#implicit response object

[prokopetz]

By contrast, the putting it on, inserting it into, and eating actions are not specified to apply to a carried thing: they perform an implicit taking attempt during their check rules, or may perform one in the eating action's case. [...] [T]he primacy of the carrying requirements rule [means] that numerous actions for which a better response would be an error regarding absurdity instead [attempt] an implicit take, e.g., if the moon is a backdrop, put moon in me would attempt to take the moon and dryly reply: "That's hardly portable."

—Proposals for the evolution of Inform E-0015: World model enforcement, subsection "Implicit taking"

While a discussion of the particulars and motivations of this proposed set of bug fixes is beyond the scope of a Tumblr post, I thought this blog's followership might appreciate the fact that, in Inform's present implementation, attempting to stick the Moon up your butt fails solely because the "inserting it into" action generates an implicit "take" action during its setup, and scenery objects are not valid targets for "take".

[fanaticsnail]

My Favorite

(Image Source: Artist: Inpolariis)

Masterlist Here

Word Count: 5,114

Summary: Sir Crocodile has founded a league of highly trained assassins named "The Choirs" - all coded after the nine choirs of angelic influences. You are his favorite: his prized "Seraphim" who's ferocious brutality is only outmatched by your incredible beauty. Not truly knowing if your affection is all an act to continue being paid a wage in berry, he has not made a move of his own aside from calling upon you to sit on his knee of an evening, and have you utter praises into his ear. It is only when the two other members of the Cross-Guild begin flirting does he find his limit being tested. Will he bend, or will he break?

Themes: Boss!Crocodile x Assassin!Reader, lap princess, Croc is in love with you, begrudgingly in love, mutual pining, “I don’t want to fix him, I want to make him worse”, wealth, Cross-Guild dynamics, partial Buggy x Reader, partial Mihawk x Reader, sign language, afab!reader.

Notes: This fic is dedicated to the wonderful @discordantwritings who wrote a beautiful Benn Beckman fic recently. I had to return the favor with some Cross-Guild content, although it became quickly a Sir Crocodile fic. Based on this prompt, because it has a hold over my very soul.

Tag List: @sordidmusings @feral-artistry @carrotsunshine @cinnbar-bun @writingmysanity @gingernut1314

The broad right hand of the brutish Sir Crocodile massaged his temples beneath his thumb and index finger. He began rotating them in an attempt to rid the swelling migraine caused by the crackled whines pouring from the lips of his clown companion. Barely paying attention to the whinging words strung into messy sentences, his ears pricked and spine tingled at the knowledge there was another presence within the hollow chambers of the Cross-Guild meeting space. 

Bringing his hand away from his temple, his smirk broke the displeased position of his lips, as his eyes rose to meet with the yellow hue of the gaze of the swordsman. Mihawk narrowed his eyes, no longer processing Buggy’s words as he attempted to locate the source responsible for the expression change of the larger gentleman in front of him. 

“-And I wasn’t the one responsible for that screw up, so I shouldn’t be the one paying for it. Really it should go to the one with the most berry. Who was it again? Between the reptile and the hawk, who has the most-.” Buggy’s voice halted as the shadows split to reveal your presence, stalking closer to the largest man in the room with an aura of silent danger. 

Mihawk reached for the hilt of Yoru, ready to strike your approaching silhouette: armored and cloaked in the darkest black to blend within smoke and shadow. Your hood concealed your face, your facial mask shieling all but the intensity of your eyes smeared in darkened war paint. You made no sound; no tap, no whisper as you wordlessly approached Sir Crocodile.

“Returned so soon, my Seraphim,” his voice purred, leaning back in his chair while placing a thick cigar between his teeth, “Did all go according to plan?” You wordlessly bent your knee, bowing your head to the large gentleman to whom you entrusted your implicit loyalty. His smile drew further up his scarred face, the purple hue of his eyes dancing with a dangerous twinkle at your wordless confirmation. 

“Good,” his voice praised you, reaching for his lighter lying atop the table. You rose to your feet, quickly reaching for the golden object, flicking open the lid and igniting the flint to spark its flame. Sir Crocodile leant forward, holding his eyes firmly on yours as your concentration was fixed on the task of lighting the tip of his cigar. 

He narrowed his eyes, noticing a small smear of red atop the darkened warpaint and streaking down your face mask and onto your leather breastplate. He sighed, reaching into his left hand breast pocket and fishing out a silver handkerchief and passed it to you within his index and middle fingers. 

“Is it yours?” he asked, gesturing to the blood congealed and spattered against your uniform. 

“No, sir,” you whispered with no vocal tone depicted within your silence. He hummed in response, narrowing his eyes as he scanned your body further. 

“Are you unharmed and unmarked?” he asked, his left brow raising in question. You stiffened your shoulders, arching your chin within the air and confirmed with a simple utterance of: “Yes, sir.” 

“Very good, my Seraphim,” he complimented further, inhaling a deep lungful of the nicotine laden cigar smoke, exhaling through his nose. Buggy did not know what to make of this interaction, feeling completely and utterly ignored as Mihawk and Sir Crocodile’s eyes and attention remained fixed on your statuesque figure clad in cloak, leather and dark plated armor. 

Leaning forward, Sir Crocodile ushered you to stoop forward to receive the next whisper of a command parting from his lips for your ears alone.

“I have laid out a new uniform for you to wear,” he uttered intimately, reaching up his left hand with his golden hook threatening to touch your shoulder. “See to it you are bathed, perfumed and clad in the ensemble within the hour,” the tip of his hook brushed with the rivets of your shoulder plate, dragging down your bicep to the inner crevice of your elbow, “And I will have you sat as my trophy upon my knee for the evening, my Seraphim.” 

At that final utterance, he withdrew his hook from your arm and focussed once more on your eyes now depicting a darkness within usually withheld for victims beneath your concealed daggers. 

Bowing to your boss, eyes now closed, you rose from your deep and respectful stoop and paid no mind to glance at the other two members of the meeting space. If Sir Crocodile found no reason to introduce you to these men, you did not deem them important enough to care who they were. Silence followed you as you trailed outside of the room, resubmerging yourself within the shadows and hastily making your way to the suite gifted to you by your boss.

“Baroque Works employee, Crocodile?” Mihawk uttered, his eyes fixed on the exit you withdrew from. 

“A thing of the past, Hawk,” His smirk not leaving his face for each deep inhale of his cigar, “I no longer put my faith in an amassment of bounty hunters to get their hands dirty for my berry.” He took the butt of his cigar from his teeth and pushed the ignited end against the glass tray with his thumb. “No, my faith is no longer spread to the many, but to the few.” 

“How many o’ them you got?” Buggy’s nasally voice chimed in, his brow furrowing and lips curling back in an uneasy smile, “Like twenty or thirty?”

“I have nine,” he confessed, eyes now bored with the conversation and lip curling down into an arrogant snarl, “And that one,” he gestured to the door with his chin, “Is my favorite.”

“Why?” Buggy asked, his voice cracking in a small apprehensive whine at the end of his question, “What does that one do that the others don’t?” Sir Crocodile’s lips curled into a darkened grin, his teeth revealed in the light. 

“You will see.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------

After bathing and cleaning yourself of the debris and carnage of the last assignment, you glanced at yourself in your large, ornate mirror. Looking over the new uniform set aside by your boss as it clung to your body, you couldn’t help the pull of a shy smile at the corner of your lips.

Of all of “The Choirs” founded and financed by Sir Crocodile, it was no illusion that you were absolutely and without a doubt his favorite. Your titles held your specialist skills as covert assassins within your roles; each skilled with a unique ability to complete your tasks to the utmost quality. 

Principalitie, Archangel, and Angel were charged with gathering information and relaying it from a great distance. They were to look like civilians; innocent and coy with the ability to blend into a crowd seamlessly. 

The Devil-Fruit users; Dominion, Virtue, and Power, were charged with carrying out tyrannical punishment and wrath without care for the casualties they caused under the utterance of a single command from your hook-handed leader. 

Cherubim and Ophanim, the two of the higher in the chain of command, followed your explicit instruction in covert operations taken either together or separately. They were your trusted confidants, you could even call them your friends if it were not too bold to say so. 

You, his ‘Seraphim’, were silent and embraced by shadows with such flawless success that it was rumored you were born in them. You were lethal with your daggers, your skill with a blade a sight to behold before life was drained from your intended target. The last thing they saw as their breath was claimed by your hand, was the ferocity in your blown pupils and lengthy eyelashes beneath the dark warpaint smeared atop your eyelids. 

Glancing over your features once more, the pale white of the dress held stark contrast to the dark armor you adorned almost an hour prior. While your armor kept all of your features hidden to the world around you, the anonymity shielding you from emphasis on your features; this dress left little to the imagination. 

The deep hook of the backless dress clung low to your hips in an ovular shape, bodice dipping down to above your navel with a thin band of fabric dancing above your cleavage to suture the bust shut with barely any support. The length of the dress halted little below your hip bone on the left-hand side, the right hand side down to the ball of your ankle to allow for the straps of your gold heels to be revealed with each step you took against the floor. 

Your mind begins to wander the longer you stare at yourself in the mirror. This was the most provocative and scandalous item your boss had ever asked you to don. You almost allowed yourself to rush to the conclusion that your boss harbored more than simple favoritism for you, you assumed you were wearing this ensemble to impress a guest with your presence on his lap. 

Silence was nearly impossible with the gold-dipped base of your heeled shoes. Each step you took after exiting your suite echoed in a foreign clack that you were unaccustomed to creating with your foot-falls. 

Immediately upon entering the large celebratory area of Sir Crocodiles casino, you scanned the perimeter of the room for your boss to begin your new role for the night: the princess sitting upon his knee and doting on him with small caresses and whispers of praise within his ear. This was not a role you were exposed to often, but one you did well enough for him to continue asking for you after the first night you played it. 

You would be lying to yourself if you said you did not harbor affection for your boss. Nothing ever transpired between you after you had finished this role for the nights he asked you to fulfill. No brush of lips meeting yours, no writhing while sprawled out beneath him against the green fuzz of the gamblers table. He would bow his head in gratitude to you, his eyes blinking shut out of respect, and dismissing you without a further word. 

Adoration, respect, loyalty, and your wage is what bound you to that man. At each moment he spent with you on his lap, or performing a deadly task for him, your desire grew. You knew, without a semblance of a doubt, that you would cast aside your wage with an instant for the luxury of remaining by his side. You loved him, and it was the only thing that truly frightened you.

After concluding your brief scan of the room, you noticed Sir Crocodile was yet to make an appearance to darken the tables with his brutish figure. However, you smiled upon meeting the eyes of ‘Ophanim’ dressed in a simple waiter's uniform, with her sleeves rolled to her elbows and shaking a steel container filled with ice, syrups and hard liquor. She shot you a wink, gesturing with her chin to wait with her at the bar. 

An honest smile sprung to your lips as you grasped the barstool within your hands, taking a seat atop it and hooking your left knee over your right; the slit of your dress revealing the entirety of your left leg to your thigh. 

Immediately as you began to open your mouth to converse with your fellow “Choir” about her latest mission, your eyes were thrust into an amassment of lengthy cerulean hair. The person seemed to ignore you as their voice informed your friend of his order of a fruit-forward and harsh liquor cocktail with an insane amount of complex ingredients. The products he asked for sounded as if it would split and separate, with the immediate souring of creamy liquid with the acidic elements. 

Grimacing with your lips curled in disgust, the individual turned to meet your disapproving gaze: his eyes widening and breath hitching in his throat. A large, rotund red nose lay central to his features, his dark vest cinching his waist beneath a white shirt and dark trousers. He looked as if he was not comfortable wearing the assortment, as if it was a mask he was given to wear akin to your arrangement set aside by your boss. 

“You are fucking gorgeous,” he stumbled over his words, the syllables falling from his lips quicker than he could silence them within. Immediately your grimace upturned into a smile, forcing a laugh to flee from you at his unbridled compliment. You arched your left brow up, leaning in close to the individual in front of you and tightening his dark tie with your right hand. 

“You are very easy to look at, yourself,” you purred in return, assuming your flirtatious role with ease. You darted your gaze between his two teal eyes, a coy smile now pursing your lips together innocently, “And who might you be, bright eyes?” Your question had his heart swelling, his cheeks filling with a boyish fluster. 

“B-Buggy,” he wheezed, gulping back his words and grunting out a small cough to mask his uneasiness. “Captain Buggy D Clown,” he attempted to meet his elbow atop the bar, missing the polished wood entirely and instead stumbling under the uneven distribution of his weight. As air met his elbow with the heel of his palm capturing his chin, he flew his head down and met it against the wood with a harsh thump. 

Wincing in empathy, you immediately reached forward and claimed his cheeks within your palms and raised him back up to his former stature. You brushed his shoulders, readjusted his collar and checked over the rising swell atop his left temple. 

“Honey, can we get some ice please?” you asked your colleague who attempted to halt her laugh behind her palm, nodding as she retrieved the frosty cubes and placed them within a checkered tea towel. She passed it to you and shook her head, you nodding your thanks at her for the object and immediately reaching for the blunt-force trauma the blue-haired clown brought upon himself. 

“Are you alright Captain Buggy?” You asked him, holding your hand against the towel and pressing it firmly against the rising bruise. He clasped his left hand around your right, leaning into the touch you were providing him and closing his eyes. 

“I like the way your tongue makes my name sound,” he confessed in a breathy gasp. You again found yourself laughing at his words, the melodic ring of your voice stirring something dangerous within the purple hues of Sir Crocodile’s eyes. He continued watching your interaction with Buggy from his place darkening the threshold of the entrance to his casino. 

“What happened, Clown?” A voice called behind him, the curve of a pale shirt clinging to the back of a dark-haired individual you could barely see. Buggy apprehensively turned away from you and lulled his head towards the man with a snarling expression. 

“It’s her fault,” he gestured to you with his thumb, “She was sittin’ on that chair all innocent-like, as if she doesn’t look like walking sex.” 

“Hardly walking if she’s sitting,” the man called over in a bored and disinterested tone, without sparing so much as a glance in your direction. You found him intriguing, but you decided to match his energy and remain aloof to his comments yourself. 

Turning away from the two men beside you, you began moving your hands in a flurry of wordless gestures to your coworker as discreetly as you could.

‘Where is he?” you asked her, watching her hands flicker in response as she continued to attempt to uphold her own persona as bartender.

“Approaching slowly,” she managed to signal to you, before she placed a glass of wine in front of the broody aloof gentleman beside the clown. The corner of his lips ticked at the corner, a whisper of gratitude depicted on his face as he turned to face you with the crystal glass rising upwards. 

The small widening of his honey-coloured eyes told you all you needed to know within his gaze. Your head cocked to the side, your eyes wide and feigning innocence to the best of your abilities. 

“My, my,” he commented, shamelessly raking his eyes over your body from your decorated toes to the follicles of your styled hair, “I do see why you would be the cause for such a stumble.” He expertly brushed the blue-haired man away from you, extending his right hand forward to seek out your own and collecting your four fingers within his grip. 

He raised your hand to his lips, his mustache tickling the knobbed joints of your knuckles before his lips brushed against your flesh. Your eyes turned sultry, not once either of you breaking your eye contact against one another. 

Unable to control the rapidity of the thump within his chest and the dry lump forming in his throat, Sir Crocodile began a stalking approach towards you. How dare they fawn over you. You: his favorite of his Choirs. His angelic muse and harbinger of brutality. 

He knew you would make heads turn with the uniform he laid out for you, but he did not anticipate the primal urge swelling beneath him to pull you into himself and shield you away from their eyes. He wanted you all for himself, in any capacity you were willing to give it to him. He didn’t care that you were paid berry to serve him, it felt real enough for him.

“Dracule Mihawk,” he uttered against your flesh, withdrawing from his stoop and arching his back to puff his barely shielded chest to you, “And you are, my darling?” Before you could answer with your name, you felt a warm graze dancing up your spine. His breath tickled against your skin, tingling your spine beneath his lips as they pressed intent and longing to your flesh. 

On any other occasion, you may have been alarmed by such attention from an individual without seeing their face. The cologne dancing with the whisper of his last cigar floated with each kiss against your skin, informing you exactly who was giving you such a touch. 

He had never offered you this unbridled affection in the past, not allowing himself to give into his craving for you, and you not willing to test your place serving under him. This touch felt natural, his lips continuing to press into you, as you continued to hold your gaze on the eyes of the dark-haired man in front of you. 

Sir Crocodile’s lips found your left shoulder, his purple eyes pulling the swordsman’s attention away from you to meet with your boss as he continued to map his lips up your neck to your jaw. His left forearm circled around your front, the golden hook firmly secured against his wrist collecting your chin beneath the smooth surface. He turned your attention away from Mihawk to look into his eyes through lowered eyelashes. 

He leant forward, drawing your lips against his by the gentle tilt of his hook against your chin. Darting his tongue out to stroke yours, his nose brushed against your own as he circled his jaw to deepen the embrace. Your hands clutched the base of the stool you were sat atop to anchor yourself down for fear of floating to the roof. The hum of his lips in joy had a small moan pull from your lips the longer he was joined against you. 

You felt his right hand brush against your bicep, curling his firm grip around it as he pushed his chest flush with your own with a gentle turn of your body. He pulled away from the kiss, his eyes immediately falling to your rapidly swelling and kiss-bruised lips, slightly smudged paint falling below the perimeter of your bottom lip. Tapping your chin with his hook, your eyes darted from your own gaze against his lips to meet with his purple eyes. 

“My Seraphim,” the rumble of his voice and the small smirk of his lips had your attention hyper fixed and hanging on his every word. You held your gaze firmly affixed to his, watching as he turned away from you and greeted the men in front of you with the nod of his head and the small utterance of their names.

“Mihawk,” the rumble of his voice rubbing within his throat had your spine tingle with anticipation, “Buggy.” He turned back to meet your orbs that had not yet broken from his face, but raked your gaze over his face with half-lidded lashes. Your eyes continued to float in a daze against his lips and flittering back up to meet his gaze. 

He extended his right hand in a gesture for you to take it, you reacting immediately by placing your hand within his larger palm to encircle his digits around it. You allowed him to pull you away from your former position atop the barstool, your heels clicking against the floor as he escorted you to the desired table for the night. Now in the shroud of seclusion, he leaned down and uttered a small apology in your ear. 

“Forgive me,” he began, taking his seat within the plush armchair and patting his left knee with his right. Without hesitation, you gracefully placed yourself atop his thigh with the small flick of your hair, crossing your left knee over your right and arching your back. 

“What sins am I forgiving, sir?” you asked him, feeling the dangerous caress of his hook brushing against your spine and collecting a small portion of your hair within its curvature. Your boss took in a deep breath through his nose, expanding his broad chest beneath his suit jacket. His exhale had a small quake to it, his eyes closing as he basked under your attention.

You reached your hands and began to dance your fingertips against the hem of his collar. Although this was a routine you had practiced with him over man a night on his lap, this touch felt almost forbidden as his brows furrowed. 

“I should not have kissed you like that,” he uttered in a voice below a hushed whisper, “You deserve better than something so public. I desire you-... -for you to be treated as a seraphim I know you to be.” His vocal catch had your attention completely focussed on every word, your body leaning itself further as your hands halted their movement. 

“I am not a seraphim, sir,” your lips were now almost brushing with the shell of his ear, your hypnotic perfume, intoxicating and mesmerizing the larger gentleman the longer your presence remained atop his lap. He angled his head away from you, exposing the side of his neck to reveal the rapidity of his heartbeat displayed against his pulse. 

“And what are you, if not a seraphim,” he whispered darkly, allowing to be disarmed by your presence as he leant into your touch, yet away from the descent of your lips upon his ear. 

“I am your seraphim,” you confessed as your lips grazed against the sensitive flesh of his cheek, his dark hair tickling against your eyes. 

Sir Crocodile was glad he had withdrawn you to a secluded portion of his casino at this moment. He truly did not desire for the other two members of the Cross-Guild to notice how much of a grip you truly had around his heart, but refused to break away from your display of unrestrained physical affection. He knit his brows together, furthering their descent down his face as he processed your words.

“Because I pay you to be,” he uttered, leaning away from your touch and forcing the mask of his arrogance back onto his features. He dropped the hook from your hair, reaching his right hand into his left breast pocket to locate a thick cigar and his golden lighter. Placing the bitten end between his teeth and clamping down on it, he drew the flame up to his lips and attempted to ignite the end. 

“I will return my wage to you,” you uttered quietly after swiping the golden lighter from his hand and reigniting the flame, “I have no need for it when you take care of me so well.” His eyes held an aloof boredom to his expression, refusing to meet with your face as you lit his cigar for him. 

“And if my wealth was taken from me?” He questioned before inhaling the smoke from his cigar, exhaling it away from your face, “If I was to go to prison once more, what then?” Your eyes narrowed, your lip curling up to reveal your displeasure at the question.

“I would claw tooth and nail to free you from your confinement, sir,” you confessed, reaching your left hand forward and collecting his chin beneath your thumb and index finger, turning his jaw for his eyes to meet with yours once more, “And although living in luxury is a welcome experience, I would stand by you regardless.” His eyes depicted his craving for your words to be true, although not believing it yourself. 

He began to open his mouth to speak, silenced by your words cutting through the air like your daggers meeting with the jugular of your foe. 

“You have my loyalty, my blades, and my body at your disposal,” you leant forward further, darting your eyes between focusing on each of his. “Should you order me to jump, I will ask how high. Should you ask me to kneel, I will fall to my knees,” you continued, your grip holding more firmly against his chin, “Should you wordlessly aim your finger at an enemy, I would be a channel of your wrath as I claim their lives for you.” 

Allowing a few moments of thick silence to swell between you, you felt the scrape of his hook trailing itself against your spine, hovering over the soft point of your rib and pressing his point firmly into your flesh. 

“While your words are as beautiful as you are,” he whispered, looking down at the plunging neck of your dress and back up into your eyes, “They are as decorated by the impact of my wealth as your body is in that dress.” You narrowed your eyes at his comment, taking the expression as a challenge. 

Shrugging away from the point of his hook, you rose to your feet between his legs and slowly drew your hands up to the thin straps on your shoulders. You hooked your thumbs beneath the material and began to slowly slip the material over your shoulders and down your biceps. Sir Crocodile’s eyes widened, immediately reaching his right hand and left forearm to halt your hands from revealing more of your flesh to him. 

“What are you doing?” His growl should’ve had your actions stuttering in any other setting, but his rasp had your heart beating in desire in place of fear. 

“I have already informed you that I will be returning my wage to you,” you cocked your head to the side, arching your back towards him and looking down at him under your lustful expression, “Why not start with the dress you claim to despise so much.” The rise of his fluster depicted in his eyes at your words had a smirk drawing up to decorate your lips. 

“What has someone like me done to deserve such devotion from you, my seraphim?” he whispered, his right hand elevating the strap of your left shoulder and securing it firmly in its prior place. You followed suit with your right strap, securing it firmly against your shoulder and leaning further into his welcome embrace. 

He leant his torso closer to you, his broad forearms circling over your own with his fingertips brushing against your skin. You began to open your mouth, confessing your adoration for your boss further upon the tip of your tongue before crudely interrupted by the presence of the blue-haired clown followed behind by the broody gentleman from earlier.

“Are we playin’ cards yet, Croco?” Buggy’s voice hitched as he met with an intimate moment shared between you and Sir Crocodile. Your boss’ hands caressed your skin, pulling you against his torso as he aimed his disapproving gaze over your right shoulder. 

He growled at the interruption, his voice holding more feral animosity than he felt he should. You drew your hand up to claim his cheek in the palm of your right hand, looking down at him with your eyes holding your unspoken answer of lustful adoration at him. His breath hitched as his gaze met with yours, prompting his right hand to grasp the flesh of your back firmer within his spread fingertips. 

“I recall you having barely enough berry to survive the last time we played, Clown,” Mihawk’s aloof tone called from beside him. Neither you nor Sir Crocodile paid either man any mind, too wrapped up in the intimate moment you were sharing holding one another. 

You removed the cigar from Crocodile’s teeth in your left hand, stooping forward and claiming his lips beneath your own. Your nose brushed against his, the kiss as hastily departing in severance of the connection as it did in its descent. He arched his chin up, chasing your retreat with his eyes closed. 

“Shall I get the table ready, sir?” You asked him in a subtle whisper, relishing in the small hum of pleasure falling from the lips of your boss. His eyes split slowly open, remaining half-lidded as he lulled his head on his neck to glance at you. The silver mark splitting his face danced in the illuminance of the soft bar light, his striking features appearing more chiseled under its glow. 

“Please,” he spoke slowly, his tongue darting out and danced as the ‘L’ passed his lips. You raked his hair back over his scalp, replacing the fallen strands in their rightful place, while leaning down once more with a smirk.

“Right away, sir,” you purred at him while returning his cigar to his teeth, watching as he bit the tip with a small snarl. Turning and walking away to collect several items to place atop the green felt for your boss to engage in a game of cards with his two unlikely colleagues, eyes fixed on your back as you exited the secluded area.

“Who is she?” Buggy’s shocked voice cracked out the stuttered question also plaguing Mihawk’s mind. Sir Crocodile relaxed in his chair, inhaling the cigar smoke deeply into his lungs and holding it. Upon it exiting from his lungs, he confessed the place you held within his heart with the utterance of two words.

“My favorite.”

[mariacallous]

The problem with judging people for their sins is that the internet makes it exceedingly easy to invent sins. In February, Buzzfeed News reported on a man filmed by a passing TikTokker, who then uploaded the footage with text suggesting he’d lied to her to get out of a date. That was false��he’d never met her—but it didn’t stop people from ridiculing him as the video racked up over a million views.

Similarly, last year, an Australian woman objected to being made the star of a stunt in which a TikTokker asked her to hold a bouquet, strolled off, and then congratulated himself on performing a random act of kindness. Sixty million hits later, his viewers were praising him for brightening the day of a woman they judged to be old, lonely, and sad. But she objected to that characterization and declared the whole affair “dehumanizing.” She hadn’t asked to have her day interrupted, let alone be thrust into a global spotlight.

And then there are those incapable of even grasping the situation. In 2022, a TikTok channel was called out for surreptitiously filming the homeless with drones. Loved ones with dementia are put on TikTok to be infantilized or have their worst moments gawked at. Parents transform their children into viral stars. Sometimes, those children grow up and call them out for warping their youth.

When people tell us it was harrowing and wrong to be unwillingly cast into the spotlight, we nod and agree. But those responsible typically offer only half-hearted apologies or remain unrepentant, while their millions of views discourage reflection. Often, moral scolding is implicit in the video and explicit in the comments: It is wrong to be homeless. It is gross to be ill. It is pathetic to be unhappy.

To be sure, crass and hateful public figures are worthy of ridicule. And we’ve been using the internet to judge strangers for as long as we’ve had the internet. But the common trait shared by much of the most obnoxious content today is that someone chose to elevate a stranger for no reason beyond their own gratification, attracting attention at a scale unimaginable in the days of relics like Hot or Not and People of Wal-Mart.

At best, these are misguided attempts to juice the poster’s social media presence. At worst, they are pointless cruelty. That cruelty can be addictive, but we can and must resist the urge to gawk at strangers against their will. It should, in fact, be considered rude, insulting, and wrong to have uploaded a stranger against their will. We would not go out into the streets and stir up a mob against a random person. Why are we so comfortable with doing it online?

Much of what we post online is innocent and will remain so. The average Facebook user has 338 friends, while the average number of Instagram followers, according to one estimate, is just 150. You likely use these platforms to follow celebrities and brands, and to interact with friends and family. These are, for most users, insular communities. Vacation photos with friends or a family portrait at Christmas are unlikely to attract trolls and creeps, and even if they do, they are clearly posted in good faith.

But some platforms, like TikTok and Twitter, are more exposed to the vagaries and cruelties of the wider world. Anything you post on them can wind up in the feed of people who don't follow you. Therefore, anyone can become the day’s punching bag. Does your relative really understand what could happen if you put your interaction with them on TikTok?

Maybe you know better than to post Grandpa on Twitter without thinking it through. We know whether our friends and family like attention and whether they understand social media ecosystems, and with this knowledge we are capable of making informed decisions as to whether and on what platforms we should post them. We do not have the same knowledge of strangers. That can be a reason to not post them, but it can also be an excuse to post them without thinking.

If it came out that an influencer uploaded an interaction with a stranger to a private Facebook page or Discord server solely so their closest friends and family could pick them apart, it would rightly be considered misanthropic. And yet uploading a stranger so millions can mock and over-analyze them is just the business of content. That business needs to change.

It’s exceedingly unlikely we’ll ever eliminate jackassery from the internet, but a social media mishap involving a friend or family member can be resolved with communication.

It is harder for a complete stranger to succeed in that endeavor, especially when “Look at this weirdo I found, please gape at them” is the text or subtext of so many videos and posts by accounts that thrive on content starring the unwilling. Such content must become anathema. Particular thought must be taken before posting an interaction with a stranger, and the consent of a stranger to be posted at all is necessary to retain an internet that is even remotely civil. If someone does post a stranger without their consent, they should be shunned, not rewarded with the attention they crave.

The vast majority of disputes with unruly neighbors are solved by talking to them. Ideally, the law only gets involved when lines of communication break down. The same can be true of digital disputes.

We have privacy laws. If I were to post your name, address, and phone number, you would have legal recourse. And yet the same is not true for your image. Today, at least, you surrender your right to privacy by stepping into public. But outdated privacy laws are catching up to the abuses of government and tech, and the issues raised by social media virality could be next.

Still, a blanket law against posting strangers without their consent would be draconian and unworkable. There are too many variables, too many circumstances, and simply too many cases. However, whole generations who have been online since birth—sometimes unwillingly—could grow up to be more sensitive to the downsides of posting without permission, prompting a normative shift.

More specific laws are already evolving to handle some scenarios raised by nonconsensual virality, specifically as it applies to children. Irina Raicu of Santa Clara University’s Internet Ethics Program points out that a recent French law entitles child influencers to demand that platforms scrub all trace of them once they turn 16. The YouTube career their parents create for them—or force on them—need not be what defines them as adults. The United States is considering a similar law; a woman who testified to a House committee said the details of her first period were turned into content.

Another law being considered in France would make parents responsible for their children’s privacy rights. Le Monde cites, as an example of fame-seeking behavior that France is hoping to discourage, TikTokkers scaring their children by pretending to call the police on them, and an Instagrammer who smeared chocolate on her 4-year-old and convinced them they were covered in feces. We will eventually wonder how parents were able to get away with this at all.

So those who cannot consent are starting to be protected. But what about those who could consent, but don’t? And what if, as some unwillingly viral subjects have found, reaching out and asking for posts to be removed is met with silence or rejection?

In reality we already practice social media consent; it is not unusual to ask a friend if they’re alright with having a picture posted to Instagram, even though the face they make as they try to cram an unusually large sandwich into their mouth is not a flattering one. And yet we continually fail to extend this courtesy to strangers, either because we think nothing of it or because it is our job to go viral at all costs.

Some of this, as Raicu points out, can be blamed on the platforms we use, which encourage hair triggers. “There are ways in which the design choices behind many websites make it harder for all of us to think about consent,” Raicu wrote in an email. She points to the sheer ease of posting and the fact that norms around social media consent have not solidified. But she notes that platforms could “introduce some friction” in the form of, essentially, reminders that other people are human before you hit Post.

Future platforms could work to curtail shaming, either out of moral compulsion or legal necessity. Much as you can report harassment to social media platforms, posts that have elevated you to infamy against your will should be fair targets.

Lines have been drawn before. YouTube banned dangerous pranks and challenges after people were hurt and complaints mounted. TikTok is trying to tweak its algorithm in response to growing concerns that young users are awash in content encouraging suicide and incel ideology. Content made from those unable or unwilling to consent is a broad category that cannot be wiped out with algorithmic tweaks, but the damage is still happening, and we have the power to collectively declare that some forms of content are unacceptable and must no longer be tolerated.

Perhaps, given the increasing universality of social media usage—83 percent of Gen Z uses TikTok—platform-embedded tools could establish consent. Before posting a video of someone, an influencer could ask their username and send them a simple, stock contract granting them permission to post. Again, this need not apply to every random photo of friends. It could be optional, or it might apply only when an account reaches a certain threshold of followers. But a lack of permission could give a user cause when they cite unwanted virality and negative attention when asking for a post to be removed.

But most of the work will fall to people. It's difficult enough to remember that the man being a bit rude in the grocery store line is a fallible human being with hopes and dreams; it can be almost impossible to remind yourself of that when viewing a contextless clip of someone halfway across the hemisphere. The internet is capable of connecting us to tremendous numbers of people, even as it makes us forget that they are human like us.

An influencer comfortable with filming themselves for thousands of viewers should be comfortable with approaching a stranger and saying, “Would you mind appearing in a video I’m making? I’m going to post it on this platform, and I have this many followers. Take a minute to check me out.” Some already do, and surely there are people who would be happy to receive a free bouquet in exchange for appearing in a TikTokker’s silly stunt. But a no should be taken as a no, just as it should in any other scenario involving consent.

It’s all too easy to skip this step today. People who speak out when they feel harmed by what an influencer did with their image receive only a tiny fraction of the attention that the original posts featuring them got. But when an influencer is repeatedly called out for exploiting strangers—or when their exploitation is obvious, such as when they prey on the homeless—they should be frozen out of the social media ecosystem, not rewarded with attention and profit.

In the future, how will we be able to see such casual cruelty as anything but unethical? Maybe stories of regret are a sign of what’s to come. Brianna Wu, one of the victims of GamerGate, says she has fielded over 100 apologies, often from people who were at their lowest and saw her as an easy outlet for their emotions. But we generally don’t take our frustrations out on people on the street; understanding that people deserve to be protected from unsolicited online fame and malice is the next logical step.

We no longer parade people through villages on a cart or lock them in pillories in the town square to shame them, as was done in centuries past. We did not stop enforcing laws and norms, but we recognized that humiliation and ostracization are harsh, counterproductive tools. Eventually, we will make that realization about the strangers we parade across the internet.

[cosmicalily]

"to be loved is to be remembered" - a mini series by @cosmicalily. view series masterlist, and outline here

3. classically-conditioned memory | han jisung x fem!reader

classically-conditioned memory: a type of implicit memory that is categorised as a learned, involuntary association between a stimulus and (typically emotional) response.

author's note: consider this my official rewrite and extension of my 'lovers rock' drabble for jisung! i absolutely adore this album (and this boy) and may have shed a tear whilst writing this. maybe.

warnings: implied sex (no explicit content)

For you, falling in love was not a singular event in your lifetime. With Jisung, it happened everyday, every hour, every minute, even if he wasn’t present with you. In albums and photographs and text messages, you loved him in a circadian rhythm; 24 hours, from the second you woke up to the moment before you fell asleep, head on his chest, bare skin warm against yours.

It had happened in the way he had smiled at you from across the room at his party, the place where you’d first met. In the way he’d invited you up to his bedroom, not to fuck, but to show you his record player. “It’s my baby,” he’d explained as your fingers ran across the backs of his records lovingly.

“What about your guitar?” you asked, picking your favourite album and setting it up to play, his fingers entwined with yours.

“That’s my baby, too.”

Falling in love with Jisung was listening to French Exit, your head resting against his shoulder, his leather jacket around your shoulders. Falling in love with Jisung was feeling your heartbeats quicken when Lovers Rock played, his body warm beside yours as the party continued downstairs. It was the way you cupped his cheeks, your nails painted wine red, and kissed him slowly, making out long after the vinyl had stopped spinning.

The two of you fell hard and fast, your love for each other a drug. When Jisung first got his drivers’ licence, you would take long road trips in the summer to dodgy motels by the coast, spending nights away from your friends and family, only wanting each other. He would play French Exit in the car, his hand on your thigh, and when he pulled into a parking lot to kiss you, too unfocused to drive any further.

Love with Jisung felt like every celestial object in the sky was colliding. Like the stars were all being reborn, like the clouds had never, ever clouded your vision in the first place. It felt magical and fantastical and like an intangible, out of body experience. It felt like something you had to hunt for, like something you would only ever experience once in a lifetime. It was a feeling deep within your bones that you knew you would never forget, an involuntary response, something unconscious.

“I’ll love you forever, baby. You’re the only one for me,” Jisung whispered, your bodies tangled in a mess of crumpled sheets. His room was humid, even with the window open, and his house was quiet, his parents out for the night. His skin was hot against yours, yet you didn’t feel uncomfortable or overstimulated. You wanted Jisung to take up all of your senses, to alert every part of your body with his presence.

“Mm,” you replied, resting your face closer against his warm skin. You listened to the record in the background, tracing shapes into his bicep to the rhythm of the music.

You felt his hand run through your hair, and you leaned into his touch.

“Mm,” you repeated again, nuzzling closer. You felt his chest rise and fall again, his breathing steady. Soon, you heard a soft snuffle, and he was asleep, bare skin warm, plump lips slightly open.

Gently, you wriggled out of his embrace. God, wasn’t he beautiful? Dark brown hair wavy from the summer breeze, soft cheeks you’d always kiss ever so gently. You reached out and touched his finger lightly, as if reminding yourself that he existed, that he was before you.

You shifted back into his arms, resting your face against his chest, pressing kisses to his collarbone. Your lipstick had long faded, but it felt like you were printing onto him, painting his skin.

You wished that he didn’t have to move halfway across the world, even if it was to pursue his dream. You wished that you were loyal enough to join him, but you couldn’t. Not when your whole life was here.

Something in you felt comforted, though. As the record played, and Jisung’s hand wrapped around your waist a little tighter, you knew that you would find him again. In music, in artwork, in dreams, both innocent and otherwise. 

He would never entirely vanish. You knew him too well.

Rain poured from the murky grey sky, dampening Jisung’s hair and running down his forehead, his nose, his cupid’s bow. He sighed, considering the twenty-three minutes of his journey back home he had. It would be better to wait it out.

It was dark, although the streetlights provided a soft glow, reflecting against the rain glossed sidewalk. He spotted a store with warm lighting pouring through its French windows, glass blurred and foggy. Jisung walked over to the burgundy door and was enveloped in warmth, a scent of familiarity and a sea of records stacked in mahogany shelves.

The shop seemed to have been designed to be a bookstore, with beautifully carved wooden cases that spanned higher than one could reach, clad with black iron ladders attached on rails to grab items from the top. The counter was empty, and Jisung couldn’t see anyone around, so he looked through the navy blue crate on the floor labelled ‘Favourites’. Beside the crate sat a record player on a low table. There was no vinyl currently playing, and a note beside read ‘Always play before you buy’. Jisung rifled through the stack of records, smiling at each album. At the very back, distinct in its red and black, sat French Exit.

His heart hammered automatically in response, body flooding with warmth. He remembered kissing you on the floor of his bedroom, kissing you in the music room at lunchtime, kissing you in between classes. He remembered your wine red nails and your (his) leather jacket, the stains your lipstick would leave on his cheeks, lips and collarbones. 

He had never stopped loving you. He fell in love with you every single day, even when you weren’t there.

Even after you’d gone your separate ways after high school.

“Good choice,” a voice came from the distance. “This album’s my favourite.”

Jisung stood up and turned, and you startled, a hand clasping over your mouth. Your nails were still wine red, and now, so was your hair, tousled and layered and falling just over your shoulders. You wore black tights and black boots, a navy plaid miniskirt and a black knit turtleneck. You looked different, but also not really. You were still the most beautiful girl he’d seen.

“Baby,” he breathed, and pulled you into a tight embrace. Your hearts raced, hands reaching to cup each other’s faces, kisses desperate. He wondered if your lipstick would leave stains again, if you still had his jacket. If you’d still let him kiss you on his bedroom floor.

“It came on the other day, Lovers Rock, and my heart started beating so fast. It always does, whenever it plays. My body remembers that song, and you,” you said breathlessly, nestling your face in the crook of his neck.

“Mine always does too,” Jisung replied, rubbing circles into your lower back. “I never forgot you. I’ll never forget you.”

“Me neither,” you whispered, and you stayed in his embrace, bodies warm against each other, hearts beating in sync. The record stopped spinning, and neither of you moved. You remembered. Your bodies remembered. 

You were a whole.

[elvis1970s]

Denis Sanders, director of the cinema documentary Elvis That's The Way It Is (MGM 1970), set out to capture the Elvis Las Vegas experience from a number of different perspectives, one of which was a selection of fan interviews.

Virtually none of the contributors were identified, other than by little snippets of information they let slip during their interview sessions.

Sue Wiegert (pictured in the bottom right image with Tinkerbell the cat and Cricket Coulter), was the president of the Blue Hawaiians for Elvis Fan Club, and was interviewed together with Cricket, a friend of Elvis for 11 years, and who had actually worked for him for a while, although this genuine connection was not mentioned in the film. Tinkerbell (the cat) was described as a fan of Elvis' Vegas album, because 'it has a lot of action in it'.

One of the nicer interviews was with the mother and daughter (centre right) who were sharing the Elvis Las Vegas experience, demonstrating that Elvis' unique fan base transcended generations. "Mother doesn't like it when he stands too still, she likes a lot of action and I must admit I do too," the daughter explained. "He sends my phi beta kappa key jangling!"

The contributor in the blue cardigan is interesting. We never find out who he is, or anything about him. He's well spoken, and makes an articulate and useful contribution, yet the Village Voice, in their review of the movie, described him as 'possibly the creepiest young man ever to appear on screen'.

One of Colonel Parker's objections to the rough cut of the film, which he communicated directly to the MGM corporate head James (the Smiling Cobra) Aubrey, bypassing the director and producer, was that the fan interviews tended to distract from the excitement of the performance segments.

One segment that never made it to the final edit was an interview with some members of the cast of Hair, who apparently offered their responses by means of a slightly weird session of improvised acting...

It's interesting to compare the way Sanders treated the fan interviews in comparison to Bob Abel and Pierre Adidge for Elvis on Tour, two years later. In Elvis on Tour, there seemed to be a spirit of togetherness, in that the filmmakers put themselves, and the camera, right in the midst of the fans and on the same level; equally caught up in the excitement at the hotels, the airports, and the arenas. Denis Sanders, on the other hand, seemed to be examining them like museum exhibits, and perhaps quietly saying, Can you believe these people?

Colonel Parker was very complimentary about Denis Sanders' professionalism and commitment, despite their creative differences. Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick suggested that Denis Sanders might have had 'an implicit contempt for his subject'. A bit harsh maybe....

[lime-bloods]

@sicklyseraphnsuch said (in response to Jake's apotheosis-as-objectification):

I havent collected my thoughts completely. But I noted this opening line: "this development represents not Manhattan's increasing detachment from humanity, but rather an escalation of his ongoing objectification-as-woman." Wouldn't it be essentially the same though? If I understand this essay correctly, objectification and a "a sexy powerful" being in the shape of a woman go hand in hand. Wherein if object, then not woman/human. It's like that saying - angels have more in common with printers than people. Objects bear a function, and internally morally neutral, especially as they are devoid of human faults, especially missish ailments like emotions. as you later say: "a woman is 'allowed' to be a person or to be powerful, but never both simultaneously, because, crucially, a woman who is allowed to be a person makes mistakes." then jake at the height of his power, and objectified as a woman, would make him more object than person at this point? unless im like way off base

well pointed-out! don't worry, I think you got my point; the confusion is an ambiguity of wording on my part, but it's an ambiguity that serves well to illustrate the gendered colours of the point I'm making, so I'll go into it a bit.

Manhattan's apotheosis and woman's objectification absolutely are both forms of "detachment from humanity": the purpose of my distinguishing the two is that Manhattan's detachment is self-imposed. He deliberately removes himself from personhood by strict adherence to what might be best described in this context as rigidly masculine values: a suppression of emotional responses and total dedication to logic above all else - put another way, rigid adherence to 'objectivity'. The objectification-as-woman is in contrast pressed upon Jake by outside forces: though we observe that Jake is a highly emotionally-driven being, his feelings are necessarily stifled by external actors who seek to project their own desires unto him.

I should also point out that in generalising apotheosis-as-objectification I have engaged in a degree of willful conflation, between objectification-by-author or by-audience (external to the story) and objectification-by-characters (within the story). Rei is such a strong example of the all-powerful woman cliche in part because she is equally subject to both; her transformation into the Giant Naked Rei is essentially the successful completion of a lifetime of grooming into sexual and maternal object by Evangelion's various conspirators. But for Rose Tyler and Jean Grey, their objectification is only implicit; the minimisation of their human agency is not the agenda of a shadowy cabal but rather the simple result of living as human women in a patriarchal society. In this sense their apotheoses are almost in spite of objectification, rather than a logical extension of it (think again of Jake's powers flaring up the most dramatically when his emotional agency is stripped from him) - as I say, at least within Doctor Who's established paradigm of power, Tyler becoming the Bad Wolf is an act above her station. The Bad Wolf and the Phoenix's objectification is exterior to the text; a re-claiming of the powerful woman as sex object for male consumption, just as the mundanely powerful woman like Lara Croft is empowered within-text but objectified from without. To the point: I believe that Beyond Canon's reflective nature (and Homestuck's generally) puts it in the perfect position to tackle the history and tropes associated with objectification-by-audience using a character like Jake who has a history of being objectified by his fellow characters.

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

But as men entered military service, the talk about protecting women began to shape a new, war-born relationship between citizens, subjects, and the state. Confederate citizens of all sorts readily subscribed to the view that the Civil War was a defensive war waged for the protection of hearth, home, and womanhood. State officials subscribed to it, too, or at least said that they did. Citizens thus not unreasonably expected that military deployment would be shaped by, or at least accommodate, those social goals. But therein lay the problem. For men took their role as protectors of women seriously. From the first, the nature of the call to arms seemed to authorize a very local notion of defense-literally home protection-that made the task of military mobilization all the more tricky. In the innocence of the early months, before the staggering requirements of the war hit home, most volunteers worked on the assumption that service would be local and short term, allowing them to fulfill their obligations both to their family and to the Confederacy. "We are composed mostly of married men of families," the Magnolia Rifles of Randolph County, Georgia, explained to the governor. "We want a place in our own state and feel that 12 months will be best for us and our families." Men expected war and military service to accommodate the farming cycle and their customary obligation to support and protect their dependents.

But already by May 1861 the Confederate War Department was facing up to the task of building a national army and authorized enlistment of as many as four hundred thousand men, not for twelve months as previously, but for three years or the duration of the war. The idea of a truly national army stirred up enormous resistance as men faced service out of their own locality and even out of the state. In Georgia men complained about being forced to go too far." Once the Confederacy started mobilizing for war, it wasn't long before white men began to feel that the protection of womanhood was at odds with military service, the private duties of husband and father antagonistic to the political obligation of the citizen-soldier. "It is the greatest dilemma that mankind can feel to leave a family in ... destitute condition," one enlisted man with a sick wife and three small children wrote his governor in 1862. "Still I know there is a great obligation resting on me to shoulder arms in defense of my country.""

Caught in the dilemma of conflicting private and public obligations, men turned the problem back to the state, demanding the reciprocity implicit in freemen's obligation to serve. The quid pro quo was widely understood. Jacob Blount of Attapulgas, Georgia, put it to his governor: "Sir," he wrote, "I am willing to defend my country but I as well as all other men want my wife and children protected." In calling repeatedly on state governors and the Confederate president and secretary of war to fill their shoes at home, new soldiers both expressed and deepened their vision of women as objects of protection. For if politicians and state officials cast women as objects of male protection (as the responsibility of their husbands), those men called to military service insisted on a more even exchange. In offering their military service to the state of South Carolina (as proof of their allegiance), two different groups of free blacks asked "only that if ordered off... our wives and children will be taken care of & provided for."

stephanie mccurry, confederate reckoning: power and politics in the civil war south

[fruityyamenrunner]

This community note on the platform formerly known as Twitter is a noteworthy example of the dire state of anti-woo.

This note is going to get policed by polite people as being written by the ghost of a fedora atheist (derogatory) (indeed, the epithet attached by the person who brought it to my attention was "new atheist reddit tier shit") and is therefore ludicrous.

I note first that aalewis' famous quote is from 2013, a time when even *atheism*, let alone "scepticism" was on the downswing, hence aalewis' otherwise unremarkable quote taking off both within and further fuelling the reaction. That was almost 10 years ago.

Here's a Google trends graph of the colocation "fedora atheist'. The step is in 2012. The "fedora atheist" as an unmemed "authentic" phenomenon - if there ever was one - is essentially a late 2000s figure, becoming a *memed* folk devil in the early 2010s.

This folk devil, ten years on, can still be evoked in the face of a very minor anti-woo reaction like the above.

But this response is *itself* compromised in a way no actual fedora wearing skeptic speaking about alternative medicine before (idk where to date the beginning of this wave) would be.

The response objects, up front, to the characterisation of these modalities as "traditional" on the grounds they are modern inventions.

This is no good -- anyone who has read the book titles of Eric Hobsbawm knows that traditions can date from any time, so it's a bad argument.

The argument the anons writing it *really* want to make is the one they offer halfheartedly -- that those modalities are *unscientific* -- that they are "pseudoscience" --, and that scientific authorities like the WHO should not be promoting them.

But they can't -- the spirit of the times is so anti-anti-woo that you get the above which, read literally, suggests that what makes something a pseudoscience is that it was developed parallel to a science. And makes no argument that the UN should not be promoting it -- that is purely implicit.

[christian-dubuis-santini]

«C'est ainsi que dans la société totalitaire, si la «culpabilité objective» des dirigeants les fait traiter comme criminels et responsables, l'effacement relatif de ces notions, qu'indique la conception sanitaire de la pénologie, porte ses fruits pour tous les autres.

Le camp de concentration s'ouvre…» (Jacques Lacan)

Nota Bene: je m’adresse au non-idiots.

En complément de la quatre-vingt-cinquième séance du séminaire, voici dessous un texte de René Gandolfi, médecin, pour faire respirer les synapses de ceux à qui il en reste.

(téléspectateurs, non-lecteurs s’abstenir…)

L’immunité ou comment devenir soi-même

Il est aujourd’hui manifeste qu’en réaction au phénomène "pandémique" du covid-19, nous assistons à la promotion prééminente d’une philosophie politique fondée sur la science biologique, laquelle devient le spiritus director de la société à laquelle elle impose sa morale.

Ce qui semble relever d’une improvisation stratégique n’est que l’aboutissement du projet d’une mathesis universalis telle que Descartes la rêvait, c’est-à-dire l’advenue d’une maîtrise totale et rationnelle du fonctionnement du monde y compris et surtout celui de l’homme jugé irresponsable.

Ce moment d’intronisation du biologique a son antériorité historique dans l’énoncé programmatique du positivisme chez Auguste Comte. Depuis lors, une unification méthodique de la pensée progresse, effaçant peu à peu les frontières entre la conception physico-mathématique des phénomènes de la nature, la biologie et la sociologie. Cette fusion glorifie le numérique avec son bréviaire des robots en guise d’évangile post-moderne. L’universalité conjuratoire de la Science ayant convaincu les âmes naïves, le dogme de l’infaillibilité du pape s’est transféré sur la congrégation des savants désormais légitimés à s’exprimer ex cathedra en matière de foi et de vérité.

La moralisation de la campagne de vaccination se calque sur la juridiction inquisitoriale usant d’un droit canonique pour imposer des sanctions aux hérétiques. L’Etat se transforme en église, encore faut-il savoir quel est son credo et l’analyse du concept d’immunité va nous y aider car c’est bien vers ce concept que convergent les questions gravitant autour du phénomène pandémique.

Le concept d’immunité se rapporte à la problématique identitaire, celle donc qui concerne l’unité d’un sujet. De ce fait, le concept d’immunité présente une structure chiasmatique où se croisent contradictoirement la pensée biologique moderne et la philosophie. Celle-ci conçoit la nature transcendantale du sujet alors que la biologie la réfute et opte pour une version ultra-naturaliste. Dans cette dernière appréciation épistémologique, l’analyse du sujet se réfère aux modalités adaptatives évaluées par des algorithmes évolutionnistes. Le chiasme immunitaire est donc celui de la métaphysique et du scientisme.

Les graphes et les chiffres résument ce qui est médicalement signifié par le phénomène pandémique et l’immunité n’est convoquée que sous le seul horizon statistique de son empreinte collective alors que se montrent des écarts cliniques importants, négligemment dépréciés, entre des personnes asymptomatiques et celles profondément atteintes dans leur vitalité. Quant aux personnes dites vulnérables parce qu’âgées, diabétiques, obèses, ou soignées pour diverses pathologies, elles sont implicitement catégorisées comme déficientes immunitaires comme si cela était absolument normal. A quoi fait-on allusion dans ce verdict qui ne reçoit aucune explication ?

L’immunité est biologiquement définie comme l’ensemble des défenses d’un organisme contre les éléments qui lui sont étrangers. Cette définition est reprise de façon plus notionnelle par la biologie évolutionniste cherchant à distinguer le soi du non soi, termes didactiques appartenant pleinement par leur ambiguïté sémantique à la structure chiasmatique vue précédemment. Ainsi, la cellule, comme unité de base du vivant, serait l’étalon conceptuel le plus adéquat à représenter le soi et par sa naturelle extension à l’organisme, celui-ci aquérirait une unité fonctionnelle garantissant son autonomie existentielle. La notion de soi se propage encore plus avant à l’espèce qui devient une nouvelle unité plus large du modèle adaptatif autistique que représente idéalement la cellule. Le corps que décrit cette théorie cellulaire devient un Etat cellulaire sur lequel peuvent se calquer les structures hiérarchiques du macrocosme politique et social.

Le glissement sémantique du soi de la cellule à l’identité psychique atteint son comble quand cette dernière n’est plus qu’un moyen de contrôle de son corps définitivement instrumentalisé et intégré dans le corps plus vaste et emblématique de la société. Nous assistons à une mascarade de responsabilisation culpabilisante où tout le monde doit protéger tout le monde, y compris les enfants susceptibles de tuer leurs grands-parents. L’homme-cellule fusionne avec le corps-Etat, version zoologique de la fourmilière.

Revenons à une pensée plus critique de la conceptualisation du biologique. L’immunité biologique concerne l’individu d’une espèce nanti des caractères d’une entéléchie, c’est-à-dire ayant une existence bien définie, ou encore se présentant comme une forme accomplie dans son mode de différenciation dans le tout qu’est la nature. L’immunité questionne in fine la relation du Un au Tout, relation constitutive et constituante d’un ensemble évolutif et sélectivement intégratif selon la logique doctrinale de l’adaptationnisme. Le terme biologique associé à l’évolution concerne donc le phénomène spontané de la biodiversité sans que l’on puisse y discerner une cause a priori : cela se résume à un extraordinaire jeu combinatoire de gènes produisant une prodigieuse efflorescence de formes sans autre finalité que faire système, c’est-à-dire engendrer et contenir ses limites. Conséquemment, aucune forme ne peut être étudiée pour elle-même de façon isolée puisque l’évolution est une coévolution impliquant tous les éléments de la planète, laquelle est envisagée comme un organisme vivant par les sciences de la terre. Les virus et les bactéries participent activement aux modalités évolutives de ce système qui semble apparemment avoir atteint de nos jours sa complétude systémique, mais qui n’en conserve pas moins sa nature compétitive.

La science biologique fait donc le choix épistémologique de concevoir une forme vivante comme une option mutationnelle génomique mise à l’épreuve de sa viabilité et s’auto-organisant au sein d’un milieu qu’elle contribue elle-même à complexifier favorisant ainsi de nouvelles possibilités formelles. Dans cette perspective, la procédure immunitaire est identifiée à l’apprentissage adaptatif d’une forme, ce qui implique à l’égal d’un contexte pédagogique la gestion d’un nombre absolument incommensurable d’informations. Chaque forme est assimilée à un bon élève qui a su mémoriser une partie des informations du milieu pour s’y faire valoir ; il est possible d’appeler cela un principe identitaire représentatif du mode de développement du système de la nature. L’homme arrive en fin de parcours de cette systématisation formelle et informationnelle et il semble logique qu’il en représente la limite et la raison. De toute évidence, l’homme a une relation au Tout et non pas à une partie des données du milieu, ce qui rend la notion d’immunité tout à fait singulière puisque, en gardant la métaphore pédagogique, l’homme intègre l’ensemble des modalités évolutives et devient le système du système, sa cause obscure. Rappelons que plus de 90% de l’ADN n’est pas directement codant chez l’homme, ce qui évoque un stockage informationnel impressionnant.

Restons encore un moment avec la théorie de l’évolution selon le mode adaptatif qui intéresse la relation d’une forme vivante à son milieu. Le cauchemar de Darwin était la queue du paon dont il lui était difficile de saisir la valeur adaptative, quant à Darwin lui-même il n’avait aucune idée sur sa propre valeur adaptative et s’extasiait devant les vers de terre dont l’importance pour la vie de la terre est indubitablement immense.

Ainsi, l’immunité dite naturelle chez l’homme, car présente dès la naissance, est le condensé d’une épopée de la survivance témoignant de l’aptitude d’une forme vivante à se produire et se reproduire en tant qu’espèce au sein de la dynamique évolutionniste. L’homme procède des lois de la dynamique différentielle qui décide de son mode d’être au monde, aussi bien sur le plan personnel que sociétal ou cosmique. La sociologie est une simple surélévation de l’éthologie.

Cependant, la pandémie, comme tout symptôme dit infectieux, dévoile la persistance de la pression sélective au sein du système de l’évolution et il est alors fait appel au concept d’immunité acquise ou adaptative qui, nous venons de le voir, est déjà implicitement convoquée dans l’immunité naturelle. Ce deuxième type d’immunité prouve que l’identité de l’homme est toujours exposée au mécanisme co-évolutionniste intéressant la vie de la totalité des formes de la planète. Déterminer l’immunité d’un organisme comme un mode de défense contre ce qui lui est étranger méconnaît le fait qu’une forme ne cesse de s’éprouver dans sa différence et que celle-ci ne peut se concevoir hors de l’impératif logique qui commande à la coévolution. La loi intégrative du système s’impose, une forme n’existe que par rapport à une autre.

La notion de soi comme unité organique se rapportant à une logique existentielle autarcique devient abstraite, sans réalité concrète et oblitérant l’importance de l’interdépendance des formes. Nos intestins abritent une faune et une flore permettant l’assimilation des aliments. Certains animaux ont plus de microorganismes dans leur organisme que de cellules propres cela s’appelle la commensalité ou l’art de vivre ensemble.

La notion de soi rejoint en pure logique celle de l’identique, du toujours pareil, d’une coïncidence à soi sans écart, d’un éternel rapport de soi à soi, rappelant l’obstination cellulaire à n’être que soi sans autre que soi. Ainsi le terme d’étranger associé à celui de non-soi dans la définition de l’identité immunitaire devient fortement problématique. Rien du monde ne peut être considéré comme étranger à une forme et surtout pas les virus et les bactéries qui sont des éléments majeurs du processus évolutif rappelant que celui-ci reste un système intégratif pour le meilleur et pour le pire ; en effet, le jeu n’est pas terminé et nul n’en connaît la fin.

En conséquence, le non-soi fait miroir à l’abstraction du soi et en récupère la dimension imaginaire.

Le modèle cellulaire se révèle fallacieux. La cellule ne se préoccupe que d’elle-même en assimilant le monde, c’est-à-dire en le rendant pareil à elle. Elle s’enclot en elle-même sur son vouloir être le monde : elle est une hallucinose et ne modélise qu’un soi psychotique.

L’ipséité est une identité ouverte au monde et donc à conquérir, jamais achevée, toujours en devenir, en prise avec l’altérité qui la fait toujours être autre que ce qu’elle est. La notion doctrinaire, voire fanatique, d’étranger est donc absconse du fait que le problème immun chez l’homme est d’assumer qu’il n’est que de son rapport à l’autre emblématisé comme grand Autre pour en signifier la logique infiniment différentielle.

Mais qu’est-ce que l’être de l’homme comme être avec un autre ? Telle est la vraie question que la pandémie aurait dû faire jaillir dans toute son ampleur.

L’être a reçu son homologation cartésienne en Europe selon la formulation ontologique qui l’apparie au penser. Cette définition est évidemment sommaire et ne fait qu’ouvrir le débat.

L’homme se réfléchit dans le miroir du monde où rien de particulier ne le sollicite ni ne le signifie. L’être est donc l’immédiateté simple, c’est-à-dire l’immédiat lui-même ou encore la pensée qui saisit immédiatement son être. Il serait plus adéquat de parler du surgissement de l’être s’imposant comme ouverture de la question que l’homme est à lui-même : l’être est d’abord l’être-là avec le néant, ou encore il est l’être se médiatisant avec le non-être ; il n’a aucun contenu, il est l’être qui pourrait ne pas être et qui pourtant est.

Si le corps de l’homme détient la mémoire de millions d’années de coévolution, aucun appendice adaptatif ne le détermine suivant un mode de survivance. L’homme est concerné par le tout du monde qui lui renvoie en abîme son être-là. La relation du Un au Tout n’est plus délimitée par une manière spécifique d’être et prend un caractère d’absolu inconditionnel.

La philosophie s’élance sur cette valeur indicielle d’une absoluité chez l’homme de sa relation au tout du monde le renvoyant ainsi dialectiquement à son extrême finitude. L’homme ne peut se signifier que de la raison du tout et doit assumer en retour l’angoisse du néant qui le fonde comme pur devenir à lui-même, sauf à être mis dans un zoo.

Il ne peut donc y avoir une simple continuité biologique de la systématique transformationnelle allant de la cellule à l’homme, mais un total renversement du courant de l’évolution, se rassemblant en son principe interne dont l’homme devient le représentant. L’homme doit assumer toute l’histoire de la nature se résumant en lui afin de lui donner une raison qui lui revienne. Ainsi se comprend la présence inaugurale du néant avec l’être, le néant est le possible de l’être et de son devenir. L’homme doit finaliser le sens de son existence sur fond de néant où veille la présence angoissante du non-sens qu’est la mort. L’homme ne peut donc fuir la mort et doit vivre avec elle puisqu’elle borne le sens de son existence et absolutise l’unicité de sa présence au monde.

Cette dernière sentence philosophique est totalement contradictoire avec le biologisme ambiant qui exalte la vie pour la vie dans le rejet phobique de la mort. La pandémie aurait dû être l’occasion de réfléchir la structure chiasmatique du concept d’immunité où deux conceptions de l’homme se croisent dans leur radicale différence. Au lieu de cela, elle a été l’occasion d’une stupéfiante mise en scène de l’effroi de l’homme face à la mort, effroi ayant même atteint les principales communautés religieuses. Ce fut la victoire du biologisme et la défaite de toute idée transcendantale de l’homme. L’inconditionné de l’être a chuté dans le marécage moléculaire d’une soupe originelle d’où jaillit la promesse illusoire d’une jouissance éternellement renouvelée. On comprend que Moïse ait brisé les tables de la loi à la vue de la vénération du veau d’or par le peuple.

L’idéologie que promeut une politique biologique est celle d’une immunisation contre la mort, permettant à l’homme d’échapper à la pression sélective du système qui l’a enfanté et de se régénérer illusoirement, comme dans la légende de Frankenstein, à même la matrice génétique emblématisée en fontaine de jouvence. Telle est l’utopie, proche d’une hallucinose, de cette nouvelle religion positiviste qu’Auguste Comte avait anticipée et qui ne concerne en rien le surhomme de Nietzsche, mais plutôt l’homme augmenté ou encore le transhumain.

Il est donc avéré que la métaphysique de l’être ne doit pas être séparée de la physique sous peine d’une perte d’unité du sujet dissipé dans la molécularisation du corps et soumettant naïvement sa construction immunitaire défaillante aux directives socio-politiques.

Pour aborder l’immunité sous l’angle métaphysique, il est nécessaire de produire une analytique existentiale, c’est-à-dire de dégager les structures d’une ontologie fondamentale. Nous avons vu qu’il ne peut y avoir de soi, ou plus exactement d’un en soi, indépendamment d’un rapport à un autre et cette relation différentielle ne peut être que dialectique imposant un rythme de structuration pour le sujet en vue d’acquérir un pour soi et de quitter l’aspect autistique de l’en soi cellulaire.

La notion de pour soi impose un caractère appropriatif purement qualitatif au mouvement dialectique. L’être pour soi conçoit sa différence par rapport aux autres êtres, se comprend en eux et revient vers soi. Ainsi, le sujet advient à soi-même pour ce qu’il est déjà en promesse en soi, l’essence du soi n’est plus biologique, mais métaphysique.

Cette esquisse ontologique est transférable sur le plan immunitaire suivant la traditionnelle tripartition fonctionnelle de l’organisme : le système métabolique, le système cardio-respiratoire et le système nerveux.

— Le métabolisme concerne l’interdépendance des formes suivant les conditions qu’impose la coévolution. Quand on mange un légume ou un animal on s’approprie le mode d’être du légume ou de l’animal ou encore leur structure ontologique. Ainsi, une forme passe dans une autre en lui apportant la valeur modale de sa genèse. Cette alchimie appropriative que le système digestif effectue montre l’indissociabilité du lien entre le qualitatif et le quantitatif. Le biotope intestinal reflète l’évolution de cette interdépendance témoignant de millions d’années et fournit les bases de la construction immune. Cette immunité initiant le rapport du Un au Tout est donc représentative de l’en soi ou encore de l’essence d’une forme. Elle est globalement assimilable à l’immunité innée et donc représentée par la lignée myélocytaire de l’hématopoïèse, source du processus identitaire primaire qu’assume le pouvoir unificateur du sang.

— Le système cardio-respiratoire se définit par sa capacité à offrir une médiation rythmique entre un organisme et son environnement immédiat, Autrement dit, l’essence d’une forme doit continuer à se faire être dans sa différence dans son rapport aux autres essences sur un mode beaucoup plus qualitatif. L’immunité est ici celle du rapport de l’un à l’autre et concerne donc le pour soi. Elle est aussi globalement assimilable à l’immunité acquise et intéresse les organes lymphoïdes. Il apparaît que le rôle de la rate soit, par sa double constitution hémo-lymphatique, d’une importance majeure en assurant l’équilibre du mouvement dialectique entre l’en soi et le pour soi.

— Le système nerveux confirme la valeur différentielle d’un organisme et en assume l’unicité. L’immunité neurologique est celle de l’en soi pour soi ou encore le soi-même comme autre et elle boucle le mouvement dialectique constitutif de toute forme.

Ce dernier moment dialectique fondant l’ipséité doit être ouvert au monde et médié par la dynamique de l’en soi et du pour soi, comme forme de sa singularité et particularité. Ce dernier moment valide l’ensemble du procès identitaire et joue donc un rôle essentiel dans les pathologies auto-immunes. Sur le plan biologique, cette médiation est assurée par le système endocrinien.

La biologie ne sait comment classer cette immunité imprécise, étudiée sous l’amalgame de psycho-neuro-endocrinologie.

A partir de cette vision ontologique, il est aisé de porter un regard nuancé sur les immunités des diverses formes vivantes dans le monde sachant que le critère incontestable de l’évolution demeure celui du système nerveux.

La plupart des plantes développent une ébauche de métabolisme dans le système floral avec une production de sucre, d’huile et de protéines ; les tiges feuillues sont aussi une ébauche du système cardio-respiratoire et les racines qui absorbent l’eau et les sels de la terre ont un fonctionnement proche d’un système nerveux par leur sensibilité chimio-tactile. La plante ne possède pas d’organe immunitaire et elle est si dépendante de son milieu, que c’est l’ensemble de son être qui participe de sa persévérance à son mode d’être unique. La plante est un prototype ou une esquisse ontologique et la cellule végétale anticipe à elle seule le futur système immunitaire.

L’animal possède évidemment les trois niveaux de la construction identitaire, mais il est aussi évident que l’immunité métabolique domine et se particularise selon la prégnance du mode alimentaire. La vie sociale souvent très complexe permet d’initier l’immunité d’un pour soi, mais aucun animal n’accède au soi-même, il ne peut que s’en approcher comme le montrent les singes et surtout les animaux que l’on domestique. L’immunité neurologique ne peut accéder à son niveau supérieur correspondant à l’unité de l’être qui s’atteint dans le penser, lequel est sa propre médiation et se libère de toute extériorité.

Ainsi, cette dépendance de l’être à l’autre ne trouve sa résolution suprême qu’en l’homme grâce à l’effectivité du mouvement dialectique faisant que l’homme devient son propre autre. Autrement dit, l’homme produit sa propre différence à lui-même, son éternelle différence à lui-même.

La méthode de la vaccination qui répondait dans ses débuts d’une certaine vision dialectique de l’immunité est devenue la bannière d’une croisade biopolitique pour la survivance à tout prix, laquelle ne sert qu’une excroissance égologique. La possibilité d’une existence sans infection, sans maladie, sans souci, pleine d’appareils ménagers, de jeux télévisés et de voyages à l’île Maurice, semble être enfin arrivée, au prix d’un total asservissement à la biotechnologie servant la bioéconomie.

Fort heureusement, l’essence libre de l’homme ne peut être complètement étouffée par la prépotence d’un mécanisme économiquement utile ; le comment d’une histoire est inséparable du pourquoi qui en est le revers. Quand on raconte une histoire à un enfant, il ne cesse de demander pourquoi, car tout son être est suspendu à une éthique qui puisse donner du sens à son existence et à celle du monde. Une histoire doit rester fondatrice d’un sujet dans le monde sous peine de laisser s’installer la loi du troupeau qui est la victoire du néant de l’être. Si effectivement la rose semble échapper au pourquoi, c’est qu’elle évoque la ruine du comment et exprime une liberté pour rien, juste pour le beau, pour l’esprit.

La plus grande liberté se cache dans l’immunité, essayons de ne pas la brader pour un minuscule virus. Affronter la mort et ne pas la fuir est le meilleur moyen d’accomplir un destin, c’est-à-dire vivre une passion qui soit une conquête de soi par soi en dialectique avec l’histoire du monde. Le moment est donc venu comme Hölderlin le pressentait d’un retour du divin en l’homme selon l’absolue nécessité d’une résurrection de l’essence libre de l’homme devant se donner son propre horizon transcendantal.

[damnfandomproblems]

771267145148628992

"Remember, gang, this was a response to someone asking people not to treat other people like playthings! Celebrities don't owe you their identity! If you won't write it about your neighbor, friend or family, don't write it about a celebrity!"

I'm sorry- what?!

RPF literally involves fictionalized, dramatized versions of people. They are fictional objects that use real people as a template. It's implicit that these are grossly extrapolated templates too. What is this "nobody owes you their identity" bullcrap?

Posting as a response to a previous ask.

[mickstart]

wait they managed not to broadcast any force india cars for a weekend?? when and why did this happen??

Oh this is a severely fucked up occurrence that I will try to stay brief about but. Basically in 2012 formula one raced in Bahrain as a pretty much implicit sportswashing measure (I'm wary of throwing the term around but f1 had cancelled the race in 2011 due to 'political unrest' aka mass protests from a civilian population that were being violently put down, and in 2012 were explicitly asked to return in what was seen by most as the Bahrain government trying to show they had returned to normal and there were definitely no more human rights abuses happening.) This was widely condemned by both international charities and local activists but Bernie insisted it was all good and they would race no matter what. To put into perspective how fucked the situation was, a protester was killed the weekend of the race.

(side note if you look into this deeper and actually investigate the politics going on behind a Motorsport pov a lot of drivers showed their asses here in their response and it's interesting especially in the case of Sebastian and Lewis how they reacted here VS how they would probably have reacted today.)

So that's. The background. Now here's the insane part. Obviously there were local protests against this, a lot of them. But only one incident really seemed to rattle f1 and that was a hire car of Force India mechanics had a petrol bomb thrown at it. Nobody was hurt but subsequently Force India decided not to participate in the later practice session so the staff could all return to their hotels before it got dark outside.

F1 was. Pissed. How dare you ruin our messaging. There is nothing wrong here, we're all having a great time here, there is no unrest whatsoever the government and their money are doing a great job. Also, this was back when news breaking on twitter was a fairly new concept so the process of these rumours coming out via twitter were very very messy and drew more attention to the sport.

So in what was probably an effort to avoid this online speculation and people demanding answers, during the first practice session, f1 decided the world was populated entirely by toddlers with no object permanence, and if they just didn't SHOW force india, nobody would remember to ask them about the force india petrol bomb rumours. So you had one session where every single team was getting screen time EXCEPT force india - like, I remember it being commented on as odd at the time - and a weekend where the camera kept cutting away from force india cars jarringly as much as it could.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jonathan Haidt

Published: Dec 22, 2023

[Note: this is post #1 of a pair of posts. The second post gives the text of chapter 3 of The Coddling of the American Mind.]

In the days after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, university campuses immediately distinguished themselves as places set apart from the rest of American society—zones where different moral rules applied. Even before Israel began its military response, the loudest voices on campus were not university leaders condemning the attacks and vowing solidarity with their Jewish and Israeli students. Instead, the world saw faculty members and student organizations celebrating the attacks. 

Political commentator and Atlantic author David Frum summed up the moral uniqueness of the academy in this tweet, four days after the attack: 

Since then, there have been hundreds of antisemitic incidents on campuses including vandalism of Jewish sites, physical intimidation, physical assault, and death threats against Jewish students, often from other students. The response from university administrators has often been slow, weak, or entirely absent. 

[ Image. The scene on the exterior wall of my office building at NYU on the morning of October 17, 2023. NYU students had posted fliers about Israelis kidnapped by Hamas. Other NYU students tore them down. Other NYU students posted more of them. ]

Why is the culture of elite higher education so fertile for antisemitism, and why are our defenses against it so weak? Don’t we have the world's most advanced academic concepts and bureaucratic innovations for identifying hatred of all kinds, even expressions of hatred so small, veiled, and unconscious that we call them “micro-aggressions” and “implicit biases”? 

Yes, we do, but it turns out that they don’t apply when Jews are the targets,1 and this was the shocking hypocrisy on display in that Congressional hearing room on December 5. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik asked the President of the University of Pennsylvania “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's rules or code of conduct, yes or no?” President Magill was unable to say yes. When the question was asked in various ways to all three presidents, none could say yes. All said variations of “it depends on the context.”

Now, as a social psychologist who studies moral judgment, I’m all for context. Technically, those presidents were correct that students chanting “from the river to the sea” may or may not be advocating killing all the Jews in Israel. Those chanting “globalize the intifada” may or may not be calling for terrorist attacks on Jewish sites around the world. And even if they were, such political speech is protected by the First Amendment unless the speech is made in a context that is likely to incite actual violence, constitutes a “true threat,” or rises to the level of discriminatory harassment. Those three presidents could have said that their universities are bastions of free speech where everyone lives and dies by the First Amendment.

In fact, they tried to say that, and this is why they were so widely pilloried for hypocrisy. Like most elite schools, Harvard, Penn, and MIT have spent the last ten years punishing professors for their research findings and disinviting speakers who questioned the value of DEI. (See The Canceling of the American Mind for dozens of other examples.) As has been widely reported, Harvard and Penn are the top two schools in America for creating terrible speech climates, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. 

What on earth happened to the academy? As Fareed Zakaria recently asked: How did America’s elite universities go from being “the kinds of assets the world looks at with admiration and envy” just eight years ago, to becoming objects of ridicule today? How did we bungle things so badly?

Greg Lukianoff and I wrote a book that tried to answer that question in 2018, as it was happening. 

The Coddling of the American Mind tells the story of how American universities lost their collective minds, beginning around 2014 when student demands for protections from speech seemed to appear out of nowhere, including calls for trigger warnings, safe spaces, bias response teams, and mandatory trainings around language use. The students were supported by some faculty members and some administrators, and their combined force pressured many university leaders to accede to their demands even though, privately, many had misgivings.2

The new morality driving these reforms was antithetical to the traditional virtues of academic life: truthfulness, free inquiry, persuasion via reasoned argument, equal opportunity, judgment by merit, and the pursuit of excellence.  A subset of students had learned this new morality in some of their courses, which trained them to view everyone as either an oppressor or a victim. Students were taught to use identity as the primary lens through which everything is to be understood, not just in their coursework but in their personal and political lives. When students are taught to use a single lens for everything, we noted, their education is harming them, rather than improving their ability to think critically.

This new morality, we argued, is what drove universities off a cliff. For a while, the descent was gradual, but at Halloween, 2015, in a courtyard at Yale, the free fall began. Students and administrators espousing the new morality demanded reforms at Yale and, over the next few months, at dozens of other schools. With a few exceptions, university leaders did not stand up to the new morality, critique its intellectual shortcomings, or say no to demands and ultimatums. 

You can see the fall of higher ed in data from Gallup. The figure below shows that as recently as 2015, most Democrats and even most Republicans had high confidence in higher education as an institution. (Independents were evenly split). A mere eight years later, higher ed had alienated not just Republicans, but also independents. The trend for Democrats was down as well. The survey was fielded in June of 2023, well before the current mess. 

[ Figure 1. Percent of U.S. adults with "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education. Source: Gallup (2023). ]

The good news is that the academy’s free fall is now over. American higher ed hit rock bottom on December 5, 2023 in that Congressional hearing room. Anyone who wants universities to bounce back and regain the trust of the American people must understand this new morality and ensure that it never holds sway on campus again.

The key chapter for understanding the new morality is chapter 3. I recently re-read that chapter and thought it would be of help to those who are struggling to comprehend the enormity of the culture change on so many campuses since 2015. Greg and I explained the transformation as the triumph of a cognitive distortion—binary thinking—such that students learn to slot everyone into one of two boxes: oppressor or victim.3 This mindset is the psychological basis of one of the three “Great Untruths” that we found flourishing on college campuses in the 2010s: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.4 We said that this was a terrible thing to teach students, and we explained why we expected that students who embraced this untruth would damage their mental health. (Subsequent research has confirmed this prediction.)

The central portion of the chapter describes two different kinds of identity politics, one of which is good because it actually achieves what it says it is trying to achieve, and because it brings both justice and, eventually, better relationships within the group.  We called this “common humanity identity politics.” It’s what Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela did by humanizing their opponents and drawing larger circles that appealed to shared histories and identities. The other form we called “common enemy identity politics.” It teaches students to develop the oppressor/victim mindset and then change their societies by uniting disparate constituencies against a specific group of oppressors. This mindset spreads easily and rapidly because human minds evolved for tribalism. The mindset is hyper-activated on social media platforms that reward simple, moralistic, and sensational content with rapid sharing and high visibility.5 This mindset has long been evident in antisemitism emanating from the far right. In recent years it is increasingly driving antisemitism on the left, too.

Common enemy identity politics is arguably the worst way of thinking one could possibly teach to young people in a multi-ethnic democracy such as the United States. It is, of course, the ideological drive behind most genocides. On a more mundane level, it can in theory be used to create group cohesion on teams and in organizations, and yet the current academic version of it plunges organizations into eternal conflict and dysfunction. As long as this way of thinking is taught anywhere on campus, identity-based hatred will find fertile ground.

With permission from Penguin Press, Greg and I present a condensed version of chapter 3 in a linked post, here:

What is the victim-oppressor mindset and how did it conquer the academy?

Please do go read that post, and then come back here. 

OK, if you don’t want to do that right now, here is the ending of the excerpt, which offers a partial summary. After describing the social psychology of tribalism and ideas about power (from Marx, Marcuse, Foucault, and Crenshaw), we analyze an intersectionalist text in which the author (Kathryn Pauly Morgan) asserted that because men created educational systems, girls and women in those systems today are essentially a “colonized population.” Here is our response:

Morgan is certainly right that it was mostly white males who set up the educational system and founded nearly all the universities in the United States. Most of those schools once excluded women and people of color. But does that mean that women and people of color should think of themselves as “colonized populations” today? Would doing so empower them, or would it encourage an external locus of control? Would it make them more or less likely to engage with their teachers and readings, work hard, and benefit from their time in school? More generally, what will happen to the thinking of students who are trained to see everything in terms of intersecting bipolar axes where one end of each axis is marked “privilege” and the other is “oppression”? Since “privilege” is defined as the “power to dominate” and cause “oppression,” these axes are inherently moral dimensions. The people on top are bad, and the people down below are good. This sort of teaching seems likely to encode the Untruth of Us Versus Them directly into students’ cognitive schemas: Life is a battle between good people and evil people. Furthermore, there is no escaping the conclusion as to who the evil people are. The main axes of oppression usually point to one intersectional address: straight white males. [...] In short, as a result of our long evolution for tribal competition, the human mind readily does binary, us-versus-them thinking. If we want to create welcoming, inclusive communities, we should be doing everything we can to turn down the tribalism and turn up the sense of common humanity. Instead, some theoretical approaches used in universities today may be hyper-activating our ancient tribal tendencies, even if that was not the intention of the professor. Of course, some individuals truly are racist, sexist, and homophobic, and some institutions are too, even when the people who run them mean well, if they end up being less welcoming to members of some groups. We favor teaching students to recognize a variety of kinds of bigotry and bias as an essential step toward reducing them. Intersectionality can be taught skillfully, as Crenshaw does in her TED Talk. It can be used to promote compassion and reveal injustices not previously seen. Yet somehow, many college students today seem to be adopting a different version of intersectional thinking and are embracing the Untruth of Us Versus Them.

So, how well does our analysis from 2018 hold up in 2023? Does chapter 3 help us to understand the recent explosion of antisemitism on campus?

Unfortunately, the analysis works perfectly. Many students today talk about Israel as a “settler-colonialist” nation.6 That is straight oppressor/victim terminology, from post-colonialist thinker Frantz Fanon. It treats Israel as if diaspora Jews were 19th century England or France sending colonists to take over an existing society, motivated by monetary greed. Once that frame is applied, students’ minds are closed to any other understanding of a complicated situation, such as the view that Jews are the original (or indigenous) inhabitants of the land, who had a continual presence there for 3,000 years, and whose exiled populations (many in Arab lands) had nowhere else to go after being decimated by Hitler’s version of common enemy identity politics.7 The French in Algeria could return to France, but if these students get their wish and Hamas gains control of all the territory “from the river to the sea,” it’s not clear where seven million Jews would go, other than into the sea.8

[ Image. Pro-Palestinian supporters march after a rally in New York City, October 9, 2023. Photo by Lev Radin, Shutterstock. ]

Direct evidence of the link between the oppressor/victim mindset and antisemitism was published last week in a poll from Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll. The survey was fielded on December 13-14.9 The survey asks about Americans’ beliefs not just about Israel but about Jews in America and on campus as well. I’ll summarize a few of the items, which you can check out in the report, and I'll expand on three in particular, which document the wide reach of the oppressor/victim mindset and its role in causing young people to embrace antisemitism.10 

The Harvard-Harris survey found that Americans side strongly with Israel against Hamas in the current conflict––except for Gen Z (here operationalized as the 18-24-year-old age bracket)11, which is evenly divided between support for Israel and Hamas. (See p. 47 of the report.) 

I should note that some have rightly criticized the Harvard-Harris poll on methodological grounds, especially for forcing respondents into binary choices, rather than offering a “don’t know” or “undecided” option. When such options are offered many people choose them, sometimes more than half, so the numbers you’ll see below probably overstate the prevalence of antisemitism, in absolute terms. Zach Rausch and I have been collecting all the recent surveys we can find on attitudes toward the Gaza conflict in this Google doc. Many other surveys have confirmed that there is substantially more support for Hamas among Gen Z than among older generations, although some studies find that Gen Z still tilts slightly toward Israel. It is the pattern of responses across questions and generations that I am drawing on, rather than the absolute numbers.

The survey found that Gen Z is not much different than older generations in agreeing that 1. Antisemitism is prevalent on campus (p. 50), 2. Jewish students are facing harassment on campus (p. 50), 3. Calls for “the genocide of Jews” are hate speech (p. 51), and 4. Calls for “the genocide of Jews” are harassment (p. 52).

Yet, despite agreeing with other generations that antisemitism is prevalent on campus, that Jews are being harassed on campus, and that calls for genocide are both hate speech and harassment, Gen Z is evenly divided as to whether campus protesters have a right to call for genocide against Jews. You can see the exact question below the table in Figure 2. As you can see below, all older generations favor disciplinary action as the proper response to students who publicly call for the mass killing of Jews. Only Gen Z does not.

[ Figure 2. “If a student calls for the genocide of Jews should that student be told that they are free to call for genocide or should such students face actions for violating university rules?” Harvard-Harris Poll, December 2023, screenshot from p. 51, with additional annotations by Haidt. ]

Why is Gen Z so tolerant of hate speech and verbal harassment of Jews, when it shows the lowest tolerance for such speech against other groups? The next three items show that the oppressor/victim mindset and common enemy identity politics are at work, but only for Gen Z. One item asked “Do you think that identity politics based on race has come to dominate at our elite universities, or do they operate primarily on the basis of merit and accomplishments without regard to race?” (p. 55). All generations agree that identity politics based on race is now dominant, but Gen Z, which has the most experience with current campus culture, agrees more strongly (69%, tied with those over 65).

The big difference between generations is that only Gen Z endorses this kind of identity politics. One survey item asks: “There is an ideology that white people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment. Do you support or oppose this ideology?” [p. 56] 

[ Figure 3. “There is an ideology that white people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment. Do you support or oppose this ideology?” Harvard-Harris Poll, December 2023. ]

Gen Z, and only Gen Z, agrees with the “ideology that white people are oppressors.” The direct line linking this explicit form of common enemy identity politics to antisemitism is found in the responses to the next item: “Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?”

[ Figure 4. “Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?” Harvard-Harris Poll, December 2023. ]

Gen Z, and only Gen Z, agrees. As I said earlier, the absolute numbers would be lower if a neutral or “don’t know” option were presented, so I do not believe that two out of every three Americans in that age range truly believes that Jews are oppressors. But even if half of the respondents chose a third option, the balance of those who believe it to those who reject it would still tilt toward “oppressors,” and more strongly than for any older generation.

In other words: While all generations agree that race-based identity politics now dominates on campus, only Gen Z leans toward (rather than away from ) endorsing such politics, applying it to Jews, and agreeing that we should treat Jews as oppressors—that is, treat them badly and not protect them from hate and harassment because they deserve what’s coming to them. 

I should offer a few clarifications. 

First, it is understandable that there is an age gradient, with older generations strongly pro-Israel and younger generations becoming increasingly supportive of the Palestinian cause. Older generations were raised by parents who remembered the Holocaust and understood the context within which the state of Israel was created. Older generations remember the frequent attacks on a vulnerable Israel in its early years. Younger generations, in contrast, have only known a strong Israel that occupied Palestinian territory (at least in the West Bank). There are two sides on this issue. I’m on one side, but I understand that there are good reasons for taking the other side. Opposing Israel or hating the Israeli government is not automatically anti-semitism. What concerns me is that anti-Israel sentiment seems to be increasingly closely linked to hatred of Jews and physical attacks on Jews and Jewish sites. Such attacks may seem morally justified, even virtuous, to those who believe that Jews are “oppressors.” 

Second, the Israeli military response has not been “surgical”; its bombing campaign has killed thousands of Palestinians who are not members of Hamas. Young people, most of whom are on TikTok, are probably more exposed than older people to videos of horrific suffering among Gazans. So again, I don’t criticize anyone for protesting Israel or the war, and I hope that universities respect pro-Palestinian students’ First Amendment rights to speak and protest. But the displays of support for Hamas began even before Israel had responded, and part of what was so shocking in the first week after the October 7 attack was the relatively muted and delayed expressions of concern by university leaders and campus organizations. Whatever has caused today’s campus antisemitism, it was already baked in before Israel’s military response began.

Third, I cannot say how much of today’s antisemitism comes from college classrooms (and K-12 classrooms as well), and how much is driven by social media, particularly TikTok. The rapid transition to the “phone-based childhood” that happened around 2012 is a crucial part of the story, which Greg and I discussed in The Coddling. As I have argued elsewhere, social media has introduced dangerous new dynamics into society, including explosive virality and the fragmentation of shared understandings (i.e., the collapse of the Tower of Babel). But given that today’s campus antisemitism is so closely linked with the oppressor/victim mindset, and given that Greg and I (and many others) have been warning about the dangers of teaching this mindset since before TikTok was created, I am confident that American higher education bears a substantial portion of the blame.

I do not believe that those three presidents, testifying before Congress, were antisemitic in their hearts. But in their heartless and gutless responses to a question about when it violates their campus’s rules for students to call for genocide against Jews, all three presidents validated the now-prevalent campus antisemitism. All three presidents essentially said: Jews don’t count, it’s OK to call for their deaths, as long as it does not “turn into action.”

According to those who embrace common enemy identity politics and its oppressor/victim mindset, all members of victim groups are justified in “punching up,” pulling oppressors down, vandalizing their buildings and symbols, and perhaps even raping their women and killing their children. At least, that is the implication of tweets from various professors who praised the Hamas attack, saying versions of “this is what decolonization looks like.”

Conclusion

In the tweet I quoted at the top of this essay, David Frum pointed out that elite college campuses have diverged from the rest of the country. Frum urged those of us in the academy to reflect upon why college campuses are so rife with antisemitism, in a country that is, according to public opinion data, very positive toward its Jewish citizens. I have tried to do that in this essay, concluding that it is our own fault for embracing and institutionalizing bad ideas, rather than challenging them. I have shown a direct connection between the oppressor/victim mindset and the willingness of many in the current generation of students to espouse overtly antisemitic beliefs (even if it is not truly a majority of them).

American higher education is now in a code-red situation. It’s not just Jewish donors and alumni who are withdrawing their support. As you saw in Figure 1, a majority of Americans had low confidence in higher ed before October 7. In the wake of the December 5 congressional hearings, it is now surely a supermajority, including perhaps most Democrats as well. Efforts in red-state legislatures to constrain, control, or defund higher ed will now find a great deal more public support than anyone could have imagined before 2015. 

If they are to regain public trust, university leaders will need to understand the victim/oppressor mindset and how their own institutions are encouraging it. Then they will need to take bold action and make deep changes. You can’t just plant a new center for the study of antisemitism in soil that is ideal for the growth of antisemitism. You have to change the soil, change the culture and policies of the institution.

Greg and I have an entire chapter (13) on how to do that, how to create “wiser universities” by enshrining free inquiry, changing the standards used to hire faculty and admit students, and then orienting students for productive disagreement. A wiser university would make students less susceptible to the oppressor/victim mindset even if they are exposed to it in a few of their classes. I will offer many more ideas in future posts. For now, I list organizations that specialize in improving the culture of universities, and I list essays that offer what I think are good ideas. I’ll keep the list updated for a while, so if you find good essays, please post links to them in the comments.

I close this essay with the quotation that opens Chapter 3 of The Coddling, from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, one of the wisest people I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet:

There is the moral dualism that sees good and evil as instincts within us between which we must choose. But there is also what I will call pathological dualism that sees humanity itself as radically... divided into the unimpeachably good and the irredeemably bad. You are either one or the other.

Universities can and must free students from pathological dualism.

[adriansvetozaroff]

The truth is here: I don't like Team Flare. But I like the potential that was put into them. I based my AU mostly on elements from the anime and manga, but I rethought and consciously rewrote a lot about them.

I always understood Lysandre's worldview, but its origins were not described convincingly enough, and he himself was presented as an arrogant maniac obsessed with the idea of ​​genocide, although, I am sure, according to the idea, deep human suffering should have been noticeable in him. He lacked sophistication. In my story, Lysandre [de Fleur] is impulsive and dramatic, the grandeur of his ambitions and the fragility of his inner world are in constant contradiction. He is very temperamental, exalted. That means outbursts of emotions, breakdowns that he immediately regrets, a tendency to self-destruction, self-punishment. With all this, he knows how to behave in public. This is the result of a strict upbringing, the requirements for what a royal heir should be. Lysandre has been taught not to lose his dignity, even when he is going through an internal catastrophe. But when he is alone or with someone he can confide in, this facade inevitably falls. He is a man with a hypersensitive nervous system, who received an inadequate upbringing: he was pressured to meet many standards, responsibility to his family, expectations of perfection, comparisons, albeit implicit, with great ancestors who made history. In part, this strictness made him highly functional: in public, he is hyper-organized, collected, purposeful. But his will is always on edge, tense to the point of pain. At times, he acts impulsively, at times, he falls out of touch with reality.

Lysandre is experiencing unbearable mental sufferings. The world does not correspond to his ideal, but neither does he. Corrupted by this world, in which he was forced to act imperfectly, he wants to radically correct everything, and only in this way become worthy of his ancestors. At the same time, he sincerely does not want to bring pain, but does not see any other way out. And he sincerely considers the moment of truth to be beautiful, for him there is no other hope. He does not live in fantasies: he has seen the world, in humanitarian missions and in other places that he was not prepared to face. And this has always confronted him with impotence. Now the idea he holds on to, having caught Zygarde is to give free rein to nature, but under his control, to bring humanity to unity in the face of a great catastrophe. There is also his faith in the activation of progress after it since worthy people will be at the head of humanity.

For contrast and drama, I decided to pair him with a character who is easy to idealize, someone who embodies a certain classic beauty, and that is Diantha. With his obsession with saving all that is beautiful, the object of his love easily becomes a fetish. It is a relationship filled with thirst and anxiety, doomed to disappointment, and yet ambiguous. Lysandre is driven into the relationship not by a desire for love and intimacy - he denied himself this as a selfish happiness - but by an inner need for an ideal. At the same time, what he loves seems fragile to him, because of his own sensitivity.

I found her image to be the most suitable for this - a noble champion, active and decisive when it comes to protecting the region. My version emphasizes that Diantha [Cornette] is stronger than Lysandre, she is stable. Despite everything, she is able to see a human in him, to try to stay on the path of love and compassion until the very end, but at the same time resolutely oppose what she does not agree with. I added that they have the same ideals. They are also united by the desire to be an example for others, the desire for self-improvement, a deeply respectful and attentive attitude towards Pokémon, a desire to change the world for the better, admiration for art. Diantha is not only ready to enter into battles, but is also a goodwill ambassador for an international aid fund. She has an opposite view of changes in the world, but she understands Lysandre's despair, when he talks about fading beauty, to some extent. She is reserved, and she was made this way by working on herself, self-discipline, willingness to learn, the wisdom of mentors. She has gained self-control and deep self-understanding through trials. Her actions are gentle but measured, sincere but tactful. She is close to the harmony of mind and heart, and feeling this in her, Lysandre reached for what was unattainable for him. Diantha remains alive to the end, even seeing how the one she began to love comes to the decision to kill everything human in himself. Her ability is to stay close, not to retreat, not to turn away, not to close her eyes to what is important. Her personal grief does not obscure her moral choice, her path is a refusal to give in, a refusal to participate in destruction, even if she shares some of Lysandre's ideals. Her internal conflict is personal, but also ethical. She has to take care of saving the world, but also her inner world after that, too.

What I had to work on most thoroughly was Team Flare, the ideology and structure of this organization and to answer the question of who Lysandre would consider "the chosen ones". The possibility of buying a place among the survivors does not fit at all with his worldview, with his hatred of egoism and greed. In addition, the administrators and grunts find themselves not under his protection, but in the thick of the battle and destruction. I justified it this way: in addition to the Team Flare, there is the Society of Patrons, which includes people loyal to Lysandre, who have already achieved success, share his values ​​and have the abilities and resources that are useful in the new world. These are the very chosen ones whom he plans to protect, and who were at least aware of their leader's plans and took advantage of his offer to ensure their safety during the catastrophe. It is assumed that a shelter was built for them, perhaps quite reliable. And membership in the Patrons' Society requires a serious monetary contribution as proof of one's readiness to give, not just take. Team Flare itself is also outstanding people, but those whose lives can be sacrificed so that the plan is carried out, despite their usefulness. These are mainly young people, not stupid, but actively wanting to change the world, dreamers and maximalists, as is typical of the young. Administrators are more experienced people, ready for self-sacrifice, or have not achieved enough to enter the Patrons' Society. The main scientists, who develop the plan directly with Lysandre, stand apart, those whom he trusts most and whom, of course, he values, but who must carry out what was conceived. But they know what and why they are doing, and do not ask for protection. All members of Team Flare are public figures. Until the plan is directly implemented, they are employees of Lysandre Labs. So, in accordance with his high principles, Lysandre does not play a double game: his team logo and their uniform, his slogans, his research - all this was always in sight, just not all the details were voiced at specific moments. Making him an idealist in everything, I added that he does not like duplicity and lies.

Working on Xerosic's character was also important to me. I absolutely did not want to make him stereotypical; I was closer to the vision in which he has his own moral compass. [Sergiusz] Xerosic is not a mad scientist, not a function. He is a recognized figure in science, famous and respected, a hard worker inspired by Lysandre. He is dependent on his fire, but also plays a unique role as an ideological squire. He becomes not just a follower of Lysandre, but a person with a living past, pain and dreams. His loyalty is not an obligation, but a choice. He was suitable for this role, since even after the death of the leader, he alone continued to try to move forward and bring his work to the end.

Of course, there was also Malva, with whom, it seems to me, the creators themselves did not know what to do. Her appearances are so contradictory. I took this as a basis to make her two-faced, a person who almost always hides behind a mask, and even when she ultimately wants to be sincere, she does not succeed. [Patricia] Malva never believed in Lysandre's ideas, but she did not pay much attention to them either, as long as it was profitable for her to be a media person next to him, an ambassador for his brand. She definitely did not believe that he and his scientists would actually do something like this, until a certain point. She also experienced envy towards many who surrounded her, but I do not want to go into details here. Acting for herself, she did not calculate that she would only push Lysandre to a desperate step. And, having found herself involved in one of the largest terrorist attacks in history, she does everything to save her reputation.

In conclusion, I have portrayed Team Flare as I wanted them to be: eco-terrorists and well-intentioned extremists. And Lysandre is an outstanding, infectious leader who remains so to the end. But he is also a deeply suffering man, maladapted to reality. He goes against Zygarde, not trusting the natural order, but relying on his own will. He goes from an outwardly noble dreamer and reformer to a radical ideologist whose actions lead to disaster. Lysandre is an incorrigible idealist who tried to take the development of the world into his own hands, for the good, as he saw it. His hatred of change, decline, decay and death opposes nature itself. Like his love, he idealizes the world - and cannot bear disappointment. It is as if he is fighting a god in the figure of Zygarde, not out of pride, but because he cannot do otherwise.

A few words about Zygarde. In choosing this legend, Lysandre found the perfect solution for himself. In slightly different circumstances, despair could easily push him towards Yveltal – towards the decision to strike a mercy blow, depriving the dying world of torment. I see the second option as a fit of despair, a last resort, in which the chosen ones receive a quick death at the epicenter and the opportunity not to see the agony of the world, and this in the current situation would seem to him the only good. He could have inclined his choice towards Xerneas in more encouraging circumstances, if he had managed to see that the world was “recovering” – this would have been a manic attempt to stop it forever at a favorable moment, since all glimmers of good seem to him inevitably vulnerable, short and fragile.

If you find my vision interesting or share it, I invite you to read the full story I wrote (https://archiveofourown.org/works/54486067 or https://www.deviantart.com/adriansvetozaroff/gallery/86782495/les-feuilles-mortes). I would appreciate your feedback! And your attention.

[flameraven]

Some Thoughts on Aziraphale

In response to this discussion, which focuses on the pain Aziraphale must have felt, deliberately breaking Crowley's heart at the end, because he has no choice but to go back to Heaven.

I do think that there's not really an option for Aziraphale to stay on Earth. There's certainly an element of coercion to the Metatron's actions, and an implicit threat. And even if there wasn't-- Aziraphale IS right, they can't really be free with the system of Heaven and Hell looming over them. They will never really be left alone to exist together. Something has to be done.

But I can't buy the final fifteen as Aziraphale knowingly sacrificing their relationship for the sake of protecting Crowley and/or Earth. The order of events is wrong. He doesn't go in to Crowley in a clear-headed, sober way, saying "I don't want to, but I have to leave." No. I think, like we saw him do throughout S2, he's focusing on his own wants and needs to the exclusion of everything else.

He comes to Crowley with the Metatron's proposal and he is giddy. He's excited. Because he thinks he's found a loophole. He wants to have his cake and eat it too. He thinks he can have Crowley AND Heaven.

When he walks back into the bookshop, he doesn't know about Armageddon 2.0 or the Second Coming. The Metatron just tells him they have a big project and they want him to lead it, and he buys in to that fantasy, like he's been focusing on fantasies for all of S2.

Aziraphale goes to Crowley and he's not proposing to keep or protect their same relationship. He says come to Heaven with me, you'll be my second in command. Second in command! Not as equal partners, like they've been for millennia. Aziraphale would be Crowley's boss. He wants to take them backwards, even. Make Crowley an angel again, ignoring how strongly Crowley rejects that idea. It'll be just like old times, only even nicer. Again, he's focused on the fantasy, the memory of what Heaven used to be, instead of the reality of what it is.

I think ultimately, Aziraphale is sacrificing Crowley and his bookshop here in order to protect his own feelings. Because focusing on this fantasy lets him avoid facing the hard truth of what Heaven is, and keep living in denial a little longer. It's not until he's at the elevator that he hears "Second Coming" and then has a very visible "oh shit" look on his face. And by that point he cannot back out. (And frankly, I read his smile in the elevator as mostly self-righteousness, a sort of "it will all work out, he'll see." Convincing himself that he hasn't just royally fucked up.)

I think it's true that Aziraphale doesn't have much of a choice here. But he doesn't approach Crowley as if he's being coerced or forced into a difficult situation. He's excited. I don't think he's thinking about the Earth at all. Or Crowley-- at least not beyond what he, Aziraphale wants, which is the two of them together... but on Aziraphale's terms.

And this is unfortunately part of the general pattern for Aziraphale in S2. He is petulant and annoyed when Crowley tells him no and refuses to help Gabriel. He doesn't ask why Crowley changes his mind later, or consider why Crowley might have been so against helping Gabriel, he just demands the elaborate apology dance as his due and delights in being Right. He overrides Crowley's objections to taking the Bentley to Edinburgh, and ignores his warnings about danger at the Ball. The whole season he is focused on his own fantasies and desires and completely fails to entertain Crowley's feelings or perspective at all.

So yes, I do feel bad for Aziraphale at the end of S2, I'm sure he's also hurt by the separation with Crowley. But this is the choice that he made! And now he has to live with the consequences.

[nautilusopus]

as for my actual many many beefs with lily orchard, i've gone off on rants about her in the past but i'll do the short version here. a lot of it boils down to like

you know that one video dan olson did on world of warcraft, where he explains that people have difficulty articulating why people like the games they do so they just assume their stated values apply to things they like?

i like good video games

many video games generally considered good are considered good in part because of their high difficulty (eg bloodborne it's fantastic go play bloodborne everyone)

i like world of warcraft

therefore, world of warcraft must also be a difficult game, because i like it, and i like good games, and good games are hard games, so world of warcraft is good and therefore hard because i like it.

it's the same complete inability to extract one's own personal tastes from their own stated values except the stated values have now also been applied to a larger cultural movement of Righting Great Wrongs being the implicit first and only goal of producing only story, and that therefore good stories are vehicles for Righting Great Wrongs, so therefore bad stories aren't, et cetera et cetera

like, if you actually look at her """"writing tips"""" list i cannot put enough quotes around that, 95% of them are her just bitching about catradora specifically because she doesn't like catradora and is still mad at catra and wants her punished as a bad guy. and y'know what fine that's her prerogative but that has fuck-all to do with what objectively makes stories good and bad and it also isn't a failing of the story that it was about a different thing than she wanted it to be.

we're working with first grader level of media literacy here. if a character does a bad thing they need to be punished. who decides what a bad thing is? you're in luck we have literal exact numbers in a rigid strikes system (why is 10000 the cutoff? who the fuck knows). all texts are literal. authors are lying when they say their stories are planned and meant to convey anything, because they are all secretly using the low-stakes wattpad fanfiction model where they are writing to create a moral guide for their fans. all stories are here for ME and what I bring to it. there is a specific CORRECT way to write things in this, arguably the most case by case medium to ever exist. your duty as an author is to be righting those wrongs first and telling any kind of personal story second so your followers can have Content but see it's morally good content so it's not bratty of me to not only expect but demand certain things of writers.

what she also reminds me of is the kind of person that like to talk about how they are Extremely Logical when actually they've just convinced themselves their intensely emotional responses are logical ones, which you see a lot of in extremely conservative right wing circles, and yes i am making that comparison because she is effectively that, she's just put a gay hat on the conservativism and swapped up who is inherently wicked and what some of the sins (which are all equal to one another) are.

also WORDS MEAN THINGS YOU FUCK four hours on why steven universe, the show that got itself cancelled in the name of getting a lesbian wedding on air in a kid's show, is actually clear and obvious fascist propaganda because the kid's show argued that even bad people could change and didn't agree the first priority of the revolution is to pick who to line up against the wall (which is, y'know, a super non-fascist thing to want)

i'm trying to avoid ad hominem here, but the things she's said do not paint a very flattering picture of her or how she views the world at all. these are the writing tips of someone who (in MY OPINION) is incredibly juvenile, unwilling to take away anything from a story that she did not come here to receive in the first place or meet it on its own terms because if she is here to be comforted and thinks if a story isn't here to do that it's a flaw with the story, sees all disappointments as something someone is At Fault for overall, is completely incapable of handling any sort of nuance on any subject because she wants to always be correct speaking to some deeply rooted insecurities, and is utterly incurious about what the world is like for other people and in fact finds it a personal affront for anyone even trying to share those experiences directly or indirectly despite claiming to champion diversity as not just something we should encourage but MANDATORY for all writers (so long as it is the Correct Portrayal).

anyone clowns in the notes and i block you lol we're not getting into steven universe discourse OR whatever fucking allegations are going on. i don't know, i wasn't there, it's none of my goddamn business. i haven't even fucking seen she-ra i do not care about it.

[coraniaid]

Finished Children of Memory yesterday. Really liked it, unsurprisingly. I think this is one of my favorite science fiction series in a while. 

I don’t really know whether it makes sense to rank the books individually, but for what it’s worth I enjoyed this one a little more than the second and a little less than the first.

(Spoilers below the cut for the whole trilogy.)

Big fan of the (I think only ever implicit) pun suggested by the Corvids dyadic nature. One half is a creative problem solver that explores new things and one half keeps track of the state of the world around them and the history of how it came to be this way.  They are thought and memory. Huginn and Muninn. Odin would approve. (The book also features a protagonist being hanged from a tree, though she already had knowledge of other worlds at the time.)

And while I'd never describe the series as “hopepunk” (because, as I said, I liked it…),  it is also – despite its far future setting being incredibly grim in many ways, starting as it does with a civilization ending war followed by the slow extinction of life on Earth – almost aggressively hopeful.  Particularly when it comes to the question of sentience and the possibility of peaceful cooperation between very different types of intelligence.

I mean, this is a trilogy that introduces, in order:

The corrupted and imperfect digital copy of the mind of a misanthropic scientist who died tens of thousands of years before the story begins

The species of cannibalistic spiders that worship her as a god and built a computer out of ants for her to live in

Spacefaring octopuses with distributed, ever-changing personalities whose main desire in life is to avoid the company of other octopuses 

A mind-controlling parasite that loves making friends and going on adventures and is directly responsible for the deaths of billions

Neuorodivergent talking mutant crows who, if pressed, will patiently explain to you that of course they're not really sentient, they're just animals mindlessly operating on instinct so as to effectively mimic the illusion of sentience (just like you, right?)

The ghost of a teenage girl who never actually existed who is on a quest to save her long-dead grandfather from a witch

The alien computer that's been patiently simulating the entire history of the colony said girl might have grown up in if only its founders hadn’t all died before landing on its planet

And then goes on to argue that yes, actually, these all count as people. Even the brain-eating parasite. Especially her. (She feels very guilty about the multiple zombie apocalypses she started once it is explained to her that taking over people's bodies without their consent is generally frowned upon in polite society.)  

Because the universe is mostly cold and empty and utterly inhospitable to life, so why not be as generous as you can be in your definitions of who counts as sentient?  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the closest thing the series has to outright villains (Liff’s Uncle Molder in this book, These-Of-We in the second book, Captain Guyen and the religious fanatic Portia in the first book) are people who refuse to accept the personhood of others (whether that’s starving people from the neighboring farms, potential new friends who vocally object to you taking over their brains and using their bodies to go out and explore the universe, the aforementioned cannibal spiders who are already living on the planet you've decided to move to or the smaller, weaker male spiders who object to being eaten.)