#also this is kinda nietzschean

[909th]

the way this is literally why i had to quit therapy lmao

[donnerpartyofone]

I don't know if I can completely articulate this so I'm kind of just piecing this together as I go, but it feels like a major component of right-leaning social attitudes is just contrarianism. I notice this whenever a popular musician becomes controversial for whatever reason--bigotry, stupidity, or maybe they just turned out to be a dick--and suddenly that artist enjoys a fresh burst of interest within the kinda rationalist, Nietzschean, libertarian-flavored neighborhoods of tumblr. I have an old friend (and actual old person) who really enjoys the performance of being a right wing asshole, even though if you get to know him he's really pretty liberal in most ways; he was an old time New Yorker and never had a nice thought about Trump, actually he was mortified when Trump became the republican candidate, but once he realized how much Trump pissed everyone off then suddenly that was his guy. He also tried to convince me that Halliburton was secretly this super responsible environmental protector, I couldn't possibly repeat what his justification was--and he really had no personal investment in environmentalism or the war in Iraq or anything, he just wanted me to feel like Halliburton was the victim of pinko lefty ignorance and that anyone who doesn't like Dick Cheney is just being a pretentious stick in the mud. I was reminded of this exchange during my brief experiment with following a bunch of tumblr people from the opposite side of the sociopolitical tracks, which more or less ended with a guy asserting that plastic pollution doesn't do any real environmental or biological damage and all the concern about it is just a typical liberal scam. And it's both true that the effects of e.g. microplastics aren't that well understood AND that recent studies have linked them to liver stress, cardiac events, and a bunch of other bad stuff...but setting that aside, I don't think it makes you a stupid hippie if you feel concerned about a relatively new phenomenon involving a continuous buildup of inorganic and essentially permanent material inside your organs. Even if you don't understand what the risks are now, I don't think it's dumb to wonder about them.

I don't know how I want to summarize this, I guess it's like a combination of a) the pleasure of pissing people off in general and b) being averse to any line of thinking that involves ethical cautions and self-control. And I mean, some amount of tire-kicking is good. It's good to have to check yourself, to notice if you're making a reasoned judgment or if you're just having a habitual emotional reaction. I think contrarians can serve a real social purpose in that dimension. But there also seems to be this urge to contradict just the basic idea that you should ever have to exercise some discipline or forego your own pleasure in the service of something more important. I think that's the fundamental thing a lot of these guys are responding to. I hear them make this diagnosis sometimes that boils down to "Don't listen to the lefties, they just want life to be hard for no reason," and that just sounds really desperate to me.

[racefortheironthrone]

Kinda of random but what do you think of Alan's Moore comments about people liking comic book movies could lead into fascism? Seems like bitter old man territory but what do you think?

I think it's fair to say that fascism has been something of an obsession of Alan Moore's and a recurring although not omnipresent theme in many of his works.

While Miracleman is technically an expy of Captain Marvel, I would argue that the series is Moore's most extended commentary on Superman instead and especially the idea of the ubermensch. In Miracleman, our protagonist is initially thought to have been made into a superhero by a benevolent enlightened scientist, but eventually we learn that Miracleman is the product of an Operation Paperclip Nazi science project called the Zarathusa Project designed to create the literal Nietzschean Ubermensch, complete with a fixation on "blond gods" and a eugenicist breeding program. A superhero fight in the midle of London causes mass civilian casualties on the scale of an atomic bomb going off. Ultimately, Miracleman effectively overthrows Thatcher's government and rules as an enlightened despot before eventually leaving Earth for space.

Likewise, I think Watchmen is Moore's most extended commentary on masked vigilantism and thus on Batman. In Watchmen, the phenomenon of vigilantism is repeatedly associated with right-wing politics: Hooded Justice is a German circus strongman who has pro-Nazi politics; Captain Metropolis wanted his superhero teams to target "black unrest," "campus subversion," and "anti-war demos;" and the Comedian is a brutal nihilist who ultimately joins the U.S security state where he cheerfully follows orders to assassinate JFK and Woodward and Bernstein, commit atrocities in Vietnam, kill protesting hippies, etc. Finally, there's Rorschach, Moore's most famous mis-interpreted creation - Rorschach is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who's an anti-communist, anti-liberal, militant and militaristic nationalist, homophobe, misogynist, and avid follower of the John Birch Society-like New Frontiersman.

And then there's V for Vendetta, which I would argue is Moore's attempt to create a masked vigilante superhero with his own anarchist politics. In this story, the vigilante isn't a crimefighter but rather a revolutionary who seeks the overthrow of a fascist state and the creation of an anarchist utopia.

Moreover, his more recent comments about comic book movies being linked to fascism are arguably just part of his much longer-running commentary that superheroes as a concept are at the very least proto-fascist.

Having read a lot of Moore's work and interviews on the subject, I don't find his critique compelling. I think his definition of fascism is far too loose, I think his lens on the superhero genre is overly narrow, and I think his mode of analysis tends to neglect the vital area of historical context.

Definitions

So let's start with Moore's definition of fascism. I think Moore tends to really over-emphasize the whole idea of the Nietzschean ubermensch and the use of force to solve problems, and more recently he's been on this weird kick of saying that nostalgia and a childlike desire for easy solutions leads to fascism. I have several problems with this definition:

the first is that, as I've talked about in the past, fascism is a very complex historical phenomenon that can't be boiled down to a single idea, and in particular the idea of the ubermensch is a pretty small part of the German case (and even then how do you balance it against Nazism's more anti-individualistic aspects, like the mass party and the mass party organization).

the second is that the idea of a larger-than-life individual using physical prowess to solve problems is not unique to fascism. After all, during the 30s, you also had the Soviet Union promoting the heroic ideal of Stakhanovitism and the depiction of the heroic male factory worker in socialist realism. More importantly, the idea of a "larger-than-life individual using physical prowess to solve problems" is basically the same description for any number of literary figures from pulp cowboys to the Greek heroes of the Iliad and the Oddessy to the epic of Gilgamesh.

the third is that I think Moore's definition overlooks the actual drivers of the rise of contemporary fascism. Anti-semitism, racism, homophobia and transphobia, misogyny - all of these are real social and cultural forces that are actually motivating people to join the ranks of the alt-right, to commit massacres, to riot at the Capitol, and so forth. It is incredibly self-involved to think that superheroes and superhero movies are worth discussing in the same breath. At the end of the day, they're harmless entertainment compared to the real political issues that need to be tackled.

Moore's Model of Superheroes

Here's where I'm going to say something that's going to be a bit controversial - I don't think Alan Moore has read widely enough in the superhero genre to make an accurate assessment of its relationship to fascism. If we look at his comics work, and we look at his writings, and we look at his interviews, Moore's mental model of the superhero really only includes two figures, Superman as the representative of the superpowered ubermensch and Batman as the representative of the masked vigilante crimefighter. Notably, Moore hasn't really touched the last of the Big Three - Wonder Woman, a superhero with a strong legacy of radical left-wing politics. I do think we have to mention, given Moore's somewhat troubled history when it comes to issues of gender, that Moore's model of the superhero doesn't include any female superheroes (or for that matter, any superheroes of color or queer superheroes). (EDIT: I should clarify - Promethea is Moore's version of Wonder Woman, but she doesn't really come up in his discussions of fascism, and her thematic profile has more to do with Moore's interests in magic.)

And other than Captain Britain, Moore never worked with any Marvel character and basically ignores them.

To me, this is like having a career as a painter and never working with colors. Moore's model of the superhero leaves out the Fantastic Four and how their flawed psychologies revolutionized the industry and the whole idea of the superhero-as-explorer, it leaves out Spider-Man and the idea of the superhero-as-everyman whose central struggle is about work-life balance and altruism, and most importantly it leaves out the X-Men and the idea of the mutant metaphor.

If as a critic you're going to make grand pronouncements about something as morally evil as fascism, I think it really is incumbent on you to have read and analyzed widely rather than cherry-picking a couple of case studies. Especially if you have something of a tendency to mis-characterize those case studies by ignoring historical context.

Historical Context

So let's talk about Superman and Batman and their emergence in the 1930s. One vital bit of context is that the U.S experienced a significant crime wave in the 1920s and 1930s as Prohibition encouraged the rise of organized crime and then the Great Depression spurred the rise of kidnapping and bank robbery gangs. Moreover, municipal police forces tended to be wildly corrupt, accepting bribes from organized crime to let them operate with impunity, while not letting up in the slightest in their brutal oppression of workers and minorities.

In this context, I think the idea of vigilantism - while it has an undeniably racist legacy dating back to Reconstruction - is not purely a conservative phenomena. It's also an expression of a desire for help from somebody, anybody when the powers that be are of no help. And at the end of the day, unsanctioned use of force can equally be traced back to left-wing self-defense efforts from the Panthers back to the Communist Party's streetfighting corps to unions packing two-by-fours on the picket line - so I don't think we can simply equate punching a bad guy with racist lynch mobs and call it a day.

So let's talk about Superman and the ubermensch. I think Moore has a bad tendency to focus on his nightmare scenrio of a godlike being tyrannizing and destroying hapless humanity, while minimizing the actual ideas of Siegel and Shuster. He tends to take their use of the Nietzschean as a straighforward invocation instead of the clear subversion it was intended to be - rather than a blond god who imposed tyrannical rule with horrific violence, Siegel and Schuster made their Superman a dark-haired Moses allegory, who rather than solely fighting crime acted to stop wife-beaters, war profiteers, and save the life of death row inmates, and whose secret identity was of a crusading journalist who uncovered corrupt politicians.

To be fair, Alan Moore admits that Superman started out as "very much a New Deal American” - but because this kind of does near-fatal damage to his argument, he quickly minimizes that by saying that Superman got co-opted and thus it doesn't count. This is some No True Scotsman bullshit - Moore knows that his example just imploded so he tries to wriggle out of it by arguing that Superman sold out to the Man. If we go back to the actual historical evidence, we can see that at the outset of the Red Scare, the Superman radio show went on a crusade against the Klan, and throughout the conservative 1950s, Superman was used to propagandize liberal values of religious and racial equality:

So much for selling out.

On the other hand, Batman is a tougher case, given that his whole deal is being a masked vigilante who wages an unending war on crime to avenge his murdered parents. So is Batman an inherently fascist figure, a wealthy sadist who spends his time brutally beating the poor and the mentally ill when he could be using his riches to tackle social issues? I would argue that this version of Batman is actually pretty recent - very much a legacy of the work of Frank Miller and then the post-9/11 writings of Christopher Nolan, Johnathan Nolan, and David Goyer - and that there have been many different Batmen with very different thematic foci.

For example, the early Batman was as much a figure of horror as he was of superheroics - he fought Frankensteins and Draculas, he killed with silver bullets, etc. Then in the 40s and 50s, you got the much more cartoony and light-hearted Batman who pretty much exclusively fought equally oddball supervillains in such a heightened world of riddles and giant pennies and mechanical T-Rexes that I don't think you can particularly describe it as "crime-fighting." Then in the 1960s, you have the titanic influence of the Batman TV show, where Adam West as Batman was officially licensed by the Gotham P.D (so much for vigilantism) and extolled the virtues of constitutional due process and the Equal Pay Act in PSAs and episodes alike. You can call the 1966 Batman a lot of things, but fascist isn't one of them.

Conclusion

I want to emphasize at the end of the day that I'm a huge Alan Moore fan; I've read most of his vast bibliography, I find him a fascinating if very odd thinker and critic, I've even tried to read his mammoth novel Jerusalem (which is not easy reading, let me tell you). At the same time, it's important not to treat creators, even the very titans of the medium, as incapable of error. And in this case, I think Alan Moore is simply wrong about fascism and superheroes and people should really stop asking him about it, because I don't think he has anything new to say about it.

[avissapiens]

Would you say it’s best to live in a Dionysian or Apollonian way?

HA look at this fucking NERD wanting me to discuss Nietzschean philosophy. I bet you're a lot of fun at parties.

But in all seriousness. For those who aren't in the Know, The Apollonian way represents the "lighter" aspects of human rationale in western culture. It's harmony, Logic, self-improvement, temperance, art and discipline. Upward clearly defined progress of the type that is often lauded by individuals who would see themselves as son's of the enlightenment. The Dionysian Way is its contrast. Almost more closely aligned with Jung's Shadow. It is our madness, our irrationality and idiotic passion. Chaos and revelry and uninhibited pleasure seeking. But it is also Instinct. Animal drive. Ecstacy and prophecy The majority of western rationalism that dominates how we operate would suggest that the Apollonian way is the best and only way to live. That we must disavow Dionysus' drunken whispers in the back of our mind and only follow his clean-cut overachiever brother. This is present in a lot of enlightenment era philosophy. Its a bit of a snobbish way of looking at things and I find it to be the core of a lot of issues i have with Frankfurt Scholars. And if you go and look into these weirdos who could be seen as paragons of Apollonianism they often have massive uncontrolled dark urges that end up getting them in trouble because they try to hide it. In a rare agreement with Nietzsche, I suggest that both are needed. Both must be embraced. Repressing and ignoring these darker aspects of ourselves essentially locks away half of our potential. Trying to shut emotion and illogic in a closet. And it ultimately always slips out, often in destructive and uncontrollable ways. It is better in my opinion to let the valve of the Dionysian urge be free to vent at any time. To mingle the light with the dark and explore depths of shadow and Chiaroscuro within our own being. Through this method we can reach even greater heights than simply expecting that preppy, twink Apollo to carry us the whole way. In striving to be better, we must also explore what worse can bring us. I believe that I've done a lot of Dionysian exploration with a lot of my Archetype ideals. The abyss itself is arguably a manifestation of the inchoate potential that can be found in the depths of madness. But again, every shadow has its light source and each archetype has a more "lightened" manifestation. Maybe i'll do a How-to series on that one day. Annnnyway. This will get like 4 notes, so i hope the nerds who like this kinda shit found it stimulating.

[mathsandcomedydotcom]

Pessimism and Horrendous Suffering in True Detective:

Like Watchmen, True Detective is also an HBO show that deals with ideas such as Nietzscheanism, Pessimism and Antinatalism. Rust, played by Matthew McConaughey looks very Jesusy, in this shot—indeed, very like the Jesus depicted on The Shroud of Turin—and perhaps this is intentional. As Shoppenhauer puts it:

‘Pessimism is the logical conclusion of Christianity.’

Christianity calls this world a ‘vale of tears’, a place where we ‘sigh and weep’, and Shoppenhauer, although an atheist, metaphysically, simply agrees with Christianity on this point.

‘...gementēs et flentēs in hāc lacrimārum vale...’

Salvē Rēgīna

‘...groaning and weeping in this valley of tears...’

Hail Holy Queen

The chapter on ‘Misotheism’—etymologically: ‘the hatred of God’—in John W. Loftus ’s anthology, God and Horrendous Suffering, details the horrendous suffering incurred by many children in this world. I think that the author of this chapter maintains that if a God exists who could stop all this suffering, but doesn’t... well such a God should be hated and not loved.

The horrendous suffering of children is discussed in this scene. Rust laments that they did not catch all the harmers of children. Marty quickly quips back that no, they did not, because this ain't that kinda world.

The above quick retort by Marty ought to give us pause. What Marty seems to be saying, here, is that this is the kind of world where at least some people can inflict horrendous suffering upon children... and then get away with it Scot free!

In my view, such a state of affairs, as this, described by Marty, seems to be incompatible with the existence of a Classically Theistic God. What Marty says in this scene reminds me of the essay concerning Misotheism in John Loftus’s anthology: God and Horrendous Suffering.

[bigolbadblog]

not kink (?) but nsfw / tmi. also i make a h.annibal joke in this post i'm sorry

so before i switched to reusable menstrual pads, i'd heard that they affect the smell of your period. but i was kinda expecting it to smell like i'm used to, just less? cuz the pads are more breathable than disposable ones, so that would decrease odors, but i mean it's still the same stuff, right, it makes sense that it would smell basically the sameish?

but like. i am not making this up. since i made the switch my period smells like sauteed mushrooms. with just like a hint of blood if you put your nose right to the pad and sniff (i did this for science). but mostly just the delicious aroma of sauteed mushrooms. also i made myself a cup of fancy white tea today and i was like "hm, why is this flavor profile familiar" and then realized it tastes kind of like my period smells now. so i got sauteed mushrooms, fujian pearl white tea, and afternotes of blood. i got that fanfic smells period pussy situation. i got that fucking gourmet hannibal nbc pussy situation. the fish i'm serving is downright nietzschean. i don't know how to feel about this because it seems like it should be sexy (?) but mostly it just makes me want sauteed mushrooms.

anyways the fabric pads are really comfortable

[hrefgopuram]

substack overview

In late 2012 I started a writing project I called 1000 word vomits, with the intent of writing one million words in 1,000 sets of 1,000 words. The idea is that they would be mostly unedited, mostly rambling streams-of-consciousness, and yet be at least somewhat mindful of taste and sense. As of June 2023, I’ve written 825/1000 wordvomits. I’ve learned a lot a long the way, become a much better writer, and one of the things I’ve learned as a result is the importance of doing reviews. The word “review” is unfortunately a bit cluttered conceptually. The etymology of the word means simply “to view again”, but it’s come to additionally mean “with a critical lens”, such that we expect book reviews and movie reviews to tell us “whether it’s any good”. Which isn’t necessarily bad, unless it’s all there is.

Still, words are worth messing around with, and I’d prefer to use the word “overview” – in part because I’d like to avoid the judgemental connotations of “review”, and in part because I’m enamoured with the concept of “the overview effect”.

Back to the importance of reviews or overviews – so one of the things that frustrated me with my wordvomits project is how much I repeated myself, kinda “senselessly”. My view on this is itself evolving – I was most recently struck by a quote from Marshall Mcluhan’s Understanding Media where he talked about how oral traditions tend to have very cyclical ‘texts’, where you could get the point pretty quickly, but the meta-point is to go around and around on the subject so that you really get into it from all angles

Even so, I feel like there are smart ways of doing this and not-so-smart ways of doing this, and I’d prefer to do it the smart way. And the smart way in my current view is to not leave things so much up to chance, but to re-visit, re-explore, re-discover. I was in a rush with my early word vomits to write as much as possible, and as a result I found myself… disoriented?

I might explain this more on second passthrough but for now why not let’s just do an overview of all the posts on this substack so far. It’s still small enough and young enough that it’s possible, so let’s do it while we can. (The sub-bullets are for my own future reference – things that I might want to write new essays about and link to.)

1. 🔥 We were voyagers – this essay just leapt out of me in one big burst after I had published my second book Introspect. I might say it’s about Nietzschean historical sense, or about Lincoln and Pericles and their ability to contextualize, to situate their people in the world. And I think that’s a very strong clue for what the essence of Voltaic Verses is going to be about.

2. The Essays I Have Not Published – looking back from the current context I would now describe this as a pre-view, a mapping of possibilities from where I stood. Looking at it now, it’s a pretty good mapping! Almost everything I write about here, is something I still want to write about in some shape or form. What’s interesting, I think, is a sense that the tentative shapes I have used, are probably not the ones I will be using. If they were the right ones, I’d already have used them. (mindpalaces, reconceptualization work, get really unblocked, growing pains, crossing of thresholds)

3. I don’t wanna! – in this essay I honor my resistance. I don’t want to fight the guy inside me that doesn’t want to write. I want to understand him.

4. nothing is edgier than earnestness – this essay meanders, and it opens with the Ted Hughes voltage quote that subsequently birthed the name Voltaic Verses. I talk about Ray Bradbury, Calvin & Hobbes… (digressions, inner critic, grief, X-Men: First Class, ATLA, edgelords, artful incompleteness)

5. dancing with constraints, pt 1 (grammar of tweets / constraint of mediums, multiple entities hot-desking the same meatbag, few hours of mental clarity...)

6. Santa is real – this was a seasonal post for Christmas, but it’s also very much about a lot of the things I care about: ritual, ceremony, meaning, belief, truth, process, social reality. Santa is a great, well-understood entry-point for thinking about all manner of beliefs and narratives. I find myself thinking there has to be a similar post to be written about talismans, and maybe I ought to pick the Oscars or the World Cup as a corresponding event. (KWML, ritual initiations)

7. 🔥 Are you serious? – I think this is currently the piece of writing I might be proudest of. Justo, Dashrath, Hokusai. Takes time to discern who’s serious. Not talking about solemnity. Silliness is sacred. Optimize for survival. The divorce mystery. (Advanced Stupid, LinkedIn World...)

8. resonance over coherence – I think this was inspired in part by the talk that I gave in New York, which reminds me I still haven’t published a post about that. Getting unstuck. Possibility space. People-shaped. Oof/crackle-boom surprisingly true. (indescribable mental motions)

9. yeet thyself – Bradbury again. Crackle-boom. Project management is about enabling collaboration. Workaholism. Living gloriously. (funhouse mirror misunderstandings)

10. branching paths – talking about Robert Frost, nominative determinism, information architecture, forgetting aids remembering, desire paths, ant colonies (narrative logic,

11. Breakthrough! in the DMs – helped someone “figure out what they want”, why I wrote Introspect, my dislike of Ikigai, Beyonce-Apple MVP, Meryl Streep inscrutability, Dinesh, the dynamism problem (asking people about movies, cartoon model of reality...)

12. interestingness on demand – the ayylmao tension of being creative for a living, Christopher Alexander, the psychology of tryhards, smart writing, clever little shortcuts, misframed problems, internally conflicted, Jim Carrey Golden Globes quote, (demonstrate interestingness, specialization and trade, perfect imperfection...)

13. witching hour writer patterns – Chrstopher Alexander, existence stack, William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence, Ted Nelson, old emotional meanings, cultural jank, technical debt, Orwell’s Politics, /my-creative-process/...

14. the tavern and the temple – Bradbury

tbc

[autolenaphilia]

The 1922 film Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler (“Spieler” can be translated as gambler or player) is a really good film, even if it might not seem appealing today. It’s very long, 4 hours and 30 minutes in total, and was released in two parts because of this. And being from 1922 it is of course a silent film.

Yet it earns its runtime by being actually rather good. Its director Fritz Lang was relatively young at the time, but he demonstrates a fine grasp of the craft of filmmaking. The storytelling is advanced for the time, yet easily understandable. There are some beautiful imagery in this, some really impressive shots and special effects work.

The star of the show is of course Dr. Mabuse himself, played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge, who is having a blast. He is a scheming mastermind criminal in the vein of Professor Moriarty and Fantomas. It’s great fun seeing Mabuse develop complicated schemes and wear elaborate disguises to execute. He has such skill with hypnosis that it makes him border on a comic-book supervillain.

The film in general is a major influence on modern crime thrillers. You get an early feature film car-chase and a climactic shoot-out scene.

It’s great pulpy fun, and Klein-Rogge as Mabuse predictably dominates the film. The “good” opposition is kinda weak in comparison, although Bernhard Goetzke as the heroic detective and State prosecutor Wenk is better than most in providing a good guy counterpart to such a charismatic villain. I really liked Gertrude Welcker as a sybaritic but sympathetic aristocratic woman.

The interpretation of Mabuse is two-fold. Mabuse isn’t explicitly identified as jewish, but an anti-semitic interpretation can easily be made. Some of his disguises definitely are based on jewish stereotypes. His main persona is a psychoanalyst, a profession associated with jewish people because of Freud. He is an inherently scheming and conspiratorial figure. He is also associated with symbols of Weimar German decadence, such as drugs, gambling, and prostitution. He hatches economic conspiracies with counterfeit money and stockmarket manipulation which reflect German economic problems and ascribe them to a conspiratorial bad actor. Both the writer of the original novel Norbert Jacques and screenwriter Thea von Harbou and actor Klein-Rogge later ended up working with the nazis (how much it was ideology or opportunism is hard to tell in all three cases).

Yet director Fritz Lang had Jewish roots and had to flee Nazi Germany. And an anti-semitic reading is possible, but never remotely made explicit. The other reading is that Mabuse is a figure of the manipulative authoritarian leader, a premonition of the rise of Hitler, which is how Lang viewed him later on.

You can read the film as a criticism of the Nietzchean rhetoric the naizs loved. Mabuse eventually reveals his justifications for his actions, which are a take on Nietzsche and his concept of the übermensch. He thinks he is beyond the law and conventional concepts of morality due to his superior abilities and strong will. He outright cites “the will to power.” And in the end his nietzschean ideals are disproven, as he ends up defeated. He locks up blind people in a room to count his fake money for him, and when through his own mistakes ends up locked in the same room with no chance of rescue, it breaks him. He can’t handle the same fate he condemns disabled people to. Like Nietzsche in real life, Mabuse ends up in a state of near-catatonia. In the sequel made by Lang about a decade later he is in a mental hospital.

Mabuse is a very ambiguous figure and which way you read the film is up to you. Still, it’s still great entertainment over a hundred years after its release.

[grandhotelabyss]

Wait wasn't logo allways against Nietsche? What makes this rant unique? (Don't use twitter anymore so cant check it for myself) Still, I kinda get his position, there is that very anti-human bend of modern "nietschians", that allways have this misanthropic and mechanistic outlook, with everyone being just stupid and evil, which justifies their cruelty to them. And, because I am simmilar to logo, with being at the same time very emotioanl/moralistic while ironically being very logical, I just take the spite out in doing the whole "yes, and" thing from standup and turning the logic of nietsche back on the nietschieans - Aren't they the real last men? Just crying about the loss of traditions they only care for some abstract pragmatic value, allways whinning about the hypocrisy of the true alpha predator of the gendergoblin class of real overmen who actually are beyond morals - using them actually cynically to enforce their will of power - basically what I mean is that "the cold truth" is what exposes the absurdity of nietschianism - the aphex predator, the strong or better said "fit" isnt some homo-erotic ayan fantasy, some Aragorn photoshoped with blond hair blue eyes and sonnenrad on his shield, but the same "cockroaches" that they despise - as they are the only once surviving meteors and nuclear blasts that kills both the mighty dinosaurs and caesars, so are the "dysgenic woketards" the once that seize the day, the once that live like they would if they had to live again (cause thats the most optimised way to get power lol) Anyways, prolly should just put this all in my comic as a heavy handed illustrated didactic parabell, but till I get till that, this will do (or due? idk I cant spell in my mother tongue so english - no chance) Ofcourse, I know this is more than a vulgar way of making a charicature of nietsche, but maybe that is not so bad - cause that lets one get, what one means when they say "Nietsche is bad/stupid/midwit/propoganda". Still I will apreciate Nietsche for shitting on universitys, cause I felt so "validated" feeling the same while studying, one could really see how I was some loser with a tumblr account who writes questions anonomyosly on the off chance somebody will track this down lol

Yes, Nietzsche has to be read against himself, because all the biological stuff about eugenics that's in e.g. Twilight of the Idols is at odds with the other material about the shaping power of language in discourse and art (in "Truth and Lie" or The Birth of Tragedy), with the two strains confronting each other directly in The Genealogy of Morals, which I've recommended reading exactly backwards, so that the Jews and Christians are its heroes. Then there's also the very different Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which seems to me to lead to spiritual discipline and something like Jungian psychology. He's a suggestive, poetic writer interestingly and poignantly at war with himself, not a guide to life to be swallowed whole. His greatest legacy is the major modern writers he inspired. This is why I suggest thinking about him in a literary rather than philosophical lineage, alongside Goethe and Emerson and Joyce. But even he shrewdly warned his readers against going around calling themselves supermen and denouncing everybody else as last men in Zarathustra. He predicted how his own work would become for a certain type of alienated male its own bible of ressentiment.

Logo probably was always anti-Nietzschean, because, if I recall his "lore" properly, he's been under the influence of Groys and Kojève since his undergraduate days. Those men, however, are/were capable of confronting the heat-death of post-historical culture with a beatific bodhisattva smile. They would even be the types to welcome Nietzsche as the needed negative moment in the historical dialectic they so calmly diagnose and submit themselves to. I think. But I don't really care enough about philosophy to know for sure.

[aufhebcn]

i want to eventually do a little write-up about mahito’s world view and how it’s got a kinda nietzschean ethics thing going on. but also i don’t even know if i want to make that comparison because looking at a curses ethics through human morality kind of seems self defeating

[baggebythesea]

If I ever get around to write Hordak post war I want to give him some sort of Nietzschean vibe, the self appointed Übermench who is strong enough to chose his own path, even when all he does is domestic fluff in Dryl. Kinda “That whole taking over the world thing was a juvenile project inspired by a false God. Now I have found life’s true calling: Science.” Still a lot of rage and pride, but a different focus (and a purple-haired tech princess to keep him off balance). Because, let’s face it, some of Nietzsche’s quotes are just spot on.

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

“Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?”

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”

“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.”

"Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

[kendrixtermina]

Sorry but hearing ppl say “I would like CF more if Edelgard was either treated like a full-on villain or as a manipulated groomed victim of TWSITD who had no choice” and just generally seeing ppl trying to shoehorn her into one of those two takes,  it’s hard not to think the words “Madonna Whore complex”

I kinda abhorr the latter more than the former (Not the crowd calling her Hitler and clown-emojis, but I’ll take someone who considers something she actually did a moral dealbreaker over someone who defends her because “she’s just lashing out cause she’s traumatized”.. That’s Dimitri. you’re describing Dimitri.) because it goes against everything her character is about, which is mostly: 

a) A tendency to think in the big picture, focussed on mainly the end result, especially on the temporal axis (”The nobility system has only existed for 1400 years”, “This is all part of the ebb and flow of history”, “This is the path that leads to the least casualties in the long run”)

She’s always playing the long game - so dealing with the Agarthans later (once the church is taken care of) is the same as dealing with them now. She never went against the church instead of them, she’s playing them against each other. 

b) A rejection of tradition as a reason to keep things the way they are

c) An emphasis on self-reliance and proactivity instead of surrendering yourself to your circumstances. See the speeches she gives to Petra and Lysithea. 

She generally believes in ppl’s agency, she gives everyone an out, and likewise her generals and the non-recruited ppl are all shown as believing in her cause (Something even Seteth notes) - they’re fighting to abolish hereditary Feudalism and clamp down on corruption. You’re fighting a bunch of people who wanna abolish Feudalism and Theocracy. 

Claude wants the same but he’s hiding it because he thinks he can avoid confrontations that way (There’s pros and cons to both their approaches, and I’m not saying that Dimitri or Seteth are bad, either, especially not in the context of the world they live in) 

She’s basically a Nietzschean Superman but in the original sense not the cheap bastardized version mixed up with pseudoscientific misunderstandings of evolution: Someone who proactively lives according to their own beliefs regardless of the mainsteam in greater society. 

And herein lies another factor, I think,like I’ve often noticed a tendency in modern fandom that people can’t seem to emphasize with anyone who isn’t in some way marked as an underdog -  Leading ppl to argue that characters who are definitely not underdogs like , say, Tony Stark, are definitely underdogs. 

Of course in reality things aren’t so simple that you could make a clean split into “underdogs” and “not underdogs” - Some ppl clearly demonstrably have it harder than others but ppl can have it hard in one way and have it easy in others. (Dimitri clearly struggles alot  - but he’s also a king. One doesn’t negate the other.)

There’s nothing wrong with underdog stories, they can be very inspiring and cathartic - but they shouldn’t be the only kinds of stories. 

Even the most powerful  can see themselves as victims because we’re all just squishy meatsacks who can still be hurt, and even the most powerless might see themselves as in-control if that helps them feel better. 

It also goes into the trolley problem and the human illogical tendency to view harm done through action as heavier than harm done through inaction. A tendency to not want to rock the boat, to confuse stability with peace. 

There’s no difference between harm done through action vs inaction. 

It’s at best, a failure of object permanence - to understand that things still happen and change even if you dont act  - and at worst selfish pride and ego (I want to keep MY hands clean I don’t care if people are suffering and dying as long as no one can say it’s my fault... the counterproductive puritanical idea of morality as “good person vs bad person”)

This leads to this attitude where if they can think of someone as a “victim” then it doesn’t matter what they do, because, after all, it was just circumstance, but the moment someone makes an active, deliberate choice, all empathy goes out the window and they’re held to some impossible standard. 

For the opposite extreme, see Dimitri (mind you I’m not saying he should be judged either im saying that mindlessly hating both is equally nonsensical... the dimitri haters are fewer but they do exist), or worse, Rhea... who regardless of her backstory has objectively been in a position of power and privilege for a literal thousand years.  You know Dedue and Seteth are right there? )

Something similar is to be said about ppl who call “bad writing” or “waifu-ism”, or consider her a “manchild” because she... opens up around people she trusts? Expresses relief when an ally validates her in a moment of self-doubt? Gets into comical situations in everyday life? That’s just kinda consequence of living in close-quarters with her. 

“How dare you not fit into “misguided victim” vs “ridiculous bitch” dichotomy don’t remind me that some character I don’t like is a human being” 

They pressed that any deviation from that is “ridiculous” or “extreme”. Tell me again that someone who’s consistently calm, collected and intellectually-inclined is a “manchild” for telling her closest ally that she would like to take a day off sometimes and liking stuffed animals.

I for once really like that she’s tough and proactive and makes decisions that really impact the plot without being a flat over the top amazonian stock character with no emotion other than “grrr! men dumb” which is then never taken seriously as a threat. 

Actually this part alone would not even preclude her from being a victim even Osama Bin Laden had a favorite color and liked disney movies. Hitler liked his dog. Stating this is just acknowledging simple facts, not saying that you should have sympathy for them (which for the record, you shouldn’t) - I think a work geared at ppl over 15 shouldn’t have to explicitly remind you that “this is an evil person” every time one shows up, people can distinguish for themselves, and those who can’t won’t be convinced by a video game. No one can “make” you like or empathize with a fictional chracter peeps. 

[vardasvapors]

DRUNK LIVEBLOG OF THE AKALLABETH BC I PROMISED @rose-of-the-bright-sea​

Uh unfortunately i’m not too drunk since once again my job was to bounce everyone once the party ended but uhhh it is early morning and i’m still not asleep and i did just spend 5 hours dancing and doing shots so...

ANYWAY: first scene of the Akallabeth, remember how the edain were the only Men who fought against morgoth in the war of wrath etc, and when morgoth was defeated the Evil Men who fought for him ran away and conquered all the Stupid Men who were still living in the middle earth area and these men’s lives sucked and were constantly attacked by orcs and monsters and they were dumb and wild and stuff. this explanation is like 20 kinds of LMAO NARRATIVES but also not like, in a lying way, just in a framing way.

otoh the edain got given a giant island in the middle of the ocean as a reward for fighting against morgoth and stuff, osse and aule and yavanna did it. (valar: ‘have an island way out in the sea’ elros: ‘SOUNDS LEGIT’). meanwhile the elves of ME are long-sufferingly granted permission to come to tol eressea because their lives kinda suck. the difference in the tone of the edain’s gift and the elves’ gift is totally not noticed by the narrator but the fact that avallone was build on the eastern edge of tol eressea where it could be seen from numenor is. lol.

there’s this super gorgeous entrancing description of how earendil burned super bright so that he shone night and day and the edain followed him over the calm enchanted sea until they found the island of numenor -- andor the land of gift, elenna that is starwards. however we all know all this incredible rich storytelling stuff isn’t important compared to the tiny scrap of smugness that can be wrung out of making elros hate earendil and/or elves, bc everyone knows that no character’s narrative matters except the feanorians’.

elves of ME also brought all the edain to numenor and elves of tol eressea gave the edain a ton of tools and gifts and stuff to help build their new nation, but you know it’s fun to headcanon elros as a bitter chest-puffing supercilious self-satisfied little prick who finds these elves embarrassing and blinkered and their existence pitiful and tut-tuttingly Wrong. bc that makes sense and is woke for some reason.

the numenoreans became taller than all the sons of middle earth, not all the men of middle earth, so numenoreans are taller than elves. also they didn’t have a lot of kids, bc i guess population explosions on islands with almost no death outside of like 300 years of old age is a Bad Time.

also “and the light of their eyes was like the bright stars” hahahahahahahahaha lmao! kill me! lies down. does not get up.

WHITE TREE FRACTALS

the numenoreans are super cool and get to talk and visit with both elves of tol eressea and elves of middle earth, which seems to lead to the completely inescapable conclusion that numenor is a place where the peoples of all lands can pass messages to one another but this is never mentioned. the numenoreans could totally also have prob defeated the evil human kings of middle earth if they tried but they were totes peaceful -- at an undefined point in time. nice vague timeline blurring bruh.

instead they like, instructed the dumb middle earth men on how to grow grain and grind flour and make stuff out of wood bc uh i guess the middle earth men are too dumb to figure it out, for “the ordering of their life, such as it might be in the lands of swift death and little bliss” hahahahahaha this is the most condescending line in the entire silm it’s great.

then the numenoreans start getting dissatisfied with how they still gotta die and stuff. it’s vaguely described as being something to do with how even their long lives are still not as long as elves’ loves, but every time i read this it reminds me how pissed about mortality i’d be if my great-great-great-uncle who was totally allowed to choose to become immortal kept popping in to talk about how he got to see the cool millennia of my country’s history first hand and debate with my revered ancestral founding king. so.

however the numenoreans totally brush over these sorts of super compelling and sympathetic and valid points and instead just whine about how they’re A Bigshot Kewl Superior Race and HDU Say We Can’t Control Everything If We Wanna, 36 Presents? But Last Century I Got 37! because they’re fucking useless dumbasses.

The valar reply that Aman Will Not Make You Immortal, Yo, and also that elves being immortal and men being mortal aren’t rewards or punishments, which are reasonable points. they then go on to go ‘TBH shouldn’t WE be the ones envying YOU bc you get to peace out of this clusterfuck world, huh, huh whaddaya think about that. also btw the whole mortality thing is some Secret Plan To Fight Inflation eru came up with, and none of us will know it until you and a bajillion generations of your descendants are all dead, lol!!!!’ THANKS VALAR. THAT’S REALLY HELPFUL. GREAT JOB OF ACTUALLY ADDRESSING ANYTHING THE NUMENOREANS ARE BOTHERED ABOUT. KUDOS. i love dumb gods.

the numenoreans are super dissatisfied but instead of anything constructive the king decides to hold his breath and throw a tantrum stay king until he’s totally senile and his son is old, bc of spite, then numenor gets divided into the king’s men and the faithful. the faithful are also bleh about death but assume that the valar have some kind of good reason for what they said, because um, reasons, i guess. no one says if the reasons are more mindless dogma or more a grounding and strengthening faith, but since numenoreans sound like RL humans to a tee it’s probably both. the king’s men aren’t skeptics tho -- they just conquer and enslave and colonize and steal from middle earth, bc ‘the west was denied to them.’ some fans find this to be a ‘yes, but--’ where it’s not the best thing to do but sympathetic and better than those un-nietzschean faithful. i’m gonna assume every single person who finds this nod-worthy is as White as sour cream.

later on Ar-Gimilzor bans the Faithful’s language, sends secret police or smth to find out everyone who is Faithful and forcibly remove them from their homes, relocate them to Romenna, and corral and watch them, call them and the elves of tol eressea spies, chase them out of numenor, and force the faithful leader’s sister to marry the king. some fans still somehow think this was a morally grey and understandable thing to do because secular-culturally-christian libs are vile and have never parsed a history book in their lives.

Tar-Palantir becomes king after being secretly taught Faithful stuff by his secretly faithful mom, but nothing he does to fix things helps and he eventually dies young from depression. His daughter Tar-Miriel becomes queen but her cousin Ar-Pharazon forces her to marry him and give him the kingship instead. exactly how this happened remains unexplained! Boo! I want more details. Anyway Pharazon is a Fragile Masculinity poster boy and when sauron starts causing trouble he decides he’s just gotta go capture him and bring him to numenor to show off and stroke his ego, bc he is an Heir Of Eärendil and Respect Meehhh!! God this guy sounds SO UNPLEASANTLY FAMILIAR DOESN’T HE EH. (parenthetically i am delighted beyond words at how absolutely bang-on it is that the King’s Men, both here and earlier with the convo with the Valar, totally Do Not Mention the fact that they’re heirs of Elros, not just Earendil, bc that would be super inconvenient to their vision of themselves and their mortality grievance!! lol!!! i love it!!!! god!!!!!!!! *fingers and thumb in a circle emoji*).

anyway sauron is super smart and an awesomesauce genre-savvy villain and way too good for pharazon and he flatters him and manipulates him into making him his councilor and convinces him that the valar are lying and and to worship morgoth and slaughter the faithful by sacrificing them on.....hm....altars....as rebels and as scapegoats for all numenor’s Problems(TM)....>_>....lmao tolkien can be really fucking dumb and scattered about his mythology and religion patchworking, and yet the wokeness-masturbating section of fandom is infinitely worse in the most predictable ways.

WHITE TREE FRACTALS (this time featuring bonus BAMF and Super Awesome And Lovable 21 Year Old Isildur......have i mentioned recently how much i hate peter jackson......)

anyway when Pharazon has a mid-life crisis about getting old sauron also convinces him he can become immortal by invading aman, which he should totally do bc The Strong Do What They Will And The Weak Bear What They Must (remember this is tragically admirable if flawed, because it’s defying fate!) and a super armament is built to invade aman and ar-Pharazon’s ex-bff Amandil who’s secretly friends with the Faithful freaks and makes secret plans to sail to valinor to beg the valar to do something and has his son elendil prepare to go to middle earth to see the elves who are hunkered down there doing.....uhhhhh???? probably hiding from numenorean conquest????

but anyway when pharazon invades aman and chases the elves out of tol eressea and then tirion, he has a Uh-Oh I Think This Was A Bad Idea feeling but can’t back down now so he lands ashore and camps out around tirion and then manwe prays to eru to bail everyone out and says he will lay down rule of arda for a minute since he doesn’t know what to do, presumably a la ‘omg dad i fucked up and totally crashed your car,’ and eru solves this by getting ar-pharazon & co buried under a mountain until the end of the world (funny how so few fans ever address this thing re: tirion in valinor fanfic eh? oh yeah i forgot silm fans don’t give a shit about humans), opening up a big crack in the ocean, pulling aman and tol eressea out into space, turning the earth from flat to spherical, and letting the island of numenor get buried under the resulting tidal wave and fall down the crack to wherever. because you know overkill is great! also sauron is too busy doing an Evil Villain Laugh to realize he’s about to get drowned and he totally dies and has to make himself a new body out of Anger and he’s now ugly, which sucks for the fanartists.

anyway manwe saves elendil and his fleet (it doesn’t say manwe, but it does say ‘but the great wind took [elendil], wilder than any wind that Men had known, roaring from the west, and it swept his ships far away...’ which, duh) and they wind up washed up on middle earth, but totally grief-stricken over the destruction of numenor.

I can’t liveblog the rest any better than verbatim so I’ll just quote:

Among the Exiles many believed that the summit of the Meneltarma, the Pillar of Heaven, was not drowned for ever, but rose again above the waves, a lonely island lost in the great waters; for it had been a hallowed place, and even in the days of Sauron none had defiled it And some there were of the seed of Eärendil that afterwards sought for it, because it was said among loremasters that the far-sighted men of old could see from the Meneltarma a glimmer of the Deathless Land. For even after the ruin the hearts of the Dúnedain were still set westwards; and though they knew indeed that the world was changed, they said: 'Avallónë is vanished from the Earth and the Land of Aman is taken away, and in the world of this present darkness they cannot be found. Yet once they were, and therefore they still are, in true being and in the whole shape of the world as at first it was devised.'

For the Dúnedain held that even mortal Men, if so blessed, might look upon other times than those of their bodies' life; and they longed ever to escape from the shadows of their exile and to see in some fashion the light that dies not; for the sorrow of the thought of death had pursued them over the deeps of the sea. Thus it was that great mariners among them would still search the empty seas, hoping to come upon the Isle of Meneltarma, and there to see a vision of things that were. But they found it not. And those that sailed far came only to the new lands, and found them like to the old lands, and subject to death. And those that sailed furthest set but a girdle about the Earth and returned weary at last to the place of their beginning; and they said:

'All roads are now bent.'

Thus in after days, what by the voyages of ships, what by lore and star-craft, the kings of Men knew that the world was indeed made round, and yet the Eldar were permitted still to depart and to come to the Ancient West and to Avallónë, if they would. Therefore the loremasters of Men said that a Straight Road must still be, for those that were permitted to find it. And they taught that, while the new world fell away, the old road and the path of the memory of the West still went on, as it were a mighty bridge invisible that passed through the air of breath and of flight (which were bent now as the world was bent), and traversed Ilmen which flesh unaided cannot endure, until it came to Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle, and maybe even beyond, to Valinor, where the Valar still dwell and watch the unfolding of the story of the world. And tales and rumours arose along the shores of the sea concerning mariners and men forlorn upon the water who, by some fate or grace or favour of the Valar, had entered in upon the Straight Way and seen the face of the world sink below them, and so had come to the lamplit quays of Avallónë, or verily to the last beaches on the margin of Aman, and there had looked upon the White Mountain, dreadful and beautiful, before they died.

[postfuguestate]

Not the End of the World

I wrote a Life is Strange fic called Not the End of the World over a year ago (?!). If you haven’t read it, it’s a Pricefield AU which is sweet, pretty funny, and (best of all) short!

I was and am proud of it; I worked hard on that one, and I think there’s some pretty good writing in there! But there was always one thing that bugged me about the fic. I introduced a subplot involving Victoria Chase that I ended up doing nothing with.

Well, I was poking through some old files and I found said subplot pretty much in its entirety as an alternate version to the opening of the fifth and final chapter of the fic. So I’m bunging it here, below the cut, for the amusement of anyone who wants to see what might have been.

Two fun facts! I cut this because I wanted to keep the focus on Max and Chloe. But the interaction between Chloe and Victoria became the foundation of another fic I’m still writing, called Grit.

Max suspects that her personal karma is still in beta. That can be the only explanation why her reward for disposing of the styrofoam remains of their thoroughly broken fast is Victoria Chase.

She's prowling the waterfront with a camera and a scowl.

Victoria is talented. She's intelligent. She's beautiful. She is better presented than Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She's richer than a triple chocolate muffin. She always smells nice.

But...she is not nice. She's disagreeable.

Just like blast furnaces are lukewarm.

Max has seen girls like Victoria. Usually on TV. There was even a giddy rush in the first few minutes of discovering the Platonic ideal of the spoiled rich brat in Max's new school. Until she realised that there was no screen separating her from Victoria and that, in Nietzschean fashion, Victoria had also noticed Max.

It seems that Victoria always notices Max, no matter where she hides.

She spots Max now with her arm halfway into a bin.

Max flinches, and yanks her arm away, but not before Victoria takes a snap shot.

As she always does when she comes face to face with Victoria, Max reviews everything she knows about self-defence. This amounts to: curl up into a ball and hope that the bear goes away.

It's not very useful. Bears can't get at your kidneys with thei heels, after all.

Victoria says, "Well, well. I wondered where you found those outfits, Maxine."

"Good morning, Victoria. Goodbye, Victoria."

"Oh, don't mind me, Maxine. Please, dumpster dive away! Let me just get a few more shots..."

Max folds her arms and half turns away. That's as much of a response as she can muster. Victoria hoists her expensive camera and clicks merrily away.

"You know, Maxine, there are these places called stores? Where you can spend this stuff called money? And buy nice things called clothes?"

"I'm wearing clothes, Victoria."

Victoria finally lowers her camera. "Y'know, it's almost cute that you think so. You might even be cute, if you could dress yourself."

"Please just leave me alone...wait, what?"

"N-nothing! You're stupid!"

Max isn't quite sure, but it seems like there's a brief moment of panic on Victoria's face. Max is still trying to process that when Chloe scrambles up onto the sidewalk.

"Hey, Max, let's go! We've got place to be, remember? Oh."

Victoria factory resets to a scowl. "Oh, my God! Is this the Bay's Biggest Losers Club? Maxine, don't tell me you've stooped so low as to actually hang out with the only girl to ever be expelled from Blackwell?"

"Expelled?"

Chloe's crimson with rage. And embarrassment. She avoids Max's eye.

Chloe snarls, "Victoria-"

"Chloe...Price, was it? Shouldn't you be chained up in a junkyard somewhere, barking at trespassers? Or curled up in Rachel Amber's lap? Careful you don't bring fleas back to the dorms, Max."

"Hilarious. My sides are splitting." Chloe stares Victoria in the eye. "Just like your lip."

Math isn't Max's strong point. There's an equation that her subconscious has been working on, though, and the last unknowns yield their values to Max in the face of Victoria's shittiness.

Max will not endure people hurting Chloe.

Max moves to Chloe's side and touches her arm. Not restraining. Supporting.

Max trembles. Her voice doesn't. "Shut up, Victoria. Chloe's shown more kindness and humanity in five minutes than you have in the month I've known you. I may not know everything about her, but I can't wait to find out more. I wish I could say the same about you. Now, unless you are going to start biting, we're going to skip the rest of the insults. I want to get back to my date."

Seeing Victoria Chase reduced to a sputtering, red-faced wreck isn't the worst time Chloe's ever had. But it's not even close to being the most interesting thing about what Max just said.

Before either Victoria or Chloe can mistress themselves, Max grabs Chloe's arm and drags her away from Victoria.

Chloe finds the impulse to look back is a bit like a tachyon. Theoretically it exists, but she just can't locate it.

Max says, "I...can't believe I just said that."

"That's because it was unbelievable. Max, you're a badass!"

"I think I'm having a heart attack. And I know I'm going to have hell to pay tomorrow."

Now Chloe does look back. Victoria's walking away, hunched and stiff.

Chloe remembers what Rachel said about Victoria. She thinks about what Max just said about her.

Chloe groans.

Max looks up at her. She tries on a reassuring smile. It's not the best fit. "It's okay. I'm okay."

"Max...look, I need to do something real quick. Could you wait for me where the trail starts? It's just over there."

"What? Why? Chloe, don't get involved, it's-"

"Hey. Trust me. It won't take long, and it's nothing bad. I swear."

"Chloe...were you really expelled?"

Chloe sighs. "Yeah. I kinda gave up on school. They were pretty quick to return the favour. I'll tell you more. If, uh, you still want to...?"

Max snorts. "I just told off Victoria Chase for you. What do you think?"

Chloe grins. "That you're really pretty, and sweet, and the sooner I go, the sooner I can get back to figuring out how to spend as much time as possible with you?"

Rachel was right about Max's eyes. When they widen like that, they are just ridiculous.

"Oh. Well. Uh, okay," she says, dazedly.

"Thanks, Max. We'll be back to our date in ten minutes, tops!"

Max gasps, "Oh, dog! I can't believe I said that, either!"

Chloe has to sprint to catch Victoria. "Vic...wait..."

Surprisingly, she does. Chloe takes a second to make sure she doesn't lose her breakfast and crosses her fingers so she can swear off smoking for life.

Victoria's chin is held at the Euclid-approved angle to project disdain. Her shoulders are squared. Her glare is set to charbroil.

"If you're going to threaten me again, don't expect me to wait for you to get a lung transplant."

Chloe waves her hands. "No threats. Talk."

"What do you want? Come to plead on Max's behalf? Or to admit that someone dared her to spend time with you-"

"It can be tough. Coming out. In a place. Like this. Where everybody's into everone else's shit all the time."

Victoria scoffs, but it's a weak scoff, by her standards. More cough, than scoff, really. "I'll wait for the Audible version of your lesbio, thanks."

But she doesn't turn away. And her geometry is that bit less aggressively aligned.

Chloe sucks in air, pitches her voice like she's talking to a spooked horse. Not a trust fund princess with the apparent moral restraint of actual medieval royalty. "I'm just saying. Maybe you feel like you've got no one you can talk to. Well. I'm way out of the Blackwell loop. If you need an ear."

Victoria whispers, "What the fuck?"

"Maybe I'm totally wrong. And I'm not trying to pry. Just...

"Are you...?" Her eyes narrow. "Is this some kind of blackmail attempt?"

Chloe sighs. "That's just fucked up, dude. I'd never out anybody. Or push them to out themselves. I just...thought I'd make the offer." She holds up her hands. "If it's even relevant to you. Anything you might tell me stays between us. That's all I wanted to say."

Victoria tugs her earlobe. She folds her arms. She drums the fingers of her left hand on her right forearm. Chloe just waits and lets her lungs reacclimate while the pressure builds and builds.

And blows. "What the fuck is this? I'm horrible to you and...are you and Max really dating?"

"Honestly, and in order: because I may not like you, but I don't really hate you. I've kinda been in your shoes." Chloe glances down and grins wryly. "Well, cheap knock-offs anyway. And...I hope so. If I don't screw things up."

Victoria snort. "The odds are against you there, you're a walking...ugh. Don't make it so easy if you expect me to be..." Her face twists into an agonised grimace. "Nice." She shudders. "Whatever. I'll hunt you down if any of this conversation gets out there. Goodbye." She hesitates, looks away. "I mean...ugh...maybe..."

Chloe laughs. "Right. Maybe we'll talk again. But I know you'll be okay, because you're smart Victoria."

That earns her a wary look. "What are you talking about?"

Chloe grins. "My biography will be epic. And detailed. Going for the hands-free format is a great call!" The wink is maybe overkill, but Chloe just goes with the moment.

For the second time, she leaves Victoria sputtering, and lopes off Maxward.

Chloe comes jogging back to Max looking lighter and happier.

"Hey, super Max!"

"Hey. Uh, is everything okay?"

"Yeah. I just had a quick, civil word with Victoria. Tried to smooth some ruffled feathers, y'know. That's all."

"You? Unruffling Victoria?"

"That's a bigger job than even I can manage, no matter how hella smooth I am. I tried, though. I mean, she's an asshole, but...everybody goes through stuff, right?"

"I guess. Like...getting expelled stuff?"

"Yeah...like that. I guess I'd better explain, huh?"

Max's voice is tiny. "Only if you want to? No pressure, remember?"

[kendrixtermina]

i use to really like the hc that Edelgard has a shortened lifespan bc i thought it was an interesting concept and i liked using it as another connection between her and lysithea, but now i agree with u that i don't like it bc i'm tired of ppl using it to woobify her and strip her of her agency against TWitSD. i also feel ppl use it to make her more "tame" and like either u agree with her or u don't but stop acting like she had absolutely no choice wrt her decisions, that's what makes her great

I mean it’s not too far-fetched a conclusion and as valid a headcanon/interpretation as any other doesn’t help that the official translation of hers and Lysithea’s ending kinda sounds like it implies that (apparently that was a translation blotch and there was no plural pronoun in the original text, there was a post)

But it’s not a necessary conclusion (she doesn’t have the “extreme physical weakness” symptoms, also Lysithea makes it sound like they wrote her off as a failure just one where the lethality was less immediate than with the others - she was a failed prtotype.  I mean a big part of why Lysithea’s so aggro is that she doesn’t want to be “Sad Cancer Victim Kid known for nothing else but having bad luck as a preschooler” and make some mark on the world)

What you determine to be factually the case and what it means in terms of subjective emotions are a different pair of shoes

I definitely disagree with the “oh thats, why she had to do it right now” like doing a rush job for selfish reasons would be that much more responsible and other readings that just make her this person who’s simply lashing out because she’s hurt. As I say regarding Rhea that would be “sympathic” not “good”. 

Everything about her character is so much about  proactivity self-determination, in the self-help booksy or the Nietzschean way and any reading that doesn’t see that... doesn’t get it imho. I hope this doesn’t sound pedantic but she’s all about  breaking traditions and decinding for yourself, and refusing to be puppet or just swept around by circumstance

And like most of us she might not always succeed but she consistentlystrives for that. 

If you want a sad woobie who strayed from the path because they were hurt...   ...that’s Dimitri. You’re describing Dimitri. If you come to CF expecting that same sort of redemption story/ sanity chain dynamic then of course you’ll be disappointed or feel that it was “not adressed”.

It sort of reveals something interesting, maybe about human nature or the state of the world or some people that they need anyone they sympathise with to be an underdog of some sort... But here’s the thing, she isn’t one. Not by any metric, and she knows it. even if her life isn’t perfect, others had it worse - Like the peasants, her siblings or Lysithea and her cousins.   In a sense she’s a lot like Sylvain. 

Edelgard  is the one with the biggest army and the most egregious superpowers (bar Byleth) and who had a lot of the knowledge from the start. 

And that can be interesting in its own way because from where she’s standing fixing the world looks to be just within reach rather than some far-fetched dream. That’s why she feels the responsibility to act. 

She certainly had her share of suffering and it does impact her in significant ways (she consistently choses death over capture cause she doesn’t want to helpless ever again and this tendency to be guarded can be unhelpful for negotiations) but that didn’t “cause” her actions her response to it did. About Six characters had their entire clans butchered and all responded in a different way. 

We shouldn’t assume that she had NO restrictions either (the choice was not “cooperate with the slytherers or do not”, but “cooperate or deal with them and whatever hell they unleash in response”... probably civil war. But Claude and Dimitri DID win in their respective routes with the home base splintered and the whole deal hinges on the fact that for all their technology the Agarthans can’t destroy the church or take over the world themselves - They could replace Edelgard and all of Adrestia for that matter but then they’d have to start their plan for scatch and 100 years of plotting would have been for naught. She has some leverage there too - and part of why she went with the temporary alliance is certainly that she didn’t just want them kicked out of her territory but also meant to take on the church and knew that this could easily become a Fodlan-wide mess, and that she needs power for that. She says it herself like three times. 

Like she can simultaneously have soft, endearing emotions and and intellectual, philosophical deliberate side to her./ be responsible for her actions both good and bad that’s how it is with most people.