#because the military values perceived strength etc

[compacflt]

have you ever considered writing more about icemav's respective childhoods? i'm always thinking about val kilmer saying in his memoir and documentary that he had obsessive dreams about ice's father who made him feel he had to prove himself as The Absolute Ideal Man and that the interactions he dreamt about between ice and his dad surely "imbued ice with greater fury" and his obsession with perfection made him arrogant.

yeah i go into ice’s childhood a little in my slider one shot since they’re right out of high school when they meet. But val and I took it in two completely different directions. Val’s ice has daddy issues and a poor relationship with his father (extrapolating from excerpt above); my ice has lack-of-daddy-issues and NO relationship with his father. No dad = no man to model himself on = overcompensating. When I said, in mavericks POV (debriefing), that ice “clearly doesn’t know how to talk to other men,” I meant that with my whole chest.

i appreciate Val’s insight, and I’m not sure when his memoir was published, but i think TG86 Ice is complicated DEEPLY by his plot-necessary accession to COMPACFLT in TGM22. At least for me, his end rank of O-10 casts him in a totally different light. It implies that what he wants is not necessarily to be “The Ideal Man,” he wants to be The Ideal OFFICER. And there’s a lot of data to back up that claim in Top Gun 86, too: he’s so gentle with Maverick, even when he’s trying to intimidate him (take the intonation of “I heard that about you. You like to work alone,” for example—is that how you’d say that if you were trying to piss someone off?); and there’s also the fact that two of the five times Ice talks directly to Maverick are explicitly about his safety practices and how they affect the safety of the TEAM (“Who was covering Cougar while you were showboating with this MiG?” / “I don’t like you because you’re dangerous.”). I said in a post last week that I don’t think Ice is a team player—but a good OFFICER doesn’t have to be a team player to make sure that the rules are followed and everyone stays safe. I think if Ice were trying to be The Ideal Man, he’d look a lot more like super-cool bad-ass rule-breaker MAVERICK (the buff daredevil male protagonist of a pro-military propaganda movie), who is canonically overcompensating for HIS relationship with his father/his incredibly unhealthy toxic masculinity.

So, yeah. that’s just how i see it. Again, idk when Val’s memoir was published—the writers of TG and TGM treat Ice as a character very differently, and both characterizations necessarily reflect on the other. I did not get the sense that TGM Ice was “imbued with fury,” for instance. So I think Ice trying to be/feeling pressured to be the best OFFICER makes more sense in light of TGM than Ice trying to be/feeling pressured to be the best MAN.

I feel very shrug about mav’s childhood. Kinda seems like he got over that in TG86. He got to save his team the way his dad did, AND lived to tell the tale. Yay. His development’s pretty much done for the franchise.

[newdougsblog]

The Tragic Hero Full of Fear

Hello everyone! Before I get into this, I’d like to thank @jasontoddiefor​ for both the name and being the main enabler of this fun piece of writing. I also want to thank all my wonderful friends over on Discord for letting me bounce ideas off of them and helping me. You are all amazing!!

Ok, so let’s get into it!

The first six Star Wars movies (the Original and Prequel trilogies) are commonly referred to as “the Tragedy of Darth Vader.”  But what makes these movies a tragedy? How is Anakin Skywalker himself, the main character of said tragedy, a tragic hero? In this meta/essay, I will discuss how Anakin himself is definitionally a tragic hero and outline his story as it relates to the structure of a classic Greek tragedy.  

This essay will focus solely on Anakin’s character as he is canonically portrayed.

The Hero

Let’s go through the main traits of a tragic hero (as per early literature) and discuss them in the context of Anakin Skywalker.

Possesses immense courage and strength and is usually favored by the gods

Anakin’s courage is evident throughout his entire life, such as when he participates in the pod race in TPM or on the front lines during the Clone Wars. 

While we cannot definitively ascribe Anakin’s abilities to any deity, we can associate them with the Force. The Force is able to somewhat influence the happenings of the universe in certain ways and takes the place of any sort of deity.

Whether Anakin is the “Chosen One” or not, his connection to the Force is stronger than that of any other Force-sensitive being, so he is consequently closer to it than most, if not all, other Force-sensitive beings. 

Extreme loyalty to family and country 

Anakin is consistent in his demonstrations of loyalty to those he has strong feelings for (whether those feelings be romantic or platonic).

His devotion to Padmé surpasses his loyalty to the Jedi, and he is always willing to go to great lengths to ensure their safety and well-being.

Anakin also exhibits a strong sense of devotion to his mother, Shmi. His devotion to her, and by extension her wellbeing, surpasses his duties as Jedi. 

In ROTS, Anakin says, “I will not betray the Republic… my loyalties lie with the Chancellor and with the Senate… and with you” (you, in this case, referring to Padmé). In this quotation, Anakin’s loyalties are made quite clear. At this point, he is not faithful to the Jedi, but to his government, its leaders, and, of course, his wife.

Representative of society’s current values

During the Clone Wars, Anakin is known by the moniker, “the Hero with No Fear,” and is one of the Republic’s “poster boys.” He is charismatic, kind, seemingly fearless (obviously) and a strong fighter, thus representing the values that were important to the Republic at the time. The last characteristic is especially important because of the assurance it instills in times of war. As a representation of the Republic, Anakin’s prowess on the battlefield creates hope for its citizens that victory is possible. 

Anakin also empathizes with the opinion that the seemingly outdated Jedi Code holds them back. In the Citadel Arc, Tarkin remarks that “the Jedi Code prevents [the Jedi] from going far enough to achieve victory.” Anakin actually agrees with this statement, replying that “[he’s] also found that [the Jedi] sometimes fall short of victory because of [their] methods” (Season 3, Episode 19). He shows a sense of allegiance not to the ancient ways of the Jedi, but to the newer, more modern ideals regarding military action. 

Anakin claims to have brought “peace, justice, freedom, and security” to his “new Empire.” While the Empire's interpretations of the aforementioned values are skewed, Anakin continues to represent them as Darth Vader. 

Anakin’s statement to Obi-Wan also mirrors Palpatine’s declaration to the Senate: “In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society which I assure you will last for ten thousand years.” The people applaud this statement, demonstrating a general sense of exhaustion in regards to the war and a yearning for what this new Empire is promising them.

Lead astray/challenged by strong feelings

Though there are many, many examples of Anakin’s emotions getting the better of him, we’re simply going to list two:

Anakin’s fury and anguish after the death of his mom leads to his slaughter of the Tuskens

Anakin’s overwhelming fear of losing Padmé is ultimately what leads to his Fall.

Every tragic hero possesses what is called a hamartia, or a fatal flaw. This trait largely contributes to the hero’s catastrophic downfall. Anakin’s hamartia is his need for control, which partially manifests through his fear of loss. 

Let’s explore this idea in more detail. 

Though Anakin grows up as a slave, the movies neglect to explicitly cover the trauma left from his time in slavery. However, it is worth noting that slaves did not have the ability to make many choices for themselves; they didn’t even own their bodies. After being freed, Anakin is whisked away to become a Jedi. He does not possess much control over his life as Jedi, for he is simply told what path he is going to take. While Anakin does make this decision on his own, becoming a Jedi is a disciplined and somewhat-strict way of life and not one that allows for an abundance of reckless autonomy as he is wont to engage in. 

(Side note: I’m not here to argue about Qui-Gon’s decision-making abilities, nor do I wish to engage in discourse regarding the Jedi’s way of life. I am simply presenting and objectively stating these facts in relation to Anakin because they are pertinent to my point.) 

During AOTC, Anakin is unable to save his mother from death. As Shmi dies in his arms, Anakin is absolutely helpless. The situation is completely out of his control, and he is forced to contend with the reality that despite all of his power, he cannot control everything that happens. 

He also feels that he has a larger potential for power and is being held back by Obi-Wan: “although I'm a Padawan learner, in some ways... a lot of ways... I'm ahead of him. I'm ready for the trials. I know I am! He knows it too. He believes I'm too unpredictable… I know I started my training late... but he won't let me move on.” Anakin believes Obi-Wan, his teacher and mentor, is holding him back. He expresses a self-held conviction of his status and skills and does not trust the word of his superior. 

In ROTS, Anakin starts dreaming of Padmé’s death. Considering what occurred the last time he dreamt of a loved one’s demise, Anakin is justifiably (or at least justifiably from his point of view) worried. He consequently wants to stop these dreams from coming true in any way possible. His fear of death, especially that of his loved ones, represents his need for control over everything, even things that are uncontrollable. This overwhelming desire leads to Anakin’s drastic actions.

As Darth Vader, he no longer possesses such fears, for everyone that he loved is either dead or has betrayed him. He is the epitome of order and control, eliminating any who disturb this perceived equilibrium. 

However, this changes because of one person: Luke Skywalker. 

Luke reintroduces something that was (arguably) long-absent in Vader’s life, which is interpersonal attachment. Vader yearns for his son to join him by his side. When Luke refuses, Vader continues to attempt to seek him out. In ROTJ, Vader is forced to choose between the Emperor, a man he has long trusted and followed, and Luke, the son he never knew he had. Out of a desire to protect and keep what little family he has left (and likely a sense of “I couldn’t save Padmé but at least I can save her legacy by keeping her child(ren) alive and safe”), Vader defeats the Emperor and saves his son. Though his actions are definitionally heroic, Anakin never truly overcomes his hamartia. 

The Structure of a Tragedy

Classic Greek tragedies follow a specific story structure, which, according to the German playwright Gustav Freytag, is as follows:

We’re going to focus on the three aspects that best represent Anakin’s story as a tragedy: The peripeteia, the anagnorisis, and the catastrophe/denouement. These occur during and/or after the climax. 

The peripeteia is the climax/the turning point in the plot. Said change usually involves the protagonist's good luck and prosperity taking a turn for the worse. 

Within the tragedy we are discussing, the peripeteia occurs when Anakin chooses Sidious over Mace Windu and solidifies his allegiance to the Dark side, becoming the very thing he swore to destroy. It is at this point that things really start to go downhill. He kills children, chokes his wife, fights his best friend, gets his remaining limbs cut off, etc. 

The anagnorisis is the point in the tragedy when the protagonist recognizes their error, seeing the true nature of that which they were previously ignorant of, usually regarding their circumstances or a specific relationship (such as Oedipus’ realization that his wife was actually his mother). In most tragedies, the anagnorisis is in close proximity to the peripeteia. In Anakin’s story, the anagnorisis occurs during ROTJ. After being wounded in his fight against Luke, Vader watches as his son is brutally electrocuted by Sidious. It is at this moment that Darth Vader realizes that Luke was right—there is good in him, and he still has the chance to redeem himself. 

The catastrophe/denouement (since this is a tragedy, we’re going to go with “catastrophe”) is the end of the tragedy. Events and conflicts are resolved and brought to a close, and a new sort of “normality” is established. The catastrophe often provides a sense of catharsis (release of tension) for the viewer. The protagonist is worse off than they were at the beginning of the tragedy. 

The catastrophe within “The Tragedy of Darth Vader” transpires soon after the anagnorisis at the end of ROTJ. Though the realization of his capacity for good is the anagnorisis, the follow-through (via his actions), as well as what consequently occurs, is the catastrophe. As previously discussed, Vader saves Luke by killing the Emperor but does so at the cost of his own life. This serves as the resolution of the tragedy, for the hero’s fate has been confirmed—Darth Vader fulfills his destined role as the Chosen One and, in doing so, brings about his own redemption and dies as Anakin Skywalker.

In conclusion, the categorization of Star Wars as a tragedy is a choice that heavily influences Anakin, the protagonist and hero, of the story. He is without a doubt a tragic hero whose fatal flaw leads to his downfall. In accordance with Aristotle’s theory of tragedy, Anakin’s tragedy is constructed not by personal agency, but by the narrative itself.

Works Cited

“Darth Vader.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Mar. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader.

“Dramatic Structure.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Feb. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure.

“Hero.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 19 Oct. 2016, www.britannica.com/art/hero-literary-and-cultural-figure.

Lucas, George, director. Star Wars: Episode III— Revenge of the Sith. Lucasfilm Ltd., 2005.

Lucas, George, director. Star Wars: Episode II— Attack of the Clones. Lucasfilm Ltd. , 2002.

Michnovetz, Matt. “Star Wars: The Clone Wars, ‘Counterattack.’” Season 3, episode 19, 4 Mar. 2011.

“Sophocles: the Purest Artist.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/art/tragedy-literature/Sophocles-the-purest-artist.

“Theory of Tragedy.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/art/tragedy-literature/Theory-of-tragedy.

“Tragic Hero.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/tragic-hero. 

[cosmicjoke]

Levi and Zeke:  Their similarities and the Fundamental differences between Them:

I’ve recently been having a discussion with @ourmondobongo, and it’s spurred me to want to kind of analyze further the fundamental and philosophical differences between Levi and Zeke.  I know I’ve gone into this thoroughly already, but my discussion with ourmondobongo has really made me want to delve in even deeper.  First though, let me thank them for, as always, inspiring such insightful discussion among the fan base!

Some really interesting ideas were posted here, about Zeke’s experiences growing up in Liberio informing his world view and his views on the worth, or rather, lack thereof, in human life.   ourmondobongo suggested that, because of Zeke’s experiences with his parents, utilizing him as a tool for the Resistance, and his subsequent utilization by the Marlyean army as a tool of war, it ended up warping his perception, and influencing him to believe that all human life is inherently worthless unless it can be molded into a tool or a weapon to further some goal.  I agree with this interpretation of Zeke’s mindset and what shaped it.  This is undoubtedly how Zeke views the world, and humanity as a whole, and he’s deemed, because of his own suffering, brought about by his experiences affirming this world view, that life is not worth living.  Because he sees life as without value unless one can make themselves useful in some way, in his view, the suffering inherent in that makes life fundamentally pointless and meaningless and not worth the effort.

Now, where I diverge slightly from ourmondobongo’s view on this is in relation to Zeke’s influence upon Levi in the final arc, or rather, what they say about Zeke’s philosophy overriding or undercutting Levi’s own.  They said that Levi’s belief in an intrinsic value in human life is bombarded and undermined during the final arc of SnK, Zeke’s own belief in the worthlessness of human life being affirmed to him again and again by the chaos and destruction around them, the rightness of his philosophy and belief that this sort of destruction can only stop with the eradication of the Eldian people being confirmed.  But see, the thing is, I don’t think Zeke is at all showing Levi something new, or something which he hasn’t already known all his life.

Zeke claims that his experiences in life make him uniquely suited to understanding the conflict between Eldian’s and Marleyeans, and that his experiences make him uniquely capable of knowing how to solve that conflict.  But Zeke is nothing if not a unfailingly self-centered egotist, someone driven purely by selfish, egotistical viewpoints, unable and unwilling to perceive anything outside of his limited world view.  His life ISN’T unique, his experiences AREN’T unique.  They’re, first of all, shared by every single Eldian on both Marley and in other countries around the world.  Further, and more importantly to the point I’m about to make, they’re shared by Levi.  

Zeke grew up being treated and regarded as a second-class citizen, relegated to a limited area, an internment zone, which he wasn’t allowed to leave unless given direct permission by the powers that be, and regarded as something less than human by the people of Marley.  Well, these are all things Levi himself experienced growing up too, and, I would argue, to an even more extreme degree than Zeke.

Levi grew up in the Underground, a sprawling, subterranean city filled with the so called “dregs of society”.  A place where the poor, the persecuted, the sick, the dying, the deviant and the criminal were either forced to flee to, or more unfortunate still, were born into.  All this underneath the Capital of Paradis, Sina, the richest, most exclusive district inside the Walls.  A place where the elite of society lived and worked and raised their families in wealth and luxury.  The irony of the poorest, most poverty stricken area inside the Walls being directly beneath the richest, most affluent area inside the Walls can’t be overstated.  

Perhaps most relevant to note in this comparison between Zeke’s experience growing up in an internment zone and Levi’s growing up in the Underground, is that the people of the Underground were not only considered second-class citizens, but relegated to something even below that, considered not citizens at all.  They were literally denied citizenship within all areas above ground, within the Walls, and if they somehow managed to make it to the surface, and were found out, they would be promptly deported back to the Underground, where they would continue to be denied any and all rights given to the people up above.  And, it can be easily argued, that the people of the Underground were treated in many ways significantly worse than the Eldian’s inside the interment zone in Liberio.  The people of Liberio seemed relatively well provided for, able to find work, able to earn a living, able to have homes for their families and put food on the table, essentially allowed a sustainable and comfortable life, if one burdened by outside prejudice.  They weren’t made to live in squalor.  Largely, no doubt, because they were seen as an unwanted, but useful resource for the Marleyean government.  The people of the Underground were provided no such provisions.  They were viewed as simple refuse, society’s unwanted and unneeded surplus.  Poverty and depravation ran rampant in the Underground, a lack of resources and support from above resulting in high crime rates and desperation, to things like murder, prostitution, violence and other sorts of criminality.  Further, leading to things like rampant orphaning of children, likely due to starvation and disease claiming the lives of parents, etc...  It was a place literally cut off from the sun, a world of perpetual darkness, sickness, poverty and dire straits.  They received no aid or support from above, were not provided any of the benefits or privileges of the people on the surface, were not offered any sort of path to success, or betterment of their lives.  They were just plainly rejected and left to the whims of fate.  This alone makes it a more difficult and desperate place than the interment zones of Liberio, for even there the Eldian’s were given opportunities to improve their lives through the Warrior Unit programs.  

You might try to point out that Zeke’s experience differs from Levi’s in how he was taught that he, and on his assumption, every other Eldian, would only ever be seen and treated as a tool to be used for some greater gain, and that Levi, at least, had the love of his mother, and Kenny to show him the ropes of how to survive in a place as ruthless as the Underground, and so Levi couldn’t possibly understand what it means, the way Zeke does, to be seen as a tool, or to be deemed worthless outside of ones utility.  But I would counter this simply, by saying that Levi grew up, spent the first, several years of his life, in a brothel, where the very mother who loved him also worked as a whore.  Through this experience alone, it can be easily assumed that Levi was exposed to repeated instances of his mother being EXACTLY used as a tool, as an object who’s sole purpose was to give men pleasure.  From his birth, then, Levi was exposed and taught the brutal lesson that the sole most important person in his life, his mother, the one person we can assume was the only positive influence and relationship he had, for the first, several years of his life, was seen and treated by everyone else as nothing more than a tool for their basest and most perverse satisfaction.  I can scarcely imagine a more horrific or cruel example of a young child being taught the same lesson Zeke seems to think is unique to him alone, that people’s lives are worthless outside of what use they can provide for someone or something else.  Beyond that, Levi was again forced to face a situation in which he and his two, closest friends in Furlan and Isabel were used as tools by other people, recruited by Lobov to kill Erwin and retrieve from him an incriminating document, promised, if they succeeded, citizenship above and a handsome payday, only to find out later the entire scenario had been set up by Erwin himself to press Levi and his friends into military service, to be used as tools in the fight against the Titans.  Both of these are prime examples of Levi being faced with the lesson that he and those he cared about were seen by people above ground as nothing more than tools, to be used at their disposal.  So this was a concept Levi was already well acquainted with by the time Zeke showed up, a merciless lesson in the harshness, violence, brutality and suffering of life.  Zeke didn’t experience anything Levi didn’t in turn, and in many ways, with greater extremity.  

Anyone trying to claim, also, that Zeke had no positive influences in his life like Levi did would be wrong.  Zeke had Mr. Ksavar, for one, and his grandparents, for another.  Mr. Ksavar asked nothing of Zeke, merely showed care and concern for him, and a desire to spend time with him, playing catch.  It was Zeke who offered to inherit the Beast Titan from Mr. Ksavar, not something forced on him.  And while Zeke’s grandparents may have tried to enforce Marleyean history on him in regards to the Eldian’s, they did so out of love for him, in a misguided attempt to PROTECT him, because they cared, not because they were trying to use him in any way.  

My point in talking about all of this is to draw a parallel between Zeke’s life, and Levi’s, and then to demonstrate how, despite deeply similar life experiences, the two of them diverge in vital and fundamental ways which, more than anything, can only be attributed to their strengths of character and natural inclinations as people.

Essentially, the gist of my argument is this.  Zeke is a bad person.  Levi is a good person.  And there can be no excuses, or influencing factors found in either of their lives to credit for the way either of them turned out, other than themselves, other than their own natures.

Because Zeke let his life experiences twist him into a heartless, emotionless, unfeeling sociopath who murders other people without remorse, and regards other human lives as meaningless, worthless trash, expendable and disposable as a means to his own ends.  He let his experiences in life serve as an EXCUSE for his natural cruelty.  He chose to view the lives of others only through the prism of his own experiences, and cast a judgment upon the worth of those other lives.  The true reveal of Zeke’s megalomaniacal egotism is in how he finds himself unable to separate the lives of others from his own.  In how he’s unable to view the lives of others as anything other than an extension of his own existence.  Because he deems his own life worthless, then so too must be the lives of everyone else.

Levi, then, is perfectly his opposite.  It isn’t because of Levi’s life experiences that he’s turned out the way he is.  It is IN SPITE of his life experiences that he has.  Everything Levi’s ever experienced in his life, according to Zeke’s philosophy, should have turned him into a monster.  He should have come out of the Underground a sociopathic, unfeeling, brutally uncaring and violent man, ready to take from and use others for nothing more than his own, personal gain, because that was the lesson his life had taught him.  Because that was what he’d been shown over and over again.  That life is cruel, and ruthless, and uncompromising in its unfairness, and that to live is to suffer.  And yet, Levi came out of the Underground with a greater capacity for compassion, feeling, love and kindness than any other character in SnK.  He continually and routinely, throughout the series, demonstrates an incredible empathy, consideration, sympathy, generosity and understanding for other people.  He is immensely accepting and nonjudgmental, and always, always goes out of his way to express gratitude towards others for their own sacrifices and efforts.  He does his absolute best to protect the lives of others, constantly putting his own at risk to help others live, constantly putting his own at risk to save whoever he can.  Constantly and consistently, Levi places the lives of others above his own in terms of worth.

And here’s the thing that makes Levi most remarkable of all.  The thing which demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt the immense strength of his character.  Levi very well knows that life is cruel, that life is brutal, that life is unfair, and that often people die for no damned good reason at all, that they suffer for no reason at all.  He very well knows that people are breathtakingly cruel and terrible to one another, that people treat one another in unspeakably horrific and unforgivable ways.  He very well knows that the dream of a lasting and peaceful world, a lasting peace between humans, is nothing more than a pipe dream, an unrealistic, unattainable ideal.  A fancy only a child should genuinely be able to believe in.  And yet, once again, despite KNOWING this, despite every lesson and experience in his life impressing this awful reality upon him again and again and again, Levi still does everything within his limited power to ease the suffering of others, to improve their lives, to protect them and show them kindness, to help in any way he can, whichever way he’s able.  Despite knowing the futility of life, the pointlessness of suffering, the injustice of other people’s cruelty, despite knowing these things INTIMATELY, Levi still has in him an open, generous, kind and caring heart.  Levi still has in him a deep, unending well of compassion and an unwavering desire to protect and better the lives of all the people around him.  It isn’t even Levi’s own dream that he fights for, it is the dreams of OTHERS that he fights for.  He can’t ever fully embrace this notion of a peaceful existence, free of violence and deprivation and cruelty, because he knows too well the way of the world.  He’s been too mired in the indifferent reality of nature and the human condition to ever, really believe it.  But in spite of that, IN SPITE OF IT, he fights to protect that dream and belief that others carry, that others strive towards, that others commit themselves to.  He gives everything he has, every piece of himself, to protect a dream that he himself can’t even fully believe in, and for no reason more than that it is something which gives others hope, something which gives other’s a sense of purpose, something which one day, possibly, however slim the chance, might come to pass.  

It is all in spite of Levi’s experiences in life, all in spite of his weary and cynical understanding of the world and the people in it, that Levi commits himself to kindness, compassion and the chance to help others, in whatever ways he can, even as he knows deep down the ultimate futility in it, even as he knows his own, relative powerlessness in the face of nature’s unyielding and uncaring apathy. 

And that really is the fundamental difference between Levi and Zeke.  Two men who have experienced such similar lives, and who have learned early on their lives the cruelties of existing in this world, but one who reacts to those cruelties with defiance and courageous opposition, standing in the face of overwhelming odds, while the other yields to it and lets it excuse his cruelty in turn, bowing to its power and letting it consume him. 

[tearlessrain]

Giant Masterlist of Cathar Facts (that I completely made up but nonetheless rigidly adhere to)

I am an unstoppable force and disney should have killed me when they had the chance (that chance was splash mountain when I was seven and as you can see I survived).

Under a break because it is way too long and covers really quite a lot, much of which I will probably never even need. But researching and writing this kind of thing is what I consider a fun afternoon so here we are.

General basic stuff

Cathar are basically felids evolved to fill a similar evolutionary niche to humans in the absence of any viable apelike species on their native planet, in the same way hyenas evolved to fill a niche normally occupied by canids. 

They are pursuit predators but not terribly efficient ones outside their home planet. In terms of both speed and strength they can outperform humans on average in the short term, but have noticeably less stamina especially when it comes to running or walking long distances. They greatly outmatch any quadrupedal felids for stamina, however. (Mandalorians are an invasive species)

They run hotter than humans, around 100-102F.

Though height varies quite a bit, cathar are taller on average than humans and build muscle easily, making them extremely formiddable opponents in hand-to-hand combat.

The average face/skull shape of cathar is largely based on assumptions that they evolved under weirdly similar conditions to humans evolving from early hominids, aka shortening of the face, larger cranium, smaller mouth, etc.

While they are obligate carnivores and do have elongated canines, their teeth are more even in size than wild felids, and while they do still have barbed tongues, the barbs are relatively small/soft and more similar to a housecat than anything of comparable size (aka they won’t literally take your skin off if they lick you).  They also have somewhat thinner skin than wild cats, though they are still more damage resistant than humans.

They do not have retractable claws because that’s not how fingers work, but they do have narrow, naturally pointed claws rather than humanlike fingernails. Many cathar choose to either dull them or file them down for convenience, but losing/damaging them, as per that one ambient dialogue on Dromund Kaas that I can never find when I need it, is extremely traumatic for them. 

They have tails because I want them to, used for both balance and communication. Cathar tails are approximately lion-like, thin with a coarse tuft at the end regardless of markings (ie. a cathar with stripes won’t have a tiger tail), with the tip the same shade or a few shades darker than the darkest part of their coats. occasionally those from colder regions will have longer fur over the whole tail, or look like they don’t have a tuft due to longer fur overall. 

Variation and a lot of bullshitting about genetics

Wookiepedia describes Cathar as “a planet of savannas and rough uplands” but I refuse to believe that all these habitable worlds are all one consistent climate/temperature across the whole globe. The weirdly ubiquitous infrastructure/cultural info I can kind of forgive since 90% of them were wiped out by Mandalorians and the rest left, and I’m charitably assuming there were a lot less than 7 billion cathar to begin with, so a lot of smaller or more isolated cultures across the planet were lost entirely. 

They have less sexual dimorphism than SWTOR implies, though females are a little smaller on average and tend to have shorter/finer manes that are closer to their base color. In terms of relative strength/mass the difference is minor and female cathar are still very capable of fucking you up (the conventional assumption in the Empire that females are weak/docile and males are too uncontrollable to enslave is not remotely true in either direction). 

Variation in fur/metabolism/ear and nose shape depends on which region/s of Cathar they come from (or their ancestors come from), but they don’t recognize different “races” the way humans do, particularly in the wake of the Battle of Cathar. 

On average, cathar originating closer to the equator have shorter, finer fur, larger and more tapered ears, a tendency toward slender, lanky builds, and coloration that leans more toward golds/reds and higher pigment density. whereas those closer to the poles are much stockier and can be extremely fluffy, sometimes with an undercoat, with paler colors and less vivid/extensive markings. None of the above is universally true and cathar didn’t necessarily always stay in the region where their ancestors come from (and thus sometimes you get people like Riska, who is all limbs but has fairly northern features and entirely too much fur)

Cathar mostly left their planet in groups, so in some parts of the galaxy you’ll run into whole colonies that originate mostly from one part of the planet and have distinct appearances/cultural idiosyncrasies from other colonies.

They mainly follow the same general rules that apply to most felids in terms of coloration/pattern.

Markings can be stripes, spots, or less commonly rosettes (definitely some version of Taqpep variants) and mostly lie along Blaschko’s Lines, though it’s more obvious on some individuals than others and it isn’t always perfectly precise. Even spotted individuals usually display some striping on the tail and around the eyes, though not always. 

“Default” coloration is black-based, with dark markings on a greyish or brownish base. 

Countershading falls pretty much along patterns you’d expect and usually lightens the chest/stomach, lower face, palms/soles, and inner thighs. Specific distribution and patterns vary quite a bit, and sometimes express in odd ways (hence whatever is going on with Khatte). Darkest points tend to be the tail tip, nose bridge, and mane.

Genetically solid cathar are incredibly uncommon; much more common are genes that affect the appearance/distribution of markings, sometimes rendering them almost invisible. Even ones who appear mostly solid (aka Khatte) usually still have some faint striping around the face and/or tail.

Khatte is basically some loose equivalent of ticked tabby, which mostly just looks like weird countershading but leaves some faint striping on his face and tail.

Jial-ro’s coloration is the result of a gene that suppresses all eumelanin production, and a sepia-like form of partial albinism. 

Riska has something similar, along with something that reduces the size/spread of spots.

Food 

They’re mainly carnivorous and have different nutritional requirements from humans (similar but not identical to those of a cat), which can be a problem in places like the military where standardized rations are the norm. In the Republic a cathar can usually put in a request for rations designed to accommodate carnivores (or supplements, failing that), though they might have some trouble on more isolated or undersupplied planets. The rare cathar in the Imperial military have to procure supplements out of pocket, though it’s technically possible to get reimbursed for it if they’re willing to wade through the bureaucracy.

Cathar are perfectly capable of eating raw meat with few to no ill effects, and have a subgenre of cuisine centered around it (and while they didn’t invent sushi, they have enthusiastically embraced the concept). They also have plenty of ways of cooking meat and readily adopt any new ones they come across. 

Their “natural” diet apart from meat mainly consists of fruit, root vegetables, and eggs, though the closer to the poles you get the less likely you are to encounter fruit in a dish. Cathar never cultivated grain and it holds no meaningful nutritional value for them, so bread, rice, and similar products simply do not appear in traditional cuisine. This does not stop some of them from eating grain products in small amounts, as they can still enjoy the taste, but it isn’t any healthier than processed sugar is to humans and they have a high rate of gluten intolerance as a species.

All cathar have a heightened and refined ability to detect savory/umami type flavors, but around 30-40% of cathar, and the vast majority of those from colder regions, have no taste receptors for sweetness at all. This has resulted in the cathar equivalent of the Cilantro Debate centering around desserts, even though they’re all perfectly aware that it’s genetic, and some who can’t taste sweetness still enjoy some desserts for the other flavors present. Those who do have sweet taste receptors are about as sensitive to it as humans, but it tends not to have the same addictive quality for them and a lot of them don’t like processed sugars in anything but small doses. They would appreciate a lightly sweet creme brulee but most of them would find soda absolutely disgusting.

Citrus is right out.

They suffer no more ill effects than humans from drinking alcohol, and due to generally having a fair amount of mass they can usually drink a lot of it.

Social minutiae

They use a fair amount of feline body language, particularly with others of their own species. While facial expressions play a part and they do smile, scowl, and generally express broad emotions, they have a reduced range of facial mobility compared to more humanoid species and no eyebrows to speak of, which leads to a lot of them having what humans perceive as resting bitchface. It also results in humans underestimating the range and depth of their emotions, and can be a problem in the medical field with human medics/doctors who haven’t been trained to work with less humanoid aliens and won’t necessarily recognize severe pain or distress.

Their ears are less articulated than a cat’s but still have some degree of mobility that serves more of a social function than a practical one. They also express a lot of emotion through their tails, to the point that it can be a detriment in some situations if they haven’t practiced consciously keeping control of it.

Bumping foreheads is a common way to express platonic/familial affection, or can be the equivalent of a chaste kiss between partners. They also squint and slow blink, though it doesn’t always translate clearly to other species.

They have a wider range of vocalization than humans; while their voices are often humanlike and they’re just as capable of articulate speech, they can also growl, purr, and make sounds outside human hearing range. Those raised among humans or near-humans tend to do this less, if at all, while cathar raised in more insular communities of their own kind can come off as very taciturn due to heavier reliance on nonverbal communication.

Sense of smell is much stronger and more refined than a human’s and plays a more significant role in how they perceive and navigate the galaxy. They can occasionally be mistaken for Force-sensitive by humans due to their knack for picking up on emotional distress or the presence of particular species/people by scent. This is more true with people they’re familiar with; they won’t pick out distinct members of the other species by default but will eventually be fairly reliable in identifying the scent of a friend or anyone else they spend a lot of time around.

The exception to the above is other cathar, who they can easily tell apart on an individual basis. They have scent glands around the jaw/neck that come into play for identification, conveying broad emotional states, in some situations can aid medical diagnoses, among other things. They also play a part in building connection and familiarity between friends, family, or romantic partners.

The ~horny section~

Cathar don’t really kiss the way humans do by default, but they can, and usually do so unless they’ve somehow had no contact with any near-human species at all. Their equivalent is gentle biting around the neck and jaw, which is another situations where the scent glands are relevant, and when aroused that whole area becomes an erogenous zone for the vast majority of cathar. 

Plenty of humans (particularly if they don’t encounter a lot of aliens day to day) will avoid kissing cathar anyway because they have sandpaper tongues and dry mouths and fangs, and it feels fucking weird if you aren’t prepared for that. 

They tend to be very bitey in general unless specifically asked not to. It only becomes a problem if the cathar in question is inexperienced with humanoids and hasn’t figured out how much bite force is acceptable for a species with thinner, more sensitive skin.

Their dicks are fairly humanoid in size and shape, though somewhat more conical at the head, but they do have a sheath rather than a foreskin. after maturity they don’t actually retract into the sheath more than about two inches when flaccid, and tend to be slightly less sensitive than the average human (same keritinization factor that affects circumcised humans). It also makes them more vulnerable to damage, but since it’s customary to wear pants on most civilized planets, that never really becomes a problem in the course of a normal day. The base of the shaft that’s usually covered has noticeably higher sensitivity. There are probably individual exceptions to most of the above.

Conventional understanding is that cathar don’t have barbs, which is true the vast majority of the time, though about 60% of them have some amount of vestigial non-keratinous bumps over their head that have no noticeable affect on anything aside from occasional increased sensitivity in that area. Rarely an individual might develop a few actual barbs at the onset of puberty, but they have no practical function and pose a risk of discomfort and injury, and can easily be removed via a fast and mostly painless medical procedure, so the number of adults who have them is close to zero.

Females do have (mild, easy to suppress if desired, and mainly not at all disruptive) heat cycles. Other cathar can generally tell by scent, but not to a distracting degree, and it’s considered rude and inappropriate to point it out with anyone but a close friend or partner. It should go without saying that males don’t have heat cycles, but I’ve gotten enough weird DMs about this to know that I need to say it. Unless said male is trans, and not on any sort of HRT, that’s not how that works. 

They kind of have breasts but unless actively nursing they’re barely noticeable if at all, especially under clothing. Cathar have much fewer hangups about going topless regardless of gender than certain human cultures do.

[callistolivia]

Venus in the Signs

In the birthchart, we look to Venus to understand an individual's values, how they express and receive pleasure in the world, and their perceptions on love. Venus is also a strong indicator to how an individual may act in close relationships.

Venus in Aries  This is the detrimental placement for Venus and perhaps it’s because Aries symbolizes the newborn of the zodiac; innocent, pure, unlearned of everything. The Venusian experiences are new experiences for Aries and they’re appreciated by Aries folk as such. Values and love are two of the strongest themes in terms of Venusian experiences. Here we see tremendous capacity for self-love in terms of values, but the latter of loving others can suffer at times. In love, Aries can be impulsive, assertive, and selfish. Aries needs to take the time to learn and appreciate love slower and be more considerate of others. Will likely break more hearts in their life than have their heart broken. Even a heartbroken Aries is too resilient to be truly heartbroken. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm for new relationships is strong. Venus here expresses affection energetically with enthusiasm, direction, and impulse. Aries are fearless; oblivious to rejection and consequences. They are always willing to dive headfirst into what they desire and always open to exploring new experiences. They value rawness, truth, and trust. 

Venus in Taurus   Venus is at home in Taurus. The themes of values and love are lived out in the most Venusian ways possible. Taurus expresses love very sensually. They need to be able to express their love through physical means such as touch and gift giving. They strongly value the senses (taste, touch, smell, etc.) and material things. Taurus can easily fall into being excessive with these things; excessive desire for rich foods, pleasure, and luxuries. They may be stiff like a military sergeant and inhibit emotional expression if they lack attention/physical touch, but are very easily buttered up if they are babied (the Sun and Moon should be checked as well for these circumstances). Taurus can be very possessive over their loved ones and material things, may need to learn to be less restrictive and generosity. Loyal in both friendships and relationships, but can also be extremely jealous. This is also a very good placement for artists, Taurus in Venus sees the world colourfully and has a way of painting it themselves too.

Venus in Gemini  Here Venus understands the game and loves to play with the themes it represents. Feelings of love or intense euphoria is accompanied with sensitive nerves and excitement. Gemini individuals consciously ponder love on an objective level; they sufficiently understand the need for love, the pleasure it brings, and the beauty in life, but tends to not feel too deeply as say, a sappy Cancer, which may make their pursuits come across as shallow. They love with their mind and less of the heart. Nevertheless, they are very good at communicating and demonstrating love, romance, and art; they can be fantastic writers (especially if their Mercury also falls in Gemini) and poets. Individuals with Venus in Gemini tend to fall in love with their best friend, as their best friend is likely someone to keep them consistently interested. Geminis get bored very easily in relationships because of their constant need of mental stimulation, communication, and change. They’re very self-aware; they focus on the values within others and reflect their own views and values. Venus here is clever, curious, light, and playful. 

Venus in Cancer  Here Venus feels love profoundly. Cancer can see love for what it is and protects its fundamentals. Overthinks how to “feel” in terms of love, as a result, can be overemotional. They’re also quite receptive; very easily moved by love and art, especially when these two themes are coupled with fate or tragedy. Could easily be considered a pessimist, but Venus here has a great focus on making life enjoyable. Venus in Cancer can be quite past oriented; often individuals have past life knowledge (consciously or subconsciously) carried over into their current life and it plays strongly into a fear of loss. This results in being very protective of their values and things of the past; past ponderings of relationships, family (especially if Venus is in or aspecting the fourth house), valuing time, and creating sentiment in this life. They love portrait photography, family recipes, secrets, and heirlooms. Values evoked memory. Very concerned with what their soul needs and can anticipate pain (strong gut feeling as well); may make them wiser in terms of who they choose to have relationships with, however inhibiting if there are other issues within the individual’s character (irrational fear or confabulated expectation). Cancers are very protective and nurturing to what they love. 

Venus in Leo  Here Venus becomes dizzying, passionate, colourful, and playful. Unlike Aries who cannot anticipate rejection, Venus in Leo has a sense of humility and understanding for rejection, however there can be that same level of naivety that the fire signs possess. An underdeveloped individual may not fully possess humility and react extremely poorly to rejection, however. Leos are known for their inability to get off their high horse, afterall. May rush into relationships for that sweet honeymoon phase and promise of pleasure, though has the will to wait for loved ones who make them. There is a great understanding for the taxing toll of heartbreak, but it humbles a Leo and makes them stronger empaths to others. Venus in Leo has a very open and generous heart to people beneath them, but will not sacrifice themself. Expresses love affectionately, proudly, and rip-roaringly. They love being the centre of attention. Values nobility, recognition, strength, and loyalty. They generally have higher standards for themselves and others, this is coupled with their sense of dignity; and this is especially true if Venus aspects to Saturn or Jupiter. Leos pride themselves on their creativity; they’re naturally very generative and talented artists.

Venus in Virgo  This is considered the fallen placement for Venus. Here Venus’ desire for love is refined. Individuals with this placement have set ideals in terms of what their desires are. Values represent supplement and purpose. They value time just as Venus in Cancer does, but more concerned with what is to happen next rather than the past, and they’re very good with what they make of their time. Not much of a daydreamer because of this. Values are always first before love; this may inhibit romantic opportunities as what they see realistic, necessary, or practical may actually be petty. This placement also lacks the warmness other signs have; the individual may need to learn to be more expressive in their affections. Often expresses affection through serving others and indirect “I love you”s. They actually enjoy making other people’s lives easier by picking up on forgotten details in plans and refining pieces of work (such as art, literature, cooking, etc.). They know where finishing touches go. Mastered sense of humility. Disappointments in love can make these individuals very cold and resentful of love. Venus here is pure, clean, cold-pressed, practical, and self-disciplined. 

Venus in Libra  This is Venus’ other ruled placement and is uniquely different from Taurus as it is a more evolved sign of the zodiac. Venus here is less possessive and more passive (in receiving and letting go of love energies) than Taurus. Libra accepts and values the world’s complexity and duality. This makes it very easy for Libra to experience love at its fullest potential. However, Libras have a deep dislike for pain and are hurt easily by rejection (luckily won’t hold a grudge like a Virgo or Scorpio!). Libra understands deeply that love and harmony are necessity. Loves beauty, romance, and has a deep appreciation for the arts. Blessed with a very artistic and aesthetic mind. May be very dependent in relationships; there is a tremendous amount of focus on their partner’s needs and values. Venus here has a great skill for relatability, but mirrored interests may make individuals with this placement seem fake or unoriginal at times. Very expressive in terms of romance, but not as touchy as Taurus; Libra is more likely to use charisma and beauty to wow. Always makes time for pleasure and has a tendency for over-indulgence (especially true when accompanied by other Libra placements). Venus here is sweet, artistic, accepting, and harmonious. 

Venus in Scorpio  This is Venus’ other detrimental placement (Aries being the other). Unlike Aries, the naivety and unknowing is dissolved and turned into a mature, knowing, and hungry heart. Values the mysteries they know, but tremendous amount of emotional and spiritual uncertainty. Scorpios greatly value intimacy and believe it should be deeply unrestricted in terms of love. They perceive that their partner should be totally fused to them to fulfill Scorpio’s need for soul connection. However, this excessive and hungry need can make individuals with this placement selfish, possessive, and consumed by desire. Once Scorpio can learn to control their desires, soul intimacy and committed relationships can be very transformative and healing. Scorpios express affection with edginess and passion. Scorpio values things that evoke thought and feelings of mystique. They value trust, though it is difficult to earn their trust. Scorpios are the type to hold a grudge as well. They value rawness, truth, vulnerability, and getting to the core of concepts.

Venus in Sagittarius  Here Venus becomes an explorer filled with wanderlust. Sagittarius values and adopts new found beauty, art, knowledge, and culture. Seeks out truth and value; “what is value?” A Sagittarius surrounds themself in tantalizing vision boards and works of art. Values thought manifestation. Here Venus views love philosophically, yet lightly; it cannot be held down or contained, it moves and flows, it is hidden and found. Individuals with this placement can be rather unrealistic in terms of love at times. Either they become flighty if their partner tries to tie them down or their partner has a difficult time keeping up with the over-optimistic, careless, and fantasized perception of love. Values honesty and open-mindedness the most in relationships. Expresses affection through generosity and sharing their beliefs and philosophies. Venus is actually quite comfortable in the fiery sign, Sagittarius, and can be quite beneficial to individuals whose life goals are very oriented with philosophy, art in correlation to religion or philosophy, theology, and travel because of the level of enthusiasm Sagittarius has. However, some Sagittarius can be misguided, overindulgent, and risky (with finances). 

Venus in Capricorn  Here Venus is content with their views on love and life, whether those views are tranquil or rather cynical. It is as if love cannot hurt them or surprise them anymore at this phase in the zodiac. That may be melancholic, but Capricorns know how to steamroll through life even in the roughest of times. They can be playfully cynical about these feelings too; they love satire. They value what they can predict or depend on; not huge risk takers, especially in love. They are very cautious with who they wish to have romantic intentions with and relationships tend to blossom very slowly. Venus here has a lot of self-control over their desires; it may inhibit closeness in relationships with those who need lots of emotional and romantic attention to feel confident in the relationship. They dislike people who may damage their reputation and they favour those who may benefit. Capricorns don’t express deeper emotions until they have complete certainty. Expresses affection through seriousness and chivalry. They have lots of soul experience and advice to give to those beneath them. Venus here is committed, serious, and resilient. 

Venus in Aquarius  Though Venus loses some of the seriousness it has in the other Saturn ruled sign, it still retains a cold, impersonal, and detached approach to the themes of Venus. Venus here may have difficulty in expressing deeper emotions, however individuals with this placement work very well in groups, often have a lot of friends/acquaintances, and have a lot of unique ideas to share with the world. An Aquarian’s emotional world develops stronger when they are around lots of people. When Aquarius does express affection, there is no lack of flirtation and charisma. Aquarius work well in relationships with those who don’t take romance too seriously and don’t need too much TLC. Aquarius value new, innovative, and experimental ideas. The artistic type strongly expresses this in their work which is often unconventional, controversial, or thought evoking. Venus here can be quite imaginative; the individual’s aesthetic and romantic world is elaborate in their fantasies despite having a hard exterior that may shield others from being able to see into this world. An Aquarius may need to find the right outlet to broadcast their hidden eye for beauty they struggle to dig deep for. 

Venus in Pisces  Here is Venus’ exalted sign; the themes of Venus transcend here. Venus receives the universal rays of love. Individuals with this placement find spiritual enlightenment through the power of love, art, and beauty. Pisces is a natural empath and healer; they can heal others through compassionate love. Individuals with this placement are willing to sacrifice for what they love or value. Venus here is very vulnerable, sometimes too vulnerable; individuals with this placement may victimize themselves when desires are unfocused, unachievable, or unrealistic. Individuals who lack strength in character and have this placement may have misguided fantasties and should seek spiritual growth to avoid unnecessary suffering. Values peace, harmony, and feelings of religiousness. Values other’s minds and psychic connections. Natural poets and musicians. May be an escapist, but only to pursue godly love. In relationships, Pisces expresses affection with gentleness, sweetness, and an intentional sincerity to soothe. Venus here is selfless, ever-giving, empathetic, and sensitive. 

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I love your blog it’s definitely one of the most smartest and cultured ones around. Since you are a super chilled out military vet (flying combat helicopters, how cool is that?!) and also a very thoughtful and devout Christian (I think you talked about being an Anglican) I know this is a cheeky question but I’ll ask it anyway. Would you rather live in a military dictatorship or a theocratic dictatorship?

Now this is an interesting question you play at 2am and the wine is dangerously low.

I have to correct you on a couple of things. Yes, it was ‘cool’ to fly combat helicopters especially in a battlefield setting but it was just a job, like any other. And it’s never about the pilot it’s about the rest of the team behind you, especially your ground crew who make sure you go up and come back in one piece. As for being super chilled you clearly have never seen how sweaty one gets flying in high stress situations. Oh and the stink! A skunk wouldn’t last 5 minutes in my cockpit.

As for my Christian beliefs, I’ll settle for being a believing one. My faith, such as it is, is about living - and failing - by grace day by day than being fervently devout. Faith is a struggle to not rely upon one’s own strength but on divine mercy and grace.

Anyway....

Would I rather live in a military dictatorship or a theocratic dictatorship?

History has shown there's not a lot of difference between the two...

No, wait. On second thoughts maybe I would rather live in a military dictatorship as the lesser evil.

As an ex-officer in her HM armed forces, I know things will be run pretty efficiently with no dilly-dallying. So there’s that.

I suppose even if one does say it’s preferable to live under military rule rather than a theocratic one there is still the question of what kind of military rule? Every nation that has been under military rule came to power and sustained their hold under different dynamics. And of course it also depends on how mature civil society and the rule of law as well as the democratic culture really was in the first place. A lot is tied up with the brutal nature of the personality of the regime leader too. There are simply too many variables.

So one is forced to generalise. So l can’t get too serious in answering this question.

Rather than focus on the negative side let’s look on the bright side.

Just off the top of my head I can think of these reasons why I would choose to ‘live’ under military rule than a theocratic one. There are in no real order:

Beds will be made properly subject to inspection.

Families will be run like military units with the man at the head of the table.

Family meals will be taken at set times.

Public civility will make a return (e.g. no public spitting, drunken, or loutish behaviour).

Freedom of speech will more likely be censored than abolished (better than nothing I suppose)

Elections would be rigged rather than banned (but who really votes anyway these days?)


They will most likely make the trains run on time (unless you’re British or Italian).

Military leaders often enjoy genuine popularity - albeit after eliminating plausible rivals - that is based on “performance legitimacy,” a perceived competence at securing prosperity and defending the nation against external or internal threats. The new autocrats of today are more surgical: they aim only to convince citizens of their competence to govern.

Maintaining power, for military dictators and their court, is less a matter of terrorising and persecuting victims than of manipulating beliefs about the world. But of course they can do both if backed into a corner to survive.

State propaganda aims not to re-engineer human souls but to boost the military regime leader’s ratings.

The military tend to stay out of personal lives. They have a political police but not necessarily a moral police.

Economic growth is more likely to be stable than under a theocratic state.

Military dictatorships are more likely to build vast bureaucracies to run the state - more jobs for everyone

The military put on great events. Their parades are more colourful and spectacular.

Having a sense of humour is more likely to get you imprisoned than executed for telling an anti-regime joke. It’s no joke to say that people develop a more refinery subversive sense of humour when oppressed. Take for example a famous comedian in Myanmar, Zarganar, for whom comedy is a shield and a weapon. During the time of the military dictatorship (1962-2010) he would make jokes like, “The American says, 'We have a one-legged guy who climbed Mount Everest.' The Brit says, 'We recently had a guy with no arms who swam the Atlantic Ocean. But the Burmese guy says, 'That's nothing! We had a leader who ruled for 18 years without a brain!" It was for jokes like this that Zarganar received a prison sentence in 2008 - for up to 59 years.

Military dictatorships don’t last long. They are more unstable. They tend to fall from the weight of their own contradictions.

One of the problems of living in a theocracy is how absolutist it would be in looking at life in terms of clear cut black and white according to those who rule over you. I strongly suspect in a theocratic state the morality secret police will be all over you looking for any social or moral infraction. In a Christian Theocracy, you'll never be Christian enough - the same would be for states that were Islamic, Judaic or Hindu etc. There's always going to be some pious asshole there with another version of Christianity that is more Christian than you and you're going to lose the freedom to make your own choices.

Under theocracies, unlike other authoritarian regimes, the rulers are the moral authorities that legitimises and fuels their political legitimacy to govern. It assumes its own moral correctness married to its political destiny to rule over others. As C.S Lewis memorably puts it, “Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.”

Finally, I’ll go with the military dictatorship with the hope that there might be some way of bringing the system down with a bit of logic and rationality. Hell knows that wouldn't be possible in a theocratic system!

I agree with Margaret Atwood when she said, “If you disagree with your government, that's political. If you disagree with your government that is approaching theocracy, then you're evil.” There’s more wriggle room with fighting against a military dictatorship because it’s usually against an asshole tyrant - or a ruling oligarchy of a military junta - and not a pernicious idea soaked in theological bullshit or an entire ideology divinely santificated by God himself.

A more interesting question is not to ask is why many people are so readily drawn to be ruled under a military rule or a theocratic one and especially a benevolent dictatorship (like Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore or Paul Kagame in Rwanda) but why increasingly more people in the Western world look to authoritarian figures to rule and shape their lives?

Why do Silicon Valley titans like Peter Thiel and others like him think fondly of ditching democracy in the name of some utopian hyper-capitalist vision of ‘freedom’?

I hear murmurs of the same talk when I interact with corporate colleagues and high net worth individuals I hear it around dinner tables about how democracy is bad for business and profit. Often it’s accompanied by praise for China's ability to "get things done." I just roll my eyes and smile politely. 

I think - outside of the legitimate concern of the decay of civil discourse, the corruption of politicians, and corrosiveness of crony capitalism - it’s because democratic politics is hard. Damn hard.

Moreover democratic politics does not have a "right" answer. There never is.

In our Western societies it is the playing field (or market place?) where our values compete. Surely, you say, there is a right way to get the job done: to fill in the potholes, build the roads, keep our streets safe, get our kids to learn reading and math. Ah, but look how quickly those issues get contentious.

Whose potholes should get filled first? Do we try to keep our streets safe through community policing or long prison sentences? Should teachers be given merit pay, are small classrooms better, or should we lengthen the school day? These issues engender deep political fights, all - even in the few debates where research provides clear, technocratic answers. That is because the area of politics is an area for values disputes, not technical solutions.

One person's "right" is not another's because people prioritise different values: equity versus excellence, efficiency versus voice and participation, security versus social justice, short-term versus long-term gains.

Democratic politics allows many ideas of "right" to flourish. It is less efficient than dictatorship. It also makes fewer tremendous mistakes.

The longing for a leader who knows what is in her people's best interests, who rules with care and guides the nation on a wise path, was Plato's idea of a philosopher-king. It's a tempting picture, but it's asking the wrong question.

In political history, philosophers moved from a preference for such benevolent dictators to the ugly realities of democracy when they switched the question from "who could best rule?" to "what system prevents the worst rule?"

But clearly democracy is buckling under pressure in our torrid times. Populism - the logical end consequence of a purer democracy - is chipping away at the edifice of democratic norms and conventions. Increasingly inward looking nativism and nationalism fuel passions beyond the control of reason.

Perhaps it is time we went back to the tried and tested example of a monarchy, a constitutional one that is. 

A revitalised monarchy in Britain needs a Head of State that can provide a personal identity to an impersonal State, and a collective sense of itself. A Head of State who does not owe his or her position to either patronage or a vote can more properly represent all the people. Consider that a President who has been elected, often by a minority of a minority of the electorate, cannot adequately speak for the people who did not vote for him or her. It is even worse if the President has been appointed, because then he owes his position to a small clique.So, the accident of birth is the best means of appointing a Head of State. Someone who has no party political axe to grind, or special favours to repay to a vested interest. Someone whose allegiance is to the people. Not just allegiance to the people who voted for him or his political party, but allegiance to all the people of the country equally. Far from being "incompatible" with democracy, a Monarchy can thereby enhance the government of the land.

The Monarch is a national icon. An icon which cannot be replaced adequately by any other politician or personality. This is because the British Monarchy embodies British history and identity in all its aspects, both good and bad.

When you see the Queen you not only see history since 1952, when she took the throne, but you see a person who provides a living sense of historical continuity with the past. Someone who embodies in her person a history which extends back through time, back through the Victorian era, back into the Stuart era and beyond. You see the national history of all parts of our islands, together, going right back in time.

As Edmund Burke, Roger Scruton and Michael Oakeshott would say, the monarchy is a living continuity between the past, the present and the future.

With its traditions, its history, its ceremonial, and with its standing and respect throughout the world, the British Monarchy represents a unique national treasure, without which the United Kingdom would be sorely impoverished.

If you value national distinctiveness, you should be a Monarchist.

If you are anti-globalist you should be a Monarchist because Monarchies represent the different national traditions and distinctions among the nations.

The desire to secure, strengthen and promote your own distinct national icons, whether your Monarch, or your own unique national identity, should be your concern, whether you live here in St Andrews, or whether you live in St Petersburg, or whether you live in St Paulo.

As the global financial system rushes us all towards a world intended to eradicate all local and national distinctions, the Monarchy stands out as different, distinct and valuable. Constitutionally, practically, spiritually and symbolically the Monarchy is a national treasure, the continued erosion of which would change the character of Britain, and not in a good way!

I’m speaking as a High Tory now, sorry.  And so of course I only see it working for the United Kingdom....and the Commonwealth (slip that discreetly in there for you India, Australia, Canada, and Africa).

Still, if you want egalitarianism then look at Norway and the Netherlands - both highly "egalitarian" societies, and both monarchies.

Everyone else will just have to jolly well do without or ask us politely to come back (I’m looking at you my dear American colonial cousins, all will be forgiven).

The best of all worlds? Time will tell.

At your service, Ma’am....

Thanks for your question.

[rodpupo]

CCS: Brazilian Style

how did the musicians, filmmakers and artists deal with Brazilian sexuality and popular culture during the 60’s ?

 The main characteristic of the counterculture movement was its profound criticism of the capitalism system and the patterns of unrestrained consumption. The young people who integrated this movement of contestation to the moral and aesthetic values of the global society promoted revolutions in their ways of dressing. Their clothes and hairstyles became symbols of this parallel universe that they designed to break the capitalist fads of the elites.

The musical movement in Brazil greatly innovated Brazilian popular music, bringing in its lyrics irreverent verses that broke with the type of music made until then.

Tropicalismo or Tropicalista movement was a cultural movement that emerged under the influence of the artistic trends of the avant-Garde and of national and foreign pop culture ( such as rock n roll and concretism), mixing traditional manifestations of Brazilian culture with radical aesthetic innovations. It had behavioral goals, and to challenge the dictatorship, in the late 1960s.

Mix of national culture traditions and international aesthetic innovations, such as pop art.

Songs that talked about sex, about the woman’s body, clothing, but also morals and behavior.

The greatest representatives of this musical movement was, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Os mutantes and Caetano Veloso.

Until the 60s, 90% of the songs that reachedthe album were about sex, bitter, vindictive and even tragic loves, pains and sufferings, in addition doses of moralism and chauvinism. When the woman is not the cause of all ills, a traitor or a fallen person, she is an idealized, ethereal and virginal figure.

National cinema has always had within is characteristics the erotic and sensual side of the people. One of the most important films of this time was “O Bandido da Luz Vermelha”. The story of criminal who gained enormous repercussion in Brazil in the 1960s, João Pereira da Costa, O Bandido da Luz Vermelha. 

O Bandido da Luz Vermelha promoted intense public disturbance of law and order, with dozens of assaults, accusations of rapes and homicides, would come to be considered the number one public enemy of the São Paulo capital and, after an unceasing police investigation, he was arrested on August 7, 1967.

The criminal, who spent a large part of the stolen money, with women and nightclubs, the film shows a lot, the woman as a kind of sexual object, for the bandit.

The movie have very controversial characteristics, but at the same time understanding the qualities that make us up, and with excellent camera work in hand and editing, he made a film which criticizes the Brazilian society at the time, and that still remains current.

As the military dictatorship was in power, the director Rogério Sganzerla’s features gains even more strength. The film clearly seeks to show Brazil as a corrupt place, with powerful people, and an entire social structure that punishes the poor, and frees the ignorant and arrogant criminals from the powerful classes.

He mixed the influences of Jean Luc Godard, Orson Welles, and Glauber Rocha to say how cinema in Brazil should be done from them on.

One of the most significant movements within this theme was “pornochanchada”. This represented a significant moment in national cinema. With erotic themes, getting very close to sex, these films were full of sensuality and the comic side always present.

Economically, this cinematographic movement had great repercussion, since it must be considered as popular, due to its success with the population in general.

They had their peak in the 60’s and 70’s.

According to its supporters, these films contributed to ‘de-eliteize’ Brazilian cinema, taking every kind of classes, to the screening rooms. 

Erotism is one of the strongest spheres of representation in Brazil. Since it manifested itself in the main stereotypes that the country has and that what people think are imagined by others, including foreigners. Our representatives, like football, samba, our natural beauty, are distinguished precisely by this touch of erotism.

Brazilian cinema was divided into two aspects, starting in the 1960s: family cinema, class situations and political life; and the other, centered on passions and sexuality.

In the past, however, the fame of sensuality of Brazilian women came to be used in official campaigns to attract foreigners to the country.

Terms like “feelings of protest”, “revolutionary pieces”, “rebelliousness”, “national identity” and “true Brazilian culture” open the way for more artistic manifestations. With regard to the process related to the idea of social participation of art: as is the case of opening art to the public, the collective aspects of production involved in it, as well as the tensions between engagement and experimentalism, in which a noticeable change in the use of images linked to the categories of “people” and “popular” can be perceived.

The central point involved is the predominant way in which the images of the urban and the suburban appear in the experimental projects of a group of artists linked to the neo-avant- Garde trends of the 60s- and no longer the image of the people as peasants or rural areas. The latter, incidentally, was prefigured to a large extent in intellectual and artistic debates about the national and the popular since previous decades and in various forms of art. The main idea was that the people’s culture, in its most authentic and genuine expression, was limited to its more traditional rural origins; manifested, above all, in the figure of the peasant, the simple man or the worker of the field.

 - During the 60s and 70s, Brazilian films had sex as their main theme. O Bandido da Luz Vermelha for example, shows the character as a womanizer, and women being treated as a sexual object.

- Pornochanchadas appeared in the late 60s and gained great notoriety in the 70s, and lost strength in the 80s, due to the rise of the porn cinema. Unfortunately, this was one of the factors that made sex tourism in Brazil encouraged. Embratour for example encouraged this type of thing, with extremely sexist posters made in the 60s and 70s.

- Tropicalismo mixed several styles of music from rock to Baiao. It transformed tastes of the time, not only in relation to music and politics, but also behavior, morals, sex and the way of dressing .

Was there a positive dimension on the production of Brazilian art, music, cinema by the 60s ?

 Film production in Brazil in the 1960s was marked by a series of readings and reinterpretations about the national reality in its various facets- in politics and plastic arts, in cities, in the countryside, in the world of work and institutions- that sought to negotiate already consecrated images of the country with new political and aesthetic projects. From the films and themes discussed in the course, discuss the legacy of this period from the continuities and discontinuities of its issues in current documentary cinema and interpretations of contemporary Brazil.

Glauber Rocha was one of the most important filmmakers of this period, because most of his movies contained themes such as anthropology, sociology, history and semiology.

Brazilian popular music, such as Bossa Nova, became extremely popular, and beloved both in Brazil and in foreign countries, like the the United States.

From the 60s onwards, the samba of bossa nova was definitely consolidated in the Brazilian music, where João Gilberto and the duo Tom and Vinicius stood out, such as Newton Mendonça, Billy Blanco, Aloysio de Oliveira, Banden Powell, Oscar Castro Neves, etc.

It was at that moment that the style experienced an international projection on a scale never seen before with another aspect of Brazilian popular music. In 1962 saxophonist Stan Getz together with the guitarist Charlie Byrd released the LP “Jazz Samba”, and also Frank Sinatra and Tom Jobim 1967 album ‘Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim’ which drew attention of the music scene in the United States to bossa nova.

But there was also a music movement called the tropicalismo, which was a libertarian and revolutionary movement, that sought to move away from Bossa Nova intellectualism, in order to bring Brazilian music closer to aspects of popular culture, samba, pop, rock, and psychedelia.

This open, syncretic and innovative aesthetic experience launched by the tropicalists, changed not only Brazilian popular music, but the culture in general, in search of the country’s modernity.

The art of the Brazilians in the 60’s, were reflected in the country’s social reality, often with political facts of the period, his role was that of a conscious revolutionary.

For some historians, the art of that period developed in response to the military coup; a very important figure from that period was Wesley Duke Lee.

The artist used varied techniques such as: watercolor, painting and collages, it was duke who introduced the pop langue in Brazil.

Another artist from this period that can be highlighted is José Roberto Aguilar who produced works that contemplated the fantastic and grotesque character.

He was pioneer of graphite when using spray paint, around 1965, then used paint with a gun and even a torch on an aluminum plate.

- Wesley Duke Lee is a pioneer in the incorporation of pop themes and language in Brazil. In 1963, he created “O Realismo Magico” movement.

- Jose Roberto Aguilar was considered one of the pioneers of the new figuration in Brazil.

- During the 1950s, Brazil experienced the euphoria of the economic growth generated after the Second World War. Based on the wave of optimism of the “Golden Years”, a group of young upper middle class musicians and composers from Rio de Janeiro started looking for something really new and that was able to escape the operatic style that dominated Brazilian music.

- Glauber Rocha Filmmaker, writer. One of the leaders of new cinema, a vanguard movement of the 1960s, Glauber Rocha proposes a cinema aligned with the socio-economic reality of the so-called “Third World”.

- References:

- Links: https://periodicos.ufpe.br/revistas/revsocio/article/view/235218/28243

              26-90-1-PB (1).pdf

             http://www.generos.ufpr.br/files/b88c-producao-academica_paulo-reis.pdf

[qqueenofhades]

Can you please explain why you like Warren more than Sanders? I was too young to vote in 2016 but I would've voted Bernie in that primary, and I plan to do so this year(I'll vote whoever the Democrat party chooses in the real election, I understand the dangers of not doing so). I don't know much about the differences in their policies except that Sanders is slightly more leftist and a relatively simple comparison between the two would help. And how big of a factor should his age play in my vote?

Thanks for asking!

I think the best place for you to start, if you want everything explained in depth on each issue far more eloquently than I can, is to simply read the Political positions of Bernie Sanders and Political positions of Elizabeth Warren pages on Wikipedia, which outline their positions on pretty much everything you could think of. The main difference in how people perceive them lies in the fact that Bernie has been a democratic socialist for his entire political career, while Warren became a Democrat in 1996, and is viewed by the hard left as still being too pro-capitalist and/or pro-military and/or too ethically suspect and/or untrustworthy and/or could change her mind and betray them again. For a certain subset of people for whom purity of ideology and/or the strength of conviction is only ever demonstrated by never changing your mind and only ever having held the right positions, the fact that Warren’s political positions have changed over time seems dangerous, and that she isn’t as purely “socialist” as Bernie means that she is, in their eyes, a lesser candidate. As I said in the earlier ask, we will never have an American president who is completely free from the toxic elements of American ideology. There are things that I don’t fully agree with Warren on, absolutely. But lashing into her as a secret spineless corporate shill who would completely betray the progressive movement if she was elected has nothing to do with reality, certainly nothing that reflects her actual rhetoric and voting record, and once again demonstrates the tendency of a certain subset of Bernie supporters to completely refuse anything less than their candidate no matter what, and that is… frustrating.

Let me be clear: Warren and Sanders are my top two choices. Policy-wise, they’re the only candidates proposing anything I want to actually see enacted. I completely support anyone who wants to vote for either of them in the primary, and indeed, I ended my last post by strongly urging the anon (and anyone else who identified ideologically with Bernie) to vote for him in the primaries. I myself get a cold shudder at the idea of having to vote for Biden or Buttigieg as the Democratic nominee (even if I don’t think it’ll happen). I don’t want to have to do it, which is why I keep urging progressives to turn out in droves and vote their conscience in the primaries: that way, we won’t even end up in a situation where we have to hold our nose and vote for a nominee we don’t really like, don’t support, and who will continue more ineffective centrist policies that don’t address the real problems in the country. If progressives vote in sufficient numbers, we will get a progressive nominee that we can actively vote for and feel good about, rather than one that we can barely stomach. If we sit home and only let the moderate/centrist white Democrats vote in the primary, that is the nominee that we will end up with. Gross. 

So in other words, I am not here to stoke the worrying and self-inflicted factionalism ongoing between Sanders and Warren supporters who have to outdo each other with My Ideology Is Better Than Your Ideology. That was exactly what I was critiquing in the earlier answer. I think both candidates align well with my values, I would vote for either one of them without qualms, and I think they are proposing policies that broadly target the major issues at hand. Destroying one to try to advance the other is unnecessary, counterproductive, and doing half the Trump/GOP machine’s work for them. It is a hollow moral victory in shouting echo chambers on the internet that has no real-world value and helps no one at all in the long run, except for feeling smug that you have The Most Pure Doctrine. Yay. Still not helping us get rid of Trump. So vote for whichever one you want in the primary, and then vote for whoever wins in the general. Like I said above, if progressives turn out in sufficient numbers, we won’t end up with a terrible candidate in the first place.

I like Warren because she has shown a consistent willingness to learn, grow, to take feedback and adjust her policies accordingly, to engage with community leaders, and, frankly, to demonstrate a more nuanced awareness of intersectionality and identity. Bernie has a tendency to struggle with differentiating class and race, dismisses “identity politics” and can confuse it with tokenism, and still holds the position that, essentially, socialism and economic justice will fix everything. Even the left-leaning The Guardian has found some grounds to criticize him on how he has handled this. I think that Warren is more aware on some levels as to how multiple factors inform an individual’s politics, not just economics and social class. But guess what: these are still minor quibbles and the kind of nitpicking that I get to do at primary stage! I’m still completely happy to vote for the man in a general election! Nothing that I say about Bernie here disqualifies him from my support if he’s the progressive candidate that comes out on top! And none of what I say below about Warren should be read as some sort of insidious attempt to prove that Bernie doesn’t hold these positions too/passive-aggressive slam on him, etc. etc. I’m simply explaining what I like about her particularly.

I like Warren because her plans are detailed, workable, based on extensive research, highlight multiple values that I have in common with her, and give practical recommendations as to how to implement them within the existing framework of the American political system (as well as, where needed, changing it radically). Her policy documents specifically highlight the African-American maternal mortality crisis, valuing the work and lives of women of color, protecting reproductive rights and access to care/abortion services, funding, respecting, and supporting Native Americans and indigenous people, supporting the LGBTQ community on many fronts, cancelling all student debt on day one of her presidency (as an academic with a lot of student debt, this is a big issue for me), confronting white nationalist terrorism, getting rid of the electoral college, regulating and breaking up market monopolies, taxing the shit out of billionaires, holding capitalism accountable, fighting global financial corruption and “dark money” in international politics, introducing immediate debt relief for Puerto Rico, overhauling immigration policy to make it more fair and welcoming, fighting for climate change especially as a racial justice issue, ending private prisons and federal defense budget bloat, recognizing that just throwing endless money at national security issues has not fixed them, drastically revising and ending a foreign policy currently based on endless money and endless wars, breaking up Wall Street economic monopolies and misbehaviour, transitioning to 100% clean energy and Medicare for All, reinvesting in public schools, and… I could go on, but you get the gist. She is a lawyer, professor, and senator with public and professional expertise in many relevant fields. She used to teach bankruptcy law and economic policy. She is smart and tough, but can break complicated concepts down and explain them clearly. She has earned the endorsement of black women’s groups and over 100 Latino leaders. And: yes. It’s time for us to have a female president. It just is. I feel strongly about it.

Warren was recently attacked for putting out a plan related to how the U.S. military could drastically reduce its wasteful carbon footprint and help combat climate change, as this was clearly proof that she was in fact just a lip-service progressive and didn’t want to, you know, apparently abolish it entirely and pretend it didn’t exist and personally tell everyone in the military what a bad person they were. I am not a fan of anything about the U.S. military-industrial complex. But if you don’t recognize that it’s largely composed of poor, working-class people of color and/or economically deprived people who have no other career option, that veterans are discarded instantly the moment they’re no use to the war and propaganda machine and that any politician is going to have to reckon with this, and that you can’t snap your fingers and make it go away, then that’s also not helping. Warren has also been attacked for not wanting to get rid of capitalism entirely, as if that is a remotely feasible or workable option in 21st-century America. She has voted for and suggested regulations and wealth taxes and major restructuring and everything else you can think of, she proposed and founded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and so on. But for some people, this still is Just Not Good Enough. Which…. fine. You don’t have to vote for her in the primary if she’s not ideologically the closest candidate to you. Once again, the point of the primary is to pick whichever candidate you like the most and to do everything to help them win, so you aren’t stuck with a bad choice when it comes time for the general. But acting like this is a huge and horrible disqualifier and that she’s an awful corporate hack who will just be terrible (her main crime not being Bernie/competing against him) has nothing to do with reality, and everything with having to win internet woke points and ideological militancy arguments. It’s not helpful. 

Since the earlier post went viral, I am now getting random hate or completely bizarre misinterpretations of my argument or whatever else, none of which I will answer and all of which will be deleted out of hand, because I am just not interested in trading insults about this and/or engaging in pointless arguments with people who have already made up their mind. But for some people, it’s apparently really threatening to say that if you only vote for the best ideology in the primaries and then quit in a snit fit before the general election, you’re not helping. You’re not doing anything useful. Everyone who was reblogging the post and agreeing with me was around my age or older; everyone who was reblogging it to slam me was usually a lot younger. And I’m glad that 21-year-olds feel that winning the ideology battle is more important than having a functional government, but: sorry. I’m old and I don’t have to listen to that, and I’m not going to. Perfect cannot be the enemy of good, or even better than what we’ve got now. And let’s be clear: anything would be better than what we have now. It would directly save lives and impact policies, and if you can’t admit that because you’re too hung up on how Elizabeth Warren might Be A Capitalist Pig Who Likes Billionaires, please, please get off the internet and go outside.

Would Warren, Sanders, or even Buttigieg or Biden lock immigrant children in cages and concentration camps at the border and commit deliberate slow-motion genocide by denial of care and access? No. Would they actively roll back Obama-era regulations protecting LGBTQ rights, the environment, climate change activism, and anything else you remotely identify as a progressive cause? No.  Would they start a needless war with Iran, build a border wall, stoke Nazis and white supremacists, pander to all the worst parts of American insularism and xenophobia, collude with Russia, lie about everything, destroy all regulations and policies that don’t benefit anyone but the rich, white, and male, fill their administration with convicted felons and homophobes and people who want to rob us blind, and be aggressively incompetent, unprepared, malicious,  stupid, angry, and dangerous to both the country and the world? No. So the various attempts to claim that there is “no real difference” between the presidency of a non-Sanders Democrat and Trump are… please, please sit down for a moment and think about what you’re saying. I realize this is, again, a hard position to hold when you depend completely on having The Right Ideology, and nuance, complexity, evolving positions, and willingness to be open to new ideas are not things that are valued in zealots on either the right or the left. I don’t know what fantasyland these people are living in, when they act like not voting for a non-Sanders Democrat against Trump would be a great moral victory or proof that they’re too good for the world that the rest of us have to live in, or think that the election into being about some magical chance to make the entire capitalist global military-industrial system vanish. It won’t. It won’t even if Sanders wins the presidency. Change only comes slowly and systematically.

This is once again, long. So to summarize:

1) If you want to understand the differences between Bernie and Warren from a place outside just what I say, go and read their policy summaries on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Look on their websites, compare their plans, do your own research, and don’t fall into the ideology-war trap just for the sake of looking better on internet arguments.

2) Vote for Bernie in the primary! Please! We want a progressive candidate who will make genuine change! We don’t want one who is just a moderate Republican but has to be a Democrat because moderate Republicans no longer exist!

3) I like Warren for many reasons and will be voting for her in the primary, but will vote for Bernie (or anyone else) who wins the primary and emerges as the nominee. I only wish that all Bernie supporters would give the reciprocal guarantee. There is a subset – again, not all – who are only loyal to him and nothing else, and who seem to feel that if they can’t have him, not voting is a better or more “moral” choice, even if the alternative is Trump.

4) For me, Bernie’s age is an issue. I can’t answer for what it might be for you, but he would turn 80 in the year he was sworn into office. He also did have a heart attack and would have a year of grueling campaigning to go.

5) Factionalism and ideology wars and loyalty to one person, rather than even trying to consider the lives and people that are at stake, that have already been lost, and that continue to suffer from Trumpism, is not helpful, not empathetic, and not more moral. You can sit and feel self-righteous all you want, good for you. People are dying. Refusing to make a change because it can’t be all the change, all at once, is not and will never be how this works.

Anyway. I hope that helped you. 

[izzyspussy]

okay so here’s my headcanons for the bigotry of the four nations based on what little is shown in canon:

sexism

water tribes: yes, obviously. needs no explanation, it was an actual plot point several times. earth kingdom: yes, but not as badly as the water tribes. ex: toph uses gendered insults against her opponents, suki is disappointed but not surprised by sokka’s sexism when they meet, the entire brainwashed service staff of ba sing se presents female. fire nation: no, or very little. co-ed prisons, co-ed military, azula’s gender never considered in regards to succession. the only instances (off the top of my head) of fire nation sexism are when iroh pretends to be paralyzed so he can snuggle jun and when the boiling rock guards say “no you can’t date the female guards”/”you don’t want to anyway” but imo those are writer bias that can be dismissed if desired. air nomads: maybe? in the flashback scenes there seem to be only men/amab children which implies that men and women are segregated based on their gender. aang is offended to be played by a female actress. on the other hand, the whole of the culture presented seems anathema to something so arbitrary. i personally prefer an even split, so most of the time i pick ‘no’.

homophobia

water tribes: yes. homophobia and sexism affirm each other. also the arranged marriages? hm. earth kingdom: not for men. it’s viewed as being Extra Tough and Strong to be able to share intimacy with another man. lesbophobia exists primarily through erasure - sapphism isn’t considered to exist. fire nation: very little. generally all sexualities are considered “normal” but the firelord is expected to provide a biological firebending heir, and therefore any relationship that wouldn’t facilitate that is a scandal. this bleeds into the rest of the culture in that people who want to be powerful or have a legacy or what have you value biological heirs and relationships that will bare them. air nomads: fucking of course not

transphobia

water tribes: yes, but less than the sexism and homophobia even though that doesn’t make any sense because i’m trans and i say so. people are sorted by their (perceived) gender which is inherently transphobic, however i say that once it is known that a person is not the gender they were perceived they are allowed to switch roles without too much pushback. earth kingdom: some. it’s not well understood and there is little mainstream knowledge or support, but there’s not the kind of recalcitrance we have irl. generally if a trans person says they’re their gender people are like “uh okay” and it’s very strange and confusing, but everyone accepts that a person knows themselves better than anyone else could. fire nation: very little. again, the only Thing is that they want biological heirs. air nomads: again sorting people by gender is inherently transphobic, but also again i’m trans and i declare that once the perception is corrected the person can be re-sorted without issue. there is much less gatekeeping for this here than in the water tribes. altho men and women are separated they don’t actually have that differing of roles, and nonbinary people are easily accepted.

classism

water tribes: very little. they do have a ruling class, but the distance financially between the chief’s family and the next most important family is negligent. earth kingdom: yes. also a plot point. fire nation: yes. the rich are disgustingly rich and the poor are destitute, and the labor of the entire nation is coerced in the name of the royal family’s wants. i also headcanon that many entry level jobs are drafted and citizens of age must serve in either an enforcement/military or service occupation for a set number of years until they can choose promotion or discharge. air nomads: no. they don’t even have money. they have a gerontocracy, so the highest class is aged into.

ableism

water tribes: no. injury is thought to be a mark of strength and defects, illness, and divergence are considered to be a sort of spiritual road map. the spirits put that there to lead that person to a different path that they wouldn’t have found if they were like everyone else. earth kingdom: yes. also a plot point, and classism and ableism go together like sexism and homophobia. toph’s parents belittle and control her and are ashamed of her enough to hide that they even have a child. teo’s dad moved them outside of their society to protect him from ableism and to be able to make him a fully accessible environment. fire nation: yes, at least for the last hundred years. injury is considered to be a mark of honor, but only if it was incurred in the course of war. otherwise disabilities make people less useful to the machine and are disdained. (side note: zuko is autistic. thank you for your time.) air nomads: no. ridiculous.

racism

water tribes: no. earth kingdom: yes. the culture has integrated aspects of fire nation prejudices in a reactionary way due to colonization. for example, earth kingdom beauty standards are close to the same as fire nation beauty standards even though the average earth kingdom citizen doesn’t look like that. fire nation: yes. arguably THE plot point. they are imperialist colonizers, of course they’re racist. they consider themselves to be superior in looks, civility, element, etc. addressed in canon through dialogue and exposition and shown implicitly when aang is belittled at school for being “from the colonies”. air nomads: no.

[mysterylover123]

Attack on Titan: Levi [ISTP]

MYSTERYLOVER123 NOTE: Originally submitted to Funky MBTI in Fiction; however, Charity doesn’t allow Anime typings, so I forward them to my own blog and publish them here. Enjoy, AoT fans!

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD (for Attack on Titan anime Seasons 1 & 2, Levi’s backstory OVAs, and character interviews)! In order to write the best profile I could, I used some of the specific details that led me to type Levi as I have. Please do not read this if you don’t want to be spoiled. Also, I use “Scouts” instead of “Survey Corps” (SC) in this analysis. I hope that doesn’t bug anyone too much!

UNOFFICIAL TYPING BY: luminousglorygrace

Introverted Thinking (Ti): Levi believes, and acts based upon, the things that make the most logical sense to him. While he is physically talented, he doesn’t jump without looking, so to speak, as much as an Se dominant character might (such as Eren, an ESFP). Levi’s words and actions at Eren’s court hearing (season 1) reveal his use of Ti. He says that he personally believes that pain is the best tool for discipline. Not that pain is objectively the best tool, not that he recommends all leaders implement a system of pain for discipline, but that he, personally, thinks pain is effective, and so he uses it to demonstrate his ability to control Eren. He also plays a role in convincing the military police members, and the judge, that he and Erwin are correct in taking Eren under the Scouts’ wing by laying out the inconsistency of the MP’s thoughts. In the scene, Levi is beating Eren, and the MP leader tells him to stop because he fears Eren will get angry and turn into a titan. Levi points out how ridiculous that concern is. In essence, he says to the MPs, “you’re here telling us that you will torture Levi, but I’m currently torturing him, and you’re afraid? That makes no sense. It proves that I can handle him, that the Scouts can handle him, and that the MPs can’t.” (Not a direct quote, I am paraphrasing). Ti users value consistency and accuracy of thought, so Levi’s actions in the court room are classic for skilled Ti users.

We also get a small window into Levi’s inner-musings when he tells Eren (while running from the female titan in season 1), that he often wonders whether it’s better to trust oneself and one’s own skills or to trust and count on capable teammates. Looking beyond his words, this tells us that Levi’s thoughts have an undertone of “what makes the most sense to me? What is the right choice for a successful result?” Not so much for a moral/ethical reason (it’s not “which choice makes me a good person,” or “which choice is morally correct”) like an Fi user might consider. Instead, Levi wants to understand which action would produce the most successful outcome (beating the enemy, preserving life). We know that he lost his dearest childhood friends in the past because he chose to trust them (OVAs), and now he is constantly wondering what the best course of action is when faced with the same choice (trust or work alone).

In the character interviews (please see link below), Dot Pyxis says that Levi “seems to dislike the inherent irrationality of this world.” Ti users are definitely frustrated by the irrationality they see in the world. Finally, and this is a bit stereotypical, Levi is more of a reserved, introspective guy, which further suggests he’s an ISTP versus an ESTP.

Extroverted Sensing (Se): Levi is known as Humanity’s Strongest (or Greatest) Soldier. His combat skills are unmatched, and everyone deeply respects his talent. He has a clear perception of the environment around him and of his own body, so he is able to act quickly (and with deadly precision) in battle. For example, he moves so fast fighting the female titan (season 1) that she is unable to harden her skin in time to defend herself. In the OVAs, we see Levi’s unique style of holding his blades. At first, he is criticized for it, but he is aware of his body, and he can feel that holding the blades the way he wants will work for him. In the end, because of how he holds the blades, he can perform his cool spinning-slice technique. Levi is also great in crisis situations because he is in tune with his surroundings. When Eren accidentally turns into a titan, Levi is able to stay calm, get in front of Eren, and tell everyone to stand down. When his squad asks him why they should be calm he says something like “I have a feeling.” It’s almost like he can sense that Eren doesn’t mean any harm, and it’s probably because he hears Eren’s panicked breathing, hears his confused exclamations, sees him trembling, etc, while his squad is so panicked that it’s hard for them to notice how Eren is responding to his titan form. Finally, Levi seems to delight in physical sensation. He enjoys the taste of black tea (so much so that he wants to open a tea shop if he lives long enough and the world around him is safe), he likes to be in clean spaces, and he likes the feel of flying through the air with ODM.

Introverted Intuition (Ni): Part of why Levi’s battle skills are so incredible is because of his tertiary Ni. He has a good sense of what will happen next in a battle, so he can act quicker than others can. His speed in a fight is due to a combination of his physical ability and his ability to understand what his opponent will do next—he can move his body quickly, he is in tune with the world around him, and his quick perceptions of the world add up to him knowing what will happen next. He can move and attack based on what his opponent will soon do, not just what they are doing in the moment. My favorite example of this is during his battle with the female titan after he loses his squad (season 1). He knows that his spin technique is one of his best, so he prepares the necessary grip (Ti; this is my strength, it’s pretty special, she may not be ready for it, it makes sense to me to use this move). We see that his eyes are razor-focused on her running form, taking in every detail of her movements via Se. All of those Se impressions tell him when she’ll punch (Ni), and, before she’s even finished throwing her punch (Ni again, acting on something that isn’t fully realized in the real world), he’s already spin-slicing up her arm (Se). A really cool TiSeNi moment and a nice example of how an auxiliary Se user’s perceiving functions interact.

Extraverted Feeling (Fe): It’s clear that, underneath it all, Levi is a bit of a softie. When the Scouts are retreating to the wall, and Erwin makes it clear that the troops are to outrun the titans chasing them (season 1), no matter the cost, Levi tells the soldiers in the back to dump the bodies with a heavy heart. He even tries to ease their guilt by saying “we’ve had to leave bodies before.” He could’ve given them a strictly logical argument, like “it’s the only way we’ll move fast enough,” but he understands the pain it will cause, and he cares about his peers, so he tries to soften the command. There is also profound hurt in his eyes when he sees Petra’s body being thrown off of the cart, and he is openly stricken when the troops return to the wall, and Petra’s father talks about the fact that she likely wanted to marry Levi. Levi also gives one of the soldiers (Dieter) a wing patch to remember a fallen friend. When Levi gives Dieter the patch, Levi hints that he also keeps patches as proof that his friends once lived. Dieter is moved to tears by the heartfelt gesture. At multiple points in both season 1 and 2, when Levi talks to Erwin, Levi is openly regretful about the amount of lives that have to be lost for the cause (whereas Erwin is much more stoic about the fact that they have to do whatever it takes and sacrifice as many lives as it takes). In the OVA, Levi rampages against the titan that killed his friends, while screaming from the emotional pain, and, once he’s killed the titan, he openly weeps. Finally, for further proof of Fe being in Levi’s stack, I read a few “character interviews” going around on tumblr, and in those interviews both Erwin and Dot Pyxis talk about Levi actually being a warm and considerate person who helps bring positive emotions to the troops. Here are the relevant quotes from those interviews:

Part 1 (Erwin’s comments. Source:http://yusenki.tumblr.com/post/141836483282/au-smartpass-erwin-levi-close-up-interview)

Erwin (E): …Alright. Starting with Levi…I think he is excellent at shouldering important duties. With the title “Humanity’s Strongest” as part of the SC, our reputations have also been elevated. On the battlefield, he has also faithfully completed the tasks I have assigned to him. Despite his warmhearted nature, I’ve asked him to carry out some cruel missions…

Journalist (J): Is Captain Levi very…”warmhearted?”

E: You’ve already interviewed his subordinates, right? Then you must have heard just how much they trust their captain.

J: Indeed. I even heard the same thing from new recruits who are not from his squad.

E: He just has a rude attitude…but he cherishes his comrades’ life more than anyone else. His reputation cannot be established based on strength alone, Humans can subconsciously detect how much concern others have for them… and when they notice this kindness, it inspires power…That is something that I can’t do.

J: But I don’t think Commander Erwin is not trusted by your subordinates.

E: As the commander of SC… As the person who stands on the frontlines of humanity’s battle, I must make countless decisions that risk my soldiers’ lives. Of course, I’m able to do that because of their trust…However, I wouldn’t hesitate to make those sacrifices when we’re under dire circumstances.

J: Is it all for the sake of humanity’s future?

E: Yes. However, if I stand alone in this authoritative position, I wouldn’t be able to maintain the SC. Because he’s at my side, the SC soldiers are able to fight heroically. Levi and I’s positions cannot be exchanged.

Part 2 (Pyxis’ comments. Source:http://yusenki.tumblr.com/post/131152292543/levi-close-up-report-part-two)

Pixis (P): I have thoroughly checked Levi’s interview… Well, I think this is enough. Above all, as long as the better facets of his personality are being shown on the article, it’ll do.

Journalist: What can you say about his personality?

P: He might look violent and impolite but fundamentally he doesn’t hate humans. He seems to dislike the inherent irrationality of this world and that is why he doesn’t want to leave the memory of hurting someone…You can see that he’s full of consideration when he’s talking about his comrades. Those young soldiers subconsciously feel it and that’s why they are following him.

NOTES/Final thoughts: I know that this was long (and that this section is also long lol), so thanks for reading! I really love Levi’s character, and I think he’s a great example of a relatively balanced ISTP. I wanted to get this right! Again, this typing is based on Seasons 1 & 2 of the Attack on Titan anime, Levi’s 2 backstory OVAs, and the character interviews I found on tumblr. I do not read the manga, and those who do may have a different view of Levi!

I have seen a few people argue that Levi is an INTJ. While I certainly respect different opinions (the guy is a fictional character after all!), I admit that I’m confused by those who think Levi is an INTJ. Levi is first and foremost an extraordinary fighter. While INTJs do have Se in their stack, I argue that Levi is such an incredible fighter because Se is high in his stack. Also, when we look at why Levi is so valued by his teammates, and even why a lot of real-life fans love him, it’s because of his fighting prowess and calm demeanor…not so much because of his ability to lead the army, create high-quality battle plans, see courses of action that others can’t see, etc. In fact, I believe it’s Erwin, not Levi, who possesses the latter characteristics. I don’t see a lot of evidence of Levi having a driving, central goal, that guides his life work and motivates him to do long range planning, and I don’t see him noticing or passionately seeking some sort of truth about the world (traits we might associate with Ni users). I also don’t see him focusing on project completion or system implementation (some kind of structured, real-world manifestation of his ideas), nor do I see him trying to get others to do things in a way that he deems objectively correct (traits we might associate with a Te user). For example, Erwin really values establishing a plan of action and making sure everyone follows orders and sticks to the plan. Levi, on the other hand, is more flexible. For example, when Eren is debating whether or not he should turn into a titan to fight the female titan (season 1), Levi basically says “do it or don’t do it. Neither choice is wrong. It’s up to you.” This suggests use of the more individualistic Ti. In the same situation, we might expect Erwin to say “this is the order. Follow it,” using the more directive Te.

I believe that Erwin is the XNTJ (I haven’t thought about E versus I for him). Levi believes in Erwin’s competence and leadership abilities, so he willingly follows Erwin’s orders. After the female titan escapes (by calling other titans to devour her body; season 1), Erwin instructs Levi to replenish his supplies. Levi says that this doesn’t make sense to him (he essentially says, “we need to hurry, and I have enough to get back”). But Erwin, who is thinking several steps ahead of everyone else and preparing for the female titan to reemerge, tells Levi to follow orders and replenish. Levi listens because he trusts Erwin’s vision and plans.

Also, when the Scouts are retreating after the failed attempt to catch the female titan (season 1), 2 titans start chasing the group. Levi says to Erwin (roughly) “I don’t see any trees or buildings. We can’t fight them.” Erwin responds by saying something like “it’ll be faster to keep moving to the wall,” and Levi follows Erwin’s orders. To me this is a nice, albeit quick, interaction of TiSe (Levi) and TeNi (or NiTe; Erwin). Levi says, “here’s what I’m seeing, and here’s what I think does/does not make sense.” Erwin says, “our goal right now is to survive, because if we lose too many people we can’t continue pursuing the overarching goal of learning the truth about titans. In order to survive right now, we will take this action. Objectively, it is the best. Follow my lead.” Again, Levi listens.

Finally, in his backstory OVAs, Levi says something like: “this guy [Erwin] sees things that I can’t see [hinting at Erwin’s use of Ni], and I think he’s onto something, so I’m going to follow him.” Erwin is also the one with the clear goal of learning the truth about titans and saving humanity. He thinks of innovative ways to pursue his goal, he expects people to follow his orders, and he is willing to make difficult decisions and sacrifices to achieve this goal (qualities that speak to TeNi or NiTe). People look to Erwin to feel secure about plans and the direction of the Scouts’ work, whereas they seem to rely on Levi to be level-headed and victorious in combat (and to show them moments of tender camaraderie like the ones I described above). That’s all folks! I can’t wait for season 3 =)!

[xhxhxhx]

I was searching for survey data on the class background of winter sports. I wasn’t able to find anything, but I did find a March 1978 address by Pierre Bourdieu, translated and reprinted as “Sport and social class,” Social Science Information 17:6 (1978), 819--840, which was better.

There is the familiar account of the practice of aristocratic and haut-bourgeois distinction, but expressed clearly and persuasively:

The constitution of a field of sports practices is linked to the development of a philosophy of sport which is necessarily a political philosophy of sport. The theory of amateurism is in fact one dimension of an aristocratic philosophy of sport as a disinterested practice, a finality without an end, analogous to artistic practice, but even more suitable than art (there is always something residually feminine about art: consider the piano and watercolours of genteel young ladies in the same period) for affirming the manly virtues of future leaders: sport is conceived as a training in courage and manliness, ’forming the character’ and inculcating the ’will to win’ which is the mark of the true leader, but a will to win within the rules. This is ’fair play’, conceived as an aristocratic disposition utterly opposed to the plebeian pursuit of victory at all costs. (And then one would have to explore the link between the sporting virtues and the military virtues: remember the glorification of the deeds of old Etonians or Oxonians on the field of battle or in aerial combat.) This aristocratic ethic, devised by aristocrats (the first Olympic committee included innumerable dukes, counts and lords, and all of ancient stock) and guaranteed by aristocrats, all those who constitute the self-perpetuating oligarchy of international and national organizations, is clearly adapted to the requirements of the times, and, as one sees in the works of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, incorporates the most essential assumptions of the bourgeois ethic of private enterprise, baptized ’self-help’ (English often serves as a euphemism).

What is at stake, it seems to me, in this debate (which goes far beyond sport), is a definition of bourgeois education which contrasts with the petty-bourgeois and academic definition: it is ’energy’, ’courage’, ’willpower’, the virtues of leaders (military or industrial), and perhaps above all personal initiative, (private) ’enterprise’, as opposed to knowledge, erudition, ’scholastic’ submissiveness, symbolized in the great lycée-barracks and its disciplines, etc. In short, it would be a mistake to forget that the modern definition of sport that is often associated with the name of Coubertin is an integral part of a ’moral ideal’, i.e. an ethos which is that of the dominant fractions of the dominant class and is brought to fruition in the major private schools intended primarily for the sons of the heads of private industry, such as the École des Roches, the paradigmatic realization of this ideal. To value education over instruction, character or willpower over intelligence, sport over culture, is to affirm, within the educational universe itself, the existence of a hierarchy irreducible to the strictly scholastic hierarchy which favours the second term in those oppositions. It means, as it were, disqualifying or discrediting the values recognized by other fractions of the dominant class or by other classes (especially the intellectual fractions of the petty-bourgeoisie and the ’sons of schoolteachers’, who are serious challengers to the sons of the bourgeoisie on the terrain of purely scholastic competence); it means putting forward other criteria of ’achievement’ and other principles for legitimating achievement as alternatives to ’academic achievement’. 

This is all familiar enough, and it’s the second part of the address, “The logic of demand: sporting practices and entertainments in the unity of life-styles,” which develops Bourdieu’s model for understanding sports-as-they-are, as a site of social difference and distinction within a field shaped by class, rather than sports-as-they were, that I found most interesting.

Bourdieu has a simple and pliable model of athletic demand as something shaped not only by economic and cultural capital, but also by an underlying system of aesthetic and ethical preferences, or “the affinity between the ethical and aesthetic dispositions characteristic of each class or class fraction and the objective potentialities of ethical or aesthetic accomplishment which are or seem to be contained in each sport.”   

It’s Bourdieu’s analysis of particular sports that I’m here for, and he doesn’t disappoint.

As regards the profits actually perceived, Jacques Defrance convincingly shows that gymnastics may be asked to produce either a strong body, bearing the outward signs of strength -- this is the working-class demand, which is satisfied by body-building -- or a healthy body -- this is the bourgeois demand, which is satisfied by a gymnastics or other sports whose function is essentially hygienic.’

It is no accident that the ’strong-man’ was for a long time one of the most typically popular entertainments - remember the famous Dédé la Boulange who performed in the Square d’Anvers, alternating feats of strength with a mountebank’s patter - or that weight-lifting, which is supposed to develop the muscles, was for many years, especially in France, the favourite working-class sport; nor is it an accident that the Olympic authorities took so long to grant official recognition to weight-lifting, which, in the eyes of the aristocratic founders of modern sport, symbolized mere strength, brutality and intellectual poverty, in short the working classes.

The most important property of the ’popular sports’ is the fact that they are tacitly associated with youth, which is spontaneously and implicitly credited with a sort of provisional licence expressed, among other ways, in the squandering of an excess of physical (and sexual) energy, and are abandoned very early (usually at the moment of entry into adult life, marked by marriage). By contrast, the ’bourgeois’ sports, mainly practised for their functions of physical maintenance and for the social profit they bring, have in common the fact that their age-limit lies far beyond youth and perhaps comes correspondingly later the more prestigious and exclusive they are (e.g. golf).

Thus, most of the team sports -- basketball, handball, rugby, football -- which are most common among office workers, technicians and shopkeepers, and also no doubt the most typically working-class individual sports, such as boxing or wrestling, combine all the reasons to repel the upper classes. These include the social composition of their public which reinforces the vulgarity implied by their popularization, the values and virtues demanded (strength, endurance, the propensity to violence, the spirit of ’sacrifice’, docility and submission to collective discipline, the absolute antithesis of the ’role distance’ implied in bourgeois roles, etc.), the exaltation of competition and the contest, etc. But in the case of a sport like pétanque [a French sport similar to bocce] it seems that only the logic of distinction can explain the class distribution. This sport, the least distinguished and least distinctive of all, since it requires practically no economic or cultural capital and demands little more than spare time, regularly culminates among the lower middle classes, especially among primary-school teachers and clerical workers in the medical services. Thereafter it declines, particularly sharply in categories where there is the strongest desire to stand apart from the vulgar, as among artists and members of the professions.

In reality, even apart from any search for distinction, it is the relation to one’s own body, a fundamental aspect of the habitus, which distinguishes the working classes from the privileged classes, just as, within the latter, it distinguishes fractions that are separated by the whole universe of a life-style. On one side, there is the instrumental relation to the body which the working classes express in all the practices centred on the body, whether in dieting or beauty care, relation to illness or medication, and which is also manifested in the choice of sports requiring a considerable investment of effort, sometimes of pain and suffering (e.g. boxing) and sometimes a gambling with the body itself (as in motor-cycling, parachute-jumping, all forms of acrobatics, and, to some extent, all sports involving fighting, among which we may include rugby). On the other side, there is the tendency of the privileged classes to treat the body as an end in itself, with variants according to whether the emphasis is placed on the intrinsic functioning of the body as an organism, which leads to the macrobiotic cult of health, or on the appearance of the body as a perceptible configuration, the ’physique’, i.e. the body-for-others. Everything seems to suggest that the concern to cultivate the body appears, in its most elementary form, i.e. as the cult of health, often implying an ascetic exaltation of sobriety and dietetic rigour, among the lower middle classes, i.e. among junior executives, clerical workers in the medical services and especially primary-school teachers, who indulge particularly intensively in gymnastics, the ascetic sport par excellence since it amounts to a sort of training (askesis) for training’s sake.

Bourdieu’s description of the class valence of middle-class sports is amusing because it is true:

Gymnastics or strictly health-oriented sports like walking or jogging, which, unlike ball games, do not offer any competitive satisfaction, are highly rational and rationalized activities. This is firstly because they presuppose a resolute faith in reason and in the deferred and often intangible benefits which reason promises (such as protection against ageing, an abstract and negative advantage which only exists by reference to a thoroughly theoretical referent); secondly, because they generally only have meaning by reference to a thoroughly theoretical, abstract knowledge of the effects of an exercise which is itself often reduced, as in gymnastics, to a series of abstract movements, decomposed and reorganized by reference to a specific and technically-defined end (e.g. ’the abdominals’) and is opposed to the total movements of everyday situations, oriented towards practical goals, just as marching, broken down into elementary movements in the sergeant-major’s handbook, is opposed to ordinary walking. Thus it is understandable that these activities can only be rooted in the ascetic dispositions of upwardly mobile individuals who are prepared to find their satisfaction in effort itself and to accept -- such is the whole meaning of their existence -- the deferred satisfactions which will reward their present sacrifice.

In sports like mountaineering (or, to a lesser extent, walking), which are most common among secondary or university teachers, the purely health-oriented function of maintaining the body is combined with all the symbolic gratifications associated with practising a highly distinctive activity. This gives to the highest degree the sense of mastery of one’s own body as well as the free and exclusive appropriation of scenery inaccessible to the vulgar.

The appeal of sport to the aristocracy and haut bourgeoisie has always seemed somewhat transparent -- it’s not like they’re hiding it -- but the implicit class distinctions of middle-class sports have always been somewhat disguised, so I appreciate the analysis.

[monswoon]

hey i was just wondering where you get all your ideas for the setting of street brat, like have you thought of all these types of places for years and just happened to include them in your story, or did you have a specific setting in mind that you found details for in historical facts and stuff? like jumina for example

A warning in advance: this is going to get lengthy. You struck a nerve, asking me about world building. Chances are I went off on an irrelevant tangent half way and never answered your question. If so, feel free to message me again and kick my ass.

With Trost, the idea I started off with was very vague and self-indulgent. I just wanted write about South Asian outfits jewellery and foods because it’s not stuff I come across often at all. A lot of those small, specific details like smells, bustling markets, tastes of homestyle foods are stuff I already knew about because of my background so was easy enough to extrapolate from. 

Other things that helped bolster the world-building was just cool things I’d stumble across and make note of to include; the Paāvaena’s decorated camels, Eren’s twin kukri and their origin, the main masjid inspired by the Hagia Sophia, Eren’s mums Tamil/Sri Lankan origin from ‘Serendib’, etc. World-building is really a matter of being able to create a franken-world of original ideas mixed with cool real life things seamlessly patched together. I started off with the base idea of ~15h century Constantinople in mind, and then went fast and loose recreating that concept with a heavy combination of Mamluk architecture and predominantly South Asian food and clothing. It all really just snowballed from there.

Jumina is your first and only glimpse of the world beyond Trost outside of what passing stories people have mentioned of prior expeditions and the Paāvaena’s travels. I’ve mentioned this several times before, but I do not plan ahead with my writing very much at all, and if you’d asked about Eren leaving Trost at ch 67 (Jumina was first mentioned ch 69) I would have hemmed and hawed because I honestly hadn’t thought that far ahead. Trost I drew from my own background and cool facts I’d gathered a lot the way, whereas Jumina was me just trying to think of something different enough from Trost to register as a believable nation with different cultural practices and values. I’m glad to hear it worked, though.

I started off with the wall. I bothered @erenbaegerr to bombard me with different walls they might have heard of to give me a foundation from which to build up this entirely alien country. I hit a jackpot when they mentioned the Gates of Cairo to me and their historical significance which was just fascinating enough to plant the seed for the values of this foreign nation and, as with Trost, I extrapolated from there. 

I had to think rationally: this had to be a country worth forging an alliance with, so what would they bring to the table? Trost was a thriving seaport nation smack-bam in the centre of several major trade routes; they didn’t need resources and goods. Trost would need a country that could make up for what it lacked, and that is mostly the stability and influence of an older nation. 

Coupled with the seedling of an idea that the Gates of Cairo had planted in my imagination, I began to picture a proud, quietly confident country that would be shaped by centuries of triumph as a military stronghold. Ruthlessly practical and self-assured in their own stature that they wouldn’t see a need for the kind of fanciful things that shaped Trost. Trost was a cultural hub and a trading goldmine; it valued diversity, trinkets, and beautiful things from far away lands. It’s most prestigious branch of the military was tasked with exploration and diplomacy. These all shaped the image of how Trost was to be perceived, and likewise, Jumina would appear different based on its strengths. 

I first pictured a kingdom based at the foot of a mountain range for strategic purposes, but that went on to manifest in other ways too. I liked the parallel I made between the Palace in Jumina to Acalapura in Trost. Trost built its Palace on a giant rock to be admired and marveled at from far and wide, meanwhile Jumina carved it’s Palace into a fucking mountain. Jumina was founded in strength and conquest. I wanted Jumina to exude this subtle intimidation in everything, I wanted it to be inherent in the very atmosphere of the country. Everything was be low-key, practical, and majestic. Impressive just by being. You know when you walk into a really old church and the quiet reverence and hush of such an ancient structure is enough to cow you into this sort of awestruck deference? That’s what I wanted Jumina to feel like; it had weathered what the world had thrown at it for centuries and come out, maybe not prettier, but certainly more impressive for it. 

Okay I’m stopping myself now: I think, to answer your question, I have different approaches to how I begin my world-building process. Trost was out of fun and pure self-indulgence; I wrote what I wanted to write about, including fun facts and cool ideas I’d accumulated on the way. Jumina came from a more practical, strategic viewpoint; I had an idea in my mind and I made it more concrete and believable by researching things that would bolster that image in my mind, and consolidated those ideas by constructing a matching culture around it.

I hope I answered your question! I think it might be in there somewhere among all the irrelevant waffle…

[gradiivus]

Rigel’s Government

Following the trend, and also because worldbuilding. This isn’t the full template that I posted last night, only a description of the government and caste system in Rigel (and how Zeke manages to avoid it all). Based on Berkut’s description, some of this seems like it might be canon in Shadows of Valentia, but I’m also hoping that IntSys doesn’t flip it over and turn Rigel’s government into a traditional monarchy, where Berkut’s ability to become the next Emperor is tied to his relation to Rudolf as his nephew. As always, I’ll edit things as more canon info is announced.

Similar to the system established in ancient Sparta, there is a highly rigid, highly defined caste system in Rigel where those in the military receive the highest privileges, including the right to hold office. The Emperor is not selected from a bloodline, but is chosen effectively by the people (the military) who deem him to be the strongest and most adept general in the country. The Emperor then selects sergeants, high generals, commanders, etc. to hold offices and serve in court, and these officers select their own subordinates and so on. Each department is bound to a set of duties, doing neither less nor more than what is designated to them, and as long as everyone fulfills these, the country is expected to run efficiently. Those who fail to carry out their jobs are removed from office and, as is usually the case, stripped of their titles and honors.

The social system is made up of the military (upper class/the closest thing Rigel has to nobility), merchants (middle class), and laborers (usually non-citizens, prisoners, enslaved poor, etc.). Similar to Sparta’s system, only those born to Rigelian parents are allowed to undergo the rigorous education to become members of the military, and also similar to Sparta, these individuals are expected to devote their entire lives to serve their country, which means that they are forbidden from participating in trades or activities beyond training for battle. This is where the middle class comes in. Typically, members of this class do not participate in politics (the exception being the very rare few who formerly served the military and are retired or have been honorably discharged), but they are given a moderate amount of freedom to travel, make money, etc. Most notably, members of this class are not considered citizens and tend to be wealthy immigrants, or children of wealthy immigrants. They are in charge of running shops and inns in the cities, watching over the mines, trading with Zofia or beyond, etc. all for the sake of fueling the military. It is the military that receives the best of these resources, then the middle class, and then the remains are to be divided up to the lower class. As Rigel is very agriculturally poor, merchants tend to specialize in artisan crafts.

While not merchants specifically, the upper middle class consists of native Rigelians who serve the military in other ways – clerics, priests, smiths, breeders, etc. Tatiana would be considered part of this class.

The laborers of the lower class have no citizenry at all and consist of poor immigrants/refugees, prisoners, slaves, those considered unfit for military service, orphans, children of slaves (even if one parent was a member of the upper classes), and those who have fled the military or been stripped of their privileges. They are forced to work the portions of land awarded to members of the upper class, work for the members of the middle class, or work in the mines. Those who are particularly unfortunate are sent to work in the salt mines, where they will inevitably die. This group is large and resources are slim, so many resort to making money through underground fighting rings (gambling + reducing the population), underground trades with Zofia, or pillaging villages, usually in Zofia. The farther east one goes, the greater the population of the lower class.

 The far east, however, consists of Judah’s shamans, who have their own small governing system and economy. They do not participate in the military, instead seeking power through Doma directly, and work autonomously beneath the Empire. On several occasions, the central Rigelian government has clashed with Judah, but for the most part, the two groups live in an uneasy peace separated by the mountain range that splits the country. There is a very “if you don’t cross my line, I won’t cross yours” mentality at work here, and perceived transgressions usually result in small skirmishes in the countryside. The live sacrifices conducted by the shamans in pursuit of this power are generally ignored by the main government, both as part of this mentality, and because the sacrifices are usually those of the lower class.

Men and women have, more or less, equal status throughout the land, as the philosophy that Rigel was founded on values strength and power above all. If a woman is strong, then she is allowed the privileges of the upper class; likewise, if a man is weak, he is condemned to the lower class. The stratification comes from physical and mental ability, not gender, and it is not uncommon for parents to euthanize their children who appear weak, so that they do not have to live their lives in the hell that is Rigel’s lower class.

Zeke is an exception to this, and one of the very few outsiders who has managed to enter Rigel’s strict caste system as a member of the upper class. When he met Emperor Rudolf for the first time and displayed his skill to him, the Emperor saw a talent that would be wasted should he be condemned to the lower class. From then on, Rudolf sought to protect Zeke, keeping him close and insisting quite strongly that he has always been Rigelian. Zeke’s amnesia worked to his benefit in this case, and even after his memories returned, he keeps this as one of his most carefully guarded secrets. For a man who values honesty, in a country that values frankness and honor, the guilt is heavy. However, he serves the country as if it had always been his home, and has never once thought to abandon it.

[foursproutwealth-blog]

Army Major Warns Don't Poke The Dragon, War With China Would Be An Unnecessary Disaster

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Army Major Warns Don't Poke The Dragon, War With China Would Be An Unnecessary Disaster

Authored by Major Danny Sjursen via AntiWar.com,

The Non-Options: 4 Wars the Military Prepares for But Shouldn’t Fight: Volume II

There’s nothing military men like more than obsessively training for wars they will never have to fight. The trick is not to stumble into a conflict that no one will win.

Let’s everyone take a breath. Yes, China presents a potential threat to American interests in the economic, cyber, and naval realms. The U.S. must maintain a credible defensive and expeditionary posture and be prepared for a worst case scenario. What we don’t need is to blunder into a regional, or, worse still, all-out war with the Chinese dragon. Not now, probably not ever.

And yet, in Washington today, and within the Trump administration in particular, alarmism seems the name of the game. This is risky, and, ultimately, dangerous. In his 2018 National Defense Strategy, Secretary of Defense Mattis, a known hawk, refers to Russia and China as “revisionist powers,” and announces that the US military must now pivot to “great power” competition. Look, I’m all for extricating our overstretched armed forces from the Middle East and de-escalating the never-ending, counterproductive “war on terror.” What doesn’t make sense, is the reflexive assumption that (maybe) dialing down one war, must translate into ramping up for other, more perilous, wars with nuclear-armed powerhouses like Russia or China.

The usual laundry list of Chinese threats is well-known: China is (how dare they!) building a sizable blue-water navy and (gasp!) patrolling around sandy islands in the South China Sea. They conduct cyber-attacks (so do we) and steal intellectual property. They are planning a new “Silk Road” to integrate much of Eurasia into a China-centric trade and transportation system. No doubt, some of those items may be cause for measured concern, but none of the listed “infractions” warrants war!

Bottom line: China, like Russia, possesses neither the capacity nor intent for global domination or the subjugation of the United States. Period.

Let’s start with the capacity problem. China has a growing military. That is to be expected of one of the world’s top-two economies and a nation with more than 1 billion people. Don’t act so surprised. Still, China spends only one thirdas much as the US on defense. It has one leaky, outdated former Russian aircraft carrier and is building a few more. The US has about a dozen and our local Asian partners (India, Japan, Australia, and South Korea) – count another nine between them.

China has 14 foreign powers – some hostile – on its land borders. One of those is Russia, with whom the Chinese have a long history of border disputes. The last thing the US should want to do is drive those two unnatural allies into each other’s arms with overly bellicose rhetoric and military posturing. Another Chinese neighbor is India, which is strengthening its own military and also has 1+ billion citizens (and a much higher birthrate than China).

Then there’s the intent issue. China is not after global domination and no longer possesses a true internationalist communist ideology. It wants regionalsuperiority and a measure of global respect to make up for its perceived (and actual) embarrassment by European and American imperialists in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It wants a powerful trade block across Eurasia and a measure of control of its own “lake” – the South China Sea. Is that so unreasonable? The US has outright supremacy in its bordering seas, such as the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and Eastern Pacific. The US military has even sponsored coups and conducted outright invasions of nearby islands that didn’t sufficiently march to Washington’s tune.

Switch places with Chinese leader Xi Jinping for a moment. How would Trump(or Obama) respond, if the Chinese insisted they had a right to supremacy in the Caribbean? My guess: outright war.

Finally, there are the reasons not to fight, the reasons why a war would be catastrophic for both sides. China is huge, both in landmass and population(of 1.3 billion!). We’ve all heard the (accurate) trope warning against starting a land war in Asia. There’s good reason for that. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is huge and is capable of bogging the relatively small, all-volunteer US military in a nightmarish quagmire.

Nor could the US count on an easy projection of its naval and airpower into, say, the Taiwan Strait. China (and other competitors) have invested heavily in A2AD (Anti-Access, Area-Denial) systems that could thwart such attempts, inflict heavy casualties, or, at the least, maintain standoff. This would force the US military to preemptively escalate with attacks on Chinese homeland defenses. There is very little opportunity, therefore, to wage a limited war. Any fight with China will force the US”all-in” as a matter of course.

Furthermore, China’s booming and growing economy is both its strength and a sort of financial doomsday device. The US, European, and Chinese economies are by now inextricably linked. Hot war means trade war; and that would likely result in a cataclysmic global financial collapse. The US military is the most well-funded and equipped force on earth. Still, the backbone and foundation of that military rests with the power of the US economy. A new crash and potential depression would permanently damage our economy (along with China’s, no doubt).

Most importantly, China maintains an arsenal of at least 250 nuclear warheads. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to America’s 6000+ weapons, but more than enough to deter any serious invasion. Here’s the trick: never to fight a nuclear power, so long as it can be avoided. Anything else is insanity – ever heard of Nuclear Winter? Yea, it’s a real thing! The lesson: tread lightly, be cautious, and avoid unnecessary brinksmanship. That’s called statesmanship, something the US seems to have forgotten about these last 17 years.

Truth is, most of this threat inflation is really about cooking the books to justify gross overspending and a profits bonanza for the military-industrial complex. That’s a concern in itself, because a $700+ billion military budget is unsustainable, requiring either tough cuts to domestic programs, increased taxes, a ballooning national debt – or all of the above.

The real danger, though, is military brinksmanship. And the inescapable fog of war. It’s not impossible to imagine a dispute in the distant South China Sea (7000 miles from California) resulting in combat and casualties between the US and China. This could quickly escalate out of control. And remember, we both have loads of nuclear weapons!

It’s time to realistically weigh US interests, display some humility and craft a sober strategy for the Pacific. The sea coast of China cannot forever remain an “American lake.” We would never accept a foreign power in the Caribbean and can’t expect China – with over a billion citizens and a growing economy – to cede their local waters to a distant American Navy in perpetuity.

The US must appeal to local Asian partners based on our (ostensible) shared values of open trade and open society – a challenge to the more authoritarian Chinese value system. After all, soft power goes a long way, especially when all-out war is a non-option! That, of course, will require more consistency from the US We’ll have to walk the walk on our values and quit backing our “partners’” military campaigns – Saudis in Yemen, Israel in Gaza, etc. – when they often add up to veritable war crimes.

Remember, we owe the Chinese a lot of money. That gives them leverage, but it also gives us leverage. They want to be paid back and Beijing knows it needs the American market for its goods. Besides, our economies are actually highly intertwined. XI doesn’t want a major war with the US He is playing the long game, a chess match as compared to our bumbling checkers!

If there is a war in the Pacific with nuclear-armed China it will most likely not be of XI’s doing. Only American hubris can lead to what would inevitably be a disastrous war.

Given our recent track record – an Icarus-syndrome par excellence – that seems frighteningly likely.

*  *  *

Read The Non-Options: 4 Wars the Military Prepares for But Shouldn’t Fight, Volume I

Danny Sjursen is a US Army officer and regular contributor to Antiwar.com. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.

[darcylindbergh]

Hey! So I saw that person ask a few days ago about wanting companionship and how that relates to personal strength. So going off of your explanation, do you think Sherlock is a strong person even though he was so devastated and unhealthy before John? The person said they were a queer, isolated chemist in their twenties and I just thought it was a really similar situation and wanted your input

Mmm so first I would say that while there’s something of a correlation between personal strength and a support network, correlation does not imply causation - that is to say, many people are able to cultivate and develop personal strength without the benefit of a support network, and many people with support networks have other things going on that prevent or discourage the cultivation of personal growth. so certainly a person can have one without the other, and having one is not necessarily indicative of having the other. but I do think that people who have strong support networks have an easier time in developing personal strength, yeah. 

it’s interesting when applied to Sherlock, because in many ways, before John, Sherlock is a sort of broken person - his mental health, his addiction, and his perceived isolation all contribute. but at the same time, when he meets John in asip, really look at how the isolation flows. John makes mention of one person in his life: Harry, who we never see on screen. Everyone else on screen is Sherlock’s. Mike is the bridge between them, but he has known Sherlock more recently. Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Molly, Mycroft, even Angelo, are, in some ways, Sherlock’s. Not John’s. Angelo and Mrs Hudson are outwardly affectionate; Lestrade and Mycroft are affectionate, though less so, and in different ways. Molly, who we know just met Sherlock a few days before from her blog, doesn’t even know John’s name by TGG. 

Sherlock does have a sense of personal strength about him in ASIP, imo. It’s not great, but it’s certainly there. It’s that rough prickliness of a former addict who is desperately trying to be taken seriously - he’s aloof, he’s a bit callous, he’s demanding. So it’s not strength in the sense of being entirely who you are, because he is putting on a bit of a front to protect himself, but it is strength in the sense of finding a way to communicate with the outside world that gets him what he wants, which is the cases, which is to be taken seriously. He’s working on himself, coming out of the addiction, trying to give up cigarettes, etc, and John fills the role of you know, trying to be a better self, and suddenly here is a companion to help lift you the last few legs. John, on the other hand, has lost so so so much, and he’s easily the weaker of the two imo in asip. He has lost his structure of the military. He has lost some of his ability to work, to be a doctor. His only family is estranged. He has so few friends that when Stamford calls out to him in the park, he keeps going - either because he doesn’t realise Mike would be talking to him, or because he dreads having an interaction with someone because he’s so used to be alone. And Sherlock is the first rung, so to speak, for John. John isn’t trying to help himself up so much as he is just existing. And for some people, just existing is a big enough job! Existing is some hard fucking work. So Sherlock’s companionship is the impetus through which John begins to develop his personal strength back. 

So together, they really find their personal strengths. Sherlock shows John that he has worth, he has value. He’s not broken. He can still be useful. And John shows Sherlock that having an emotion or two isn’t as bad as it sounds. That sometimes it’s important. That caring is important. It’s also interesting how much this seems to reverse when they are separated - Sherlock is entirely isolated in TEH, when he comes back, and is trying to reforge relationships, and he’s also much softer, much more willing to show his emotional sides (or somewhat less able to hide them - toss up) and John has Mary, and apparently a whole wedding full of people, and neighbors and coworkers and so on, and yet he hides more and more and more of himself underneath this sort of veneer until we get to his breakdown in TLD. 

anyway, point being, there are different shades of strength. we see various iterations of strength between john and sherlock throughout the series, but i think in the end we really see that they are strongest, they are personally best, when they are together. that’s johnlock, to me. they fill in each other’s gaps and lift each other up and complement each other and parallel each other. It’s just really lovely. 

[nofomoartworld]

Artefact festival: Magic and politics

The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, 2009

The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception 2009. Image via Gizmodo

During the Cold War, the CIA paid magician John Mulholland $3,000 to write a manual on misdirection, concealment and deceit. The manual teaches spies how to surreptitiously slip powder into someone’s drink, send messages with their shoelaces, steal documents, etc. In true spy fashion, the text was supposed to have been destroyed in 1973. It was however recovered, declassified, and reprinted a few years ago under the title The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception.

Mulholland was not the first magician who put his skills at the service of governments. The famous Harry Houdini used his career as a cover and worked as a spy for the American and British governments. As for stage magician Jasper Maskelyne, he is remembered nowadays for his collaboration with British military intelligence during the Second World War when he elaborated all kinds of ruses and illusions to deceive the German troops.

PBS, The Ghost Army trailer, 2013

A halftrack with a 500 speaker mounted on the back for sonic deception. Image National Archive via Chicago Tonight

Around the same time, the U.S. set up the Ghost Army, an elite force whose specialty consisted in “tactical deception.” Its soldiers were recruited from art schools and ad agencies and given the mission to create visual decoys such as rubber airplanes and inflatable tanks, sonic deception and fake radio transmissions to fool the enemy into thinking that the allies troops, weaponry and infrastructures were far more formidable then they were in reality.

All these stories are of course entertaining but they also demonstrate that magic, because of the way it can deceive, confuse and manipulate is a powerful art that can be applied beyond the stage. Magic is an ambiguous and wide-ranging concept that sits at the intersection of science, spirituality and politics. It can be used to unsettle, misinform, divert the attention or even to put a veil over and make more opaque and inscrutable the complex structures that control us.

Hollington & Kyprianou, Gladiator, 2016 (Artefact commission.) Digital composite using ITN news archive

This year, the Artefact festival at STUK in Leuven (Belgium) is looking closely at magic and the role it plays in politics, finance, the military, technology and more generally in society.

The artists in The Act of Magic shed light on the way in which magic and the magical has permeated all layers of our everyday life. From poetry to activist strategy, from magical object to black box, from benign illusion to deception and manipulation, from New Age self-help advertisement to spiritual vision: the artworks throughout the exhibition incite magical thinking and reveal a passage to another world.

Artefact: The Act of Magic is a joyful, thought-provoking and intelligent festival. I expected razzle-dazzle, hocus-pocus and charming artifices. I certainly found some of that across the exhibition space but i also encountered a series of artworks that explore and demystify offshore constructions, high frequency trading algorithms, political ploys and other black boxes that keep the secrets of power away from society. I’ll focus on some of these work in this first report from the festival. The first one is from one of my favourite artistic duos:

Goldin+Senneby, Zero Magic, 2015-2016. Installation view at STUK in Leuven for the Artefact festival. Photo © Kristof Vrancken

For the past ten years, Goldin+Senneby have been studying the economic and financial world to master its strategies and bring its shadier businesses into public discussions.

For Zero Magic, the artist infiltrated a hedge fund in the US, reverse engineered its methods and recreated its short selling practices.

In finance, ‘short selling refers to the practice of selling something you do not own. Making a profit of it if and when the target company looses in value. Successful short sellers commonly trade in the narratives of failure, fraud and corruption, since dire findings and rumours are what help realize their short positions. Just like magicians, short sellers make a living by ‘adjusting’ people’s perception of reality, making them see things that don’t exist.

In collaboration with the magician Malin Nilsson and finance sociologist Théo Bourgeron, Goldin+Senneby developed and patented a magic trick for the financial markets that has the capacity to undermine the perceived value of a publicly traded company and to profit from this. The magic gimmick consists in a computer program that help non-experts identify suitable short selling targets, and a step-by-step guide to undermining their perceived value and executing thus a successful short sale.

Goldin+Senneby, Zero Magic, 2016. Magic box. Installation view: Stockholm School of Economics

Goldin+Senneby put the Zero Magic computer software inside a magic box that also contains a US Patent Application for Computer Assisted Magic Trick Executed in the Financial Markets and four historical examples of magic tricks played out offstage, in real life. One of them is the ‘Light and Heavy Chest’ trick performed in the 19th century by magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin and used in colonial Algeria as a demonstration of European superiority.

The work was first presented as part of a magic show in Helsinki in 2015 and, according to the artists, it realized a 64.7% profit for the members of the audience who had participated in the experiment by buying special tickets.

Liz Magic Laser, Stand Behind Me, 2013. Installation view at STUK in Leuven for the Artefact festival. Photo © Kristof Vrancken

Liz Magic Laser, Stand Behind Me, 2013. Performance and two-channel video, 10 minutes, Lisson Gallery, London, UK

Liz Magic Laser worked with dancer Ariel Freedman to adapt oratorical gestures from speeches made by politicians from various countries. A video of the performance made at the Lisson gallery in London is screened at STUK. Next to it, a teleprompter displays the corresponding script delivered by the politician mimicked. The isolation of expressive gestures is mesmerizing. Even if you pay no attention to the text, you can’t help but be seduced by the movements and rhythms of the body. You also gradually come to realize that, as soon as they step on their speaking platforms, world leaders behave and appear like magicians selling their illusions to the public.

Center for Tactical Magic, Linking & Unlinking, 2009

The Center for Tactical Magic, an activist art collective that uses the many guises and functions of magic to challenge existing power structures, had several works in the exhibition. One of them was the Linking & Unlinking video. Initially designed to be displayed on a digital billboard in New York after the city had implemented the stop-and-frisk policy, the short film combines 3 different source materials: found footage demonstrating how to pick locks to free yourself from handcuffs; found footage of professional and amateur magicians performing the classic magical escape trick, “the linking rings” (a.k.a. “ninja rings”); and, a rolling text of “Know Your Rights” information from the American Civil Liberties Union explaining what your rights are if you are stopped by the police.

Center for Tactical Magic, Universal Keys, 2017. Installation view at STUK in Leuven for the Artefact festival. Photo © Kristof Vrancken

Center for Tactical Magic, Universal Keys (detail), 2017

Universal Keys, an installation especially made for Artefact: The Act of Magic, is the perfect companion for Linking & Unlinking because of the way it exposes the competing illusions of liberty and law. Thousands of “universal” handcuff keys hang on a wall in a formation that evokes two interlocking links. Visitors are invited to take a key for personal use.

According to Aaron Gach, founder of the Center for Tactical Magic, the work explores the illusion of control and liberation. This illusion was at the forefront of the escape acts popularized by Houdini and other magicians. Handcuff escapes are particularly appealing to people seeking their own release from authoritarian control. As the artist explains:

Offering visitors their own handcuff key invites the potential for accomplishing their own self-liberation. Although it is completely legal to purchase, own, and carry a handcuff key in most countries, possession of such a key is also sure to invite scrutiny.

Similarly, notions of security and threat are seen as linked to our collective desires for freedom and safety as they form two parts of the same illusion. Does possession of a universal key truly enable the beholder? Or, does it simply make visible the material strengths and weaknesses of state power? In what context might such a key open up new possibilities for understanding power relations? Ultimately, these are questions to be answered by those who hold the keys.

CIA, The Ghost Army + Jonathan Allen, Levitating The Pentagon. Installation view at STUK in Leuven for the Artefact festival. Photo © Kristof Vrancken

Abby Hoffman and friends attempt to levitate the Pentagon. From the University of California, via Unredacted

Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon, by The Fugs

The festival has a room dedicated to historical films that explore the connections between the military and the magical. One of these films is The Ghost Army mentioned above. The other one recounts The Levitation of the Pentagon.

On 21 October 1967, activist Abbie Hoffman, poet Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders of the band The Fugs devised an exorcism ritual as part of the ongoing protests of the Vietnam War. They organized a ‘magical’ happening called Levitating the Pentagon. The activists even attempted to secure a permit beforehand, asking for the authorization to elevate the HQ of the U.S. Department of Defense 300 feet (almost a meter) in the air. They were granted 3 feet. Together with thousands of demonstrators, they joined hands and meditated around the Pentagon while chanting Aramaic exorcism rites. They announced that they would use ‘psychic energy’ to make the building float above the ground and vibrate until all of its war-loving demons spilled out of it. The Pentagon never did rise nor vibrate (in case you were wondering.)

However, the wacky action demonstrated that playful energy, magic and ‘secret’ insights are not the appanage of the political or military elite. They can also be harnessed by citizens to achieve political ends, greater public debate and manipulation of corporate media techniques.

Artefact : The Act of Magic is at STUK – House for Dance, Image & Sound, in Leuven, Belgium until 9 March 2017. The exhibition was curated by Karen Verschooren from STUK & Ils Huygens from Z33.

Previously: Dataghost 2. The kabbalistic computational machine and Interview with The Center for Tactical Magic. More installation views of the exhibition Artefact : The Act of Magic. I also have a crappy flickr album. Photo on the homepage: Liz Magic Laser, Stand Behind Me, 2013, via Lisson Gallery.

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