#and why do so many of them think the audience are incapable of feeling empathy towards a lizard

[sparrowlucero]

dr who is (apparently) redesigning this turtle from the classic series to be just a green human elf lady instead and twitter is eating it up because "no one would take the show seriously otherwise" and "the audience isn't able to empathize with something that doesn't look human". another fascinating data point in the psychology of doctor who fans.

[writing-for-life]

To Be Human Means to Die (Even for Morpheus)

I know one of the biggest points of contention in the Sandman fandom (especially between show-only and graphic novel fans) is the end:

On the regular, we all hear the wish that the ending should have been more hopeful, that Morpheus dying is soul-crushing and devastating and sends the wrong message. And while I agree that it is incredibly sad upon first read (I actually cried my eyes out many moons ago when I first read World’s End, because that’s when I knew, without a doubt, what was going to happen), I would like to expand a bit on why I think we are actually getting the most hopeful message of them all…

It’s a Tragedy: Yes, but That’s Also Simplifying It

Let me briefly talk about tragedies first, because many people, myself included, often bring up the purpose of a tragedy first when we are talking about why realistically, there can be no other ending to The Sandman than the one we already have. That purpose is that we, as the audience/reader, are supposed to do better, and that we are supposed to learn from our hero’s fatal flaw(s).

And while all of this is true, it is also too simple.

Yes, Morpheus has fatal flaws, his inherent rigidity being the most prominent of them (on that rigidity, everything else hinges: his occasional cruelty, his sense of responsibility even if it destroys him, his inability to hold down relationships because he won’t communicate and compromise…).

But it would be too easy to say: “This is what we are supposed to learn from it, let’s not do that and instead be capable of change. Lesson learned, the end”.

For me, the most important personal truth of The Sandman goes far beyond that, and it is connected to the through-line:

Gods Can Die and Humans Can Be Immortal

When we first meet Morpheus, he is Endless in the truest sense of the word—although captured, it is very clear that he is not mortal, not human, and one step further: That he also doesn’t always understand what it means to be human. We get to know him as aloof, arrogant, proud, often devoid of empathy, and even cruel. And we all know that this changes throughout his arc. That the being who always asserted he is incapable of change finally has to admit, to himself and others, that he has changed, most poignantly in The Kindly Ones (e.g. when he tells Nuala that he lied to Ishtar when he denied he had changed).

And that change was initially a slow one--perhaps that is why he denied it for so long. But by the time we arrive at the end of Brief Lives, his change and, yes, his humanity, are already so clear to the reader that most of us probably went: “You really are slow on the uptake sometimes.”

Even Frank McConnell writes in his intro to The Kindly Ones: “And with [killing Orpheus], Dream has entered time, choice, guilt and regret—has entered the sphere of the human.” And Nuala is right when she asks him: “You want them to punish you, don’t you? You want them to punish you for Orpheus’ death.” Guilt, regret, and a choice. And his reply is silence, and it’s deafening.

On Becoming Human

By the end of The Kindly Ones, Morpheus basically is human in the metaphorical sense: He feels like a human, and even his body (or at least his relationship to his body) has changed. The most important indication for the latter is when we put in contrast that the Corinthian stabbing him in Collectors doesn’t draw a single drop of blood, but the scorpion whip of the Fates in The Kindly Ones does, and that scar remains. We can of course argue about who can hurt him and who can’t, but in either case, we see a Morpheus now who is more flesh and blood than he has ever been, and he feels a sense of mortality not only mentally/emotionally, but also physically.

(I have to throw in here that the change they made in the show at this point greatly confused me, and I think it is significant, as are a lot of other changes that have been made. And I personally hope they only use them to hint at a more human side to him from the outset to make us relate more, but not as a change to the whole arc. I will admit that I would have preferred if he didn’t bleed at this point because to me, it would have had more impact when we finally do see him bleed at the end. And we got foreshadowing for the scar in the show, when the earthquakes crack one of the windows and he looks through it for the second time. Yeah, I’m really that obsessive when I rewatch it, it’s embarrassing).

To Be Human Means to Die

And before we all collectively go into our evolutionarily ingrained wish to pretend that’s not true (because most of us fear death):

It is our mortality that gives our lives meaning. Without an end, life has no meaning bar feeling empty responsibility (or endless hedonism that gets boring at some point). And after 10 billion years, maybe the burden of that responsibility simply becomes too heavy (“But even the freedom of the Dreaming can be a cage, of a kind, my sister,” he says to Death in #69. And that he is “very tired”). It can’t make up for what truly makes our lives worth living:

The Impermanence of it.

Destruction got it right when he said that the illusion of permanence basically depends on our vantage point. That we can pretend if we so wish, and that there is comfort to be found in that, but that things simply don’t last. And that the Endless are truly no exception to that rule (“…even our existences are brief and bounded. None of us will last longer than this version of the universe.”)

And yet, we look at Morpheus choosing death and think: ”But that’s it then, he can't go back on that, but he deserved happiness because he has changed, he deserved (insert preference/head-canon of choice) and will never get a chance to have it now.”

And I get it. Psychologically speaking, we often fight the idea of death tooth and nail. We fear our own, and we have to deal with the loss of loved ones. So the denial is real—it’s not one of the stages of grief for nothing. But staying in that stage of denial is stagnation—the very antithesis of change. Death and change are linked—in the Sandman, they are not truly presented as alternatives, even if we might think so. They are two sides to the same coin. Death says to her mortal form in The High Cost of Living that the fact that life ends is what gives it meaning. That’s why it always ends. And that message has already been given to us in The Wake: “(Death) gives you peace. She gives you meaning. And she bids her brother goodbye.”

It’s Not Just About Dying, It’s Also About Coping With Grief

It tells us something about our own mortality, but also about mourning our loved ones. That’s why The Sandman doesn’t end with Morpheus’ death/The Kindly Ones, but we get a whole story arc after he is gone/The Wake. Because mortality isn’t just about us. It is also about the ones we love, the ones we need to let go while keeping on living, but we also hold on to them in certain ways (“humans can be immortal” because we make them so). All the mourners are us, and in the case of grieving Morpheus, many of us are probably a bit like Matthew:

In the throes of grief, we don’t care that there might be someone else who might even be more kind and loving (poor Daniel)—we don’t want a “replacement”, we want back what we have lost. And we are not ready to move on, until we somehow are/do. And that path is painful and long, as everyone who ever lost a loved one will be able to attest to. The pain never truly goes away, but it changes, from something so raw and painful that it knocks the air out of your lungs, to something that shows up here and there unexpectedly, still painful, but a little less so. Until it only hurts around the edges of memories that make us smile, miss and love someone, all at once. That love is permanent, even if life is not. It doesn’t really die with us either, because we can pass it on.

And it is somewhat fitting that the idea of “to be human means to die”, and that death is what gives life meaning, also extends to storytelling:

Without an end, a story has no true meaning. Our lives are stories, and every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Morpheus’ story is meaningful because it has an end (I already wrote about this before in “Why the order of the last three issues of The Sandman matters” and have attached a long reblog chain)—not because it plods on endlessly (no pun intended). And that end is exactly what makes it last, what makes people feel, reflect, understand, learn, pass it on.

We, a whole fandom. continuously talk about how upset we are that he died, what we learned from it, what we would do differently (be that in our own lives or in a retelling of the story), and I’ll just leave it at that, because it drives the message home so much more than any further exploration could….

[horizon-verizon]

I'm an old anon, a while ago I told you that I was worried that they will take away the houses that supported Rhaenyra and give them to Aegon.

I don't know if they will change that later but I decided to stop the chapter and stop watching it, I just can't continue with this I am completely unable to immerse myself in the story because all I can do is scream internally in indignation and bite my tongue to keep from screaming at the TV "this is stupid, this doesn't make sense, what the hell?! Why are they...?" I'm just on my way to having an aneurysm because of this damn show.

Rhaenyra lost support due to the death of the "child". I don't put it in quotes because I don't think he's a child but because they always refer to him that way, which can be dehumanizing except The continued emphasis that it was a child who was murdered will emphasize in the audience's mind how terrible it was, so don't forget that a child was murdered.

And it's terrible!

Only they are taking the plot from the blacks to give it to the greens. Again.

The death of an envoy means that the customs that are the basis of social agreements are not being respected that would make some reluctant to ally with the greens, the fact that A kinslayer remaining unpunished and his crime being celebrated means that no one wants to be associated with the perpetrators of that sin.

☝️These are the things that would make any potential ally reluctant to trust the Greens. Luke's death was a catalyst, a social horror and the fact that after the funeral it was erased(literally the scene doesn't even appear on the tapestry anymore but Alicent's green dress and Jaehaerys' death does) damages the very basis of support for Rhaenyra and her cause.

Every time someone says "But Jaehaerys! 🥹" I can only think "mmm... If you remember Luke and his murder or...?" sorry Luke, bb, apparently your death was irrelevant and you'll just be the guy who blinded sexyman (the reason doesn't matter either)

I also want to kill whoever is writing the Demon parts, because WHAT THE FUCK?! Give the man some charisma, I saw Matt as the doctor, I know he's capable of bombast . It is assumed that this is the man who, despite his cruelty, was attractive, this is the man who after 30~ years away still had allies in the force that he founded, THIS IS THE MAN WHO FORMED AN ARMY FIRST FOR VISERYS AND THEN FOR RHAENYRA!!! but he is incapable of not saying my way or the sword every time he talks to someone. Do you know who this reminds me it? AEMOND

And sorry to the people who thought Daemon had empathy for an old and sick ruler, here he suggests to his grandson that he kill his beloved grandfather to make him useful to his cause. That is literally Demon's winning speech.

The only thing, THE ONLY good thing so far is Jacaela, those two are a sweetheart and are learning to be a powerful couple. I think I'll just watch the gifs and scenes of them while crossing my fingers,maybe they won't ruin them too because at the pace we are going although at this rate TG's wish to get Cregan Stark on their side might happen.

Fuck this show, if they can't at least keep the political part right and every detail of the character motivation is stupider than the previous one I can't continue. I tried, but there is only so much stupidity one can endure

I'll note that I don't think that daemon would feel as much pity for a sick and dying old man "And sorry to the people who thought Daemon had empathy for an old and sick ruler," (Grover Tully wanted to follow Aegon and vociferously said so many times, so I esp do not think he'd feel empathy towards a old guy he'd see as a traitor). But neither would he seriously say to his heir to kill him--esp not in front of people who can see/hear him say such things.

THIS IS THE MAN WHO FORMED AN ARMY FIRST FOR VISERYS AND THEN FOR RHAENYRA!!! but he is incapable of not saying my way or the sword every time he talks to someone. Do you know who this reminds me it? AEMOND

Yeah...it's been a thing, unfortunately anon.

[dendrite-blues]

For a relatively short exchange, this scene is jam packed with characterization for Loki. 

It’s also our first reliable look into what Loki was like before Thor 1. Not as described by others, but first hand and from his own mouth. I think that deserves a closer look, to see what we can learn about Loki and how he thinks.

This scene is significant because it tells us what Loki’s personality is like when he’s not running for his life. It tells us who he was before his trauma and what his core beliefs are underneath those layers of humor and bravado.

Better yet, since he’s alone we can assume that every line in this scene is presumably true, or at least Loki believes it to be true since he has no audience but himself. 

The dialogue centers mostly around the statement “You deserve to be alone, and you always will be.” I’m not going to focus too much on the “alone” motif since I already dedicated an entire meta post to it.

What I think is more interesting about this scene is actually the looping, and the stages Loki goes through in trying to deal with it. There’s a lot of really interesting character traits on display in that progression.

Loop 1: A Warm Bath and Glass of Wine

The first loop entails Sif lecturing Loki about cutting her hair, kicking him in the balls, and storming away. Loki kneels on the floor and he gives us this great line:

“A bad memory prison? How quaint. Some punishment. I remember exactly what I did after that. I went and had a nice, hot bath and a glass of wine, and I never thought about it again. Because it was just a bit of fun.”

So we can take this to be Loki’s default reaction to pain and criticism. When put into an unexpected conflict without any forethought or outside influence, this is what he says/does.

1) Downplay the damage/threat. How quaint. 2) Dispel/soothe the emotion. Nice hot bath. 3) Minimize the impact. Never thought about it again. 4) Deflect responsibility. Just a bit of fun.

Keep those in mind as we move forward, since we’ll be using them to make sense of what else Loki says in this scene.

Loops 2 and 3: Okay, Sif, Hang On

This bit is about Loki realizing just how bad his predicament is.

L: Okay. Okay, Sif. Hang on. S: No, you hear this. You deserve to be alone... And I always will be. L: Alright, I get it. Listen. You are a reconstruction of a past event created by the organization that controls all of time. So you need to trust me and you need to help me escape. Yeah? S: Pathetic. (she kicks him again) L: (winces and groans)

As we all would expect from him, Loki’s first impulse is to try and talk his way out of it. What he says to achieve that goal is pretty revealing though. Because he doesn’t try to ease Sif’s upset by apologizing or explaining or offering to magic her hair back. 

Any of these would have been more likely to save his nads in the given circumstance, right? The present threat is Sif, and she’s mad about what Loki did to her hair. But Loki doesn’t really see that. Rather, he treats her as a means to an end.

“So you need to trust me and you need to help me escape. Yeah?”

To me, that choice reveals something of a blind spot Loki has to the feelings of others. Even if he doesn’t actively like hurting people, he does prioritize their problems below his, and quite shamelessly. And at least on his first impulse, he doesn’t seem to feel much remorse or empathy for them.

Usually in fanon we attribute this callousness to his trauma. He’s learned that no one can be trusted and no one cares, and so he doesn’t allow himself to care for others. 

But between his Loop 1 sentiment of “It was just a bit of fun” for an event which caused real hurt to Sif, and his Loop 2/3 behavior of “you, stop being mad and help ME” I think it’s reasonable to say that selfishness/low empathy are traits Loki possessed pre-trauma.

Loop 4-????: Happens Off Screen

It’s unclear how many times Loki loops while the camera is following Mobius, but the implication is clear that it was been many, many repetitions. Somewhere in this his denial and deflection must break, because we come back to a much humbler, more pleading Loki.

The Final Loop: I Crave Attention

S: You conniving, craven... L: Sif. Sif. S: ...pathetic worm. L: Please, please, no more. Please, I beg you. I'm a horrible person. I get it. I really am. I cut off your hair because I thought it'd be funny. And it's not. Uh... I crave attention... because I'm... a narcissist. And I suppose it's... It's because I'm scared of being alone.

HOOO BOY, so this is quite a tough bit to analyze. There’s a lot of interpretations you could make, and a lot of topics to delve into. For the sake of focus, I’m going to ignore the narcissism question. That one really needs an entire post, and I want to focus on something else here.

That being, Loki’s way of processing conflict/punishment.

I’ve always found it strange how Loki takes such pride in being called a liar and cheat when he simultaneously has this chip on his shoulder about how nobody likes him. 

Those two traits don’t seem to play well together, and I always scratched my head over how they coexist in his character. If he wants people to be nicer to him, maybe he should stop antagonizing them? Yeah?

Well, here we’re finally given a clear reason. Loki craves attention, he hates being alone. So how does he avoid it? Pranks and mischief. 

Fair enough.

But then, if all his pranks lead to this outcome--outrage, retaliation, insult--why doesn’t he ever learn? How is it that after 1000 years of this behavior, he hasn’t found a better way to get the attention he craves? 

Loop 1: Downplay, dispel, minimize, deflect. He accepts zero accountability for the impact of his actions, and doesn’t think at all about how they affect other people. Just a bit of fun. I had a hot bath and a glass of wine, and never thought about it again. 

The only reason he reaches the level of self awareness on display in the Final Loop is because the looping forces him to contemplate his actions and the impulses within him that lead to that behavior.

This is projection on my part, but to me he acts as though this kind of deep reflection is a new thing for him. He sounds like someone sharing a revelation that he’s just had about himself. We’re being shown that Loki is a man of action. He will always move forward if he can, possibly because looking back to so painful that he can’t bring himself to do it.

Circling back around to the pride Loki has for his knavery, let’s suppose that he’s been on this negative reinforcement cycle since childhood. He’s always acted out to get attention, then received retaliation and insults for it, and then pushed the bad feelings out of his mind with creature comforts and mental gymnastics.

What happens over time, when you’re being constantly told that you’re a pain in the ass and no one likes you? Most of us would take it to heart, but Loki doesn’t. He has a big ego, big enough to resist that constant barrage of hate coming at him.

So how does he marry these two conflicting realities? 

He turns it into an identity, the God of Mischief. 

In his head, Loki excuses himself of blame by shifting the culpability to his moniker. It’s not that he’s immature and petty, he’s just a “trickster.” It’s in his nature to cause trouble, so he can’t help it. You wouldn’t dangle a steak in front of a tiger and blame the tiger for striking, would you? And if other people can’t take a “joke” then that’s not his fault, that’s on them for not having a sense of humor. It was just a bit of fun.

Here we see the union of these two halves of Loki, the lonely ice runt and the mischievous scamp. (And a little bit of the original Loki who Thor accused of being incapable of growth!) 

By refusing to think about others, and excusing himself from responsibility, Loki successfully preserves his self worth and insulates himself to most of the negative emotions he experiences.

Pain, embarrassment, and grief aren’t pointless emotions though. They are vital feelings that serve to regulate our behavior, and that push us to conform to the ways of our social circles. Without them, we annoy and upset others. Be annoying for long enough and you will eventually find yourself, well, alone. As Loki is.

Thus “Mischief” is a self-defeating loop, and Loki is just as caught in it as the cell Mobius trapped him in.

In order to be free of both traps, Loki has to stop running. He has to take a deeper look at himself and realize how much he is getting in his own way. The entire scene is one big parallel between these two “loops.” Pretty neat, huh?

Sadly these kinds of thought loops are really difficult to break, they’re buried so deeply in our personalities and habits that we usually don’t notice them until life forces us to address them.

The cell is Loki’s wake up call, and thankfully he does seem to rise to the occasion. He tells Sif quite clearly what his problem is, and he does it with beautiful, painful honesty.

Which is why it’s so fucking awesome for Mobius to acknowledge that, and to finally give Loki a taste of positive attention. 

You don’t deserve to be alone. I believe you can be anything, even something good. Whatever you two did, it was powerful enough to bring this whole place down.

It’s a beautiful scene. Well written, meticulously acted. The clarity of vision in the pacing and shot selection, it’s really something special.

[linkspooky]

Why is shinobu such a great character? I love her, shes my favorite pillar.

I think the single best thing about Shinobu’s character is that she’s a bitch. Wait, wait, no get back here I’m going to explain myself. I think what makes Shinobu great is that she’s THAT BITCH. 

There’s a pressure for characters, especially female characters to be written with no real substantial flaws. At best they have job interview flaws, they are clumsy, oblivious, or they’re just too giving towards people. They’re too empathic. They’re too nice and they let people walk all over them, but to no real consequences. 

Often characters are written to be likable, rather than to be complex and flawed. They’re written in a way that they will be likably received by an audience. Which is why the rough edges of them tend to get sanded down. I think this is a problem for both male and female characters by the way, that characters are reduced to bland characterizations as opposed to complex ones. 

It’s like the difference between Uraraka and Himiko in MHA, a shonen manga that runs within the same magazine. Himiko as a character is far more developed because she is allowed to have flaws and get in the middle of bloody confrontations. Uraraka is a character who could be interesting: a hero motivated by personal greed, a child who feels that they burden they’re parents, someone perceptive and empathic but who always keeps her mouth shut for fear of tripping on other people’s feelings. She has complex flaws, but priority is given on making Uraraka look like a nice girl. Himiko isn’t nice, but she gets to like... do things. 

Shinobu has flaws, and she holds onto the ugliest parts of herself, her anger, her desire for violent revenge, and refuses to improve as a person and ultimately dies to those flaws and that’s what makes her so unique and interesting. I’ll go over those underneath the cut.

1. Medicine and Poison

Shinobu’s entire character is written around this dual meaning: basically, medicine is something that both heals and hurts. Most people think of medicine as something that is comforting and nurturing, but too much medicine can become a poison that destroys the body instead. Often many drugs we use for medication are toxic in excessive amounts. 

Shinobu is a character who toes the lie between a healer, which is how everyone expects her to act, and a poisoner which is what Shinobu regards herself as. She is someone capable of both. She can heal and nurture others, she can also destroy them with horrible poison. However, her arc in the story shows more and more that she chooses to poison and destroy because she doesn’t see herself as someone capable of healing.

Demons were once human. They are still capable of human feelings. They all have human desires and fell into demonhood for very human reasons. 

Tanjiro is someone who ultimately rejects the actions of Demons, but also sympathizes with their humanity. He doesn’t want to kill. He acknowledges that he has to due to circumstances, but no matter what he cannot stop seeing the humanity inside of the demons he is fighting against. Tanjiro is a merciful killer.

Shinobu is introduced right after we see Tanjiro introduced to the idea that demons have feelings and motivations and grapples with that and his own empathy. Shinobu is presented to us as a character without any empathy for demons. She is a merciless killer. 

Shinobu wants to repay cruelty with cruelty. She relishes in the chance. She likse feeling more powerful than the demons that victimized her. Tanjiro and Shinobu’s methods of dealing with demons are deliberately contrasted to show how different they are. Shinobu doesn’t see demons as humans, just as things, that need to be punished. She’s not wrong for thinking that demons need to be stopped and killed in order to prevent them from hurting innocent people, but torture is bad yo. 

It’s even shown that Tanjiro is much more willing to accept demons who genuinely are repetant for what they did in the past like Tamayo. Whereas, Shinobu does work with Tamayo she mistrusts her and resents her the entire time. Shinobu’s view of the world is black and white, where she is the personal judge, jury and executioner of demons. Yes, that’s how most of the demon slayer pillars are introduced to us, but it’s especially drawn attention to in Shinobu’s case with her introduction, and her comparisons to Tanjiro. 

Basically Tanjiro’s stance is I’m not going to belittle those who regret their actions, and see the humanity in demons. Shinobu’s response is I’m going to belittle the HELL out of them. 

Shinobu mocks, teases and belittles because she’s someone incapable of being sincere. The main difference between Shinobu and Tanjiro, is that Shinobu’s sister is dead, and Tanjiro isn’t. Tanjiro still sees himself as fighting to protect someone whereas Shinobu only lives to pay back the damage that’s been done on the world. 

Shinobu serves a dual role in the series. She’s the one who nurtures and heals everyone on the butterfly estate. She’s also the most remorseless killer of demons who physically enjoys the slaughter. She is medicine, but she is also poison. 

Shinobu’s anger is a very poisonous part of her personality, but rather than deal with it, and attempt to be better she’d much rather put on a fake smile and let the poison flow. We’re given a reason why. Ever since her sister died Shinobu felt like everything that’s good about her died with her sister, and now she’s indulging in the worst of herself. 

If Tanjiro is someone who fights out of their love for other people, then Shinobu is someone who fights out of hatred. She hangs onto that hatred because she feels like that’s the only real part of herself and she can’t be good like her sister.

There’s a reason that Shinobu is paralleled to Doma and it’s because everything that’s positive about her, her gentle nature, her smiling, her empathy is completely faked. It’s an act that she puts on to be more like her sister while holding her resentments deep in her heart. She could be medicine or poison, and chooses to be poison. 

Shinobu could have chosen the path of healing or forgiveness, but she didn’t want to. She chose to die, angry and fighting instead. Her last action is tantamount to suicide. She chooses to die poisoning another, rather than try to live healing herself because she thinks she is incapable of living without her loved ones in her life. It’s not a happy ending, but it’s a powerful  writing choice. The choice not to forgive. The choice to stay angry. Shinobu is a character written with powerful emotions behind her, hiding just underneath the surface which is all fake smiles and friendly pleasantries, and that’s what makes her a compelling character. 

[wickwrites]

Burning as a Motif for Humanity in Violet Evergarden

I think, when watching Violet Evergarden, most of us picked up on fire as a motif for Violet’s trauma – the violence and destruction she witnessed in the war, and the violence and destruction she engendered with her own hands. I’m not going to go into this too much because it’s all pretty self-explanatory, if not trite, but here are some quick examples of fire as a motif for her trauma just to lay the groundwork for the rest of the essay:

In frame 1 (episode 8), Violet draws first blood on the battlefield, and the once contained fire from the felled soldiers’ lanterns spread quickly through the forest, a symbol for how one small act of violence can cascade into large scale destruction. In frame 2, Gilbert stares at the carnage in front of him, horrified. In frame 3, the major is shot, and all we get to see is a screen of flames. In frame 4 (episode 12), Merkulov stares into a fire as he schemes about re-kindling the war.

I want to follow this (well trodden) opinion up with a more encompassing statement. That is, fire, in Violet Evergarden, is not limited to representing the destructive power of violence and trauma. Instead, it is a motif for humanity itself – an embodiment of the full range of experiences and emotions that make us human.  

To show this, I’m going to start off at the beginning of Violet’s journey, focusing on how her disconnect (from herself as well as others) is illustrated in episode one. For instance, her initial struggle to move her now mechanical arms as she sits in her hospital bed in the opening sequence is an excellent embodiment of her dissociation from her own body and lack of agency. I want to, however, focus on two scenes that are particularly relevant for our discussion:

First, the scene where Violet spills tea on her hand:

And second, the scene where Hodgins insists that Violet is burning:

These scenes are similar: in both, someone asserts that Violet must be in pain, specifically due to burning, and in both, Violet rejects that statement. In the first, however, that burning is physical. And in the second, that burning is emotional. Regardless, Violet is so removed from her own body that she is incapable of feeling either. Her mechanical hand is therefore an embodiment of her inhumanity (ie. her “dollness” or “weapon-ness”). Like her, it is cold, mechanical, insensitive, without life or agency. After all, up until now, all she’s been doing is killing on command, without the ability to think for herself, experience her own pain, or sympathize with her victims’ pain.

When the screen shows that Hodgins is indeed correct, that Violet is literally on fire (frame 1), that fire is depicted with restraint. Flames engulfs Violet’s body, but those flames are from a streetlamp enclosed in glass. It is controlled and distant. This encapsulates Violet’s current state; she is literally on fire, but that fire is so compartmentalized and suppressed, and she is so far removed from her own experience, that she is incapable of feeling it.

In frame 2, we are viewing Violet in a flashback, from Hodgin’s point of view. Although we’re offered a close up shot of her bloodied hands, we see, about two cuts later, that Hodgin is actually observing Violet from afar (frame 2.5). This distance demonstrates that he cannot bring himself to reach out to her, something that Hodgin confesses he feels guilty about literally 5 seconds later. They were, at that point in time, and perhaps even now, unable to connect.

In frames 3 and 4, Hodgin is speaking again. We get this super far shot of Violet’s body. The camera is straight on, objective, and unfeeling. This unsympathetic framing has two functions. First, it distances us from Violet. Our inability to see the details on her face and her relatively neutral body language gives us, the audience, no real way inidication her thoughts. Second, it distances Violet from herself. As someone who experiences dissociative symptoms from PTSD, this is a very poignant way of framing what it feels like to be removed from your own experience. Hodgin’s line, “You’ll understand what I’m saying one day. And, for the first time, you’ll notice all your burn scars,” further drives home the sense that Violet is completely estranged from herself. It almost feels like we are looking at her, from her own detached point of view.

We’re going to move on now, but we’ll get back to these frames later in the analysis, so hold onto them.

Throughout Violet’s journey, fire comes up again and again. Specifically, it shows up in moments of emotional intimacy, connection, and healing. Let’s see what I mean by this:

I have here a collection of moments that all occur at the same narrative point in their respective mini-stories: the moment where one character reaches out to another, sympathizes with them, and literally pulls them of their darkness. For example, frame 1 (episode 3) shows Violet bringing a letter from Luculia to her brother. It expresses Luculia’s gratitude and love for him, and ultimately mends their relationship. In frame 2 (episode 4), Violet and Iris share a moment of emotional intimacy and connection, which is the beginning of Iris’ story’s resolution. In frame 3 (episode 9), Violet’s suicidal despondency is interrupted by the mailman, bringing her a heartwarming letter from all her friends. In frame 4 (episode 11), Violet comforts a dying solder by a fireplace.

It’s not that other modes of lighting do not exist – modern looking lamps show up repeatedly in the show. Even Iris’ rural family has them, so I can reasonably assume that, no, the above moments do not all coincidentally use lamps because that’s all there is in this universe; the usage of fire during moments of catharsis is deliberate, and establishes that fire can also bring hope, kindness, and love.

Now that we’ve explored the dual nature of fire as both destructive/constructive, painful/cathartic, let’s go onto the thesis of my essay. Why do I say that being on fire is to be human? Let’s go back to the scene where Hodgin tells Violet she’s on fire (episode 1, on the left), and compare it to the scene where Violet finally realizes that Hodgin was right and that she is on fire (episode 7, on the right):

In these sequences, there is a notable shift in framing and perspective. In frame 1b, we finally get to see Violet’s blood-stained hands from her point of view, as opposed to from Hodgin’s point of view in 1a. Violet becomes aware of her past as an actual agent choosing to kill, shown through the first-person point of view. Similarly, the medium, straight on shot of Violet looking down at her hands (frame 2a) is replaced with an intimate first-person, close-up view (frame 2b). In shots 3a and 3b, the difference in framing is most pronounced. In 3a, we get this straight on, long shot. In frame 3b, the camera’s detachment is replaced by a claustrophobic closeness. While this framing does an excellent job at conveying the panicked feeling of “everything crashing down all at once”, it also demonstrates Violet’s new-found awareness of herself. While before, the camera was used to alienate, now it is used to create a sense of painful awareness and intimacy.

These series of shots are the first in the entire show, I believe, of Violet's body from her own point of view. Their co-incidence with her awakening self-awareness characterizes the state of “being in one’s body” as a precondition to self-connection, or more specifically, to Violet’s understanding of herself as neither a weapon nor a doll, but as a human. Correspondingly, this pivotal moment serves as a catalyst for her subsequent emotional development. From this episode on towards the finale, we’re launched into a heart wrenching sequence of events: Violet’s desperate grieving for Gilbert’s apparent death, her attempted suicide driven by newfound grief, and most importantly, Violet receiving her first written letter, an act that is strongly representative of genuine human connection. Following these events, Violet’s emotional connection to both herself and others only continues to grow; during her two final jobs of the story, she breaks down crying in response to the suffering of her clients, demonstrating a level of compassion—if not empathy—that she seems to have never been able to tap into before.

At the same time, Violet acquires a new sense of agency, making plot-driving decisions that no longer require other characters’ validations. Most poignantly, in episode 12, she chooses to stay on the train to fight Merkulov, explicitly going against Dietfried’s order for her to leave. Her reason?

She doesn’t want anyone to die anymore.

And it’s this moment, for me, that consolidated her as a character with true agency. Up until now, all her major decisions have been framed in relation to Gilbert: she killed in the war because Gilbert ordered her to, and she became an Auto Memories Doll because she wanted to understand Gilbert’s enigmatic “I love you”. Now, however, her motivation is purely her own—she fights, simply because she doesn’t want anyone else to die. It’s a line implies an intimate knowledge of loss. It’s a sentiment motivated by compassion. It’s a raw and extraordinarily human thing to say.

When Violet embarks on her journey to decipher Gilbert’s love, she is devoid of many traits we consider inherent and possibly even unique to being human—suffering, compassion, altruism, love, agency, and the interplay between them. As an Auto Memories Doll, she learns to live, experiencing all these emotions she had never had the luxury to experience before, and we quickly realize that she cannot know what love is without simultaneously wrestling with her trauma. She learns that yes, sometimes the fire destroys and sometimes it burns, but sometimes it thaws too, and you cannot have one without the other. You cannot choose what the fire does to you; you cannot choose what you want to feel. Thus, to be on fire is to know the anguish of its destruction, but it is also, and more importantly, to know the catharsis of human connection, to be the warm flame that pulls someone else out of the dark, to be pulled out of the dark yourself. To be on fire is to be human.

[on-literal-mars]

The Narcissism of Wilbur Soot: Ghostburs real unfinished business.

Wilbur Soot effectively manipulated a bunch of children into fighting a war for him. This was the first ‘official’ arc of the Dream SMP and even though it’s been months and months since it happened, so many things still tie back to it. L’manberg: a country more power struggle than nation, Tommy’s discs and their importance, and Wilbur Soots selfishness. This post will be broken down into four parts for four symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder that fit Wilbur the best. There will also be a final section dedicated to Ghostbur and his unfinished business on the SMP.

Having an exaggerated sense of self importance:

Wilbur is a showman. He is useless unless he has an audience. It’s introduced from day one as he cultivates an army over the shared dream of freedom, again when he holds an election and reads out the results, and finally when he doesn’t blow up L’manberg until Phil comes. How many times does Wilbur go into the button room by himself? I think on stream maybe 3-4 times. That’s 3-4 times that he doesn’t do what he says he’s gonna do and it’s because someone like Wilbur needs an audience.

He can’t do anything by himself, he hates himself too much, the only time he achieves anything is when he manipulates others to get it done for him. Think about it. How many times has Wilbur sung out for his nation and called it “My L’manberg” like he built it himself? Like he actually fought in the battles instead of standing off to the side and urging his child army to ‘keep fighting’. He’s encredibly entitled. Which brings us to our next point:

Having a sense of entitlement:

Wilbur believes that everything is owed to him. Dream is a tyrant for telling him not to sell drugs on SMP land. People should be allowed to do what they want.

Wilbur should be allowed to do what he wants.

And he wraps this idea up with a bow and calls it ‘freedom’. He elects himself president without any hesitation and is surprised and insulted when Quakity runs against him. I’ve already touched on how he obsesses over L’manberg and destroying it. A narcissist looks at life with complete tunnel vision. The only thing they care about is what will benefit them and what will make them feel better. So the logic behind Wilbur wanting to destroy L’manberg was never ‘they took it from me, I want to destroy it so they can’t have it’(because even that requires some level of empathy) but more ‘It’s mine. If it isn’t mine, then it can’t be any bodies’.

it was always his L’manberg. His unfinished Symphony. It was his way of taking back control. Here’s one thing you have to know about Narcissists, they are rampant control freaks. And if they can’t control you or you are no longer benefiting them, they will destroy you.

Being preoccupied with fantasies about brilliance, beauty, or the perfect mate:

We’ve never seen Wilbur(Ghostbur is a different story) interact romantically but we have seen how he treats the ones he’s supposed to love. Fundy is a perfect example. I could go on and on about how Wilbur gave Tommy more attention because Tommy was always willing to stay under Wilbur while Fundy always tried to go against him but that’s a post we’ve all seen a hundred times(in all fairness, very good posts). I present you another outlook: Wilbur neglects Fundy because he sees too much of himself in him. Like, oh I don’t know, Fundys want for control and authority. He wants attention because he’s just as much of a showman as his dad.

And Wilbur can never share the stage. He is incapable of it, his thinking is too black and white. Regardless, his relationship with both Fundy and Tommy(towards the end) showcase how manipulative and abusive narcissists often are. Now notice how pretty Wilbur tries to make Pogtopia? I know towards the end he was fine to let all those buttons litter the place but think before that. You could argue that Wilbur worked so hard on it because he wanted a cosy place to stay for him and Tommy but it simply isn’t true.

We know this because when Technoblade tries to put railings around the stairs Wilbur breaks them down. He wasn’t intentionally being malicious, you’ve got to understand that narcissists just never think about anyone but themselves. He simply didn’t care if Tommy or Techno( or tubbo who eventually did)fell off the stairs and hurt themselves. It didn’t matter. The railing just didn’t go with his aesthetic. Wilbur made Pogtopia so nice so that he could feel in control.

He did it to convince himself that it was some nice vacation home instead of a stone prison being used as a fugitive hide out. He was absolutely delusional.

Inability to take responsibility:

Right away I bet you can see how this lines up with Ghostbur, huh? It ties back to black and white thinking, as well. His famous phrase ‘indepenance or death’, calling everyone in Manberg traitors because they hadn’t immediately dropped everything to join Pogtopia, and how he kept making destroying L’manberg the final option. He knew from the beginning that he was going to destroy it. The second he built the button room the countrys fate was sealed. Wilbur is never wrong.

He knows what’s best for his country. But here’s the thing: Wilbur has always done things indirectly or through someone else. He does this to avoid direct criticism. Criticism cripples narcissists, it is their worst fear. But blowing up L’manberg would leave no room for anything else. It would be Wilburs fault and no one else’s.

That’s why he has Phil kill him. It wasn’t out of regret or shame, it was one last act of selfishness. He left them with crater for a country and didn’t even say goodbye. And even in his final moments it was “they all want you to, look at them, they want me dead”. He was a coward and died like one. He died to try and escape criticism and responsibility. But death has a funny way of catching you off guard.

Some final symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder before we move into the Ghostbur section:

React with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make themselves appear superior

Have difficulty regulating emotions and behavior

Experience major problems dealing with stress and adapting to change

Have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation

(This isn’t an official definition but Dr. Ramani Durvasula says that Narcissists are characterized by lack of empathy and deep insecurity. Keep that in mind.)

Ghostbur:

Ghostbur to me is very child like. Ghostbur pulls some pranks but is never intentionally malicious, just works his hardest to make everyone happy. He is innocent and playful and doesn’t like to talk about serious things. We could see him as Wilbur back when he was a little kid. Before the effects of abuse start to kick in. Everyone says that Phil is canonically neglectful, I’m not sure where this comes from but I believe it.

As childlike as he is, it isn’t like he’s the ghost version of kid Wilbur. Wilbur was an adult when he died. He’s so childlike because that’s what Wilbur was on the inside; a child who never matured properly. L’manchild takes a whole different meaning now lmao. Ghostbur is Wilbur without the walls he puts in place to protect himself. That’s why he’s cold all the time: he’s finally being exposed to all the things he tried to hide from.

Wilbur acts like a child throughout majority of his time on the SMP. He gets angry when he doesn’t get his way, expects everyone to kiss his ass and take care of him, and throws tantrums when all he should’ve done was compromise(the way people blame George or Quakity for Schlatt getting elected but Wilbur could’ve just taken down the American-ban). And doesn’t that sound just like the points I made earlier? Ghostbur isn’t the sad alter ego of Wilbur that some try to paint him out to be, he’s literally just Wilbur without the bullshit. He wasn’t the father of a nation he was an abused kid who never grew up. He ran from his problems to the very last second but now he doesn’t have a choice.

That is Ghostburs unfinished business. He must finally allow himself to be wrong. Only then will he be able to move on. And shit, with the way he keeps forgetting the bad stuff he’s done, perhaps he isn’t meant to. Perhaps this is supposed to be his hell and he’ll be trapped in constant pain for all of eternity. It would make sense wouldn’t it?

Death was like: hah, you want to act like you did nothing wrong? Fine, I’ll help you out.

That’s the problem with black and white thinking. Too much of anything will eventually become bad for you. Ghostbur is gonna realize that he can’t float around L’manberg for the rest of time and actually accept the fact that maybe everything is his fault. Atleast Wilbur actually got his wish, I suppose. Dead men can’t take responsibility. Dead men can only exist in hell forever or let go and move on.

[destiny-smasher]

“But I can't walk on the path of the right, because I'm wrong.”

So, The Last of Us Part 2 is out. It’s about 25 hours long. I’ve played it. I loved it, but it’s got its flaws. I think the hype buildup was overblown, and I think the zealous hate from the leaks was also overblown. This is a beautifully produced game that is trying to do much more than the typical AAA game tries to do, and in so trying, it’s messier, muddier, and more complicated than its predecessor. I love it for that, despite my issues with how the game ultimately resolves things.

I think Naughty Dog was either intentionally misleading audiences (which, given the marketing, is possible) or perhaps Neil himself has a different concept of the game he directed than what was actually delivered. Despite how it was advertised, The Last of Us Part 2 is not inherently about ‘hate’ or ‘revenge.’ It’s not just a revenge story.

It's a story about empathy, about how human beings and their interactions have layers, and how we are better when we extend blind empathy to others instead of blind hatred. I gotta talk about this. SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE GAME to follow.

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Seriously, final warning for SPOILERS.

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This game is simply too big, too complex, and has too much going on for me to write a single piece going over everything there is to talk about, but there are some things I need to say that inherently rely on discussing the entire game in a spoiler-filled way.

Let’s start with the most noticeable thing that has hit me over this game’s reception: people like Joel way more than I would’ve expected. SO much of this game’s negative reception seems to be over Joel’s character and the circumstances around his death. I was not at all surprised that he died - I was a bit surprised at when and how he died, in the moment, but even by the end of the next scene, it had washed over me how much sense it made. He died in the same way everyone else dies in this series. He had it coming in the same way anyone else in this world has it coming. He was never a hero. If you truly look at Joel as a ‘hero’ figure but don’t extend that same logic to Ellie and Abby, you do not make sense to me.

I’ve seen a LOT of hate getting thrown at Abby, and frankly, I do not understand it, and if you hate her but do NOT hate Joel or Ellie similarly, then I inherently don’t respect your opinion? You’re being blatantly biased and unreasonable in exactly the way this game is arguing you should not be. Straight up. Get your transphobic jokes the fuck outta here. Get your homophobic takes on Ellie and Dina the fuck outta here. Get your xenophobic complaints about the MUCH more diverse cast of characters in this sequel the fuck outta here. The ONE case where I could see a reasonable thing to be conflicted about is Lev’s character, because they are a transgender kid who gets deadnamed by some NPCs. As a transgender person, I personally found this to just...make sense and feel organic to the world, and none of the actual characters in the narrative with names or roles in the story ever deadname Lev. Lev is fucking precious and I love him, and I think his inclusion adds inherently more to this game than otherwise, despite the understandable conflict some might feel about his backstory. To ME, the fact that all of what Lev goes through and how Yara and Abby do what they can to look for him, that says to me, “protect trans rights” and I am glad it is there. Trans people have to deal with that shit sometimes, I think it’s fine having it be PART of a wider narrative. It doesn’t define Lev’s story, it doesn’t dictate the plot of the game, it’s a spark that sets some events off and I think that adds more than it could potentially take away, as does the overall representation in the game.

Getting back to this element of bias, though, I get that you “went on a journey” with Joel and Ellie in the first game. I get that. But you spend about as much time with Abby in this game as you did with Joel in the first game. And I see a lot of people are SOMEHOW totally fine and chill and cool with Joel going on a murder rampage in the first game, specifically killing at least one man who was specifically trying to save humanity - they cite that Joel is a morally gray person who has done bad things and is trying to become a better person. Sure, cool, OK. And Ellie, sure, ya’ll will think her going on a bloodthristy revenge quest is cool, fine, A-OK, because Joel was murdered. But somehow they are physically incapable of extending that same empathy to Abby, even after the game bends OVER BACKWARD in every reasonable way it could. Why is this? One person tweeted at me the simplistic, reductive idea, 

“ I know the sensible thing that naughty dog was aiming at was that we'd feel sorry for abby and eventually grow to like her, but for me I just don't. I loved Joel and I love Ellie. They didn't kill anyone who I loved as a character. Abby did. “

At least they’re being honest with themselves in that they literally missed the entire point of the game. You having personal bias you cannot remove yourself from does not make for “A DEEPLY FLAWED STORY” or whatever the fuck people have been tossing around.

I personally don’t buy any of that bullshit until we get into the final hours of the game during the epilogue, but we’ll get to that.

Everything in the first 20-ish hours of this game felt organic and believable and completely in line with the first game to me, and the fact that ALL OF IT happens as a direct after-effect of Joel’s selfish act at the end of the first game really contextualizes how/why it was called ‘Part 2.’ So honestly, all of this nonsense about this sequel being ‘badly written’ is just...bonkers. I will agree it’s not some master class in writing - neither was the original game. But both games are very similar in writing style, tone, and the world presented is consistent, while character motivations are realistically complicated. Naughty Dog has never been great at plot, but the real quality of their work comes through in how much effort they go to in order to present realistic feeling worlds and characters, and from the environments to the actors to the extra animations on top, I think the details and the context they create are where they shine.

To better understand where I am coming from with this game, let me lay this on you.

During the scene in that basement, when Abby shot Joel in the leg, and Ellie shows up...I realized what was about to happen. Ironically, it was exactly what I had originally predicted was the thing going on WAY back when the game’s reveal trailer was dropped -- that Joel was dead, and was motivating Ellie’s revenge quest. If you’ve read what I have written of Arcadian Rhythms, you will have some idea of my feelings on Joel and Ellie’s relationship -- in short, I think it is complicated, and just as damaging as it is good. That’s real life. That’s how reality is for many relationships, especially ones between parents and their kids, especially in my experience. When I realized Joel was about to be murdered, my feelings and thoughts were not jumping to ‘oh fuck what an asshole I wanna kill these people’ or ‘oh no not Joel’ but rather, my immediate gut thoughts were ‘yupppp Joel kinda deserves this, he literally did this to who knows how many other people, but why are THESE people, specifically, out to get him?’ 

When Ellie later cites to Dina that there’s ‘no point’ in speculating as to why these people murdered Joel, because it could be for one of many possible reasons, I found that to be interesting -- Ellie herself acknowledging that Joel had fucked over many other people, while still pursuing revenge herself.

I do think the theme of ‘the cycle of violence’ is very core to this game and arguably is its strongest central theme, specifically because violence in wholly integrated into its gameplay. But narratively and structurally, empathy is, I would argue, even more paramount. This game spends about 12 hours of its runtime (so about half of the entire game) actively trying to encourage you to understand, relate with, and empathize with Abby. The developers COULD have had you swapping back and forth between both characters, which might have resulted in better pacing, but I think it would’v taken away from what they were going for. It’s that long, slow burn that makes Abby’s side of the story work, in much the same way the long, slow burn of the first game does what it does, and the way the long, slow burn of Ellie’s revenge quest helps us see just how far gone she is.

But “arghh I hated Ellie she kept making bad decisions that made no sense” some of you say, “they did her DIRTY” some of you say.

No.

Joel did her dirty.

The Fireflies did her dirty.

And it’s this exact concept -- that our actions and choices have consequences and ripple outward beyond what we can initially imagine - that is at the heart of why I think I love this game so much. Most video games depict a pool of water that is either a constant whirlpool, a raging clash of waves, or stone dropped in the middle and the ripples spreading out. The Last of Us Part 2 is more like a series of ripples all happening simultaneously, and not all of them are as apparent or even important, but it’s just...a bunch of ripples all happening all over the place.

And it breaks my heart, during 2020, a year when human rights, systemic racism, a worldwide pandemic, late capitalism, and entire countries submerged in protests because their government is fucking them over...has people shutting off or refusing to turn on their empathy to anyone outside of their bubble. In 2020, when the world needs empathy more than any other year I’ve experienced in my life thus far, a game like this goes SO FAR above and beyond what most games try to do, in a very risky and controversial way, to actively invite its players to fucking STOP AND CONSIDER for a damn moment that there’s more to the world than JUST YOU and what you care about. That your actions have consequences beyond your singular perspective.

Ellie is fueled by rage for a number of reasons, and we don’t even understand all of them until literally the final moments of the game, which I found to be appropriate as it ends on a note of reminding us that there is ALWAYS something we don’t know, something we don’t understand, motivating someone else’s decisions.

Ellie was robbed of agency, of purpose, by both Joel and the Fireflies. Joel robbed both Ellie and the Fireflies of their purpose. And the Fireflies robbed Ellie and Joel of theirs. In return, Ellie is left without purpose, and all she’s really left with is a broken man who desperately wants to be a dad again, to the point that he will murder and lie to hold on to that. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t necessarily hold it against Joel that he murdered people to save Ellie. I will always defend the idea that it was a fucking selfish decision that would realistically lead to consequences. But in the same way Marlene points out to Abby’s dad, ‘What if it was your kid?’ ie ‘What if it was someone you loved?’ I get that, that’s the beauty of how the first game ended. It presents a zero sum game where there is no ‘correct’ choice that everyone can agree on, but in the back of our heads -- and Part 2 actually states this as a point of fact -- we all know Ellie would have CHOSEN to sacrifice herself, had she been asked.

So it was deliciously realistic to me to see Ellie grappling with the frustration, distrust, and anger of Joel having not only robbed that purpose from her, but having lied to her about it. And in the end, it was also wonderfully realistic that part of why she hated Abby so much was that Abby inadvertently robbed her of her chance to try and rebuild and repair that broken relationship.

But here’s the thing, though - the thing I see fucking NO ONE talking about, and I can’t decide if it’s because no one is picking up on it or what.

Both Ellie and Abby are haunted and driven by broken men making selfish choices. Their selfishness keeps both characters kind of locked in to desperately grasping at violent acts to justify a purpose.

Some will play the flashbacks with Joel and will feel warmth and nostalgia and admiration. Some will play the flashbacks with Owen and feel disinterest or disgust because ‘why should I care about these people?’

For me, I couldn’t help bu draw parallels to how both Owen and Joel were men trying to be good, you know, not being specifically evil people, but men who were a bad influence on the women around them, who were great and good and charming and all that until things didn’t go the way they wanted, pushing and prodding with passive digs and pressure to reaffirm their own hopes that despite their mistakes, they’re ‘good men.’ Owen is admittedly much less well developed in this regard, partly because his arc just isn’t as deep or interesting, partly because he didn’t exist in the previous game. But I still could not quite shake it. I grew up with men like Joel and Owen as my father figures, so there’s personal bias there.

I literally had an actual nightmare that woke me up in the middle of the night partway through playing through this game because Joel was in it and I said or did a thing he did not like, and his reaction spooked me awake, in part because I LIVED that growing up. (not murder, but violence, passive aggressive manipulation) I absolutely adore the depth given to Joel’s character, that he has LAYERS to him, and I loved seeing Tommy similarly expanded upon. (him passively prodding at Ellie to try and make good with Joel felt a little manipulative, given that he KNOWS what Joel did; and even his wife’s prodding at Ellie at the game’s outside to ‘make good’ with some old jerk who seems all expectant about being rewarded for basic apologizing, ech)

Last of Us is a horror game, Part 2 even moreso, but it was the feeling of men like Joel who do bad things and then try to justify them after the fact that actually creeped me out more -- all the more creepy because I KNOW Ellie and Abby will give up on better choices to try and ‘do right by them’. I was relieved when Abby began to break free from these old, poor choices, even shortly after making more fo them during her half of the story. This brings me to another fascinating aspect of this game: how Abby’s story is a combination of both Joel’s and Ellie’s.

Dunkey (of all people!) recently praised this game and compared Ellie’s and Abby’s narratives to TLOU1 and Uncharted 4, and I agree with him in a lot of regards, there, but I think what the team was more going for was for Abby’s story to feel like a combination of Joel’s and Ellie’s while simultaneously being directly impacted by Joel and Ellie’s story.

Abby grew up in a military community, even though she expressed an interest in science -- just like Ellie. The death of her father drives her on a quest for revenge -- just like Ellie. She does some horrible shit to people all in the service of trying to protect a kid as some desperate attempt to feel better about all of the bad shit she’s done -- just like Joel. She starts to let herself be empathetic to other people and tries to become a better person because of the kid she takes under her wing -- just like Joel.

In a way, you could argue Part 2′s overall story is kind of repetitious. Ellie’s quest for revenge is a bit too narrow-minded and blind in her rage, and Abby’s story kind of recycles many components we have already seen up until that point. I think what’s there still generally accomplishes what it set out to do: get us to question and try to understand why people do what they do, and consider our own place in that cycle, in those ripples.

I think many aspects of this game that look circumstantial on the surface are not accidents.

I think the recurring imagery of water is an allegory for how we can let rage, anger, and hate drown us. The game’s title starts with a boat drifting in water, and the title changes after the ending to a boat that is beached. The Seattle arc shows a gradually increasing focus on water flooding the environments, culminating in a big rainstorm with crazy waves. The final fight sequence (which tbh I hated but we’ll get to that) takes place literally IN water, involves Ellie trying to drown Abby, and ends with the two of them going separate ways in their boats.

I think it’s no accident that Abby and Ellie’s desire for vengeance is ultimately caused by the same specific moment, and I think it’s interesting that many people seem to skip RIGHT OVER the idea that Ellie feels such a deep sense of rage at Abby killing Joel only because Joel made the decision that caused Abby to kill him in the first place -- and the good and bad that came from that. It’s just a brilliantly complicated web, I think, and that further highlights that none of these characters are inherently good or evil, which is pretty much the entire point of this world in the first place.

I think it’s interesting that both Ellie and Abby grumble insults all of the time over the people they’re killing, and both try to justify their violence with thoughts like “well we’re better then that, we don’t do THOSE kinds of things,” which is, ya know, literally the kinds of mental hoops actual real human beings jump through to justify doing bad shit to each other.

I liked the idea of the trading cards until fairly early on when I found the ‘Dr. Uckmann’ card, which...made me roll my eyes a little at first, until I read the description, which then made me feel more actively uncomfortable than maybe anything else in the entire game, to be quite honest. Partly because it rang of entitled self-importance, but partly because of the reports of Naughty Dog crunch culture.

And on that note, let’s talk about how this game arguably crunched its employees way more than it needed to while simultaneously making its story more bloated than it needed to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I love indulging in more STUFF than it required. I can totally see the appeal of writing extra stuff to a story like because you can, because it’s interesting, because it’s fun to MAKE shit. But when you are a AAA game development studio who is potentially crunching your employees into burnout, maybe a fairly pointless epilogue on top of a game that is already arguably a bit too long in the tooth is...maybe not the best way to go?

On the upside, I enjoyed playing the Santa Barbara location, I loved getting some more Abby/Lev time, I liked seeing Ellie a bit older, I LOVED the scene at the farm with her, Dina, and JJ. I loved the gameplay challenge that was the Rattler’s base. I loved that this game had noticeably larger environments to explore.

But tbh a LOT of content could’ve been cut from this game to make a smoother, better paced experience while simultaneously putting less strain on the developers. I do think the extended flashback sequences focused on non-violent gameplay is important enough to justify itself, but I think a lot of the more violent or unnecessary parts of the game (like the entire sequence on the Seraphite’s island and the Santa Barbara sequence) all feel like...EXTRA? Which on the one hand is great because hot DAMN more beautifully rendered locations, content, etc. but on the other hand I’m not sure it adds as much to justify the real life pain and misery I’m sure some developers went through to create it all, and in a way, it doesn’t quite justify its own existence if we’re being critical.

I get what they were going for with the Seraphites and the WLF but neither group is developed enough to really accomplish the goals of empathy. I think focusing on specific members OF those groups is better, because that is ultimately how real life people break down their walls of bias, -isms, etc. -- they just interact with and befriend people from these groups and realize organically “oh hey we’re all...people, huh.” The game’s attempts at naming NPCs and dogs don’t do much when the game actively rewards you for killing them (speaking of which, I played on Normal and there were way too many items imo, we’ll see how that is on higher difficulties). We could get into the role of violence and gameplay but that’s a WHOLE other can of worms.

But the Rattlers in the final act are even worse. After this entire game of being actively encouraged to empathize with other people from other groups and let yourself consider they aren’t evil, the game just...shoves an objectively worse group of people at you, asks you to murder them, and then...discards the whole thing without a second thought. I found this to be fun from a gameplay perspective (sorry Neil, playing your game actually IS FUN when you put so much work into making the violence fun to engage with) but I found it weird and frustrating from a storytelling perspective, as if the whole thing was an undercooked, unfinished final act that they cobbled together because they just...wanted enemies with helmets and an environment depicting southern California. Hell, tbh I don’t even get why Ellie had to be there other than the developers didn’t think players would be OK just...letting Ellie live a life in peace on a farm or that players would be OK NOT playing as Ellie at the end and letting her beat the shit out of Abby.

I actually LOVED the farm sequence, it felt so...weird for a while. Like you’re just waiting for the hat to drop. And when it does...it’s just PTSD. And that felt right. That felt good, that even though Ellie was spared, after all the shit she did, because she let go and spared Abby in return, she got to live this peaceful life...except life’s not that simple and old scars can still hurt.

I loved when Tommy showed up and we got to see that darker side to him we KNOW has been there this entire time, but Ellie maybe hasn’t been forced to see it. All the way up until this point, I felt I could understand where the characters were coming from and what motivated their decisions.

And then Ellie decided “no, actually, maybe if I throw all of this away I can maybe get rid of this PTSD I got from throwing everything away before.” And then it got worse when after she breaks into this fucking slave house to free people, after she saves Abby and Lev from dying on posts, she STILL wants to fight. ANd Abby’s where I’m at -- that ‘fucking REALLY?’ feeling. I utterly disliked the fight scene in the water. It was the one time in the whole game that actually felt like misery porn to me. I was honestly going into it expecting that maybe Ellie’s stab wound from the trap would cause her to be too weak to fight, and she’d literally drown from bleeding out because of her own unrelenting pursuit of revenge. But nah, we’re put through a pointless, brutal fist/knife fight that...doesn’t really have purpose imo. WHatever you wanted to accomplish here, you could’ve done back in the theater in Seattle. (on that note I LOVED the Ellie boss fight, what a fun gameplay thing and also just tense all around since you really couldn’t tell what was going to happen, but I LOVE that Lev stopped Abby from killing Dina, even though she had every reason to)

I can imagine different versions of the Santa Barbara sequence that offer a more edifying conclusion while still working in the environmental and gameplay components they seemed insistent on working in. It’s the one major portion of the game that, now that I’ve had time to process, I feel the most conflicted about.

Neither Ellie nor Abby “deserve” a happy ending in much the same way Joel didn’t “deserve” a happy ending. This game has no true protagonists or villains (anyone who is presented as a ‘villain’ is minor, and we don’t find out much about them anyway). I think Joel was lucky to get the time he got to live in community once again, to rediscover his humanity (look at all of those flowers they left at his house, this man who fucked over humanity and murdered countless people had a chance to live a few years of peaceful life again), I think Ellie was lucky she got time to even live what she did on that farm with Dina and JJ, and was lucky to still be alive at the end of the story. I think Abby was lucky to have been able to break free from a life of militaristic bullshit and rediscover some of her own lost humanity.

I think a lot of people admire Joel as a hero when it’s clear he was never one.

I think a lot of people admire Ellie and try to idolize her as the smarmy kid she could never permanently exist as.

I think a lot of people hate on Abby for EXISTING (and being a woman -gasp- WITH MUSCLES) and I’m pretty pleased with Laura Bailey getting to play this role (and Ashly Burch getting a supporting role in this game, too, for that matter).

I think The Last of Us is not ‘about Ellie and Joel.’ I think The Last of Us is about humanity, and exploring it through different angle. Sometimes needlessly gritty and dark ones, but Part 2 gave us even more light-hearted, pelasant moments than I could have expected. I think people who look so reductively at this game -- now officially a ‘series’ -- as ‘Joel and Ellie 100x forever’ and literally anything outside of that being bad and a waste of time fundamentally missed the entire purpose of this game, ironically ignoring what it is trying to passionately to convey. I think Naughty Dog’s marketing of the game actively misled people in ways that are rare for the industry, and I do think that is a bit shady - but on the other hand, being misled actively improved my experience with the end product (which is arguably why they did it). I think the way Sony has latched on Joel and Ellie as ‘Playstation Icons’ and encouraged people to buy up TLOU merch depite there not being much TO turn into merchandise says something.

Also? Frankly?

I am SO FUCKING TIRED of “angry sad dad” games.

Like. I loved TLOU 1, I loved the new God of War, etc. etc.

But God of War took basically NO RISKS and had NOTHING TO SAY that countless other pieces of media have said to death. That’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, I really enjoyed it and look forward to the next. But this game actually has challenging thoughts, complicated things, it is trying to get players to consider, and most everyone I see shitting on the game either hasn’t played it or doesn’t seem interested in games that exist for something beyond making them feel good about themselves? I dunno.

I think at the end of the day, TLOU as an entire series, and specifically the sequel, isn’t about Joel and Ellie, that was just the more focused lens the original game had. For its messier, muddier experience, Part 2 strives for nothing more than many pieces of media have but for something that is still rare in the space of AAA video games.

It takes some risks, it makes some missteps in getting where it goes, for sure, and it’s by no means some holy gift to mankid, but it passionately goes to GREAT lengths to explore and express a fairly simple idea: 

empathy is a choice, understanding others is a choice,

and we are all inherently better off when we choose to blindly accept understanding than when we blindly choose hate and violence.

Just because we can’t walk ‘the path of the right,’ and just because ‘we’re wrong’ doesn’t mean we should let the phantoms in our lives continue to keep a hold on our future. Just because someone does some good things doesn’t erase the consequences and ripples of the bad they have done, and just because we do bad things doesn’t mean we can’t do good.

The way to end the cycle of violence is empathy.

It’s simplistic in concept, but if you look around at not just the reception to this game even before people could play it, but just the STATE OF THE WORLD IN 2020, you will see that maybe we still need such basic, simplistic concepts to continue to be explored in big budget media.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Do you think Ogata is a sociopath?

Sorry for the late reply. Sadly this is an extremely busy working period for me.

Anyway…

is Ogata fitting sociopath trope?

It’s a really interesting question and also, if I’m not wrong, a hot topic for the fandom so I’ll try to answer it the best I can.

I’ll use as reference for the Sociopath trope tvtropes because it’s good enough to analyze a character of a litterary work.

So, for this trope, we’re given 5 defining qualities (I’ll copy the words of tvtrope below so people don’t have to go back and forth to check it).

1) Lack of Empathy and Devoid of Conscience: Their defining feature. Utterly ruthless doesn't begin to describe them: except for when trying to appear normal, they will disregard any social norms and semblance of morality in pursuit of their own selfish desires. The Sociopath will do whatever it takes: lie, cheat, steal, extort, manipulate, or use outright violence without the slightest hesitation, disgust or remorse, and for as little as Pleasure or The Evulz. Murder and violence have no more emotional weight than eating Chinese takeout or some other mundane activity, and they have no concern for the direct or collateral damage they do to other people, being unable to understand why anyone should. Likewise, they never truly understand the feelings of others on anything more than an intellectual level, and may even believe that everybody else is faking it too. As many Real Life criminal psychologists put it: "They know the words but not the music." Techniques for learning moral behaviour, such as reason, therapy, rehabilitation and behavioral reward/punishment, will not work on them or tend to only make their behavior even worse by making it easier for them to fake it. This is why the only thing resembling consistently successful treatment involves teaching them to avoid behaviors that have predictable consequences; they may still believe that consequences are bullshit, but if they have been made sufficiently aware of the fact that their behavior will always end up with them in jail, getting sued, or simply just getting jumped or killed when they fuck with the wrong people, and that they can't lie and fake their way out of it because people are wise to their game, they will usually shape up.

Noda actually debunk this in Ogata’s second apparition and it’s THE DEFINING FEATURE of the trope.

Not only he has Ogata decide they won’t kill Tanigaki in Huci’s house because Huci reminds him of his grandmother, whom he loved and therefore he doesn’t want to kill her (chap 43),

but he also have him to save Nikaido (Chap 45)

eventhough Ogata is sure it’s a trap (Chap 45).

In case people hadn’t gotten the message well Noda remarks his meetingwith Huci left an impression by having him remember her when Tanigaki mentionedher (chap 110)

making him consequently offer to help Tanigaki (yeah the way hewent at it was horrible) and in other small instances (like how although hedoesn’t believe in dreams he tells Asirpa he should write her instead than justsaying he should ignore her for being senile and naïve (chap 113)).

He also remarks that Ogata knew a wounded Nikaido would be a liability byshowing how one of the war techniques Ogata learnt in war was to woundopponents instead than killing them (chap 46)…

and underlines this again in thefight with Vasily, where not only it’s explained again how wounding opponentsis a technique used to damage enemies (Chap 162)...

but Ogata also comments on how Vasilywon’t expose himself for his companions as he evidently would be comfortablehearing their screams of pain through all the night (chap 162)...

which was what Ogata should have done instead than saving Nikaido.

We’ve other instances in which Ogata showed he’s not utterly ruthless,like when he saves Shinpei instead than letting his father kill him and onlyafterward killing the man (chap 59).

We’ve him claiming he doesn’t feel guilt for the people he kills and yethe hallucinates and is clearly haunted by the memory of his brother, whom hekilled (chap 164/165).

More recently instead we’ve the scene in which he comfort Koito (chap199)

...or the fact once he was left alone with Koito he didn’t harm him in retaliation for slamming his head against his nose but just tied him (Chap 200).

Noda likely created those settings exactly to debunk the defining feature of thetrope, so we won’t get the wrong impression about Ogata.

2) Consummate Liar and Manipulator: In the event they are ever targets of suspicion in crime dramas and thrillers, sociopaths are able to fool any Living Lie Detectors in the cast, pass polygraphs effortlessly, and fool even you, the audience, into believing they are genuinely kind and caring people who are victims of a "big misunderstanding" (assuming they are not so smugly confident of their own invincibility that they feel no need to hide their unsavory personality). Moreover, despite their lack of empathy, sociopaths are capable of using their knowledge of others' desires, emotions and insecurities to manipulate them for their own personal gain. Because of this, many of them are Faux Affably Evil. This is related to their lack of empathy and shame - they don't feel the slightest discomfort about lying or exploiting others, so they do so with the same ease in which normal people perform mundane activities. This is why you should always assume that any apparent epiphany from a sociopath is bullshit; as far as they're concerned, it's just another tool to get what they want, and they don't actually believe that they have done anything wrong. Don't let them know that they are full of shit, because it will just force them to become more slick, but do act with the knowledge that they will go right back to their old ways the minute that they think it is safe to do so.

Yeah, Ogata lies in Golden Kamuy. All the cast does, even Asirpa.

But the idea here is he has to be a consummate one, a GOOD one, a masterful one, not just a guy who here and there lies. He has to be so good at lying he can manipulate others though his lies.

And Ogata fails at lying. Noda debunks this as well in Ogata’s second apparition when he tells Tanigaki that he was joking when he said Tanigaki might have killed Tamai and Co and Tanigaki is free to remain in Huci’s house because Ogata will act as if he had never seen Tanigaki (Chap 43).

Tanigaki is so sure Ogata is being sincere he thinks he has to leave AS SOON AS POSSIBLE (Chap 43).

And I’ve spent lot of time discussing how his lie about Sugimoto’s final moments was a complete and utter mess, the clear sign the most Ogata can do are extremely simple lies because as soon as he tries to make up a story that’s as unbelievable as possible.

Ogata can be a good strategist during a battle.

We see it in the Barato arc, also in the sniper duel and, if we want, also in his recent escape. However he’s clearly not good at manipulating people in interactions.

He can’t win over their trust, which is a big requisite to manipulate people as he’s almost universally distrusted, we see it not only with Tanigaki, who simply didn’t buy his lie nor spilled the truth about Sugimoto’s involvement but also with Sugimoto himself, who’ll be more prone to trust Kiro or Hijikata, who’ll both betray him to try to get Asirpa, and even Tsurumi than Ogata even when it’ll be really obvious Ogata is actually right (remember the fake Ainu arc?), with Yuusaku, who won’t spend time with whose women nor kill a man, with Asirpa, who won’t give him the code and honestly, I’m not even sure his attempt at hinting Tsurumi’s involvement in Koito’s kidnapping will be something Koito will understand.

In order to be a manipulator is not enough to attempt to manipulate, you’ve to do so successfully. And Ogata fails at this.

3) Pathological Need for Stimulation: The Sociopath's raison d'etre (i.e.: an overriding goal which serves as one's "reason for existence"). Due to their inability to empathize or even care for those around them, sociopaths largely view their existence as boring or meaningless and therefore feel compelled to engage in "thrill-seeking" activities to alleviate their restlessness. How this manifests depends largely on the sociopath's personality. It can be as relatively benign as binging on video games, compulsively gambling, or leading highly promiscuous lifestyles. Far more dangerous examples are prone to satiate their lust for thrills by partaking in criminal enterprises, becoming serial rapists and/or killers, or (if they are unusually high-functioning) accumulating vast wealth and/or influence for the sole purpose of dominating as many people as they can for their own amusement. Due to their obsession with indulging their insatiable appetites however they want whenever they want, sociopaths have a very low tolerance for inconvenience or irritation which in turn leads them to have a pronounced lack of impulse control. Because of this, many of them are Ax-Crazy, have a Hair-Trigger Temper, and/or are Mood Swingers.

That’s hard to say.

So far Ogata never stated to find existence boring without action. Sure, he’s engaged in a very risky hunt and he’s rather reckless but does he has a pathological need for this or, like the rest of the cast, he’s just thinking this is the price to pay to reach his goal? He’s in this for the fun of it or he has a different purpose? Until we don’t know Ogata’s goal we can speculate as much as we want but we can hardly say for sure.

What we know is Ogata has a very good impulse control, that he’s usually very cold and even in the few circumstances we’ve seen him angry or in a tight spot he hardly lost it.

4) Shallow Affect and Complete Lack of Emotional Reciprocity: A Sociopath is physiologically incapable of experiencing a deep emotional attachment towards others but - being a Consummate Liar - learns early in life how to fake them. This shallow emotional life means that the Sociopath is unable to form sincere long-term relationships with anything or anyone, but will feign feelings of love and affection if they feel it serves their purposes. Most of the true feelings a sociopath harbors towards others, positive or negative, are rooted in an insatiable desire to dominate or control them. While narcissists desire to be loved or at least respected, sociopaths don't care whether others view them positively as long as they don't stand in the way of their own self-centered gratification. In the rare event that a Sociopath actually does form an "attachment" to another person, it rises no further than that between an owner and a possession and/or a valuable resource for advancing their goals. Thus, once such "friends" cease to be useful or entertaining, they will abandon them or, in some cases, even kill them without any hesitation or regret. Any emotional reaction to having committed a heinous act is met indifference at best and glee at worst.

Technically debunked again in Ogata’s second apparition.

As said before not only Ogata declared he had feelings for his grandmother but even went out of his way to spare Huci because it reminded him of her.

But I know this is viewed in a rather controversial manner.

In fact so far we hadn’t seen him developing a deep emotional attachment toward others as he remained a loner.

The fandom though was very impressed by two things.

One is his relationship with Yuusaku. It’s worth to note that Noda made very clear that Ogata wanted to avoid Yuusaku and not have a relationship with him at all (chap 164),

...and it was on Tsurumi’s request he ended up on having to try to deceive him and get them what they wanted. It’s also meaningful how Ogata never played the whole thing on the affection side. The most he did was to point out he and Yuusaku were brothers so they should get to mischief together, but he never tried to use feelings into the play, he insisted in calling Yuusaku ‘Yuusaku-dono’ and he never asked Yuusaku to do something because Ogata loved him or out of the love Yuusaku should feel for him.

Ogata is clearly not faking any affection for Yuusaku, he’s at most giving him some of his time. Yuusaku, who has already decided Ogata has to be delighted to have a little brother even when Ogata clearly hinted the contrary, might not see it but this speaks more of Yuusaku’s obsession to get Ogata to be his big brother than about Ogata’s attempt at faking feelings he didn’t felt.

The other thing the fandom likes to talk about is Ogata’s relationship with Asirpa.

That one is a rather controversial topic.

Asirpa is friendly with Ogata. Nothing over the top, she just deal with him with the same kindness she would deal with everyone else (actually she’s kinder with Tanigaki considering the guy threatened her and tried to use her as human shield and she completely forgave him that and saved his life. Twice).

Ogata’s interactions with her, for most of the story, are not responding to it at all.

He’s not faking affection, he’s just mostly not interacting and keeping on his own.

It takes him months to say ‘citatap’ as she repeatedly asked him and call Asirpa by name. It’ll take him even more to say ‘hinna’.

Asirpa decides to remain friendly with him. That’s Asirpa’s decision, it’s not Ogata’s actions, or more exactly his lack of actions that cause Asirpa to remain friend with him.

And Asirpa is clearly not the type who needs to be rejected to latch to someone as we see she’s just fine with being friend with Sugimoto, Shiraishi, Kiroranke, Tanigaki and others, who aren’t keeping distant, nor she’s so starved for affection just a word would win her over.

Even when he will try to get her to give him the code he won’t try to play it on the ‘if you care for me/trust me give me the code’ or on the ‘I care for you so I’m telling you what would be best for you’.

Really, to assume Ogata was faking affection with her would require accepting he can’t fake it to save his life.

5) Grandiose Sense of Self-Worth: The trait that ties it all together - the one that changes it from moustache-twirling evil into a mental disorder. Sociopaths will go so far as to convince themselves that they have succeeded in their plan, even as failure stares them in the face and snaps on the handcuffs. They genuinely believe it. They don't really care what others truly think on the matter, but they do care about what they say, and like to fill their social circle with people who say what they want to hear. Any others - even former 'friends' - will be dismissed from the sociopath's social circle simply for doubting them. They consider themselves better than anybody else and that they are entitled to special treatment - and they can't stand anybody being considered better than them. However, while the Narcissist is self-conscious of how they measure up to others' standards (and therefore will experience shame or guilt for failing them), a sociopath's grandiosity is all-encompassing to the point they have no concern how their actions reflect upon them UNLESS it threatens their ability to indulge their appetite for further stimulation. They are incapable of acknowledging personal responsibility for failure, and will always blame others, no matter how irrational it is. In fact, it's considerably difficult convincing them that the activity they have partaken in has even failed. This is all part of why a sociopath can't change - since they consider themselves to already be perfect, and refuse to acknowledge failure on their part, and consider the true opinions and feelings of others insignificant, they never try to improve themselves.

Honestly I wouldn’t say Ogata has a grandiose sense of self worth.

Sure, he knows he’s an amazing sniper and he occasionally brags about it.

Everyone does know Ogata is amazing at sniping. This is, after all, a fact that’s accepted by the whole cast and that’s actually proved more than once, after all Ogata fits the trope of improbable aiming skills with his impressive feats of shooting two deer at once or managing to catch three woodcocks with a less suitable rifle, exterminating a reindeer herd on his own or hitting targets with an impossible precision from an amazing distance.

Ushiyama too comments on how he’s Ushiyama, the Undefeated, even if he lost to Gansoku here and there when they only used fists (Chap 143).

Just bragging a little on a real skill isn’t a sign of grandiose sense of self-worth, just of rightful pride for it. Yeah, modesty is an important virtue but you don’t turn into a sociopath if you’re proud of what you can do.

What’s more noteworthy though is he knows he’s a rejected kid, anunwanted one, who wasn’t loved and that feels he lacked something fundamental. He’s aware of how, being an illegitimate, his existence was a source of shame for his father. He comments on how he knew he wouldn’t be able to persuade Asirpa, admitting his failure. He admits his responsibility in his actions.

Therefore I can’t really see him as a guy with a grandiose sense of self worth.

And so with this, we’ve finished with the defining traits for this trope.

Tvtropes also says:

Many of these traits are shared with other disorders, but it's the combination of them all that creates the trueSociopath.

In short you need them all to have a character that fits this TROPE (please, remember, this is a TROPE, the real personality disorder that goes with the same name is not something an ordinary person can find out in real people with this checklist, no, not even if, like me, they studied psychology in high school, this is a list for a TROPE as this is a fictional work).

As a result honestly I can’t see Ogata fitting into them because, for the first 2, Noda actually did his best to remark howthey don’t fit to Ogata from his second apparition, for the 3rd we can’t really say as we lack material, I’ll let the 4th up to debate and honestly, I don’t see him matching with the 5th.

As a trope Ogata fits the cold sniper with improbable aiming skills and an ambiguous disorder (at least for now... who knows, in the future Noda might tell us).

The one of the sociopath isn’t really cut on him.

It doesn’t mean Ogata is a good person, or that he only does good things, it’s clear he does a BIG DEAL OF TERRIBLY WRONG THINGS and we know sociopaths can do this sort of wrong things.

However Noda apparently wasn’t interested in making Ogata a sociopath or otherwise he wouldn’t have written scenes debunking a sociopath’s main characteristics and, believe it or not, in real life you don’t need to be a sociopath to do the sort of wrong things Ogata does so it’s not like Noda is being unrealistic.

Sorry to whoever wanted him to be one, I know each fandom loves to have its own memetic psychopath but as they’re not my cup of tea I fear I won’t partake into the ‘fun’ of turning Ogata into one.

Thank you for your ask!

[cero-blast]

Your post about Gin "messing with people's heads" makes me think, doesn't this also apply to Ulquiorra? He also psychologically tortured Inoue, don't you think it's hypocritical to say Gin's actions don't nullify the bad things he did, but say that UH is good/not toxic? I'm not trying to hate on you, I don't ship anything in Bleach, I just wanted to know why Gin is considered a bad inexcusable guy but Ulquiorra's relationship with Inoue is glorified?

This will get… really long. I’m genuinely sorry it’s this long.

I never said Ulqiorra did nothing wrong (though it’s fair to say I didn’t happen to specifically point it out), or that UH is a ship with many positive feelings associated to it. That would be… an interesting take. I hope you don’t think I think that. But I also need you to understand that I don’t base my taste in ships on what I desire/consider healthy in real life. They exist in the context of the canon — not interchangeable with reality considering the existence of superpowers, ghosts, semi-human creatures and time warping — and that’s where it ends for me. Applying the dynamics in my ships to any situation other than the precise one of Bleach’s canon would make them fundamentally different.

I’ve wanted to mention this about Ulquiorra for a while now and I’ll take the occasion to do so. It’s a mistake to put him in the same framework as a human or shinigami. (The latter two also have their differences but based on observation shinigami seem to behave in a much more human-like manner compared to hollows/arrancars.) He’s practically incapable of understanding what empathy is or find any good reason not to hurt other people, which is why it’s surprising when he manages to grasp even a shred of the concept right before dying. Hollows are born from experiencing such severe pain that it distorts their whole ‘essence’, so something has gone terribly wrong with them emotionally by definition, whether they evolve to arrancar form or not. Ulquiorra’s aspect of death, his ‘theme’, is emptiness — characterized by complete neutrality towards everything. Since a person with a healthy mindset tends to focus on danger and negative events, neutrality often comes across as immoral for being equally conceding towards moral right and moral wrong. The point is, Ulquiorra’s motivations for provoking Inoue had nothing to do with him taking joy in causing pain to her. In fact, it’s hinted he’s not even fully aware he’s doing it, like the scene where he tells Inoue he’d laugh at her friends’ foolishness in her place. He’s unaffected by most things AND has difficulty placing himself in others’ perspective, which results in him assuming everyone around him would be unaffected. The only thing that factored into him doing just about anything was curiosity, the need to fill the void, however you want to put it. If a human or shinigami behaved the same way he did around Inoue, it would come across in a vastly different way and I’m not sure it would even interest me as a ship. Ulquiorra is not only a hollow, but a hollow with a particular impediment in understanding how others feel, and this is an integral part of him as a character, of his interactions, of UH, of anything regarding him. I know it’s funny as a fandom meme to act as if he were human, but he’s NOT and this needs to be kept in mind.

This applies to any arrancar or espada, really. It’s tempting to judge them on the same basis as enemies who are closer to humanity, mainly because of their appearance and intellect. But this is the trick itself the narrative plays, a progression that has been present in Bleach since the start: it created a human/monster (shinigami/hollow here) dichotomy, then spent the longest arc deconstructing it by blurring the lines between the two. It doesn’t matter how smart and eloquent the espada manage to get, the only productive way of interpreting them is as people who are missing a very core part of their personality, so someone severely psychologically ill. (I say this as someone who has their own problems, before it gets misinterpreted as condescension.) Should this absolve them from punishment? Bleach says a very clear no. They almost all get killed by shinigami, in Ulquiorra’s case Ichigo specifically — Ichigo, who, by his own admission, empathized with everyone he fought and even gets angry at Yammy for speaking ill of Ulquiorra after his death. (I don’t want to start arguing about how he was in hollow state when he defeated him. He would have killed Ulquiorra either way if he continued to stand in the way of protecting his friends.)

In summary, the espada aren’t human. Ulquiorra isn’t human. It’s unrealistic to expect him to behave like a human. You’re free to pick who you want to have compassion for among Bleach’s positive and negative characters and if you decide Ulquiorra is irredeemable in your opinion, that’s fine — many characters would agree. But at the very least it can be objectively said that Bleach spends a lot of time presenting ‘evil’ characters’ perspectives as nuanced and explicable instead of writing them off. It gives the audience a choice in the matter. A core message of the entire story is that we’re subjective and maybe we’ll never manage to see the world the same way as someone else, but that’s fine and it doesn’t make us all that different; hollows can become *almost* shinigami, shinigami can become *almost* hollows, and they both have ways to relate to one another while retaining the insurmountable differences and even fighting and killing each other.

Now, onto Gin. First off, you seem to be under the impression that I don’t like him as a character. That couldn’t be further from the truth; I only said it in the tags because I figured saying it in the post would have sounded like making excuses, which is not what the post was about. I don’t know if I would call him a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person. All I know is that I really enjoyed him as a character and I could see how he evoked sympathy — in the tragic way antagonists do when they get some sort of redemption. I noticed it’s a common tool in fiction to make an impact on the audience, I suppose because we’re happier when we see ‘bad people getting fixed’ rather than someone already good doing more good things. It’s a Prodigal Son type of thing; can be argued about but it definitely makes an impact.

Gin is a quintessential ‘mysterious type’; he has a long-running plan that he executes throughout almost his entire life without ever consulting with anyone (an important detail). He had a hypothesis on what would be the most effective way to kill Aizen and constructed a convoluted plan based on it — a plan where the ends would have justified the means in many, many situations, and that required causing problems to a lot of people. He had, however, no certainty that what he was doing would lead to the desired results (which it then didn’t…). A lot of his provocation was a means to create a certain image of himself and there’s a big question of where to draw the line there, whether all of that was absolutely necessary. Leaving to Hueco Mundo and technical demonstrations of loyalty were, sure, but mocking Rukia on her way to being executed? He considered keeping everything a secret a prerequisite for things to work out — presumably because if he talked to anyone, Aizen could have noticed — but was it, really? Many of his actions were based on his personal judgement on what would and wouldn’t have ruined the façade, subjective and hunch-based since he didn’t know the outcome for sure.

Gin isn’t inexcusable, but I noticed a lack of emphasis on the damage his actions caused among fans, both because of the chronological order of the story and his affiliation with the protagonists’ side. Because the last thing he did was a good thing, that’s what he’s remembered by, without taking into account the sum total of his interactions with others. He posited himself as vicious until the last moment and did so consciously. Ulquiorra had a very, very gradual progression in the way he talked to Inoue, which doesn’t make it less rude and traumatic, but there’s a difference between him showing up and telling her she ‘has no rights’ and later taking an active interest in her views on the Heart. It would be equally reductive to interpret him by his last moment and nothing else, but all he did before led to that moment progressively, while Gin’s was a very abrupt twist.

My post was a comment on psychology on the most basic, technical level, not a moral judgement. The two are separate in the way we process trauma and that’s exactly what I find interesting. Having strong negative emotions associated to a memory (what I think Kira, Hinamori, Hitsugaya or Rangiku could have had with Gin’s betrayal) creates a very subconscious reaction that can hardly be fixed by suddenly finding out it was necessary for a positive cause, which is why healing from trauma requires years of therapy. Because *in that moment* you didn’t have that knowledge, the pain remains in your memory and it’s not a matter of logical reasoning. Now, I’m not saying Ulquiorra’s interactions with Inoue were numerous or productive enough to properly process the trauma he caused her — the canon info is ambivalent on how comfortable Inoue was around him towards the end of her captivity because there’s both scenes like the famous slapping one *and* her seeming more light-hearted towards Ulquiorra in Unmasked, plus no one has any idea of which came before which. All things considered, I think repeated discussion and an attempt at mutual understanding does a better job at elaborating something traumatic than one single piece of information on why what traumatized you was justified. And note that the *only reason* the understanding between Ulquiorra and Inoue could have been mutual is because Inoue was exceptionally patient, empathetic and willing to face discomfort, way beyond the base level or what should be expected from anyone. Even if it was a *small amount* of *not very productive* discussion, it’s better than one act in my opinion (which most of the people who had some sort of issue with Gin didn’t even directly witness). Which of them is *morally worse* depends on how you draw the lines and define morality and that’s not something I feel qualified to decide.

So, in the end;Ulquiorra:-working towards enemy goals overtly-motivated by curiosity, which can be considered self-oriented-gradual improvement-not fully conscious of the emotional impact of his actions-Inoue considers him an ambivalent presence but “Isn’t afraid”, in her words-half-succeeded, as in: failed the goal of killing Ichigo but sated his curiosity

Gin:-working towards enemy goals on the surface and soul society goals covertly-motivated by attachment to Rangiku and/or revenge, less self-oriented but still focused on close acquaintances -long-running façade of being a terrible person followed by a sudden twist towards the good side-completely aware of everything he’s doing, plan laid out hundreds of years in advance-Gotei 13 don’t interact with Gin throughout HM arc, consider the traitors a lost cause-failed to kill Aizen

Instead of this encyclopedia I could have just written “Gin isn’t irredeemable, I just said he did bad things before”, but I thought too much about it. And I might go through spelling mistakes once I wake up.

[philosophicalparadox]

Sympathy for the Devil

Sometimes, I wonder about those characters. 

The ones that everybody hates, but that so many of us love. 

And I can not help but think, that maybe we love them, not because they are relatable, or because they are righteous, or maybe not even because they are interesting, 

we love them for what we can not see, but that we can sense. 

There’s always more than one side on a coin, and sometimes what the audience thinks is a square, might actually be a cube if looked at from the proper angle. 

Characters that have no backstory are often the highlights of a series; There’s always something we don’t know about them, and that makes them interesting -- and yet, there can be so many proper heros who we also know next to nothing about, but do they recieve the same adolation? Not really. In quantity, yes, certainly. There are I don’t know how many people that speculate about the livelihood and past of “hero” characters like Yusuke of Yu Yu Hakusho. Because frankly, we don’t know anything about that past. 

But for the villain, for the outcast, for the devil himself, there is a different attitude towards those speculations. There’s a fandom-wide curiousity, but also, I think, a pervasive sense of sympathy for those characters. In human psychology, a man does not become a monster overnight without something already there, some spark, an incentive -- a reason. In one second to the next, a decent human being isn’t likely to murder somebody, and not feel anything about it. 

There are, definitely, conditions such as Psychopathy which, from birth, render a person unable to experience or learn empathy or compassion. And yet, they are not often the ones who perpetrate the worst crimes (As much as hollywood and cheap, plastic Wikipedia articles would have you believe otherwise). 

And there are conditions, often falsely roped into the same group, such as Sociopathy, which is learned through horrible, neglectful, pervasive abuse that goes on continuously in someone’s life. Those sociopathic characters that can’t bring themselves to have a conscience in spite of being born okay -- well, they weren’t okay as they grew up, and learned that feeling was a bad thing. Feeling pity, or sympathy, was something used against them. It was something they were punished for, or that they were just never taught because there wasn’t anyone around to teach them. (Dude, telling you now, don’t try to argue with me that empathy is inherent in humans, because it is learned - there’s a whole lotta scientific papers and psychology to prove you wrong if you want to go check them out.) 

Narcissistic Personality Disorder is also a learned condition, and I think we can name at least a few characters we could suspect of that. (Ahem, you know who you are :p ) It, too, is a disorder born of abuse and neglect, and setting entirely the wrong standards for your children. (There is a genetic component for both of the above, but nurture is what brings those traits out). 

But there are so, so many completely typical (as in neurotypical) flaws in those characters we love to hate, hate to love. Look at Alucard (Hellsing) - if that isn’t a human man with a broken sense of self, I don’t know what is.

 He’s a monster, a beast that likes to pretend he has no feelings, but it is so very painfully obvious to some of us that yes, yes he does -- and they are all too human feelings. He feels jealousy. He feels rage. He feels empathy, which is a rather miraculous thing since he is both quite old, and has been dragged through hell and back from the time he was a small boy. 

To his defense, Alucard was human at one point and time. But what about those other, not-so-human characters? Can we feel sympathy for them? Or is it just their way to be so mean and nasty? 

Well, I think both. 

I seen a post a long time ago, talking about Sebastian (Black Butler) and how he reacted to being called a monster at that party in the beginning of the Blue Cult arc. 

And honestly, that fine post has stayed with me, as did that scene. He had such a look of hurt on his face, that it is really hard to place whether it was truly fake. The post went on about how Sebastian wasn’t such a heartless monster; maybe he did feel, on some level, like we do. Certainly, he seemed to be offended at the least when so many women began to shield their children from him. 

I don’t know if I fully agree with what that post said about him having human feelings, but I definitely concur that he has feelings, and that there was an unmistakable sense of realism coming from his response. He seemed, to me, confused and affronted more than hurt, his expression begging the question, what did I ever do to you? followed by his tucked head, maybe even shamefully, wondering, I never wanted to hurt you, so why do you hate me?

I got a similar-ish sense from Mephisto when he was confronting Amaimon on the balcony, Amaimon stating flatly that he hated his brother. 

Mephisto just shrugged with a hmf, and said ‘Hate? What a human emotion.” which I think is a remark of contempt from him. Contempt, maybe not for human feeling entirely, as surely you couldn’t enjoy the company of humans if you didn’t have tolerance for their fickle hearts, but perhaps towards those feelings which he has known, and abandoned. 

It’s pretty evident that demons in the Blue Exorcist universe are capable of fairly complicated human emotions, and compassion is not something unknown to them, nor incapable. 

But it would seem that Mephisto, like many, forgo that compassion and empathy at some point. Why? 

Because it hurts. 

And something which hurts is something you could live without, by demon logic. Besides a body. Because a body is such an intoxicating and exhilerating thing that no demon, save a few bold souls, would dare be without one, even at the cost of enduring torture. They’re the ultimate drug, the highest addiction, and nothing ever feels the same once you’ve had it once. 

living bodies are heroin for demons, change my mind

But feelings? Feelings are fickle, they’re not necessary to survive or to enjoy the pleasures of the mortal realm. Things like empathy can get you hurt. Being nice to people can get you yelled at, or hit. Showing great wells of compassion to the sick and dying won’t bring them back, and the humans who mourn them will try to kill you if you use magic that they don’t understand. Because mankind is a terrified animal who doesn’t know where they are in the scheme of the cosmos, but damnit if they don’t wonder. It just happens that when one tells the truth, and one is called a liar, everyone around them would rather accept that they know better, and that you are the one who lied. 

And it is too often true, and a trope of course, that when you’re called a monster enough times, you will someday see yourself become one. After all, a child who does bad things to get attention, is still getting attention, and we all know that demons, at least in the Blue Exorcist universe, but sometimes in mythology as well, have the tired hearts of children. Their minds are complex and at times, expansive, but their emotions are those of kids who just want to play, to have fun and, of course, be recognized.  

I have a great deal of sympathy for the Devil. He wanted to be recognized, to be admired and loved as much as his Father was; but in the end, he became a victim, not only of his own pride, but that of his Father as well. 

I feel for Mephisto, too. There are times I don’t wonder if he really was an “angel” once upon a time. Maybe somewhere, deep in a past he can’t remember, he was benevolent, and kind, only to find out the hard way that humans can be cruel, unspeakably so. To find out that their fickle hearts can love you one day, and in the same stroke, hate you the next, and all because of one mistake. It’s been happening for millenia; Good people who are doing good things, but lose face, and in the end, lose trust. It’s got to be one hell of a bitter realization for an alien that knows nothing of human kind, to be adored and praised and given the recognition every child yearns for; and in the same day, have all those men and women leer and sneer and throw stones at you because you made a mistake. 

We all know how it feels, to be blamed for something unjustly. Imagine that playing out over, and over, and over again over hundreds, thousands of generations. They love you, they hate you, they die. Repeat for thousands of years, thousands of humans who ally themselves with you, who praise you and uphold your image, who worship you as a god; but just as quickly as they came to find affection for you, they either move on and forget your existence, or they hate you and point the finger your way every time something bad happens, because hey, it’s easier to blame the devil than to admit you were wrong, right? 

None of this is to excuse the terrible actions of those “demons” and “devils” and “evil people”; Your actions are your own, and they are just as responsible for them as anyone else, fictional or not. There’s no denying that Alucard has killed, slaughtered, butchered and masacred thousands, that he has tortured and bullied and abused others. 

There’s no denying that Sebastian, demon as he is, isn’t sadistic, nor that his actions with Beast were of questionable consent, seeing as he basically intimidated her into sleeping with him. 

There’s certainly no denying that Mephisto is a toxic cocktail of narcissism combined with an enabling attitude; he might not have been directly involved with the human experimentation that went on in Asylum, but he did nothing to stop it’s progress either. Hell, he proposed the idea! And the suffering of all those clones, all those kids, is at least partly on his head. 

But he doesn’t care. None of them care, because it would hurt them if they did. It would drive them mad and make them scared of themselves (like Alucard isn’t, pfft) if they took those steps back and looked at what they did, and examined it through the eyes of the empathy that they might have had at one time. (Alucard still does, but he is super selective about it. Compartmentalization at it’s finest.)

But somehow, I don’t think they got that way by choice. Someone  failed to teach them that it was okay to feel hurt, that it was okay for them to be scared, that they didn’t need to hide or disguise or push it down. 

This is mostly to do with the fact none of those mentioned had “parents” to teach them anything at all, but instead relied on themselves or, in the case of Mephisto/Samael, the humans around them. And what they learned instead was that they were the only reliable ones, that the only people they could trust was themselves, and that human nature is a confusing mixture of contradictions, of pleasure and pain, of kindness and cruelty, and the only way to feel good about themselves was to focus on themselves, and to live as an island, sustaining their own egoes and living for the sake of themselves, because they “know” no one else will. 

And I think, in some way, those of us who are willing to love the bad guys while also hating their guts -- we feel that. We sense that. We know there’s something underneath all the flashy clothes, the smirking sarcasm, the shrugged shoulders and the utterly remorseless attitudes. We sense something deeper, even if we don’t know what it is. In fact, the very reason we cling to them sometimes is because we don’t know what it is, and it makes for a far more entertaining thought to chew on than the flat, but adorable, but also sometimes embarrassingly shallow hero. (Ahem, Inuyasha, I’m looking at you, mister “I have no character development despite being the main character”). 

I have great sympathy for the Devil, and I think all of us do too. 

[gotgifsandmusings]

Full musings on Infinity War

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: I'm just waiting for your thoughts on Thanos. I know there will be thoughts.

Ha, there are thoughts indeed. I was thinking of recording a video about it, but my mic seems to be messed up from the journey, and Griffin’s mic picks up everything...

Alright, fuck it, I’ll just write everything I was thinking about Infinity War, because overall I’d call it a frustrating viewing experience.

FULL MOVIE SPOILERS are below the cut, so you have been warned.

Very warned.

Okay then, let’s get into it.

I want to be able to have a neatly packaged thesis statement of “I did/didn’t like it,” but I do think my dissatisfaction with it is a bit more nuanced? Like, I was viscerally annoyed sitting through Ragnarok, and a lot of that were thanks to the expectations I had going into it. Here, I kind of didn’t care that much and didn’t read spoilers for that reason. Griffin was super hype to see it, I knew Lindsay Ellis didn’t react favorably to it on Twitter, and those two things alone were my only basis for any expectations.

I tend to have my mind wander think, “am I liking this?” during a movie screening. Had I been asked during this one, I couldn’t have clearly answered at all, at least not until the very end. There were some jokes and dialogue I laughed at, the action pieces always felt earned by the context, though not necessarily incredibly engaging. It was a mixed bag, maybe, but it was more just me kind of nodding along at the direction. Not in a “cool” way, but more a, “okay here’s what they’re doing now.” It became very obvious Thanos was going to get the all stones this movie, and equally obvious that it was not going to be fully resolved, so it was really the question of how and where the final action piece would fall.

Gamora’s death was some bullshit. I sort of felt like it sucked out the emotional tension, since this is just big purple dude from space beaming in with stones who doesn’t have any direct connection to 98% of the characters. But even more than that, I was having trouble understanding what they were going for there at all.

I didn’t see GOTG2, though I want to. However, I do know about the familial dynamics with Gamora and Nebula and Thanos. I think Gamora giving up the soul stone location to save her was seeded, at least from what I understand went down. And frankly, I can even track Gamora kissing Peter given the stakes, given she asked him to kill her, and so on. What loses me was why they painted her death as a sacrifice of Thanos’s, because it’s 100% clear this guy is an abuser to her and Nebula, and then even backing out of this, he’s 100% incapable of empathy, which is why his solution to ~famine~ is a glove that can literally do anything (like...you know...make resources more plentiful or increase education about birth control or something), and his solution is still “equal opportunity genocide.”

So that Gamora was explicitly shown to us to be someone he loved to get the soul stone sends all kinds of really dangerous messages, and also does it banking on the believability of his philosophical commitment to thinning the herd. Except that philosophy itself falls apart with minor scrutiny. His planet fell apart because of thin resources, so he can extrapolate that to the universe? And he really believes just arbitrarily murdering half the population would do anything, without addressing birth rates, or power structions, or anything at all?

It was just so, so, so weak as a motivation for him. And I’m absolutely flabbergasted critics are seriously comparing Thanos to Killmonger as two villains with “understandable” motivations. These are two massively different scales of understandability, right?? How is there any basis for comparison other than to say, “wow Thanos is a shitty villain after Killmonger.”?

The problem is, Thanos was the closest thing we had to a movie protagonist, since it was his journey. But there’s nothing remotely sympathetic about what he’s trying to accomplish, or particularly logical, and to have him be the one to “sacrifice” to get there was like...for what? Otherwise we wouldn’t have believed how hardcore he was?

I think how much this movie lands for someone is going to fall entirely on their view of Thanos. I wasn’t impressed and I don’t understand why this is the guy they built towards, and specifically him and the infinity gauntlet.

Because yeah, that damned gauntlet. I really can’t stand unclear power scaling like that. The gauntlet can do anything with all the stones in it, but minus two of them, Dr. Strange can go toe-to-toe with Thanos? It’s just...the fights became increasingly irrelevant because Stones of Random Power so things happen that need to happen just because. They are one of the most profoundly uninteresting plot devices I can think of.

Oh also? Hands down the worst moment was when Starlord was so full of Manpain about Gamora that he ruined Peter Parker and Tony Stark almost getting the gauntlet off Thanos. Just utter horseshit there. Not to mention even going with the mapain, he could have just shot him in the face or slit his throat instead of punching him, and then boom, movie over.

Idk, that moment, along with Gamora’s death earned heavy eyerolls. There are so many more inventive ways to have those guys lose a fight to him, or to have Thanos obtain the soul stone, and I don’t see her dead body being the necessity for any of them. Especially with the soul stone. Maybe Thanos creates some kind of illusion using the reality stone where Gamora thinks she has to get the soul stone in her possession to save Nebula, and then Thanos is able to take it. Idfk. Just...why this?

(Also the Guardians felt super off to me. I know stuff happened in GOTG2, but it seemed obvious they weren’t being penned by their usual writer.)

I do want to address the darkness of this movie. I got one ask saying it was acedia at its finest, and another saying that no, the thesis of the movie was that every life is important (Steve says this to Vision) and we fight for something saving or whatever. I lean more with the acedia anon.

If anyone is reading this and doesn’t know the spoilers, the movie ends with Thanos, having assembled all of the stones, snapping his fingers and killing half of the universe. The finger snap itself is mentioned as the threat and how easy it’d be fore him to do it at least 5 times, so it was certainly seeded. Then, we get a lovely sequence where we watch half the Wakandaans turn to dust, T’Challa among them, along with half the Avengers: bye bye Sam, Bucky, Elizabeth Olsen, every Guardian of the Galaxy except Rocket, Dr. Strange, and Peter Parker. That’s after already watching Vision, Gamora, Loki, and Heimdall get killed by Thanos.

Like yes, everyone knows this is not going to stand. We are shown about two minutes before this charming sequences Thanos going back in time because he has the time infinity plot device, and we also know Avengers 4, GOTG 3, Black Panther 2, the next Spiderman follow-up, and so on are in the works.

Oh except children in the audience. There was a BAWLING 7-year-old outside the theater, and what do you tell them? “Don’t worry, it’s just the Russo brothers doing it because they can, and they want to seem edgy and bold”? It’s not bold. It’s kind of the biggest cop-out possible, because we know nothing is permanent now, it’s probable everyone who died in this is brought back (...maybe Loki or Heimdall or all of the Asgardians are exceptions? maybe?), and it was basically just an exercise in the limitations of the movie medium for comic narratives.

But thank god we got to watch all of our heroes horrifically die with everyone reacting to them. Like good god, the very young Peter Parker had to be given time to freak out about how he feels sick and doesn’t want to go? What was the point of that? Or was that the reserved take, and in the full cut there was actually a death scene for Princess Shuri too or something.

Speaking of Shuri and Wakanda, I do want to say that I think there’s an element of this that’s in poor taste. Black Panther is *still* airing in theaters, and there have been how many pieces coming out about the importance of representation and what Wakanda meant to so many viewers. So the fact that it was in Wakanda when we see half the population dying... Like, I do like that Wakandans were given an instrumental role in end-of-the-world stakes. But then that meant that yeah, you’d watch half of them crumble to dust in that sequence. Yes, you know that half of San Diego is also crumbling to dust, but it’s a little more viscerally upsetting to see it.

And honestly, why couldn’t T’Challa have been a living Avenger in this? Why was his death particularly necessary? The body count of black characters was kind of high across the board when you take into account Heimdall and Sam (and out-of-universe Zoe Saldana as Gamora. Oh and then Nick Fury in the post-credits. Also is Valkyrie implied to have been with the half of the Asgardians that lived, or did she die off-screen? Cause I’m not sure I imagine her *not* fighting back.). I’m not sure if this is a point of contention with viewers for the most part, but there was just something about T’Challa’s unceremonious death alongside half his country where you’re like, “seriously, why is this what they’re showing now?”

Because guess what? It wasn’t an effective ending! We KNOW it’s being turned back, especially given the utterly ridiculous volume of deaths with key characters who we know have movies. You know what would have been a better ending for this? Just...Thanos snapping. That’s it. “You should have aimed for my head. *Snap*.” Cut to black.

There was no reason I can think of to have been this explicit about everyone’s deaths when they’re just temporary anyway. “Hey kids, enjoy your horror-free entertainment!” Especially Peter Parker’s death. That really, really felt like acedia at its finest.

Because part of the thing with acedia, as Gretchen has so eloquently explained, is that it’s a dark kind of writing where nothing really matters, bad shit just happens. And boy if *that* wasn’t the actual thesis statement of the movie.

Steve said that no, you save every life because that’s what you fight for. But that point was heavily undercut multiple times in the film. There seemed to be countless situations where a character had to either kill or consider killing someone they loved for the greater good (or not saving someone they loved, or giving Thanos keys to something really bad). It was utilitarianism vs. the power of emotional connection, and it was constant. Frankly, it was pretty cohesive.

Except magic man got magic gauntlet and did magic thing, so choice was rendered completely useless.

All told, once this movie is put together with Avengers 4, it’s possible there is some message that works to this end. But right now we essentially got half a movie based around an incredibly weak motivation that we know is all going to be back-dialed anyway. But thank god we got to traumatize kids in the name of ~boldness~ in the process.   

Loki gave over the Tesseract but tried to kill Thanos, and got punished for it. Peter pulled the trigger to kill Gamora like she asked and got punished for it. Gamora tried to stab herself and got punished for it. Gamora tried to save Nebula at the cost of an infinity stone and got punished for it. Trying to save Vision didn’t work. Trying to not save Vision didn’t work. 

Nothing mattered. Except apparently Thanos “sacrificing” Gamora. Wow, what commitment to bullshit philosophy and a laughable “solution” to a problem that is at best, temporary in nature.

This was a downer of a film, and not in a way that made me interested to see the resolution. I just want this out of Marvel’s system. It was event comics writing at its worst, and using an event that never could have really worked for this medium with this schedule of releases.

So okay, fine, my thesis statement is: I really didn’t like it. The longer I think about it the more annoyed I am. Had it ended five minutes earlier, I would have had major issues with it, but it would have been more of an “...okay then” kind of thing. Gamora got the shortest end of the stick, from what I can see. But nothing really came together, and the climax with the RANDOM EVIL ARMY was just going through the motions.

Honestly? If I had to sit through this or Dark World again, I’d choose the latter in a heartbeat. That was a mess and often boring in places, but at least the climax was inventive and fun, and there was lip-service to character development. This was just...an event. Can’t wait for it to not matter at all!

[voyageviolet]

There’s more I want to say about To Siri With Love, because I think a lot of people discussing it have overlooked a major issue the book has: It spreads misinformation about autism, which is a serious problem considering how many people are already ignorant on the subject.

There are a lot of examples I could cite, such as: the author, Judith Newman, frequently refers to studies on autism without any kind of citation. There’s no way to know if these studies are outdated or flawed, and the reader is expected to take the author’s word without any critical thought. At one point in the book, Newman refers to an April 2016 article on Spectrum which “explains why up to 84 percent of children with autism have high levels of anxiety, and up to 70 percent have some sort of sensory sensitivity: they are lousy at predicting the future.”  After doing a search for the month of April 2016 on Spectrum, I could find no such article. I did, however, find an article called “Living Between Genders”about the intersection between the trans and autistic communities, which Newman could read if she wanted to stop disrespecting transgender people.*

The most egregious example, though, is Newman’s repeated statement throughout the book that autism makes people solipsistic. By this, she means not the philosophical theory, but the second definition, which Dictionary.com describes as: “extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.” To put it more simply, Newman endorses the common stereotype that autistic people lack empathy. In her own words, from the introduction to To Siri With Love:

...every person with ASD I’ve ever met has some deficit in his “theory of mind.” Theory of mind is the ability to understand, first, that we have wishes and desires and a way of looking at the world—i.e., self-awareness. But then, on top of that, it’s knowing that other people have wishes and desires and a worldview that differs from yours. It is very hard, and sometimes impossible, for a person with autism to infer what someone else means or what he or she will do.

Again, there is no citation to back up this claim.

It’s true that people on the autism spectrum struggle with theory of mind, but Newman’s definition of the term is a complete misunderstanding. Here’s a more accurate definition of theory of mind, from the 2006 study “Who Cares? Revisiting Empathy in Asperger Syndrome”:

Theory of mind can be defined as the ability to understand the feelings, intentions, and motivations of others (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). This definition of ToM is remarkably similar to the concept of cognitive empathy (understanding another person’s perspective or feelings) and for this reason, ‘‘cognitive empathy’’and ‘‘ToM’’ are often used synonymously (e.g., Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004; Royeurs et al., 2001).

In other words, having a deficit in theory of mind means that autistic people may struggle to understand what other people’s feelings are. It does not mean that autistic people don’t understand the fact that other people have feelings. Here’s a quote from the conclusion for the same study:

Our data indicate that individuals with AS appear to have as much care and concern for other people as unaffected individuals do. Although this finding is at variance with previous reports of deficits in empathy in individuals with AS(Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004; Flor-Henry, 1998;Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2002), it is in keeping with anecdotal reports from parents and clinicians that suggest that autistic individuals can be very caring. 

...

The low scores on the PT scale of the IRI suggest that individuals with AS have difficulty understanding the feelings and perspective of others. Consequently, individuals with AS may not react to situations as expected and may therefore seem cold or uncaring. However, our data would suggest that when individuals with AS are given the information that allows them to understand the point of view of others, they have as much concern and compassion as unaffected individuals.

Throughout the book, Newman relies on her false claims of “solipsism” to draw conclusions about her son Gus. From chapter four:

It doesn’t matter how good he gets [as a musician]; I can’t imagine him performing in any way. Or, rather, before he does, he has to have that thing he has yet to develop, that theory of mind, so that he understands he is doing this for others, not just himself. You can’t be a good performer if you haven’t mastered the concept of audience, of playing for the enjoyment of others.

From chapter six, in support of her own claim that Gus is incapable of feeling embarrassment (discussed in more detail in my last post):

If one of the primary manifestations of autism is the inability to understand that other people have thoughts, feelings, emotions, and needs different from ours, then it makes sense that many aren’t self-conscious; they don’t have a sense of who they are in relation to other people.

The most harmful example is Newman’s reasoning for wanting to have her son forcibly sterilized. From Chapter 8:

Gus should not be a parent. Not just because he’s still shaky on the whole concept of where babies come from, but because the solipsism that is so much at the heart of autism makes him unable to understand that someone’s needs and desires could ever be separate from his own, let alone more important.

Newman’s misunderstanding of “theory of mind” leads her to draw false conclusions about the capabilities of her son, as well as those of all autistic people. It is part of her reasoning for wanting to forcibly sterilize her son, even knowing the horrific history of eugenics behind such an action. Also, among the discussion of #BoycottToSiri, there has been some upset from some autistic parents who (quite fairly, in my opinion) feel that To Siri With Love undermines their abilities to care for their children. However, the worst effect is, to my mind, the fact that this misinformation is being spread to unknowing individuals who happen to pick up this book. Considering that To Siri With Love has has celebrity endorsements and has appeared on the New York Times’ list of 100 Notable Books of 2017, it’s fair to assume that its reach will be quite far. Thanks to Judith Newman, this misinformation will be spread far and wide, encouraging the stereotyping of autistic people for some time to come.

*From Newman’s author’s note at the beginning of the book:

I will also defer to the masculine pronoun when I am talking about people in generalities, because I learned that it was correct to do this sometime back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I mention this because a friend just wrote an excellent book on parenting using the pronoun “they” instead of “he or she,” and she uses the term “cisgender” to refer to anyone who is well, cisgender, which is one of the at least fifty-eight gender options offered by Facebook, ranging from Agender to TwoSpirit. She did this at the insistence of her teenage daughter. Language needs to evolve, but not into something ugly and imprecise. I read her book simultaneously loving her parenting philosophy and wanting to punch her in the face.

[rusticide]

"Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth." [Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1943]

Narcissists are obsessed with delusions of fantastic grandeur and superiority. As a result they are very competitive. They are strongly compelled – where others are merely motivated. They are driven, relentless, tireless, and ruthless. They often make it to the top. But even when they do not, they strive and fight and learn and climb and create and think and devise and design and conspire. Faced with a challenge, they are likely to do better than non-narcissists. Yet, we often find that narcissists abandon their efforts in mid-stream, give up, vanish, lose interest, devalue former pursuits, or slump. Why is that? Coping with a challenge, even with a guaranteed eventual triumph is meaningless in the absence of onlookers. The narcissist needs an audience to applaud, affirm, recoil, approve, admire, adore, fear, or even detest him. He craves the attention and depends on the Narcissistic Supply only others can provide. The narcissist derives sustenance only from the outside – his emotional innards are hollow and moribund.

--

But the narcissist is different. He is incapable of holding an external dialog. Even when he seems to be interacting with someone else – the narcissist is actually engaged in a self-referential discourse. To the narcissist, all other people are cardboard cut-outs, two dimensional animated cartoon characters, or symbols. They exist only in his mind. He is startled when they deviate from the script and prove to be complex and autonomous.

Narcissists can be imperturbable, resilient to stress, and sangfroid. Narcissistic rage is not a reaction to stress – it is a reaction to a perceived slight, insult, criticism, or disagreement (in other words, to narcissistic injury). It is intense and disproportional to the "offence". Narcissistic rage has two forms: 1. Explosive – The narcissist flares up, attacks everyone in his immediate vicinity, causes damage to objects or people, and is verbally and psychologically abusive. 2. Pernicious or Passive-Aggressive (P/A) – The narcissist sulks, gives the silent treatment, and is plotting how to punish the transgressor and put her in her proper place. These narcissists are vindictive and often become stalkers. They harass and haunt the objects of their frustration. They sabotage and damage the work and possessions of people whom they regard to be the sources of their mounting wrath.

--

"Specifically, past research suggests that exploitive tendencies and open displays of feelings of entitlement will be less integral to narcissism for females than for males. For females such displays may carry a greater possibility of negative social sanctions because they would violate stereotypical gender-role expectancies for women, who are expected to engage in such positive social behaviour as being tender, compassionate, warm, sympathetic, sensitive, and understanding. In females, Exploitiveness/Entitlement is less well-integrated with the other components of narcissism as measured by the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) – Leadership/Authority, Self-absorption/Self-admiration, and Superiority/Arrogance – than in males – though 'male and female narcissists in general showed striking similarities in the manner in which most of the facets of narcissism were integrated with each other'."- [Gender differences in the structure of narcissism: a multi-sample analysis of the narcissistic personality inventory.

--

ON EMOTIONS

Deep inside, the narcissist knows that something is amiss. He does not empathize with other people's feelings. Actually, he holds them in contempt and ridicule. He cannot understand how people are so sentimental, so "irrational" (he identifies being rational with being cool headed and cold blooded). Often the narcissist believes that other people are "faking it", merely aiming to achieve a goal. He is convinced that their "feelings" are grounded in ulterior, non-emotional, motives. He becomes suspicious, embarrassed, feels compelled to avoid emotion-tinged situations, or, worse, experiences surges of almost uncontrollable aggression in the presence of genuinely expressed sentiments. They remind him how imperfect and poorly equipped he is. The weaker variety of narcissist tries to emulate and simulate "emotions", or, at least their expression, the external facet (affect). Such narcissists mimic and replicate the intricate pantomime that they learn to associate with the existence of feelings. But there are no real emotions there, no emotional correlates.

The narcissist's is an empty affect, devoid of emotion. This being so, the narcissist quickly tires of it, becomes impassive and begins to display inappropriate affect (e.g., he remains indifferent when grief is the normal reaction). The narcissist subjects his feigned emotions to his cognition. He "decides" that it is appropriate to feel this or that way. His "emotions" are invariably the result of analysis, goal setting and planning.

Many narcissists can intelligently discuss emotions never experienced by them: empathy, love, or compassion. This is because they make it a point to read a lot and to communicate with people who claim to be experiencing them. Thus, they gradually construct working hypotheses as to what people feel. As far as the narcissist is concerned, it is pointless to try to really understand emotions, but at least these models he forms allow him to better predict people's behaviours and adjust to them. Narcissists are not envious of others for having emotions. They disdain feelings and sentimental people because they deem them weak and vulnerable and they deride human frailties and vulnerabilities. Such derision makes the narcissist feel superior and is probably the ossified remains of a defence mechanism gone awry.

[ofubox]

Back in May, at Google’s I/O Developer Conference, the company demonstrated its new Duplex system, an AI-powered virtual assistant that makes phone calls to organize your schedule for you. The audience watched a recording of Duplex making bookings at a restaurant and hair salon. They laughed in surprise when it ‘mmm-hmmm’d its way through the conversation, apparently convincing the person on the other end of the phone that they were, in fact, talking to a fellow human being. This unexpectedly convincing demonstration set social media buzzing – and in the process, it raised a question. Does Duplex’s capabilities for reading and sending conversational signals show that a machine is capable of empathy? This is one of the most critical questions in the developing debate around AI, its role in society, and the extent to which it will disrupt creative industries such marketing. Can a machine have empathy? The three responses I wanted to get a sense of the different opinions out there – and so I decided to ask the question in my LinkedIn feed: Can a machine have empathy? It was the start of a fascinating discussion stream with some intriguing responses. Broadly speaking, these answers fell into three categories. I think these are a pretty good representation of the views that professionals have of AI’s capabilities – and their views about how those capabilities could be used. The first type of response is that yes it can, or yes it will, because AI is ultimately capable of anything the human brain is capable of. As one of the commenters on my question put it, Empathy can be programmed like us. We are machines… the brain is a very good computer but still any ordinary analogically programmed Quantum computer.” The second response is that no, it can’t, because empathy is a uniquely human characteristic and not something a machine is capable of experiencing: Empathy entails not only a sense of self, but also experiencing the emotions of someone else (more or less)—to feel another’s pain… We do not understand consciousness in humans, let alone possess the ability to create it—with verification—artificially.” The third type of response is particularly intriguing. It’s a question of its own: if a machine appears to have empathy, does it really matter if that empathy is real or not? It amounts to functionally the same thing, whether that machine is feeling the same emotions as us or merely deducing those emotions from the signals we send, and coming up with the most appropriate response: “let's imagine we can't tell the difference if it is genuine or not, because a robot has learned the mimic and structure of empathic behaviour, are we still able to look at the robot as a machine?” I’m writing this post to share my own view, but also to answer the question raised in the third type of response that I received. Does the distinction between real and ‘artificial empathy’ matter? I believe that it does. Especially in marketing.Why machines are incapable of true empathy First though, let’s go back to the original question: can a machine have empathy? I’ll put my cards on the table here. I don’t think this is a matter of opinion – and I don’t think it’s one of those questions where the answer may change in the future. A machine cannot have empathy by definition. It comes down to what empathy is – and what a machine is. The full definition of empathy in the Oxford English Dictionary is this: “the power of mentally identifying oneself with (and so fully comprehending) a person or object of contemplation.” Machines cannot mentally identify themselves with human beings because what goes on in the mind of a human being involves things that a machine can never experience for itself, no matter how advanced and deep-learning-driven its own processes might be. For the same reason, a machine will never fully comprehend a human being. As we discuss the role of AI in society in general, and in marketing in particular, it’s important to be clear about why this is. Feeling machines that think The neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio describes it like this: we are not thinking machines that feel; rather, we are feeling machines that think. Human consciousness involves a lot, lot more than rational cognition. In fact, that ability for rational thought is a byproduct of most of the other aspects of our consciousness – not our brain’s driving force. Our conscious life is driven by the way that we experience the world through our senses: a combination of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell that no machine will ever experience in the same way. It’s also driven by powerful biological impulses and needs. No machine will ever feel what it means to be hungry or thirsty; no machine is moved and motivated by the drive to have sex and all the attendant emotions that spin around it; no machine fears homelessness or feels the intense vulnerability that comes from fear for your physical safety. Finally, and no less significantly, our consciousness is shaped by the collective intelligence and cultural memory that comes from being part of the human race. We have collectively channelled our shared emotions and sensory experiences into stories, conversations, shared jokes, sarcasm, symbolism and incredibly subtle psychological signals for many thousands of years. That same collective intelligence develops ethics and values that we can all instinctively agree with; it makes sense of money and systems of fair trade; it agrees on concepts that aren’t logically concrete but are perfectly solid in our minds. Nothing else communicates like human beings – and human beings communicate with nothing else the way they do with one another. This is significant, because the only way to acquire a share in our collective intelligence is to be interacted with as a human being yourself. Unless we engage with machines in the same, full way that we do with other human beings, this collective experience and intelligence is simply not available to them. They are not part of the empathy club. Artificial Intelligence doesn’t replicate human intelligence When people talk about the human brain operating like a computer or about AI learning in the same way that a human being does, they are guessing. In fact, they are part of a long tradition of guessing at how the brain works – and what really makes our consciousness tick. Whenever we invent a new technology, there’s a powerful temptation to start using that technology as an analogy for how the brain functions. When we invented electricity, we started talking about electric currents in the brain; when we invented the telegram, we decided it worked by sending signals. Every time you talk about the cogs whirring away trying to figure something out, you’re harking back to the era when we invented clockwork and became convinced that something similar was going on inside our heads. The conviction many people now have that the human brain works like a computer (and is therefore primarily a logic machine) is just our latest guess. We really don’t know how the brain works and how that working produces our consciousness. It’s therefore highly unlikely that we replicated the human brain when we invented computers – or developed AI. These are the reasons why I agree passionately with the second of the responses to my question in the LinkedIn feed. When we claim that a machine can feel empathy, we’re guilty of reducing the immense, mysterious workings of the human brain and human consciousness down to something that can be understood, replicated and mimicked through a machine driven by logic. It’s not so much that we’re overestimating the capabilities of AI – it’s that we’re severely underestimating how complex our own capabilities are. What’s the difference between Artificial Empathy and the real thing? That brings me to the second question – does it matter that Artificial Empathy isn’t true empathy if it still interacts with us in the same way? I believe it matters a lot. If we proceed with AI on the basis that it doesn’t, the implications will be huge. Artificial Empathy works by observing, learning, responding to and replicating the signals that people send. As deep-learning AIs evolve, and as they are able to work on larger and larger data sets, they’ll get better and better at doing this – of producing the appearance of empathy. However, true empathy involves a lot more than merely observing and responding to emotional signals, no matter how many of those signals you have to work with. Why? Because the signals that people send are a tiny fraction of the internal narrative that they experience. You and I are both far more than the sum of what other people think we are by watching what we do and say. We contain capabilities, emotions, memories and experiences that influence our behaviour without ever coming to the surface. They have to be intuited without ever actually being observed. Beyond rationality: what human empathy is capable of Human intelligence is so powerful because it is not limited to rational thinking. The other elements of our consciousness enable us to deal with the inherent unpredictability and ambiguity of the world around us. They enable us to make decisions on the basis of shared values and motivations that resonate collectively and enable us to know what is right without having to figure out what is right. Empathetic human intelligence is able to feel what it feels to be sad, and feel what it feels to be happy – and it allows those feelings to sway its judgments and its behaviour towards others. A machine couldn’t do that, even if it wanted to. Things become complicated when machines start taking decisions that have profound consequences, without the emotional context and shared values that all humans use when making such decisions. This was one of the key themes in the piece that Henry Kissinger recently wrote on the implications of AI, for The Atlantic. Take the self-driving car that must decide between killing a parent or a child. Will such a machine ever be able to explain to human beings why it makes the choice that it does? And if it’s not required to explain actions with human consequences in human terms, what becomes of our system of ethics and justice? It will need to be rewritten, simplified and stripped of emotion in order to accommodate such machines. As a result, it will feel less representative of us as human beings. Beware a Narrow AI definition of marketing A similar process would occur if we substituted artificial empathy for human empathy when it comes to marketing. AI can impersonate human interactions, but with a far narrower understanding of what’s going on than a human being would have. We have to bear this in mind when we choose the role that AI should play in engaging with audiences or directing marketing strategies. Google’s Duplex may have the appearance of empathy, but that empathy is strictly limited to what’s relevant to the task at hand: completing a restaurant booking, for example. It’s not trained to detect any emotion outside of this – or readjust its behaviour on that basis. If the person on the other end of the phone sounded disorganised and stressed could Duplex respond? Could it make them feel better? Could it thereby charm them into somehow finding a slot for them at a busy time? And from the restaurant’s point of view, will the person making the booking be as likely to actually turn up – or will they feel less obligation to do so, since they never actually spoke to the restaurant themselves? There’s a lot more to human conversation than exchanging information efficiently – and that’s where the implications of real and artificial empathy start to become particularly significant. It’s not just one-to-one conversations that are affected by the difference between real and artificial empathy. It’s also the conversations that you hold with the market and your audience in general. Marketing is the process of creating a proposition that has value for people, and which they will exchange value for. Up to now, marketers and their audiences have been able to feel that value in broad and varied terms that reflects what it means to be alive. Brands and their products and solutions provide functions and services but also reassurance, confidence and certainty; a sense of support and potentially even belonging. And don’t think I’m just talking about consumer brands here. B2B marketing addresses some of the most powerful motivations and emotions that a human being can feel: around security, hopes for the future, the ability to provide for others, personal value and worth. If we start to hand fundamental strategic decisions about marketing to AI, then the definition of value will narrow with startling speed. It will be based around what can easily be observed, measured and communicated – the kinds of things that machines can feel artificial empathy for. It will offer efficient optimisation of particular aspects of a marketing proposition – but the risk is that it ignores the other elements that engage human consciousness in different ways. Smart B2B marketers know the dangers of talking about price when their buyers really want reassurance on value. They know the importance of instilling confidence over and above simply describing product features. Perhaps most importantly, they know that what a buyer describes as being the basis for their decision is often not the only basis for their decision. It’s not just what’s observable that matters. Does AI make better judgments – or just more efficient ones? Much of the fear that people express about AI involves being replaced by a superior form of intelligence that can think in ways that we can’t conceive of and outcompete us in almost every role we can imagine. I believe that the real danger is subtly different: that we downgrade our own intelligence and unique capacity for empathy because a far narrower artificial version is capable of doing some things in a more efficient way. Unless they are fully aware of these risks, organisations that plan on unlocking vast new forms of competitive advantage through AI could end up narrowing the scope of what they are capable of instead. I work for LinkedIn, which is itself owned by Microsoft: two businesses that are developing exciting applications of AI but which also spend a lot of time thinking about how that technology can be ethically used, and what impact it has on society.  Microsoft thought leaders talk about building self-limiting considerations into AI systems, for example, describing AIs that know “when they need to get out of the way.” That’s hugely important at all levels of marketing and business. There are exciting times ahead for applying AI in marketing, including applications that can detect emotional signals at scale and provide us with new depths of audience understanding. As marketers, AI tools can make us more responsive to our audiences on an emotional level – but only if we see them as an input for human empathy rather than a substitute for it. The secret to making best use of artificial empathy will be recognising its limitations compared to the real thing. Effective leadership in an age of AI involves recognising that a world of sensory, emotive, complex and conscious beings cannot be navigated by logic and observation alone.

http://ofubox.blogspot.com/2019/09/can-machine-have-empathy.html