thing, the Russos also said that Bucky is too damaged still to be Captain America. Uh, THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE THEY REALLY THINK HE’S OKAY.

[justgotham]

The fifth and final season of Fox's Gotham begins in five months, and it will - finally, for some fans - take David Mazouz's Bruce Wayne into his first steps as Batman. In an set visit earlier this month, Newsarama spoke with the cast and crew about 2019's ten-episode final season and the finale to the story of Bruce Wayne, James Gordon, Oswald Cobblepot, and more.

The set visit began at Gotham's Sirens Club, with Donal Logue (who plays Harvey Bullock) talking about his character's moral compass and how it's changed (or hasn't) in the past five years.

"The most important thing to me is that the idea of moral relativism is this notion of black and white," Logue told Newsarama. "Jim Gordon is all good, Harvey Bullock is all bad or crooked, but we’ve seen Jim do some dark, shadowy type stuff and we’ve seen it go both ways. I think that’s an imperative moment you hit on."

When cast, Logue became the first live-action iteration of the decades-old character, bringing life to one of Gotham P.D.’s most controversial characters and someone who defined what kind of people Gotham could turn them into. The veteran actor opened up about the challenge to bring this character to the screen and putting his own personal stamp on Bullock.

"You know, I think it would have been very difficult - it was beautiful in the animated series - but it would have been difficult to have played somebody who was so misogynistic and possible homophobic," he explained. "I think that I had to make this guy more empathetic and to see the humanity in him in all the way he had to play the comic relief for a while, too."

Gotham's final season is only scheduled to run 10 episodes - less than half of the previous four seasons. Logue admits that he wish he had more episodes - or more seasons even - to continue this story.

"I wish we had twenty more seasons for our stories to tell. There’s part of me that misses Gotham Central with the sense of the noirish sort of police department, I liked that kind of stuff in the comics," he said. "The internalized conflict within the department itself, I liked the politics of the precinct and I don’t know if we got the time to tell that as much I would have liked."

After that, actor Cameron Monaghan - who plays the Joker-ish twins Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska - stepped up to talk to the press. The twin sons of a snake dancer and fortune teller, Jerome was the manic and explosive twin while Jeremiah more collected one, but still very dangerous. Monaghan explained what it was like being able to make this version of the Joker his own not once, but twice during the show.

“I think what’s awesome was it allowed so much freedom for a performance and it could have gone in so many directions with someone who isn’t constrained by social conventions, his behaviour is defined by what he wants to do," he said about these proto-Joker characters.

“Which means as an actor you can bring it any way you want. With Jerome, I wanted it to be heightened and sort of cartoony, but with [Jeremiah] I wanted him to be a bit more chilling and internal with his mania," Monaghan continued. "That being said this year, he’s sort of gained an ego and started to lose some of the plot and go off the deep end in the fact he was successful for causing so much destruction."

The actor continued praising the show’s creators for letting him to be able to play characters like these two.

"It’s just an amazing opportunity as a performer to have gotten to do this."

Monaghan went on to explain that there are definite highlights in these upcoming episodes for his character that allow them to use classic Batman/Joker moments.

"I have a couple moments this season, especially deeper towards the end where the character gets to play with some iconic imagery that I love that we’re bringing from the history of the character and there’s moments that are huge for people who are fans of the comics," he said.

"I will say that the final episode of the season there’s some stuff that I’m really excited for. I’m champing at the bit to get to that."

In Gotham's fourth season, Monaghan-as-Jerome said that Bruce was his only friend - hinting at the conflicted dynamic that the Joker and Batman have had in comic books. The actor says that they will "absolutely" explore that more in these last episodes.

"That’s sort of Jeremiah’s main plot point this season, he’s relating into Bruce," he replied. "I think the main difference between Jerome and Jeremiah was that Jerome was destructive and most of his anarchy came from the fact that he wanted to destroy things and didn’t have much of a plan. What’s interesting with Jeremiah is that he’s this strange craftsman. He gets his joy from engineering these things that tend to hurt a lot of people. So most of his amusement is coming from his influence on Bruce and I think the reason he’s so obsessed with Bruce is this strange sense of love."

He went on to say that for Jeremiah, Bruce is the only person he felt connected to emotionally, intellectually, and he’s coming from this place of almost admiration.

"I do think there is this weird sense of appreciation for each other in this strange way. Jerome wanted to kill Bruce since he didn’t care for him that much, but Jeremiah very much does and that it is emblematic of the Batman/Joker relationship and I don’t know if it’s been really explored enough in live-action yet so I wanted to push that if we could."

Following that, the assembled press were taken to several sets including the Riddler's and Bruce Wayne's libraries, the new City Hall, and Penguin's newest base of operations. After that, we were circled back to Siren's to find Ben McKenzie (who plays James Gordon) "tending bar," in his own words.

The first question McKenzie was asked concerned Jim Gordon’s trajectory at the beginning of the season with No Man’s Land in effect.

"Gordon is literally and figuratively on an island so he’s not in a great place when we first see him...and it gets worse."

McKenzie said that Gotham's final season will be teasing the adult relationship between Gordon and Batman down the road.

"I think we are definitely leaning in to giving the fans those iconic moments between Gordon and eventually adult Bruce," said McKenzie. "There will be more of those to come but it’s been such a rewarding thing to watch, and of course it mirrors real life over the course of over five years, to see him grow from a boy into a man."

He went on to say how there is a certain pressure to say everything that they’ve wanted to say and get it said in the final episodes, but also it’s a "certain blessing" to know the end is near.

"So many shows get cancelled at the last minute based on things outside their control so they don’t get time to ramp up towards the conclusion or sense of closure and we are absolutely trying to give the fans a lot of these iconic moments that everyone is thirsty for," McKenzie explained. "Everyone is going out of their way to take time and appreciate each other."

At the end of Gotham's fourth season, Gordon stays behind in the ruined and isolated city - something that affects the character coming into the new season.

"Well he’s the last guy to go down with the ship, and the pressure becomes more and more intense, almost like Atlas carrying the weight of the world," said McKenzie. "It’s interesting because then it leads him to make decisions he otherwise wouldn’t make which there’s a big one in the middle of the season in the heat of passion that will have serious ramifications for himself and others."

These last ten episodes are packed with Easter eggs according to the actor - something he, the cast, and the crew wanted to make sure to include.

"All the questions we got at Comic-Con International: San Diego were ‘When are you going to do this’ and the answer is right d*** now! We don’t have any more time so might as well throw it in here, though, you know, in a well-constructed way. John Stevens and the writers have created a plan to sprinkle in things they want to see that doesn’t come across as lip service, but actually part of the 98 episodes that we made."

With things winding down, McKenzie talked about whether or not Gotham’s version of Gordon has reached his apex and finalization.

"I hope that with each season new layers are discovered and explored, but some of the events in season five are things that we’ve never seen Jim go through before and I would imagine we would see new sides of him."

Lastly, he talked about his relationship with Bullock and how it’s evolved from the beginning when Gordon joined the ranks of the GCPD.

"I think that their friendship was at the core of the show and I always appreciated how it never devolved into the classic this guy says blue, the other guy says red...I always felt it was more nuanced than that and as we get into this apocalypse, staring down the face of Death in season five, we can watch these two men who started out with a huge distrust and almost animosity towards one another to a true friendship."

After that, David Mazouz stepped in to talk about his final season as Bruce Wayne - a role the 17-year-old actor started when he was just 13. Is he ready for it to end? Not remotely.

"No, not at all. 70% not ready," he said shaking his head.

Mazouz is also one of the youngest actors to ever play Bruce Wayne in a setting that allowed some time to show his point of view of Gotham and his surroundings. The actor said he enjoyed showing a side of Bruce that isn’t explored in live action media, saying it’s all about making sure he gets to do the character justice, first and foremost.

"I get a lot of fan letters around my age and a lot of them say the same kind of thing and that is it’s great to see a hero that’s our age and somebody we can identify with," said Mazouz. "Seeing Bruce take on this mantle was such an inspiration for me. We just had a scene with all the good guys and discussed their game plan and realized I’m the only kid in the room and it’s cool."

Expanding on what McKenzie said about trying to cram so much material from a full-length season into a half length episode order, Mazouz emphasized that yes, it is a lot, but completely worth the wait.

"It’s so action-packed and we really do cram into the action from twenty-two episodes into ten which makes it a fascinated read when you’re looking over the scripts. It makes me think how the hell are they going to get the money to do that. Every episode is huge and almost its own finale and as an actor the hard part is keeping up with it and knowing what’s going on."

Circling back to Monaghan’s comment about some "iconic" imagery with his fight with Bruce, Mazouz said it’s incredibly special to him and so glad they included it.

"I won’t say much about it, but it’s very reminiscent of other incarnations of the Joker."

Playing Bruce’s faithful butler and father figure Alfred Pennyworth, Sean Pertwee added a level of toughness to his usual olden characteristics.

"Bruno and I had this conversation about why is Alfred there and who is he and what is he to this young Master Bruce, and that’s been the biggest thrill, to give him this difficult journey," said Pertwee. "He had no experience with children, he never asked to be a father, he has PTSD and he’s a disaster himself but through the darkness they find each other.”

Gotham’s Alfred also wasn’t afraid to take out any and all threats to young Master Bruce, but Pertwee himself is a bit more sensitive. When we sat down, he talked about how he just learned he had filmed the final scenes in Wayne Manor and the emotions he felt when he wrapped.

"Yeah, I didn’t know until [series writer] John Stevens told me last night. It was very emotional for David and I as it seems like only yesterday and he was a young boy that I could pick up with one hand and now in that scene he could look me in the eye."

Pertwee went on to explain how Alfred and Bruce’s relationship has strained but also grown and matured as the series has gone on.

"Their dysfunctionality is their reality. The boy needs the man just as much as the man needs the boy."

As for the show being allowed these last ten episodes, Pertwee feels lucky that they get to still end with a bit of closure.

"It feels like we’ve been lucky enough by Fox and Warner Bros. to grant us to finish with dignity. It feels like we can exhale and let Batman rise. We’ve earned it. I wish we would have had more time in the proper cave. I mean, we’ll get there, but I wanted more to that point of their true relationship. I never wanted it to stop really."

Pertwee went on to say how he hopes people will look back at this iteration of Batman and how it has defined the world for generation.

"There are so many versions, ours is our generation’s. Ours is Taxi Driver meets Brothers Grimm. People have accepted it and I think people will now reference us. I think people will look back at this for future iterations."

Following Pertwee was Robin Lord Taylor, whose breakout role as Oswald Cobblepot helped define Gotham early on - even before he amassed his criminal empire and obtained his trick umbrellas. The actor began by reflecting upon his time in the tuxedo and prosthetic nose.

"It’s one of the things I’m most proud of in my career. Just to take a piece of American pop culture and bring it into today and especially that it’s so dynamic and brilliantly layered and sketched out, but to bring it to now and something that’s never been done before feels incredible. It’s exhilarating."

Shane West was announced earlier this year to be joining Gotham as Eduardo Dorrance, the father of Bane in comic books, and Taylor talked about interacting with the new addition.

"Yeah we just had a scene but we’ll have more in the future. It’s interesting because as you know Penguin and Jim have this interesting dynamic, there is this weird sense of trust there but Eduardo knows Gordon very well, but he sort of comes in the beginning and disrupts that connection and no, it’s not good for anybody."

Taylor offered his own thoughts about whether or not ten episodes is enough to give this world and these characters a proper ending, saying he has faith in the writing team to bring everything to a close with a nice superhero landing.

"I mean, I think there’s a lot to cram into 100 more episodes, you know what I mean? We’ve shown in previous seasons this story, this city, these characters...there’s so many of them and they can go in so many ways. I think the way it’s coming down it’s very concentrated. We’re bringing storylines to a close, relationships to a close, and it feels like a rush."

When asked about what he wished he had more time for, he thought about it before coming to an answer.

"I wish we had time to take a closer look at these individuals’ lives. I wish we could spend a day in Alfred’s shoes and see Gotham through his eyes. Or Selina. To really solidify who these characters are."

The last question for Taylor was if his character will get an ending that the actor felt he deserved.

"Absolutely," Taylor replied with a laugh. "I mean we’ll see, but I’ve said before the ending I want for Penguin is that he becomes the classic supervillain we know. Somebody devoid of humanity and somebody who has done so much damage not only to himself, but to so many people. I want to get that point and ultimately, we’ll be seeing that."

[aljopandablog-blog]

Moral Development Theory (Albert Bandura)

Lawrence Kohlberg (1958) agreed with Piaget's (1932) theory of moral development in principle but wanted to develop his ideas further. 

He used Piaget’s storytelling technique to tell people stories involving moral dilemmas.  In each case, he presented a choice to be considered, for example, between the rights of some authority and the needs of some deserving individual who is being unfairly treated.

One of the best known of Kohlberg’s (1958) stories concerns a man called Heinz who lived somewhere in Europe.

Heinz’s wife was dying from a particular type of cancer. Doctors said a new drug might save her. The drug had been discovered by a local chemist, and the Heinz tried desperately to buy some, but the chemist was charging ten times the money it cost to make the drug, and this was much more than the Heinz could afford.

Heinz could only raise half the money, even after help from family and friends. He explained to the chemist that his wife was dying and asked if he could have the drug cheaper or pay the rest of the money later.

The chemist refused, saying that he had discovered the drug and was going to make money from it. The husband was desperate to save his wife, so later that night he broke into the chemist’s and stole the drug.

Kohlberg asked a series of questions such as:

1. Should Heinz have stolen the drug?

2. Would it change anything if Heinz did not love his wife?

3. What if the person dying was a stranger, would it make any difference?

4. Should the police arrest the chemist for murder if the woman died?

By studying the answers from children of different ages to these questions, Kohlberg hoped to discover how moral reasoning changed as people grew older. The sample comprised 72 Chicago boys aged 10–16 years, 58 of whom were followed up at three-yearly intervals for 20 years (Kohlberg, 1984).

Each boy was given a 2-hour interview based on the ten dilemmas. What Kohlberg was mainly interested in was not whether the boys judged the action right or wrong, but the reasons given for the decision. He found that these reasons tended to change as the children got older.

He identified three distinct levels of moral reasoning each with two sub-stages. People can only pass through these levels in the order listed. Each new stage replaces the reasoning typical of the earlier stage. Not everyone achieves all the stages.

Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

Level 1 - Pre-conventional morality

At the pre-conventional level (most nine-year-olds and younger, some over nine), we don’t have a personal code of morality. Instead, our moral code is shaped by the standards of adults and the consequences of following or breaking their rules.

Authority is outside the individual and reasoning is based on the physical consequences of actions.

• Stage 1. Obedience and Punishment Orientation. The child/individual is good in order to avoid being punished. If a person is punished, they must have done wrong.

• Stage 2. Individualism and Exchange. At this stage, children recognize that there is not just one right view that is handed down by the authorities. Different individuals have different viewpoints.

Level 2 - Conventional morality

At the conventional level (most adolescents and adults), we begin to internalize the moral standards of valued adult role models.

Authority is internalized but not questioned, and reasoning is based on the norms of the group to which the person belongs.

• Stage 3. Good Interpersonal Relationships. The child/individual is good in order to be seen as being a good person by others. Therefore, answers relate to the approval of others.

• Stage 4. Maintaining the Social Order. The child/individual becomes aware of the wider rules of society, so judgments concern obeying the rules in order to uphold the law and to avoid guilt.

Level 3 - Post-conventional morality

Individual judgment is based on self-chosen principles, and moral reasoning is based on individual rights and justice. According to Kohlberg this level of moral reasoning is as far as most people get.

Only 10-15% are capable of the kind of abstract thinking necessary for stage 5 or 6 (post-conventional morality). That is to say, most people take their moral views from those around them and only a minority think through ethical principles for themselves.

• Stage 5. Social Contract and Individual Rights. The child/individual becomes aware that while rules/laws might exist for the good of the greatest number, there are times when they will work against the interest of particular individuals. 

The issues are not always clear-cut. For example, in Heinz’s dilemma, the protection of life is more important than breaking the law against stealing.

• Stage 6. Universal Principles. People at this stage have developed their own set of moral guidelines which may or may not fit the law. The principles apply to everyone.

E.g., human rights, justice, and equality. The person will be prepared to act to defend these principles even if it means going against the rest of society in the process and having to pay the consequences of disapproval and or imprisonment. Kohlberg doubted few people reached this stage.

Problems with Kohlberg's Methods

1. The dilemmas are artificial (i.e., they lack ecological validity)

Most of the dilemmas are unfamiliar to most people (Rosen, 1980). For example, it is all very well in the Heinz dilemma asking subjects whether Heinz should steal the drug to save his wife.

However, Kohlberg’s subjects were aged between 10 and 16. They have never been married, and never been placed in a situation remotely like the one in the story. How should they know whether Heinz should steal the drug?

2. The sample is biased

According to Gilligan (1977), because Kohlberg’s theory was based on an all-male sample, the stages reflect a male definition of morality (it’s androcentric). Mens' morality is based on abstract principles of law and justice, while womens' is based on principles of compassion and care.

Further, the gender bias issue raised by Gilligan is a reminded of the significant gender debate still present in psychology, which when ignored, can have a large impact on the results obtained through psychological research.

3. The dilemmas are hypothetical(i.e., they are not real)

In a real situation, what course of action a person takes will have real consequences – and sometimes very unpleasant ones for themselves. Would subjects reason in the same way if they were placed in a real situation? We just don’t know.

The fact that Kohlberg’s theory is heavily dependent on an individual’s response to an artificial dilemma brings a question to the validity of the results obtained through this research.  People may respond very differently to real life situations that they find themselves in than they do with an artificial dilemma presented to them in the comfort of a research environment.

4. Poor research design

The way in which Kohlberg carried out his research when constructing this theory may not have been the best way to test whether all children follow the same sequence of stage progression. His research was cross-sectional, meaning that he interviewed children of different ages to see what level of moral development they were at. 

A better way to see if all children follow the same order through the stages would have been to carry out longitudinal research on the same children.

However, longitudinal research on Kohlberg’s theory has since been carried out by Colby et al. (1983) who tested 58 male participants of Kohlberg’s original study. She tested them six times in the span of 27 years and found support for Kohlberg’s original conclusion, which we all pass through the stages of moral development in the same order.

Problems with Kohlberg's Theory

1. Are there distinct stages of moral development?

Kohlberg claims that there are, but the evidence does not always support this conclusion. For example, a person who justified a decision on the basis of principled reasoning in one situation (post-conventional morality stage 5 or 6) would frequently fall back on conventional reasoning (stage 3 or 4) with another story. In practice, it seems that reasoning about right and wrong depends more upon the situation than upon general rules.

What is more, individuals do not always progress through the stages and Rest (1979) found that one in fourteen actually slipped backward. The evidence for distinct stages of moral development looks very weak, and some would argue that behind the theory is a culturally biased belief in the superiority of American values over those of other cultures and societies.

2. Does moral judgment match moral behavior?

Kohlberg never claimed that there would be a one to one correspondence between thinking and acting (what we say and what we do) but he does suggest that the two are linked. However, Bee (1994) suggests that we also need to take account of:

Overall Bee points out that moral behavior is only partly a question of moral reasoning. It is also to do with social factors.

3. Is justice the most fundamental moral principle?

This is Kohlberg’s view. However, Gilligan (1977) suggests that the principle of caring for others is equally important. Furthermore, Kohlberg claims that the moral reasoning of males has been often in advance of that of females.

Girls are often found to be at stage 3 in Kohlberg’s system (good boy-nice girl orientation) whereas boys are more often found to be at stage 4 (Law and Order orientation). Gilligan (p. 484) replies:

“The very traits that have traditionally defined the goodness of women, their care for and sensitivity to the needs of others, are those that mark them out as deficient in moral development”.

In other words, Gilligan is claiming that there is a sex bias in Kohlberg’s theory. He neglects the feminine voice of compassion, love, and non-violence, which is associated with the socialization of girls.

Gilligan concluded that Kohlberg’s theory did not account for the fact that women approach moral problems from an ‘ethics of care’, rather than an ‘ethics of justice’ perspective, which challenges some of the fundamental assumptions of Kohlberg’s theory.