cryptidandwren

[cryptidandwren]

OUR FETISHES ARE NO BASIS FOR A SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT

In this essay we will discuss the media and social environment under which a dangerously unhinged President personally responsible for a quarter million of his people dying can come within ten million votes of winning the popular vote. You are seeing this because you follow my wife’s porn blog, so I'll skip over the part about minority rule’s role in American politics. There is nothing cute to be made of a Senate majority that represents 20 million fewer people systematically eroding reproductive rights, discriminatory protections, and twisting the federal judiciary into a visage of an extreme few. No, you are seeing this because of porn, so let's use porn to understand what is happening in The United States. Personally, I am very interested in dangerously unstable people with complete disregard for their actions’ effects on themselves and others. While it's personally undisputed that crazy is hot, this sexual preference was never going to factor into my dating decisions, because unfortunately I am within the subset of “others”. In this discussion we are also going to be talking about those on the right side of the political aisle, because what we are talking about is not symmetrical fresh-never-frozen-bug-fucking-insanity. The Republican Party started experimenting with putting its dick in crazy beginning with the Southern Strategy, and now its been balls deep in crazy for three decades. Part of the “go balls deep and nut in the worst angels of our being” strategy pioneered by Nixon and allies like the Koch brothers was to create a verdant media environment where you could choose your own adventure on talk radio or Fox News. Choice is where this all goes from “go balls deep and nut in the worst angels of our being” to “tied to a chair in a shady warehouse by the docks wearing nothing but a latex horse mask and being sucked off by one lady, one man, and an oddly enthusiastic aquarium fish.” In broad strokes people are selecting news that makes them feel good in the same way that they are selecting porn that makes them feel good, and people will become better able at determining what exactly they want over time.

Let’s start off by defining what makes something pornographic. For this there can only be one source of authority to begin our inquiry: The United States Supreme Court. The United States Supreme Court defined obscenity as: “1) A thing must be prurient in nature; 2) a thing must be completely devoid of scientific, political, educational, or social value; and 3) a thing must violate the local community standards.” Miller v. California 413 U.S. 15 (1973).  The Miller test is the threshold standard for obscenity. Obscenity is a classification under First Amendment law, and not all porn will pass through the Miller test threshold. At the same time Miller is the culmination of a large body of litigation over the question of how pornography, its almost always pornography, should be classified for First Amendment protections purposes. It is important to understand that this is a local standard. Which is to say that the Government’s ability to regulate pornographic or otherwise obscene speech is conditional upon local community standards. While two people fucking on the subway may be a charming part of the morning commute in NYC, or nutting to Lucky, the mascot for the Celtics, may be essential to Boston culture, both acts may be obscene in Des Moines Iowa. When discussing the internet, which we must do in this inquiry, local standards are thrown out. Additionally, Miller is a threshold standard for a certain kind of porn. For these reasons, Miller cannot be said to be controlling on what makes something pornographic. 

Fortunately The Supreme Court’s long history of litigation on the legal question of what makes pornography allows us to draw on persuasive evidence. Justice Stewart in his concurring opinion stated that he knows it [obscenity/porn] when he sees it. Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 187 (1964). This rule cures the defect created by a local standard as found in Miller. Additionally, it provides a more sex positive framework with which to approach the issue, as it better acknowledges the full breadth of human sexual expression. Still, it is too subjective to provide a tenable framework, as when everything can be porn then nothing may also be porn. A synthesis of the two rules is therefore appropriate.  

The definition of porn requires a global standard, room to embrace the full breadth of human sexual expression, and some objective elements. Drawing on both Jacovellis and Miller porn is: 1) a thing known when seen; 2) a thing completely devoid of scientific, political, educational, or social value; and 3) a thing which violates community standards. Let us now apply this new test to two fact patterns. First, HOT MILF OCTAGON DILDO WARRIOR 3 THE RESUBMITINING is a hypothetical film about mothers, although proof of their identity as such is lacking, fighting with dildos to submit or resubmit other mothers in a octagon with elaborate combat etiquette around naked dildo fights. Starting at the top, let us stipulate that this would be known to be porn when seen. Second, only the most strained and lonely freshman year Lit students could glean some scientific, political, educational, or social value out of what has been presented. Perhaps something to the effect of: “it represents the way in which an overly sexualized capitalist society pits actors against each other in abstracted combat which inevitably comes at the expense of the family unit, and the brunt of this abstract combat falls on women and or female caregivers”. Finally, this would violate community standards. Transgressiveness is hot, and you are not supposed to fight, much less with ten (10) pound dildo flails. Alternatively, there is the Venus de Milo. They would show this on PBS. It's not porn. That's not to say you can't nut to it, but any such nutting would be brought to you by viewers like you. This synthesized rule provides a practical framework to view porn broadly.  

Now that we have a definition to apply to the pornographic, let us turn our gaze towards the fetish driven hellscape that is American politics. Our politics have become run by civic pornographic tropes. These tropes exigent before the advent of social media found a newly fertile ground on Twitter and Facebook. In the same way that interest in DADDY BIGFOOT FUCKS ME IN THE ASS AND THEN TAKES ME TO CHILI’S existed before the internet, interest in a secretive government leaker trying to save children and provide life extending technology conspiracies existed before the internet. The internet simply reduces the transactional cost of finding what you are really into.   

Sex sells, but faces problems of scalability. Facebook, twitter, and all the rest sell ads. The more you are on them the more ads they can sell. Porn sells like, well, porn, but Pornhub hasn’t managed to destabilize entire governments and escalate ethnic tensions into a genocide. The problem that Pornhub has is scalability. We are closer to chimps than bonobos, so sex can only sell so far. This presented Facebook with a problem.  How do you scale up a platform designed to rank your co-workers on fuckability into something that can Grima Wormtounge everyone’s grandmother? Use algorithms to push people towards more and more specifically targeted salacious content and rely on a healthy community of amateur content creators so that there is always something available to engage anyone’s most niche interests. That the business model of Pornhub and Facebook are nearly indistinguishable are no mistake. 

To scale up one not only has to understand what porn is, but what the draw of porn is. Porn’s fundamental draw is not the sex, but the fantasy. It is fantasy without the distant mirror, or at least without an intentional one. Porn, unlike sex, creates a reality of your own choosing unconstrained by real worldly limitations and curated to facilitate the chosen fantasy. PRISON LESBIANS 4 NO ESCAPE; BUTTSTUFF FOR BAD GIRLS doesn’t have to be a dingy place standing as a monolith to a horrifying system housing those broken under the crushing wheels of a morally indefensible society of indifference, like a real prison. Instead it can be a well-lit, adequately shot, sanitized play place for beautiful people to fuck like they are in a smutty disneyworld after Disney ripped the still beating heart out of the play Chicago. Through its alchemy porn is able to transmute the real world into smutty gold. Any impurities which may have stood in the way of the fantasy drawn out and rendered golden.  

It is this same alchemy that we find at work in the so-called “new media”. GOD KING TRUMP TO KILL CHINESE DRAGON AND FREE AMERICAN WORKERS FROM THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS is no more concerned with the realities of the election than PRISON LESBIANS 4 NO ESCAPE; BUTTSTUFF FOR BAD GIRLS is concerned with The United States criminal justice system. Applying our standard to GOD KING TRUMP TO KILL CHINESE DRAGON AND FREE AMERICAN WORKERS FROM THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS its pornographic nature must be:1) a thing known when seen; 2) a thing completely devoid of scientific, political, educational, or social value; and 3) a thing which violates community standards. Starting with the first element, this exists because someone is into it. It is, like most porn, ridiculous with the benefit of post nut clarity. Secondly, no real value can be drawn from it. Perhaps a vague sense that the American working class has not been served by the last forty years of neoliberalism’s relentless pace which makes scabs out of entire nations, but surely nothing can be gleaned worth thinking about. Finally, Trump by his nature and actions is transgressive and violates nearly every social norm he's ever met. He even paid off several social norms to ensure their silence. This is porn under the Miller-Jacovellis synthesis rule.  

“Well that is only one example,” a scarecrow I just created to take down might say. Well scarecrow I've inserted in a petulant power fantasy, we will discuss yet another political pornographic genre.

 Let's look at one of the most persistent fetishes in American politics. The fetish that The United States is a meritocracy. First prong is satisfied, because this is a fantasy that exists because it feels good. In a meritocracy one would see social mobility both upwards and downwards. As a person of great quality is born to a low class they would naturally rise. Conversely as a person of low quality is born to a high class they would naturally fall. This is simply not the case. You will die in the same class or a little below as your parents. Men make more on average than women for the same work. Finally, reports of racism's demise after Obama’s election were greatly exaggerated. Much as the realities of American prisons have to be thrown out to allow for the fantasy within PRISON LESBIANS 4 NO ESCAPE; BUTTSTUFF FOR BAD GIRLS or the class and gender implications must be kept at arm's length for HOT MILF OCTAGON DILDO WARRIOR 3 THE RESUBMITINING, the realities of America’s class, gender, and race relations must be transmuted away for the alchemy of porn to take place on the American meritocracy. Element two is met, because this fantasy has no more value than those contained within DADDY BIGFOOT FUCKS ME IN THE ASS AND THEN TAKES ME TO CHILI’S. Any attempt to stratify and rank fantasies based on intellectual merit is more likely to tell us about the author of the list than to accurately rank the intellectual merits with any validity, so all fantasies must then stand on equal footing sexually or not. Finally, we must analyze the transgressiveness of a meritocracy to satisfy the third element. On one hand, this is a omnibus fetish like tits or ass in sexual pornography. However, a kind of transgressive nature does appear to materialize when POC or women succeed. Were Captain America to be cast as a black man it would surely be met with cries of, “that's not right, Cap is White, Libs ruin comic books”. When female characters fail to be thinly veiled fetish items or possess body fat necessary to make it through a day without getting dizzy are cast, one can expect cries of, “WOMEN CAN’T BE.” In this way it is transgressive for those who are not supposed to win based on their immutable characteristics rather than their talents to win under this meritocracy. It is therefore plausible to find meritocracy in The United States as a genre of civic pornography.

It is at this point that we must view those on the right side of the political aisle not as misguided by misinformation with infantilizing gaze and endless forgiveness, but as fetish enthusiasts who open conversations with what grocery store’s ginger makes the best buttplugs. People gravitate towards the news that makes them feel good, in the same way that they gravitate towards porn that makes them feel good. These are active choices to view and active choices to talk about their fetishes. It's fine if people want to read TRUMP ELECTED GOD KING OF AMERICA; TO LIFT US TO MOON BASE WITH MASSIVE COCK or PRESIDENT TRUMP LOCKS BABIES IN CAGES TO HARVEST LIB TEARS; TOO WINNING TOO HARD  in the privacy of their own bedroom. Much like sexually explicit pornography, the line is drawn when you start acting on or discussing the weird stuff in the real world without consent. 

Fundamentally, when Nixon first suggested to the Republican electorate that they had the freedom to go balls deep in the worst angels of our being, we saw a sort of sexual liberation take place. It started with veiled dogwhistles. Just the “tasteful” little “welfare queen” brand racism used to be enough, but it wasn't really what they wanted. I mean sure, BALL GAG BALLET SWAN TAINT LAKE has some things you like, but maybe GIMP SUIT’S A NUUTCRACKER; CHRISTMAS CUMS ONCE A YEAR is gonna really scratch that itch. 

We need to stop asking Republicans to change for us. This is their authentic selves, and it's awful. Accepting someone for who they are doesn't always mean forgiving them for the things they jerk off to in the supermarket in a bizarre attempt to undermine your nation's democratic institutions.    

[cryptidandwren]

2020 EVERY DAY IS ANOTHER DAY FOR SOME REASON

Ok, ladies, gentlemen, and those beyond the binary. When this blog started it was intended to be a space for inane conversations about media, and the consumers’ relationship with it. Then everything changed when accountability attacked. This post is going to be a fusion of the original inspiration, which we hope it can get back to, and the unending nightmare commentary that it has become. (In, oof two weeks …)

Discovering that BonAppetit is not paying its POC is kinda like discovering that Mr. Rogers has a NAZI shrine in his basement. (He did not. Some things are still sacred until proven otherwise.) BonAppetit’s collaborative and mutually supportive vibe evaporated when Sohla revealed that BA has not been paying its POC for their appearances on the wildly popular youtube channel. Additionally, one of the executives dressed up in brown face. (Can powerful white men stop doing this? Like at this point, can they? Are they capable?)

This has been our safety blanket. When the day is over, and its time to settle down from the eye-popping stress that is 2020, BA has been one of the spaces that we have gone to. Really hope they can get their shit together. Gabby, Sohla, Priya, Rick, and Christina all deserve their own shows, and the fruits of their labor.  

[cryptidandwren]

YEAH SURE, JUST EAT THAT GAS STATION HOTDOG AGAIN. I’M SURE THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT. JESUS CHRIST YOU ARE EATING IT AGAIN. ITS GONNA GIVE YOU FOOD POISONING YA’ DAFT SHIT, SPIT IT OUT! FUCK!

Privilege is not a finite resource. The fundamental problem here is not that white folks have white privilege its how they use it, and it’s that POC don’t have it.

The privilege to ignore is super fucked, full stop. Not talking about the problem will not make it go away. Not addressing the problem will not make it go away. Like a bad gas station hotdog this is coming back up, and its going to be painful and uncomfortable when it does. Kenneth Clark said the following in 1968, “I read that report … of the 1919 riot in Chicago, and it is as if I were reading the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of ’35, the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of ’43, the report of the McCone Commission on the Watts riot,”. The proverbial bad hotdog of racism came back up in 1992 and now in 2020.  It will keep coming up until white people stop ignoring it.

The problem with privilege isn’t that you have it. The problem with privilege is that others don’t. Let’s take this into a little less charged space for a second with a metaphor. If only one of your pets is getting fed the just and equitable thing isn’t to not feed either. Justice and equity are served only by feeding both. I can go anywhere in America and people assume that I am a good person who deserves a fair shot. That’s good. Everyone should have that. I don’t have to constantly think about how people are going to perceive my race to remain safe when I take the dog out. That’s good. Everyone should have that. I can get sick and not die from the illness or the economic effects. That’s good. Everyone should have that. I can go to the grocery store and buy nutritious food that is good for my body. That’s good. Everyone should have that. I think you get the point. White people, stop being guilty that you have what people deserve, and start being driven to make sure everyone has what they deserve as human beings.  That starts with not ignoring the problem.

[cryptidandwren]

“GOOD WHITE PEOPLE” AND THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING SPINE 🕵️🕵️🕵️🕵️🕵️

Warning: Sexual trauma 

             I’ve been surrounded by “good white people” my whole life. I grew up in a college town with “Good White people”, then went to college with more “Good White people”, and then to graduate school.  My dad, a thirty plus year veteran of teaching in rural Appalachia and inner city neighborhoods, would call these people limousine liberals. This white person keeps up with the trendiest developments in political correctness, knows what you are supposed to be outraged by and when, and keeps it fresh with NPR hot takes.. During the Iraq War these are the people who proudly supported the fundamental humanity of “Arabs”, as a stand in for the complex ethnic make up of Iraq and the region more broadly. During Obama’s Presidency these people would tell anyone who would listen that they had voted for Obama with the air of someone who likens themselves to the freedom riders of old.  

             When #MeToo broke I was in a friend group of “Good White people”. One of the people in that group had come out, and they were supportive and understanding. I trusted these “Good White people”. I saw their outrage directed towards sexual misconduct, and I thought to myself, “this seems like a pretty good time to open up to them about my sexual trauma”. Being the white, liberal, law school graduate that I was I didn’t want retribution. I just wanted restoration and support from my friends as I went through a personal struggle. Certainly, after all of their big talk about how victims should be believed and about how those who commit these “vile acts” are not the victims things would be fine. I would be believed and supported.  After all, so many had said something to the effect of “accountability is not violence”.

              I was wrong. Things would not be fine. The “Good White people” claimed that I was lying, cut me out of the group, and spread rumors about me to mutual friends.  When #MeToo affected them personally the response was very different than when it happened to old white men they did not know. The thing is that when these “Good White people” were called on to make a choice between their comfort and their supposed beliefs; they chose their comfort. They were woke to the right thing to do, but it would have been hard, so they dident do it. It’s as simple as that.

             That’s the thing about bringing people like myself into a movement. Can you trust us to do the right thing when the moment comes? What if its hard? I trusted “Good White people”, and I got burned. I did receive support from some friends in that circle when it all came to a head, and they supported me at personal cost to themselves. Still, it wasn’t everyone. Fundamentally what I’m saying is that “not all Good White people” will betray their beliefs for their comfort as soon as it gets hard. Doubt kills trust before it can be built, and “Good white people” provide plenty of room for doubt.  

[cryptidandwren]

YOUR WHITE SADNESS IS FUCKING USELESS AND SO ARE YOU. THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE! STOP BEING SAD AND GET A GODDAM BUCKET OF WATER YA’ DENSE SHIT.

White folks, Let’s talk about our struggle with sympathy. Every person of color you know probably has a trauma response built into their discussion surrounding policing and broader racial equity in general (housing, medical care, tax policy, exct). I’m not generally in the business of comparing and grading traumas, but that’s what we need to do here.

Grade 1 I watched, or more likely, heard about someone dying on the news: You can be traumatized by this. That trauma can be real, but this is not your moment. Your sympathetic, a feeling of pity or sorrow for the distress of another, response is not the story here. Congratulations on being a human being with a heart. At this level you can see that there might be some structural problems with the house. You pass it on the street when you go on walks.

Grade 2 I worked on a legal case or an activist movement and had to see what people of color see firsthand. For every 1 unarmed person of color whose death makes the news, there are many more that don’t. The sense of injustice becomes more real to you, because you are emotionally invested in it. The emotional response is more real, because you are face to face with people when they suffer the source traumas. If you can build trust, this is the level where you are invited in as a guest. At this level you can see how well folks are really coping. Are the dishes put away when the guest come over, exct, exct. Second verse same as the first, this story is not about you (me THE CRYPTID).

Grade 3 You are a person of color. You live in the house. IT IS ON FIRE. This is the source trauma. The more time you spend in the house the more traumatized you are by it. As we navigate a movement that is already decades old at this point, ask yourself how much you know about the house, and if you are really the best person to be speaking on the matter right now. When you say things like, “we are all hurting” are you hurting in the same way as the person that you are speaking to? Is your insistence that you are hurting in the same way gaslighting that denies a greater affinity with the house and the trauma within?

[cryptidandwren]

RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE ... KILLING OF YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS YOU FUCKING MONSTER

We are past the point of talk. 400 years of black folks begging for their lives is 400 years too many, and if I hear people making noise about property damage one more time I’m going to scream. It shows fundamentally that the person does not internalize that black lives matter. The common law (the one based on community standards of fairness) places human life above property in every way. Defense of property does not support use of force, lethal or non-lethal in most cases. You can damage and break property if doing so is necessary to protect your life, and you only have to pay for repairs.

What the discussion of property damage really tells me is that someone thinks black lives matter, but not as much as a shop window. The hierarchy goes white life, personal property, white comfort, black lives. Narratives have a hierarchy of information, so thanks for letting us all know how you structure it.

I’m tired and I’m grumpy. I’ve personally interacted with this issue before and having to tell someone permanently crippled by the police while they were running away that there is nothing the law can do for them broke me. The police say they found a gun a yard over and 30 feet from when you were shot, so this case is unwinnable. Sure, they shot you in the back of the knee for no fucking reason, but cops. I was teetering on the edge of a massive depressive episode before that, but having to look someone in the face and tell them things would be different if you were an enemy combatant, but because you are a US citizen its all above board broke me. I’m not the real victim in the story, but it has left a deep scar none the less. Like, I haven’t earned my rage like my client did. My knee got ruined playing basketball, not because of the color of my skin. (Some facts changed for attorney client privilege reasons)

And furthermore, I’m tired of people being woke for the white gaze. Thinking that your brothers and sisters deserve to live in a society that doesn’t kill then for shits and giggles does not make you a good person. It makes you a person.

[cryptidandwren]

A RESPECTFUL TITLE, BECAUSE THE THEME OF THIS BLOG DOES NOT FIT THE SUBJECT MATTER

Let’s talk about police killings white folks.

The year is 1676. A multiracial army is marching on Jamestown. Frontiers people, European indentured servants, and enslaved Africans form the main body of this army. All have their own reasons for joining, but a common enemy unites them, the ruling class of slave-holding elites. Shortly thereafter Jamestown is burned to the ground. The American aristocracy would learn the lessons of Bacon’s rebellion well. If poor whites, poor blacks, and otherwise marginalized people band together and figure out who is screwing them a system of governance that disproportionately benefits those with already thick pockets cannot be maintained. American Racism can be understood as a contract between the white elites and the poor whites. The basic agreement is that poor whites will remain poor, but they will be better than someone else and treated better in society.    

The day is March 5, 1770. A largely unaccountable police force occupies Boston. An event latter known as the Boston Massacre began with verbal insults directed towards that unaccountable police force. 7 officers joined the first. The soldiers acting as police escalated. The growing crowed escalated. Officers were struck by snowballs, stones, and oyster shells. An officer fires into the crowd and the 7 other officers fire as well. 3 Bostonians are killed on the spot and 2 latter die from their wounds. The city takes to the streets to demand justice. The Governor promises an investigation, but Boston wants this unaccountable police force out. Investigations promised days late and a dollar short would not sate these patriot’s righteous anger, or that’s how its taught in schools. This story should sound painfully familiar, but the framing is a little different.  

Transitioning to the well-known 18th Century thinkers Locke and Hobbs. The social contract theory underpins most American institutions. “Life, liberty, and happiness” is paraphrasing Locke’s justification for the English Glorious Revolution. The social contract is on a very basic level an agreement between people and the State. The agreement is that people will give up some of their liberties, and the State will ensure that life is better than it would have otherwise been under State of Nature. (State of Nature = Lord of the Flies) Locke and Hobbs were both pretty bright people, and they decided to call it a contract for a reason. In contract law, when a party breaches that terminates the other parties’ responsibility to perform is terminated. Now aside from the fact that a good amount of the looting that some people are so upset about is being perpetrated by white nationalists hoping to use the tragic death of a man to start a race war, lets reframe how we think about this. Why wouldent black folks loot a target at this point, and why are you more upset about black folks looting a target than white folks storming state capitals with firearms?

What that tells me is that you think that the looters are breaching the social contract, and they are. But, the order of the breach is important. Society has breached first. In the State of Nature, killing is common and random. Right now, every time someone eats Piggy its another black body. Id rather have the killing be random and common than targeted and common, and so would you. Premature death is to be avoided. That’s just being a biological organism 101. The remarkable thing isn’t that people are feed up with peaceful protest. The remarkable thing is that it’s taken this long.  Three high-profile shootings make the news in the last week where the police force or the DA is acting inappropriately, and all you all want to talk about is property crime. SMH.  

[cryptidandwren]

COLONIAL POWER FANTASY: FELLS LIKE NOTHING TO BE THIS BAD

Let’s talk about media’s role in maintaining and normalizing the mindset of the colonizer. Colonization is the policy of a country seeking to extend or retain its authority over other people or territories generally with the aim of economic dominance and exploitation. Now I’m guessing that you, the reader, as a woke individual with a bespoke taste in smutty blogs, are conquering up images of European powers during the 18th and 19th Century. That is what we are taught in school was colonization. But returning to the very official definition that can be found in many authoritative sources I just made up, colonization is not bound to any time period or dress code.

I’m going to describe the plot of a story, and you are going to guess whether this is how The British Museum acquired one of its artifacts or the plot to a sidequest in a wildly popular video game. It starts when stories circulate that an indigenous people have an artifact linked to one of their great kings. A weapon of exquisite craftsmanship and cultural significance. A great hero-explorer goes to the village where the weapon is held and kills everyone. The artifact is then brought back to a more economically well-off people to be a wall-hanger and conversation piece. I’ll spare you the portion of this genre where the author preens their feathers and pats themselves on the back for being so clever. It’s the “Red Eagle” side quest in Skyrim. It’s also plausibly the story of how The British Museum acquired more than one of its artifacts. (Hey look at that! MCU can have a good scene that addresses the real world. It’s almost like the real world is better at creating compelling conflict than who has the bigger energy-dick-hammer-glove-McGuffin.)

Look I get it. Sandboxes are a place for you to be a dangerous, psychopath, fuckboy, fuckgirl, or fuckhuman beyond the binary, murder-hoboTM. Skyrim is a sandbox, but the way that the narrative treats the violence is important. Skyrim just doesn’t engage with that violence at all. Go to place. Kill forsworn. Get trinket. The sword is never good enough you are going to use it. Your sword is either the bones of demigods, the petrified blood of a dead god, or the petrified blood of a dead god mixed with the heart of a daemon. The player has no motivation to kill beyond idol curiosity. That’s a pretty flimsy justification for wholesale slaughter.

Bethesda has what Ill generously call minimalistic storytelling, but it can’t escape being a story. Alongside this, um, minimalist storytelling is a tendency to create moral grey areas. This can be seen in, well all of it. They Greybeards question whether the world deserves to be saved at all. That’s about as morally grey both-sidesy as you can get in the narrative. The foresworn on the other hand are not given this moral ambiguity both sides treatment in “Red Eagle”. None of the foresworn ask, “why would you do this to our village.” They arn’t people. They are just the zubat that lives in the Reach region. They exist in the narrative to further the honor and glory of spilling blood. The sort of dehumanization shown through the foresworn is necessary to justify colonization to the colonizer. They are not people, but obstacles to be overcome in the quest of resource extraction.

Now that’s not to say that Skyrim is a bad game. I’ve spent lots of hours exploring that world and escaping this one. The foresworn are not real, but the choices that you make in the game are. Why you make those choices are real. Are you role playing a colonizer who believes in the honor and glory of spilling blood, or are you mindlessly killing in a power fantasy of spilled blood and glory? Is the truth somewhere in between these two? If extrapolated out to the real world are you comfortable with the answer?    

[cryptidandwren]

MY FETISHES ARE REAL AND SO CAN YOU

Let’s talk about porn, but really let’s talk about literary realism. Coming up with a practical definition of porn is famously difficult. Supreme Court lore holds that during the period in the Court’s history when a legal line between art and porn was sought, the Supreme Court would have viewing parties to read tea leaves to determine the difference between the two. Supreme Court Justice Brennan, who was going blind at this point in his life and had to have a clerk provide a play by play synopsis of the “films”, blurted out during one of these viewings “That’s it! I know it when I see it.”

After much time and ink the Supreme Court finally agreed that porn is art, but it’s not art that the First Amendment cares about as much. Porn is any art that highlights one emotional response at the expense of all others. Sexuality is of course a very complex topic and there is a lot of room for content under that umbrella, but porn in the conventional sense (big tiddies Anime gurl do sex stuff) does not make room for, let’s say, contemplation on the justifications, or lack thereof, for imperialism and colonization.  Once you’re trying to make porn, you have a goal that might conflict with more nuanced narrative goals. Complex real world problems that leave most people feeling uncomfortable and a little hollow just don’t mesh well with porn. I mean if it works for you it works for you, and no shame. Just count your blessings and go into history, sociology, or some similar field. Papa always used to say you never work a day in your life as long as you do what turns you on. Porn is about meeting indulgent desires whether sexual or not.

Literary realism is a movement that takes the artifices of fiction and analyzes them. Let’s look at MCU “Civil War”. The general rule in the genre is that heroes are heroic, and people see them as heroic even if there is damage. Realism asks the question, but what if people held the heroes personally responsible for losses? For example, the woman who lost her son holds Iron Man personally responsible in “Civil War”. Now aside from the lazy worldbuilding that this employs (because were the face eating alien invasion force not going to eat your kids face?) realism as it has been practiced and illustrated in this scene is fundamentally flawed. Most people do not create contrived and twisted world views to lay blame at the feet of someone else that was doing the right thing. Yes it happens, but the set up has to be more complex than MCU ever gives us. There isn’t a moral grey area to be explored when one of the sides is Space-Hitler-eat-your-face-lately and the other is Iron Man. Reality isn’t a constant parade of one horrible event after the other - and I see you 2020. You don’t have to raise your hand. Ill get to you next.

Realism can far too often fall into a trap where it becomes misery porn. There is a lot of misery in the real world. Genocide, plague, racists, sexists, a forever war, and twitter trolls as far as the eye can see, if that’s where you are looking. There are also acts of incredible kindness. People using social media to keep up with each other and lend an ear in troubling times. The many, many people sewing and making masks for health care works in light of governmental failure. And to be honest, the people that are willing to sacrifice and stay home. Where art focuses on one aspect to the exclusion of any other it has a tendency to become pornographic. That’s not a judgement on the substance. I rather like hope porn. The speeches of real-world President Obama and fictional President Bartlett are some good shit. Like me some hope.

Now let’s look at another show that uses literary realism well: Avatar. Superman and Aang both come from a people who have been entirely wiped out. Superman is by and large unaffected by it, because he is superman. He has incredible strength, including the strength to just not feel bad things. (I am choosing to ignore modern DC Superman, because its bad). Aang doesn’t. When the sand benders take Appa, the last thing that he has to connect him to his people, he’s ready to enter the Avatar state and go full Anakin on their sand people asses. That’s real. That’s a trauma response -right there- if I’ve ever seen one. Aang only calms down when Katara reminds him that even if his old family is dead, he still has a family that loves and cares for him, and that he is safe. That’s real. A deeply problematic trauma response by a male presenting figure being mitigated by the continued and tiring emotional labor of a female presenting figure. Even the “good” to balance the “bad” has nuance and complexity to it, but Katara’s actions don’t just come from gender roles. She genuinely does care for Aang and his wellbeing, and it hurts her to see Aang in the grips of a trauma response. Which launches into a several show arc where Aang completely disassociates, because the last time he felt something he hurt the people he cared about, and he will not allow himself to do that again.  (The Show is soo good. Watch it. Its on Netflix. You have no reason not to. I know you have time.)

Reality in literature has to be real in some way, and reality is complex. If your realism singles out one emotional reaction playing only that note, it’s as real as anything in conventional porn. See “Big tiddy anime gurl do sex 2 electric bougalu the re-cockining”. It can be a safe play space, but it important to contextualize and identify the play space. Literature informs our world views, and we have to respect what our media diet can do to us. Just as in conventional porn, feminist, anti-colonial, and queer theory remain helpful tools to help manage our relationship with the media. It is just as dangerous to thoughtlessly let porn inform your relationship expectations as it is to let multi-million-dollar corporations inform your view of reality, if not more so.