#i think we as a society are romanticising our trauma to the point where it's unhealthy - nd that too only for internet points.

[butchkaramazov]

as much as i like jokes about homoerotic murder & partners being condescending and (although very rarely) people using you as objects, i think at the end of the day i want to come home to a person who loves me, who will not push me away when i hold their hand, who will make the effort to show me they love me. at the end of the day, i want to hand them a knife and trust them not to stab.

[sheshirkat]

Euphoria, unpopular opinion and long rant :

Euphoria is accurate, it's just not a show for teenagers but for people who need to come to terms with their messed up teenagehood, or for adults in general to understand it. It is romanticised but it is in fact the way we tend to see things when we're in this cycle, this situation...we think it's so pretty and we're so cool but then we realise it's ugly as fuck. Maybe sometimes the show doesn't romanticise it, but the viewers do. Maybe some shows aren't meant for everyone. I'd love to see a show like euphoria where the last episode the aesthetic veil falls down and you see just all the disgust and despair the aesthetic covered up, as the characters starts to get it.

(Thought I lowkey defend euphoria in this (mostly I don't defend it's just expressing thoughts and opinions) I still think Sam Levinson has troubles with sexualising teenagers (all of Hollywood really) and stealing other artists' style and art)

Euphoria seems unrealistic until you grasp the concept of toxicity in your own teenage self and feel the unreadable depth of your own loneliness and guilt scratching at your back. No really, euphoria (and skins) is about fucked up kids doing fucked up shit cause they have no idea what the fuck they're doing and they're egoist and wrong and bad people but YOU'RE DOOMED TO BE FUCKING BAD WHEN NO ONE TEACHES YOU HOW TO BE GOOD AND ALL THERE IS IS HURT. Everyone hates Cassie but she's just an accurate representation of a girl trying to extermine herself just to fit in to please a boy she likes cause no man ever took care of her and her mother does the best she can but it's not enough cause she suffers too and she just feels abandonned. Attention seeking is often a call for help. Y'all just hate Cassie cause she doesn't fit into your "nice quiet sad girl" fantasy.

Same for most characters actually. Yeah they "act older than they should", especially with sexuality. But this show is about the shit we do as teenagers when we're trying to be independant and we've internalised trauma and patriarchy and so many shit comes out at this time of our lives.

Idk how to express that euphoria characters are flawed and each of them is deeply wrong in so many ways and it is precisely the point, at least in my opinion. For me, it is not a show for teenagers. It is a show for adults to understand what happened to them, or to teenagers in general, and to warn or to help come to terms with what you've been through and the shitty person you used to be in high school, the shit that happens to you, the shit you've done to others, but also to yourself...Not saying everything is forgivable, Nate's a downright abusive prick, but it's also an interesting character because it questions where morals come from : he has no other model growing up than his father. To change you have to have a shock, especially when you come from a wrong place. And school don't teach you morals, ethics, how to treat people right. You may think it's logic, and so do I, but because it has always been for us. But see further, see reality TV, history, the government, toxic masculinity, forcing kids to kiss their grandparents to "be polite"...violence has mechanism, and these mechanisms are intertwined with the way we grow up. Not saying to not blame grown ass men (and women sometimes) doing awful shit, we all got our responsabilities and abuse is not justified in any way. But the intrications of violence, to me, are something to be questioned and thought about if we want to make the world a better place, cause obviously prison and laws don't do shit about this part of society. Nate's a reflection of toxic masculinity.

Would have more stuff to say but gotta sleep, rant over and good night!

[veritasss5]

I truly understand your position and I want you to know that you and your gift of tarot reading is truly appreciated in this community. As well as all of the other readers. I agree that half/some people need to do self work and they base their self worth on relationships. But it is another half of us that aren’t young/freshly graduated. We’re in our 20’s and are already in our career, we’ve worked on self love, and are just ready for the next step. Some people I know in this community feel as if their purpose is to be a mom and have a family. And I believe we should respect that just like we do career women. I think life can be very disheartening and sometimes it feels like dreams won’t come true or people are running out of time. So, this readings give the mom a glimpse of the possibility. But they read them, and go on with their day. It doesn’t affect them one way or another. A lot of people ask for future spouse readings because they don’t need guidance on their career or self progress. They’re exactly where they want to be in life in those subjects.

I appreciate that you took time to express your point of view, which is quite refreshing to see, and now I understand why you made those points.

Pardon me that I lost a little bit in this conversation, but what are you trying to express? Defending the other half that I never mentioned or say that we shouldn’t stop doing fs reading because of the other half that I just called out? Good for some people that can find some glimpse of guidance and help, but I don’t think I said something against those that already have something in mind and they just want to have fun with fs readings? Fun is absolutely welcomed but with some degree of self control and don’t let these love readings get addictive.

Here is my point of view:

In reality I see more people that have insecurities in both love and career stuff plus lack of self work. The half that I am talking about are obsessively searching for external validation and love because they can’t find that love in themselves.

Let’s put this example: if someone managed to find their fs, do you think they are able to keep a healthy relationship with them while never addressing their traumas, issues, insecurities, etc? And then problems arise and the worst outcome is Y leaving X, and then they will ask the tarot readers questions like when they are gonna get back to their exes. And then the unhealthy cycle of bingeing tarot readings starts again, until they find that tarot reader that actually calls them out and tries to wake up X.

You said for some they look tarot readers as their mom or family figures, well the best way to describe me is I am that harsh and strict mom that wishes that in a harsh way to let people realise that what they are doing is not benefiting themselves.

You said that people don’t need guidance for career and work, well that applies only for a few in my personal view and experience. People tend to prioritise love because of how romanticised love is in this actual society. There is a whole discussion about it and I am gonna link it so you can take time to read since there are tarot readers’ opinions as well.

I just added that tarot readers should be first the one to have firm boundaries, so they can avoid to be frustrated.

LINK of the discussion mentioned.

Thank you so much for staying polite and civil instead of rushing to insult me without a concrete argument. I really appreciate that you took time and managed to read my point of view with respect as well♥️

[scripttorture]

Hello! I've browsed this blog a bit and came across the idea that torturers often develop mental illness because of their repeated exposure to the violence/trauma of seeing another person in pain, which I'd never considered before. A) Do you believe torturers can therefore be a type of victim as well, depending on the circumstances, and therefore deserving of compassion/therapy? B) Can you point me to more information about this/what kinds of mental illnesses develop in torturers? (1/2)

C) Do you think it's possible for a mass murderer/torturer character to have a realistic, satisfying redemption arc? Do you know any media that's pulled it off believably? Thank you so much for taking the time to read/answer this if you do! And for this excellent resource!

-

The most accessible sources that cover this are O’Mara’s Why Torture Doesn’t Work (good grounding, start with him), Rejali’s Torture and Democracy and the appendices to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth where he describes treating two torturers.

 The most current research is about 600 pages of print on demand untranslated French. If you’re fluent in French (I am not and lock down etc has got in the way of me getting this translated) Sironi Comment devient-on tortionnaire?

 Broadly speaking the symptoms appear to be the same as those survivors and witnesses develop.

 And I will go into this in more depth later but keep in mind there is not anywhere near enough research on torturers for us to be entirely sure about most of this. I’m working with the best information we have right now.

 The other two questions are subjective and sort of complicated. By definition a lot of this is going to be my opinion because well that’s what you’re asking for.

 I think we need to be really careful about describing torturers as ‘victims’.

 Yes they’re put in this situation by social structures beyond their control. It is not their fault that they weren’t given training or support in their job. It’s also not their fault that we have this global message that violence is effective or that so many workplaces are unnecessarily pressured/stressful. Most of the time they are drawn in to abusing others because of the social groups and structures within the organisation they join.

 Oversight (with a drive to eradicate torture), funding, training and clear consistent messages about the right way to handle difficult situations would probably prevent most cases of torture.

 This does not change the fact that on an individual level each of them chose to hurt other people.

 Some of them will have made that choice understanding there was a threat to their own safety if they did not. Some of them will have made that choice just because it was what everyone else was doing. Some of them genuinely believe what they did was the ‘right’ decision at the time.

 They still made that choice. And given that we have records of people in similar positions refusing, even when it put them at risk of attack or death, I don’t have a lot of sympathy with the choice torturers made.

 The fact I’m a pacifist factors into this. Consider my biases.

 Torturers typically show a very low understanding of the impact their actions have had on other people.

 They might regret their actions but this is typically framed in a very self-centred way. They usually don’t express more then cursory regard for the victims. They regret it because they’re suffering now, because they have nightmares, because they can’t keep a job. And oh it’s all so unfair.

 I don’t know why this is the case. But it’s a feature Sironi described in interviews about her work. And I’ve seen it over and over again in interviews with torturers.

 Yes torturers suffer. The symptoms they develop are terrible and have a lasting impact on their lives. They typically can’t hold down jobs and struggle to re-integrate into society in any meaningful fashion.

 And yes I believe they should be treated. I believe that anyone with a disease or condition which requires treatment should have access to care and treatment. Whoever they are. Whatever they did.

 I believe that as fellow human beings torturers are entitled to a degree of compassion. When I say that torture and mistreatment are wrong I mean it. My position doesn’t change just because the theoretical victim is a former torturer.

 I do not think that treatment and compassion should be dependant on a person being suitably victimised. For me the only thing it depends on is their need and their humanity. In the literal physical sense of them being a human.

 But we tend to think of ‘victim’ as a simple category that doesn’t overlap with mass murderers.

 And I don’t believe the position of torturers is that simple.

 Especially when so few of them are charged. Torture trials are rare. Convictions are rare. And sentences are short.

 And their victims deserve justice too.

 I feel conflicted about calling torturers ‘victims’ because of this complex reality. And because in fiction we have a tendency to focus on the torturers prioritising their voices over the survivors. I feel like presenting torturers as simple victims of society could risk adding to that.

 For me the focus has always got to be the survivors.

 And I think all of this feeds into how we handle redemption arcs.

 I don’t think that writing redemption arcs for villains, even torturers or mass murderers is ‘wrong’. In fact I think that it can be a really good idea. Showing how toxic the environments these people are in is a good thing. Puncturing the way it’s romanticised is a good thing. And showing a way out of it, even if it’s imagined, is not a bad thing.

 But if we’re going to do that in our stories then I think we need to think about what redemption means and in whose eyes the character is redeemed.

 There’s also a small problem: we don’t really know what recovery for torturers looks like.

 There isn’t enough research on them. Partly because of lack of interest but partly because the low conviction rates means sample sizes are small. We’re talking about a limited number of individuals who are jailed and we can’t really ‘prove’ that individuals who weren’t convicted were torturers. We don’t really know what the long term outcomes are, what treatments might be effective or- Much of anything.

 Studies on torturers are typically based on very small numbers of individuals. (For a long time Fanon’s work was the only example of a mental health professional talking about torturers specifically. He saw two of them.) They are not statistically sound. And a lot of resources were simply journalists or mental health professionals compiling notes on the handful of individuals they talked to.

 Everything I say about torturers is based on things like interviews, a handful of studies that have flaws and anecdotal evidence. Unfortunately as of right now it’s the best we’ve got.

 Personally I don’t think there’s enough research on torture generally. Or enough attempts to collate relevant research from other fields. But that’s a rant for another day.

 Let’s get back to that central question: what does redemption mean?

 I think that it’s pretty easy to write a character changing for the better. You can build up the character’s level of insight into what they’re doing/did over the course of the story. You can show them choosing to stop. You can show them shifting to oppose their former allies.

 But bundled up in the idea of a redemption arc is this: is it enough? And who is it enough for?

 I don’t think survivors should be obliged to forgive former torturers. I also don’t think they’re likely to interact positively.

 I’ve talked about this now and again when asked about the difference between legally defined torture and abuse. Because of the organised and widespread nature of legally defined torture there are usually communities of survivors. And communities that are collectively moving through a recovery process because even those people who weren’t directly attacked are likely to be witnesses, carers and relatives or friends of survivors.

 These things echo down generations.

 Cyprus gained independence from the British in 1960, my father is too young to have any real memory of the violence during the colonial period. But he referenced it in arguments with my English mother during my childhood. There are people throughout China today who won’t buy anything Japanese because of Japanese war crimes there during World War 2. There are people who won’t eat fish from the Black Sea, because the bodies of their ancestors were thrown into that sea during a genocide over a hundred years ago.

 I know that as a both a Greek Cypriot and an English person there are people all over the world who will not want anything to do with me based on what my people have done to theirs. And the fact I wasn’t alive at the time does not really factor into it.

 What I’m trying to illustrate here is that this is much bigger, broader and more complex then individual acts of forgiveness.

 Survivors are a highly varied group of individuals. And each torturer can have thousands or tens of thousands of victims. Expecting each impacted individual, and any witnesses and all their family members and friends, to forgive these people is… let’s say ‘unlikely’.

 So does redemption require forgiveness from the wounded party? Is there any possible action that can atone for the sheer scale of these atrocities?

 If we play a simple number game causing this level of harm can be achieved in months or years, but saving the equivalent number of lives takes decades of skilled, dedicated work. If we look at concepts like wergild or jail as ‘paying your debt to society’ then how do we measure something like torture where the numbers are so big?

 I haven’t seen a piece of fiction seriously tackle these questions. But then again I also haven’t actively looked for that fiction.

 I feel like a lot of fictional redemption arcs judge a character to be sufficiently redeemed based on audience sympathy and the main cast forgiving the character. They don’t typically go on to broaden the scope of the narrative and question whether any one else impacted by the former villain’s actions also sees the character as redeemed.

 One of my stories has a former torturer as a major character and I think they are a sympathetic character in many ways. I think that my readers would empathise with them through a lot of the story (which takes place decades after they stopped torturing).

 They’re a mentor figure to some of the younger cast members. They’ve acted as a protector to them and taught the younger generation a lot about the minority culture they themselves are from. And they do genuinely care about these people that they helped to raise, consistently sacrificing to protect these ‘kids’. (The ‘kids’ are 30s-20s at the time of the story.)

 But they’re also incredibly self centred. They don’t really interact with or have a lot of sympathy for the people they hurt. And while this particular family loves and forgives them society at large views them as a monster. Albeit one that is now leashed.

 Is this a redemption story? Is this character redeemed? I genuinely don’t know. In fact that’s part of my interest in writing the story: trying to work out if there is a point, as this character grows, develops and helps others, when I believe they’ve done ‘enough’.

 I think that redemption means different things for different people. A satisfying redemption story is different for different people. And if we can disagree so strongly about it with much simpler, smaller scale crimes then where does that leave us with torture?

 There isn’t a simple answer or a one-size-fits-all writing solution. There can’t be.

 My approach is to try and use the story to see if I can find an answer. Even if it’s only a limited one. For me the story itself is a forum for exploring human complexity and difficult ethical questions.

 I don’t think we have a good solution for how to deal with these people in reality yet. But I do hold out hope that a good solution is possible. Fiction is an arena where we can safely explore possible solutions.

 I guess in the end I’m not sure if there’s any story or arc that will work for everyone. I don’t think there are any hard rules for writing anything and I don’t think there’s ever a way to please everyone.

 Redemption and forgiveness are complicated topics. I think we do a much better job when we engage with that complexity then when we assume a character just has to do a, b and c in order to achieve it.

 When you consider someone to be truly redeemed is an ethical question that I can’t answer for you. I don’t think I should. The chances are you’ll know when you think your character has done enough.

 Just be open to the fact that it won’t be enough for everyone. Consider reflecting that with the characters, because that can make for truly powerful moments.

 In Midnight’s Children Shiva never forgives Saleem, even though Saleem isn’t responsible for Shiva ‘losing’ his life and family because they were both infants at the time. And damn there are a lot of flaws in the movie adaptation but that scene between them in the jail, when Saleem throws that in Shiva’s face hits hard. It shows us so much about both characters.

 And I think that’s a better way to approach it then trying to figure out if a character is redeemed yet: figuring out how they’ve progressed, how others respond to that progression and why.

 I hope that helps :)

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[readyaiminquire]

The Other Germany.

This is my attempt at a shorter post, giving some insight into a particular phenomenon or experience I’ve come across. While the overall intent is to shed some anthropological light on these questions, it is also more of a quick-fire approach and commentary on how I might read the topic. In this sense, it’s more the opening to a discussion than a fully formed argument. I hope you enjoy!

Almost a year ago I had a discussion over a drink or two with a good friend of mine. The focus, for some reason, had turned to Germany. He maintained that one of the issues with Germany today is their inability to be proud of what Germany, and by extension Germans, had managed to create. Germany as we know it is not what Germany was, but they were collectively saddled with a sense of guilt for their genocidal policies during the 1930s and 1940s. Even worse, he felt, was that Germans saddled this guilt upon themselves - and the great tragedy in the situation remained that they themselves failed to understand that they had changed. There was nothing inherently 'wrong' with them, at least not anymore. They should embrace their contemporary identity, and let go of their crippling guilt.

I didn't really buy this analysis at the time, nor do I now - but at the end of the day it was no more than a discussion in a pub, so it faded from memory as soon as it was over. Until very recently, that is. It was recalled from some memory bank just the other week when one of the leading figures of Extinction Rebellion, Roger Hallam, decided to voice a similar sentiment, albeit with far more tasteless comments accompanying his analysis. In essence, he criticised Germany for taking their history with the Holocaust too seriously, remarking that "the extremity of a trauma can create a paralysis in actually learning the lessons from it." At the end of the day, he argued, the Holocaust was "just another genocide" in history. Hallam’s comments have already been debunked as absurd, incorrect, and displaying a complete misraeding of history, so I won’t dwell on them here - and he has since apologised for them.

What I do want to talk about is the - apparently recurring - feeling that Germany exists under the weight of its own guilt, stopping them from taking certain actions, even in the face of reason. The guilt of what previous generations had done is simply too ingrained in their culture - it cannot be overcome. I think this is a fundamental misreading of the contemporary understanding of German subjectivity (i.e. what it means to be German). This is also an angle that has  been far less discussed. To assist me in painting my particular argument, I turn to Rammstein.

Before we reach Germany however, we must first take a detour to Slovenia - specifically to raccoon-turned-human and sometimes-philosopher-always-entertainer Slavoj Žižek. Žižek makes in interesting point in the film A Pervert's Guide to Ideology with regards to Rammstein and Nazi imagery - this will be our starting point, so I will quote the script in full:

"The German hard rock band Rammstein are often accused of flirting, playing with Nazi militaristic iconography. But if one observes closely their show, one can see very nicely what they are doing, exemplarily in one of their best known songs: "Reise, Reise". The minimal elements of the Nazi ideology enacted by Rammstein are something like pure elements of libidinal investment. Enjoyment has to be, as it were, condensed into some minimal tics, gestures which do not have any precise ideological meaning. What Rammstein does is it liberates these elements from their Nazi articulations. It allows us to enjoy them in their pre-ideological state. The way to fight Nazism is to enjoy these elements, ridiculous as they may appear. This way you undermine Nazism from within."

Let's unpack this for a moment. What Žižek is arguing is that the certain fundamental and base behaviours we intrinsically associate with Nazism - large groups of people, a sense of uniformity, German militarism, certain uses of language and so on - are in fact so base that they only acquire ideological meaning if such meaning is ascribed to them. It then follows that by decoupling these behaviours from their ideological meaning, you undermine the ideology itself by effectively removing how it is articulated. All clear so far?

This process of decoupling meaning from articulation is exactly what Germans have done with ‘Germany’. That's a strange sentence, but bear with me. Earlier this year Rammstein released a new album, and it's first single "Deutschland" has often be read as a industrial metal ode to German history, though one which paints all of its history as dark, bloody, sometimes arcane, but always with the undercurrent that it is not worth romanticising. Though I think this reading is largely correct, I would extend upon it and say that it is love letter to what I'll call ‘Modern Germany’. It is often said that there are two kinds of history: The 'academic' history that investigates the past, and the social history - which is what we remember. In terms of identity and belonging, what matters is what is remembered, not the truth of how things were. We must therefore imagine an 'Old' Germany starting perhaps with the unification in 1871 only to culminate in the crashing and burning of the Third Reich in 1945.

In this sense, Germany's history collapses into a quagmire of sorts best symbolised by the rise and leadership of the NSDAP. Given the consequences faced by Germany post-war - economic strife, denazification, partitioning between East and West etc. -  the unified country that came out in 1990 was very different from the one that crashed and burned in '45. So different, in fact, that they are understood, culturally and conceptually, by Germans as two ontologically separate entities. In other words, ‘Modern Germany’ simply isn't ‘Old Germany’.

The most telling portions of Rammstein's "Deutschland" are probably these:

Deutschland, mein Herz in Flammen

Will dich lieben und verdammen

Deutschland, dein Atem kalt

So jung, und doch so alt

Translating to:

Germany, my heart is in flames

I want to love you and condemn you

Germany, your breath is cold

So young, yet so old

Followed by:

Deutschland, deine Liebe

Ist Fluch und Segen

Deutschland, meine Liebe

Kann ich dir nicht geben

Again, translating to:

Germany, your love

Is a curse and a blessing

Germany, my love

I cannot give you

The rejection of the Old Germany and all that it conceptually stood for, in essence becomes the most patriotic thing that can be done with regards to Modern Germany. In this sense, Modern Germans define themselves in opposition to the ‘old’. It is important here not to read this as a rejection of this history - for it by no means is - but rather as a rejection of what Old Germany stood for, and what pre-1945 Germany means to Germans today. By turning 'loving' Germany on its head and refusing to fall into the same nationalistic hole, you are simultaneously displaying the greatest respect and love for what Germany is today. In this sense a rejection of Germany becomes the highest display of love.

This might read as a contradiction, and to an extent this is sort of the point. It is most certainly why it’s often misread or misunderstood. Anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro has called this process "equivocation". Equivocation is, in essence, the ability to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time because they are internalised as two ontologically different things. Another scholar, Martin Holbraad applies this concept to the Cuban revolutionary project, where he found that levying harsh criticism against the failures of the revolutionary project had become the most revolutionary action one could do - Rather than rejected the revolution, something Holbraad argues few Cubans do, through the process of equivocation, criticism and revolutionary fervour had become two ontologically different thing.

There are, in this sense, two Germanies. Rejecting the past Germany with its roots in ultra-nationalism, racism, white supremacy, and genocide, is the highest profession of love for the modern German state and culture. By rejecting this background you are effectively saying that Germany is no longer this past, and there is no place for this form of nationalistic understanding in their modern society. Though, this equivocation is also what often leads to things being so clearly misread by the outside world. Germany isn't being crushed by its own guilt, instead it is decoupling the ultra-nationalistic articulations from what it means to display any form of patriotic affiliation with Germany today. It is a continued vow to move onwards, not to regress.

And few countries boast the same promise.