#Am I being pedantic? Yes. Does it matter?? No.

[jo-does-things]

I officially play to many fighting games because now I watch cartoons/shows where people fight hordes of enemies with traditional weapons and all i can think is  ‘Why does no one have an AOE attack??????’

Like I want to know what they expected to happen when they went to Bug Planet home of Bugs without anything to effectively deal with the inevitable Bug Swarms. 

[thosearentcrimes]

Read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. It rules, what else is there to say? Wonderful book on so many levels.

So, the first thing I'll say is that the concept of kemmer ran so omegaverse could crawl. Now, I do not put these into relation purely because they involve the application of concepts of heat/rut to human beings, which would not be a sufficient basis for comparison. Instead, it's that they are both obviously fujoshi-coded. Now, you might wonder, how can kemmer be a fujoshi-coded plot point if it doesn't involve men and is obligately heterosexual? Well, for the former objection, yes it does. They literally all use he/him pronouns lol. There's a whole bit in the book about it (that's obviously a bit outdated with advances in transgenderism, but still holds up). And for the latter objection, it is important to remember that yaoi, especially but not exclusively in the fujoshi subculture, spans a sort of spectrum from "just two guys having sex with each other", through "seme/uke" to "procreative penis in vagina sex in the missionary position" (currently mostly omegaverse, but obviously kemmer falls into it). But of course kemmer is far more interesting conceptually than even the most creative treatment of the omegaverse concept could be.

The worldbuilding is really fun. The way LeGuin allows the reader to sink into an understanding of an authentically alien-feeling world while maintaining enough predictability and familiarity to keep the reader following along is very impressive. I'm not entirely sure what shifgrethor is supposed to be if it's not another word for honor, but the book and its setting is so charming that I treat that as an amusing mystery rather than idle mystification, as I very well might if I were less positively inclined. And similarly for some other elements of the worldbuilding.

I suspect there is a fair deal in the novel to displease conlangers however. There are terms nominally brought in from the Gethenian languages, but it's fairly obvious each term is generated arbitrarily as needed, for spice, even when there is already an equivalent term. Additionally, one feature that is liable to irritate the sort of linguist so impressed with themselves for rejecting both prescriptivism and Chomskyism that they fail to notice they have become as pedantic and rigid as either of those factions tends to get. That is, at one point the novel makes note of the great number of distinct words for snow. Personally I think there's nothing all that wrong with it. To linguists it is a very important matter whether the phenomena invoked are in fact distinct words or not. For everyone else, the point of the factoid, even when it related to specific human groups, was to establish that there were a people who distinguished a very large variety of kinds of snow, which they had established designations for, and that this taxonomy of snow and ice demonstrates an intimate understanding of snow, ice, and related phenomena. These three claims are all true, the precision of the specific statement notwithstanding. And on Gethen, the precision of the specific statement can be assumed, because it says so in the book. That is not to say that a deeper engagement with the referenced factoid wouldn't have helped the book. Notably, I think it is a bit silly that Karhide apparently only has the one language. Given how politically and physically isolated it is, there should be a pile of dialects and arguable distinct languages floating around. But that's a minor quibble.

An interesting, but not particularly bad thing about the book is how heavily the shadow of the Cold War falls on it. Large parts of the book are quite unimaginable outside its context. That the book was published in '69 is hardly surprising. With the benefit of decades of separation from even the Cold War itself, this becomes far more a contextual curiosity than anything else, however. I am excited to see how deranged the present era will seem in the future, if I live that long. It seems plenty deranged already, to be quite honest. Probably did back then too.

I can warmly recommend reading The Left Hand of Darkness. I suppose there are some people who wouldn't like it. It's done in a fairly particular style, and some people might object to the treatment of sex (and gender and sexuality) sufficiently to reject the book entirely. They can if they want to, but I think they're missing out. Very fun book.

[yuurivoice]

Im so sorry but is Al's hair naturally black or pink?? I feel like the obvious answer is black but if I remember correctly (again, could be wrong) when jackie drew his dilfy designs his roots were pink. I just dont wanna assume error 🙏

The psychic damage I am taking from these questions is immeasurable and we're going to hit a point where I'm either going to just not answer certain things or I'll end up imploding. 😂

In the beginning...I just wanted a pink haired fuckin guy. I was using anime logic. His hair was pink. There was no thought beyond that because he's a two-dimensional fictional lad. It simply was.

Then came the questions. God. The questions.

Does he dye his hair? Why are his eyebrows black? Is his natural hair color black?

Those were dark times.

BitterSweet Chapter 3 created an opportunity for Dark Mode Alphonse, and we established that yes.....his natural hair color is black.

Today I was asked the pedantic question about Al's body hair...which just about took me out, but we made it through.

Now this.

Bubba his hair looks that way because I thought it fuckin looked cool. The rules of real hair, what his natural hair color is, and any other such business can suck my cock. He is a 2D dilf designed to look as fuckable as possible...why in the name of GOD are we worrying about his natural hair color?

Mind you, we have canonically seen black haired childhood Alphonse in photos twice. Two different pictures, even! 😂

Is there some boogeyman out there heckling people for being "wrong" about things like natural hair color? Is someone wagging their finger or being a shit about accuracy in depictions in fanart or something? Because it sure as hell is not me, and it shouldn't be anyone at all because none of that shit actually matters.

Yes his natural hair color is black. He's got pink highlights I guess? It looks cool, so that's why it is what it is.

I think there is a fundamental difference in the way I personally engage with shit that I like, because I cannot comprehend or envision a world where I would ever approach the creator of a thing to ask a question like this, or would even wonder about those details because they are so miniscule a thing to ponder when you could be spending time considering, imagining, creating a million other things that are vastly more exciting and intriguing than being correct about a fictional character's natural hair color.

I'm not upset with you, or angry, none of that. I'm befuddled. Absolutely bumfizzled. Questioning my sanity, because I am so far removed from caring about this sort of thing in regards to fictional characters that the rift is unfathomable.

If questions like these are inspired by an anxiety about being correct, I implore you to be wrong more often. You'll quickly find that no one of import is actually going to care, and you'll get out of the way of your own enjoyment of the thing. I don't know if there's some sort of widely held opinion in fandoms that being this granular is necessary, but it certainly is not the vibe in this neck of the woods.

This has been a long and unexpected installment of Old Man Yells At Cloud. 😂

[woodsfae]

B5 s03e10 Severed Dreams table of contents - previous episode

Londo fully deserves all the inconvenience that an extremely pedantic Narn security force can muster against him. It's the least his genocidal, fascist ass deserves. I hope many more little miseries for him. 

"This never would have happened if the humans hadn't started fighting each other!"

This also would never have happened if Londo hadn't thrown the entire fucking galaxy under the bus in exchange for temporary political cred. 

Having moral qualms about firing on one's own people mid-civil-war does seem like the sort of emotions one would have as a member of the military that's schisming against itself. 

Psst, while the opening is playing, I have a secret. I'm 100% going to count these words towards my NaNoWriMo count. Probably am not going to make it, since I didn't write at all from the 11th to the 26th. But I did write more than 14k words in the last two days so ya never know. I could whip out 11k a day for the final two days of November. No I'm not lingering over this paragraph to inflate my word count, how very dare?

General Hague's ship is coming to B5. It's called The Alexander, which is a pretty obvious allusion to Alexander the Great, although the Rangers haven't been conquering any vast tracts of land lately in B5.

I fucking LOVE G'Kar helping with the Rangers now! He's like "I AM A GOOD ALLY JUST LIKE I ALWAYS KNEW. Watch me carry this slender little Minbari as far as you'd like." 10/10, no notes. I think he might be my favorite character overall. I mean, Susan is the BEST, but I think G'Kar might be my favorite, yanno? There's a difference. 

"Our humanity got us into this. It's our humanity that's going to get us out again." 

I certainly do hope so, John Sheridan. Because as always, this show is eerily prescient about our present, when it was intended to be a social commentary on the socio-political state of the 90s. 

This side character Minbari is a kickass actor. He welled those tears up no problem. Also very lame that there's even more instability that'll inevitably benefit the Shadows. How much more bleak does it need to be for them to have a satisfying, underdog victory? They're already under, dawg! 

General Hague is dead.  Most of General Hague's fleet is destroyed. And Earthforce is bombing Mars. The plea from Mars not to fire, that there's women and children, is chilling. But the random Aflack commercials on Tubi are great about lightening my mood. /s 

It's so funny that Delenn makes sure to tell Lennier she will support any decisions he makes in her absence, because I just know she's about to go fuck shit up on the Grey Council. 

This journalist is so brave! The journalists were lying, spreading earthgov propaganda, but it didn't matter. The government still came to take them down in the coup because they weren't extreme enough. 

The Agrippa and the Roanoke are coming to seize command of B5....Agrippa was a general, but I don't recall what he is most known for. Roanoke is famous in the USA for being an early colony, which the colonists all disappeared from in a fabricated mystery, when it was obvious they had joined the nearby Roanoke tribe. I wonder if the Roanoke is going to switch sides at the last moment in this episode, or go fuck off to do their own thing or something. 

John giving his senior staff the same inspirational speech he uses for himself because it's 100% "Do it for Delenn!!!! And freedom. But mostly Delenn!" It's extremely cute. 

tHe CoUnCiL wIlL NoT sEe YoU. - useless Minbari dude

"Then I will see them!" 

Yes you will, Delenn. That whole speech is excellent. and wasted on that little pissant. But her speech to the Grey Council is even better! 

Mira Furlan delivers this speech, as all of her speeches, so powerfully. 

And she has such pointed things to say to each of them. Yessss be shamed!! Delenn you badass. Shattered that staff literally with her bare hands!! Was that the strength of prophecy, or her mad grip strength? She got five of them...are there nine on the Council at a time? I can't recall. 

It's very endearing that John called home to make sure to check in with the folks before he can't do it easily for awhile. 

"Where's Mom?" "Oh, she went to town....errands to run. You know how it is."

Actually, in this family, I do know how it is. Is Mom Sheridan in jail for protesting or agitating or something? 

I remember liking the design for B5's little fighter holds when the series started, but I like it even more now. It's just so smart. They're stored so there's easy access with the spin-gravity, and so they can't deploy accidentally. And then they get whooshed out to space when the pilot is in. I'm sure the new opening which highlights it in such crisp, remastered HD helps a lot with my newly arisen appreciation for their fighter deployment systems. 

It pleases me greatly seeing Sheridan using DraalPlanet's hologram! I'm a sucker for continuity. 

Susan Ivanova is right, damn it! One of them, her or Sheridan, does have to be out there, fighting with their people against the rest of EarthForce. And it does have to be Ivanova: Sheridan is the captain. He can't captain while he's starfighting. 

OK they're here! The Churchhill - authoritarian leader who speaks first and deploys their fighters first. Sheridan speaks eloquently. The Agrippa and Roanoke fall silently in line. I'm so curious to see how this plays out. Ivanova is engaging with the Churchill. The Alexander comes out as well! And there's a breaching pod on B5 - something for the B5 security forces to do so Garibaldi doesn't feel left out! 

It's horrible to see the Narn security forces going in without armor, ahead of the humans in armor. At least give them some protective gear, damn! So many of them went down, and idk if their blasters even have stun capability. I'm assuming they're all dead. Which, fuck. 

I think Hiroshi rammed the Roanoke? Ah, and the Roanoke is destroyed. I think all three of the attacking ships were straight up destroyed. I'm usually able to track the B5 battles, but this was the largest and most complicated one.  And I am also kinda crossfaded. 

"If you value your lives: be somewhere else." 

Delenn is getting all the best speeches this episode, as she deserves. Really, excellent Delenn episode all around! She is a badass. Love to see more aspects to her badassery highlighted. 

Zack Allen is now a paragon of helpfulness and loyalty. And Garibaldi got injured again. 

It suddenly sounds like the Churchill was on B5's side which...I definitely misunderstood part of that battle, if so. But at least B5's fighter crews are at full strength since they're taking the Churchill's survivors. 

John Sheridan has a good conversation with the Major whatshisface, and I am charmed again by his deciding not to wear his uniform till he can be proud of it again. Will he extend that decision to every personnel on board? Is everyone about to be running around in civvies? Soace fashion! Space business casual!  

Dang, Delenn's "Hello, John," was sultry. And her dress is much simpler and akin to a human wrap-dress than her usual, structured Minbari robes.

"I don't know how much this cost you personally, and I suspect I never will. But I want you to know that seeing your face is that moment was the finest moment of my life." 

cute, but I think Delenn heartily enjoyed ripping the council a new one.

I am glad Sheridan got applauded by all his B5ers at the end, and the pan over to the partially torn down Nightwatch poster was c h i l i n g

want another one?

[olive-ridley]

Okie dokie, after having to do meditative breathing after reading an instagram comments section, let’s talk whales!! What is a whale? What is a dolphin? Is a square a rectangle? Am I too pedantic? (yes) Is this important? (definitely not)

So, the group ‘Cetacea’ is named for the Latin word, ‘cetus,’ derived from the Greek word ‘ketos.’ Cetus refers to large sea animals, including whales, as well as the constellation named Cetus, depicting a whale. The group Cetacea, as you can probably derive, are “whales.”

Let’s discuss the parvorders. Mysticetes are our baleen whales (see: humpbacks, blues, greys, fins, etc.), and Odontocetes are our toothed whales (see: orcas, sperm whales, bottlenose dolphins, harbor porpoises). Now, after this last set of parentheses, you might see where the source of the confusion from the questions I asked above is.

For many years, the general populous has been laboring under the misinformation that dolphins are not whales. But never fear, I am here to free them from the shackles of 2010’s Discovery Channel oversimplification. Ok but in all seriousness, let’s talk dolphins. ‘Dolphin’ often refers to species in the family ‘Delphinidae,’ but also to three more families comprising two families of river dolphins and one family of brackish dolphin. Dolphins is a distinctive term within Cetacea to describe several families. Although interestingly, ‘porpoises’ just refers to a single family within Odontocetes. I just learned that!

So, what is a ‘whale?’ If I surveyed people on the street, I think the general answer is that it has to be a huge cetacean. But when the maximum measured length (6.45 m/21.2 ft) of the smallest baleen whale (pygmy right whale) is 3.4 m/11 feet shorter than the maximum measured length (9.8 m/32 ft) of the largest dolphin (orca), that’s maybe not the best definition. Some might refer to baleen, but then how does the sperm whale, who has teeth and is an odontocete, fit?

The answer is, all cetaceans are whales! From vaquita to blue whale, it’s whales all the way down. Colloquially, this is not the definition that most use, but as a formal, scientific definition, this is 100% correct. So, if you are like me, and you see someone posted a beautiful drone video of orcas on instagram to celebrate World Whale Day for the comments to be full of people saying ‘these are dolphins, not whales,’ and not being like ‘holy shit thank you for sharing this beautiful video with us,’ now you too can be burdened by the knowledge that no, all Odontocetes are whales no matter how small! Good luck on fighting the endless fight in comments sections my pupils.

(My sources are the wikipedia articles for cetacea, cetus, toothed whale, baleen whale, dolphin, porpoise, orca, pygmy right whale, and whale. Wikipedia iffy yes yes, but rest assured I knew this info before Wikipedia from a Prophetic Dream/course on marine mammals during my bachelor’s/experience working in fisheries observing after my bachelor’s)

[adultswim2021]

Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job #45: “Crows” | March 29, 2010 - 12:30AM | S05E05

Lotta chatter in the discord about this season of Tim & Eric. Most of my friends were Tim and Eric devotees to some degree, and we are all having a great time communally reshaping our opinions on a shared like of something. It’s special. I like it! They’ve been selectively watching along with my watch along, and a lotta them are making a point to dig into a Tim & Eric rewatch. You bet they are. Lotta them said they hated this one especially, but lord help me, I think I love this one. 

When I give a contrarian opinion–you better believe it–people talk. So, let the conversation begin: I got very high before watching this episode, and that is probably the only reason I liked it so much. So, I am going to make the mistake of letting this stand as my definitive opinion on the episode. When one embarks on something so audacious as an adultswim.com branded blog, when one uses their mind for a higher purpose (discussing Meatwad, Brak, etc), they must occasionally reflect on their lives and conclude: I am the only person who is right about anything, so much so that it’s especially true when I am high as hell. 

Okay: Quall sings the Car of the Future, not that good but I like that there’s a crazy guy on TV. This was Tim & Eric’s intent all along, and sometimes it’s just nice.

Then there’s the Paynus Bros. This doesn’t go anywhere, really, but I laughed a bit and I can’t deny that. Is it weird that a guy in this once yelled at my wife over some seriously pedantic bullshit regarding some forgotten stand-up comedy-related scandal? Yes, it’s weird. But guess what? I don’t even HAVE a wife anymore, dickhead. I do like the part where the host of the entertainment news show interviews his friend’s parents. LOL who DOES that. A lot of this is a little time-wastey though and it doesn’t really have much of a point. But some of it works for me, which isn't bad for being the worst sketch in the episode. 

The Cinco Sleep Watching Chair is a classic. I love this sketch so much. Doug Foster (aka Doug Prish-Preed) cracks me up, and the bit where they give him age-inappropriate frat boy dialogue (saying his romantic partners just need to be hot, and nothing else matters- IMAGINE!). Michael Gross plays his sleep-watching friend, a strange sinister-seeming relationship. It’s almost as if he’s the man’s feeder, but for sleep. One of my favorites, I love the little smile at the end. It makes me do a huge one. 

The wraparound is that Tim has his eyes pecked out by crows, which eventually leads to Eric getting his eyes also pecked out. This is because, inexplicably, they can’t not simply avoid one particular alleyway where foreboding crows attempt murder on those who pass one too many times. This is all connected to a “Dark Man” who, I learned only recently, is famous rapist Marilyn Manson. I thought he was just some bad actor they got. Oh well, fooled me. I am sorry for not taking a stand against him. I promise I don't like the guy.

The reviled Rainn Wilson plays a menacing character who crackles and warns Tim & Eric of the crow storm coming. It’s all meant to evoke tropes of supernatural horror films. I hate Rainn even more than Manson, but even his presence doesn’t bug me in this. This is a good role for a wad like him.

Another interesting thing about this sequence is that it results in a sketch that works both as a standalone bit of weirdness AND as a narrative bridge that introduces the referenced "dark man". A circle of chanting people all say mildly absurd things like “Be provocative, be organized”, which is a phrase that I think is poetry, and I think about it often. A shadowy figure swoops in and takes one of the men's sons. I love this, and consider it art.

The Dark Man shows up in the spooky alley to turn Tim & Eric into a pair of porcelain birds because of their past crimes against birds. The little bit of footage of Eric smugly shooting a bird at point blank range is so funny to me. I consider moments like this to be gifts, and I appreciate the wonderful one I have received here. He also turns Rainn Wilson into a toilet, like he deserves. It becomes apparent that this is a reference to the Tom Goes to the Mayor episode Porcelain Birds; so much so that John Ennis reprises his role as the guy at the bronzing plant. Then he morphs into the Tom Goes art-style and we cut to Tom Goes to the Mayor style credits. Wonderful! Simply wonderful!

I like Crows, everyone!

[mytastessuck]

Smosh: Dixon Cider

Welcome to Clown College.

Another Smosh song for this blog (the other one actually got likes...what the hell is wrong with all of you?) and it's one I feel disproportionately strongly about. It's a song about apple cider, supposedly written to support a failing business and, gonna spoil the joke right now, "Dixon Cider" is a homonym for "dicks inside her", a joke that is the keystone of the song. More typical late 2000s-early 2010s sophomoric humor, right?

No duh. And it's still one of my favorite comedy songs from the era.

Having grown up with sex-obsessed R&B/hip-hop, I have a special place in my heart for songs that take the piss out of it, even if it's by the whitest dudes on the planet. The song is competently sung, the jokes are chuckleworthy and the even the bad rap breakdown isn't distractingly awful. I even have a favorite lyric:

It don't matter who you are White, black, Asian or Hispanic There's no need to panic You know that shit's organic

That's so fucking stupid it's hilarious. But I remember this song for another reason: it's disappointing ending.

Right there, at the end, they just come out and say the whole song is a joke about oral sex. That's not funny, it's lazy. Yes, there are ways to explain the joke outright and still be funny but these guys chose to intentionally faceplant rather than actually think of even a lame joke or even just dropping the cow.

Think I'm being pedantic? There's only one way to solve that. Here's another more obscure video:

This song has the same concept (Deck sounds like Dick...vaguely. If you're saying it fast/not paying attention) and is more amatuerish in its execution. Nobody's really trained to sing, the production values are minor, people just randomly show up to add onto a lame joke...but its ending blows Dixon Cider's out of the water with an actual joke. The wife complains about Dale using up the water to the point she can't take a shower. Song over, Dale sheepishly walks back in the house...and pops his head out of the dogdoor for the punchline:

"Also, I fuck my wife on the reg."

Boom. That's what this whole song was about. Dale didn't explain the joke, he just dropped the subtlety. Am I detail-obsessed? Yes. Does my point stand? I dunno. You read somebody bitch about a Smosh song for an entire post. A Smosh song. You judge who's weirder.

Song Score (Dixon Cider): 8.5/10

Song Score (Dads Are Getting Their Decks Wet): 7.5/10

[freedomofthemoon]

I did a thing:

My first tattoo ❤️

He needs a name.

My sister got one at the same time, inspired by the stories about gnome life she used to beg our father to tell on our camping trips.

It is possssibly going to bug me that the blueberries aren't botanically accurate (real blueberries have five-pointed crowns - yes I am this pedantic). Blueberries were my second choice after teaberries, and if there's anything I might want to change in the future, it would be that or adding colour. But this was partly an exercise in letting go of perfectionism, so maybe I can look at it as adding bonus meaning.

But overall I am thrilled, and so happy I did it!

I thought for a long time I would never get a tattoo because: a) I am indecisive b) nothing ever felt like it would be more 'me' than my own skin as is c) probably some purity culture bullshit and d) I was afraid of pain. But in the last few years I've had a shift of perspective. Maybe it's the realization of how much of life has passed me by because I was afraid to try things. Maybe it's the realization that life is short, so being stuck with it ''forever' really isn't all that long. It's definitely to do with some really complicated feelings about living in my body and the idea that I can respect it by enjoying it - marking it up feels kind of like claiming it as my own. What was I worried about trying to keep it pristine for? It's not meant to outlast me and I'm not getting a deposit back (I mean, I really hope some parts do outlast me via organ donation, but I also hope to maximize my own use of them before that happens).

Back when I used to draw, I had so much anxiety about ruining the perfection of a blank page and all its possibilities putting something down. And that's how I've come to have created so little. I won't regret this image because it doesn't matter what the image is; it matters that I chose something and I get to have this instead of nothing. It matters because it's who I am now and if future me has different taste, I'll still be part of how they got there. Why does future me matter more than current me anyway? Only the present is ever guaranteed.

I suspect all those fics set in tattoo parlours helped me get in the right mindset about pain you choose - it hurt but in a way that didn't alarm my brain and that I almost kind of missed when it stopped.

I like that he will always be there, running along beside me, when I can't have my parents anymore in person.

[empressapprentice]

I agree with most thing you say, and I think you address many important points, however, there is one thing that has been annoying me a little recently.

Why do you always accuse people who dislike Nadia of being sexist and racist?

Look, I understand that a lot of the time this is the case, but I'd like to maintain at least a tiny spec of faith in humanity and assume that this isn't the majority.

Using myself as an example, I do have to admit that Nadia was never one of my favourite LIs and yet I will still keep saying that she IS an absolute badass! She's powerful and determined and so so cool!

And yet, she does have character flaws that bother me a little more than the flaws of other characters, such as:

- her initial hatred towards her sisters (I know this changes by the end of her route, but it really did bother me in the moment and created somewhat a distaste to her, I will admit this might be because I am an eldest sibling and she sounded exactly like my younger siblings).

and

- her almost pedantic perfectionism (yes, once again, this changes by the end of the route, but only slightly in my opinion. I still felt like she had a need for major control over every situation, which is understandable considering her position in society, and yet is simply a pet peeve of mine).

I don't believe these things annoy me because she's a woman of colour in a position of power but rather because they are simply character flaws that I dislike no matter which character they belong to.

Just to reiterate the main thing I am trying to get answered here is why are you so persistent about these theories that racists and sexists don't like Nadia? I'm not trying to toot my own horn or be a 'its not all...' type of person. I am simply saying that you really are trying to push this idea across and I'm not entirely sure I can agree. I haven't seen many- if any at all- post putting Nadia down because of her race and gender, or at least I have never interpreted them that way. By no means do I mean to belittle or disregard what you're saying, because I do believe that problems like this should be tackled, but perhaps you are interpreting most of the Nadia hate as something it's not. Or perhaps I am not reading into it enough and try my best to maintain some belief in this community, causing me to miss the blatant racism and sexism.

Hi there, thank you for sending me this question. I appreciate having the opportunity to better explain some of these issues. The first thing I would like to point out is that it's okay to not prefer Nadia compared to the other characters, or even not like her. That's fine. Having preferences is not the issue here. The problem is that Nadia is largely ignored compared to the other love interests. Knowing that Nadia is a woman of color (the only WOC love interest), it's very telling that she is always the one who gets excluded and sidelined. I know that this fandom has issues with racism and sexism. When you spend enough time looking at the patterns of how characters are treated, you see it. Take for example, how many times people whitewash Asra in fanart.

The other thing is that a lot of people dislike Nadia for reasons that link to stereotypes and biases against women of color. People tend to paint her as mean, stern and bossy. I strongly suspect that people who mischaracterize her like that are leaning into stereotypes about women in power and further, women of color in power. Think about how from young ages, girls who take leadership roles are called "bossy" while boys are praised for being assertive. People seem willing to make these sweeping generalizations about the kind of character she is without really backing it up with evidence from her route. It's more subtle than "I dislike Nadia because she's a woman," it's deeper and more insidious. She always seems to fall into the background, too. There's a major lack of interaction with her character and interest in her route.

I recognize that there are times where perhaps I have been too aggressive in calling out racism and sexism without explaining why I feel the situation warrants it. However, to myself and others in this fandom (particularly the people of color who do a lot of work in calling out this behavior, whose example I always strive to follow), it is abundantly clear that these issues exist in all fandoms and it's not surprising that it affects us here in the Arcana fandom too. I recognize that it may be helpful for me to elaborate on these issues more but my goal has always been to help people confront their personal biases when they see my posts. I hope that seeing something like my Nadia character sheet allows people to understand how complex and flawed she is. She's not a one-dimensional girlboss or a passive victim of Lucio. My goal is always that people will look at my page and start to think beyond the stereotypes that surround the fanon discussion of Nadia.

Just for the sake of brevity, I decided to not address the specific issues you have with Nadia. However, please know if there are things you (or anyone else) want to talk about, my inbox and DMs are open. I hoped this helped.

[fluffbyday-smutbynight]

Way Too Deep (TAB rewatch)

Going back to The Abominable Bride? What is this madness?

Do not fear, I won't even dwell on the hidden meanings of the whole parallel reality set in 1895. Instead, this will be the beginning of my modest attempt (read: slightly disfunctional coping method) at making some sort of sense out of S4. I could read all the meta, and agree with it even, but at the end of the day I just have to take the raw data and digest it on my own.

Why start from TAB? If I recall correctly, it wasn't originally conceived as a bridge between the two seasons – and yet, it has such a peculiar structure that I can't justify it being just a coincidence. If you will, I'll look at the frame rather than the picture.

TL; DR: what if Sherlock overdosed on the tarmac plane... and never came back?

So, let's begin well into the third act (1 hour or so into the episode):

MORIARTY: Because it’s not the fall that kills you, Sherlock. Of all people, you should know that. It’s not the fall. It’s never the fall...It’s the landing.

Sherlock wakes up on the plane and the narrative trick gets exposed: the Victorian adventures were a creation of Sherlock's drug-fueled mind.

Sherlock's usage is not exactly news to us - hello, heartbroken Shezza in a crack den - but this time it feels different. It's not just escapism or the siren's call of addiction; he doesn't look high, not even to John Watson MD, which by the way has already seen him under the effect. This is the very intentional treading the fine line between sanity and delirium, between life and death:

JOHN: For God’s sake! This could kill you! You could die!

SHERLOCK: Controlled usage is not usually fatal, and abstinence is not immortality.

...all for the sake of "solving a case" or, should we put it in plain words, going deep and deeper into his own mind.

Strap yourselves in, 'cause we're going for a ride. From this moment on, we'll bounce back and forth between reality and hallucination, the two separated by a boundary so unstable that we won't even see it.

Notice how heavily drugged-Sherlock sounds fairly coherent so far – and yet, when Mycroft speaks:

MYCROFT: A week in a prison cell. I should have realised [...] that in your case, solitary confinement is locking you up with your worst enemy.

...his mind palace fabrication unexpectedly bleeds into reality:

JOHN (offscreen): Morphine or cocaine?

SHERLOCK: What did you say?

JOHN: I didn’t say anything.

SHERLOCK: No, you did. You said ...

(As he says the next sentence, it’s Sherlock’s lips moving but we hear John’s voice.)

SHERLOCK/JOHN: Which is it today – morphine or cocaine?

What did spur this abrupt transition? What is Sherlock's worst enemy? Himself, his addiction or... Moriarty, though a figment of his imagination, trapped in his mind palace?

Victorian Sherlock goes on with his investigation, which ends with the crypt scene. Sudden plot twist: under the bride's veil there's not Mrs. Carmichael, but... Moriarty again.

MORIARTY: Is this silly enough for you yet? Gothic enough? Mad enough, even for you? It doesn’t make sense, Sherlock, because it’s not real. None of it. [...] This is all in your mind. [...] You’re dreaming.

Cue another transition to a hospital room, which looks just a bit surreal. What's up with the red blanket and the carpeted floor? Why is Sherlock just lying there in his suit?

Doesn't look very much like an overdose intervention... because it isn't. This is not reality.

In fact, Sherlock goes on all jolly to unbury Emelia's corpse (let me be pedant: just like a recent overdose patient should do), and we're given a couple lines that reinforce how much of a pressing matter all this is to him:

SHERLOCK: It’s why we came here! I need to know.

JOHN (turning away): Spoken like an addict.

SHERLOCK (straightening up to look at him): This is important to me!

Sherlock and Lestrade dig, Mycroft supervises (lazy sod, eheh), until the casket is unearthed – pay attention to what Mycroft says here:

MYCROFT: We do have slightly more pressing matters to hand, little brother. Moriarty, back from the dead?

And yes, immediately after Moriarty is mentioned, another turn into surreality takes place; the skeleton moves on its own, a spectral voice calls, and Sherlock is back to his mind palace.

VOICE (rhythmically, as if reciting lyrics to a song): Do not forget me.

... and Holmes starts violently and wakes up to find himself lying on his side on a narrow rocky ledge. Water is pouring over him as if it is raining heavily.

HOLMES : Oh, I see. Still not awake, am I?

"Still not awake" - what a peculiar choice of words. The line between reality and hallucination is feeble because it's not there; the plane, the hospital, the cemetery? All fabrications of his own mind.

Look, even Moriarty must be tired of beating around the bush, 'cause he doesn't talk in riddles anymore. He just lays it out:

MORIARTY: Too deep, Sherlock. Way too deep. Congratulations. You’ll be the first man in history to be buried in his own Mind Palace.

MORIARTY: I am your WEAKNESS!

MORIARTY: I keep you DOWN!

MORIARTY: Every time you STUMBLE, every time you FAIL, when you’re WEAK...

MORIARTY: I... AM... THERE!

MORIARTY: No. Don’t try to fight it. LIE BACK AND LOSE!

So, not only Sherlock has gone deep into his mind palace, he never got out of it and he literally can't.

John coming to the rescue must represent Sherlock finally waking up... or does it?

WATSON: So, how do you plan to wake up?

HOLMES: Between you and me, John, I always survive a fall.

In fact, Sherlock jumps and falls deeper down and while we're told he always survives the fall, we're never told about the landing. We're circling back to what Moriarty said.

At this point, is Sherlock waking up on the plane again even real? Do overdosed people just wake up like that, and go on with their day like nothing's happened?

Furthermore, if Sherlock really woke up on the plane, this should be where the episode ends.

Why, instead, go back again to 1895?

HOLMES: It was simply my conjecture of what a future world might look like, and how you and I might fit inside it.

HOLMES: From a drop of water, a logician should be able to infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara.

Where is this happening? What's the "Atlantic" (or Niagara, or Reichenbach) we should be able to infer?

The structure of TAB – the back and forth between past and present, fiction and reality - reminded me of this zen koan:

"Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi. Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things."

As you may know, a koan is a paradox: for instance, you can't be both man and butterfly, but at the same time you can't be definitively sure about one or the other. This is where we're left at the end of the episode – hanging on the doubt that what we've seen so far has been imagination disguised as reality: Sherlock can't be both in present time (having woken up on the plane) and in the Victorian setting we've just seen.

So we should infer that he is still stuck in his mind palace, and his hallucination is not only about the 1895 timeline, but comprises all the scenes set in present time, too -"It was simply my conjecture of what a future world might look like"; also, he might have overindulged with his drugs, to the point of never coming back to consciousness.

WATSON: As for your own tale, are you sure it’s still just a seven percent solution that you take? I think you may have increased the dosage.

Notice how the overdosing incident will never be mentioned again, which makes sense if we assume that it's a point stuck in time with no foreseeable resolution – an idea which is supported by Mycroft's notebook, in the form of the Minkowski Metric we can see there:

a formula referring to special relativity, more specifically "the spacetime interval between any two events is independent of the inertial frame of reference in which they are recorded" (x)

All this, in the perspective of interpreting S4, makes for an interesting premise... but we'll look into it another time.

_____

Dialogue transcript source: Ariane DeVere

[idw-sonic-fan-blog]

The Mandates

Just wanted to share my thoughts on the pro-ported mandates because they cast a shadow on this comic.

“Game characters cannot have relatives unless they were estabilished in the game canon, i.e. Cream and her mother.”

This one is understandable and you can blame Penders for this. Mind you that most licensed comics of gaming franchises don’t actually delve too much in personal family relationships or expand on them. So this is expected and honestly Sega should have put the screws on Archie decades ago about this.

“Game characters can not die. There are workarounds for this, such as being Mistaken for Dying or "Mistaken For Dead”

Again. Yes. Not a big deal.

“Game characters cannot have wardrobe changes unless approved. Chao Races and Badnik Bases has some characters (mainly the female game characters) wear different clothes for extreme conditions. Male characters remain the same.”

This is a useless rule but whatever. I mean Sega, you are the ones putting bad wardrobe choices on the characters so again it’s whatever.

“Sonic can't be shown getting too emotional (i.e;cry)”

This is one that it complained about because it really wouldn’t matter unless it is called attention to. A lot of superheroes don’t cry. But that doesn’t prohibit them from expressing themselves. IDW Sonic has been sad. He has been pissed. He has been furious.

Is this not too emotional?

Is he not expressing himself appropriately?

I don’t even know why this is brought up. When in this comic has Sonic not been expressive or displaying the appropriate amount of emotion? When did Sonic needing to cry be necessary?

“Game characters cannot enter in a relationship.”

Oh GOD YES. Don’t threaten me with a good time.

“All major Character Development must be approved by SEGA.”

Yeah, of course. Let me remind you that Penders and Archie ruined any strand of trust Sega could have in comic media. They played loose at first and all of the sudden, they are involved in a lawsuit about characters in a Sonic comic that they didn’t even know about. They probably lost a video game business relationship because of it. If they want to be involved in the comics, fine. That means that they are now forced to World Build. They have to invest in it now and not just be like Lucas Films and let anybody do anything with their flagship title.

“Much like the post-reboot of the Archie comic, the words "Mobius" is banned—the planet is simply called "Sonic's World". Unlike the Post-Boot, which allowed the names "Mobian" and "Mobini", anything related to Mobius is banned in this comic.”

…Of course but how about you throw the writer’s a bone and I don’t know, name the fucking planet. If it is not Earth, give it a name.

“Sonic must always win at the end. Even if he and his friends are at the losing end in an overarching story (the Metal Virus arc, for example), they must come out on top when it concludes.”

I don’t even get this rule and the knee jerk hatred for it. Why even have it? Why even share the existence of this rule? Archie Sonic didn’t really lose too bad. It’s more on how you frame a victory. The fact of the matter is that Eggman is still actively trying to conquer the planet. Sonic stops him but Eggman still has control of land and has military installations all over.

This rule is offset by this. While Sonic can’t lose, Sonic can’t completely win.

“Characters and material from other licensed properties (Sonic the Comic, Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM)', Sonic Underground, the OVA, Sonic X and the Paramount films cannot be used. This rule extends to characters and redesigns done by the current writers. The only exception is Sticks from Sonic Boom, and that's because she was created by SEGA themselves and showed up in non-Boom media, but any ideas regarding her use still need to be okayed by SEGA.”

First off I am glad that Sticks was spared by this rule and I look forward to her eventual inclusion. Second, again, this is not much of a big deal as it was expected. Sorry Freedom Fighter fans but honestly deal.

“Male characters, sans Eggman, can't wear pants, which was also a thing in the Post-Reboot, albeit never explicitly stated. The inverse is also true; female characters have to have some form of lower clothing.”

Okay this is a pedantic rule. It is so weird with how precise it is. Like…huh?

“Classic characters such as Mighty, Ray, Nack/Fang, Bean, and Bark won't appear in non-Classic issues, as Sega doesn't want Classic and Modern Sonic to mix.”

One of the most bullshit mandates fueled by the nostalgia boner fans created. Like this is stupid because Archie Modern Sonic has added more character and depth to all of these mentioned characters than any of the Sega Sonic games they appeared in which only amounts to 1 or 2 at most. Why neuter your own potential stories with this stupid limitation?

“According to Ian Flynn, a specific incident involving Shadow's characterization when he's exposed to the Zombot infection was written in a specific way because of Sega mandating that he be written as an "overconfident asshole rival" character, similar to Vegeta. He later followed up with an explanation that out of every character, Shadow has the most mandates and notes attached to how he's portrayed. According to the podcast, Sega says that Team Dark is no longer a thing. The three members are not a team and they have never worked for G.U.N.; Shadow also doesn't even consider them friends.”

This is my opinion is the worst rule. First it’s contradictory to the character Sega introduced us to. Stop trying to be like Dragon Ball for once and actually be your own thing. It’s one thing if we are changing it because Shadow was unpopular because of his personality. But no one likes this Shadow. People miss the somber but reserved Hedgehog that continued to fight in spite of the world betraying him. Hothead Shadow is a cheap Knuckles. And I don’t even understand why Shadow even has so many mandates when he wasn’t the most egregious offender. Knuckles was.

Also, Team Dark aren’t a thing and Shadow doesn’t even consider them to be his friends. First off that doesn’t even fly in your own games. Who outside of Sonic does Shadow interact the most? Rouge. They have teamed up and were a packaged duo since their inception. When Shadow appeared, Rouge appeared right next to him. If Rouge was in a game, so was Shadow.

Team Dark or just Rouge has fought alongside Shadow in every game they appeared in. Who else does Shadow talk to if not Rouge?

“Sega has stated to Flynn that only male hedgehogs are allowed to go Super with the Chaos Emeralds.”

Except in Sonic Mania.

“Ian isn't allowed to directly reference a game, since the comic is supposed to be its own thing.”

Okay. Not only is this rule stupid. But it’s untrue.

This references the end of Sonic Forces.

The first page of comic.

It has referenced Sonic Adventure, SA2, Sonic Generations , and Sonic Unleashed.

This referencing Shadow the Hedgehog.

I don’t believe this rule exists and even if it did, it is dumbest rule since the whole point of this comic is to base it off the games more. The dumbest rule.

“Knuckles is not allowed to leave Angel Island unless he has a very good reason to.”

For decades, people have complained that Knuckles routinely leaves the island. For decades. Now does this mean Sega is going to 1. Use Knuckles and 2. Amplify the importance of Angel Island and the Master Emerald? No. Again, this criticism should be levied at Sega because they often conveniently forget Knuckles purpose and just hand wave it instead of giving Knuckles more to do on the island like I don’t know, have other entities invested in attacking him.

In summary, here is what I think is going on. Do I think most of these mandates are real? Yes. Given what happened to Archie, I do think Sega is doing some brand alignment. I think they got the clamps on.

But what I think is going on is a Japanese cultural thing called Power Harassment. It is normalized abuse of power. Sega of Japan is normally laxxed about their brands. They don’t mind blatant rip-offs of their mascot nor do they get stiff about fandom creations or mods. The comic division, however, is getting tough love because not only did it cost them a publishing deal, but ruined a relationship with a high end developer. So the IDW writers and staff are being subjected to intentionally hypocritical rules and strict mandates that they know don’t make sense until they’ve shown to be obedient.

A lot of the mandates aren’t strict. But some are so asinine that I don’t think they aren’t aware with how stupid they sound imposing those rules. Like Shadow is the most narratively complete Sonic character and yet, Sega puts this tight mandate as if Archie Shadow was the most egregious thing. Archie Shadow was overpowered. He wasn’t out of character like Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails were. They can’t be that stupid or be that intentionally dense. So they want to see if the writing crew can follow orders. That’s it.

But that’s just my take.

[ladyalienist]

So what happened yesterday is that I posted a rant about fatphobia in radical feminist spaces. And today I woke up finding some notes, some I had already seen yesterday but I didn't bother to reply, which I deeply regret.

Yes because I would like to offer a shoutout to that one single person who reblogged it with a series of tags that proved the point, but sadly some hours later she changed her mind and erased the tags, thus forbidding me to offer her the attention she clearly deserved. I managed to take one look at them and they were along the lines of "you're a lazy and not feminist dipshit", so luckily the concept of such a profound insight has not gotten entirely lost, even if the poetics of the wording has. Food for thought, my ladies, food for thought!

However, another reply I managed to save:

@september-morning-butch I hope you don't mind me making another post to reply to your insight, which I indeed found fascinating.

See... I find it fascinating that you automatically assumed I never once in my life spoke to a sporty person.

I was a sporty person. Some posts earlier I wrote about the sports I've tried and sometimes kept on doing for years, and since I am human and I live in a society, I also have had interaction with fitness enthusiasts, coaches and casual sporty human beings. Most of my friends hit the gym on the regular or practice some other kind of physical activity. When I have spare time I, too, do so.

Maybe I should have asked more expert sporty people. Like this man, for instance. Or this woman. Or, why not, this guy. The list goes on, and on, and on: maybe not every sport enthusiast will tell me the same things.

I find it also fascinating that you assume I do not know the criteria for a diet to be actually working. Do you by any chance think that fat people do not ever try to go on diets, or that I, personally, did never try? Because I did.

And now I will share with you what usually happens when Average Jane, who just needs to keep off those 10 kilos and then she's fine, goes on a diet-and-gym-new-lifestyle:

Average Jane decides to go to a nutritionist, who will (usually) tell her to cut all processed foods, all sugars and most carbs and invest on proteins. She then will subscribe to the gym and receive her personalized (which is usually just a standard one but let's not become too pedantic) programme. She starts the next day, full of good intentions. At first she's enthusiastic: she's finally losing those ugly ugly fat rolls! She will be in shape! Her lifestyle will be healthy and good, no more food guilt! Then, usually after a month or two, she starts noticing that the weight loss is slowing down and she's stabilizing somewhere that's not her ideal weight. Let's say she wants to weigh 50 kilos: she weighs 55 and can't seem to go under. At the same time, gym is getting increasingly tiring and she's starting to crave sugar and carbs, she dreams of full plates at night, every waking moment is spent in food obsessing. At some point she'll either understand that she needs to restrict more, and then more, and then more, in order to keep those rolls off herself, and I don't know how to tell you that this is usually called an eating disorder, or she'll give up and order takeaway one evening, gulp it down, immediately feel better, and in a year she'll have all of her previous fat back on, plus some more in most cases. Two months after she decides that after all it wasn't that bad, and goes back to the nutritionist and to the gym and the cycle restarts. This is called yo-yo dieting and it's far, far more dangerous for health than just staying fat and eating balanced meals.

Now, am I being catastrophic? A little. But I'm not making this up, I'm paraphrasing words from at least one trainer who bragged about her own weight loss journey and how she had spent the last few years never enjoying a social gathering because she cannot deviate from her diet in any way. Not so different from what you told me, but she was totally bragging about... being miserable during celebrations. How is this in any way good for her?

Does this mean "go get stuffed on McDonald's"? Absolutely not. Following a healthy lifestyle and a good diet and exercise regimen is essential! And it's true that sometimes lifestyle changes can and will do wonders for your body! You could cut off McDonald's for anticapitalistic/antispecistic reasons and realize you're losing weight, and that's amazing! However, that's not how most people work and I don't know how to tell you that being constantly hungry because "that's my new lifestyle and I need to keep the weight down" is not healthy in the slightest!

You were unlucky, living with an ugly disorder that requires loads of attention. I understand this and I fully see where you're coming from. Making eating choices that are good for our health sometimes is a hard path that requires willpower, and I am not saying that it doesn't do wonders and that your life quality doesn't improve a lot when you manage it.

But framing the "not working-ness" of dieting as a matter of willpower and basically saying that the only reason they don't is that fat people are not enthusiastic enough about their health... is again re-framing that you think fatness=laziness and moral failure.

So thank you for expressing your point of view in an articulated way instead of just hurling insults, but my point still stands.

[whitehotharlots]

The point is control

Whenever we think or talk about censorship, we usually conceptualize it as certain types of speech being somehow disallowed: maybe (rarely) it's made formally illegal by the government, maybe it's banned in certain venues, maybe the FCC will fine you if you broadcast it, maybe your boss will fire you if she learns of it, maybe your friends will stop talking to you if they see what you've written, etc. etc. 

This understanding engenders a lot of mostly worthless discussion precisely because it's so broad. Pedants--usually arguing in favor of banning a certain work or idea--will often argue that speech protections only apply to direct, government bans. These bans, when they exist, are fairly narrow and apply only to those rare speech acts in which other people are put in danger by speech (yelling the N-word in a crowded theater, for example). This pedantry isn't correct even within its own terms, however, because plenty of people get in trouble for making threats. The FBI has an entire entrapment program dedicated to getting mentally ill muslims and rednecks to post stuff like "Death 2 the Super bowl!!" on twitter, arresting them, and the doing a press conference about how they heroically saved the world from terrorism. 

Another, more recent pedant's trend is claiming that, actually, you do have freedom of speech; you just don't have freedom from the consequences of speech. This logic is eerily dictatorial and ignores the entire purpose of speech protections. Like, even in the history's most repressive regimes, people still technically had freedom of speech but not from consequences. Those leftist kids who the nazis beheaded for speaking out against the war were, by this logic, merely being held accountable. 

The two conceptualizations of censorship I described above are, 99% of the time, deployed by people who are arguing in favor of a certain act of censorship but trying to exempt themselves from the moral implications of doing so. Censorship is rad when they get to do it, but they realize such a solipsism seems kinda icky so they need to explain how, actually, they're not censoring anybody, what they're doing is an act of righteous silencing that's a totally different matter. Maybe they associate censorship with groups they don't like, such as nazis or religious zealots. Maybe they have a vague dedication toward Enlightenment principles and don't want to be regarded as incurious dullards. Most typically, they're just afraid of the axe slicing both ways, and they want to make sure that the precedent they're establishing for others will not be applied to themselves.

Anyone who engages with this honestly for more than a few minutes will realize that censorship is much more complicated, especially in regards to its informal and social dimensions. We can all agree that society simply would not function if everyone said whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. You might think your boss is a moron or your wife's dress doesn't look flattering, but you realize that such tidbits are probably best kept to yourself. 

Again, this is a two-way proposition that everyone is seeking to balance. Do you really want people to verbalize every time they dislike or disagree with you? I sure as hell don't. And so, as part of a social compact, we learn to self-censor. Sometimes this is to the detriment of ourselves and our communities. Most often, however, it's just a price we have to pay in order to keep things from collapsing. 

But as systems, large and small, grow increasingly more insane and untenable, so do the comportment standards of speech. The disconnect between America's reality and the image Americans have of themselves has never been more plainly obvious, and so striving for situational equanimity is no longer good enough. We can't just pretend cops aren't racist and the economy isn't run by venal retards or that the government places any value on the life of its citizens. There's too much evidence that contradicts all that, and the evidence is too omnipresent. There's too many damn internet videos, and only so many of them can be cast as Russian disinformation. So, sadly, we must abandon our old ways of communicating and embrace instead systems that are even more unstable, repressive, and insane than the ones that were previously in place.

Until very, very recently, nuance and big-picture, balanced thinking were considered signs of seriousness, if not intelligence. Such considerations were always exploited by shitheads to obfuscate things that otherwise would have seemed much less ambiguous, yes, but this fact alone does not mitigate the potential value of such an approach to understanding the world--especially since the stuff that's been offered up to replace it is, by every worthwhile metric, even worse.

So let's not pretend I'm Malcolm Gladwell or some similarly slimy asshole seeking to "both sides" a clearcut moral issue. Let's pretend I am me. Flash back to about a year ago, when there was real, widespread, and sustained support for police reform. Remember that? Seems like forever ago, man, but it was just last year... anyhow, now, remember what happened? Direct, issues-focused attempts to reform policing were knocked down. Blotted out. Instead, we were told two things: 1) we had to repeat the slogan ABOLISH THE POLICE, and 2) we had to say it was actually very good and beautiful and nonviolent and valid when rioters burned down poor neighborhoods.

Now, in a relatively healthy discourse, it might have been possible for someone to say something like "while I agree that American policing is heavily violent and racist and requires substantial reforms, I worry that taking such an absolutist point of demanding abolition and cheering on the destruction of city blocks will be a political non-starter." This statement would have been, in retrospect, 100000000% correct. But could you have said it, in any worthwhile manner? If you had said something along those lines, what would the fallout had been? Would you have lost friends? Your job? Would you have suffered something more minor, like getting yelled at, told your opinion did not matter? Would your acquaintances still now--a year later, after their political project has failed beyond all dispute--would they still defame you in "whisper networks," never quite articulating your verbal sins but nonetheless informing others that you are a dangerous and bad person because one time you tried to tell them how utterly fucking self-destructive they were being? It is undeniably clear that last year's most-elevated voices were demanding not reform but catharsis. I hope they really had fun watching those immigrant-owned bodegas burn down, because that’s it, that will forever be remembered as the most palpable and consequential aspect of their shitty, selfish movement. We ain't reforming shit. Instead, we gave everyone who's already in power a blank check to fortify that power to a degree you and I cannot fully fathom.

But, oh, these people knew what they were doing. They were good little boys and girls. They have been rewarded with near-total control of the national discourse, and they are all either too guilt-ridden or too stupid to realize how badly they played into the hands of the structures they were supposedly trying to upend.

And so left-liberalism is now controlled by people whose worldview is equal parts superficial and incoherent. This was the only possible outcome that would have let the system continue to sustain itself in light of such immense evidence of its unsustainability without resulting in reform, so that's what has happened.

But... okay, let's take a step back. Let's focus on what I wanted to talk about when I started this.

I came across a post today from a young man who claimed that his high school English department head had been removed from his position and had his tenure revoked for refusing to remove three books from classrooms. This was, of course, fallout from the ongoing debate about Critical Race Theory. Two of those books were Marjane Satropi's Persepolis and, oh boy, The Diary of Anne Frank. Fuck. Jesus christ, fuck.

Now, here's the thing... When Persepolis was named, I assumed the bannors were anti-CRT. The graphic novel does not deal with racism all that much, at least not as its discussed contemporarily, but it centers an Iranian girl protagonist and maybe that upset Republican types. But Anne Frank? I'm sorry, but the most likely censors there are liberal identiarians who believe that teaching her diary amounts to centering the suffering of a white woman instead of talking about the One Real Racism, which must always be understood in an American context. The super woke cult group Black Hammer made waves recently with their #FuckAnneFrank campaign... you'd be hard pressed to find anyone associated with the GOP taking a firm stance against the diary since, oh, about 1975 or so.

So which side was it? That doesn't matter. What matters is, I cannot find out.

Now, pro-CRT people always accuse anti-CRT people of not knowing what CRT is, and then after making such accusations they always define CRT in a way that absolutely is not what CRT is. Pro-CRTers default to "they don't want  students to read about slavery or racism." This is absolutely not true, and absolutely not what actual CRT concerns itself with. Slavery and racism have been mainstays of American history curriucla since before I was born. Even people who barely paid attention in school would admit this, if there were any more desire for honesty in our discourse. 

My high school history teacher was a southern "lost causer" who took the south's side in the Civil War but nonetheless provided us with the most descriptive and unapologetic understandings of slavery's brutalities I had heard up until that point. He also unambiguously referred to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshmia and Nagasaki as "genocidal." Why? Because most people's politics are idiosyncratic, and because you cannot genuinely infer a person to believe one thing based on their opinion of another, tangentially related thing. The totality of human understanding used to be something open-minded people prided themselves on being aware of, believe it or not...

This is the problem with CRT. This is is the motivation behind the majority of people who wish to ban it. It’s not because they are necessarily racist themselves. It’s because they recognize, correctly, that the now-ascendant frames for understanding social issues boils everything down to a superficial patina that denies not only the realities of the systems they seek to upend but the very humanity of the people who exist within them. There is no humanity without depth and nuance and complexities and contradictions. When you argue otherwise, people will get mad and fight back. 

And this is the most bitter irony of this idiotic debate: it was never about not wanting to teach the sinful or embarrassing parts of our history. That was a different debate, one that was settled and won long ago. It is instead an immense, embarrassing overreach on behalf of people who have bullied their way to complete dominance of their spheres of influence within media and academe assuming they could do the same to everyone else. Some of its purveyors may have convinced themselves that getting students to admit complicity in privilege will prevent police shootings, sure. But I know these people. I’ve spoken to them at length. I’ve read their work. The vast, vast majority of them aren’t that stupid. The point is to exert control. The point is to make sure they stay in charge and that nothing changes. The point is failure. 

[janiedean]

Book!Theon is Azor!Ahai, not Jon. It makes no sense narratively for Jon to be AA, and it’s the most stereotypical thing ever, and he’s already stereotypical, he’s the red flag for the audience. Theon’s chapters are full of hints, he has the perfect salt/smoke/stars/dragons thing at the end of ACOK, when he “dies”. His story is about destroying death, his entire narrative, with things that come from mythology and ancient literature, points to that. The show is trash, but don’t you think that it’s a little weird that Theon is there at the end and then Arya comes out of nowhere and becomes AA? And what ending does she get? Exploring the unknown SEA with SHIPS? Being free and on her own? Maybe it doesn’t make sense for her because it’s not for her. D&D already took everything else from Theon, they took this too. And even if he’s not AA, he’s still clearly connected to magic and all of that, he didn’t go though so much for nothing, he didn’t take his name back for the first time in his life, his name that literally means “godly”, for nothing. He has something big to do, and it’s about himself, not Robb and the Starks. And he’s also so clearly connected to the politics of the north and of the iron islands, a villain was literally created for him, so I don’t understand how can you say he’s not really important and all he’s got left to do is retire in a house and be sad. Of course he has a lot of trauma and that’s important, but I don’t like how people reduce him to that and act like just because those things happened, he can’t do anything else

anon with no ill will and I swear I don't want to sound pedantic or anything but I, uh, never came to the conclusion you say I came from - that said let's go in order even if I think I already went through all the reasons why it makes literally no sense if it's anyone but jon, but let's start with one thing:

It makes no sense narratively for Jon to be AA, and it’s the most stereotypical thing ever, and he’s already stereotypical, he’s the red flag for the audience.

it's stereotypical.... to us maybe, but it is not to westeros. like, you're looking at it through audience-lens because it has been years and the show confirmed r+l=j and we all figured that shit out, but to westeros, the idea that the prince that was promised is a bastard guy serving on the wall aka a state-sponsored prison where people go to not die and is filled to non-desirables to society is... the least likely option in existence? no really, but again:

first thing that should quiet all doubts, when melisandre asks r'hollor to see azor ahai bc she wants to see stannis, r'hollor shows her jon snow and instead of going like 'uh wait why am I seeing another dude' she's like 'I want to see stannis but r'hollor shows me jon snow there must be some disturbance on the line', like she doesn't even consider for a second that it might be jon;

no one else has brought WITHIN THE NARRATIVE jon up as a likely candidate - they said stannis, they said dany, they said whoever but no one ever said hey jon snow might be AA, because again no one even suspects that it might be jon;

other matter that you're overlooking here: if theon is azor ahai.... it means that the rebellion basically was for nothing? because like the entire shtick with rhaegar targaryen's bad life choices™ is that he was apparently a swell dude, then he read a book where somehow it was exactly explained how the apocalypse was gonna happen, he deduced that he was the guy who had to father AA/the prince that was promised and in order - first he doesn't care about fighting but suddenly after that he starts getting learned; - he immediately worries over having THREE children from which we can deduce from the narrative that as far as he knows in order to fight when the wights come he has to have three kids for three dragons and one of them is azor ahai; - the moment his wife can't have more than two even if he's sure that he already had the right one (aegon) he still runs off with lyanna to make sure he has the third because it's that important that HE rhaegar targaryen fathers the three heads of the dragon... to the point of starting a civil war and most likely giving arthur orders to make sure that the kid lives at all costs even if he thinks lyanna's kid is NOT AA; - let's remember that the entire schtick is also that 'he is the ptwp and his is the song of ice and fire' which means that this kid of rhaegar's is the person these books are titled after.

now, let's look again at tyrion's infamous quote which I always bring up in these cases but let's refresh our memory here Prophecy is like a half-trained mule. It looks as though it might be useful, but the moment you trust in it, it kicks you in the head now: given this, we can absolutely assume that no single prophecy in this book goes the way the person at the end of it interprets it... which means that rhaegar was wrong on a lot of accounts, but guess what, the thing is that one out of three of his kids is dead (if we count aegon as trueborn, if he's not then two on three but I think he's trueborn) and the one who hatched the eggs/has the dragon is DANY so he already was wrong on head of the dragon #1, and he can absolutely be wrong on aegon being tptwp which would mean mistake #2 and we should know about the prophecy, but one of his children being AA and his being the song of ice and fire looks a bit too much of a stretch to be incorrect and have AA being someone else's son also would be.... but if AA is jon ie the one he had for last that he was sure was not AA and who doesn't even have the targ name (nor the stark one) and no one suspects having that kinda ancestry then yes it fits exactly all the parameters and it still allows for rhaegar to have partially misinterpreted the entire thing even in large chunks but not enough to make it look like he was completely making shit up, which... I mean the long night is coming I don't doubt he had very good reasons to want to stop it; also, anon not to beat the dead horse, but: - jon's death fits all the prophecy parameters already there's the bleeding star, the smoking wound and the salt of the tears which btw is not obvious nor something you'd immediately do 2+2 about... which fits perfectly with the above - jon died and came back to life in the godforsaken show like he's literally the only idiot who resurrected in it and we're supposed to handwave it the way dnd did? - jon has a valyrian steel sword that he can handle while theon atm really doesn't - we could argue that ygritte could be a possible nissa-nissa contender though I mean maybe it could also be that he and val get hot and bothered and it turns out it's her or someone else and that hasn't happened yet but surely there's more evidence for that with jon than with theon - theon has like... povs in two books for a total amount of less than fifteen chapters, jon has at least ten chapters per book or so on, which just mathematically makes jon a main fiver character while theon is not and like I understand deconstruction and all but you don't make your ace in the hole mystical prince hero character someone who has had fifteen chapters total at most unless I remember wrong the amount he had in acok in comparison to someone who was a main throughout the entire thing - like guys I say it as someone whose third-fave char is theon, theon is not a main fiver™ character and that's okay that's not the point, and with that I don't mean he's not important, I mean that he's not one of the five main ones that have most of the plot stuff on their shoulders and he's not THE main character, because if theon is AA then these books are named a song of theon greyjoy and considering that the main five are jon tyrion arya dany and bran I think it's highly not probable that at the end of it theon is the one character to rule them all

and that was for how jon fit the criteria, but theon doesn't fit them because again he doesn't have a number of chapters/povs that justifies such a plot twist, balon is certainly not rhaegar and I don't see how rhaegar reads a prophecy wrt balon and thinks it's about him, the heads of the dragon should be three and theon had three siblings two of which are dead and asha has no tie to the dragon storyline, this means that theon should be able to ride/command a dragon and we know that in theory just targs can and there's already three of them around - dany jon and aegon - and if anyone who's not a targ has a narrative reason to ride a dragon is tyrion not theon... and tyrion is a main fiver too, also there's the nissa-nissa/burning sword angle and as it is theon could absolutely use a bow again but a longsword with his hands maimed like that and no muscle mass would be a bit implausible, in order for the reborn prophecy to actually make sense it means his last adwd chapter should have smoke, salt and the bleeding star which it doesn't but jon's has so there's that

now, re what you said wrt theon:

Theon’s chapters are full of hints

not really? he doesn't have a tie to the magical storyline beyond his connection to bran. they have hints for a lot of things but that he's AA? idt so

he has the perfect salt/smoke/stars/dragons thing at the end of ACOK, when he “dies”

okay but then I could use the same argument for saying that AA could be davos when he survives blackwater because he says he woke up in wreckage of smoke in salty water, and then stannis has equally valid arguments bc he has the shiny sword and he's in dragonstone etc and we all know it's not stannis, also an AA death at the ending of acok when the topic has barely been introduced in dany's vision is entirely too early for me to drop that bomb

his story is about destroying death, his entire narrative, with things that come from mythology and ancient literature, points to that.

his story is about overcoming trauma and abuse and not dying in the process (which is why I think the show was trash) and okay but everyone in these books has something that comes from a mythology or ancient literature, like jaime brienne and c. all have arthuriana roots same as bran, doesn't make any of them a viable AA candidate

The show is trash, but don’t you think that it’s a little weird that Theon is there at the end and then Arya comes out of nowhere and becomes AA?And what ending does she get? Exploring the unknown SEA with SHIPS? Being free and on her own? Maybe it doesn’t make sense for her because it’s not for her.

considering that maisie williams was shocked that arya was AA and she also thought it made no sense and that dnd never thought theon had his own storyline while I can agree on the fact that it fits more for him as an ending than for arya, I don't think that means it makes him AA, same as I think that they gave sansa his storyline and possibly his confrontation with ramsay and I'm not 100% convinced on the last part anyway but that just means they didn't realize theon doesn't exist for the starks' storyline, also like.. in the show everyone but c. was in WF and theon was already dead when arya did her thing and honestly idt the battle of the long night will ever go like that anyway so idt even partially show truthing is bringing us anywhere

and even if he’s not AA, he’s still clearly connected to magic and all of that, he didn’t go though so much for nothing, he didn’t take his name back for the first time in his life, his name that literally means “godly”, for nothing

I never said it was for nothing which I'll elaborate in a second and ofc he's connected to the magic storyline... because he's connected with bran's storyline and his last round of atonement has to happen through bran in the sense that since he was the one basically forcing bran out of wf now he most likely has to facilitate bringing him back or smth (surely not dying for him), but like whatever magical stuff he has going on it has to do with bran dot, not with AA which I still think he doesn't have a stricter text connection to than davos has for that matter and idt davos is AA as I think I made clear

He has something big to do, and it’s about himself, not Robb and the Starks.

never said he didn't, and I also said that I wasn't going to speculate in detail about what theon has to do because I don't think there are enough text elements to say it now but there will be when wow comes out for sure, but like again I don't want to make predictions when I don't have the elements and wrt theon's themes/possible canon ending etc I always said that he most likely isn't going to inherit the islands but that he'll do something huge before the books are done which is gonna be tied to the northern storyline and possibly to bran because he has to go specular to acok - acok is his downfall, adwd is 'I'll find myself again', wow+ados have to be what would theon do if he decides his own thing while being his own person, or recycling my old THEON HAS HEGELIAN THEMES IN HIS STORYLINE acok = thesis, adwd = antithesis, wow+ados = synthesis so obviously he has something huge in the plans.... I just don't think it means he's AA

And he’s also so clearly connected to the politics of the north and of the iron islands, a villain was literally created for him, so I don’t understand how can you say he’s not really important and all he’s got left to do is retire in a house and be sad

aaand here we get to the point which is that... I never said that? I honestly never said that? I said he has to overcome his trauma and live and thrive and be happy after that. if he retires in a house at the end of ados after he does whatever he has to do in the main plot it's going to be because it's what he wants to do and most likely he and jeyne are going to be adorbs while doing it together or smth or if he goes back to the islands and advises asha then he's going to be happy doing that too, but like... the entire point of theon's sl is that he overcomes that horrendous abuse while not being a perfect good victim™ throughout and still be happy after and gain his redemption? that's what I always said. I never said that now he can just retire and be sad. trauma recovery is becoming happy after getting over your trauma. not being sad. and like.... sometimes not getting amazing mythological things but just being happy by yourself is actually a goal? again, grrm is a lapsed catholic. if I know that breed and I do, he doesn't think redemption and happiness are in shortage at the supermarket. and in order for theon to have narrative importance/weight/relevance he doesn't have to do magical mythological IMPORTANT™ things (even if I think he does have something cooked up as I said above), but like the entire point of his sl is the trauma recovery. he's there for that. that's literally his point in the plot and the fact that grrm created a villain for him means that he thinks it's an important thing to explore.

also I personally think that theon's arc is the best written thing in those books so like I don't want to undermine its importance, I just don't think that in order to be important™ then theon has to be dragged kicking and screaming into main fiver territory because there isn't the need.

. Of course he has a lot of trauma and that’s important, but I don’t like how people reduce him to that and act like just because those things happened, he can’t do anything else

I don't like that either esp. when coming from dnd who didn't even let him have it fully, but: and when did I ever do it? I never said that theon is only his trauma. my standing opinion wrt theon is that he's grrm's best written/constructed character (along with jaime) and his most innovative one (jaime following but theon wins it) because theon deconstructs the backstabber trope which I already went on about but:

again usually ppl who backstab the good protagonist™ get caught and punished and you never hear their pov

theon has all the povs

he's the main char in that storyline not robb

he has entirely understandable reasons that ppl decided aren't sympathetic just bc they don't want to admit that in his position they'd have done the same thing

the audience hates him for having contributed to robb's downfall but then he gets a comeuppance that's completely not what anyone would deserve for that and he gets the spotlight/the sympathy again

he gets narrative redemption saving jeyne so you can see he's not an asshole at all

has to get through horrific abuse for his entire life not just with ramsay, he's not a good victim™ but he's still written in a way that makes you want to root for him and at the end he actually comes through so you want him to keep on succeeding

which is smth that with the backstabber trope never happens

now the thing is that theon's there bc a) identity issues b) trauma recovery storylines that then get tied to bran's main one but like idg why just having the recovery storyline would make him lesser - saying he's not a main fiver doesn't mean he's not important, it means he's not a MAIN™ character... which in asoiaf doesn't matter bc even ppl without povs are important to the narration and are there to drive a point (see sandor and stannis), and I don't see why saying that the most important part of his sl/the one grrm wants to stick with the readers is the survivor part of it rather than whichever heavy magic related plot thing he has to play in the future means undermining his importance. and while I think he has that role, idt it's the most important one he has bc being a survivor is what sells his storyline/the entire arc of his character.

then if come wow I'm wrong I'll be like okay I fucked up, but: honestly, imvho there is no way that azor ahai is not jon snow, the fact that collectively as a fandom we think it's obvious doesn't mean people in westeros do, each single point of evidence is at jon and if occam's razor is a thing then it's jon and that's okay because as deconstructed chosen one as he is, jon is still the protagonist of these books and regarding the prophecy above, it makes a lot more sense that this series is titled a song of jon snow and not a song of theon greyjoy and I say this as someone who vastly prefers theon as a character. also, if smth is well-written, readers should see it coming, so the fact that jon is AA isn't predictable if it's true, it's grrm.... knowing how to write a book and plant his hints because if everyone guessed right then if he makes it suddenly someone else bc jon is too predictable then it's dnd making it arya bc SURPRISE WE NEEDED YOU TO GO LIKE WTF HAS JUST HAPPENED INSTEAD OF FOLLOWING THE NARRATION TO ITS NATURAL CONCLUSION, not 'it's too predictable' or the audience red herring the way jaime being the valonqar is an audience red herring. jon being AA should be absolutely obvious for the reader who paid attention and a total surprise for the other characters in the narration, the audience red herring is more dany than anyone else imvho and I'm dying on that hill for now, thanks for coming to my ted talk but like I don't see how it's anyone but jon personally X°D

[dialux]

bring on the fire, bring on the storm

Written for @aspecardaweek! I meant to put this up for either Day 1 or 2, but time flew past me. This fits into my Findis fic series, and is a very... roundabout exploration of how being aroace can affect your life if your dad’s the only person to have two marriages, I suppose?

...

“They are searching for you, little one.”

“Let them search,” says Findis coldly. 

For all that Findis is young, and that Tirion is at peace, she knows her politics well. Rumil had spoken strenuously against Finwe’s remarriage, and he remains one of Feanaro’s strongest allies. Findis- eldest daughter of Indis, first child to bring two divided people together- is not one of his charges, and never will be if Indis has her way. They both know this.

“Your father,” says Rumil slowly, before heaving a great sigh. “Your father is a great man, but he sees the world through his own eyes.”

“A king cannot choose to be half-blind.”

“And yet he is the king we chose. Envinyasse-” Findis does turn at that, levelling such a look at Rumil that he steps back, “-Findis, then. Findis: he is a good king, and a good father besides.”

“He does not understand me.”

“Have you allowed him to?” 

“I am not Feanaro.”

“Feanaro was very young when he met Nerdanel,” Rumil acknowledges. “But then, so was Finwe when he met Miriel. He only wishes for you to feel that joy as well.”

He sounds like he thinks she needs consolation. But Findis has not wept for her father in many, many centuries.

“My heart is my own,” says Findis. “Go to my father and tell him that I’ve given it to the sea, and shall not return until he learns that I’ve my own thoughts, my own loves, and my own mind.”

“You’re leaving?” asks Rumil, startled.

“I will not stay in a home where I am not heard,” replies Findis, and draws the hood of her cloak over her head, and starts walking.

...

Findis is the eldest child of Indis and Finwe. She is the eldest daughter, and she represents, more than any other, the whole of that truth: it’s an open secret through Tirion that she is meant to bind herself to another high lord of the Noldor, to fall in love with him, to bear him children with shining eyes and starful beauty. To heal the rift caused by Miriel’s death, in the only way that she can.

It’s the greater pity that Findis refuses.

...

How did you know? she asks, once, desperate for advice. 

Feanaro, hot in the throes of his love for Nerdanel, smiles at her. ‘Tis not some difficult tapestry to weave, Nesace. You will find one for yourself, sooner or later.

And if I do not, she thinks, but does not say. If I never find anyone- if I never wish to find anyone- what then?

But she is named Envinyasse for the healing she is meant to bring. She is named Envinyasse for the bridge her father wished her to become, and that bridge is made up of Findis finding someone to love, and she was never asked, not once, whether this is a task she wishes to complete. Whether this is a task she can complete.

...

The sea is cold and silver, and Findis lets her rage run out into its rippling waters. She spends many years there: composing songs, sharpening knives, studying her own fea. Though she is not hiding from her family, she also refuses all her parents’ summons back to Tirion: if she returns, Findis will have to explain why she left, and that will be impossible if she does not have the words for it. 

She explains as much to Lalwen when she comes to fetch her. 

“And so you’ve spent a decade trying to find those words?” asks Lalwen, spearing a mollusk on a knife. Sand wraps around her braids, but she doesn’t seem to be bothered. “That is... pedantic, even for you.”

“I also wanted to yell at Atar,” says Findis. “I didn’t think he’d appreciate that either.”

“Well. He was- beyond- his authority, last time.” Lalwen waggles her eyebrows. “Amme told him so, after Rumil came back and announced that you’d left to the sea.”

“Did she?” asks Findis, startled.

Indis prefers to let them fight their own battles. She always has. For her to rebuke Finwe- to publicly rebuke Finwe- 

“And then Aro and I spent years scouring the beaches for you. You couldn’t have chosen somewhere further south?”

“I was furious,” says Findis plainly. “Do you think I would have calmed in the warm waters of Alqualonde?”

“I don’t think you’re calm now.”

Findis checks herself, and then relaxes the painfully stiff arch of her spine. “I apologize for the trouble I gave you and Arafinwe.”

Lalwen waves it away. “It gave us an excuse to leave Tirion. Though last I heard, Feanaro’s back in the city, and Nolo never left, so...”

“Let’s hope Tirion remains standing, then.”

“Precisely.”

After a long moment, Lalwen casts the mollusk in the flames and turns back to Findis. “You must return,” she says. “Findis. You cannot while your time away here. We need you. Someone needs to talk sense into Feanaro, and keep all those children from burning the palace down, and stop Amme from fretting to death. I tried, you know, for a year? And then I decided I’d rather spend the rest of my life searching for you. They’re all insane, and exasperating, and- and- and Aro’s in love, did you know that? Aro’s in love, and my fourth betrothal fell through, and I cannot bear staying in Tirion without someone tempering them, I cannot!”

Findis stares at her, and then laughs. "It’s been a busy decade, then.”

“Findis-”

“Fine, yes, I’ll come back to our wretched family.” Findis reaches out a hand and tangles it in Lalwen’s own, ignoring the stickiness of the mollusk on Lalwen’s palm. “For you, darling. For you and no other.”

...

She returns, and she never speaks on it to her father again, but it is quite clear that he has been ordered by her mother not to discuss it. It’s a tenuous kind of peace, but Findis’ life has been built on such peaces all her life, and she’ll take what she can get.

...

This is the truth at the end of all things: Finwe does not understand her, and never will. Findis does not hold that wholly against him.

Not wholly.

...

Not until he chooses Feanaro over all of them. Not until he proves himself incapable of even the dregs of understanding that Findis had offered him.

...

Later, Findis does not remember all that she screams. Finwë shouts back to her, though, and they are matched in their fury; they are matched in their ugliness, and their cruelty, and their knowledge of the others’ intimate, tender spots. Findis does not remember all that she screams or all that is screamed at her. But she remembers, well, that Finwë still leaves.

...

The stairs up to Finwe’s study are long and steep. He’d once told Lalwen that he’d constructed it so to cool the tempers of any petitioners who wished to speak to him in haste- and, if nothing else, it would leave them breathless enough for Finwe to offer tea and a kind smile, bleeding off the worst of their rage. Findis remembers that now.

But no stairs shall serve to temper the worst of her fury. Not after all that has happened.

The door is closed. Findis opens it, steps inside.

“Atar,” she says.

Finwe, busy writing a letter- to Nolofinwe; that stamp atop the page is the blue of Nolofinwe’s house- looks up. “Findis,” he says. “Oh, good. I needed someone to send this letter to your brother.”

Findis clenches her jaw, and deliberately misunderstands. “I am not currently in contact with Feanaro.”

“It’s to Nolofinwe, not Feanaro.”

“Why would you need to send a letter to Nolofinwe?” asks Findis coolly. “You shall see him soon enough. It is Feanaro who is banished.”

“I shall be accompanying Feanaro,” says Finwe slowly.

Something cracks- the windows, giving way under the howling pressure of the wind outside. Findis does not snarl, but it is a close thing indeed. Finwe shifts uneasily, and Findis tosses her- loose- hair out of her face, baring her throat: the throat that Feanaro cut.

“To the edge of Tirion?”

“To Formenos,” says Finwe. “Where he shall live, with his sons and his-”

“-and no other,” says Findis harshly. “Because you shall not be going. Let his sons go with him- I will not stop them- but you will not be accompanying him, not when he held a sword to your son’s throat-” when he held a sword to my throat, she thinks furiously, “-and threatened to cut it!”

“He was angry.”

“And now I am angry.”

“Findis.”

“But my anger has ever been the dross to his gold, hasn’t it?” Findis smiles like a snake: toothless, venomful. “None of us shall accompany you. Do you understand that?”

“I understand your rage,” says Finwe calmly. “I shall not ask you to send your followers into banishment. Of course not.”

The smile widens. “My followers? I wasn’t speaking of them- of course I wouldn’t ask them to go. I was speaking of your family. Of Nolofinwe, yes, but also Lalwen, and Arafinwe. I was speaking of your wife.”

“My wife,” echoes Finwe, as if he doesn’t comprehend what she’s saying. Then he does, and his eyes go cold: the first time, in a long time, that he’s truly seen Findis. That he’s paid as much attention to her as he has to his fair, fair, fair eldest son. “Indis has said she will not accompany me?”

“Does it hurt?” asks Findis. “Does it hurt you, to be so misunderstood?”

“I will explain-”

“No. The time for explanations has passed.” Findis smiles, mirthless, at his open mouth. “Is that not what you said to me that day? That day that you told me that you’d rather I were chained to another elf than alone, that day that you told me that a spouseless life akin to another death-”

“-you cannot hold grudges from centuries past-”

“-I’ve never been enough for you,” she says, quietly, coldly, furiously. “But I thought Nolofinwe might have mattered more to you.”

Finwe rocks back, looking like she’s slapped him. “I did not mean- I do not mean-”

But Findis has no desire to hear his justifications. She narrows her eyes and speaks over him.

“You claim to be the beloved of the Valar,” says Findis harshly. “But it was they who mandated that our marriage bonds must remain exclusive. Tell me, Atar, shall you ask for a third wife now? Shall you go to the Valar and ask for an obedient one, who shall follow you into strife as quiet as a shadow, who shall love you as if the Mingling sets upon your shoulders and the stars wheel in their orbits as per your pleasure, who shall bear you more children, faithful children, quiet and dainty and unassuming and stupid as the ones you wish your living children to become!”

She is shouting by the end, unpleasantly loud. Her face is flushed and her hands are trembling. Her eyes are burning.

“I am your father,” says Finwe, but he is angry now: Findis has made him angry now. Feanaro holding a sword to Nolofinwe’s throat had not made him angry. All of Feanaro’s insults and slights to Finwe’s wife and queen had not made him angry. But this- this- has lit a flame in Finwe’s gaze. “You do not speak to me that way.”

The wind is howling outside. Findis reaches for it with her fea, hands whitening on each other until the bones creak.

“I have waited all my life for your love,” Findis forces out. “But all I have received is your disregard. Over, and over, and over again.”

“I have always lo-”

Findis’ hands clench into fists. The windows crack, glass shattering inwards, and the wind howls as it spills into the room. Finwe flinches. But his will is strong too; the wind ruffles through the papers of the room, but it does not throw him end over end.

“These answers cannot be sought by petitioning the Valar,” says Findis. “You cannot resolve this by asking them for aid. This is an elven problem and an elven decision. But then, when have you ever accepted your mistakes, Atar? When have you- ever- once- claimed- responsibility?”

And now the wind is a flood, snatching at Finwe’s clothes, tearing at his hair. 

He stumbles, once, and then he moves, too, a song of silence and stillness and calm from his throat, and Findis is so taken aback by the sheer power of it- she’d forgotten how powerful Finwe could be when he puts his mind to it- that she is thrown into the door from which she entered.

She lands on her knees.

The wind goes silent.

Finwe says, into the yawing silence, “I forgive you for your lapse in judgment. I understand- tempers are running high- but your brother needs me. Just because I go to Formenos does not mean that I do not love you, Findis. Understand that.”

Findis looks up at him, and Finwe pales at her expression.

“There can be no love without understanding,” she says. “There can be no love without effort. Understand that.”

She lifts her hands, rolls her wrists, and her song surges like a river swollen with snowmelt, like the sword had leapt to Feanaro’s hands in a silver blur as he cut her throat.

The shattered shards of window-glass fling themselves at Finwe. He shouts, once, and then strains his song against her own, as if puzzled as to why he cannot overpower her once more. But Findis is more powerful than him- she is trained in the art of using her voice. She is a Songstress, and she is his heir, and she is as full of rage now- full of a lifetime of rage- as ever Feanaro has been towards Nolofinwe, and she will not stop, because she is as the wind, and who has ever heard of stopping the wind?

But then Finwe turns, and they have exchanged places: he is at the door, and Findis is behind his table, and his eyes are large, and there is blood spotting his once-fine robes, and the glass caught in his hair shines like the crown that he has abandoned-

He yanks open the door and flees.

Findis screams. She screams, loud and louder, and anything capable of shattering within the study shatters at it: inkwells, pots of incense, glass cabinets, the last vestiges of the window panes. She slips to her knees.

Findis does not weep.

(Fifty years later, when the world goes dark, she still does not weep. For six thousand years, for six thousand bitter, bitter years, Findis does not weep.)

...

A lifetime later, Finwe comes to her in her forest dwelling. He sits at her feet, and does not speak, not until she has finished whittling a little star-crowned bird for Elwing’s newest child and set it aside.

Then he turns to her, and he touches her wrists, and Findis lets him, heart twisting in her chest.

“Envinyasse,” he says quietly.

“That is not my name.”

“I named you that,” says Finwe. “But I never dreamed you to do- to do this.”

“Atar-”

“There can be no love without effort,” he says, and Findis goes as still as a windless tree. “There can be no love without understanding. I spent too long not understanding you: seeing what I wanted, hearing what I wanted.” He swallows. “Doing what I wanted.”

“And you’re here to fix that?”

He breathes deep, and then releases her hands, and sits back: as a pupil would, before a master. Findis barely allows herself to breathe.

“I,” says Finwe, with the resolution that had led his people to safety once, eyes bright as the stars hanging around them, “am here to listen.”

[gammija]

Does 170 confirm Martin’s domain?

I know, i know, it’s been 5 weeks since MAG170, and meta/discourse online currently moves at the breakneck speed of one week/episode... But! recently while discussing tma theories with people the idea came up that 170 definitively confirmed Martin’s domain as the Lonely.

I don’t think that that’s the case however, so I wanted to write this post to explain why I think that.

(Not primarily to convince anyone that I’m right, though that’d be a nice bonus ;). More just so I have all my thoughts down in one spot that I can link to in the future, hah. Also, this post is not necessarily arguing that Martin’s domain is definitely not the Lonely - though that, to be fair, is my bias - only that 170 didn’t confirm it one way or the other.)

[Spoilers up to 175] Okay so

there are a few other assumptions/theories about domains and avatars I’m using for the final conclusion above! So I’ll first try to prove those, and then show how 170 does or doesn’t fit them.

1) Martin actually has a domain, because the question was raised and left unanswered in 167:

Martin: “What about me?” Jon: “Would you… like me to -” Martin: “No, no. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

If we aren’t meant to wonder which it is, I’m sure there would’ve been some sort of answer or guess from either Jon or Martin. It would’ve been easy to have either of them suggest the Lonely (or even another Fear), or to simply say that Jon only meant full avatars, and Martin doesn’t have one. So from a meta standpoint, the lack of an answer makes it more likely that there is one, and it’s important.

2) Saying that a domain is “[Someone’s] domain” requires that someone to be (on their way to becoming) an avatar of that fear. This is the only way that the word has been used in relation to people in s5, otherwise it’s used as [Fear’s] domain. Never is the domain the property of the victims.

167: Jon tells us explicitly that domain means “the place that feeds us”, and that Gertrude would “have resigned herself to - ruling her domain.” 168: “This is Oliver Banks’ domain.”  

3) An avatar, while they might be conflicted about their actions, does genuinely like some essential aesthetic of their Fear and indulging in it. That’s shown in basically all the known avatars’ statements, and in 111: 

Gerard: “Do you like [compelling people]? Jon : “[...] Yes, I… I suppose I do.”

The only avatars that don’t follow this are Michael and Gertrude. But then again, the Distortion is a unique case - it existed long before it became Michael and was forced to become him, and was forcibly taken over by Helen, who does seem to follow the trend. Gertrude, I admit I have less of a good defence for, though she’s also just canonically hard to read in general - and it is implied that she’s not (as good) an avatar to the Eye as Jon because she doesn’t really have an affinity for it.

The difficult thing about this one for Martin is that our only model for a full, confirmed Lonely avatar is Peter. We definitely know that he enjoys being lonely - but it’s hard to say for certain whether that’s a prerequisite of going full avatar, or just. peter.

4) Avatars enjoy a position of privilege in their domains. That’s evidenced in basically every domain for which we’ve seen the avatar; Jude wasn’t stuck burning, Jared wasn’t stuck in the ground, Simon wasn’t fleeing ‘Junior’ or stuck in it.

(I realize I’m talking a lot about specific word choices and such here, so, sorry for being pedantic :’D But I’m not going to stop, since in my experience, with tma it pays off to be pedantic. (‘why hasnt any ritual ever succeeded’, ‘why are people being weird about Elias being head of the institute’, ‘hey if you count jons scars he's almost got one from every fear lol’, etc are all questions based on small details that turned out to have legitimate answers. specificity matters.)(... Excluding timeline stuff))

Regarding 170

So, combining those three, if the Lonely really is Martin’s domain and he's partaking in it, I'd expect him to have a position higher than those of the other victims, and to be somewhat enjoying himself (even though he’d definitely hate it if he were) or at least not dislike the core idea of the Lonely.

There certainly are a few parts in the episode in which Martin admits to not finding this domain so bad: 

“Sometimes I wonder if I forget things on purpose. Easier not to think about them, I guess. Easier to just let them… slip away. They can’t hurt you if you don’t think about them; they can’t shout at you or call you names.”

“I’m losing myself, and I - and I don’t know if I mind? Maybe I deserve it. So much of what’s behind the fog hurts. So much of it just makes me wanna curl up with pain and embarrassment and - Maybe the fog’s here because I want it here.”

“Honestly, I - I wanted to believe it.”

“It’s comforting here, leaving all those - painful memories behind.”

“It’s the Lonely, John. It’s me.”

… Except that almost all of those are followed up immediately with refutals: 

This one peters (hah) off into Martin panicking over forgetting his Mom’s face, and saying he shouldn’t be there.

“Maybe I asked the fog to come. No. No, no - no, no, no, that’s not true!”

“I wanted to believe it. But I didn’t.”

“But - It’s not a good comfort, it’s - i,it’s the kind that makes you fade, makes you dim and - distant.

“Not anymore.” “- No. No, not anymore.”

On top of that, there are all the times that Martin reiterates that he doesn’t like this place, or being alone in general:

This, This isn’t my house! [..] I don’t like it here.

I don’t like it. Why does my house smell like that, I - It can’t be my house. No, no, no; my, my - My house doesn’t smell like this! My house smells… s-smells different.

I shouldn’t be alone; there should be people!

I don’t know why I’d decorate my house like this; I don’t like it! I like - (breaking off) Wh- I, It’s not my home; it can’t be. [...] I don’t like it here.

Where am I? This isn’t right; I shouldn’t be here.

I don’t like this place.

It certainly doesn’t seem like the kind of place that somebody called Martin would live. Martin. It feels like a small name. One that wants to be warm and happy. Not like here.

[The entirety of his last paragraph before Jon finds him]

I should add that a lot of Lonely victims (13, 48, 108) like their solitude, so Martin occasionally liking being alone doesn’t preclude him from being a victim.

Furthermore, Martin doesn’t seem at all to be in any better position than any of the other Lonely victims: 

“They’re all trying to remember. T-To recall, to picture someone, anyone who loves them, and their hearts are all full of fear. Afraid that those people are gone forever. That maybe - maybe they never existed at all.”

That describes Martin’s experience this episode almost exactly, except that he hasn’t been there as long, and has both an Eye avatar and some tape recorders looking out for him.

He doesn’t sound to me like an equivalent to other avatars in their domains: he sounds like the victim.

Other counter arguments: 

I’ve seen the argument that the privilege Martin gets here, is the knowledge of all those other victims.That him knowing that they exist, and what they’re struggling with, proves that it’s his domain. Honestly though, I think that’s not a very strong argument, seeing as he explicitly says he’s seen them, which makes sense as he’s been able to see victims in other domains as well. And describing their experience isn’t that hard either, seeing as he’s just had a similar one (and has prior experience with the Lonely to boot). So there’s an easy explanation for how he knew this, without the Lonely having to be his domain.

There’s also the idea that in 170, “house” is a metaphor for domain, and since Martin occasionally thinks that it’s his house, that means that it’s his domain. Two problems there:

he spends just as much time saying that it’s not his house.

the (other) victim he runs into also thinks it’s their house at first.

So while I think the idea has merit as an analysis, it still doesn’t definitively prove Martin’s domain one way or the other.

*DEEP INHALE*

SO! In the end, 170 to me is anything but conclusive about what Martin’s domain is, and hopefully at least was able to show why I think that way. TL;DR: 

If the Lonely were Martin’s domain, he should be like the other avatars in theirs, not stuck in it as a victim;

Martin in 170 seems to be a victim;

Therefore 170 doesn’t confirm that the Lonely is his domain.