#and i think it provides a really interesting perspective and commentary on like. consumption and entertainment

[ozzieinspacetime]

Trevor Hills being Pathetic Blorbo #1 and your enjoyment of him being said Pathetic Blorbo #1 just adding on to the games pre-existing meta commentary is,, so good. They made him as miserable as possible and god it really worked.

[mittensmorgul]

The TNT loop got me good today. 7.21 is... a new level of angst now. I’ve been yelling my incoherent feelings at @wigglebox about this, and decided I just needed to make all the parallels. So I’m just gonna quote chunks of the transcript for 7.21 here, and then comment on it. Because it is A Lot™

(honestly y’all should be glad I’m not a gif maker because a) it probably would make this post lethal, and 2) the first casualty would’ve been me)

Okay, here we go. For reference, I’m just using the transcript here, and basically annotating it with thoughts from the POV of 15.03. Some of it will be directly quoted from this transcript at the superwiki if you’d like to follow along for maximum pain (or to fill in any blanks I’ve left in the rest of the episode), and some of it will just be direct commentary. 

We begin with Cas awakening, bolting upright, from the catatonic state he’s been in since he’d healed Sam’s Hell Trauma. Remember, Cas took that wound into himself. Cas’s awakening wasn’t “natural.” It coincided with the awakening of the Prophet Kevin Tran, and Dean shattering the ancient rock concealing a long-buried “Word Of God.” I’d like to take a moment here to remind everyone why Sam had even suffered this trauma that Cas had to heal in the first place. Not only was “breaking Sam’s wall” one of the “terrible things” Cas had done in s6 in the name of trying to keep Dean from being conscripted back into service in the new Apocalypse Raphael was plotting, but it also led directly to The Worst Thing Cas Has Ever Done In The Name Of Doing The Right Thing Of His Own Free Will. Because ALL of this was couched in that language. In 6.20, in that final scene, this was the specific language that Cas used with Dean in his final attempt to earn Dean’s trust and support in his (soon to be) catastrophic plan. And Dean couldn’t give it to him. ALL of this is now currently wrapped up into the events of the first three episodes of s15. Free Will, the Word of God, a Cosmic Wound that has injured both Sam and Cas (and that Cas was unable to heal this time), Kevin Tran forced into service, A Plot to gather god-like power through the consumption of souls, a Rift into an afterlife for the purposes of releasing a terrible apocalypse on the world... heck... there’s probably more, but this will do nicely for a start, for the purposes of Painful, Awful Context.

FLASH TO TITLE CARD

(see what I mean? this is gonna be a long, bumpy ride... I should probably put this under a cut...)

The lightning flashes and odd weather effects from breaking open the tablet caused a worldwide disruption to the weather, to the point that a meteorologist on the radio said he wasn’t baffled by it, but offended.

So the Word of God being freed, from being given power by having been revealed, revealed something that went beyond confusion, and was just so wrong it actually made the guy ANGRY. Hmm. Kinda like Dean in early s15, yes? Dean’s our “offended weatherman.”

(I really miss the text separator line function. Thanks for taking that away from us, tungl. I guess I’ll have to insert something else between commentary... asterisks it is... I’ll keep it to three for a visual separation that hopefully won’t screw too badly with screen readers)

DEAN: So, what? We start the storm heard 'round the world? SAM: When we broke this thing [SAM touches the stone tablet] open last night, every maternity ward within a hundred-mile radius got slammed. Looks like any woman in the last month of her pregnancy went into labor.

WELL that’s definitely an interesting parallel... motherhood, giving birth. With the imagery of Rowena’s spell in 15.03 looking both like Mary and Jess in 1.01 as well as a weird sort of “reverse birth” of hundreds of souls.

***

Sam and Dean were planning to head West to Rufus’ cabin, until THIS, that had them heading in the exact opposite direction, because Cas:

SAM: What? [to DEAN] Cas is awake. DEAN: When? [SAM puts the phone on speaker and holds it out.] When? MEG: Last night about eight. DEAN: And you waited till now to call us? MEG: I've been busy with Cas. He's just a tad different than when he dozed off, 'kay? DEAN: What do you mean, different? MEG: Hey, Seacrest, guess what – not a nurse. Just playing one on TV. Want answers? Start driving.

Or, because Demon who teamed up with them specifically because they intended to use Cas for his specific power... Meg intended to earn Cas’s loyalty for her own security/protection/personal mission against Crowley, so she could swing him like a big hammer. In s15, Belphegor’s machinations were much the same, with his long-term plan to earn just enough of Cas’s trust to use him as the key to open the box holding Lilith’s Crook. By hook or by crook, right? Demons, man. I mean, I’ve mentioned the parallel to 8.17, and the crypt scene with the unlocking of this box in a different crypt for a different god-level power item (in 8.17 it was brainwashing and the angel tablet, and in 7.21 it’s denial and the leviathan tablet, but you can draw a big fat straight line through all of it). And this is just another go-around of all those same themes.

***

DEAN: We raced all the way here, and now I don't know. I can't say I'm fired up to see what's left of the guy. SAM: You think he remembers at all? DEAN: That, and I'm guessing whatever kind of hell baggage he lifted off of your plate. It's not gonna be pretty.

Oh remember this? Previously on Supernatural, this was owie, but now it’s been weaponized with new context from s15, with this endless cycle of guilt and blame laid on the table between Dean and Cas. He couldn’t look at Cas, was terrified to see what had become of Cas because of ALL of this. Because of everything that began in s6 and culminated with them finally cracking the Word of God. Or at least A word of god, since we know now that this wasn’t the only thing Chuck wrote, you know? And we’re still due to progress through Metatron’s hackneyed retelling, too. But even back then, Dean’s feelings of guilt, blame, and loss were all tangled up together regarding Cas, and infused with a confusing dollop of friendship, need, and (dare I suggest) love. Because the kind of stuff Dean (and Sam) have forgiven Cas for over the years? Even if it was only in knowing the underlying good intentions and wondering about all of Cas’s motivations, this isn’t the kind of thing you forgive someone for unless you truly care about them, deep down. The only ones who truly have the power to break you like this are the ones you love.

***

After Cas’s unsettling attempt at a “joke,” (pull my finger *lights explode* *disturbing chortling*), Dean needs information, and needs it from Cas.

DEAN: Okay, just hang on, Cas. Wait. Let us catch up to you for a second. SAM: So, you're saying you remember who you are, what you are. CASTIEL: Yes. Of course. Oh. Outside today, in the garden, I followed a honeybee. I saw the route of flowers. It's all right there, the whole plan. There's nothing to add. SAM: You might want to add a little Thorazine. MEG: Right? He's been like the naked guy at the rave ever since he woke up. Totally useless.

Let’s start at the end of this mess and work our way back to the start. Meg declares Cas “totally useless.” Because in his current state (I don’t fight, I watch the bees), he literally can’t be the weapon she hoped he’d be for her own personal needs. Like Belphegor in s15, it took some chipping away before Cas could even remotely be “useful” to him. Cas couldn’t even look at him, and he certainly would never agree to fight for him (the muscle).

Next let’s tackle Cas’s perception of creation, as told in metaphor between his observation on the micro-level scale of the “route of flowers,” which he directly compared to the macro-level scale of “the whole plan.” As if there was a “whole plan” to the universe. I could write a doctoral thesis on just this statement alone, of how Cas’s observation of the plan inherently altered it, how his presence in the garden as observer watching the bees do their thing, following them along their paths to the flowers irrevocably inserted him into the “whole plan,” and whether he or the bees realized it or not, those bees by necessity altered their paths to accommodate Cas’s presence in their daily routine. Did this make their lives easier? More difficult? Regardless, it had to affect their choices, which flowers to visit, which paths to fly, because Cas’s mere presence provided an obstacle to their routes. They couldn’t fly through him, you know? Left or right, over and around, He became something the “whole plan” needed to work around. And isn’t that what Chuck’s been doing since the start? And on an entirely different level, Chuck’s done it all with intent, because “the whole plan” had been his creation from the beginning.

And then, both first and last depending on your perspective, is Dean, asking Cas to stop just long enough for him to finally catch up. Asking Cas to wait. Because Dean feels like he’s the one who’s fallen behind.

Okay, everyone take five to have a good cry *passes out tissues*

***

CASTIEL: Will you look at her? My caretaker. All of that thorny pain. So beautiful. MEG: We've been over this. I don't like poetry. Put up or shut up.

Ah, Cas and “poetry.” He’s temporarily given up on seeking Free Will, temporarily abandoned the attempt to “teach poetry to fish,” as he’d said in 6.20. And Meg doesn’t like poetry either. She just wants Cas to suck it up and do what she needs him to-- be her personal hammer. She doesn’t care about him, but only what he can do for her. Put up or shut up.

***

CASTIEL: Oh. Of course. Now I understand. SAM: Understand what? CASTIEL: You were the ones. Well... I guess that makes sense. DEAN: What makes sense? CASTIEL: If someone was going to free the Word from the vault of the earth, it would end up being you two. Oh, I love you guys. CASTIEL pulls DEAN and SAM into a hug.

Of course The Winchesters would be the Disruptors™ to the natural order, right? Even though Sam and Dean had only stumbled across the word of God by accident, while trying to clean up the planet-wide epidemic of cosmic Goo left behind after Cas’s attempt to rewrite the story and play god. But still, of course it would be Sam and Dean, because it’s always Sam and Dean, right? I mean, Cas already hung a lampshade on “The Whole Plan” being right there for anyone to see, in everything from the path of the flowers right up to the unearthing of the Word.

Chalk another one up to the spiral narrative as everything.

***

Cas mutters something about cat penises, and females not being consulted on that terrible bit of creation. Chuck, man. Throwing barbed penises around with zero consideration for the ladies. Ow. But on to the bigger things:

DEAN: Cas, please, we're losing ground out there, okay? We need your help. Can you not see that? CASTIEL: This is the handwriting of Metatron. SAM: Metatron? You saying a Transformer wrote that? DEAN: No. That's Megatron. SAM: What? DEAN: The Transformer – it's Megatron. SAM: What? CASTIEL: Metatron. He's an angel. He's the scribe of God. He took down dictation when creation was being formed. SAM: And that's the Word of God? CASTIEL: One of them, yes.

They’ve been drowning in goo for months, and Cas coming back had represented a beacon of hope in the darkness. But the reality of the whole situation at hand wasn’t something Cas could deal with. He was so burdened with personal guilt that he chose to ignore the mess, reacting with anger (and by disappearing) with directly confronted with it. In s15, Dean... can’t just disappear, even though he’s the one drowning now.

A... Transformer. A misinterpreted word that changes the meaning, creating a baffling misunderstanding that requires a re-translation and correction before understanding can occur. That’s so meta I could cry. “I always get the words right.” Cas had no idea what “Megatron” or “Transformers” were, but saw that Sam and Dean were literally “speaking language he didn’t understand,” but that they’d come to a satisfactory conclusion that seemed irrelevant to their current conversation anyway, and just... continued on as if the disruption had never occurred. An entire loop of conversation just flew right over his head. He might not get words wrong, but sometimes he just doesn’t get them at all, you know? Nor does Dean always understand what the intent behind Cas’s words are. They need a translator. Or they need to stop speaking in references and metaphor, and speak clearly in unmistakable language. And all of this is wrapped up in the parallel to the indecipherable Word of God, which will require a unique translator to interpret.

Author to Scribe to Prophet, because the knowledge within is not meant for angels. It’s not even meant for humans. It’s just another randomly-scattered puzzle left by Chuck to be simultaneously helpful and dangerous. Choices and drama.

***

CASTIEL: Don't like conflict. CASTIEL disappears and the stone tablet drops to the floor, breaking into three pieces.

Aah, the conflict, that Meg attempts to blame on Dean, when she was the one who (I mean, understandably she was curious, but she’s still a demon that Dean still doesn’t trust, who once possessed Sam and tried to force Dean to kill him, so... she’s not actually their friend, she was “mutually assured destruction” in case things with Cas went sideways while Sam and Dean were running around trying to clean up the Leviathan mess...). Cas’s reaction to conflict back then had been to drop the Word like a hot potato, smashing it to pieces on the floor. Even when he isn’t trying, he’s tearing up pages and altering the shape of Chuck’s story. Bless him. But he’s still... actively avoiding doing anything, including acknowledging his own role in the events that have brought them to this point, and to everything Dean had been fighting almost on his own (Sam’s been “in the bell jar” most of s7 fighting the Hallucifers) and basically surviving with whiskey, denial, and pasting a fake smile on and pushing through trauma after trauma without Cas (or... pretty much anyone else in any measurably reliable way). But we all know this isn’t how DEAN reacts to trauma, right? He pushes people away, by manufacturing conflict when he runs out of organic conflict.

***

DEAN: All right, I'll go handle Cas. Sam, will you please pick up the Word of God?

Dean, delegating responsibilities. He’ll take the broken angel, and Sam will take the broken Word.

***

MEG: We both call, who do you think Cas will come to? I'm guessing me. You heard him – thorny beauty, blah, blah. I'm the saint who stayed with him. He owes me. His words. SAM: Yeah, what about what he owes us? MEG: Well, work on him a little. Maybe he'll start crushing on you, too, hot stuff. SAM: What are you gonna do with a broken angel? Don't be stupid. MEG: I'll take power where I can get it. I've got myself to look out for.

Unlike Belphegor, Meg never even attempted to disguise her motives. She wanted Cas for his power, broken or not. She’d find a way to manipulate him to defend her-- despite his insistence that he doesn’t fight. And it’s interesting it’s Sam who’s given the line “what about what he owes us?” While Dean’s discussion with Cas is far more personal.

***

DEAN: You realize you just broke God's Word? CASTIEL looks away and DEAN sits down at the table opposite him. DEAN: It's Sam's thing, isn't it? You taking on his, uh, cage-match scars. I'm guessing that's what broke your bank, right? CASTIEL: Well, it took... everything to get me here. DEAN: What are you talking about, man? CASTIEL: Dean, I know you want different answers. DEAN: No, I want you to button up your coat and help us take down Leviathans. Do you remember what you did? CASTIEL holds up the board game “Sorry!” He shakes it once and the board and pieces appear on the table, set up ready to play. CASTIEL sets the box aside. CASTIEL: Do you want to go first?

Dean’s still kind of in awe at the notion of directly defying God’s Word, and Cas just... doesn’t even seem bothered. Dean needs to find an explanation for Cas’s avoidance of the Urgent Matter at Hand. He blames it on what Cas suffered after taking on Sam’s Hell trauma, but Cas tries to tell him it’s so much more than that, that his entire experience since the moment he gripped Dean tight and raised him from perdition had led to this moment. But that’s too much for Dean to even wrap his head around, and Cas is just... speaking in riddles anyway. So he presses on and demands a direct answer. Cas continues speaking in riddles.

And pushing for a more direct personal conversation, despite the chasm of misunderstandings separating them. For possibly the first time ever, it’s Cas speaking in metaphors and references that Dean does not understand. And it frustrates the hell out of him. He just wants to get some straight answers out of Cas before the world goes up in flames. Or drowns in dark waters.

He needs Cas to “button up his coat” and help save the world. Save it from the mess he technically made of it. But Cas won’t even engage with what Dean’s saying to him, like in s15 Dean doesn’t even engage with what Cas is saying to him (but Cas is also refusing to button up his coat and do what had to be done in s15, refusing to even look at Belphegor... despite actively assuming another equally important job... he wasn’t avoiding HELPING, just avoiding the specific task Dean had tried to give him... as the one of them most qualified to monitor a demon for ~demonic hinkiness~ or whatever. Sam and Dean would’ve just assumed they were dealing with Jack if Cas hadn’t been the one to tell them it was actually a demon, you know?

***

Meanwhile, back in Cas’s room, Kevin is knitting the Word of God back together, while being simultaneously baffled and terrified by everything that’s going on.

***

DEAN picks up a “Sorry!” card. CASTIEL: You know, we weren't sure at first which monkeys were gonna make it. No offense, but I [DEAN moves a marker on the board] was backing the Neanderthals because their poetry was... just amazing. It's in perfect tune [CASTIEL picks up a card] with the spheres. But in the end, it was you – the [CASTIEL moves a marker] homo sapiens sapiens. You guys ate the apple, invented pants. DEAN: Cas, where can we find this, uh, Metatron? Is he still alive? CASTIEL: I'm sorry. I – I think you have to go back to start. DEAN moves a marker. DEAN: This is important. CASTIEL motions for DEAN to pick up another card. DEAN does and moves another marker. DEAN: I think Metatron could stop a lot of bad. You understand that? CASTIEL picks up another card. CASTIEL: We live in a "sorry" universe. It's engineered to create conflict. I mean, why should I prosper from... your misfortune? [CASTIEL puts down a marker and moves DEAN’s marker back to the start.] But these are the rules. I didn't make them. DEAN: You made some of them. When you tried to become God, when you cut that hole into that wall. CASTIEL: Dean... it's your move. DEAN pounds a fist on the table and swipes the board to the floor. DEAN: Forget the damn game! Forget the game, Cas. CASTIEL: I'm sorry, Dean. DEAN: No. You're playing "Sorry!"

Dean’s still trying to solve their bigger problems, but he’s really trying to play along to appease Cas, trying to speak to him on a level he can understand. Trying to “play his game” and hope that Cas will play by the rules Dean had thought they both understood-- give and take. Mutual contribution to the conversation. But Cas continued talking about things Dean believed were irrelevant in the face of the current crisis. Neanderthals losing out to homo sapiens. And again, Cas talking poetry, and referencing the spiral narrative of creation.

The thing about Sorry! is that the game involves a lot of elements of chance, but also a lot of elements of CHOICE. I know someone’s written meta on this in the past, but really quickly, in Sorry, each player controls a number of different pawns, all of which must eventually be advanced from the starting point to their respective finish line. The playing board itself is the defined and accepted parameters of the world the game will play out on, yet there are multiple different “paths” for each player to take. The players draw cards in turn (the element of Chance) and then decide which of their pieces to advance according to the instructions on the card they selected (the element of Choice).

The thing is, in this game, Cas could’ve chosen to “play a different piece.” He could’ve made the game easier on Dean while still advancing his own position, and yet he chose to strategically remove Dean’s piece from the board. Cas was playing not just to win for himself, but to frustrate Dean’s chances to even get a fair turn to play. Cas was playing by the rules, after all, which encourage competition over teamwork. The name of the game is Sorry! after all, and “sending your opponent back to the start” is half the point of the game. Cas wasn’t going to even play in the spirit of cooperation with Dean. He wasn’t going to provide answers. This was, in a horrific way, Cas’s attempt to revert himself back to the “reprogrammed” Cas that came back from Heaven at the end of 4.20. All under the guise of playing sorry, without having to engage with it in good faith.

Dean wasn’t even asking Cas to fight here. He was trying to respect Cas’s choice to “avoid conflict.” But Cas wouldn’t even TALK to him, wasn’t even engaging with him as if HE was real. And Dean was not unreasonably frustrated.

Dean’s been fighting back against an impossible enemy that can’t be killed and has devised a way to suppress human free will into submission, so that all of humanity will willingly march themselves into the slaughterhouse. It’s horrifically WORSE than the apocalypse to Dean, and he’s desperate and at the end of his rope, and is hoping for even a spark of hope to keep fighting himself... and Cas has nothing but poetry for him.

***

And then the angels show up, prepared to take the Prophet with them, as if Kevin was their property. Kinda raises some questions about how the Prophet Chuck could’ve been unaware of what he was, you know? Almost as if it had literally been a lie...

HESTER: You smote thousands in Heaven. You gave a big, scary speech. Then you were gone. What the hell was that?! CASTIEL: Rude, for one thing. INIAS: Where have you been? CASTIEL: Oh, Inias. Hester, I... I know you want something – answers. I... I wish it could be that… There are still many things I can teach you. I can offer, um, well, perspective. Here. [CASTIEL points a finger at HESTER.] Pull my finger. [HESTER doesn’t move.] Uh... Uh... Meg will – will get another light, and I'll – I'll blow it out again. And, well, this time, it'll be funny, and – and we'll all look back and laugh. HESTER: You're insane. DEAN: Hey. DEAN is standing in the doorway. DEAN: Heads up, Sunshine. DEAN puts his hand in an angel-banishing sigil he’s drawn on the wall outside the room. White light flares and the angels vanish.

Unlike Dean, who’d tried to be patient and understanding with Cas despite everything, Hester simply angrily demanded answers from him. And Cas... was equally evasive with her. She labeled his evasion “insane,” but Cas is 100% sane. He knows exactly what it is he’s avoiding answering for, but he’s paralyzed with fear that anything he does will only add to the problem. And Dean gets rid of the angels before they can start killing everyone (including Cas).

I mean, Cas’s answers are pretty obvious anyway, you know? His guilt, his hubris for believing he was choosing the right thing, in trying to teach the angels a better way-- Free Will and the protection of humanity-- that in the execution he lost his own free will (and his life) and unleashed a horror onto Heaven and Earth that he’s entirely incapable of fixing. It’s not like he doesn’t HAVE answers, they’re just... to much for him to even face. Guilt is a terrible thing.

***

DEAN: That is back in one piece, I see. And you're saying that there's some sort of a "How to punch Dick" recipe in there somewhere? KEVIN: I-I don't know what you're saying, but it seems kind of like an "in case of emergency" note. What did they mean by "prophet"? DEAN: Oh, no. [to SAM] Really? SAM: Yeah. Yeah, that's what the angel said. KEVIN: I don't want to be a prophet. DEAN: No. You don't at all.

Yeah... nobody wants to be a prophet. It’s a terrible job. No free will, no freedom at all, just ensnared into the service to God’s Word. (oh, and poor Kevin will try to resist, will willingly nearly kill himself trying to turn God’s Word around into a weapon he can wield. I can see why Chuck would single him out for specific “punishment” for messing around with his story like that.

***

MEG: Yeah. Yeah, Castiel. It's me. DEAN: Cas? Where? Where is he? MEG: [to DEAN] Shut up. CASTIEL: I’ll stop speaking. MEG: No. No, Cas. You talk. CASTIEL: [audible over MEG’s phone] I’m in a place called Perth. MEG: Perth? DEAN: Perth? As in Australia? MEG: What dogs? [to DEAN] He says he's surrounded by unhappy dogs. CASTIEL: They’re chasing a rabbit around [indistinct]… MEG: Oh. Okay. He's at a dog track in Perth. CASTIEL: I’m surrounded by large unhappy dogs. MEG: Yeah, they're unhappy 'cause the rabbit's fake. Listen, we're on highway 94, north of St. Cloud, Minnesota, just passing mile marker 79. CASTIEL materializes in the back seat between MEG and KEVIN.

Okay, first off, miscommunication. This is just riddled with miscommunication. But the background conversation, Cas is at a dog track surrounded by large, unhappy dogs. Kinda makes interesting light of all the “Dean is a Weird Dog” the show has been hammering on for years-- both literally and metaphorically. But... these dogs at the track are given the runaround. They’re trained to run a specific track for the entertainment of the spectators, running in endless circles chasing after a lure that they can never quite catch before they arrive at the finish line, where even winning the race just means they’ll have to run another round around the track the next day. And the lure? The rabbit they’re trained to follow after? It’s fake. It’s all part of the bigger game the poor dogs can’t escape from. I’d be unhappy, too.

Which is all a tidy metaphor for how Dean feels in s15, but how Cas has seen pretty much everything since way back at this point, if not far earlier.

Hence even more miscommunications, or at the very least each of them not understanding where the other is even coming from, based on these wildly different baseline perspectives. Cas, as an angel, had always been one of the spectators before Dean had pulled him into the race, so to speak. He’s always understood all of existence as a sort of game in this way, but Dean had never even had an inkling of the bigger game they were all part of all along. He’d thought he understood the rules, understood his role in the game, and it took until s15 for him to see that all of it had been a game to Chuck. That even when he’d thought he’d escaped the endless go-around of fake rabbits, it had only put him back at the startling line over and over again to run another race. And Cas... can’t understand Dean’s perspective here any more than Dean can understand Cas’s, despite them each believing they actually understand one another and just don’t care... awful, right?

***

CASTIEL: They're from the Garrison – my old Garrison. Looks like Hester's taken over. We were assigned to watch the earth. Often, it was boring. The wars were very boring and the sex – you know, the repetition. Anyway, I was, uh... I was their captain. Isn't that strange? SAM: Cas, why are they pissed at us now? CASTIEL: [to MEG] You know, those racing dogs were absolutely miserable. They can only think in ovals. DEAN: Cas, don't make me pull this car over! Why are angels after us? CASTIEL: Are you angry? Why are you angry? DEAN: No, I-I'm... Please, can we just stay on target? CASTIEL: There is no reason for anger. They're only following protocol. If the Word of God is revealed, a keeper of the Word will awaken, like this [He touches KEVIN’s nose] hot potato right here.

Observing creation enabled Cas to see the “repetition.” The endless loops. Like the dogs running in ovals. But he’s unable to connect with humanity directly right now, unable to risk feeling. And we’re back to doorways to doubt, and the same “only humans can feel true joy.” But also suffering. As long as he remains at a distance, he can protect himself from feeling all of that, from having to recognize his part in it.

And he doesn’t understand why Dean is angry that he keeps talking in circles.

Dean just wants to know why the angels are angry at THEM, why they’re coming after THEM when they’ve got so many other bigger problems they’re trying to solve.

***

CASTIEL: Anyway, Garrison code dictates you take the keeper to the desert to learn the Word away from men. DEAN: What kind of sense does that make? He has to tell us so that we can use it. CASTIEL: That's God and his shiny red apples.

Cas didn’t expect anything less from God. Dean just wants to stop the Leviathan from eating humanity and destroying life as they knew it, and Cas... doesn’t have anything to give.

***

DEAN: Okay, you know what? Screw the Garrison. We need the tablet to end Sick Roman's "Soylent Us" crap. CASTIEL: If you want the Word, you'll have to duck Hester and her soldiers. SAM: Yeah, you're in our corner, right, Cas? CASTIEL: No, I don't fight anymore. I watch the bees.

see? yet despite that declaration, Cas does try to help how he feels comfortable-- painting sigils to hide them from angels, but leaving off banishing sigils or he himself wouldn’t be able to stay. Kind of a conundrum, right? Sacrificing some of the safety Sam and Dean could’ve worked into the sigils so he himself could remain in the room with them.

***

CASTIEL: You seem troubled. Of course, that's a primary aspect of your personality, so I sometimes ignore it. SAM: Okay. Um... right now I'm just wondering about you. CASTIEL: What about me? You're worried about the burden I lifted from you. SAM: I think I was done for. Do you see Lucifer? CASTIEL: I did at first. But that was... It was a projection of yours, I think, sort of an aftertaste. Now I more see... well, everything. It's funny. I was – I was done for, too. The weight of all my mistakes, all those lives and souls lost, I... I couldn't take it, either. I was… I was lost until I took on your pain. It's strange to think that that helped, but – SAM: I know you never did anything but try to help. I realize that, Cas, and I'm grateful. We're all grateful. And we're gonna help you get better, okay? No matter what it takes. CASTIEL: What do you mean, "better"?

And here we have it. Sam plainly expresses his own guilt and regret over what’s become of Cas. But Cas hasn’t even begun to see how deep he’s buried himself to avoid dealing with his own guilt. Using Sam’s trauma as a sort of penance, he’s using that to “transfer” his own guilt away from himself, the way he shifted Sam’s trauma into himself. As if the second shift washes away the first and he’s wiped the slate clean. As long as he lets himself believe that, he doesn’t have to face what he’s done, and the consequences of his own choices.

Which is... kinda what Dean’s doing in early s15.

***

KEVIN: I am not prepared to factor the supernatural into my [DEAN puts the brown paper bag over KEVIN’s face] world view. DEAN: Okay, there we go. [He pats KEVIN on the back.] That's it. That's it. Just breathe. Take it easy. KEVIN holds onto the bag and breathes into it. DEAN: Oh, I don't know, man. What can I say? You've been chosen. And it sucks. Believe me. There's no use asking "why me?" 'Cause the angels – they don't care. I think maybe they just don't have the equipment to care. Seems like when they try, it just... breaks them apart.

I mean, Dean’s seen what trying to care has done to Cas. And Dean... was the one who pushed Cas to care in the first place.

***

And Meg kills a couple of demons who’d picked up their track, but that also brings the angels back down on them:

MEG: Typical. I save our bacon, and you're sitting here, waiting by a devil's trap. Seriously, I just killed two of Crowley's men. I could have gone the other way on that. CASTIEL: It's true, incidentally. There's other demons' blood on that blade. MEG: Look, I'm simpler than you think. I've figured one thing out about this world – just one, pretty much. You find a cause, and you serve it. Give yourself over, and it orders your life. Lucifer and Yellow Eyes – their mission was it for me. DEAN: So, what? We should trust you because you wanted to free Satan from Hell? MEG: I'm talking "cause," douchebag, as in reason to get up in the morning. Obviously, these things shift over time. We learn, we grow. Now, for me currently, the cause is bringing down the King. And I know we'll need help to do it. DEAN: Crowley ain't the problem this year. MEG: When are you gonna get it? Crowley's always the problem. He's just waiting for the right moment to strike. I know what I'm supposed to do. And it isn't screw with Sam and Dean or lose the only angel who'd go to bat for me. SAM breaks the devil’s trap with his foot. CASTIEL: This is good – harmony and communication. Now our only problem is Hester.

yeah, but they haven’t really communicated anything useful yet. But Cas does know that the angels are about to find them again...

***

HESTER: You took the Prophet from us?! CASTIEL: I'm – I'm sorry? HESTER: You have fallen in every way imaginable. INAIS: Please, Castiel. We have to follow the code. Help us do our work. DEAN: He can't help you. He can't help anybody. HESTER: We don't need his help... or his permission. HESTER nods to INAIS, who nods back. There is the sound of angel wings and INAIS disappears. HESTER: The Keeper goes to the desert tonight. INAIS reappears with KEVIN. DEAN: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back off. We're actually trying to clean up one of your angel's messes! You know that. CASTIEL: He's right. An angel brought the Leviathan back into this world, and – and they begged him. They begged him not to do it. DEAN: Look, just give us some time, okay? We will take care of your Prophet. HESTER: Why should we give you anything... After everything you have taken from us? The very touch of you corrupts. When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost! For that, you're going to pay. HESTER walks towards DEAN. CASTIEL: Please. They're the ones we were put here to protect. HESTER: No, Castiel. HESTER backhands CASTIEL and he falls to the ground. INAIS and the other MALE ANGEL each hold up two fingers to stop DEAN and SAM from going to CASTIEL’s aid. HESTER: No more madness! [She punches CASTIEL.] No more promises! [She punches CASTIEL again.] No more new Gods! [She punches CASTIEL repeatedly and then holds up an angel knife.]

I couldn’t decide how to break this up to talk about it, because one thing leads directly into the next, and it all goes to context.

Hester accuses Cas of falling “in every way imaginable.” In the wake of their brush with free will, the remaining angels are attempting to restore the old order to Heaven, because there’s not much left to them than what they’d known before. When the new rules fail, the only thing they know to do is revert to the old rules.

Dean calls them out on it, and Cas even steps in to support Dean’s words. Only Cas can’t even say *I* and *me* here. He talks about himself in the third person, but at least he’s acknowledging what kicked off this mess, even if he’s still not taking direct responsibility for it. Not only that, he acknowledges that Dean had tried to stop him, and that he’d refused to listen. This seems to be a key point again in 15.03. The inability to acknowledge guilt and responsibility, and the refusal to listen. This entire conversation is just a few painful twists away from the Breakup Scene in 15.03.

But Hester lays down The Worst Truth, that Dean himself is at fault for destroying Cas, for just the TOUCH of him “corrupting” Cas, breaking him until he broke the world. To Dean, this was the equivalent confirmation of all his worst fears-- he’s poison, he’s worthless-- that Cas got from Belphegor in 15.03-- that Dean doesn’t care about him beyond his usefulness. But this is something that Dean will carry with him for YEARS, and which Dean will continue to feel in every dealing he has with Cas going forward-- that HE is at fault, that HE is unworthy, that everything that makes Cas “fall” in any way is because of him, because he’s poison. And so he internalizes every mistake that Cas makes, every burden he endures, as his own, because it’s all his fault anyway, right?

But Cas, too, learned a lesson here as Hester beat and prepared to kill him: NO MORE MADNESS. NO MORE NEW GODS. And when confronted with the truth of what Belphegor planned-- to become a new god in the same way that Cas had-- he understood what he had to do. He would not exchange one problem for another, exchange one apocalypse for one that would likely be even worse. It was a terrible choice, and I think this is the root of his decision.

***

Here have some dramatic irony, and the demon saving Cas’s life:

INAIS: Hester! No! [He grabs HESTER’s arm.] Please! There's so few of us left. HESTER punches INAIS in the face with the hand holding the knife. HESTER: [to CASTIEL] You wanted free will. Now I'm making the choices. HESTER raises the knife. White light blazes from her chest and she falls to the ground. MEG has stabbed her. MEG: What? Someone had to.

Hester claimed she was choosing her actions now, using the same excuse of Free Will that Cas himself had claimed as his motivation for swallowing Purgatory in the first place. Even when everything she’d done had been in the name of restoring the Old Order, of following the Rules that angels had always obeyed. Talk about not getting the point of Free Will.

This is what Dean’s struggling with now in s15, with his own long-held understanding of what Free Will even meant, with this new context that Chuck had repeatedly thrown new obstacles in his path, personally. There are no rules left, or so it feels like to him. There’s nothing to revert back to, or hold on to as an ideal, when every choice they make has been engineered to lead them to equally bad outcomes.

***

But Cas... he’s understood this for a very long time:

INAIS: These are strange times. CASTIEL: I think they've always been. INAIS puts a hand on CASTIEL’s arm. INAIS: I wish you'd come with us. CASTIEL: Oh, I'm not part of the Garrison anymore, Inias. I'm sorry.

Sure, he’ll be forced back against his will, but in a way that will help save him eventually. It won’t feel like salvation for years to come, though, but it’s a journey.

***

SAM: Here. “Leviathan cannot be slain but by a bone of a righteous mortal washed in the three bloods of the fallen.” Uh... It says we need to start with the blood of a fallen angel. SAM and DEAN look at CASTIEL. CASTIEL: Well, you know me. [He holds out a small bottle.] I'm always happy to bleed for the Winchesters. CASTIEL hands the bottle, which is filled with blood, to DEAN. DEAN: What are you gonna do, Cas? CASTIEL: I don't know. [He smiles.] Isn't that amazing?

AAAAHAHAHAH. Angel blood, required by Belphegor’s first spell. This scene was directly paralleled in 15.01, and with context, it’s it awful? After refusing to fight for the entire episode, Cas is happy to bleed. To do penance, but not to be burdened with action or responsibility. And with complete freedom to choose his next move, to choose for himself what to do with himself, he... chooses nothing. And heck, I get it, after billions of years of thinking he didn’t have ANY choices, suddenly he’s presented with EVERY OPTION, and is DELIGHTED by that.

But the one thing he WON’T choose? Staying with Dean. Standing by Dean’s side while he fights to clean up Cas’s mess.

Dean’s next line to Sam after Cas leaves? “Well, let’s get to work.”

They can’t rest yet. They can’t stop, because the world’s still ending and they’re still entirely on their own. Only now they’re armed with at least a DIRECTION they can work toward. It’s something, but... it’s still just the two of them alone against the apocalypse. Which is what Cas had spent s6 trying to avoid. And can’t face at all now.

And this is what Dean had long since resigned himself to-- that Cas, given the choice, would leave. So Cas choosing to leave in 15.03? I think Dean was shocked he hadn’t left sooner.

And then of course there’s the angels dying when they return Kevin to his home, only to be deceived by Leviathan and abducted.

He just couldn’t win. And neither could Cas, and neither could Dean and Sam. It was an unwinnable game that would just break them all again.

I could do a post like this for 7.22, and for 7.23, and probably for every other episode from all the episodes between then and now, but this has taken me all day. I really hope y’all are making all the same connections, spotting all the thematic subversions and twists of every turn of the narrative spiral between then and now. But this episode killed me today. And it gives a lot of obvious context to Dean and Cas’s choices and issues in early s15 that led to the Breakup. But hopefully it also lays down the foundation of what they truly need to put out on the table to move past this impasse.

They need to put down something better than Sorry! They need to use real words and actually listen to each other. But the fact that scene in 15.03 directly called out this miscommunication, this refusal to listen (and it’s not just on Dean here, but Cas has refused to listen, too). And now the narrative demands they have that conversation for real. For their own good, but for the good of the world, to break these eternal ovals and finally break free of this endless chasing after the fake rabbit.

[ofravensandgenesis]

World Building Through Character Creation and Background NPCs

Entry 03. I was thinking over how to build out more plot points for both the underlying bones of original fiction, and also fleshing out ideas for some of the arcs in my ACABH fic. Honestly, adding more characters within reasonable limits seems to really help with that. Even if they’re just characters with a name and a few lines of description, or even just one line of description, it makes for a great springboard point to start tacking on more details. From those details, it’s a lot easier to build out the world around them in various layers. Like for the original fiction world I’m building out right now, creating the character Corwin Blackwood with the helpful input from my friends on how the name sounded, resulted in spinning up a huge chunk of the underlying world order. Originally I was going with just a two-sided state of tension and conflict, but Corwin’s family brings with it a third side that’s caught in the middle—people minding their own business that aren’t actively affiliated with either side. In terms of mechanics, the Blackwoods’ existence brought in some specific broad categories of magical beings, a rudimentary idea of various magical systems with an as of yet undefined overarching universal magic system, and social conflict regarding differing points of view relating to said beings and affiliations with them.

His name is all about his role in the story, with the meaning of his first name being “heart’s friend,” and having had a close if tempestuous friendship with the main character. The last name of Blackwood automatically brings to mind a haunted forest, and as inspired by a Netflix Castlevania fic called Baba by Crownofpins on Ao3 as recommended to me by a friend, and the Blackwoods’ home-locale and name makes me think of the Belmonts. So it was easy enough to consider the Blackwoods tentatively as a family of exorcists/monster-hunters/etc in this rough draft. (The Baba fic is pretty awesome btw, it’s got great elements of old Slavic folklore, obviously Baba Yaga for example, among other things. I shan’t spoil it ofc, but I thought it was a lovely read. Adult content warning for the fic ofc, read the tags, etc.) There’s other external factors that helped bring him about, including other recent media consumption on my part also again in thanks to my friends for recommending them, including Mo Dao Zu Shi and The Legend of The White Snake. (Content warning: Both of those works contain adult content, etc.) They’re both stories of Chinese origin that focus on romances that contain supernatural elements, with The Legend of The White Snake being an old classic tale of folklore. But what’s really fascinating to me is the mythology system that’s at play in the stories—I’m so used to “medieval” fantasy settings being European-influenced landscapes and civilizations, it was really cool to see a more involved Asiatic-inspired one. I’ve certainly seen Asian-mythos-based supernatural movies and series before, but not in this specific niche that’s more fantasy-adventure-ish. Usually the ones I’ve come across are much more heavily leaning into the martial arts category of movies as I’d classify them, or set in more modern-based times. That’s probably just a sign I need to go out and find more content of this sort to consume, honestly. But how the above two works treat the whole spirituality/magic/supernatural aspect is admittedly a huge inspiration point for me for how I’m hoping this original fic’s world will be built, and provides a great starting point to go and try to research more into stories and myths relating to those elements. It also happens to fit in neatly with me being interested in trying to learn a bit more about some of my heritage and culture, being partly of Chinese descent. That’s another thing I know I want Corwin to explore as an additional main character: what does it mean when you’re a part of multiple cultures as a person? What’s that experience like? How does that fact shape how he interacts with his world? I know it has a huge impact on how he’s perceived socially and allows him greater access to magical training via one side of his family having the history for it, and it interests me to think of exploring that in writing. What I’m not certain of is what name to label this general cluster of magical beings as—are they demons? Yaoguai? Spirits? There are associations with each word and name, and giving them a newly made up name would mean severing those ties for better or worse. There are definitely classical monstrous elements in that group, but also a lot of diversity, holding up yet another mirror to the run of the mill humans of that world. What is this group of magical beings specifically in this world’s build? Are they humans that have cultivated themselves spiritually enough to transcend, or is it a reincarnation gig, or something else? I’ll probably have to make another OC or import ideas from mythology to explain where they’re from. With regards to the FC 5 fic though, I’m currently listening to more of the in-game dialogue and commentary as provided by DanaDuchy on their account/channel (also: thanks to DanaDuchy for providing the rest of us such wonderful resources on this and other games/works) and boy the dev team did a wonderful job of just adding more of those little details to help make the setting feel alive. Like it’s honestly really cool to hear the NPCs talk about how haunted the King’s Hot Springs Hotel or the Catamount mines are, how Casey at the Spread Eagle makes the best loose meat/steamer/etc sandwiches and burgers in the entire county, the stories behind the Whistling Beaver Brewery, etc. It’s also pretty grim to hear the tales of all the people the cult’s taken and some of the things other people have seen the cult do, namely killing civilians in gruesomely inventive fashion. Which raises as an interesting problem for me as a fanfic writer is trying to figure out A) how much did the Seeds know about these particular clusters of mass murder, B) did they permit it if they knew about it ahead of time, and C) what purpose does it serve? Currently the answer to A is more than enough because the Seeds not knowing wouldn’t fit this AU nor their character builds in it to go well with the level of importance that the themes of responsibility and consequences carry both in the meta of the fic and in-world for Joshua personally. So that means for B, the Seeds are definitely permitting the additional senseless acts of cruelty noted in the dialogue and conflicted-conversations among the Peggies. Certainly they’re aware at least to some extent if not fully aware of the entirety of it, but I would assume based on the Heralds’ personalities that they all do like to know what their people get up to. They all seem like they would want to know the details of what’s going on for various reasons. I’m leaning towards having the particularly senseless murders be a mix of some acts the Seeds ordered, some acts they left open to interpretation to their followers who then took it to a dark extreme, and some acts were instigated by the followers alone. Basically: humans being humans during chaotic dark times and doing terrible, bad shit. Which leads to the conclusion for Joshua that the Seeds should be more disciplined about keeping their followers in line and not sinking down to this level of pointless evil. He’s not wild about their more purposeful evil acts either and is intent on trying to get them to stop the worst of that, but there are darker gradients of black and grey morality for him there to be more outraged by. So that pretty much wraps up C with the answer of “not much” other than humans being terrible to each other. Perhaps from the villainous perspective it helps terrorize the people of Hope County and whittle down the number of people the cult has to fight now or later, but overall that is still straight up mass murder. ...hm, that reminds me, I need to go tweak a line in a past chapter regarding the population of Hope County. I had it too low for there to be a reasonably-sized if small county aside from the cult’s numbers. Hm. I have the cult at around 1,800ish souls, with their goal being 3,000 total based on in-game commentary from nameless background NPCs, and the line from the Book of Joseph “A few thousand pure souls, whose mission would be to start over and repopulate the earth.” Doing a little quick search, there are some counties even in Montana that according to past censuses had 3,000 or less people in them. For it to feel a bit less likely that the Resistance and civilian population would be easily overwhelmed, it probably should be somewhat higher than the cult, since the county’s numbers will include those who cannot or do not want to fight—that being the old, the young, the ill, etc. Plus if the cult’s being quite so gruesomely wanton in the murdering sprees, that means they aren’t out to absorb the entire county, just most of it. But the cult must also be expecting losses on their side as well since this is a violent conquest they’re undertaking and all of Hope County’s armed to the teeth, if not as necessarily heavily as the cult itself seems to be. We’ll stick the vague number at around 2,400 civilians who are not in the cult for now then and add that to the notes—plus some of the cult’s population is certainly from the county itself pre-Reaping, not including increases that happen during the Reaping with all the active brainwashing, kidnapping, etc. Hm, given some of the generic-NPC-dialogue of how people were forcibly turned to being obedient members of the cult who actually did turn on and shoot their once-allies (and in that dialogue, the brainwashed were also long-time pre-Reaping neighbors of the speaker,) that makes Pratt’s situation in-game all the more interesting. He definitely recognizes the Deputy, whereas it sounded like the aforementioned brainwashed-individuals did not recognize their once-neighbors and friends at all. Pratt’s capable of thinking independent thoughts and he’s remained lucid enough to observe his surroundings and plan an escape, despite going on what sounds like a very dark “hunting trip” Jacob may have taken him on to hunt “deer” which sounds definitely like he was hallucinating in a bad way per his own lines. Jacob apparently isn’t a guy to miss out on using easy symbolism for his enemies, specifically the Whitetail Militia. That was probably not the only “hunting trip” Pratt and the other converts have been on, and that would potentially suggest that the converts are still possibly hallucinating much like how the Deputy is during the first portion of Jacob’s boss fight with the destroy-the-music-beacons visual effects, after exiting the Wolf’s Den. Is Pratt seeing something like that scene though? He doesn’t seem to be triggered by the music box or in the scenes where the music starts playing certainly. He’s surely been exposed to Jacob’s conditioning or at least the trials, and the list his name’s on would strongly suggest he passed his trial, dark as that is. Who did he kill as his sacrifice? Is he perhaps more immune to the Bliss effects? It seems to vary in intensity of how effective it is and how it effects people, based on their susceptibility to it—some factors may include addictive tendencies, personalities, etc, looking at generic-NPC-dialogue in Faith’s region. The sparkles that show up on the screen in addition to the red edges do lend themselves to interpreting that Jacob uses Bliss as part of the brainwashing regime, in addition to the hallucinations Pratt, the Deputy, and others seem to experience. (Also the Judges disappearing in Bliss clouds during the first half of Jacob’s boss fight, etc.) Either way, with the mention of no one expecting Jacob to go easy on Pratt, it seems like Pratt was more resistant to the brainwashing and breaking than Jacob expected, even in light of there being potentially more torment lined up for Pratt than the average captured civilian. (I suspect aside from Pratt’s involvement with the officers who tried to arrest Joseph, Jacob in particular is more likely to not think kindly of police men, given his time in Juvie and the events leading to him being sentenced to doing time, setting him on the path to joining the Army and the ensuing tragedy, and separated from his brothers when they were younger. Also possibly the lack of perceived protection from policemen in the times prior to their father Old Mad Seed’s arrest.) However, it could also be that Jacob deliberately set Pratt up to test his loyalty to Jacob and the Project by giving Pratt the opportunity to help the Deputy escape, instead (or a little from column A, a little from column B.) That music did come on awfully fast after the breakout after all, and perhaps Pratt hadn’t made his sacrifice yet. Maybe the Deputy was meant to be his sacrifice, in a less murderous way of just leaving the Deputy in Jacob’s hands. Seems like Jacob would have mentioned it if the Deputy was meant to be Pratt’s sacrifice by leaving them in the cage to their fate, but on the other hand it would fit the game’s plot and Jacob’s theme real well. Plus Jacob’s a cunning bastard and able to plot this kind of scheme out quite readily, I would say. This all probably means I need to flesh out more of the fic’s world with background NPCs here and there a bit more for the plot. That being said, I’m all excited to be borrowing with permission AU versions of some of my friend’s OCs for this. It’s definitely a new addition to the plotting that I hadn’t started out with, but feels like they’d fit in well with the plot overall. Two of the OCs will have a significant impact on Jacob as a character across his entire timeline in the past, present, and future. It’ll be an interesting challenge to deal with that, since while I do want to try to interpret the characters as close to their original canon lines and outlooks as possible, I feel this addition does open up more preexisting lines for Jacob that do fit the hints we get of his internal workings from in-game. It’ll mean he’s got more development in certain areas of his psyche and mental state, but a little bit of twisting here and there still keeps it all in line with the initial interpretation this AU’s got for him. I do feel the addition of the OCs will help bring Jacob to be more emotionally involved than he potentially was to begin with before the real-world-now with the intended future events of the fic, and this creates much more potential for up-close-and-personal levels of emotional exploration for the entire lot of them, both positive and negative emotions. ...oo, we might get to see Jacob actually losing his cool on-screen externally as a result of possible plot happenings. That could lead to an entire mess of the entire Seed family being angry and yelling at each other, creating emotional development. It’s really quite fascinating to try to work out how to get a group to actually get along well with characters like Faith, John, Joseph, and Jacob who are often at odds with each other. All while dealing with their rampant personal issues. Still something to study and test out for other original writings—haven’t quite learned how to take that kind of group dynamic apart and construct something from that inspiration yet. But definitely learning as we go. Back to listening to more NPC dialogue recordings though.

[ultrajonlewis-blog]

Breaking News: Media Coverage Belittles Millions

The maintenance of inequalities is not something that is hard to do.  Change is difficult, but maintenance is more easily handled.  The media plays a big part in maintaining the inequalities that we see in our everyday lives.  The media is an indefinitely expanding entity that broadcasts a wide variety of different ideas to the general public.  The media ranges from everything on cable to social media plus everything in between.  The billboards we see in big cities to the small signs seen out in the countryside, all of it can be the media.  And all of it, without a doubt, shapes minds and opinions like no other force on the planet.  Everything we see on TV, Instagram, newspapers, radio, etc. is all a range of ideas and messages being thrown at us, whether we are aware of it or not.  This either reinforces our ideas as we know them or forces us to view things from a different perspective.  The way we interpret media is either a result of our mindset or a contributing factor to how our mindsets are shaped.  Again, whether we know it or not, messages pertaining to race, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. make their ways into our brains.  This shapes the structures and institutions that we build in society.  They provide the basis or foundations of these institutions, directly and indirectly.  Furthermore, bell hooks provides some interesting commentary on the unique subject of the perspective or gaze of Black females, which is quite relevant to the conversation of media presentation and its effects on the public.

To be frank and possibly simplistic, the media is a huge contributor of the information we receive.  Yes, the parents and teachers of society provide a bulk of knowledge for future generations.  However, what happens in between the time spent with parents and teachers?  Adults, teens, children, and even toddlers now have access to information like never before.  The learning never stops with the pervasiveness of technology in this day and age.  TVs, phone, tablets, laptops, etc. are widely accessible.  Even at exorbitant prices, people manage to purchase electronics, all of which have the power to show you some form of media.  Children watching cartoons on TV can take the shows they watch with them wherever they go, learning valuable lessons about sharing and caring wherever their parents take them.  Teens continue scrolling through all platforms of social media from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed.  Adults watch the morning news while getting ready for work, hear news while they commute, have their phones out all throughout the workday, and can end the day with nightly news.  Movies and shows are made available to the public for indulgence at all hours of the day and night with services like Netflix and Hulu.  There is a nonstop barrage of media we are able to consume in 2018 and it is only still the beginning of this massive technological revolution.

With all this media surrounding us at all times, it can absolutely have a negative impact on the institutions we have set up to enhance and enable the smooth flow of societal necessities.  Additionally, it can have a negative impact on the mental health and schools of thought of many in the general public.  When this does occur, we have individuals in society that are shaped by the on-goings of the world and this does not only affect those individuals.  They bring this thinking to work, to school, to anywhere they take themselves and if they are notable individuals in places of importance (schools, business, prisons, media) they can harm others mentally, emotionally, even physically with their anomalous ways of thinking.

Let us take a broad example, a trend per say, of recent media coverage of politics that may (and does) reinforce or shape ways of thinking that can potentially (definitely) affect peoples’ lives in more ways than one.  I will analyze here potential direct and indirect effects of this media coverage on an individual’s life.  So, how can media coverage on politics directly effect a person’s life and maintain the inequalities we see every day?  A “caravan” of migrants has been a big story in the media recently.  The biggest development in the ongoing story has been the mention of US troops going to the United States/Mexico border to stop this “invasion” as it has been referred to by many.  Regardless of what the story is about, talk of troops “protecting” the US automatically enables a sense of fear and subliminally identifies an enemy.  Media coverage that describes troops protecting this country, no matter what it is from, objectively identifies a hero (troops) and a villain (something bad).  This plays into the vilification of Mexican immigrants that has been ongoing for much of US history but has been very prominent and overt in recent years.  So how does this directly affect the average American?  Well, let’s take the case of the average Latinx-American who has to see these heartbreaking messages of people with whom they may identify.  This not only affects their mental health directly but affects the way they go through the world.  Within the workplace or at their school their race/ethnicity becomes overly apparent to them.  They become hyper aware of their belonging to the “other”.  They become the anomaly.  They become a representation of the villain.  At work, coworkers bring their thoughts on the matter in with them, and some are not too pleasant.  At school, other kids make racially-charged jokes, whether they know how much of an impact that has or not on the Latinx in this example.  Just because of media coverage, some people are introduced to ideas or have ideas reinforced that are neither conducive to a healthy society nor happy individuals.  A person’s life is both directly affected by what they actually see for themselves and indirectly affected by the ideas or actions that other people may present to them.

Regardless of the type of media or the topic the media is covering, this example is analogous to so many situations.  Whether it’s the topic of race in “Dear White People” (Netflix Original show), the coverage of the #MeToo movement in the local newspaper, or Breitbart posting something political on Instagram, media portrays a message and that message truly stays with people.  That message can linger for an entire lifetime and this is a powerful sentiment.  These messages shape individuals and therefore shape the institutions of which they become a part.  This has drastic consequences on how some live their daily lives, and can unfortunately add to the inequalities many deal with all the time.  Today, this isn’t something that can be turned off.  It affects people 24/7.  How can one not internalize these messages?  If a person is told something enough times and/or for long enough, they will start to believe it, no matter how offensively outlandish that message might be.  The media has the power to eat away at individuals if left unchecked.  Even with all the good the media does, the negative side can absolutely have long-lasting negative effects on peoples’ psyche and well-being.  

A notable and relevant reference to this commentary is bell hooks and thoughts on “The Oppositional Gaze”, with specific reference to Black female spectators.  As stated by Manthia Diawara but mentioned by hooks, “Every narration places the spectator in a position of agency; and race, class and sexual relations influence the way in which this subjecthood is filled by the spectator” (117).  Here, we have this ever present idea of media affecting the minds of individuals and that individual’s mind perceiving media in very distinct ways.  Furthermore, hooks references “rupture” or the resistance of “complete identification with the film’s discourse” (117).  I think this can be applied more widely, specifically to the resentment man feel toward many forms of media.  This is again all part of the negative effects media may have on the general public.  If you are told to believe something negative, perhaps many in society will refuse to accept this and shy away from media consumption or a particular message being portrayed.  When hooks dives deep into that opinions of Black women she writes “[Black women] testified that to experience fully the pleasure of that cinema they had to close down critique, analysis; they had to forget racism.  And mostly they did not think about sexism” (120).  I think this is so relevant to the times; people can become so jaded by the negative role media may play (direct/indirect) in their lives that they may reject it altogether, in order to live peaceful lives.  Unfortunately, this ushers in the thought of “ignorance is bliss”, which may not always be healthy.  But this is the unfortunate reality with which many live.  hooks continues by adding, “[Black women] consciously resisted identification with films   that this tension made moviegoing less than pleasurable; at times it caused pain” (121).  The relevance this has to my fictitious, yet very realistic scenario, is spot-on.  The overwhelmingly affect media can have on one’s life truly is something awfully spectacular.  It can really cause so much hardship for an individual, especially when these message of inequality are floating through the airways nonstop.

I do not know if there is a remedy to all this negativity.  Somehow, throughout history, in the face of negativity people have found a way to resist and provide social change in this country.  Classes such as AFS 363, for example, serve as a way to educate motivated individuals to create a more informed society.  Other classes on race, gender, economics, politics, and so on also serve to better society and produce individuals more equipped to bring about change, even if that change is something as simple as one person providing their friend with just a little bit more knowledge than they had prior.  Media that provides fair and moderate coverage or perspectives on very polarizing subjects, in light of much bipartisan frames of thought, also serves to push society toward a more fair and equal world.  Still, we live in a time where media is a never-ending production of information that can affect people’s lives in so many different ways.  We must be the change and further advance the change to eliminate inequality and internalize more positive messages about ourselves and others.  

References

hooks, b. (1992). The oppositional gaze: black female spectators. In Black looks: race and representation (pp.115-131). Boston, MA: South End Press

[digital-strategy]

https://ift.tt/2PVgtaN

The path forward for premium media is seemingly clear: Put up a paywall.

Digital advertising is a duopoly-dominated mess; any print or broadcast cross-subsidy you might have is declining at one speed or another. Your loyal core digital readers may be only a tiny fraction of that big “monthly uniques” number you put into press releases — but some of them are willing to pay for what you do. Reader revenue is relatively reliable, month to month or year to year, and it’s at the center of media company plans for 2019 and beyond.

But how many paywalls will people really pay to click past? It’s worked for The New York Times; it’s worked for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. But does it work for local newspapers? Metro dailies? Weekly or monthly magazines? Digital native sites?

The data thus far isn’t super encouraging, and that’s the world that New York magazine and Quartz walk into with their just-announced paywalls. New York’s was announced yesterday:

New York Media is now joining other publishing companies or individual publications that have recently added paywalls, including Bloomberg Media, The Atlantic and the Condé Nast magazines Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Wired.

Subscriptions for the New York Media sites will cost $5 a month or $50 annually. For $70 a year, the company will include a subscription to New York magazine, the onetime weekly that started publishing every other week in 2014.

The pay model, which will allow readers a number of stories free before shutting off access, will go into effect the last week of November, according to the company, which would not specify a date for the change.

Quartz, the business news outlet recently purchased by Japan’s Uzabase, made its move this morning:

The Quartz membership is an education in the global economy that’s written to equip you to make more informed decisions at work, in your investments, and in life. Each week, we take you outside of the news cycle to provide analysis, context, and insider insight about one of the players or phenomena that’s upending global markets and rewriting the rules of business. You can read the first installment on our race toward a cashless future (and who wins and loses in it) today. The exclusive new content published every day is designed to deepen the expertise of leaders, and help those aspiring to leadership get ahead in their careers without stepping out of them. Membership — which costs $14.99 per month, or $99.99 for the first year as a special limited-time founding offer — also brings you the ability to engage directly with Quartz’s journalists via conference calls, and join events with other members.

Even news omnivores won’t pay for everything

Both New York and Quartz have been real standouts in terms of digital strategy. New York has made content verticals work far better than most legacy media companies and built an agile editorial voice that really works for the web; Quartz has been a leader in mobile-first thinking, platform-specific strategy, and new interfaces for content discovery and consumption. Between the two, I’ve probably read 100 of their stories in the past month. They’re really good!

But are they $50 a year good? Or $100 a year good? To go alongside $120 a year for The Atlantic, $90 a year for The New Yorker, $420 a year for Bloomberg, $60 a year for Slate, $50 a year for Medium, debitum ad infinitum?

To be fair, these paid products offer substantially different value propositions, mixing content, membership, and experience. Quartz is keeping its main output free to read and making an interesting education-and-networking play that makes sense for a business site; New York is building a paywall that can flex open or closed depending on a reader’s predicted propensity to pay; The Atlantic is mostly offering a premium experience while leaving the main site open; The New Yorker and Bloomberg offer relatively traditional meters allowing a set number of articles a month.

But only 16 percent of Americans say they are willing to pay for any online news. If someone’s first digital subscription is to the Times or the Post — how many are willing to pay for a second, or a third, or a fourth news site? Especially if that second or third site costs as much or more than their favorite national daily?

To frame it another way: There’s a segment of the population that can grudgingly be convinced to pay for a news site, out of some mix of consumer reward, civic duty, and peer pressure. But that second or third subscription requires a level of devotion that can be hard to sustain in a digital environment where the links come at you from every direction.

Are you Netflix or Seeso?

Or allow me a metaphor: Netflix and Amazon have convinced many millions of people to pay for streaming video. But how many of those people think: That’s not enough, I need more? If The New York Times is Netflix and The Washington Post is Amazon (of course) — are these premium national publishers Seeso? Filmstruck? DramaFever?

One complicating factor is that the line between magazines and daily news used to be much more clearly drawn. What you got from a print subscription to The New Yorker or The Atlantic was distinctly different from what you got from the local daily — in timeframe, in editorial approach, in format. But premium magazines’ expansion online has typically been in a newsier direction. Real-time reactions to Mueller news; breaking news from Capitol Hill; columnizing off the latest outrage — these are things can now appear at any of a dozen quality domain names. Wired does great writing about technology, of course — but is it so distinct from what other sites offer that its value remains as clear as it used to be? The Atlantic had a lot of scoops in the last election cycle — but is breaking campaign news something it’s really going to be better at than the Post?

On one hand, it’s unfair to lump this class of premium paid products together — each will succeed or fail on its own merits, both editorial and strategic. A business publication like Quartz will likely have an easier time of it than a more general-interest outlet like New York. But I think it is a fair question to wonder how far down the Paywall Solution can filter through the editorial ecosystem. Local newspapers have already hit this roadblock: While the Times, Post, and Journal build subscriber bases in the millions, most metro dailies have struggled to go far into the five figures. Only two non-national papers — the Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe — have more than 100,000 paying digital subscribers. Aggregation theory holds that, in a frictionless marketplace, the Internet tends to aggregate power in the hands of a few large players. That’s benefited Google and Facebook — and, on another scale, the Times and the Post. What about everyone else?

I mused about this idea on Twitter yesterday, and here are some the responses I got — keeping in mind that people who follow me on Twitter are necessarily Very Unusual News Consumers:

I’m sorry to hear about this. I read New York Mag at work; I adore The Atlantic. I already pay for WaPo. I don’t want to pay for every site I frequent online

— Lebanexican (@Lebanexican) November 12, 2018

This. There’s only so much I feel comfortable paying for services that are not essential like food/clothing/shelter is.

I ♥️ news, but if I have to choose between my utility bill and the six subscriptions/recurring donations to news orgs I currently have… 🤷🏽‍♀️

— Wendi C. Thomas (@wendi_c_thomas) November 13, 2018

I think about this quite a bit from a consumer perspective. I do NYT but not WaPo, New Yorker but not Wired/Atlantic. ESPN but not The Athletic. If I let it, I could be nickel and dimed to death with subscriptions.

— Dan_Rowinski (@Dan_Rowinski) November 12, 2018

Especially if they all cover the same things/people/topics. There's a lot more value that can be unlocked when outlets selling subscriptions offer something truly unique & different. That's how the subscription model bring a host of new voices to the fore (IMO).

— Terrell Johnson (@terrellwrites) November 12, 2018

Icksnay on the aywall-pay. Will simply read other content sources — sorry NYM.

— Al Poochini (@alpoochini) November 13, 2018

I get to read ten articles a month on various news sites. Sometimes only one or two articles per month before I'm shut down. I'm not going to pay for news, but it does mean I don't get to check the primary source when I'm reading commentary about something.

— Missus Bennet (@poornerves) November 12, 2018

You can't subscribe to everything. I appreciate @NewYorker's version. There are occasional "must read" stories there that someone I follow links but not enough for me to replace one of my newspaper subscriptions when choosing what to buy.

— Jane (@Poeia) November 12, 2018

Or….it makes it harder for everyday people to discover the great words from the honkers of our time, I wouldn’t have read Ta-Nehisi Coates “Reperations” essay of a paywall had stopped me, or much Ta Nehisi at ALL. Pros and cons, happy to see some people getting some pay for wrk

— Elliott Troy (@AngloGyptian) November 12, 2018

Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, NYT, Economist, New Yorker, The Athletic, Spotify. I like Slate and NY Mag and VF but at a certain point it's enough. Rather go without than pay for more

— Daniel O (@DanOfromNYC) November 12, 2018

exactly. for me it just means i don't read the stories. they should just use ads to pay the bills. or i just reset my browser if I really feel like reading it

— The Count (@Alan87374847) November 12, 2018

Hmmm… I read a ton of content from all of these sources. But I only have subscriptions to @newyorker and @TheAtlantic. I have just been helping myself to free NYMag copy, just because I could. I fully expect to pay up now!

— Chris Daly (@profdaly) November 12, 2018

I'm happy to pay for WaPo and 7 other newspapers (not including the NYT) as well as The Atlantic and The New Yorker. I want to support the sites I rely upon. But I realize I may not be typical.

— Jeri Dansky (@JeriDansky) November 13, 2018

Illustration by

Louis Richard

used under a Creative Commons license.

via Nieman Lab

[0xslash-blog]

The Elephant in the Brain (review)

The book was a very interesting read.

The art scene, for example, isn’t just about “appreciating beauty”; it also functions as an excuse to affiliate with impressive people and as a sexual display (a way to hobnob and get laid). Education isn’t just about learning; it’s largely about getting graded, ranked, and credentialed, stamped for the approval of employers. Religion isn’t just about private belief in God or the afterlife, but about conspicuous public professions of belief that help bind groups together. In each of these areas, our hidden agendas explain a surprising amount of our behavior—often a majority. When push comes to shove, we often make choices that prioritize our hidden agendas over the official ones. 

The thesis of the book is the underlying motives behind everything a person does is to increase prestige and social status ― and our conscious brains invent false pro-social explanations that we tell others. More strongly, we consciously believe these false explanations and don't understand the motives behind our actions as well as we think. The hidden motives trying to maximize prestige in our respective social circles is "the elephant in the brain".

Here are some intriguing extracts with some commentary:

On why self-deception is sane from a game theory standpoint: 

Civilization is a Mixed-Motive Game

A classic example is the game of chicken, typically played by two teenagers in their cars. The players race toward each other on a collision course, and the player who swerves first loses the game.18 Traditionally it’s a game of bravado. But if you really want to win, here’s what Schelling advises. When you’re lined up facing your opponent, revving your engine, remove the steering wheel from your car and wave it at your opponent. This way, he’ll know that you’re locked in, dead set, hell-bent—irrevocably committed to driving straight through, no matter what. And at this point, unless he wants to die, your opponent will have to swerve first, and you’ll be the winner.

The reason this is counterintuitive is because it’s not typically a good idea to limit our own options. But Schelling documented how the perverse incentives of mixed-motive games lead to option-limiting and other actions that seem irrational, but are actually strategic. 

Your Conscious Brain is a Press Secretary that explains the actions of the President, i.e., the hidden motives:

When we capitalize “Press Secretary,” we’re referring to the brain module responsible for explaining our actions, typically to third parties.

In one classic study, researchers sent subjects home with boxes of three “different” laundry detergents, and asked them to evaluate which worked best on delicate clothes.16 All three detergents were identical, though the subjects had no idea. Crucially, however, the three boxes were different. One was a plain yellow, another blue, and the third was blue with “splashes of yellow.”

In their evaluations, subjects expressed concerns about the first two detergents and showed a distinct preference for the third. They said that the detergent in the yellow box was “too strong” and that it ruined their clothes. The detergent in the blue box, meanwhile, left their clothes looking dirty. The detergent in the third box (blue with yellow splashes), however, had a “fine” and “wonderful” effect on their delicate clothes.Here again, as in the split-brain experiments, we (third parties with privileged information) know what’s really going on. The subjects simply preferred the blue-and-yellow box.

But because they were asked to evaluate the detergents, and because they thought the detergents were actually different, their Press Secretaries were tricked into making up counterfeit explanations. 

And a whole series of examples in Part II of hidden reasons for everyday behavior.

Laughter is a Play Signal: 

Gregory Bateson, a British anthropologist, figured it out during a trip to the zoo. He saw two monkeys engaged with each other in what looked like combat, but clearly wasn’t real. They were, in other words, merely play fighting. And what Bateson realized was that, in order to play fight, the monkeys needed some way to communicate their playful intentions—some way to convey the message, “We’re just playing.” Without one or more of these “play signals,” one monkey might misconstrue the other’s intentions, and their playful sparring could easily escalate into a real fight.

Here, for example, is a joke that flirts with, but doesn’t actually consummate, a norm violation:

MARY: What do you call a black man flying a plane? JOHN: Uh … I don’t know… . MARY: A pilot. What did you think, you racist?!

The humor here plays off the norm against racism. After Mary’s setup, John starts to squirm uncomfortably, afraid his friend is about to tell an offensive joke. But when Mary delivers the punchline, it’s sweet, safe relief. She wasn’t telling a racist joke after all. She was just playing! And a hearty chuckle ensues.

This joke uses the norm against racism only to provide the sense of danger, and achieves safety (and laughter) by not violating it. In this way, the joke ultimately reinforces the norm. But other jokes don’t pull back from the norm violation, and must achieve safety by other means, which often subverts the norms that they’re playing with. 

We speak to gain prestige: 

In case it’s not clear by now, this chapter helps explain Kevin and Robin’s “hidden” motives for writing and publishing this book. To put it baldly, we want to impress you; we’re seeking prestige. We hope the many things we’ve said so far testify to the size and quality of our “backpacks.” 

We consume to signal social status: 

When you think about people two or three rungs above you on the social ladder, especially the nouveau riche, it’s easy to question the utility of their ostentatious purchases. Does anyone really need a 10,000-square-foot house, a $30,000 Patek Philippe watch, or a $500,000 Porsche Carrera GT? Of course not, but the same logic applies to much of your own “luxurious” lifestyle—it’s just harder for you to see.

Consider taking the perspective of a mother of six from the slums of Kolkata. To her, your spending habits are just as flashy and grotesque as those of a Saudi prince are to you. Do you really need to spend $20(!!) at Olive Garden to have a team of chefs, servers, bussers, and dishwashers cater to your every whim? Twenty dollars may be more than the family in Kolkata spends on food in an entire week. Of course, it doesn’t feel, to you, like conspicuous consumption. But when a friend invites you out to dinner, it’s nice being able to say yes. (If you had to decline because you couldn’t afford to eat out, you might feel a twinge of shame.) And at the end of the meal, when you leave two uneaten breadsticks on the table, it doesn’t feel at all like conspicuous waste. You’re just thinking, “Why bother?” In fact, you might feel silly asking the waiter to pack them up for you, those two measly pieces of bread. 

Advertising to Non-Buyers to create Common Knowledge:

One reason to target non-buyers is to create envy. As Miller argues, this is the case for many luxury products. “Most BMW ads,” he says, “are not really aimed so much at potential BMW buyers as they are at potential BMW coveters.”33 When BMW advertises during popular TV shows or in mass-circulation magazines, only a small fraction of the audience can actually afford a BMW. But the goal is to reinforce for non-buyers the idea that BMW is a luxury brand. To accomplish all this, BMW needs to advertise in media whose audience includes both rich and poor alike, so that the rich can see that the poor are being trained to appreciate BMW as a status symbol.

Naturally this feels manipulative, and it is. But the same tactics can be used for more honorable purposes as well. The U.S. Marine Corps, for example, advertises itself as a place to build strength and character. In doing so, it’s not advertising only to potential recruits; it’s also reminding civilians that the people who serve in the Marines have strength and character. This helps to ensure that when soldiers come home, they’ll be respected by their communities, offered jobs by employers, and so forth. 

Art as a display of Fitness: 

The argument we’re making in this chapter is simply that “showing off” is one of the important motives we have for making art, and that many details of our artistic instincts have been shaped substantially by this motive. Not only do artists want to show off, but consumers simultaneously use art as a means to judge the artist. That’s one of the big reasons people appreciate art, and we can’t understand the full range of phenomena unless we’re willing to look at art as a fitness display.

This way of approaching art—of looking beyond the object’s intrinsic properties in order to evaluate the effort and skill of the artist—is endemic to our experience of art. In everything that we treat as a work of “art,” we care about more than the perceptual experience it affords. In particular, we care about how it was constructed and what its construction says about the virtuosity of the artist. 

Education as Domestication: 

In light of this, consider how an industrial-era school system prepares us for the modern workplace. Children are expected to sit still for hours upon hours; to control their impulses; to focus on boring, repetitive tasks; to move from place to place when a bell rings; and even to ask permission before going to the bathroom (think about that for a second). Teachers systematically reward children for being docile and punish them for “acting out,” that is, for acting as their own masters. In fact, teachers reward discipline independent of its influence on learning, and in ways that tamp down on student creativity.29 Children are also trained to accept being measured, graded, and ranked, often in front of others. This enterprise, which typically lasts well over a decade, serves as a systematic exercise in human domestication. 

In this particular instance, I think modern educational institutions are a sub-optimal equilibrium the world has slipped into, rather than domestication. But the above gives reasons why employers prefer college graduates.

Medicine as Conspicuous Caring: 

We asked readers to consider the case of a toddler who stumbles and scrapes his knee, then runs over to his mother for a kiss. The kiss has no therapeutic value, and yet both parties appreciate the ritual. The toddler finds comfort in knowing his mom is there to help him, especially if something more serious were to happen, and the mother is happy to deepen her relationship with her son by showing that she’s worthy of his trust.

The thesis we will now explore in this chapter is that a similar ritual lurks within our modern medical behaviors, even if it’s obscured by all the genuine healing that takes place. In this ritual, the patient takes the role of the toddler, grateful for the demonstration of support. Meanwhile, the role of the mother is played not just by doctors, but everyone who helps along the way: the spouse or parent who drives the patient to the hospital, the friend who helps look after the kids, the coworkers who cover for the patient at work, and—crucially—the people and institutions who sponsor the patient’s health insurance in the first place. These sponsors include spouses, parents, employers, and national governments. Each party is hoping to earn a bit of loyalty from the patient in exchange for helping to provide care. In other words, medicine is, in part, an elaborate adult version of “kiss the boo-boo.”

Like the conspicuous behaviors we’ve seen in other chapters, we’re going to call this the conspicuous caring hypothesis. 

This chapter was especially hard to digest. While this explains the heroic end-of-life care that families subject their loved ones to, I felt the chapter overstates the conspicuous caring hypothesis.

Status Climbing Gone Astray (explaining celibacy vows): 

Individual brains are built to go “up” in pursuit of higher and higher social status (or any other measure of reward). So we scramble our way toward the top of whatever hill or mountain we happen to find in our local vicinity. Sometimes, we consider going down to find a better route up, or wandering randomly in hope of finding an even higher peak off in the distance. But mostly we just climb skyward as if on autopilot. And in most landscapes, these instincts serve us very well. But if we happen to find ourselves in a nonstandard landscape, one that our brains weren’t designed for, the same instincts can lead us to bad outcomes.

To continue the analogy, we might model the landscape of a religious community as a volcano—a cone-shaped mountain with a perilous crater at the top. Every day, as a worshipper, you seek to climb higher, which often (counterintuitively) requires you to make sacrifices. Each sacrifice earns you more trust and respect from your peers, taking you further up the slope. It may get steeper and the air more rarefied. With each step, you run the risk of slipping back down or getting clawed down by rivals. But you steel yourself to press onward. You make ever larger sacrifices, which continue to work out in your favor—until one day, without realizing it, you push yourself too far. Your brain, expecting a simple mountain, took a step that felt like “up.” But in reality, the mountain was a volcano, and your final step sent you tumbling over the edge and into the crater.

It’s important to note that these hill-climbing accidents aren’t at all unique to religious landscapes. In dietary landscapes, we seek tasty fats and sugars, which were almost always “up” (in health terms) for our ancestors—until one day we’re stricken with diabetes or a heart attack. In military landscapes, we learn to show bravery, earning ever more respect from our comrades—right up until we take a bullet. Drug addicts seek ever-more-pleasurable highs until they overdose. And in literal mountaineering, risk-taking explorers might search for higher and higher peaks to climb, each summit bringing more glory—until one day their reach exceeds their grasp and they plummet to an untimely death.

In all of these cases, instincts that are adaptive in one context can lead us fatefully astray in another. But we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the instincts are necessarily maladaptive, or that the people acting on them are hopelessly foolish or deluded. They’re just chasing their highs, same as the rest of us. 

This kind of explains why young males decide to pursue math PhDs despite the atrocious sex ratio. Ultimately all creative work is like a sexual display ― done to gain prestige and status among fellow humans. Hill climbing errors happen when they don't directly result in reproductive success.

Politics as a display of Loyalty:

At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up, and the small hall echoed with stormy applause. For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the applause continued. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin. However, who would dare be the first to stop? So the applause went on—six, seven, eight minutes! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! Finally, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved!

That, however, was how the [secret police] discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years [in a labor camp] on him. 

― The Gulag Archipelago

Nevertheless, our hypothesis is that the political behavior of ordinary, individual citizens is often better explained as an attempt to signal loyalty to “our side” (whatever side that happens to be in a particular situation), rather than as a good-faith attempt to improve outcomes. In addition to the Do-Right’s motives, then, we also harbor the motives of the apparatchik: wanting to appear loyal to the groups around us. This is the key to making sense of our political behavior. It’s not just an attempt to influence outcomes; it’s also, in many ways, a performance.

As long as we adopt the “right” beliefs—those of our main coalitions—we get full credit for loyalty. We don’t need to be well informed because the truth isn’t particularly relevant to our expressive agendas. The main actions we take based on our political beliefs are preaching and voting, neither of which has practical consequences for our lives (only social consequences).