#Essay Questions

[passingmyged]

Memorizing vs Deep Knowledge

I had an interesting discussion with a colleague yesterday, about what and how much to memorize, especially in preparation for essay and practical tests. Both of us got bad advice as teens in school, to just memorize everything. During college and in our careers, we discovered how absurd and WRONG that advice was. LOL we each nearly got busted out of training by examiners who thought we memorized too much and didn't understand things in depth.

Memorize the things you do not have time to look up in books or online. Such things you need to know and apply promptly. For other things, you should know where to where to find the information. In my career, there are a lot of rules and machine limitations we must know dead cold. Examiners would ask a lot of "scenario" questions, where you must talk at length and juggle a lot of different concepts. They wanted rules and numbers memorized, but "how and why" to be understood.

That said, delivering a 20 minute talk or 4000 word essay requires you to deeply understand the topic. LOL I don't mean at the level of a PhD, but as a competent person who knows the field and won't get lost or try to bullshit out of a question. It is different from having things memorized. To sit or stand before an audience and show mastery requires you to cover multiple concepts, explain how they relate to one another, and apply what you know.

Study, but then practice by writing out brief essays on the smaller topics. Work out the awkward wordings or funky logic. Learn the limits of what you know and have a sense of when you are weak in some area, so you can focus you studies there. It is an iterative, "do then do again" process.

[eddieintheocean]

Essay about the different trends of dinosaur evolution in the Triassic vs Jurassic vs. Cretaceous era?

Ooooooo that could be fun actually

I dont really know anything about dinosaurs so that could also be a fun research thing

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Vibes based grading system.

(for @epistemologys, who wanted some post-canon, teacher WWX)

[egophiliac]

I've had a beast of a cold for the last few days, but I wanted to get this out before the new year! while I've sort of made my peace with my first take on Lilia's UM poster, I really wanted to do a version with the new context that chapter 6 gave us. because. c'mon.

(don't worry, Lilia can carry ALL HIS KIDS AT ONCE)

[voluptuarian]

Gussie Fink-Nottle would do fucking numbers on this site

[bluejayscrying]

Bruce would send a huge paragraph text to Jason, and Jason would just immediately send it back edited.

[lunar-years]

Propaganda in SOTR

An interesting facet of the way propaganda is used in SOTR is that the Capitol/Plutarch's manipulation of the footage happens gradually over the course of the Games in real time, which means people see multiple versions of the same events. Things are aired and then scrubbed, or else aired and then re-aired, slightly altered, until we get the edited cut that emerges during the Victory Ceremony recap. That 'final' edit succeeds in replacing the nation's collective memory of the Games, but it's important to note that plenty of citizens have, to varying degrees, witnessed parts of the truth!

For example, the footage from when the Games is airing "live" across Panem during mandatory viewing is not tampered with to nearly the same extent as the post-Games recap, both because:

1) the overarching 'narrative' of the Games inherently cannot be determined until the Games are finished and a Victor is named. Even the Gamemakers don't know exactly how the story's going to end. Things that might've seemed like normal gameplay (such as Haymitch and Ampert's initial meetup/alliance) likely air to the public before it becomes clear that what those two are actually up to is rebellious. When they begin to carry out their plot, certainly the cameras cut over to the other players, meaning none of the tank explosion gets shown, but only later would the Ampert & Haymitch alliance have been cut out completely.

2) The five or so minute delay is not long enough to make the kind of changes Haymitch describes watching during his Victor's Ceremony, and it is more likely that it only gives the Gamemakers/broadcasting crews enough lead time to determine which tributes they should be following at any given point of the Games (and when to cut away when someone is involved in something questionable). When the Careers and Haymitch and Maysilee encounter Gamemakers in the arena, for example, you can bet the footage airing across Panem shifts to Wellie in her tree. But later, when Haymitch tracks down Wellie and helps her, that's something that probably is shown at first, only to be erased later.

I'm thinking about this because I read a review where someone was saying this book opens up new plot holes for the original trilogy, because if they changed up Haymitch's games so much they could've just edited out Katniss and Peeta's suicide attempt and the berries altogether. I think it's a lot more complicated than that!

In her SOTR B&N edition interview, Suzanne even discusses how many versions of Haymitch's reaping exist and air to different people at different times. On the one hand you have what actually happens and is first filmed: The peacekeeper's shooting Woodbine, Lenore Dove helping Woodbine's mother, Haymitch's rigged 'reaping.' All of District 12 witnesses this, but the wider nation doesn't. Then you have the version that is aired to the rest of Panem after the 5 minute delay: Haymitch's name is called. No one reacts. Then you have the version Plutarch tweaks for the nightly recap: Sid and Ma are shown reacting to Haymitch's name being called. You then have the version shown during the Victor's Ceremony, post-games: Sid and Ma are scrubbed from the footage. And even then, finally, you get the version Katniss and Peeta watch on the train in Catching Fire, which Suzanne states could very well have been further tweaked over the years to fit an evolving narrative.

One can imagine this is true of many other elements of these Games. Capitol citizens directly witness both the Chariot Parade and the Interviews. Since the Interviews are also mandatory "live" viewing, nationwide, presumably the rest of Panem get much more extended footage of each tribute (with maybe just a couple of their answers cut by the 5 minute delay) than what is ultimately preserved on the tape Katniss & Peeta see. It's only after the games that the Newcomer alliance is all but erased.

The tributes' families are interviewed when there are eight kids remaining. Sid and Ma must've been interviewed back in Twelve, and surely that was shown. It's cut out, after, to make people forget about Haymitch's family. Similarly, the footage of Haymitch receiving the milk in the arena probably airs, because Snow's plan there is to force Haymitch to look like a terrible person (by dumping it when Wellie needed it), or force him to kill his ally (by giving Wellie the milk), or force him to kill himself (by drinking it), all of which needs to be seen to be effective. That entire plot line is cut from the recap footage because it goes nowhere, and no one who did see it probably thinks anything of it because it ends up not being important to Wellie's or Haymitch's death, but this doesn't erase that people did see it.

Ultimately, the point Suzanne's making re: propaganda isn't as simple as the nation being fed one (1) false version of events and believing it because it's the only thing they've ever been shown. It's that many citizens WITNESSED (to various degrees, depending on where and who they are) other versions of these Games, with more, though still not entirely truthful, elements from reality. Yet even though there are plenty of discrepancies for people to question, no one does. Haymitch even comments on this as he's watching the recap. The Capitol's gone so far as to have even changed up the order of the deaths (which wouldn't have been altered in the "live" footage for obvious reasons), and the Capitol audience is eating it up even though they MUST remember it didn't happen like that!! The propaganda, the final narrative, is so effective that it makes people forget even the truths they have seen with their own eyes. Reality gets buried under several layers of falsehood, not just the one. And no one asks any questions.

To bring it back around to Peeta and Katniss, their games and rebellion are harder to alter for several reasons. Some things do get cut, including what Katniss' does for Rue, in the recap. But The Finale is the one point of the games that to some degree needs to be shown in all versions. There's no one else left to cut away to, for one, and there also needs to be some sort of narrative ending to close the Games. It's harder to edit actual deaths, and harder still when it's down to the last two tributes remaining. (I'll point out here that the Capitol doesn't alter the force field trick in Haymitch's games, either, even though some people might have read rebellion even in that [Katniss and Peeta certainly do!] They really couldn't. This is why I think Haymitch's side plot to blow up the cornucopia and kill off Silka and likely himself in the process might have actually worked to cause a visible stark for the rebellion more than anything else that he does. To at least some degree, that would've had to have been shown. They would need it to explain the ending.)

Now, in a best case scenario, the Gamemakers certainly could've sent in a targeted mutt or something to take out Katniss or Peeta, and thus handpicked their singular Victor. But this idea is immediately foiled by the both of them very imminently killing themselves. This time, the Capitol does not have the benefit of time on their side, and the 5 minute delay in the footage makes not one ounce of difference.

Secondly, Katniss & Peeta have the added protection their personal narratives afford them. It's harder to erase Prim from all footage than it was Sid and Ma, because Katniss volunteering for Prim is The Fact about her everyone latches onto pre-Games. The desperate star-crossed lovers storyline, meanwhile, effectively makes the berry trick ambiguous, instead of inherently rebellious. Some might see it as an attack against the Capitol, but plenty more buy into the romance, and even Snow is forced to admit that this narrative can be useful in shifting the public sentiment. By that point in the books, the time for killing them has passed and it makes more sense for the Capitol to use Katniss & Peeta, just as by the end of SOTR, it makes more sense for the Capitol to use Haymitch to solidify their propaganda. Thus, Haymitch's story enhances Katniss and Peeta's, rather than tarnishes its believability. When propaganda works, it will have people believing what they are told above even their own memories. Katniss' ~luck~ comes from what Haymitch never had... a series of other events and people directly aligning with her actions to allow them to break through the Capitol's narrative.

[varilien]

pine barrens by jakey THEEE existential personhood horrors song ever.... applies to the stans uncomfortably well tbh (╥﹏╥)

Palestine: Funds | Action | eSims | Info Sudan Resources | Congo Resources | Lebanese Red Cross

[sweetberry-roebuck]

Hey y'know when the current moment is transcendently beautiful and meaningful and true, but you know that it is temporary and you can't help but feel existentially haunted by that fact. You know when you are experiencing beautiful heartrending art and you feel lost in the moment and then its over. You know how you'll experience art or human connection or a walk on a nice day and you know the sunlight on your skin will fade and you'll forget how it felt to be this warm.

You know in video games when there is one experience-definingly gleeful or touching or viscerally emotional moment that soon ends and leaves you with something more complicated, more doomed, more cyclical? You know? You know how it feels to dig your claws and teeth into a moment and try as hard as you can to feel it and to remember it and to make it part of yourself? Do you know??

[sparta369]

I bought slay the princess but haven’t started it ‘cause it kinda intimidates me, can you convince me to play it?

Ok now I know you just asked me to convince you to play it but hear me out

Don't play it yet

There's a huge, Free Content expansion coming out on the 24th of this month, in just 8 days called The Pristine Cut, which is going to expand the game by about 35%. The Devs themselves have said to wait for the expansion release if you haven't played it already lol

That being said, I'd never pass up an opportunity to gush about one of my favorite games ever created

I realized far too late that I'd accidentally written far more than either of us probably wanted. So I'll try to sparknotes it, and leave the full thing below the cut.

The less you know going in, the better. However, it is still a horror game. You can find a list of content warnings here. It's just a list, so it doesn't really reveal very much.

A single playthrough lasts about 3-4 hours on average, though I can guarantee you'll want to do more than one. The game is positively dense with choices. It's impossible to see everything in one playthrough, and one would be hard-pressed to have the exact same playthrough twice.

Words cannot really capture how much I love this game. It's story masterfully crafted with a vast ocean of choices for the player to make, all of which make a true and profound impact on the narrative. If you enjoyed Disco Elysium or The Stanley Parable, You'll like Slay the Princess. The game was lovingly hand-drawn, pencil on paper, and the music was beautifully composed. The voice acting, featuring the talents of Nichole Goodnight and Jonathan Sims, are also, in my opinion, phenomenal.

I truly cannot express the emotional impact this game has left me with. It's a game I'll carry with me for the rest of my life.

Whether you intend to stop here or read on, I'll leave you with this one screenshot. It's only text, and it's literally the second thing you see upon booting up the game, so don't worry about spoilers lmao

"Whatever horrors you may find in these dark spaces, have heart and see them through."

"There are no premature endings. There are no wrong decisions."

"There are only fresh perspectives and new beginnings."

"This is a love story."

Oh boy you clicked the "keep reading" button :o) I wrote this over the course of most of my day today before I realized exactly how long it was. Besides a small change to the end, I'm going to leave most of it un-touched, just for the sake of preserving whatever the hell was going on in my head at the time :o)

Slay the Princess is one of those games where, the less you know going in, the better, So I'll do my best to convince you without revealing anything.

Still, though, It is a horror game. If you would like to look through it just in case, you can find a list of content warnings on their website here. It gives a list of many things you may encounter, but there is a 0% chance that you will encounter all, or likely even half, of the things described in there. In addition, they present these things in a way that reveals as little as possible. Still, I would personally recommend against reading through them, but there's no shame or judgement if you go dig through it. You know yourself better than anybody, if you think ya need it that's fine.

There's also some flickering image effects & a parallax effect that has caused motion sickness for some players, but both of these can be disabled in the settings.

With all that out of the way...

Words truly cannot explain how much I love this game.

It is an absolute masterwork of interactive narrative storytelling. No other game I've played or heard of in my life gives as much weight to every single choice you make, every little thing you do. There are so many choices and possibilities, and not once does the game ever make you feel like you've chosen "wrong." It's impossible to see everything in one playthrough, and you would be hard-pressed to get the exact same playthrough twice. Quite literally, every time I've watched somebody else play the game, they happened upon something I'd never seen before, despite me having 100% of the achievements.

One playthrough usually takes around 3-4 hours, but you will almost certainly want to do more than one.

There are also a number of places where you can safely and logically pause and come back later, should you need to.

The narrative itself is expertly woven. The storytelling is phenomenal, interweaving paralyzing fear with heart-aching beauty, while also carrying a healthy amount of comedy at carefully chosen places. The themes carry through beautifully. I've cried actual tears on more than one occasion, and it's not easy to get that out of me. Slay The Princess is a story that will be a part of my heart for as long as I live.

If you've played and enjoyed Disco Elysium, you'll enjoy Slay The Princess.

If you've played and enjoyed The Stanley parable, you'll enjoy Slay The Princess.

I know that I often struggle with games that require a lot of reading, and that includes a lot of visual novel type games.

Thankfully, the game is, for the most part, fully voice-acted :) The very few bits that aren't voiced are that way for narrative reasons hee hoo

The voice acting itself is, in my opinion, phenomenal. Both actors put their heart and souls into their roles, and their care shows in their performances. The Princess is voiced by Nichole Goodnight & the Narrator is voiced by Jonathan Sims (Who you may recognize from The Magnus Archives, if you were ever into that).

The art of the game is beautiful. It is all lovingly hand-drawn, pencil on paper. Thousands of images, and even a few animations, all coming together to form a wonderfully unique visual style that lends itself well to the game itself.

The soundtrack of this game, composed by Brandon Boone & with vocal performances by Amelia Jones, is absolutely breathtaking. It does a phenomenal job setting and supporting the tone of the game, whether it be tension, fear, hope, joy, or anything between and beyond. I can't put it's beauty into words.

Brandon Boone actually just recently won the "Game Music Award" at the World Soundtrack Awards for his work on Slay The Princess, and I deeply believe that it was 100% deserved.

This is... probably far more than you ever asked for. But I mean it when I say that Slay the Princess is one of my favorite games of all time. I mean it when I say that Slay The Princess is a story that will be a part of my heart for as long as I live. I'll take any opportunity to make more people play it, in hopes that it might impact them even a fraction as much as it has impacted me. I've bought a total of 11 copies of this game (1 for myself, 9 which were distributed to friends, and one that's coming with the Collector's Edition)

As my final word, I'll once again remind you:

"Whatever horrors you may find in these dark spaces, have heart and see them through."

"There are no premature endings. There are no wrong decisions."

"There are only fresh perspectives and new beginnings."

"This is a love story."

[lycandrophile]

it's silly but the biggest reason why im not into t yet is bc im so afraid of losing my hair. do you have any solutions/tips for it?

first of all, i don’t think it’s silly — it’s natural to be worried when hair loss is talked about by so many people as like…one of the worst results of aging for men. listening to my dad talk about how much he hates balding definitely did not make me feel particularly good about the knowledge that i may very well be joining him someday. i’m not saying the fear is right, because i don’t think hair loss is something awful that we should avoid at all costs, but it’s an understandable fear given the beauty standards we’re working with, and it’s one that a lot of us (myself included) feel.

one thing that’s helped me is just…paying more attention to the guys that i interact with on a daily basis. i’ve learned two things from it: 1) hair loss is super fucking common. i’d say it’s much harder to find an adult man who isn’t balding at all than it is to find one who’s completely bald. and 2) if you forget everything you’ve been told about how bad hair loss is, you’ll realize that quite frankly, every single one of those guys looks totally fucking fine. it doesn’t ruin their appearance and make them ugly, it looks totally natural and isn’t really even something you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. we put so much weight on it but it’s really just not that big of a deal. i’ll hear my parents talk shit about men in my family who are losing their hair when i didn’t even notice a difference last time i saw them. it’s one of those things (like so many other appearance-related things) that you really only notice at all because you’ve been taught that you’re supposed to care about it.

this isn’t something i’ve done personally, but if you really want to desensitize yourself to the idea of it, embrace the time-honored queer tradition of just shaving your whole damn head! find out what you’d look like without hair, find out how you feel about it and what you can do that makes you feel good about your appearance without hair, test the waters while it’s still a temporary change and not something permanent. that way, it won’t feel like this big scary unknown, and you’ll actually have a frame of reference for your feelings about how you look without hair rather than accepting the societal assumption that you’ll inevitably hate it. if you don’t want to actually shave your head, you could also just fuck around with bald filters or photoshop and see what happens.

oh, and if you’re attracted to men, keep an eye out for guys who are bald or balding and also hot as fuck. in my experience, there’s no insecurity or potential future insecurity that being gay for other men hasn’t helped me with. just off the top of my head, i can think of a couple actors who i think are absolutely fucking gorgeous who have helped me get over my fears about losing my hair. despite what our anti-aging-obsessed world might want you to think, there is no such thing as a physical feature that automatically makes someone less attractive, and while making attractiveness less of a priority in your life is good, it can’t hurt to also give yourself some proof that actually, you might lose your hair and look hot as hell doing it.

basically, entertain the possibility that it won’t be a bad thing at all! whether that’s just because it turns out to be a neutral thing for you or because you end up actually liking it, it’s not an inherently bad thing. i’ve ended up liking a lot of things that were “supposed to” be bad effects of t — i love the weight i’ve gained and the new shape it gives my body, i get a lot of gender euphoria from the fact that my acne is now on parts of my face that i saw a lot of guys in high school get it and i’m not complaining about the scars i get from it either because i’ve always liked the added texture that acne scars give my skin, and so on. i think there’s a lot of joy to be had in the changes we’re taught to fear, once we look past that conditioning and actually explore how we feel about it.

but if it’s something you really don’t want and you just want to improve your chances of not having to deal with it, it’s not like there’s nothing you can do! products like finasteride (oral) and minoxidil (usually topical but i think there might also be oral versions) are pretty commonly used among trans guys, for the purpose of avoiding hair loss and for other reasons, and there are plenty of other anti-hair loss products out there (though i don’t know how effective any one of them might be). if it’s a big enough deal for you, you can just decide that you’ll go off of t if/when you start noticing signs of it, since no longer having higher t levels would stop the process in its tracks. and if you don’t find prevention options that work for you so it ends up happening, you can always explore different hair styles (judging by the pattern of hair loss i see in my family, i suspect that keeping my hair long would make it less obvious if i started losing mine), find your preferred method of covering it when you don’t feel good about it (personally i love a good beanie generally and would probably wear them a lot more if i didn’t have hair to worry about because my main complaint is the way they press my hair onto my neck), or just shave it all off if you don’t like the look of the partial balding but don’t mind a shaved head. the point being �� you have options!

at the end of the day, whether you go on t or not, you’re going to see your body change as you age in ways that aren’t always going to be attractive to others or aesthetically pleasing to you. that’s just the reality of having a body. even if you never went on t, you’d get older and you might see your hair thin out even if you don’t bald, you’ll see your skin start to wrinkle and sag in places that used to be smooth, your metabolism might slow or your body fat might start to gather in new places; hell, you might lose your hair for a totally different reason and end up in the same place but without the benefits of having been on t that whole time. life is full of bodily changes like that. transphobes will fearmonger about the permanent changes of testosterone all day long but the truth is, there is no escaping permanent bodily changes. whether or not you go on t, your body now isn’t the same as it will be in 1 or 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 years, just like it isn’t the same as it was at any point in your life before now. our bodies are never supposed to stop growing and aging and changing throughout our lives. there’s no guaranteeing that we’ll love every single change our bodies go through, but that’s okay! there are so many things in life that are more important than the way our bodies look. even if you go on t and lose your hair and don’t like how it looks, your life won’t be ruined; plenty of other things will bring you joy and more than make up for the insecurities.

just think about the gender euphoria and relief from dysphoria that t could give you. would losing your hair be bad enough to outweigh all of that? or is it just the pressure of a society that decided balding is bad that’s making you fear one single change despite how much joy you could have if you let that fear go? only you can decide if going on t is worth the potential downsides for you, but i suspect that for most of us, the benefits of going on t far outweigh the possibility of side effects like hair loss happening down the line.

[redtalics]

love how dogman is just a normal-ass guy 95% of the time and then 5% of the time he passionately spills out an UNGODLY amount of lore, story, and character personality that he did NOT need to give. this man is an admirer of his own work and i think that's pretty cool

[matt0044]

Is Sherlock Actually Garbage? Why did we enjoy?

Like... I feel that we as an audience take video essayists like hbomberguy too much at their word and default to them when it comes to explaining our feelings on something. This isn't to send hate towards him but rather... healthy skepticism. It's clear that his now infamous essay has colored many people's opinions on the show but I find myself asking, "Well... why did we like what was 'garbage' to begin with?"

Because, well, nothing gets popular without some good reason. However much one thinks Series 4 dropped the ball, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat had struck gold here. What about it was good enough to invest so much time into it? How good was it that the finale soured everyone before any essayists could?

I don't want to outsource my thinking for this. I wanna share my thoughts along with you if you are willing.

So... who wants to start?

[prlssprfctn]

I think you know that Alfred arranged Jason's memorial. I'd like to hear your opinion on what he originally put into it (and maybe a scene where he would explain to Jason)

i do, i do. you see, with comics (and DC, specifically) i love supporting a few different interpretations at the same time. i see and understand why most of the people hate how inconsistent the writing here is, and i also hate when they fundamentally change the character depending on the author, but sometimes it is an interesting tool to play with, though, i try to never change the character itself, just to analyse different situations from different point of views. thus, there are a few interpretations of Alfred being the one arranging the memorial, that i usually look at when i am writing something or creating a scenario!

the most popular one, is that it was supposed to be a punishment for Bruce. i, personally, have slight issues with this interpretation, though, i also use it on occasions. it is not a bad idea overall, but I don't think Alfred ever blamed Bruce for Jason's death (i don't think anyone did but Bruce himself, in fact), and Alfred is not exactly against the idea of Robins. and he loves Bruce so much. the last thing he wants, is to torture him, tbh. he does it to himself, anyway. but! i accept it sometimes as i said. it could work;

Alfred is an army man. the good soldier was never supposed to be an offence or berating. he, we saw, has a very different perspective of the world - different from anyone's in this family, to be honest. i think, he could mean it not as a bad thing. after all, that is just the way things were for him, back in the time;

my personal favourite, though, very self-indulgent: it is an inside thing, half-joke that was between Jason and Alfred back in the time. i wrote about it here once. it is up to you if Jason forgets about it after being back or not, honestly.

despite the interpretation, there are still a few interesting things to acknowledge in this situation, though.

first and foremost: Jason doesn't hate Alfred for it. i saw a lot of Jason fans, who spat on Alfred for this, but Jason would never, and Alfred, honestly, is one of the most dear people to Jason in the canon. he is not mad, i think, because he knows that whatever reason Alfred had in his mind when he put it, he didn't mean ill to Jason.

here comes the logical question - if so, why Bruce is blamed for that and Jason actually calls out him for it? well, mostly because of how Bruce sees this memorial and interprets it himself. because he never tried to take it off, if he felt like it was a bad thing. and because when Jason comes back, Alfred wants to hide the memorial, but Bruce stops him and says that it changes absolutely nothing - Jason's return changes nothing, his son is dead, and keeps the ghost of Jaybin in the Batcave to haunt him and further use the memory of the kid as a form of self-punishment.

yeah.

anyway.

hopefully, i answered to your question!

[amateurvoltaire]

Do you know if this guy just hates Camille or is any of this is true? Like he was "so little respected" and "never entrusted with duties of any consequence"?

I'm reading "The Twelve Who Ruled" by R.R. Palmer because it got recommended a lot on reddit, but this guy seems kind of mean. He refers to Camille's writings as "childish pretentions to learning" & even goes out of his way to say how he didn't die "with fortitude" like everyone else.

His Wikipedia article says he was begging for his wife's life, which paints a totally different picture. But I'm having trouble getting access to a lot of the books that I see referenced, and I don't know if that's a romanticized version or if Palmer's is slanted.

Camille's last letter got its hooks into my brain and I can't stop chasing down his story! People are complicated & I love that he might've been an awkward little weirdo, but also I don't know that the sources I have available are particularly unbiased.

Camille Desmoulins: A kind of child in politics?

First of all, I have to say I adore this question. Genuinely. Thank you, @secondjulia, for sending it in.

Why do I love it? Because it lets me say the obvious thing that somehow still needs saying: Camille Desmoulins, like everyone else in the 18th century, was a person. Not a metaphor.  Not a cardboard cut-out. Not a tragic hero cooked up by a novelist. An actual human being. Loved by some, ignored by many, hated by others.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: historical figures were people. They sulked, lied, procrastinated, wept, and occasionally changed their minds.

And so, as with Robespierre, Danton, Saint-Just and the rest, our understanding of Camille depends far more on who’s writing than on Camille himself. The sources, primary or not, often reveal more about their authors than their subjects.

So what about Palmer? I like Twelve Who Ruled. It’s a sharp piece of scholarship. Palmer had a clear aim: to explain the Committee of Public Safety. And that’s what he did. The book is about them, told from their vantage point.

Palmer reconstructed Year II from the Committee’s outgoing paperwork and their own letters. In other words, he built his narrative from the records of the people who had Desmoulins arrested. Naturally, their prejudices bled through. When Saint-Just called him a Danton’s vain syncopath (1), Palmer more or less nods along and copies it out.

So, was Camille really a political child whose death meant nothing? As always with history, it depends who you ask.

A Short (and simplified) overview on Historiography of Camille Desmoulins

Nineteenth-century French historians such as Michelet, Lamartine, Thiers and Claretie, cast Desmoulins as a central (if impetuous) voice of 1789: the spark that roused Paris, an eloquent pamphleteer elected to the Convention, and a tragic victim of the Revolution’s tendency to eat its own children.

Twentieth-century assessments split. The Marxist-Jacobin line, via Mathiez and Lefebvre, paints Camille as vain, erratic and unserious. In this respect, Palmer follows this view,  no surprise, since he admired Lefebvre and borrowed from his intellectual conclusions. And Palmer, after all, wasn’t writing a book on Desmoulins.

Revisionist historians , from J. M. Thompson to François Furet,  pushed back, reframing Camille as a voice of early dissent, warning of the Republic’s descent into purges and paranoia.

Since the 1980s, press historians have looked more closely at his journalism. Révolutions de France et de Brabant, Le Vieux Cordelier. They have found serious contributions to republican thought and critiques of the Terror.

Today, writers like Hervé Leuwers depict him as a thoughtful Enlightenment man of letters, a proto-republican, and a principled journalist whose private letters radiate clarity, courage and, and, above all, love for his family.

Palmer’s charges against Camille

So, given that the historiography is anything but settled, let’s examine what Palmer actually accuses him of:

Political immaturity and irrelevance. Desmoulins was "a kind of child in politics". So unimportant that he was never given any serious responsibility.

Mock-intellectualism and distortion. He had “childish pretensions to learning” and twisted facts for the Indulgents’ cause.

Cowardice at death. He alone struggled at the scaffold.

Cruel hypocrisy. He was cruel and mocked others for dying badly but couldn’t manage composure himself.

Undue familiarity. People called him “Camille”, and that, somehow, is evidence of his unseriousness.

So, with all the charges laid out, let’s get into it

1. Political immaturity and irrelevance.

This is nonsense.

Desmoulins wasn’t just writing pamphlets in cafés, the 18th-century equivalent of a keyboard warrior. He was elected Deputy for Paris from 1792 to 1794. Convention transcripts show him speaking at the king’s trial and submitting official opinions on the veto, the royal succession, and the state of army morale.

He sat briefly on the Commission of Public Safety (March 1793) (2)  and then on the Committee of War, submitting papers on military supply and recruitment. In February 1793, he alone was tasked with inspecting Didot’s paper mill (3), which was vital to revolutionary printing.

Danton and Robespierre also used him strategically. They gave him documents and political cover to attack the Hébertists in Le Vieux Cordelier (4). Even Palmer concedes that his Histoire des Brissotins (5)  was so influential that entire pages were quoted in the Girondins’ indictment.

So no, he wasn’t kept out of power because no one respected him. The Committee turned on him when he demanded clemency, not because they thought he was harmless, but because they knew he wasn’t. They understood perfectly well that his words could shift public mood, that he could cause real trouble. If he were just Danton’s decorative shadow, there’d have been no need to silence him. But they arrested him, too. That tells you exactly how seriously they took him.

2. Mock-intellectualism and distortion

Camille’s notebooks are still in the Bibliothèque Thiers. Marginalia in Cicero, Tacitus, Livy, Rousseau. Not bad for a political child…

In La France libre he coined “liberté, égalité, fraternité”. In Révolutions de France et de Brabant, he cites Grotius and Vattel to sketch a law of nations. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t call that childish. When I was a child, I was reading Harry Potter, not Grotius.

Palmer accuses Le Vieux Cordelier of distortion. But what did Camille actually write? He warned of secret denunciations, lawless arrests, and the slow crawl toward dictatorship. Robespierre himself approved the first three issues until Camille turned the critique on the Committee itself and dared to demand clemency. That was the line. Truth was acceptable, so long as it didn’t threaten the precarious stability of the revolutionary government.

And let’s be clear. I’m not in the “Robespierre was a tyrant” camp. He wasn’t. Not even a little bit. But Year II was an unholy mess, and Camille was right to say so.

3. Cowardice at death.

First of all, I don’t know about you, but if I were about to have my head cut off for writing a few pamphlets, I’d be a little miffed too. But let’s set that aside.

Did Camille lose his composure on the scaffold? Yes, he did. Eyewitnesses like Beffroy de Reigny (6) saw him in the tumbrel, shirt torn, laughing convulsively, looking unhinged. He did not cut the calm figure Danton did beside him.

But was he truly afraid of death itself? Perhaps. He had every reason to be. That would have been natural, even expected. Yet his final letters suggest something else. In one of them, he wrote: “My head rests on the pillow of my writings... they all breathe philanthropy.” (7) He knew why he was being killed, and he accepted it.

So why the breakdown? In court, when Fouquier-Tinville (8) dragged Lucile’s name into it, Camille lost control. “They want to murder my wife too!” (9) he shouted, and had to be forced down. Perhaps his despair was not for himself, but for her. For the child they had. For the family he knew he was leaving behind, and feared might follow him to the scaffold.

Palmer was writing in an era that still venerated stoicism as a masculine ideal. Men were expected to die well, quietly, without emotion. It is a ridiculous standard. Always has been. Men, 18th-century ones included, are allowed to be human. A thirty-four-year-old husband and father, facing a violent end and the likely execution of his wife, is allowed a moment of collapse.

Yes, Camille broke down physically. So did Fabre d’Églantine (10) and Chabot (11), though Palmer leaves them out. But courage should be measured by your posture in the cart. It should be measured by whether you stood by your words. Camille did. He never disowned what he wrote. He died with it, and with all the fear that came with being someone who loved deeply.

4. Cruel hypocrisy

Camille Desmoulins was a brilliant journalist. In my view, the best of the Revolution. His style was elegant, funny, and direct. He picked his topics shrewdly and knew exactly what would catch the public’s attention. At times, he was cruel, but cruelty was the currency of the era. No one ever accused Marat or Hébert of restraint…

He was a masterful satirist. Early in the Revolution, he mocked the high and mighty with gusto. In Révolutions de France et de Brabant, he took aim even at the executioner Sanson (12) and earned himself a libel suit. In Discours de la lanterne, he justified the lynching of aristocrats. The title alone was a nod to the violent street slogan “à la lanterne” (13). He made his position very clear.

And he was hardly an outlier. Violent rhetoric was everywhere. It was the daily fare of the press, speeches, and yes, even the national motto. “Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort.” (14) This was a very intense time.

That said, by the time Year II descended into madness, Camille had changed his tune.

In Vieux Cordelier no. III, he called for clemency and due process, an unpopular stance in the Convention, though wildly popular in the streets. The issue sold out across Paris. Robespierre had to speak on his behalf at the Jacobins just to stop his peers from tearing him apart.

By the end of 1793, Camille had become a humanist. He had moved from vengeance to justice. He had seen what violence looked like when taken to its logical end. That was not hypocrisy. It was growth.

5. Undue familiarity

This one barely deserves a rebuttal. Yes, people called him “Camille” instead of “Desmoulins”. In the West,  they also called La Rochejaquelein “Monsieur Henri”, and still do. It did not make him any less of a general. It was not disrespect. It was affection. Perhaps even popularity. Was it a bit infantilising? Maybe. But that is hardly an indictment.

Conclusion

Every one of Palmer’s criticisms, whether it be childishness, flippancy, uselessness, shallow intellect, fear, hypocrisy, or lack of seriousness, collapses under scrutiny. Read the transcripts. Read the pamphlets, the letters, the modern biographies. You will not find a clown. You will find a sharp, impassioned writer. Not a child, but a man whose conscience could no longer stomach what the Revolution had become.

Palmer was writing during the Second World War. He valued discipline, executive clarity, and the capacity to act decisively. Desmoulins, a polemicist and tribune rather than a minister, naturally fell outside Palmer’s pantheon.

So, who was Camille? He was a man. He had friends. He was loved.

That may not have counted for much in Palmer’s eyes, but it was precisely what made Camille so effective. He moved people. He mattered to them. He made them listen.

Robespierre put it best during one of the most memorable exchanges between them. Camille, instead of keeping quiet and letting Robespierre speak for him, insisted on defending his own writings. Robespierre, exasperated, said: "Learn, Camille, that if you were not Camille, we might not be so indulgent with you." (15)

That tells you everything you need to know.

Notes

(1) Saint-Just had a busy spring in 1794. As the Committee of Public Safety’s mouthpiece, he was repeatedly sent to the Convention to justify the arrests of Danton, Desmoulins, and the rest of the Indulgents. On 31 March, he made it perfectly clear what he thought of Camille. In his view, Desmoulins was a vain little man, too foolish to think for himself and too dazzled by Danton to notice he was being used.

(2) Not to be confused with the more infamous Committee of Public Safety. Desmoulins briefly served on the Commission of Public Safety in March 1793. This commission was established to protect the young Republic from internal and external threats. It would eventually evolve into the Committee we now know.

(3) The Didot family were renowned French printers and typographers. Their paper mill was instrumental in producing the high-quality paper used for revolutionary materials, including assignats (paper money).

(4) Le Vieux Cordelier was the last journal founded by Desmoulins, launched in December 1793 to attack the radical Hébertists. It ran for seven issues, the last of which appeared posthumously.

(5) In May 1793, Desmoulins published Histoire des Brissotins, a pamphlet attacking the Girondins, particularly Jacques Pierre Brissot. It portrayed them as enemies of the Revolution, helping to discredit them and strengthen the Montagnards’ hold on power.

(6) Louis Abel Beffroy de Reigny, known by the pseudonym "Cousin Jacques", was a French dramatist and journalist. He is best remembered for his satirical commentary during the Revolution.

(7) Original French: "Je repose ma tête calmement sur l'oreiller de mes écrits... tous respirent la philanthropie."

(8) Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville served as the public prosecutor in Paris during 1793–1794. He was responsible for leading many of the key trials of the Terror, including those of Desmoulins, Danton, and Robespierre.

(9) Original French: "Ils veulent encore assassiner ma femme !".

(10) Philippe-François-Nazaire Fabre, known as Fabre d’Églantine, was a French actor, playwright, and politician. He helped create the Revolutionary calendar and was a close ally of Danton. Accused (rightly) of corruption, he was executed alongside Desmoulins in April 1794.

(11) François Chabot was a former Capuchin friar who became a radical Jacobin and Convention deputy. He was implicated in financial scandals and executed with Danton and Desmoulins in April 1794.

(12) Charles-Henri Sanson was the official executioner of Paris throughout the Revolution. Desmoulins satirised him, claiming he dined with aristocrats , a jab that earned him a libel suit.

(13) The phrase “à la lanterne” was a revolutionary slogan calling for perceived enemies to be hanged from street lamps.

(14) The motto of the First Republic was "Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort"  or "Liberty, equality, fraternity or death."

(15) Original French: "Apprends, Camille, que si tu n'étais pas Camille, on pourrait bien ne pas avoir autant d’indulgence pour toi."

[typingwithmyhandstied]

Sunrise on the Reaping just further cements to me the brilliance of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes as well because everything comes back to it. It is the start of it. You can tie everything in the whole series back to it, and I'm specifically talking about the human nature question: Are humans inherently good or evil?

Now, Sunrise on the Reaping talks about propaganda, and while it had plenty of messages in its own right, if you apply it to that human nature question, it adds even more.

The people in the Capital have been shaped by the propaganda and outer forces to believe that the Hunger Games, this evil thing, is right. They wouldn't think this inherently and without this propaganda.

Think of Effie who is completely manipulated by the propaganda. She says to Haymitch that the games are necessary, but she also tries to be good to him. She isn't inherently "evil." She is shaped by the world around her like everyone in the Capital and the districts alike.

Human nature isn't inherently evil. Our natural state isn't to be monsters. Outside factors can make us "evil," and propaganda is one of those ways we are shaped.