#is anything particularly interesting or relevant. Maybe 'what makes a king?' is explored but not well to my tastes

[death-rebirth-senshi]

I think it's interesting to look at ideas they played with in dark souls 3 that made their way into Elden Ring, because while I don't think the Lord of Londor ending is nothing, it's fairly. A whole load of nonsense that's just kind of there.

And like, to a degree that fits the vibe of dark souls 3. It's all a whole load of nonsense; linking the fire, an age of dark, usurping the fire, it's all equally desperate attempts at mending a world that started circling the drain long ago.

And becoming Elden Lord in Elden Ring is similarly kind of vague as far as what it means and what exactly you accomplish by becoming elden lord. And it's similar to me in the way these desperate masses bow to you and beg for you to "make Londor whole", somehow.

Slightly less vague in Elden Ring; like the first flame, the Elden Ring has power, and power specifically to enforce a new Order upon the lands. And you get to choose what kind of Order that will be, or you can reject it and burn it all down, or you can reject it for something dark and frightening and uncertain.

[avesomnia-inhoramortis]

[ooc] would you mind especially if i utilized a bit of the ideas around your trina-as-white-king rumination for the express purpose of miquellatrina exploration fic?

Go for it and feel free to tag me when it's done!!!

Admittedly a lot of my attempts to cram Miquella into the alchemical marriage are a little hamfisted, but figuring out what Trina is in relation to Miquella and Malenia is interesting. Because Marika is the White Queen, and Radagon is the relevant Red King. They have kids. The curse of their... how do I phrase this, selfcestuous union? Anyway, they end up with twin children: a White King and a Red Queen. Venus as a boy and Mars as a woman.

So whatever Trina is in relation to Miquella, she is not the same thing as Radagon. She is not a Red Queen. I like experimenting with writing her as such, but she's not- most of the textual references to her involve people chasing her down.

Saint Trina might have some hope or guidance to share, but most of her "activity" I extrapolated from where her lilies are located. The one thing we could solidly say she Does, soothe the merchants, comes from a cut questline. By contrast, it is much easier to read her as a passive figure- she's a princess in a tower, like Marika, Rennala, and Ranni. All of them are absolutely strong queens who take no shit and no prisoners, but you must admit they are characterized by a certain lack of agency that requires a knight-errant. A Lord, a Mars, someone who will kill for them.

But then if we're talking genders and alchemy- what would it even mean to be a White King? I'd need to do more studying to take a proper crack at answering that. I think there's something to be said for Miquella's strange combination of abundance and infertility- he keeps trying to give birth to things, in one way or another, that either never come to fruition or die stillborn. The Haligtree is dead, its womb ripped open, Elphael is covered in cocoons still occupied by the bodies of his followers, arrested in whatever they were becoming. Conversely, even if it's not conventional, Malenia almost can't stop giving birth- she transforms her knights, she explodes into multiple buds, there are numerous pests in Caelid who feel abandoned because she's supposed to be their mother. Miquella wants to be a god and has no children, Malenia does not want to be a god and has unwanted children. There might be something to that, particularly if a god is meant to be feminine. Miquella is, after all, the odd one out in a group of primarily women.

But he rejects that femininity to become a god, and that's interesting. The way it was framed in the trailer, Trina had something to do with his fate. Possibly his fate as an Empyrean, which is supposed to be the living vessel of an outer god like the Elden Beast or the Moon or Rot. What's his god? What was he meant to contain? We might never know, and he's as close as we're going to get to a high fantasy atheist I think. I think, if anything, Miquella is Trina's Radagon, if that makes sense? Miquella doesn't want to be a princess in a tower and just decree his will- he wants to make changes and do things and act, which is the province of a lord.

It's extremely queer of him and I love that.

Trina might be their passivity, their dependence, their childish neediness- she's content with stagnation and oblivion in a way Miquella isn't, I think, considering most of her imagery is mist and swamps and Miquella has his butterflies.

So I decided maybe that's it. She's a flower and he's a butterfly. Both limited, both needing eachother, one still very much passive and the other determined to be active. It's very easy to read this whole Empyrean business as the idea that Miquella should have been a woman and is determined to Not Be. He's just. So queer. Him, Trina, and Malenia are SO queer. The alchemy hyperfixation just gives me the words to explain it.

I did not intend to write this much in response, soooo. If you want more rambling you can always feel free to poke me, I love theorizing So Much.

[dannyphantom-justiceleauge]

This may be a minor gripe but something that has kind of bothered me about discussions and depictions of Dan is how often people seem to forget that Dan isn't just an older evil Danny, he's a combination of Danny and Vlad's ghost sides. Like people always talk about him like Danny threw away his humanity and turned evil but that's not even true. Sure, we can say that Dan is the result of Danny's action but that's a little unfair. (1/2)

(2/2) Him cheating on a test, coincidentally putting his loved one's in a position where they could be killed, is absolutely not his fault. Letting Vlad take away his ghost powers with a strange contraption might not have been the smartest move, but we are talking about a grieving CHILD here, of course he isn't going to make the best decisions. If anything Vlad's the one to blame here, and even then, it's not like he could predict what happened

---

you aren't wrong, my friend. it really isn't entirely danny's fault and the whole 'if you cheat on a test, you'll loose everything you love' moral is confused at best. i think as fandom we find it more interesting to look at danny's potential evil and moral struggle with himself. so simplifying it to be dan is a worse case scenario of danny makes the conflict less abstract.

particularly because when it comes to self blame danny isn't going to go easy on himself just because it was excusable mistakes.

i think another talking point should be how danny is the target of the time assassination more than vlad is, even though vlad is part of the evil whole. you could argue that danny is the catalyst of his friends death and vlad inventing the claw things. but vlad invented the claw things. maybe because his human side survived and acted relatively harmless from then on? or maybe it's because the observants based on the available evidence recognized danny as more of a threat. i think that fits actually, for all vlad tried to be an evil mastermind, his achievements outside of terrorizing a teenager and theft isn't particularly impressive. danny was the one who got shit done. all his fights he finished one way or another and i could see how that would bleed into dan defeating everyone.

the real question is how to we fix this. ideally we could shape this idea so it's less confused, though i do honestly find the dynamic of half danny, half vlad interesting. if for not other reason. than two half ghosts make a whole. actually that's something else to be said about dan. his self-loathing is what led him to killing his human half, another negative aspect coming from danny.

i wonder if we could frame it like fusion, from su. obviously dan isn't stable or healthy, or based on love. he's most comparable to malichite. but with less internal debate. dan took the best and worst of both of them. danny's determination, danny's fighting ability, danny's anger, danny's sarcasm, vlad's anger, vlads lack of morals, vlads schemes, vlad's control. heck, vlads desire to rule the world. i don't think we ever got that from danny.

maybe if vlad was more involved in the fight with dan it could have been used as an opportunity to compare and contrast their characters. to go we're not so different you and i. danny gets to recognize that he has that dark potential. vlad gets to be humbled by the fact that what he wants isn't good for anyone, especially himself. and to be fair, we do see some of that humbling with future vlad, but none of that character growth is given to present vlad, so, really it's just another vehicle for danny angst. it also depends on what you want to do with vlad though. he's a fascinating character and could be given redemption under the right circumstances or be a character who has the opportunity for redemption but chooses not to be redeemed every time.

that fits him and makes him both a more pathetic and despicable villain. it's hard to pity someone who ignores the opportunities to heal and grow.

as for danny, he becomes far more aware of the consequences his actions, especially his selfish and cruel ones can have. because that potential was always there. he has a history of abusing his powers. perhaps for this specific incident him abusing his powers can be something less understandable than almost cheating on a test that he couldn't study for through no fault of his own. (maybe i just have flexible morals?). maybe it could be something more character relevant, like he did something particularly vlad like, maybe he set up a prank at the nasty burger to get dash but it set off the explosion that killed his family. or maybe he did something particularly cruel and manipulative. there are better catalysts than a test. either way he recognized that he should never go that far again and strive to avoid being actively cruel.

he also has the opportunity to recognize that vlad does have a human half, even the one he's fighting everyday. he can face some conflict in it's not entirely clear what trait belongs to vlad and what trait belongs to him. he can empathize with vlad and he can recognize that situations aren't always in black in white. those who fly the highest, fall the hardest, after all.

it can be a growing experience. and while making it solely a danny goes bad and learns not to do evil kind of story. maybe we could cut vlad from the equation and just have danny face himself, full evil refection. i think exploring both vlad and danny through this fusion is far more interesting. especially because we can build on what's revealed about vlad in these episodes, in later ones. danny sees a future where vlad chills and that maybe his vlad could get their. later he see vlads past and what he lost to become who he is.

and then there's vlads turning point episodes. i don't know when motherly instinct took place but maddie fully recognizing he's a bastard and rejection him, was a turning point for his sanity, and danny helped it along. then we have danny rejecting him repeatedly, then we the clone episode, which we can all agree was a desperate move on his part, that danny once again thwarted. and we can all agree that this was the cannon turning point for his character where he stopped fighting for a family and started trying to be danny's villain. in that episode, i think danny could potentially pity vlad enough to try and reach out. he's not going to justify what vlad did and he's not going to apologize for stopping him. he went too far. he hurt danny and dani, he crossed a moral line that can't be justified even with his desperation. but if he changes...

he lost this time but if he changes, maybe they'll reach the point where they're ready to accept him.

i think the same thing could be said about his relationship with jack and maddie. if he changes, if he reaches out. if acts like less of a crazy fruitloop, his friends would be there for him. jack is still trying to be there for him, even if he's being oblivious about vlad's faults. vlads the one driving wedges into his relationships and pushing everyone away.

and that's so freaking human and understandable.it would be such a cool thing to explore with his character.

i could also see a potential arc where after valerie finds out vlad and masters are the same person she tries to get close to him, both to sus out how evil he is and to understand him as a halfa. afterall danny got her to acknowledge dani as human enough, the same would apply to vlad/plasmius, right? only he's a bad person and the more she uncovers about vlad masters the man, the more she realizes it's not the ghost half that's evil. but this is a double edged sword because, vlad is getting attached to her and encouraging her to be more evil. he's encouraging her to go darker and darker in her fight against ghosts and her fight specifically against phantom. to the point where she finally draws the line and says, i'm not doing that! boom exploring the moral ambiguity of her character and getting her to take a hard stance on her morals, because there's a line too far for her.

and boom a further breakdown of vlads character because he finally had someone outside the fentons to redeem him. she could have helped pull him out of the hole he'd been digging himself into. she wanted to help him. he got attached to her, but he and his bad decisions decided to dig himself deeper instead. so once again he's 'abandoned and betrayed'.

from that point, i think it'd be time for him to finally face jack head on. not through manipulative schemes. not through veiled threats and insults. but the full confrontation of 'i always hated you. you ruined my life. you're the reason i lost everything'. which is really just his own self loathing speaking. and jack... empathetic jack can see that vlad desperately wants help. and jack would offer it to him. jack would try to hug it out and apologize and give vlad the love and friendship vlad's been fighting to steal this whole time.

and vlad would reject it.

he'd probably lash out a jack and go into a full breakdown/world destroying attack. could finally put the stolen crown to use and try declaring himself king and embracing his megalomaniac thing and actually be a threat this time. and THAT would be our series finally. everyone teaming up to fight 'king vlad'. danny probably finding out that he's technically king because he beat pariah dark but the matter being a bit confused because he had help. val and danny trying to find the ring of rage or at least find someone who can make one. secrets are out. i imagine vlad, upon revealing himself to jack would out danny to make danny as sad and alone as him. except nope, his family still loves him and val has had the character development to come around to him. (she's still gonna punch danny for lying for so long.) the ghosts will come and help because no one wants another tyrannical kind and vlads obviously off his rocker.

ah, the could have beens

anyway, i didn't mean for this to become a full vlad character analysis and rewrite when we were supposed to be talking about dan, but hey, i'm a simple creature. i like good writing, and i have to rewrite things myself, so be it. - Hestia

[op-sheepy]

ok so I'm particularly interested in

Bellamy Law

Law and Bible stuff

Law is a substitute kindergarten teacher

shichibukai applications

reverse hanahaki disease (?? do u spit out flowers when your nemesis walks by?)

if you feel like elaborating on any of these!

This is gonna get long and I actually contemplated posting them separately but would that have been more work? Yeah, that felt like more work so for anyone interested, check under the cut. :D

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Bellamy Law

Hm… This would be an attempt to explore the parallels and contrasts between Bellamy and Law. I've always found it fascinating that the former was a foil to the latter.

They both come from well-off  towns in the North Blue.

Bellamy left because of boredom. Law had no choice because Flevance.

Both ended up seeking Doflamingo  because of  his notoriety as a pirate. Both admired him initially

Doffy favored one over the other though. Bellamy always sought his approval but was never really part of the inner circle Doflamingo cared about.

Law got the dubious privilege of being part of the family despite being absent for so long. Even offered one of the highest seats by Doffy's side for seemingly nothing.

Law had no trouble turning his back on Doffy once he realized the man's nature. Bellamy tried to stick to his principles until the end despite admitting that he new he was wrong.

Bellamy can (and did) quit piracy after his ordeal with Doflamingo. Having the option to live peacefully, perhaps a return to his previous life (the one he considered boring). Law can't do that quite as easily what with his Devil fruit and his reputation.

I thought it would be interesting trying to explore what Bellamy was thinking. Did he hear the Donquixote Pirates talk about their missing 'family'? Did he get to see Doffy be amused at Law's rise as a Supernova while he kept being reminded of his own status? Did Law save Bellamy partially because he also saw what he could have been had Corazon not saved him?

On principle, Bellamy should have hated Trafalgar Law. Does. Bastard even saved him without him wanting it. But there was something about the shadows haunting those eyes and Bellamy started to wonder.

He had heard the family talk about Law before. The child personally taught by Doflamingo, chosen to be his right hand. Never was he compared to the man because Law was just obviously better. Smarter. Stronger. Bellamy was ever just an uncouth thug.

He was allowed to 'borrow' Doflamingo's symbol while Law had an empty seat waiting for his return–a seat Bellamy had wanted enough to risk everything for.

Maybe he had resented, Trafalgar Law for carelessly rejecting the things he had that Bellamy had always desired. In the end too, Trafalgar Law did prove to be better. He'd done as a child what Bellamy had trouble doing even as he was now.

But having been given the chance to observe the other man as they all recovered, he wondered, perhaps for the first time, whether despite Law being better than Bellamy, Bellamy had had it better–barring the poor life choices.

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Law and Bible stuff

This is just me wanting to know how many biblical parallels and themes I can draw from Law, the Donquixote brothers, the characters associated with them, and his backstory. Honestly not sure whether this would become a fic and in what style or I'm gonna give up and just make it a post.

Not gonna elaborate on them much but here are the ideas in more bullet points (yay):

Law gets familiar with all four horsemen of the apocalypse: conquest, war, famine, and death. He even survives them.

Law is like the son in the parable of the prodigal son to the Donquixote pirates. Except the themes are inverted.

Doflamingo and Rocinante -> Cain and Abel

Ope Ope no Mi -> Granting eternal life by sacrificing one's own life

Gods descending or living among humans. Also, Homing and his family being prosecuted for other people's sins.

That scene where they were hanged by their arms outstretched looks like a crucifixion. Also, Rocinante was on the right while Doflamingo was on the left. Similar to how the penitent thief was on the right and the unrepentant one to the left.

Flevance being considered a paradise with walls/fences/gates and somewhere Law cannot return to.

In the panel where the Donquixote pirates are seated at the table, there were thirteen of them with Doffy at the center. Same as The Last Supper

There are a lot more of these (David and Goliath, Solomon, Jonah, Job, etc.) but I kinda lost the notes and some are more visual so I can't really explain it too well. This would is a drabble series to emphasize or highlight the parallels so no proper snippet for this one.

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Law is a substitute kindergarten teacher

Originally an idea to get around most of the Heart Pirates being nameless but evolved to include other characters as kids. Chopper is a kindergarten teacher and he convinces Law to take over his class for a week because somehow Law has the qualifications to and free time. Naturally, he wasn't able to say no.

Unfortunately, despite not being terrible at handling children, Chopper's class is filled with menaces. Also, despite not being terrible, Law can still be awkward so...

"Mr. Trofao–fargar—"

"Trafalgar."

The kid—which one was this one again? Shit, he should really get them name plates or something—scrunched up his face and tried harder, "Tar-pal—"

"Law. Just call me Law."

"Mr. Low"—eh, close enough—"can I go to the bathroom?" Wide imploring eyes stared up at him.

"Sure, go ahead." Law gestured towards the exit of the classroom with his head.

The kid just stared expectantly at him and he tried to suppress the need to narrow his eyes.

"Is there… anything else?"

"Mr. Chopper always comes with me to hold my hand."

Really?

"Mr. Chopper isn't here. You should practice doing it on your own now." He said after a deep inhale.

"But the monsters might get me…"

"No, they won't."

"You don't know that."

"I do." Before the kid could open his mouth again to argue, he added, "Besides, children taste terrible so you're safe."

The kid looked stricken and took a step back from him. Uh oh. Glistening eyes, wobbling lower lip… "Alright! I'll go with you." The kid did not look reassured. In fact he looked like going alone with Law was the last thing he wanted to do. Guess, he kinda implied that he ate children didn't he? Oops.

Well, the kid needs to go and he's not going to be cleaning up after him if he wets himself.

Law glanced at the rest of the children. It was Arts and Craft time and they seemed preoccupied enough. Still, Law doubted Chopper ever left these kids alone–already he could see some of them glancing up at him, waiting for him to leave no doubt to cause trouble. That Monkey kid in particular looked extremely suspicious.

He stood up from his crouch and clapped twice to get everyone's attention.

"Alright. Fall in line. Single file."

There was some grumbling and questioning directed at him. "What's going on?"

Law shrugged. "You're all going to the bathroom."

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Shichibukai Application Forms

Crackfic where the World Government and relevant parties review various Shichbukai Applications. Most submitted by the pirates applying themselves, some produced by their own staff. They discuss and debate. As well as judge pirate resumes.

She scanned the document. Terrible format, really. If you fail to impress within the first page, you've failed entirely. There just wasn't anyone promising enough in this batch of applications or any of the other ones before. The last one had been that clown. "Apprentice to the Pirate King," was a pretty hefty credential.

"Oh, how about this one? Three years experience pillaging, and they even listed all the towns they looted." One of the newly transferred administrative staff said.

"None of these are worth considering at all. You know, when Mihawk was asked to submit his application, he hadn't bothered with all of this. He just sent us a card with his name on it and the title "World's Strongest Swordsman," underneath."

The staff perked up. "Oh, there was an application like that." There was scramble and some shuffling before a plain white card was produced. "Here."

"'From Trafalgar Law'. What does this even mean?"

"Well, it did come with a big box..."

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Reverse Hanahaki Disease

(?? do u spit out flowers when your nemesis walks by?)

Haha. At first it was going to be that way (because it is hilarious) but the inflicted would probably choke to death too soon. Or if both enemies had it, they'd end up just coughing flowers at each other until they stopped being enemies.

The version I ended up going with was that this variant of Hanahaki, instead of afflicting those with unrequited love, affected those in denial instead. The reverse part comes from the original idea that this would usually happen if you somehow fell in love with your nemesis (someone you originally hated). So it's not the thought that the other person can't love you, it's that you can't accept that you love that other person. You get cured by confessing to the person sincerely.

This is actually another KidLaw (surprise!). And the flower coughed up directly represents the person they're in love with (I went with Oda's flower representation for them because I found it funny for plot)

So the idea is that, you get sick but you don't automatically know (maybe) who it is because that's part of being in denial. Kid and Law have many enemies after all. In this story they both get it though not exactly at the same time and not known to the other.

He survived Amber Lead Syndrome only to be killed off by a stupid flower disease that apparently knows more about his own feelings than he does.

He glared at the petals. Tulips. Red.

An image of a cocky grin and a shock of red hair flashed through his mind and—nope. That's not right.

He coughed harder, tears stinging his eyes with the effort. More flowers. Now he has enough for a bouquet.

Alright, he was a doctor. He could do this. Differential time.

First, which variant does he have. He doesn't particularly feel unloved or hopeless. There wasn't anyone he wanted in particular to love him. Ok, nothing. It was maybe safe to say he had that other variant.

Which was stupid because Law had many enemies and he hated all of them.

And cue the racking coughs. More red. He was very familiar with that particular shade.

New theory. This was a new variant that somehow makes you sick when you think of the person you hated the most.

Yes, that had to be it. He thought as he all but collapsed on the floor from the sudden paroxysm.

I knew this was gonna get long. :) Oh well...

Thank you for playing. :D

[dirkjakeweekly]

DIRKJAKE FIC RECS

This is a rebloggeable version of our sidebar page reproduced in full, for those who prefer to save things on their own blogs for later!

INTRO

This page is not intended to be an encyclopedia, but rather a non-exhaustive list of a few Dirkjake Fanfics (and Fancomics) for those that may be interested in the ship, but a little too tired of trawling through AO3 search! Some of these contain NSFW or suggestive content, viewer discretion is advised.

[ FIC RECS (last updated Jan 2021, click readmore for full list) ]

It’s only a canvas sky

Their guardians dead at the hands of the Condesce, growing up in the shadow of her slow takeover of the Skaian Federation, Dirk Strider and Jake English have spent their whole lives alone up until shortly before their twelfth birthdays.

Or: Dirk fixes a transmitter, makes a friend, builds a robot, and tries to communicate affection over distance to the barest possible minimum.

Read here!

GOD’S BRAND NEW FATE SELECTOR (Fancomics)

In ONE PARTICULAR TIMELINE, detached from many similar ones, an aspiring divorcee stands by his baby’s cradle and attempts to hatch an escape plan with some aid from the ghost of his long-deceased boyfriend. He’s not exactly helpful.

SOMEWHERE ELSE ENTIRELY, Dirk Strider is overcame by the nagging feeling his splinters may be getting a little out of hand and far too into his head, when he gets a booty call.

One timeline is Epilogues-Compliant, another Epilogues-Divergent. 

Read here!

We’re All Friends & Family Here (And Frankly, We’re Sick Of Your Shit)

It’s been about a year since the big Fast Forward, and sure, things on Earth C aren’t perfect for everyone. But they’re fine. Really. It’s fine. Everything is super fuckin’ swell, and that’s that.

It’s not like one night is going to change anything.

Read here!

Perpetuity

“Call it a car crash waiting to happen, you’ll just call it your downfall”

Dirk is a romantic, just not a particularly optimistic one.

(Written pre-epilogues release, post-game, fix-it)

Read here!

Tailspinning Into the Epilogues with Dirk and Jake (complete series)

Read here!

Stark Nonfiction (Part of the Tailspinning series)

Jake tries his hand at a gentler epilogue.

Read here!

Between the Lines (Part of the Tailspinning series)

“It’s just… I can’t remember the last time I felt so at peace, I guess. It was such a lovely jaunt with Jade, and instead of being all torn up about coming home, I feel even better, now. It’s actually been a real while and a half since I felt… bad, you know? Like actually bad.”

You don’t have much in the way of emotional permanence about that sort of thing. Surely it was months ago, when you were staring gloomily at the bottoms of bottles like the world’s most up-his-own-ass useless overdramatic dilettante. Did it even really happen, if it all, in hindsight, just seems like a dumb pantomime of misery to get attention? A successful dumb pantomime of misery to get attention, mind you, you definitely got it, and a boyfriend to boot. Was it ever really as atrocious and apocalyptic and unsurvivable as it seemed?

Read here!

A Palate Cleanser (Part of the Tailspinning series)

ROXY: hay everybody its jakes turn! ROXY: hes got a few words hed like to say about our dear departed buddy

The eulogy we missed on Candy’s page 15.

Read here!

Eschewal

“you hope he’s a benevolent god”

Read here!

Grublr. (Fancomic)

In the consort kingdom, atop of the large, humongous mansion where the god of Hope lives, there is an apartment complex.

Read here!

The Hitchhikers Guide to Your Ex-Boyfriend (Fancomic)

Jake English waking up sore and alone on a cold floor is not a strange occurrence for him as of late. The ethereal beam of light and sluggishly churning floor is new, but he’s woken up in stranger places.

If circumstances were better he’d probably have something shocked and relevant to say about this strange landscape he’s found himself in, but circumstances are in fact legendarily shit right now.

(A comic/fic where Jake English gets rights)

Read here!

The Four Kings, the God Thief, and the Black Diamond Pirates

Dirk and Vriska have it good. They raid ships, pillage merchant vessels, constantly poison each other, possess a lucrative pact with the Wind King, sing a lot of dope fuckin’ sea shanties, and captain a loveable crew of pirate scum. They’re ready to kick back, take it easy, and become the vile and revered scourge of the diamond trading line.

Then they find someone in the water.

Read here!

Sea shanties for Thots (Four Kings continuation)

Jake English has never done anything wrong, ever, in his life, if you don’t count literally all that stuff from the first installment of oxfordRoulette’s diegetic-musical-cum-found-family-pirate-AU. Luckily, that was in the last story, and he is completely better now in all respects. None of that nonsense is a thing anymore and it will not be relevant at all! Surrounded by friends and allies, with a very cool piratey boyfriend and a hold full of treasure from his recently decimated country, he’s got everything a fellow could want.

What will he do?

Befriend an octopus god. Learn to fish. Kick back. Take it easy. Kiss his boyfriend a lot. Open a jewelry company? Pursue immortality. Confront his past. Embrace his future. Maybe save the world. One thing’s for sure: there will be a lot of songs involved.

Read here!

Two idiots at Homoville, N69, TX

In a moment of desperation, Dirk goes on r/relationships. Things get oversharey real quick. He types as follows:

“I [23M] cannot understand my [24M?] roommate. He is the most bizarre man to ever set foot on earth and I’m afraid I’m losing him.”

or, and They Were Roommates.

Read here!

Drive it home with one headlight

Some mistakes are so fucking big that they divert the path of your life entirely, sending you somewhere you were never meant to go. Some mistakes are so seismic and so obvious that when you look back on your life all you can see is the beacon where you made them. Some mistakes leave you so far off course you don’t even recognize who you are or why you’re still here.

You don’t usually get a chance to make amends.

Read here!

A Tallied List of Various Occasions in Which Jake English Encountered the Elusive Smile Belonging to One Dirk Strider

Jake English, explorer extraordinaire, tracks down the most unique treasure of all: a nerd in pointy sunglasses.

Read here!

BONES OF BLACK MARROW

Dirk summons a demon for the exclusive purpose of ‘cathartic boning.’ He gets what he wants.

NOTE: This fic is ergodic (think House of Leaves), which means it cannot be downloaded for offline perusal on your kindle/pdf reader. Also has CYOA elements, so clicking “Entire Work” will make the fic impossible to read.

Read here!

fire fly

A wedding. An anxiety attack. A daring tryst.

Read here!

DIRK TOPS (Fancomic)

Ever think about how Dirk Strider got full narrative awareness of the fanfics where he’s the big scary hunk in charge and went “I can do that” when he wasn’t, in fact, able to do that? i do. i think about that.

Read here!

MLM stands for Moron loving Moron (Fancomic)

aren’t you TIRED of longing? don’t you just want to go APESHIT while dating your best bro? i mean, you’ve earned it, right? (Collection of oneshot comics. marked as complete, updates whenever)

Read here!

fist is a four letter word

Jake’s face quirks. “App?“ 

“Yeah, app. Like, application. You know your phone can do other things right? Like, apps.”

“You sure do keep using that word! I’m not quite sure I understand what you mean.”

“You know, apps.” You try to think of how to explain apps. You suddenly can’t think of what apps are.

What’s the name of an app.

Literally just name any app.

He’s staring at you.

Oh my god.

Read here!

Witching Hour

There’s something almost magical about that time between too late at night and too early in the morning. It’s the perfect time to meet a stranger and go on an adventure.

Read here!

[irandrura]

I will aim for three posts, I think, trying to give some general feelings on Three Houses after completing one route (Azure Moon). This post will be on world and plot, and will have a mixture of things I liked and things I thought could be improved. The second one will be on characters and will be mostly positive. The third one will be a grab bag of other thoughts on mechanics, tone, where I think 3H fits into the series’ overall trajectory, and other things that occur to me.

It’s also worth noting that at this point I think I’ll grant myself license to read spoilers for the other routes. This is mainly because I don’t think it’s reasonable to need to play dozens more hours, many of which just repeat content I’ve already done, in order to get a full picture of the plot. That said, I realise that reading a wiki and skimming the odd chapter transcript are not substitutes for the experience of actually playing a route, so I will not make any judgement on the other three routes in terms of quality. I do intend to play at least Crimson Flower and Verdant Wind at some point, and that should be a richer experience than just reading, but I probably won’t start another forty-to-fifty hour journey straight away.

So, world and plot!

I think worldbuilding is one of Three Houses’ strengths, and is definitely a big step up after Fates and Awakening. Fódlan’s worldbuilding is not perfect, and sometimes has a few cringeworthy elements – in particular the King Lear references in the Alliance are a bit cheesy – but for the most part it successfully presents itself as a rich, interesting world, containing diverse cultures, and a complex history.

The sense of history is particularly important to me, especially compared to the last few games. I’m glad that the game goes to some effort to give Adrestia, Faerghus, and Leicester a sense of a shared past, full of rivalries and alliances. I can imagine setting other stories at different points in Fódlan’s history – Loog’s revolt, the occupation of Brigid and invasion of Dagda, the Almyran invasion, etc. – and those stories still being interesting and fun to play. I can imagine using Fódlan, perhaps centuries in the past, perhaps in the future, as a D&D campaign setting and it being quite interesting. That to me is a sign of good worldbuilding. If the world could easily play host to many different stories, not just the one I’m currently playing, then it can probably stand on its own quite well. This contrasts strongly with, say, Nohr and Hoshido, which felt like they were really just built for Corrin’s adventure.

I also appreciate that it’s not just ancient history that matters, but also the twenty years or so before the game begins. The heroes did not burst on to the scene ex nihilo, but all come out of particular historical situations. Events like the Insurrection of the Seven or the Tragedy of Duscur give you context for what happens in the game. The heroes generally have parents and families, and those families are relevant. They all come from somewhere, and while the details often aren’t described, what you get is enough to start imagining their home lives, and what might be going on elsewhere in the world. I really liked that and felt it was missing from the last few games. Can you imagine asking most of the Shepherds about their familes, or about the lands where they grew up?

Similarly, the range of visible cultures is one that I quite appreciate. Even outside Fódlan itself, mentions of Dagda, Brigid, Sreng, and Almyra help to make the world feel populated. That’s only the other regions that we know much about: there’s also Morfis, Albinea, and Mach, so the world is clearly quite large. Further, these different regions all have some noticeable cultural traits: the people of Brigid are animists and believe in many spirits, the Almyrans are a warrior culture and seem vaguely Persian, and so on. Within Fódlan there are visible differences as well, so the titular three houses are nicely differentiated.

The role of crests in shaping the continent also appealed to me. I believe I commented before that it reminds me of Birthright, an AD&D setting from the 90s that I have a soft spot for. While crests aren’t quite as powerful as Birthright’s bloodlines and don’t have exactly the same effects, the idea of aristocrats with real superpowers passed down in the bloodline, but which if abused can twist people into horrible monsters, was quite reminiscent of that setting. It’s a premise I’ve always found relatively intriguing, and I like that Three Houses does spend a little while exploring the social stratification that crests have produced. There are some interesting marriage politics going on because of crests; that’s really fun for me. Nonetheless I think the game also takes the right approach by not making crests too overpowering, and by firmly asserting that a person’s worth is not dependent on whether they have a crest or not. If it hadn’t done that, crests might have had some uncomfortable implications.

That said if I have one quibble it would be etymological. I understand that the Empire is vaguely Germano-Nordic, Leicester is vaguely English, and Faerghus is Franco-Celtic, but these aren’t always incredibly consistent, and names can sometimes be a bit surprising. The name ‘Dimitri’, for instance, stands out as being slightly out of place. I suppose its origin, ‘Demetrius’, is a Latin name and thus appropriate enough, but today I hear ‘Dimitri’ as Slavic, which doesn’t fit the established pattern for Faerghus. Still, this is a minor quibble.

The one exception to my general praise for the worldbuilding is the church, which I think is a huge mess. Maybe another route fleshes this out, but from what I played, it is extremely unclear to me how the church actually works. Was there a previous archbishop, or has Rhea been succeeding herself over and over, changing her name each time? How has the church been involved in history? We’ve had the occasional mention of cardinals, possibly with secret identities, but they’re entirely invisible and don’t seem to do anything. I would have liked more details on the church and how it fits into Fódlan’s history, because right now it feels like the anomaly, to me.

Moving on to the plot…

This had a number of issues, in my opinion.

Azure Moon was very much Dimitri’s story. In some ways I like that Byleth is simply not very important to the story. You are not the hero; you are the hero’s mentor. Byleth is more active than, say, Mark was in Blazing Sword, but still fades into the background compared to the true protagonist. However, I have to stand by the judgement that Dimitri’s redemption was too fast, and it probably would have been better to drop some of the church-related content for this route and spend more time exploring the characters and relationships that are at the heart of this story. Azure Moon is about Dimitri, Dedue, Felix, Sylvain, Annette, and probably Ingrid at the core: this rising generation of Faerghus nobility, with the long shadow of the past over them, struggling to overcome the sins of yesteryear and the cycle of revenge in order to build a better world. This story is good and I liked it, but a bit more polish and focus could have made it shine.

In terms of actual events, though, I have to say that a lot of things in the story didn’t make a lot of sense. The most obvious case is probably the rematch at Gronder Field. I understand the desire for a three-way battle there as adults, a rematch that contrasts dramatically with the mock battle they fought as students. However, as cool as the scene is, I don’t feel the set-up for it made a lot of sense: in particular Claude and Dimitri have no reason to fight each other. Dimitri might still be bloodthirsty and vengeance-obsessed, but that should translate to a charge straight at Edelgard, and Claude seems cunning enough to let that happen without getting in the way. There might surely have been better ways to set up a conflict there, especially since the writers have the get-out-of-jail-free card of a faction of evil shapeshifters trying to foment conflict. All you need is for a few Slitherers to deliver false messages or instigate a skirmish or two to start a battle based on a tragic misunderstanding.

Similarly, my confusion at the Leicester Alliance disbanding and the Kingdom absorbing the Empire remains present. I can guess that they wanted every route to end with Fódlan united into a single realm, but in this particular story it seemed strange, given how much the story had focused on freeing Faerghus from Imperial occupation and on defeating Edelgard. Dimitri’s ambitions were personal, rather than the grand schemes to reorganise Fódlan politically that both Edelgard and Claude have.

I wonder if there might be an unspoken cultural difference here? As someone from a Western European background, I am quite comfortable with the idea that many different nations can rightly exist on the same continent, and see coexisting self-determining territories as a quite good result; but perhaps in Japan it might be more natural to think that “an empire divided longs to unite”? The game begins with the territories of the ancient Adrestian Empire split into three nations now. Perhaps, like Warring States of either China or Japan, they must be united back into one? Three Houses to parallel Three Kingdoms, perhaps? The Japanese title of the game does not mention Three Houses, to be fair, but the title is an allusion to classical Chinese poetry, so I wonder what assumptions or resonances might be in the background.

Moving along, the logistics of war in general stood out to me as rather odd. I can’t tell whether you’re supposed to be canonically returning the entire army to the monastery in between every battle or not, but even if you’re not, you march all over the continent with very little regard for things like plausible logistics. Invading the Empire, winning a battle at Gronder, and then stopping to run all the way back up to Fhirdiad and liberate it in a single battle seemed particularly odd, especially when you also somehow make time to visit Arianrhod way out in the west. I wouldn’t be that strict about this in most games, but Three Houses does have that lovely detailed map and shows coloured lines with armies moving around, so I felt that it drew attention to one of its own weak points. Here I think the game contrasts negatively with the Tellius pair, which also feature a bunch of continent-wide wars, but generally seem to avoid bizarre logistics.

Finally, let’s talk about the ending. As I mentioned in one of the linked posts above, I was a bit surprised that there was no resolution to the Slitherers subplot in this arc. I liked the scene where Dimitri asks Edelgard why she did all of this before the final battle, but unfortunately they just talk about ideals. If I were Edelgard I might have mentioned the part where I did all this at the behest of – while also hoping to turn on and destroy – a faction of evil subterranean wizards who have been fomenting conflict throughout all of Fódlan’s history. I might also have mentioned the part where I believe the Church of Seiros is run by a different faction of ancient immortal manipulators, since that also seems key to understanding why Edelgard thought such drastic measures were necessary.

Perhaps that didn’t come up because if Edelgard were to mention those motives, it would quickly become apparent that she has already achieved most of her goals, and there is no more reason to fight. By the time of Edelgard and Dimitri’s fateful meeting, the Slitherers have already been defeated (albeit inadvertently, when we killed Arundel), the Church of Seiros is already shattered, Fódlan is close to being reunited under one government, and both we and Edelgard know that Dimitri wants to establish a more participatory and egalitarian form of government that should resolve some of Edelgard’s worries about crests. If Edelgard were the utilitarian fighting for the greater good that she portrays herself as, she could simply surrender, arrange the sort of peace treaty that Dimitri clearly wants, share all her knowledge with Dimitri and Byleth, and work for a brighter future together.

The final cutscene was thus quite striking to me. By ‘Light and Shadow’, it is extremely clear that the war is over. Even if Edelgard were somehow to successfully kill Dimitri, she would be killed immediately afterwards, and no good could come of it. But Edelgard cannot surrender. It is the one thing she cannot do, that she will never do. After the heart of the story was Dimitri’s redemption, and his painful struggle to turn away from his crimes and start anew, it seems appropriate to draw this line between them.

Both Dimitri and Edelgard did terrible things: he from vengeful passion, she from sincere belief it was for the best. But he could change his ways, grow, and find a new beginning. She never could. At the midpoint of Azure Moon, Byleth offers Dimitri his hand, and taking that hand and accepting help is the point at which Dimitri’s redemption begins. At the end, Dimitri, having learned this lesson, offers Edelgard his hand… but she does not take it.

There were plenty of places where I thought the plot could be improved, in terms of time, pacing, focus, and even practical things like why certain battles happen or how troops get there. But ultimately the story worked for me, I think, because the emotions worked. I can excuse a lot of nonsense if I care about the characters and the emotions resonate. I would rather do that than have a story that makes perfect logistical sense, but in which all the characters are flat and boring.

Next time I’ll talk more about supports and all the other characters.

[niennavalier]

So I’m sure no one cares but

I’ve recently discovered genderbent Frozen covers and animatics and honestly I love these? Like, a lot? 

(Rambly thoughts under the cut, because I got invested in talking about Disney movies and ways they write characters and generalizing stuff, despite writing this all on a whim and doing not much research but hey, that’s what this blog is for. Random thoughts about movies and stories and Youtube comments)

I mean, I’ll admit that I’ve never been a big fan of Frozen - nothing against the story (cause it is good and for all I will criticize Disney for not generally being particularly uh...keen on taking any risks, I do appreciate the way they do break the mold here) or the music (it sounds like a Broadway musical, hell yeah) - but tbh Let it Go far overstayed its welcome and yes, I’m glad kids enjoyed the movie, but we heard it nonstop for way longer than we should have. The song honestly never felt like it went away for, what like, 2 years? I can listen to songs on endless loops, and this was still too much for me. Granted, I never hated it (my brother did, possibly still does, so I didn’t mind listening to it for the sole purpose of tormenting him) but still. It sorta turned me off from the franchise. I didn’t need to hear it every time I walked into a store.

And I’ll also admit to never being big on genderbending. Nothing against people who enjoy it, but it’s never been my thing, and the few fics I’ve read with it never felt like it used the swap for any sort of message or to explore anything particularly interesting. Which I would’ve preferred, because otherwise, I didn’t see the reason for the swap, personally. (and to be fair, I turned off of this pretty quickly, so I’m sure there are good ones out there, but it’s really just never been something I’m big on)

But like...okay. There is this animatic for Show Yourself, but with the audio dropped into the male vocal range and I love it so much. It’s wonderful and adorable (and the song is legitimately very good, so I’ve seen that part, despite never having actually watched Frozen 2). And also a handful of actual covers, which are absolutely amazing. And now I’ve found the same sort of thing with Let it Go (which I’m now okay with - I guess it just takes 7 years for me to get over the oversaturation of that song in society) and like holy shit, friends. Big fan.

Scrolling through the comments also gets all the “can we please get a Disney Prince movie” thoughts and hey, I’m so on board with this. I know, there are movies with princes (Aladdin, Hercules, Lion King, etc), but it’s less that plain fact of having a prince, and more of the arc for the character? Basically, I wanna destroy the trend of having male-oriented movies be more action-adventure-y. Let boys be soft and have feelings, that’s all I ask. Make that the character arc, have your main character be male and need to discover himself, all of the fears and insecurities included, I am begging you. 

(Sidenote because I did see some other interesting mentions: I haven’t seen Hunchback, back from what I’m aware of with that movie, that one probably fits closer to what I’m talking about. Also Treasure Planet, because honestly, that really is exactly the kind of arc that I’m talking about, and there’s a reason I love that movie with all my heart, it’s amazing, and go watch it if you haven’t. But like, it’s a coming of age story with some good ol’ found family and no romance! And while Jim is really smart and has some bad-ass moments, I love when we get insight into his emotional state. But I could gush about this movie forever, moving on. The one thing about these is not the lack of royalty (for me), but just...box office? I don’t know the circumstances for Hunchback, except that the numbers apparently aren’t great, and to my knowledge, someone over at Disney just didn’t want Treasure Planet to do great, and this goes to show what marketing does. Apparently, they did the same to Emperor’s New Groove, which isn’t entirely relevant, but my point is, whoever did this to these movies, screw you, they’re wonderful)

(Apologies for the tangent)

Anyway, I’m not saying remake Frozen, but doing the genderbend works really well here, I think? Obviously, I love that Elsa’s arc is entirely her own, and stories about opening up to family and accepting yourself have messages that everyone needs to hear, regardless of any barrier. So this isn’t a criticism, just a thought. Because (granted, I’m not doing research to write this, and I’m admittedly not 100% caught up on Disney movies) it feels to me like female characters do tend to have the more emotional arcs. Talking Disney Renaissance, this feels true in the female-lead movies, especially if you compare to the respective princes. In male-lead movies, it’s not entirely true, and I’m not calling the characters flat or emotionless, but that’s not the main thing going on in the movie. (ie, Simba has his reservations about returning and so he talks to Mufasa, and that’s a big scene and its important, but it feels more like it’s just a step to ultimately taking down Scar - tbh, compare the screentimes there). Again, the Renaissance movies are fantastic and I love them, but I just want to make some comparisons. And I don’t want to delve too deep into the more recent ones, because I haven’t seen them all, but the focus seems much more on the strong, independent female-lead (again, not a criticism because we can always do with more strong ladies who don’t need no man - I am just saying). 

But anyway. Frozen. I like the idea of keeping Anna as herself, because the Hans twist and more slow-burn-y development with Kristoff is good - that accomplishes the idea of breaking down tropes. But Elsa as a male character is really interesting to me? Having an arc that centers on fear that’s born of isolation, and ends with self-acceptance and familial love, is something that I don’t recall seeing in male characters very often (not never, but not often)? But I can think of tons of male characters who appear confident and charismatic, even if that’s in their own way, and then even if we do peel back to find trauma and pain, I can think of more instances of it presenting as bitterness or anger rather than genuine fear (or at the very least, we as the audience don’t quite see that fear). I want to see a male character who was forced to repress who they are and has real fear as to who their true self is. I want this character to discover who that is and have a hard time coming to grips with it, and all that stuff because I honestly just really like writing a lot of self-deprecation. Won’t deny that. And then pairing that with magic is also just interesting IMO. I don’t know how magic tends to fall with regard to this sort of thing, but just the fact that it’s inborn and different (akin to D&D sorcery), rather than learned and understood (like D&D wizardry, or even HP wizards), is an interesting thought to me? Maybe because the “strange and different” type of magic reminds me more of the general conception of witches (or...the Salem Witch Trials) which is also more female-leaning, but I won’t stand by that super strongly, because it’s not something I’ve looked into all that much. But it means, to me, that it would be an interesting way to sorta...turn the tables in the way magic gets used.

Point being: I just think this would be a really solid message. That bravery doesn’t have to be saving the world or killing the dragon or even the self-sacrifice story that’s become more prominent in stories now. It can also come from battling your own demons and opening up to people to ask for help. Which is obviously something everyone needs to learn, but if we’re gonna fight the submissive female character trope with some badass heroines, then I say we also do the same thing in reverse for our male characters. Just a thought

[incorrect-akatsuki-no-yona]

ok that's completely unrelated to anything, but i just read chapter 178, are kye-sook's balls made of vibranium or what?

…headcanon accepted anon. Kye-Sook has nerves of steel, balls of vibranium, and the face of a uni student (read: permanently exhausted). He’d make a great poker player *gets bricked*

Okay jokes aside though, I think chapter 178 is where we start to see more of what makes Kye-Sook tick, which I’m hoping will be explored further since we don’t really see much of him. 

Disclaimer: ngl, I don’t really have much of an impression of Kye-Sook so if anyone disagrees with my really really quick bullshit analysis of the guy, you’re more than welcome to yell at me for it in the comments. Also kudos to Bunny for remembering all relevant plot points for me! (because god knows I can barely remember what I had for breakfast)

Since the beginning Kye-Sook’s more or less been portrayed as a seriously shady guy who makes the occasional stab at Yona’s life. You know, standard villain stuff. iirc though, we’ve never really been told exactly what made him take such extreme measures against King Il (like sure, the guy can’t rule worth a damn and has clearly never gone to business school, but murder? really?).

Chapter 178 however, makes me think it’s got something to do with Yu-Hon, and that Kye-Sook’s personal motives are probably similar to Soo-Won’s.

Also I find the way he phrased things to be interesting: “To think the legendary four dragons would appear here and now… If only Lord Yu-Hon were alive to see it.” To me, it seems to imply that Yu-Hon either actually believed in the legends of the dragons (unlikely), or that he didn’t - but felt strongly enough about the subject that Kye-Sook would even bring him up in this context. Which then begs the question: Why was he so against the legend?

Bunny also made the excellent point that Yu-Hon probably wouldn’t have reacted well to the dragons based on the fact that he chased all the priests out of the castle which I think could support the second option - particularly if there was some sort of prophecy or whatnot made about Yona/the dragons?

Anywhoo I digress. My point here is that if Kye-Sook’s motives are similar to Soo-Won’s, this could explain why he turned on Il and taunted Hak by calling Il’s death their “greatest victory”: resentment and/or hatred. From what we’ve seen, Soo-Won seems to almost idolise his father, and harbored a grudge against Il for killing him (whether or not this is true, I have no idea). If that’s also the case for Kye-Sook, it’s probably safe to say that he also holds some feeling of hatred for Il too. That being said, I honestly can’t explain his actions in chapter 178.

The way he casually taunts Hak, but doesn’t lift a finger in his own defence makes me wonder what his goal is. We know he’s smart, so why would he deliberately provoke one of the most powerful people in the entire series if he intends to ally with them? Doing it purely out of pettiness or resentment doesn’t really seem his style. Does he have a plan, or does he just not value his own life? Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it and the answer is simply that he knew Yona would stop Hak and did it for the vine. Who the heck knows.

So yes, Kye-Sook is probably one of the ballsiest characters in the series, particularly since the guy doesn’t seem to be much of a fighter from what we’ve seen. As for why he did it… hopefully time will tell?

tl;dr: Kye-Sook is vine star/master poker player.

- Pip

EDIT: Bunny says: I have no idea what his deal is at all tbh. He is a mystery, as with what his nerves and balls are metaphorically made out of.

[aotopmha]

Attack On Titan Chapter 115 Thoughts

Yeah, looking at the full chapter, Levi isn't dead.

This is frustrating to me for various reasons.

Levi's face is smashed in and it looks like one of his hands is probably unusable, as it seems like fingers were blown off of it and are stuck on the blade he was using:

Hange also dives into the water with him - with that kind of setup, I think it would feel off if he died here.

He might eventually, but that wouldn't feel as weighty to me anymore because he already survived here.

In addition, if Levi dies or survives without having any effect on the plot from here on out, all this dangling of his fate and the cliffhangers were pointless and just there for shock value to keep the readers coming back.

My least favorite part of the serum fight at the end of the Return to Shiganshina arc was how contrived it was. Both, but particularly Armin, surviving that long felt like a pretty big stretch and I think we see some of that here with Levi, too. I think his survival is a pretty big stretch because he took the Thunder Spear head on.

We know the Ackermans could possibly have healing powers since we had a possible hint like that with Mikasa back in chapter 51, so Levi could end up having this kind of healing and it could somehow save him:

We also now know they are products of Titan science, so it would "make sense", but it all still reeks of character favoratism and flies in the face of one of my favorite thematic ideas of the story: the idea that all of the lives of the characters are equally valuable and each character is treated the same way regardless of how major or minor they are. 

Unlike Levi, Armin, for example, was involved in a choice (so either way, one had to go), while this was an individual moment for only Levi alone, singling him out narrative-wise. Most of the big survival moments (Eren, Ymir, Reiner) were also related to Titan powers, making it all specifically dependant on the narrative element of the Titans and leaving the human aspect fairly grounded, only mostly limiting the impossibilities to the Titans. The serum was there the whole arc and the Titans/shifters have specific established abilities that might be twisted and turned, but are still consistent and related to prior abilities.

Armin surviving wasn't as much of a favoratism-filled of a moment to me because of these aspects (the reach/contrivance came from how the situation was set up to me, rather than the components and content of it because it went against the more grounded way of how regular human characters were treated, and I think the only other time this was stretched to it’s limits was with Erwin in chapter 50), but I also don't think Levi is a nearly as well-developed or potential-filled of a character to merit giving him more chances. I think interesting stuff could still be done with Armin and we see glimpses of that, but I don't see much of that with Levi - I think most of the potential in his character was wringed out in the Uprising arc.

He softened up and became more of a protector figure and we saw the results of that in the Return to Shiganshina arc.

Thematically, the contrast between Zeke and Levi was neat, but it was also the general contrast between the SL and Marley. Levi keeping his promise and killing the Beast Titan is also something that the whole SL (specifically those that aren't in fractions working against them at this point) is fighting for in a general sense - it’s one of the SL’s general principles that they fight to make sure all of the sacrifices made by soldiers that came before could have meaning.

There isn't much going on for Levi *specifically*. Anyone could avenge Erwin or defeat Zeke because it would have the same thematic meaning regardless of who does it.

The counter-argument to this would be that Levi had the most fleshed-out relationship with Erwin, but that doesn't really translate to actually doing anything new or interesting with his character.

Plot-wise I can accept him healing, but not completely regenerating. Again, in comparison, I think the Titan stuff with Zeke is also just fine because he actually is a shifter (and has the Founding Titan power at that, the most special of them all) and the whole point of the story and the Titans is that we don't know much about them - not even the characters that know the most about them don't know everything.

This is why I was okay with Reiner surviving in the Shiganshina arc, too. The characters and, by proxy, we, didn’t know everything about his and the others’ powers, that was the point. Their survivals are, again, dependant on the established rules of the Titan element of the series. You could argue there may have also been some reaching with these cases (Reiner in the Shiganshina arc and Zeke here), too, but it is also backed by smart plotting in a different sense - by the fundemental plot design of the series, which is actually a unexpectedly thoughtful detail when it comes to writing.

Many stories don’t actually make the inherit plot structure of the story as part of the thematic point of the story, and you could still see it as an cheap excuse, but I always appreciate whenever that happens because I feel like it shows the writer’s self-awareness and that they are actually thinking about the story and how it would have as few holes as possible. It might seem cheap on the surface, but it’s also smart in it’s own way.

Moving on, though, technically the Ackermans are related to the Titans, but the connection seems to be intended to be pretty loose, so anything that reveals a bigger similarity than just a vague connection automatically feels like a reach to get the plot where it needs to go to me.

I have that problem with the more magical-leaning abilities of the Titans, too - how did we get from regeneration and creating armour to memory manipulation and rewriting the DNA of a whole race?

If they actually turn out to be the same, this is another huge reach and something I am getting tired of - at this point, every Eldian might as well turn out to be a super soldier because they all have a loose connection to the Titans. I could deal with some of the reaches because they were exceptions and they weren’t as big leaps of logic. If these exceptions grow numerous, I can't believe in any of the established rules of the story anymore, be it the point of the plotting or not. There has to be some rhyme and reason to everything from a storytelling POV. 

On the other hand, though, I love AoT's wierd and grotesque imagery and along with that we got some possible details about the Titans, specifically the “paths” cleared up. The whole scene of Zeke regenerating with the help of the mindless Titan was really interesting, nasty and creepy.

I think it also makes it much more likely that Ymir could actually be alive by the end of the story.

Since not being absorbed into a Titan requires willpower and all Eldians are part of a big Titan "mass", the “paths” could work like Evangelion's LCL where a strong will allows the person to not be absorbed into this giant hivemind and remain their own person - it seems something like an invisible network of all of the Titan Shifters and mindless Titans of the past, present and future, maybe even all Eldians - though that's a less certain possibility to me. We know the matter that appears when the shifter transforms also comes from that network (as we learn from Kruger first and for now have confirmed by Xaver):

(Chapter 114)

How the matter is stored, created or appears at all is another thing entirely, but I feel like that’s how the “paths” thing works in the basics, looking at everything we know as of this chapter. So because they are all technically of the same flesh, the mindless Titan could reform Zeke’s body.

Basically, if her death wasn't a fakeout, Ymir (or any other shifter) might technically be able reform themselves, given a strong enough will and presence of appropriate flesh. The current shifters fighting the wills of the previous ones to be reformed back to their own bodies has always been a interesting idea with a bunch of character development/exploration potential to me - such as Eren fighting with the First King/his father/Frieda/Kruger/Tybur (man, he has like 5 people in there at this point), Armin fighting with Bertholdt, Ymir fighting with Porco and so on.

If it’s not something like this specifically, then I feel like these details would be relevant somehow anyway.

Finally, we have the Eren stuff. While talking with Zeke, he basically goes against everything he believed in prior to the development of his more pragmatic perspective.

It's either his father's memories and the moment in the cave having more of an effect on him than we thought or judging by his calm demeanor, him actually appealing to Zeke and manipulating him. In both cases he needs to be smacked.

In the former case, it's him agreeing with Zeke because of his hyperfocus on the moment he went through in the cave and Eren not really having truly grown past it.

In the latter case, I think his plan might actually be to rewrite the Eldians so they wouldn't have the Titan ability anymore.

One steals even more of the freedom of the Eldian people from them by denying their continued existence. The other takes away their only ability to protect themselves against the much better technology of the rest of the world and lessens their chance of survival even more, even if it removes the Titans from the world.

I think Mikasa, Armin and everyone else have to reach Eren and return the favor he did for them - telling him to fight again.

Also, hi there Pieck, I'm curious what you're planning to do.

This was a pretty alright chapter - I wish Levi died because I think it would've been a much better writing choice in comparison to the options we have now - if he dies later, I feel like it wouldn’t have the same weight, if he miraculously recovers, it's a massive stretch, if he is injured and gets no plot importance from this point on, this was all pointless shock value drama and if he pulls some miracle stunts while injured, it's also a pretty big stretch.

I think a swift death by the hands of Zeke would've been much more thematically powerful and interesting in comparison to the alternatives we seem to have now.

The most optimal option with the current situation I see is Levi mattering in a stealthy way - with a seemingly small action that matters a lot.

I guess prove me wrong and make this good, AoT, you've done it before.

I found everything else pretty interesting, though.

This back and forth between who is manipulating who between Eren and Zeke is the longest, most dragged-out seesaw game ever. It drags, but I still want to know where it eventually goes.

It might be Eren still not having moved past his moment in the cave or it might be him manipulating Zeke. These are the two options I see, but I’m not entirely sure which I lean towards because both have some holes. Maybe slightly more towards the first option because I feel like his talk with Zeke is more consistent with his talk in the cave, but I’m not sure.

The details about the paths through the Zeke scene were nice and actually did possibly tie up some loose ends about how the Titans work, just like all the info in the previous chapter.

This is such a strange chapter to me as a result. Great, interesting stuff and not so great stuff together and much of it's quality also being dependant on how it all pans out in the long run.

We'll see.

[the-desolated-quill]

The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not For The Lamb’s Cry - Star Trek: Discovery blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Couldn’t they have thought of something a bit less clunky for their title? When the title of your episode is so ridiculously long that it ends up taking up half the screen on Netflix, maybe you should think about condensing that shit down just a tad.

Right then. The Butcher’s... No. Fuck that. I’m just calling it Episode 4. What did I think of it? Well it’s better than Context Is For Kings. In fact it’s a lot better than Context Is For Kings. There are still some problems, sure, but at least I could watch this one without tearing my hair out in frustration.

The bulk of the episode revolves around Michael studying the creature from the previous episode. Admittedly it does that annoying thing at first where everyone says they need Michael’s help only to then prevent her from doing anything because they don’t trust her. Well if you don’t trust her, why are you asking her for help in the first place?

Gabriel wants Michael to study the creature in order to weaponise it, so Michael starts looking into its behaviour. A very sensible idea. I mean you don’t want to start rushing in with scalpels or syringes or anything until you fully understand what this creature is thinking and what it’s capable of, right? Enter obnoxious bitch Commander Landry. See Little Miss Dumbass over here is getting impatient that Michael isn’t progressing fast enough for her liking and so, knowing full well what the creature is capable of because she tangled with it in the previous episode, promptly marches into the containment cell with a gun, planning to crudely lop bits off the creature only to then get a faceful of monster. (Also the irony that she, a woman of colour, is negatively judging another life form based solely on their appearance appears to have sailed clean over her head). What an utter tit!

Still, once all that bullshit is out of the way, I can’t deny the stuff with the creature is interesting, as is the characters’ reactions to it. We see Michael’s compassion and curiosity start to creep back in as she interacts and tames the creature, and we start to see Paul Stamets open up a bit more. Okay, he’s still a little bit too whiny for my liking, but I do appreciate the show’s attempts to humanise him as we see just how much his work means to him. His joy when he realises that the creature and the spores are symbiotically linked is pretty uplifting and I hope we see more of this side of Stamets.

But what i find especially clever is that while them getting the warp drive working is a cause for celebration, it’s dampened somewhat by the fact that they are exploiting a living creature for their own ends. That was a really nice touch as we see Michael looking visibly uncomfortable at what they’re doing to creature whilst everyone else is cheering at their accomplishments. In fact Michael’s guilt plays a large part in this episode. Her friendship with Saru has hit an all time low and the last will and testament of Philippa just adds more salt in the wound as she and the audience question how much more of her morality she will compromise in order to win this war.

But while all the stuff about the creature and the ethics surrounding it was interesting, my big problem with it is this feels like the wrong episode to be doing this in. This all should have been done in the previous episode where it felt more relevant because this is not the time or the place to be exploring this. The main premise is that a mining colony is under attack by Klingons and the Discovery needs to get there and rescue them. This should be a pulse pounding, race against time with hundreds of lives in the balance, but at no point does it ever feel like that. There’s almost no tension or suspense. Nobody is desperately scrambling around or panicking over the fact that the warp drive isn’t working and that they’re running out of time. In fact it’s the complete opposite. Everyone seems to be casually strolling around, cool as cucumbers. Even the audio of one of the colonists saying a preemptive goodbye doesn’t seem to worry anyone into action as far as I can tell. The only time it ever gets close to tense is when the ship nearly crashes into a sun. Apart from that, nobody seems particularly bothered that people are going to die. Part of the reason is because the focus is largely on the creature, which is all wrong. It just distracts from what should be an extremely tense scenario and it just feels really jarring. It’s hard to be entranced by an alien eating spores when people are getting killed as we speak.

While everything that occurs in Starfleet is hit and miss, the action that takes place on the Klingon side is incredibly good. We get more of an insight into how the Klingons work, specifically their obsession with purity. They’d rather starve to death in the vacuum of space rather than loot one of the Federation’s starships because they consider it to be blasphemy. We also learn that the Klingon Empire isn’t as united as it first appears. The 24 houses may be fighting for a common cause, but they’re not in any way allies and will gladly stab each other in the back for personal gain.

One thing I was especially impressed with was Voq, the outcast and new Torchbearer from the opening two parter. The show did a really good job of getting us to empathise with him and better understand just how much this cause means to him, to the point where I was surprised to find myself actually feeling sorry for him at the end when he was betrayed and seemingly left for dead (even despite the fact knowing that he ate Philippa’s corpse). This is largely down to nuanced writing and great acting. It would get boring real fast if the writers stuck to the whole angry space orc thing, which makes the conversation between him and L’Rell (I think that’s her name) while they’re salvaging the dilithium processor that much more powerful and interesting. It’s smaller, quieter and more touching than what I would have expected from the Klingons based on my very limited knowledge of them, and a lot of credit has to go to David Iqbal and Mary Chieffo for their brilliant performances. They have arguably the hardest jobs of any of the actors in this show and they did exceptionally well here. I’m genuinely curious as to where they go from here.

Yes there are flaws and quite a few things I can complain about, but overall I thought Episode 4 was pretty enjoyable overall.

...

I still think that title is way too long though.

[jadelotusflower]

It’s cold in that fridge: The case of Lady Marian

Christmas, 2007.  I was among the scores of viewers across the UK tuning in to see the season 2 finale of Robin Hood, which saw the gang trek to the Holy Land on a mission to rescue Marian from the clutches of the Sheriff, and prevent the assassination of Good King Richard™.

There had been rumors and hints that a character would be killed off in the last few episodes and speculation was rife.  But almost everyone was shocked when Marian was stabbed, this time fatally, by Guy of Gisborne, married Robin on her deathbed and was buried in the sands of Acre to show that this was no fakeout and she was really, truly dead - although this did not stop people clamoring for an “it was all a dream” reveal just to bring her back. 

But nope, welcome to the fridge, Marian.    

To say that people were angry would be an understatement -  the BBC was flooded with complaints and the rumor mill was strong - arguments were made that Lucy Griffiths wanted to leave the show, because why else would they kill off such a beloved character, one of the only two female regulars on a show, and not only one of the defining, enduring aspects of the Robin Hood legend, but a fantastic character in her own right.  Lets take a look at some of the comments just on the BBC website:

My 6 year old daughter was in floods of tears.

BBC and Tiger Aspect have traumatized millions of children with Marian’s death. 

They ruined the show when they killed marian, SORRY BBC…..I will not watch the third series. 

The decision to kill Marian was gratuitous sensationalism - designed for headlines not for the (young) audience.

Killing Marian off is senseless and has obviously upset many children, let alone me and I’m an adult! 

The ending was a huge disappointment and I’ve never seen my family in so many tears!   

My daughters are devastated!  The main reason they watched Robin Hood was to see Marian, I can’t imagine they (and many other 7 year old girls) will want to watch a series without her.

Horrible! My children and I watch the show and to see the looks on their faces when Marian died….I will NEVER watch this show again.

Basically:

and

Of course, devastation and fan outrage are common whenever any popular character is killed off, but Marian’s death in particular seemed to strike people very deeply not only in fandom, but in the general audience.  

It’s important to remember that Robin Hood was conceived as a family friendly show - it occupied the pre-watershed Saturday night timeslot when Doctor Who was in the off season, and Marian was a character that many young viewers, particularly young girls, looked up to.  It was shocking for them to see their heroine killed, and many of the complaints, while indulging in a bit of “won’t someone think of the children”- was not without foundation - it’s clear that many a tear was shed over Marian by viewers who’d tuned in for a fun, all-ages retelling of the Robin Hood legend and instead saw Marian impaled.  Even in Australia, when the finale aired many, many months later, I read letters in the tv guide lamenting Marian’s demise and the effect it had on their daughters.  It’s important to note that many of these viewers would not return for season 3.  

But shocking as it was, maybe we shouldn’t have been so surprised.  This was, after all, a Classic Fridging.  Women killed in horrible way?  Check.  Excessive manpain?  Check and check.  The male character(s) story/conflict driven by female character’s death? Check and check again.  

But what makes the death of Marian somewhat different from your average fridging was her status as a folk heroine.  Marian is an integral part of the Robin Hood legend and we’ve seen her in many iterations - from Olivia DeHavilland to cartoon vixen.  This version of Marian, in particular, was entirely suitable for a modern re-telling; she was a capable fighter, smart and strategic, chaffed against society’s expectations for her, and was a hero in her own right as the Nightwatchman.  Her goals were aligned with Robin’s, but her agenda was her own. 

So there was a double backlash - against the killing of this Marian in particular, and against killing Marian in general, in what was seen as a dishonour to her iconic status.  Many of the comments in the article linked above speak of disrespect to the legend, to folklore.  Whatever else may change in a Robin Hood story to adapt to changing times, we expect there to remain some constants, and one of those is that Marian lives.  Whether she goes on to marry Robin in that church in Edwinstowe is of less relevance, what is important is Marian’s status as an iconic, feminist figure who the viewer desperately wants to see get their happy ending, because she is not a tragic figure, but a transformative one, the May Queen.  

These stories and characters have such power that a complete subversion of them without warning, and for no real purpose is upsetting, and not in the “wow, what a twist, I can’t wait to see what happens next” way the showrunners desired.    

(At this point I should also mention that Marian was also killed off in Once Upon a Time, but the less said about that trainwreck of a storyline, the better.)

It came out later that Marian’s death in fact a showrunner decision, and while Richard Armitage has been free in expressing his displeasure in the outcome, producers Dominic Minghella and Fox Allen were unrepentant, if not completely tone deaf:

Minghella - Her position was to an extent untenable in that, without a father to protect, she no longer had reason to pretend she was “on-side” with the Sheriff and Gisborne. There was no reason not to declare her affiliation, and affection, for Robin. So she did. There was no way Gisborne could allow that. He would rather kill her than let Robin have her. So he did.That was the core logic. Marian’s days were numbered once her father died.

MARIAN’S DAYS WERE NUMBERED ONCE HER FATHER DIED.

Here we have a textbook example of why fridging is part of a larger issue in how female characters are written.  Marian’s role, in Mighella’s view, was the spy in the castle and object of affection, and when that role ended so did her life.  Male Writer Logic.  There was literally no other story left for Marian except to remain the focal point of the Love Triangle and that she could easily remain in death.  Except, you know, the myriad of other, infinitely more interesting storylines they could have explored, such as Marian joining Robin’s gang in the forest, Marian marrying Guy and still trying to work the inside, Marian striking out on her own - any of the plethora of scenarios that have since been explored in fanfic.  

That’s not even getting to the gross assertion that once Sir Edward died, Marian by necessity wasn’t far behind.  Really, Marian had NO other reason to remain a spy once her father died?  A character who created an alter-ego in the Nightwatchman to “go to war against poverty” who declared that “England needs me” and who tried to kill the Sheriff to stop him from killing the king?  Nope, her only driving force was a desire to protect her father, and she could have no other motive for pretending to remain on the Sheriff’s side.   

This is something I will always believe no matter what denials or counter-arguments are made: they wrote themselves into a corner with the love triangle and took the easy way out.  This way they could still write Robin and Guy fighting over Marian but didn’t have to worry about her pesky feelings or agency.  They didn’t have to worry about her at all, they could just let the male characters grieve and brood and fight over her, without Marian actually being present, without them needing to have her make a choice.  This way, Marian can remain the object of the love triangle rather than an active participant.

It’s laziness, pure and simple.  Far from shaking things up, it’s taking the cliche-ridden, well-travelled path of the hero and the antagonist at each other’s throats, so sad over the death of the woman they loved, each able to memorialise her as they wish.  

Minghella again -  There were several considerations in play. The main one was that after 20+ episodes, the show was in danger of getting stuck. We needed to shake up the world. Whenever we tried to move away from the ‘format’ of Sheriff chasing Robin/Outlaws break into Castle it didn’t quite work… and yet at the same time we were worried about repeating ourselves ad nauseam. Marian’s demise also seemed to me inevitable once we had taken away her father. His role was pivotal in that it kept Marian in the castle, for fear of repercussions against her Dad, and meant she could not run off with Robin and declare her hand. Once he was gone, she had no reason not to go off with the outlaws. That felt to me like a potentially uninteresting place for Marian and Robin – there would be no barrier, no tension, leaving room only for bickering about strategy.

As a Robin/Marian fan, I find this particularly egregious.  I hate that it’s “uninteresting” to explore the dynamic between a couple once they’ve gotten together, especially characters like Robin and Marian who, let’s face it, have Issues™ and Marian in the forest would certainly not remove any tension between them - if anything the opposite would be true. 

But far worse is viewing Marian only in terms of her relationships with the male characters - her father, Robin, and Guy.  Even if they felt they had nothing further to explore in Robin and Marian’s relationship, that doesn’t mean they didn’t have anything further to explore with Marian herself.  Losing her home and father, learning to live in the forest and be one of “the gang”, and likely being ill-suited to such a role, continuing her work as the Nightwatchman, growing closer with some of the outlaws and likely having tension with others.  How would Much and Marian learn to live with each other, for example?  Would she become the person in Allan’s corner, having grown to know him better in the castle?  Would she and Djaq have grown close and become the female friend likely neither of them ever had before?  Would she threaten Robin’s leadership, convinced that she could do better?     

But no, she no longer has a father to protect, her role as spy/fooling Gisborne is finished, and she declares her love and allegiance to Robin.  There’s nothing left for her to do, except die.  Male Writer Logic.        

This is the ultimate sin of fridging, not only because it removes a female character from our screens, but because it diminishes that character, making her worth and value dependent on the men in her life and not even conceiving that she could lead a story of her own.  It’s “shock value” to “shake up” the narrative, to explore what “losing the thing he loves most” does to the male lead.  It becomes about grief, rage, and revenge, and no longer about the female character at all.  

The worst thing?  Marian was a fully realised character - bold, brave, capable, flawed.  She didn’t always do the right thing or make the right choices, she could be stubborn and prideful and reckless, but she was always interesting.  

She had so much more to give.  

[manlyronpa]

Long ass DR venting

Man I really just wanna give up on everything, I’m really tired of pretty much loving something but overall not feeling like I’ve gotten anything out of it. As a fan I’m completely disappointed, as I feel the series creators and writers never once considered me a part of their demographic at all. Like everything that appealed to me or interested me from the series just kinda got unceremoniously swept under the rug or mainly used to make other characters look better. I can’t emphasize enough how shitty it feels knowing you have a favorite and that the only time they get brought up is to kind of rub it in your face that they fucked up and they don’t get a second chance. It’s especially shitty when they make it feel like none of them matter and that their only relevance to the story is that their losers. For fuck’s sake, it would not have been that hard to have something, anything for them that doesn’t make them feel like absolutely no one in this series gives a shit about them. The closest I got to that was in AE and AE turned out to be something that had interesting ideas and things, but none of that shit gets explored! And I dunno maybe that’s my biggest fucking gripe with this fucking game series. It plays everything too fucking safe now and it’s fucking uninteresting when it takes those routes. Like god damn, do I even need to bring up DR3? Like how the hell is a long time DR fan supposed to feel about that shit? There’s absolutely no way people who actually love the series as a whole can say it was anything but shit. Did it have cool stuff? Yes. Did it have interesting ideas and great potential to properly go into things and give us a unique view on things? Yes. But the big thing here is that it didn’t do any of that shit. It took the laziest god damn route which was to play everything fucking safe, no one dies, all the SDR2 kids are actually pure cinnamon rolls who did nothing wrong and best of all any and all inconsistencies from previous entries get either cut off, retconned or my personal favorite, out right ignored completely! How dare I get invested in the larger world of Danganronpa or expecting it to deliver at all, especially after SDR2 pussied out on killing anyone. All in all, I love the majority of the characters, I feel almost all of them can bring something interesting, new, or different to the table. Yes, even the SDR2 kids. I don’t fucking hate them as much as people seem to think, I just give them and the DR1 survivors a particularly hard time because they are fucking survivors, I expect more from them. And it’s disappointing the route they took with every single one of them. Even Touko/Syo who should’ve grown since the events of AE just came off as completely regressed or worse than before AE’s events. And that fucking sickens me, the game was supposed to end on the note that Touko was finally detaching herself of her obsession on Togami, so why is she regressing to being worse by tenfold? On top of that, I do enjoy the ideas and messages Kodaka tries to push or tell the players. I feel that they can be interesting to think about and in some cases challenges how someone may see things. But at the same time, Kodaka’s a bit of a two-faced shit because he goes back on a lot of these messages often or contradicts himself with these messages or what is more common with him is that there is no power behind his messages. His execution is weak and flimsy, and while I can understand where he’s trying to come from, his actual execution leaves someone like me unsatisfied and often times frustrated like I am right now. Well whatever, I can accept that maybe the writing is just not for me, and that the survivors are not for me, and that 85% of the series is probably just not for me. So I should move on right? Nope, it’s not that easy especially since it really did leave that much of an impact on me. Recently someone told me they think it’s sad that I love and hate this series so much, yet I can’t move on from it like I have other things. And I’m inclined to agree with them, it is kind of sad that I can’t let go of it. But I firmly believe it’s because I think this series did help me as a person, especially the 1st entry. And it’s that appreciation I have for the most part that keeps me going. I don’t know, I want to see this series succeed. I don’t hate it, it’s more so a strong feeling of frustration of having to deal with a writer who has changed so drastically as Kodaka. While NDRV3 was alright for me, after playing it, I feel like Kodaka needs to be the one that moves on from it and to leave it to a more capable and admittedly, firm writer. Kodaka’s biggest problem is that he had a solid message in the 1st game, which was to keep going forward, no matter what happens. And he again had a solid message in the 2nd game about how you don’t have to live life the way everyone sees you, you can reinvent or renew yourself. However in the jump to DR3, Kodaka went back on his word for the 1st game. Rather than move forward, he went back, bringing back the DR2 kids. And not just a few, but literally all of them, even Chiaki in a weird way got brought back by turning out to be a real person. On top of that, AE’s complete lack of onscreen deaths and complete pandering to what the fans want in the DR3 anime kinda sealed it that Kodaka had gotten completely soft. I’m not gonna lie, I bet if people were being just as vocal about the dead DR1 kids as they were about the SDR2 kids, Kodaka and Lerche would’ve brought them back to life. After all, Kodaka said he wanted them to be more involved in interviews, he wanted them because they ARE important to the story. But for the most part it feels like the fanbase not only don’t care about them, but also feel like they don’t matter at all. So Kodaka took that in mind and decided not to use them, despite the fact it was something he fucking wanted. And the fact the anime actually kind of portrayed them as unimportant no doubt made my own heart sink. Lastly is while the fanbase is so vocal, they do not like even the slightest bit of criticism, especially when it’s about SDR2 or DR1 survivors. I constantly see AE shat on, I constantly see dead DR1 kids shat on, but man point out the flaws or bad writing in DR2 or DR1 survivors and everyone is quick to defend it. That’s admittedly why I love NDRV3′s release so much, due to the message given at the end of the game and also Kodaka’s acceptance of everyone’s opinions on it. I love that Kodaka is basically saying everyone’s opinions on everything concerning NDRV3 are completely valid. If you think it’s shit? That’s fine. If you think it’s good? That’s fine too. Do you not give a shit either way? That’s fucking fine too. I wish the other two entries were handled that way, because then I wouldn’t feel like my opinion isn’t just gonna be seen as negative. I mean, as most know, I haven’t really made many (or any?) friends in this fanbase, despite me contributing to it as much as I can and being so passionate about the series. Currently I have no one to really talk to about this series much with, as everyone I’ve met have moved on and this leaves me conflicted as to where I wanna go with things. I don’t want to quit DR, but I have to face the facts that while I loved NDRV3, it did not leave as much of an impact as 1 did. And that as much as I love the 1st game, none of my favorites are ever going to come back or get anything special. Those characters stories are firmly done and at this point Kodaka saying ‘Well as long as you love them, they’re still never truly die’ isn’t helping since I do love them, yet DR3 made sure I don’t forget that they’re dead and no one gives a shit. So most likely, after I finish my current engagements(NDRV3 Anthology, SDR2 anthology, Chiaki manga, Genocider Mode), I’ll move on to just doing what I love about the series. This probably means I’ll only really push or work on DR1′s anthologies and 4-koma kings. And once those are done, I think I will properly quit and leave behind all my resources and raws to let anyone who wants to do the leftover DR2, DRAE and possibly NDRV3 stuff to the fanbase. Ultimately I know all anyone will shift to only giving a shit about NDRV3, but at least if I do that I will feel like I contributed, did what I wanted and that I legitimately tried my best to make everyone happy in the fanbase.

[bandedshadows]

Voyager review.

This is long overdue (I was caught up with life stuff and had to stop liveblogging), but I actually finished watching Star Trek: Voyager last week. 

Judging by the length of this post, HOLY SHIT, do I have a lot of feelings.

TL;DR: I’ll give it a 7/10. 

My verdict: 

Voyager had a number of truly extraordinary moments sprinkled among clusters of average to very low points. 

I still loved Janeway a lot, even though there’s notable issues with her characterization. (Kate Mulgrew’s gr9)

Seven’s introduction gave the show a much-needed kick up the next level, but they ended up overdoing it imo.

Some characters are more developed than others, but I found the crew to be generally likeable. 

Continuity? What’s that?

prime directive... prima directa... primal dialga... perma dry roof... pearl digestive... prophylactic dental... partial deposit... parking at disneyland...

I still enjoyed Voyager very much, but oh boy, did this show have many, many flaws. I also took it upon myself to read up on Voyager’s behind-the-scenes issues for context, and jfc, the production is even messier than the text. Put two and two together and it’s obvious why the show took the course it did. 

I’ll go into detail behind the cut. It’s very long. Spoilers ahead :).

[CUT]

I’ll start with the negative points:

The ‘Endgame’ episode was... abrupt. It was still emotionally impactful, but it wasn’t the most graceful way to tie things up. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the show was given fair warning that the 7th season was going to be their last? If that’s the case, I expected more pre-finale plot development before this out-of-pocket Deus Ex Machina plot of future!Janeway pointing out a shortcut to the Alpha Quadrant. Or at least all the Borg encounter episodes could’ve added up to building Voyager’s path home. Endgame’s resolution is acceptable, but it really should’ve been spread out for the last half season. 

The serial, episodic format of Voyager ultimately led to all the aspects in which it fell short. Particularly in continuity and character development. There were bad episodes, average, above average, and then there were GREAT ones. 

But, it’s always Schrodinger’s cat on whether the next episode is going to be watchable or not, as well as which Janeway is going to show up.  

At times, Janeway would be stringent when it comes to the prime directive. Other times she unquestionably abandons Starfleet protocol to be a good samaritan. One day she backs out of complicated situations in order to prevent any losses of life. Another day she’s adamant in achieving her goals even if means accruing some casualties on the way. She gave Harry shit for sleeping with a girl from an alien race without getting medically checked, but then makes out with Devore!Spencer Tracy-lite Bashyk next episode. 

Over the course of the show, Voyager had many episodes that were forgettable. I found myself having to skip a lot of the holodeck fillers (Fair Haven is the worrrrrrssttt), some of the bottle episodes where the crew get first contact with alien races that would predictably betray them, and at times near the end, my fatigue of Seven and the Doctor can get me to tune out of their more unimpressive episodes. 

But then there’s also episodes where they delve deep into character development, but they never acknowledge the character’s growth in any subsequent episodes. The better episodes of Voyager often feel like missed opportunities for more in-depth exploration. B’Elanna undergoing depression was a great plot point that they could have explored more. The episode they did on her about her self-hate for her Klingon half was great but how she came to terms with her Klingon identity felt incomplete. Her character always fascinated me, but I seriously needed more.  #JusticeForB’ElannaTorres

The episode “Mortal Coil”, for example, explores Neelix coping with the loss of his belief system after experiencing death. HIs usual positive outlook was compromised because he realized there’s no heaven and he’s questioning the point of living. Neelix is far from my favourite, but I kind of relate to what he went through. Before the next episode started, it looked like he’s headed to a darker path. Perhaps this change will interfere with his approach to being the morale officer, or he’d don a more assertive aura in future eps. Then he’d be a more interesting character. But NOPE, next episode he’s back to his old sunny self. Missed. Opportunity.

I’m going to echo what I said in this post I made awhile back. I do love Seven’s character, I truly do, but the balanced family dynamic of the crew was special. She didn’t have trouble integrating into the cast, but she pretty much hijacked the show from then on. She’s a great, well-developed character but I found myself longing for the others to get as much depth as she did. 

I just read up on the Jeri Ryan/Brannon Braga stuff,  the beef between Mulgrew and Ryan, the writers willfully shortchanging the actors they don’t like (Beltran, Wang getting less focus episodes), the intense working conditions, and just... the general toxicity of the environment (not to mention Rick Berman’s an ass). I see how the behind the scenes conflicts could’ve influenced the show and now that’s just... really irresponsible.

Now, for the positives!

The writing of her character is flawed, but I thought Captain, *ahem* ADMIRAL Kathryn Janeway was a splendid captain. We wouldn’t know which Janeway showed up each episode, but I love all the versions lmao. Before I binged Voyager, I was already defensive of her from a symbolic standpoint, being the only female captain to lead a show and all. But it turns out that defensiveness was justified. Janeway is both strong, yet fragile. Authoritative, but warm. Adventurous and scientific, but can also get reclusive. She was overly curious, stubborn, and indecisive, but ultimately handled her woes with grace. She proudly demonstrates her iron will, but her empathy for others always prevailed. Her character arc took many paths and turns (intentional or not) but I enjoyed how the character was conducted as the leader of the ship. I felt a different affection she particularly shows to her crew that I don’t think other Trek captains ever did. 

If anything, I have to credit Kate Mulgrew for masking the inconsistent writing quite well. Janeway came off as layered and multi-faceted instead of mischaracterized. 

As for the rest of the cast: they each have their own quirks and they all helped prompt the dynamic of the team. A number of them fell flat towards the end, like Kim & Chakotay, (but I guess it was for the best because of the racist elements of the Chakotay character and Kim’s infantilization. I really wish the writers got more creative with them though.) But either way, all the chracters contributed to the crew in their own way. Each one of them did have a standout episode. They all took a while to find their footing at the beginning, but they all eventually grow into it. 

Now, when Voyager has a great episode, it’s REALLY, REALLY GREAT. 

By far my favourite episode in the entire show is the “Year of Hell”. There’s been plenty of episodes where the crew undertook mishaps but always came out unscathed. But in the “Year of Hell”, this conflict took the crew to dark, new places that really challenged their limits. They were plunged in a darker place of total despondence and desperation, where they got in each other’s nerves, they sacrificed things they love, and the situation tested their hope and will for survival. The desperate situation made for compelling interaction between the characters in how their dynamic changed after their morals were compromised. I also enjoy the laid back nature of Voyager, but I do wonder what it would’ve been like if the whole show had been like this?

Other favourites were: 

Living Witness-- a poignant examination of the nuances behind historical remembrance. An issue that is still relevant today. At first I was going to be annoyed if the point of the story is to clear Voyager’s good name, but later on, The Doctor says that the obsolete Voyager’s reputation is irrelevant to the creating peace between the two factions. *cough*Japan downplaying wartime aggression to clear their name*cough*

Timeless-- just a well-done episode. Yes, once again, they dabble into alternate timelines, but this episode brings such emotional weight and splendidly tackles the issue of survivor’s guilt. Kim’s finest moment. Also, Geordi my king!

Deadlock-- Another space-time episode, but the duplicates really posed a formidable challenge to the crew. It was also a testament to their nobility and sacrifice.

Scorpion-- the game-changer for the show. Also, Seven’s first appearance!

Equinox-- again, this episode featured the crew encountering a real moral dilemma. One of the few episodes that treated the prime directive with a non-simplistic, nuanced approach.

Resolutions, The Chute - ‘cause I’m shipper trash.

Anyway, this was tiring to write. I’m thinking of taking a break from sci-fi shows for a while, then maybe I’ll rewatch TNG or BSG again. Voyager was the only Trek I haven’t watched chronologically and it was nice to witness ‘new’ Star Trek again. This is really long, but I spent over 120 hours watching this, sooooo...

[abandonedshoppingtrolley]

My Thoughts on Final Fantasy XV

 This is a little late to the game now but it’s a long time coming for me to write my thoughts on it and I’ve decided to do it now because of well recent developments and announcements of future patches etc.

I made this a read more because it’s a little bit longer than I intended but yeah hopefully this is easier to read and stuff but there you go for those who care?

First off I want to note that I enjoyed Final Fantasy XV to me it was a pretty good game. Overall I’d give it 7/10 maybe 8/10 tops?? It really doesn’t deserve anything higher than that for me though I’m afraid mostly because it’s not incredibly groundbreaking. They haven’t incorporated anything hugely new to it? Everything within it has already been done, albeit in a different form but yeah.

First of The Characters:

Overall I have to admit I think the four guys were pretty awesome characters.

Noctis -  The sleepy, moody prince who wasn’t too into his duties as a prince. It sometimes felt like in the undertone that he had a feeling the only reason his friends were around (Mostly Gladio and Ignis) were simply tied to the fact that he himself was a prince, sadly that wasn’t explored... At all. His character through the story was admittedly written quite well, he starts off a mega sleepy prince, becomes enraged and continuously fueld by his emotions of wanting revenge and also being unable to cope with the loss of those around him. This doesn’t stop him from enjoying himself but it’s a big influence.

Gladiolus- He’s the big tough guy of the group, masculine, muscular the kind of guy who’d wear shorts during winter to prove how straight he is. Honestly I don’t have any qualms with his character! I think he was well written in remaining a good friend, bodyguard, true to himself and also unable to hold back his emotions, which was particularly made known when he became increasingly angry over Noctis’ self anguish over Luna’s death and how he became frustrated over him not showing any care towards Ignis becoming blind. The only problem I really have to find is his relationship with his sister. He worried over her situation, how she was etc when Insomnia was attacked and over the course of the game showed increasing concern over her well being EXCEPT the moment they met. There was almost nothing between them. He had a stronger relationship with his group of friends than he did with his little sister which they built up so much of.

Ignis - Being the calm and collected guy of the group he was mostly a tactical advisor and almost like a caregiver of sorts to both Noctis and Prompto, constantly advising them, cooking and being the most “adult” one of the group. Like with Gladio I really don’t have any qualms over his character? It was definitely interesting to see him go blind and how he coped with that situation too since that was something Final Fantasy hadn’t done before either.

Prompto - Good ol’Prompto! He felt like he was going to be the annoying character of the group with his witty one liners but honestly? He’s really just as awesome. I didn’t find him annoying one bit during the entirety of the game which was good. He’s a well written character who seemingly helps keep Noctis grounded since he doesn’t treat him like a prince but rather like a best friend which is both good for Noctis of course and good for us to see another side to them both. The only dig I have to make about him is his relation to magitek soldiers/demons. It wasn’t explained... At all? It felt like it was just thrown into the game for shock factor and then IMMEDIATELY dismissed and never brought up again? Maybe this was implied in the Brotherhood anime or Movie but regardless it should’ve been explained in game? I shouldn’t have to watch the anime or movie to really understand the story of the game itself, it should explain itself fluidly and properly without the need of extra content, because that’s there to be well just extra content?

Other Characters - You’re probably thinking “But Sam there are so many other characters you can’t shove them all into one category” well sadly I can because none of them are really fleshed out characters I’m afraid, dismissing Cindy and Cid of course who are for a better part of the game quite important. Sadly the others aren’t even though some of them should be. (looking at you Luna and Ravus). None of the extra characters have really been given much to them, they’re all rather 2-dimensional? Iris, Gladio’s sister who was given a good chunk of dialogue did interact quite well with the part and it was implied she liked Noctis and that she was a good friend to everyone within the 4 main characters HOWEVER it wasn’t fully explored? There were just underlying tones of what kind of relationship she has to everyone, as well as her feelings for Noctis sadly.

Luna, who is supposed to be an INCREDIBLY RELEVANT CHARACTER almost the same amount of importance as Noctis well what can I say, She seems strong, She seems defiant, She seems brave and She seems like she’s a kind and caring person who obviously cares deeply for both her family and close one’s. Do you see the problem here, if not re-read that again. Everything about her all I can really say is it SEEMS like because we don’t know her. We know parts of her through other people, JUST BARELY, but even then it’s not enough. We weren’t given the chance to truly get to know Lunafreya as a character and that honestly disappointed me because by the time we got to meet her she died. Her death had no impact on me what so ever. The only reason I was sad was because it made Noctis sad, and that’s not enough. That’s not good story telling because FFXV isn’t JUST about Noctis.

The same situation with Ravus he was actually supposed to, as you find out old some strong respect for Noctis he was just frustrated with what was happening to Luna (There were some documents I believe you had to find to find this out or something?). I honestly wish I could’ve felt more emotion for him because from it sounds like he seems like a caring older brother figure who also cares deeply for Noctis, sadly all we really see is an older brother who betrayed his nation, his sister and all those around him and stole Regis’ Armiger. I don’t feel sad about his end, he was forced to become a monster, a demon but I didn’t know him enough to well actually care? It disappointed me because I didn’t get that chance to build as strong a connection with him.

Moving on from Characters:

Overall the gameplay mechanics were really fantastic, the controls weren’t clunky everything flowed quite nicely but there was nothing that hadn’t really been done before if I’m honest? The graphics however to point out were ASTOUNDING They really outdid themselves the game is absolutely gorgeous there’s no denying that! The soundtrack too I found was a perfect fit for the game, they really outdid themselves on that ESPECIALLY Florence and the machines rendition of Stand by me, it fitted perfectly with the characters and the theme they were going through it truly, honestly impressed me.

The magic, elemancy as it’s called I did enjoy. I loved seeing how my magic affected my surroundings as well as having to think tactically since it could also affect my teammates especially in some closed off areas. I liked it, however it felt kind of boring apart from that? To put it simply magic in this game (casting aside the Luciis ring which is USELESS) is basically just a bomb. A bomb infused with magical energy that anyone can then use a set amount of times. It’s like an action game with grenades with different affects, some causing more fires or others being cryo related. So it kind of felt bland in that aspect, although the merging of elements for spells with items as well was quite enjoyable especially the way you could fuse in status effects. (Although let me tell you Quad/Quintcast is the way to go just saying). My second dig has to be the amount of elements available. There were three, Fire, Ice and Thunder WHICH has always been prominent within Final Fantasy so I can see why they’re there. But Final Fantasy 13 had not only those 3 included but water, earth and wind elements as well with the spells, water of course, aero and quake. So honestly I was sad to see them not throw them in too, which would’ve increased the amount of tactics at hand and the amount of elemancy fusing you could do, considering they had 2 astrals which were of earth (titan) and water (Leviathan).

Okay so moving on from that let’s get into the most important part of Final Fantasy XV, THE STORY, and whether that was good and concise or just random gibberish. Well honestly The story wasn’t too bad, you’ve got princey boy and his band of merry bro’s off to get him wed to the hot chick who’s loved by everyone for saving the world and speaking to the godly gods, but shit hits the fan when Insomnia falls to Imperial fleets and now the prince and his broski’s are on the run still aiming to be wed? Lots of things happen and they go on a quest for revenge reclaiming the old kings powers and the astral beings in order to gain the strength to smash those imperial asshole faces in. Sadly his father of course died as we find out AKA his prime reason for revenge but Luna dies too which cause even more tension in the group, Ignis goes blind, Gladio gets made, Prompto’s a magitek demon soldier boy??? And then there’s the weird guy who just keeps appearing every who “Surprisingly” Turns out to be the main antagonist. But of course before you can smash his face in Noctis gets eaten alive by the crystal, his friends have to flee from the demon spree and ten years scroll by. Out pops princey boy on an abandoned island which just so happens to have a boat docked, he sails off back to the once sunny resort reflecting on how the land itself has been blanketed by eternal night. He meets up with old pay’s at Cindy’s hammerhead garage place, meets the broski’s forges a plan, charges into Insomnia, kicks ass and saves the day by giving his life to the crystal or whatever and boom the sun comes out.

On a more serious not it was really kind of... clunky. There were moments it felt awkward and you questioned some of the choices the group actually made? There were also themes that felt too forced, like Prompto’s apparent super soldier ser- i mean demon serum birth thingy that again WAS NOT EXPLORED, was just thrown in for shock factor. I’m not gonna say it was all bad because I enjoyed it and they did very well in forging a strong bond between 4 friends who stuck through thick and thin with each other HOWEVER that’s all they did well story wise. They needed to fit more in, more explanation of the characters, more things to do with Iris, Cindy, Cid, Luna ESPECIALLY LUNA AND RAVUS. Cor was tossed to the side after they were through with him and then brought him back for one final hurrah in the middle. Aranea Highwind was given the bare minimum of an explanation but honestly we don’t know her, her story or who the hell she really is, she’s just a lady with a lance and lot of people who know she’s a buff bad bitch. The story felt empty, incomplete almost. I wanted more for the characters, I want more from chapter 13/14 I wanted to explore that ruined world. I didn’t want to just have my teammates just HAPPEN to get to me at the exact moment I’d appear. Why couldn’t my new mission have been to find and reunite with them in different parts of Eos, having to explore the world once again except ten years later after being covered in darkness, seeing places I once loved and thought were gorgeous covered in darkness, destroyed by demons. People I’d previously met who’d gone crazy, been killed changed etc. I wanted to see this “Iris the demon slayer”. There was still so much that could’ve been put in to Final Fantasy XV to not only make the story more concise and a more enjoyable experience, but to also add in more content to enjoy.

And finally moving on to the last bit DLC:

Okay first of all it’s nice to see them become active in making dlc content for this game it’s really good. I love the idea of the moogle carnival it was a great thing to throw in. I like the items they keep putting in too, new equipment etc which is honestly a thing most games do anyway. I’m also excited about the apparent Character chapters they were going to release for Gladio, Prompto and Ignis, having the chance to not only play as them but also learn more about them.

But... Some striking rumours, which are apparently confirmed have both shocked and horrified me. They’re working on patching into the game a better storyline... a better chapter 13 etc. WHY???

Stop beating a dead horse. The story has been told you CANNOT just change it on a whim because you want it to be good, that’s like an author publishing a book and then telling everyone who bought it it’s not good enough and he wants to rewrite a few chapters. If you do that whatever I’ve played right now, is basically irrelevant because I don’t know what you’re planning on changing?

The stories been told, leave it at THAT. The point of dlc is to bring in EXTRA CONTENT, extra chapters, items, sidequests etc NOT TO CHANGE THE ORIGINAL STORY BEING TOLD!!!!!!!!!! Regardless of whether it’s not changing it but rather just trying to “improve” it, it’s already been told END OF STORY!!!

Rather than focusing on FFXV’s story, which has already been done, either focus your efforts on the dlc content, other games square enix has in the works OR even more importantly how you’re going to improve your content IF you decide to make a Final Fantasy XVI. The last comment, what I mean is just understanding what they did right and what they did wrong with XV and making sure not to make the same mistakes with future games. That’s what’s important to me right now, that’s what I’m committed into as a person who loves Final Fantasy and the many world’s and characters it holds. I want to see the developers, the content creators committing themselves to bettering their own abilities and making sure not to cause the same mistakes, the same crap that happened in XV. That’s what’s important to me after this, not some changing in story crap.

Side Note: It’d also be great if, I know they like having super complex story lines but if they went back to basics, have a basic story line that’s easy to follow and not too complicated. A game can be amazing without a hugely complex story line, just look at some of the indie games that have had break throughs too!

[bluewatsons]

Cass R. Sunstein & Adrian Vermeule, Conspiracy Theories, Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 08-03 (2008)

Abstract

Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a “crippled epistemology,” in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.

Introduction

“The truth is out there”:1 conspiracy theories are all around us. In August 2004, a poll by Zogby International showed that 49 percent of New York City residents, with a margin of error of 3.5 percent, believed that officials of the U.S. government “knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act.”2 In a Scripps-Howard Poll in 2006, with an error margin of 4 percent, some 36 percent of respondents assented to the claim that “federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center or took no action to stop them.”3 Sixteen percent said that it was either very likely or somewhat likely that “the collapse of the twin towers in New York was aided by explosives secretly planted in the two buildings.”4

Conspiracy theories are by no means a strictly domestic phenomenon; they can easily be found all over the world. Among sober-minded Canadians, a September 2006 poll found that 22 percent believe that “the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden and were actually a plot by influential Americans.”5 In a poll conducted in seven Muslim countries, 78 percent of respondents said that they do not believe the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Arabs.6 The most popular account, in these countries, is that 9/11 was the work of the U.S. or Israeli governments.7

What causes such theories to arise and spread? Are they important and perhaps even threatening, or merely trivial and even amusing? What can and should government do about them? We aim here to sketch some psychological and social mechanisms that produce, sustain, and spread these theories; to show that some of them are quite important and should be taken seriously; and to offer suggestions for governmental responses, both as a matter of policy and as a matter of law.

The academic literature on conspiracy theories is thin, and most of it falls into one of two classes: (1) work by analytic philosophers, especially in epistemology and the philosophy of science, that asks what counts as a “conspiracy theory” and whether such theories are methodologically suspect;8 (2) a smattering of work in sociology and Freudian psychology on the causes of conspiracy theorizing.9 Both approaches have proved illuminating, but neither is entirely adequate, the former because the conceptual questions are both less tractable and less interesting than the social and institutional ones, the latter because it neglects newer work in social psychology and behavioral economics, both of which shed light on the causes of conspiracy theorizing. Rather than engaging with the conceptual debates, we will proceed in an eclectic fashion and mostly from the ground up, hewing close to real examples and the policy problems they pose.

Our main though far from exclusive focus – our running example – involves conspiracy theories relating to terrorism, especially theories that arise from and post-date the 9/11 attacks. These theories exist within the United States and, even more virulently, in foreign countries, especially Muslim countries. The existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be. Terrorism-related theories are thus a crucial testing ground for the significance, causes, and policy implications of widespread conspiracy theorizing. As we shall see, an understanding of conspiracy theories has broad implications for the spread of information and beliefs; many erroneous judgments are a product of the same forces that produce conspiracy theories, and if we are able to see how to counteract such theories, we will have some clues about how to correct widespread errors more generally.

Part I explores some definitional issues and lays out some of the mechanisms that produce conspiracy theories and theorists. We begin by discussing different understandings of the nature of conspiracy theories and different accounts of the kinds of errors made by those who hold them. Our primary claim is that conspiracy theories typically stem not from irrationality or mental illness of any kind but from a “crippled epistemology,” in the form of a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources. Those who hold conspiracy theories do so because of what they read and hear. In that sense, acceptance of such theories is not irrational from the standpoint of those who adhere to them. There is a close connection, we suggest, between our claim on this count and the empirical association between terrorist behavior and an absence of civil rights and civil liberties.10 When civil rights and civil liberties are absent, people lack multiple information sources, and they are more likely to accept conspiracy theories.

Part II discusses government responses and legal issues, in light of the discussion in Part I. We address several dilemmas of governmental response to conspiracy theories, such as the question whether it is better to rebut such theories, at the risk of legitimating them, or to ignore them, at the risk of leaving them unrebutted. Conspiracy theories turn out to be especially hard to undermine or dislodge; they have a self-sealing quality, rendering them particularly immune to challenge. We suggest several policy responses that can dampen the supply of conspiracy theorizing, in part by introducing diverse viewpoints and new factual assumptions into the hard-core groups that produce such theories. Our principal claim here involves the potential value of cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, designed to introduce informational diversity into such groups and to expose indefensible conspiracy theories as such.

I. Definitions and Mechanisms

A. Definitional Notes

There has been much discussion of what, exactly, counts as a conspiracy theory, and about what, if anything, is wrong with those who hold one.11 Of course it would be valuable to specify necessary and sufficient conditions for such theories, in a way that would make it possible to make relevant distinctions. We bracket the most difficult questions here and suggest more intuitively that a conspiracy theory can generally be counted as such if it is an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role. This account seems to capture the essence of the most prominent and influential conspiracy theories. Consider, for example, the view that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; that doctors deliberately manufactured the AIDS virus; that the 1996 crash of TWA flight 800 was caused by a U.S. military missile; that the theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud; that the Trilateral Commission is responsible for important movements of the international economy; that Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed by federal agents; that the plane crash that killed Democrat Paul Wellstone was engineered by Republican politicians; that the moon landing was staged and never actually occurred.12

Of course some conspiracy theories, under our definition, have turned out to be true. The Watergate hotel room used by Democratic National Committee was, in fact, bugged by Republican officials, operating at the behest of the White House. In the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency did, in fact, administer LSD and related drugs under Project MKULTRA, in an effort to investigate the possibility of “mind control.” Operation Northwoods, a rumored plan by the Department of Defense to simulate acts of terrorism and to blame them on Cuba, really was proposed by high-level officials (though the plan never went into effect).13 In 1947, space aliens did, in fact, land in Roswell, New Mexico, and the government covered it all up. (Well, maybe not.) Our focus throughout is on false conspiracy theories, not true ones. Our ultimate goal is to explore how public officials might undermine such theories, and as a general rule, true accounts should not be undermined.

Within the set of false conspiracy theories, we also limit our focus to potentially harmful theories. Not all false conspiracy theories are harmful; consider the false conspiracy theory, held by many of the younger members of our society, that a secret group of elves, working in a remote location under the leadership of the mysterious “Santa Claus,” make and distribute presents on Christmas Eve. This theory is false, but is itself instilled through a widespread conspiracy of the powerful – parents – who conceal their role in the whole affair. (Consider too the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.) It is an open question whether most conspiracy theories are equally benign; we will suggest that some are not benign at all.

Under this account, conspiracy theories are a subset of the large category of false beliefs, and also of the somewhat smaller category of beliefs that are both false and harmful. Consider, for example, the beliefs that prolonged exposure to sunlight is actually healthy and that climate change is neither occurring nor likely to occur. These beliefs are (in our view) both false and dangerous, but as stated, they do not depend on, or posit, any kind of conspiracy theory. We shall see that the mechanisms that account for conspiracy theories overlap with those that account for false and dangerous beliefs of all sorts, including those that fuel anger and hatred.14 But as we shall also see, conspiracy theories have some distinctive features, above all because of their self-sealing quality; the very arguments that give rise to them, and account for their plausibility, make it more difficult for outsiders to rebut or even to question them.

Conspiracy theories generally attribute extraordinary powers to certain agents – to plan, to control others, to maintain secrets, and so forth. Those who believe that those agents have such powers are especially unlikely to give respectful attention to debunkers, who may, after all, be agents or dupes of those who are responsible for the conspiracy in the first instance. It is comparatively easier for government to dispel false and dangerous beliefs that rest, not on a self-sealing conspiracy theory, but on simple misinformation or on a fragile social consensus. The simplest governmental technique for dispelling false (and also harmful) beliefs – providing credible public information – does not work, in any straightforward way, for conspiracy theories. This extra resistance to correction through simple techniques is what makes conspiracy theories distinctively worrisome.

A further question about conspiracy theories – whether true or false, harmful or benign – is whether they are justified. Justification and truth are different issues; a true belief may be unjustified, and a justified belief may be untrue. I may believe, correctly, that there are fires within the earth’s core, but if I believe that because the god Vulcan revealed it to me in a dream, my belief is unwarranted. Conversely, the false belief in Santa Claus is justified, because children generally have good reason to believe what their parents tell them and follow a sensible heuristic (“if my parents say it, it is probably true”); when children realize that Santa is the product of a widespread conspiracy among parents, they have a justified and true belief that a conspiracy has been at work.

Are conspiracy theories generally unjustified? Under what conditions? Here there are competing accounts and many controversies, in epistemology and analytic philosophy. We take no final stand on the most difficult questions here, in part because the relevant accounts need not be seen as mutually exclusive; each accounts for part of the terrain. However, a brief review of the possible accounts will be useful for our later discussion.

Karl Popper famously argued that conspiracy theories overlook the pervasive unintended consequences of political and social action; they assume that all consequences must have been intended by someone.15 The basic idea is that many social effects, including large movements in the economy, occur as a result of the acts and omissions of many people, none of whom intended to cause those effects. The Great Depression of the 1930s was not self-consciously engineered by anyone; increases in the unemployment or inflation rate, or in the price of gasoline, may reflect market pressures rather than intentional action. Nonetheless, there is a pervasive human tendency to think that effects are caused by intentional action, especially by those who stand to benefit (the “cui bono?” maxim), and for this reason conspiracy theories have considerable but unwarranted appeal.16 On one reading of Popper’s account, those who accept conspiracy theories are following a sensible heuristic, to the effect that consequences are intended; that heuristic often works well but it also produces systematic errors, especially in the context of outcomes that are a product of social interactions among numerous people.

Popper captures an important feature of some conspiracy theories. Their appeal lies in the attribution of otherwise inexplicable events to intentional action, and to an unwillingness to accept the possibility that significant adverse consequences may be a product of invisible hand mechanisms (such as market forces or evolutionary pressures) or of simple chance,17 rather than of anyone’s plans.18 A conspiracy theory posits that a social outcome evidences an underlying intentional order, overlooking the possibility that the outcome arises from either spontaneous order or random forces. Popper is picking up on a still more general fact about human psychology, which is that most people do not like to believe that significant events were caused by bad (or good) luck, and much prefer simpler causal stories.19 Note, however, that the domain of Popper’s explanation is quite limited. Many conspiracy theories, including those involving political assassinations and the attacks of 9/11, point to events that are indeed the result of intentional action, and the conspiracy theorists go wrong not by positing intentional actors, but by misidentifying them.

A broader point is that conspiracy theories overestimate the competence and discretion of officials and bureaucracies, who are assumed to be able to make and carry out sophisticated secret plans, despite abundant evidence that in open societies government action does not usually remain secret for very long.20 Recall that a distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is that they attribute immense power to the agents of the conspiracy; the attribution is usually implausible but also makes the theories especially vulnerable to challenge. Consider all the work that must be done to hide and to cover up the government’s role in producing a terrorist attack on its own territory, or in arranging to kill political opponents. In a closed society, secrets are not difficult to keep, and distrust of official accounts makes a great deal of sense. In such societies, conspiracy theories are both more likely to be true and harder to show to be false in light of available information.21 But when the press is free, and when checks and balances are in force, government cannot easily keep its conspiracies hidden for long. These points do not mean that it is logically impossible, even in free societies, that conspiracy theories are true. But it does mean that institutional checks make it unlikely, in such societies, that powerful groups can keep dark secrets for extended periods, at least if those secrets involve important events with major social salience.

An especially useful account suggests that what makes (unjustified) conspiracy theories unjustified is that those who accept them must also accept a kind of spreading distrust of all knowledge-producing institutions, in a way that makes it difficult to believe anything at all.22 To think, for example, that U.S. government officials destroyed the World Trade Center and then covered their tracks requires an ever-widening conspiracy theory, in which the 9/11 Commission, congressional leaders, the FBI, and the media were either participants in or dupes of the conspiracy. But anyone who believed that would undercut the grounds for many of their other beliefs, which are warranted only by trust in the knowledge-producing institutions created by government and society. How many other things must not be believed, if we are not to believe something accepted by so many diverse actors? There may not be a logical contradiction here, but conspiracy theorists might well have to question a number of propositions that they seem willing to take for granted. As Robert Anton Wilson notes of the conspiracy theories advanced by Holocaust deniers, “a conspiracy that can deceive us about 6,000,000 deaths can deceive us about anything, and [then] it takes a great leap of faith for Holocaust Revisionists to believe World War II happened at all, or that Franklin Roosevelt did serve as President from 1933 to 1945, or that Marilyn Monroe was more ‘real’ than King Kong or Donald Duck.”23

This is not, and is not be intended to be, a general claim that conspiracy theories are unjustified or unwarranted. Much depends on the background state of knowledge- producing institutions. If those institutions are generally trustworthy, in part because they are embedded in an open society with a well-functioning marketplace of ideas and free flow of information, then conspiracy theories will generally (which is not to say always) be unjustified. On the other hand, individuals in societies with systematically malfunctioning or skewed institutions of knowledge – say, individuals who live in an authoritarian regime lacking a free press – may have good reason to distrust all or most of the official denials they hear. For these individuals, conspiracy theories will more often be warranted, whether or not true. Likewise, individuals embedded in isolated groups or small, self-enclosed networks who are exposed only to skewed information will more often hold conspiracy theories that are justified, relative to their limited informational environment. Holocaust denials might themselves be considered in this light. When isolated groups operate within a society that is both wider and more open, their theories may be unjustified from the standpoint of the wider society but justified from the standpoint of the group if it maintains its isolation. In these situations, the problem for the wider society is to breach the informational isolation of the small group or network, a problem we discuss below.

On our account, a defining feature of conspiracy theories is that they are extremely resistant to correction, certainly through direct denials or counterspeech by government officials. Those who accept such theories believe that the agents of the conspiracy have unusual powers, so that apparently contrary evidence can usually be shown to be a product of the conspiracy itself. Conspiracy theories display the characteristic features of a “degenerating research program”24 in which contrary evidence is explained away by adding epicycles and resisting falsification of key tenets.25 Some epistemologists argue that this resistance to falsification is not objectionable if one also believes that there are conspirators deliberately attempting to plant evidence that would falsify the conspiracy theory.26 However that may be as a philosophical matter, the self- sealing quality of conspiracy theories creates serious practical problems for government; direct attempts to dispel the theory can usually be folded into the theory itself, as just one more ploy by powerful machinators to cover their tracks. A denial may, for example, be taken as a confirmation. In this way, conspiracy theories create challenges that are distinct from those posed by false but dangerous beliefs (recall the belief that prolonged exposure to sunlight is good for you or that climate change is not occurring). Accordingly, we will focus on indirect means of undermining such theories, principally by breaking up the closed informational networks that produce such theories.

So far we have discussed some epistemological features of conspiracy theories, in the abstract. We now turn to the sociology of conspiracy theorizing, examining the mechanisms by which such theories arise and expand.

B. How Conspiracy Theories Arise and Spread

1. Crippled epistemologies. Why do people accept conspiracy theories that turn out to be false and for which the evidence is weak or even nonexistent? It is tempting to answer in terms of individual pathology.27 Perhaps conspiracy theories are a product of mental illness, such as paranoia or narcissism. And indeed, there can be no doubt that some people who accept conspiracy theories are mentally ill and subject to delusions.28 But we have seen that in many communities and even nations, such theories are widely held. It is not plausible to suggest that all or most members of those communities are afflicted by mental illness. The most important conspiracy theories are hardly limited to those who suffer from any kind of pathology.

For our purposes, the most useful way to understand the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories is to examine how people acquire information.29 For most of what they believe that they know, human beings lack personal or direct information; they must rely on what other people think. In some domains, people suffer from a “crippled epistemology,” in the sense that they know very few things, and what they know is wrong.30 Many extremists fall in this category; their extremism stems not from irrationality, but from the fact that they have little (relevant) information, and their extremist views are supported by what little they know.31 Conspiracy theorizing often has the same feature. Those who believe that Israel was responsible for the attacks of 9/11, or that the Central Intelligence Agency killed President Kennedy, may well be responding quite rationally to the informational signals that they receive.

Consider here the suggestive fact that terrorism is more likely to arise in nations that lack civil rights and civil liberties.32 An evident reason for the connection is that terrorism is an extreme form of political protest, and when people lack the usual outlets for registering their protest, they might resort to violence.33 But consider another possibility: When civil rights and civil liberties are restricted, little information is available, and what comes from government cannot be trusted. If the trustworthy information justifies conspiracy theories and extremism, and (therefore?) violence, then terrorism is more likely to arise.

2. Rumors and speculation. Of course it is necessary to specify how, exactly, conspiracy theories begin.. Some such theories seem to bubble up spontaneously, appearing roughly simultaneously in many different social networks; others are initiated and spread, quite intentionally, by conspiracy entrepreneurs who profit directly or indirectly from propagating their theories. An example in the latter category is the

Another common idea treats conspiracy theories as a form of collective paranoid delusion. See, e.g., Deiter Groh, The Temptation of Conspiracy Theory, in CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF CONSPIRACY, supra note 8, at 1. Our suggestion is that the lens of psychopathology is not helpful, whether it is interpreted in individual or collective terms. French author Thierry Meyssan, whose book “9/11: The Big Lie” became a bestseller and a sensation for its claims that the Pentagon explosion on 9/11 was caused by a missile, fired as the opening salvo of a coup d’etat by the military-industrial complex, rather than by American Airlines Flight 77. Some conspiracy entrepreneurs are entirely sincere; others are interested in money or power, or in achieving some general social goal. Still, even for conspiracy theories put about by conspiracy entrepreneurs, the key question is why some theories take hold while many more do not, and vanish into obscurity.

Whenever a bad event has occurred, rumors and speculation are inevitable. Most people are not able to know, on the basis of personal or direct knowledge, why an airplane crashed, or why a leader was assassinated, or why a terrorist attack succeeded. In the aftermath of such an event, numerous speculations will be offered, and some of them will likely point to some kind of conspiracy. To some people, those speculations will seem plausible, perhaps because they provide a suitable outlet for outrage and blame, perhaps because the speculation fits well with other deeply rooted beliefs that they hold. Terrible events produce outrage, and when people are outraged, they are all the more likely to attribute those events to intentional action. In addition, antecedent beliefs are a key to the success or failure of conspiracy theories. Some people would find it impossibly jarring to think that the CIA was responsible for the assassination of a civil rights leader; that thought would unsettle too many of their other judgments. Others would find those other judgments strongly supported, even confirmed, by the suggestion that the CIA was responsible for such an assassination. Compare the case of terrorist attacks. For most Americans, a claim that the United States government attacked its own citizens, for some ancillary purpose, would make it impossible to hold onto a wide range of other judgments. Clearly this point does not hold for many people in Islamic nations, for whom it is far from jarring to believe that responsibility lies with the United States (or Israel).

Here, as elsewhere, people attempt to find some kind of equilibrium among their assortment of beliefs,34 and acceptance or rejection of a conspiracy theory will often depend on which of the two leads to equilibrium. Some beliefs are also motivated, in the sense that people are pleased to hold them or displeased to reject them.35 Acceptance (or for that matter rejection) of a conspiracy theory is frequently motivated in that sense. Reactions to a claim of conspiracy to assassinate a political leader, or to commit or to allow some atrocity either domestically or abroad, are often determined by the motivations of those who hear the claim.

These are points about individual judgments, bracketing social influences. But after some bad event has occurred, those influences are crucial, for most people will have little or no direct information about its cause. How many people know, directly or on the basis of personal investigation, whether Al Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, or whether Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy on his own, or whether a tragic death in an apparent airplane accident was truly accidental? Inevitably people must rely on the beliefs of other people. Some people will require a great deal of evidence in order to accept a conspiracy theory; others will require much less. People will therefore have different “thresholds” for accepting or rejecting such a theory and for acting on the basis of the theory.36 One way to meet a relevant threshold is to supply direct or indirect evidence. Another way is simply to show that some, many, or most (trusted) people accept or reject the theory. These are the appropriate circumstances for social cascades, in particular informational cascades, whose dynamics help to explain the pervasive acceptance of conspiracy theories.

3. Conspiracy cascades, 1: the role of information. To see how informational cascades work, imagine a group of people who are trying to assign responsibility for some loss of life. Assume that the group members are announcing their views in sequence. Each member attends, reasonably enough, to the judgments of others. Andrews is the first to speak. He suggests that the event was caused by a conspiracy of powerful people. Barnes now knows Andrews’s judgment; she should certainly go along with Andrew’s account if she agrees independently with him. But if her independent judgment is otherwise, she would—if she trusts Andrews no more and no less than she trusts herself—be indifferent about what to do, and she might simply flip a coin.

Now turn to a third person, Charleton. Suppose that both Andrews and Barnes have endorsed the conspiracy theory, but that Charleton’s own view, based on limited information, suggests that they are probably wrong. In that event, Charleton might well ignore what he knows and follow Andrews and Barnes. It is likely, after all, that both Andrews and Barnes had evidence for their conclusion, and unless Charleton thinks that his own information is better than theirs, he should follow their lead. If he does, Charleton is in a cascade. Of course Charleton will resist if he has sufficient grounds to think that Andrews and Barnes are being foolish. But if he lacks those grounds, he is likely to go along with them.

Now suppose that Charleton is speaking in response to what Andrews and Barnes did, not on the basis of his own information, and also that later people know what Andrews, Barnes, and Charleton said. On reasonable assumptions, they will reach the same conclusion regardless of their private information (which, we are supposing, is relevant but inconclusive). This will happen even if Andrews initially speculated in a way that does not fit the facts. That initial speculation, in this example, can start a process by which a number of people are led to participate in a cascade, accepting a conspiracy theory whose factual foundations are fragile.

Of course the example is highly stylized and in that sense unrealistic; conspiracy cascades arise through more complex processes, in which diverse thresholds are important. In a standard pattern, the conspiracy theory is initially accepted by people with low thresholds for its acceptance. Sometimes the informational pressure builds, to the point where many people, with somewhat higher thresholds, begin to accept the theory too. As a real-world example of a conspiracy cascade, consider the existence of certain judgments about the origins and causes of AIDS, with some groups believing, implausibly, that the virus was produced in government laboratories.37 These and other views about AIDS are a product of social interactions and in particular of cascade effects.

4. Conspiracy cascades, 2: the role of reputation. Conspiracy theories do not take hold only because of information. Sometimes people profess belief in a conspiracy theory, or at least suppress their doubts, because they seek to curry favor. Reputational pressures help account for conspiracy theories, and they feed conspiracy cascades.

In a reputational cascade, people think that they know what is right, or what is likely to be right, but they nonetheless go along with the crowd in order to maintain the good opinion of others. Suppose that Albert suggests that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy, and that Barbara concurs with Albert, not because she actually thinks that Albert is right, but because she does not wish to seem, to Albert, to be some kind of dupe. If Albert and Barbara say that the CIA was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy, Cynthia might not contradict them publicly and might even appear to share their judgment -- not because she believes that judgment to be correct, but because she does not want to face their hostility or lose their good opinion. It should be easy to see how this process might generate a cascade. Once Albert, Barbara, and Cynthia offer a united front on the issue, their friend David might be reluctant to contradict them even if he thinks that they are wrong. The apparently shared view of Albert, Barbara, and Cynthia carry information; that view might be right. But even if David has reason to believe that they are wrong, he might not want to take them on publicly. His own silence will help build the informational and reputational pressure on those who follow.

5. Conspiracy cascades, 3: the role of availability. Informational and reputational cascades can occur without any particular triggering event. But a distinctive kind of cascade arises when such an event is highly salient or cognitively “available.” In the context of many risks, such as those associated with terrorism, nuclear power, and abandoned hazardous waste dumps, a particular event initiates a cascade, and it stands as a trigger or a symbol justifying public concern, whether or not that concern is warranted.38 Availability cascades occur through the interaction between a salient event and social influences, both informational and reputational. Often political actors, both self-interested and altruistic, work hard to produce such cascades.

Conspiracy theories are often driven through the same mechanisms. A particular event becomes available, and conspiracy theories are invoked both in explaining it and using it as a symbol for broader social forces, casting doubt on accepted wisdom in many domains. Within certain nations and groups, the claim that the United States or Israel was responsible for the attacks of 9/11 fits well within a general narrative about who is the aggressor, and the liar, in a series of disputes – and the view that Al Qaeda was responsible raises questions about that same narrative. Conspiracy theories are frequently a product of availability cascades.

6. Group polarization. There are clear links between cascades and the well- established phenomenon of group polarization, by which members of a deliberating group typically end up in a more extreme position in line with their tendencies before deliberation began.39 Group polarization has been found in hundreds of studies involving over a dozen countries.40 Belief in conspiracy theories is often fueled by group polarization.

Consider, as the clearest example, the finding that those who disapprove of the United States, and are suspicious of its intentions, will increase their disapproval and suspicion if they exchange points of view. There is specific evidence of this phenomenon among citizens of France: With respect to foreign aid, they trust the United States a great deal less, and suspect its intentions a great deal more, after they talk with one another.41 It should be easy to see how similar effects could occur for conspiracy theories. Those who tend to think that Israel was responsible for the attacks of 9/11, and who speak with one another, will end up with a greater commitment to that belief.

Group polarization occurs for reasons that parallel the mechanisms that produce cascades.42 Informational influences play a large role. In any group with some initial inclination, the views of most people in the group will inevitably be skewed in the direction of that inclination. As a result of hearing the various arguments, social interactions will lead people toward a more extreme point in line with what group members initially believed. Reputational factors matter as well. People usually want to be perceived favorably by other group members. Once they hear what others believe, some will adjust their positions at least slightly in the direction of the dominant position. For purposes of understanding the spread of conspiracy theories, it is especially important to note that group polarization is particularly likely, and particularly pronounced, when people have a shared sense of identity and are connected by bonds of solidarity.43 These are circumstances in which arguments by outsiders, unconnected with the group, will lack much credibility, and fail to have much of an effect in reducing polarization. As we will explore below, these circumstances imply that direct government rebuttals of the reigning conspiracy theory will prove ineffective; government will instead do best by using various tactics of cognitive infiltration to break up the polarized information cluster from within.

7. Selection effects. A crippled epistemology can arise not only from informational and reputational dynamics within a given group, but also from self-selection of members into and out of groups with extreme views.44 Once polarization occurs or cascades arise, and the group’s median view begins to move in a certain direction, doubters and halfway- believers will tend to depart while intense believers remain. The overall size of the group may shrink, but the group may also pick up new believers who are even more committed, and in any event the remaining members will, by self-selection, display more fanaticism. Group members may engage in a kind of double-think, segregating themselves, in a physical or informational sense, in order to protect their beliefs from challenge by outsiders.45 Even if the rank and file cannot coherently do this, group leaders may enforce segregation in order to insulate the rank and file from information or arguments that would undermine the leaders’ hold on the group.

Members of informationally and socially isolated groups tend to display a kind of paranoid cognition46 and become increasingly distrustful or suspicious of the motives of others or of the larger society, falling into a “sinister attribution error.”47 This error occurs when people feel that they are under pervasive scrutiny, and hence they attribute personalistic motives to outsiders and overestimate the amount of attention they receive. Benign actions that happen to disadvantage the group are taken as purposeful plots, intended to harm.48 Although these conditions resemble individual-level pathologies, they arise from the social and informational structure of the group, especially those operating in enclosed or closely knit networks, and are not usefully understood as a form of mental illness. The social etiology of such conditions suggests that the appropriate remedy is not individual treatment, but the introduction of cognitive, informational, and social diversity into the isolated networks that supply extremist theories. We take up the resulting policy problems in the next Part.

II. Governmental Responses

What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do, what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).

If one believes that conspiracy theories are in some sense inconsequential, the best answer will be for government to ignore them. If children believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, there is no problem for government to solve; and the belief that the government covered up the landing of space aliens in Roswell does not seem to be causing discernible harm, with the possible exception of bad television shows. (This does not imply that government should ignore conspiracy theories only if they are inconsequential. As we will see, under certain conditions government may do best to ignore conspiracy theories and theorists even if it justifiably fears that they will have harmful effects, because government action may make things worse.) In Section A, however, we give some reasons to think that some conspiracy theories are consequential indeed.

In Section B, we address several dilemmas of governmental response to conspiracy theories and theorists. Is it best to ignore them, creating a risk that the theory will spread unrebutted, or to address them, with the risk that addressing the theory will legitimate and even be taken to confirm it? Assuming budget constraints and limited resources, should government efforts focus on debiasing the conspiracy theorists themselves, or solely on preventing the spread of conspiracy theories among the larger population? How can government get behind or around the distinctive feature of conspiracy theories -- their self-sealing quality, which tends to fold government’s denials into the theory itself as further evidence of the conspiracy?

An obvious answer is to maintain an open society, in which those who are tempted to subscribe to conspiracy theories do not distrust all knowledge-creating institutions, and are exposed to corrections. But we have seen that even in open societies, conspiracy theories have some traction; and open societies have a strong interest in debunking such theories when they arise, and threaten to cause harm, in closed societies. Here we suggest two concrete ideas for government officials attempting to fashion a response to such theories. First, responding to more rather than fewer conspiracy theories has a kind of synergy benefit: it reduces the legitimating effect of responding to any one of them, because it dilutes the contrast with unrebutted theories. Second, we suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to such theories. They do so by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity.49

In Section C, we examine the role of law and judges in fashioning the government’s response. We will ask whether judges do more good than harm by invoking statutes such as the Freedom of Information Act to force government to disclose facts that would rebut conspiracy theories. Our conclusions are generally skeptical: there is little reason to believe that judges can improve on administrative choices in these situations. Section D concludes with some brief notes on government efforts to dispel conspiracy theories held by foreign audiences, especially in Muslim countries.

Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improved by doing so. (We do not offer a particular account of social welfare, taking the term instead as a placeholder for the right account.) This is a standard assumption in policy analysis, and is useful for clarifying the policy questions, but we note that real-world governments can instead be purveyors of conspiracy theories. In Egypt, newspapers effectively controlled by the governing regime regularly spread conspiracy theories about Jews.50 Some believe that the Bush administration deliberately spread a kind of false and unwarranted conspiracy theory – that Saddam Hussein conspired with Al Qaeda to support the 9/11 attacks.51 Suppose for discussion’s sake that this is so; then a future administration motivated to improve social welfare would need to consider whether this theory is false and harmful, and if it is what can and should be done about it. But this would just be another case of a conspiracy theory circulating in the population, which might or might not be worth responding to, in light of the considerations we adduce below. Nothing of theoretical interest follows from this case for the questions we address here, which strictly involve optimal responses to conspiracy theories on the part of a (real or imagined) well-motivated government.

A. Are Conspiracy Theories Consequential?

One line of thinking denies that conspiracy theories matter.52 There are several possible reasons to think so. First, conspiracy theories may be held by only a tiny fraction of the population. Perhaps only a handful of kooks believe that U.S. government officials had any kind of role in the events of 9/11. Second, even if a particular conspiracy theory is widely held in the sense that many people will confess to it when polled, conspiracy theories may typically be held as “quasi-beliefs” – beliefs that are not costly and possibly even fun to hold, like a belief in aliens in Roswell or UFOs, and that do not form a premise for action.53 Many people profess to believe, and in some sense do believe, that eternal life depends upon actions that they do not take. So too, perhaps many people quasi-believe in conspiracy theories yet do not take action on account of those quasi-beliefs.

In both cases everything depends, of course, on which conspiracy theory and which population one is discussing. However, as discussed in Part I, there is ample evidence that some conspiracy theories are not at all confined to small segments of the population. Overseas, “a 2002 Gallup Poll conducted in nine Islamic countries found that 61 percent of those surveyed thought that Muslims had nothing to do with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”54 According to an anonymous State Department official in charge of anti-disinformation, “a great deal of harm can result ‘when people believe these lies and then act on the basis of their mistaken beliefs.’” For example, “Al-Qaeda members ‘were encouraged to join the jihad at least in part because of disinformation.’”55

The point about quasi-beliefs suggests that many do not in fact take any action on the basis of their mistaken beliefs. However, this does not at all entail that conspiracy theories are inconsequential. Even if only a small fraction of adherents to a particular conspiracy theory act on the basis of their beliefs, that small fraction may be enough to cause serious harms. Consider the Oklahoma City bombing, whose perpetrators shared a complex of conspiratorial beliefs about the federal government. Many who shared their beliefs did not act on them, but a few actors did, with terrifying consequences. James Fearon and others argue that technological change has driven down the costs of delivering attacks with weapons of mass destruction, to the point where even a small group can pose a significant threat.56 If so, and if only a tiny fraction of believers act on their beliefs, then as the total population with conspiratorial beliefs grows, it becomes nearly inevitable that action will ensue.

In cases of this sort, the conspiracy theory itself supports affirmatively violent action on the part of its believers (which only a small fraction will actually take); conspiracy theorizing leads to an actual conspiracy. Within a network whose members believe that the federal government, say, is a hostile and morally repellent organization that is taking over the country, akin to a foreign invader, armed resistance will seem a sensible course to at least some fraction of the believers. In other, perhaps more common, cases the conspiracy theory will be of a different nature and will not directly indicate such action. However, such theories can still have pernicious effects from the government’s point of view, either by inducing unjustifiably widespread public skepticism about the government’s assertions, or by dampening public mobilization and participation in government-led efforts, or both. The widespread belief that U.S. officials knowingly allowed 9/11 to happen or even brought it about may have hampered the government’s efforts to mobilize social resources and political support for measures against future terrorist attacks.

In the nature of things it is hard to find evidence for, or against, such possibilities; yet it hardly seems sensible to say that because such evidence is lacking, government should do nothing about a potentially harmful conspiracy theory. That precept would be paralyzing, because there are uncertain harms on all sides of the question, and because – as in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing – some of those harms may approach the catastrophic.57

B. Dilemmas and Responses

Imagine a government facing a population in which a particular conspiracy theory is becoming widespread. We will identify two basic dilemmas that recur, and consider how government should respond. The first dilemma is whether to ignore or rebut the theory; the second is whether to address the supply side of conspiracy theorizing by attempting to debias or disable its purveyors, to address the demand side by attempting to immunize third-party audiences from the theory’s effects, or to do both (if resource constraints permit).

In both cases, the underlying structure of the problem is that conspiracy theorizing is a multi-party game. Government is faced with suppliers of conspiracy theories, and might aim at least in part to persuade, debias, or silence those suppliers. However, those two players are competing for the hearts and minds of third parties, especially the mass audience of the uncommitted.58 Expanding the cast further, one may see the game as involving four players: government officials, conspiracy theorists, mass audiences, and independent experts – such as mainstream scientists or the editors of Popular Mechanics – whom government attempts to enlist to give credibility to its rebuttal efforts. The discussion that follows generally assumes the three-party structure, but we will refer to the four-party structure when relevant.

1. Ignore or rebut?

The first dilemma is that either ignoring or rebutting a conspiracy theory has distinctive costs. Ignoring the theory allows its proponents to draw ominous inferences from the government’s silence. If the theory stands unrebutted, one possibility is that it is too ludicrous to need rebuttal, but another is that the government cannot offer relevant evidence to the contrary; the suppliers of the conspiracy theories will propose the second inference. On this view, all misinformation (the initial conspiracy theory) should be met with countermisinformation.

On the other hand, to rebut the theory may be to legitimate it, moving the theory from the zone of claims too ludicrous to be discussed to the zone of claims that, whether or not true, are in some sense worth discussing. This legitimation effect can arise in one of two ways. First, third-party audiences may infer from the government’s rebuttal efforts that the government estimates the conspiracy theory to be plausible, and fears that the third parties will themselves be persuaded. Second, some members of the audience may infer that many other members of the audience must believe the theory, or government would not be taking the trouble to rebut it. Consider circumstances of “pluralistic ignorance,” in which citizens are unsure what other citizens believe.59 Citizens may take the fact of rebuttal itself as supplying information about the beliefs of other citizens, and may even use this information in forming their own beliefs. The government’s rebuttal may be a signal that other citizens believe in the conspiracy theory – and may therefore make the theory more plausible. If the number who follow this cognitive strategy and thus adopt a belief in the theory exceeds the number who are persuaded by the rebuttal, the perverse result of the rebuttal may then be to increase the number of believers.

How should government cope with this dilemma? In a typical pattern, government plays a wait-and-see strategy: ignore the conspiracy theory until it reaches some ill-defined threshold level of widespread popularity, and then rebut. There is a straightforward logic to this strategy. First, when the government ignores the theory, either the relevant audiences will draw an inference that the theory is silly, or else will infer that the government cannot effectively deny it. If the conspiracy theory does not spread despite government’s silence, the former inference is probably dominant, and response is unnecessary. Second, there is an option value60 to the strategy of ignoring the theory: a public rebuttal now is costly or impossible to undo, but maintaining silence now leaves government with the option to rebut later, if it chooses to do so. On this approach, when faced with a spreading conspiracy theory, government should wait until the marginal expected benefits of further delay just equal the marginal expected costs of leaving the theory unrebutted. Finally and most generally, it seems silly and infeasible to chase after and rebut every conspiracy theory that comes to government’s attention.

However, this logic overlooks an important synergistic gain: rebutting many conspiracy theories can reduce the legitimating effect of rebutting any one of them. When government rebuts a particular theory while ignoring most others, the legitimating effect arises at least in part because of a contrast between the foreground and the background: the inference is that government has picked the theory it is rebutting out of the larger set because this theory, unlike the others, is inherently plausible or is gaining traction among some sectors of the mass audience. Rebutting a larger fraction of the total background set reduces the strength of this inference as to each theory chosen for rebuttal. The more theories government rebuts, the weaker is the implicit legitimating signal sent by the very fact of rebuttal.

It is impossible to say, in the abstract, how great this synergistic gain may be. It remains true that not every conspiracy theory proposed by someone somewhere (that comes to the attention of relevant government officials) warrants a response. However, the implication is that government should rebut more conspiracy theories than it would otherwise choose, if assessing the expected costs and benefits of rebuttal on a theory-by- theory basis. Because of synergy effects, government action considered over an array or range of cases may have different total costs and benefits than when those cases are considered one by one. Practically speaking, government might do well to maintain a more vigorous countermisinformation establishment than it would otherwise do, one that identifies and rebuts many more conspiracy theories would otherwise be rebutted. There will still have to be some minimum threshold for governmental response, but the threshold will be lower than it would be if this synergistic gain of rebutting many theories did not exist.

2. Which audience?

Another dilemma is whether to target the supply side of the conspiracy theory or the demand side. Should governmental responses be addressed to the suppliers, with a view to persuading or silencing them, or rather be addressed to the mass audience, with a view to inoculating them from pernicious theories? Of course these two strategies are not mutually exclusive as a logical matter; perhaps the best approach is to straddle the two audiences with a single response or simply to provide multiple responses. However, if there are resource constraints, government may face a choice about where to place its emphases. The question will be what mix of second-party responses (pitched to the suppliers) and third-party responses (pitched to the mass audience) is best. Moreover, apart from resource constraints, there are intrinsic tradeoffs across these strategies. The very arguments that are most convincing to the mass audience may be least convincing to the conspiracists, and vice-versa.

We will begin with some remarks about responses addressed to the supply side. The basic problem with pitching governmental responses to the suppliers of conspiracy theories is that those theories, by their nature, have a self-sealing quality. They are (1) resistant and in extreme cases invulnerable to contrary evidence,61 and (2) especially resistant to contrary evidence offered by the government, because the government rebuttal is folded into the conspiracy theory itself. If conspiracy theorists are responding to the informational signals given by those whom they trust, then the government’s effort at rebuttal seems unlikely to be effective, and might serve to fortify rather than to undermine the original belief. (A possible solution is for government to enlist private rebuttals; we return to this point shortly.) The most direct response to a dangerous conspiracy theories is censorship. That response is unavailable in an open society, because it is inconsistent with principles of freedom of expression. We could imagine circumstances in which a conspiracy theory became so pervasive, and so dangerous, that censorship would be thinkable. But in an open society, the need for censorship would be correspondingly reduced. In any case censorship may well turn out to be self-defeating. The effort to censor the theory might well be taken as evidence that the theory is true, and censorship of speech is notoriously difficult.

After 9/11, one complex of conspiracy theories involved American Airlines Flight 77, which hijackers crashed into the Pentagon. Some theorists claimed that no plane had hit the Pentagon; even after the Department of Defense released video frames showing Flight 77 approaching the building and a later explosion cloud, theorists pointed out that the actual moment of impact was absent from the video, in order to keep alive their claim that the plane had never hit the building. (In reality the moment of impact was not captured because the video had a low number of frames per second.62) Moreover, even those conspiracists who were persuaded that the Flight 77 conspiracy theories were wrong folded that view into a larger conspiracy theory. The problem with the theory that no plane hit the Pentagon, they said, is that the theory was too transparently false, disproved by multiple witnesses and much physical evidence. Thus the theory must have been a straw man initially planted by the government, in order to discredit other conspiracy theories and theorists by association.63

Government can partially circumvent these problems if it enlists nongovernmental officials in the effort to rebut the theories. It might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves. There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however. The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts. Although government can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes, too close a connection will prove self-defeating if it is exposed -- as witness the humiliating disclosures showing that apparently independent opinions on scientific and regulatory questions were in fact paid for by think-tanks with ties to the Bush administration.64 Even apart from this tradeoff, conspiracy theorists may still fold independent third-party rebuttals into their theory by making conspiratorial claims of connection between the third party and the government. When Popular Mechanics offered its rebuttal of 9/11 conspiracy theories, conspiracists claimed that one of the magazine’s reporters, Ben Chertoff, was the cousin of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and was spreading disinformation at the latter’s behest.65

Because of these difficulties, many officials dismiss direct responses to the suppliers of conspiracy theorists as an exercise in futility. Rather, they implicitly frame their responses to the third-party mass audience, hoping to stem the spread of conspiracy theories by dampening the demand rather than by reducing the supply. Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 commission, says that “[t]he hardcore conspiracy theorists are totally committed. They’d have to repudiate much of their life identity in order not to accept some of that stuff. That’s not our worry. Our worry is when things become infectious . . . . [t]hen this stuff can be deeply corrosive to public understanding. You can get where the bacteria can sicken the larger body.”66 Likewise, when the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a fact sheet to disprove the theory that the World Trade Center was brought down by a controlled demolition, the spokesman stated that “[w]e realize this fact sheet won’t convince those who hold to the alternative theories that our findings are sound. In fact, the fact sheet was never intended for them. It is for the masses who have seen or heard the alternative theory claims and want balance.”67

The problem with this line of argument, however, is that it takes the existence of a hard core as a given. This is premature; we will suggest below that if the hard core arises for certain identifiable reasons, it can be broken up or at least muted by government action. Furthermore, there are intrinsic costs to the strategy of giving up on the hard core and directing government efforts solely towards inoculating the mass audience. For one thing, the hard core may itself provide the most serious threat. For another, a response geared to a mass audience (whether or not nominally pitched as a response to the conspiracy theorists) will lead some to embrace rather than reject the conspiracy theory the government is trying to rebut. This is the legitimation dilemma again: to begin a program of inoculation is to signal that the disease is already widespread and threatening. Under pluralistic ignorance, the perverse result may actually be to spread the conspiracy theory further.

3. Cognitive infiltration

Rather than taking the continued existence of the hard core as a constraint, and addressing itself solely to the third-party mass audience, government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories, arguments and rhetoric that are produced by the hard core and reinforce it in turn. One promising tactic is cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. By this we do not mean 1960s-style infiltration with a view to surveillance and collecting information, possibly for use in future prosecutions. Rather, we mean that government efforts might succeed in weakening or even breaking up the ideological and epistemological complexes that constitute these networks and groups.

How might this tactic work? Recall that extremist networks and groups, including the groups that purvey conspiracy theories, typically suffer from a kind of crippled epistemology. Hearing only conspiratorial accounts of government behavior, their members become ever more prone to believe and generate such accounts. Informational and reputational cascades, group polarization, and selection effects suggest that the generation of ever-more-extreme views within these groups can be dampened or reversed by the introduction of cognitive diversity. We suggest a role for government efforts, and agents, in introducing such diversity. Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.

In one variant, government agents would openly proclaim, or at least make no effort to conceal, their institutional affiliations. A recent newspaper story recounts that Arabic-speaking Muslim officials from the State Department have participated in dialogues at radical Islamist chat rooms and websites in order to ventilate arguments not usually heard among the groups that cluster around those sites, with some success.68 In another variant, government officials would participate anonymously or even with false identities. Each approach has distinct costs and benefits; the second is riskier but potentially brings higher returns. In the former case, where government officials participate openly as such, hard-core members of the relevant networks, communities and conspiracy-minded organizations may entirely discount what the officials say, right from the beginning. The risk with tactics of anonymous participation, conversely, is that if the tactic becomes known, any true member of the relevant groups who raises doubts may be suspected of government connections. Despite these difficulties, the two forms of cognitive infiltration offer different risk-reward mixes and are both potentially useful instruments.

There is a similar tradeoff along another dimension: whether the infiltration should occur in the real world, through physical penetration of conspiracist groups by undercover agents, or instead should occur strictly in cyberspace. The latter is safer, but potentially less productive. The former will sometimes be indispensable, where the groups that purvey conspiracy theories (and perhaps themselves formulate conspiracies) formulate their views through real-space informational networks rather than virtual networks. Infiltration of any kind poses well-known risks: perhaps agents will be asked to perform criminal acts to prove their bona fides, or (less plausibly) will themselves become persuaded by the conspiratorial views they are supposed to be undermining; perhaps agents will be unmasked and harmed by the infiltrated group. But the risks are generally greater for real-world infiltration, where the agent is exposed to more serious harms.

All these risk-reward tradeoffs deserve careful consideration. Particular tactics may or may not be cost-justified under particular circumstances. Our main suggestion is just that, whatever the tactical details, there would seem to be ample reason for government efforts to introduce some cognitive diversity into the groups that generate conspiracy theories. Social cascades are sometimes quite fragile, precisely because they are based on small slivers of information. Once corrective information is introduced, large numbers of people can be shifted to different views. If government is able to have credibility, or to act through credible agents, it might well be successful in dislodging beliefs that are held only because no one contradicts them. Likewise, polarization tends to decrease when divergent views are voiced within the group.69 Introducing a measure of cognitive diversity can break up the epistemological networks and clusters that supply conspiracy theories.

C. A Role for Law, and Courts?

So far we have detailed some dilemmas facing government officials and have suggested some policy responses. What if anything is the role of law, and courts, in these matters? The principal point of contact between the legal system and the issues discussed here is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which creates a presumption of transparency for documents held by administrative agencies and executive institutions. Unless the government can show that the requested information falls within one of a designated list of exceptions, there is a legal right to disclosure, and the Supreme Court has created a broad concept of “informational standing”70 to permit interested groups and citizens to enforce that right.

FOIA becomes relevant when the government holds, and declines to disclose, information that might rebut a circulating conspiracy theory. An example involves the disclosure of the Department of Defense video involving Flight 77’s crash into the Pentagon on 9/11. A pro-transparency group, Judicial Watch, filed a FOIA request to obtain the video, but the Defense Department declined, saying that the video was to be used in the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui. Judicial Watch filed suit to force disclosure, with the avowed objective of using the video to rebut the conspiracy theories surrounding Flight 77. However, when the Moussaoui trial ended the government released the video before the lawsuit could be decided.71

The details of the case only suggest the larger question that it poses: should courts, and law, force the executive to disclose information that a litigant claims would help to rebut conspiracy theories? If the answer is yes, then control over the timing and nature of the executive’s responsive strategy will be partially transferred to litigating groups and judges. If the answer is no, the executive will retain full control.

We suggest that the critical question is a comparative institutional one. Will adding judicial involvement, itself partially determined by the decisions of litigating groups, create a net improvement in the government’s overall response strategy? In general, two conditions must hold for this to be so. First, there must be some mechanism that causes the executive systematically to make suboptimal decisions about whether, when, and how to release information that might rebut conspiracy theories. If executive branch decisions are unbiased, in the sense that they are accurate on average (even if randomly mistaken in particular cases), then courts will be hard pressed to improve upon them.72 Second, even if the executive branch does make predictable errors, the litigation process must have some relative institutional advantage in this regard; it must be able to improve upon the executive’s choices. The benchmark is not optimal disclosure, but the disclosure that actually results from adding litigation-based oversight to executive branch decisions.

There is little reason to think, in general, that both of these conditions will usually be met. In the Flight 77 case, Judicial Watch offered no concrete reason why the executive would erroneously balance the relative benefits and costs of disclosing the information immediately, including (1) the expected gain to the government’s efforts to rebut the Flight 77 conspiracy theories; (2) the expected costs to national security of disclosing details about the Department of Defense’s surveillance activities and methods; and (3) the lost option value of disclosing later, rather than now. Judicial Watch noted that (2) was low, because most of the information was already public in one way or another, and this seems plausible. However, (1) was also low. As we have detailed above, the video’s release did little to squelch the Flight 77 conspiracy theorists, who promptly folded the video into their theories. Factor (3) is hard to estimate; but it is clear that when courts require disclosure in such situations, the value of the option to make a later disclosure is systematically destroyed. Even if the executive would make mistakes about these factors, viewed in the light of hindsight, it is plausible to think that those mistakes will tend to be randomly distributed, in part because governmental interests are on both sides of the balance. In any event, Judicial Watch offered no reason to think that the litigation process would systematically do better. In general, the argument for compelled disclosure is strongest when the executive branch is likely to be systematically biased against disclosure, for self-serving reasons; this is the argument that most plausibly justifies FOIA itself. When a conspiracy theory is at work, there is unlikely to be any systematic bias against disclosure, because the executive has a strong incentive to correct the theory.

To be sure, the first of the two conditions we have mentioned – that executive branch disclosures are not optimally geared to suppressing conspiracy theories – does seem plausible under certain conditions. Because the executive is partially a they, not an it,73 its (their) efforts to respond to conspiracy theories may be hampered by poor coordination across agencies or executive departments. Perhaps, for example, one agency holds information that it refuses to disclose or even transmit within the executive branch, although another agency or another branch of government needs it to combat a conspiracy theory. Here there is a kind of intra-executive externality, with one agency failing to take into account the full costs of its actions to other institutions. Moreover, if there are systematic incentives for overclassification and excessive government secrecy – a claim that is often heard but rarely fleshed out with concrete mechanisms – then there will be systematic error in government responses, with too little disclosure or disclosure coming too late.

However, these possibilities are balanced by equally speculative possibilities cutting in other directions. If the executive is a they, not an it, it may also be the case that a given agency does not fully take into account the harms of disclosure to the mission of other agencies, and the problem will be too much disclosure or premature disclosure (from the standpoint of the latter agencies). Intra-executive externalities and agency incentives may cut in either direction; their net effect is hard to assess in the abstract, and there is little reason to think they necessarily create a systematic skew in one direction or another. Furthermore, addressing conspiracy theories is not the only thing the executive does. Even if an agency is not acting optimally with respect to that goal, it may be acting in a way that promotes good policy (somehow defined) overall.

Most importantly, there is little general reason to think that the second condition – that litigating groups and judges can improve upon the executive’s choices – will often be met. First, if agencies may hold motivations or face incentives that distort the optimal approach to information disclosure, courts suffer from deficits of expertise and policymaking ability that hamper their efforts to make things better. Here a serious problem is that courts decide one case at a time. While this practice has many benefits,74 it makes it difficult for courts to gain a systemic view75 across an array of cases in order to decide whether an agencies’ decisions are systematically distorted, or to evaluate whether inter-executive externalities are occurring.

Second, suppose that the court does know (better than the executive) how and when to disclose information in order to rebut a conspiracy theory. The problem is that the court may be legally constrained not to act optimally in any event. There is no necessary connection between the timing of the lawsuit and the optimal timing of disclosure for addressing the relevant conspiracy theory. In the Judicial Watch case, the optimal time of disclosure may have been never, given the low benefits; it may also have been at some time in the future. The court, however, is legally constrained from acting on its open-ended assessment. It may decide that the plaintiff prevails and disclosure occurs, or not, but in general it may not fine-tune the timing of disclosure at will.

In all of these remarks, we have made two assumptions that cabin the analysis; we are not offering a general account of FOIA litigation. We have assumed first of all that – as in the Judicial Watch litigation – the plaintiff’s avowed purpose is to force a disclosure that in the plaintiff’s judgment will rebut a spreading conspiracy theory. In internal legal terms, this is irrelevant; the Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that reviewing courts should not consider the specific interests of the requester in obtaining FOIA disclosure.76

However, it is certainly relevant from an external standpoint, where the question is how to assess the institutional capacities of relevant actors. Where the aim of all concerned actors, including the plaintiffs, is to supply an optimal response to conspiracy theories rather than to assert other interests, there are special grounds for doubting that the litigation process can improve upon executive branch choices.

We have also assumed that the relevant statutes are sufficiently ambiguous or vague that both agencies and courts are at least in part making policy choices, rather than enforcing the law in any simple sense. Where this is not so, and the commands of FOIA are clear, courts should enforce them. If the resulting disclosure is not optimally timed, the problem lies with the statute (as applied). In general, however, this is not the situation such cases will pose. Rather the agency resists disclosure under a vague or broadly worded FOIA exemption, and perhaps also by invoking principles such as the “mosaic theory,”77 according to which government may resist disclosures that are innocuous in themselves but that can be assembled into a larger picture damaging to national security. If the reviewing court does not face a clear legal command, and if the court lacks confidence (as we do) that the litigation process will on average produce better responses to conspiracy theorizing, then the court should stay its hand.

D. A Note on Conspiracy Theories Abroad

Our focus has been on domestic conspiracy theories, although some of the relevant considerations are constant across both domestic and foreign audiences. Conspiracy theories flourish in many Middle Eastern and predominantly Muslim countries, so much so that there is a small literature asking why Muslims are so prone to conspiracy theorizing.78 (One paper by Freudian psychologists even ascribes this “fact” to Muslim child-rearing practices79; we are skeptical.) If many Muslims abroad are prone to conspiracy theorizing, so too are many non-Muslims in the United States, as the evidence given above demonstrates. On the other hand, we have conjectured that there is a causal link between the prevalence of conspiracy theories and the relative absence of civil liberties and a well-functioning marketplace of ideas,80 so it is unsurprising that such theories are even more widespread in the Muslim world than in the United States. Overall, conspiracy theorizing is undoubtedly virulent in the Muslim world, has a sharply anti-American inflection, and poses problems that are somewhat distinctive, so a brief discussion is warranted.

On the diagnostic side, it is highly likely that the virulence of conspiracy theorizing in Muslim nations has a great deal to do with social cascades and group polarization, and with weak civil liberties and the lack of a robust market for ideas in many of those nations. In terms of our suggested policy responses, the foreign setting is both a worse and a better environment for the U.S. government. It is worse in that the nature of the relevant institutions and audiences in the Muslim world sharpens many of the dilemmas and tradeoffs we have described. Typically, the audience is antecedently skeptical, in the extreme, of anything said by United States officials; shortly we will see that this creates enormous pressure for the U.S. to engage in various forms of covert or anonymous speech. The marketplace of ideas, in many Muslim nations, is institutionally fragile or dominated by powerful governments. Civil liberties, including free speech, are often shaky. The upside to the foreign setting, however, is that on some dimensions the U.S. enjoys greater freedom of action, in part because domestic U.S. politics will tolerate some actions abroad that it would not tolerate if taken at home.

We begin with the difficulties. The foreign setting sharpens one of the central tradeoffs we have identified: to enhance the credibility of speech that debunks conspiracy theories, the government must surrender some degree of control over the institutions of speech. In 2004, the U.S. government set up a broadcast network for the Middle East – Al-Hurrah, “the Free One” – that puts out news and third-party opinion. In May 2007, a House subcommittee called a hearing to investigate reports that Al-Hurrah had broadcast “terrorist” content, including “a 68-minute call to arms against Israelis by a senior figure of the terrorist group Hezbollah; [and] deferential coverage of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial conference . . . ”.81 Legislators sharply questioned officials of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the government corporation that ultimately funds Al-Hurrah, and those officials had to promise to address the legislators’ concerns. Those problems, however, were part and parcel of a broader strategy for enhancing credibility by permitting other viewpoints and voices on the air. In general, in order to enhance its credibility with antecedently skeptical Muslim audiences, the U.S. government must go a long way towards surrendering control over the content of its speech (or must speak anonymously, a strategy that carries its own risks, as we mention next). However, as this episode reveals, domestic political constraints may preclude whatever mix of credibility and control is optimal from the standpoint of dampening conspiracy theories or promoting U.S. public relations goals more generally.

The alternative to surrendering control over the content of the government’s responses, in order to enhance credibility, is for government officials or agents to speak anonymously. A mini-scandal erupted in 2006 when U.S. newspapers revealed that the Lincoln Group, an independent contractor of “influence services,” had paid Iraqi newspapers to publish hundreds of “news stories” written by U.S. military personnel but not identified as such, most of which portrayed events in Iraq in cheery terms or rebutted circulating conspiracy theories.82 The stories were factually true, but selective. As against the obvious moral objections to this practice, the Lincoln Group argued that speech identified as stemming from U.S. sources would, even if true, credible and important, be utterly discounted by the Iraqi audience, leaving the field entirely to conspiratorial and hostile rumors. On this view the implicit lie of planting “news” stories not identified to their true sources is necessary, in a deliberative environment that is already warped, to the goal of putting all relevant information before a quasi-rational audience. Where the marketplace of ideas is already malfunctioning, in the sense that relevant audiences discount to zero statements that should carry positive weight, practices that would not be permissible in a well-developed liberal state might be permissible on second-best grounds.

A better objection to this practice may instead be tactical. By outsourcing this form of quasi-propaganda to an independent contractor whose participation would sooner or later be brought to light, the U.S. government fell between two stools, obtaining neither the credibility benefits of full transparency nor the credibility benefits of totally anonymous speech. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer, commented that “[t]he historical parallel would be the [CIA’s] efforts during the Cold War to fund magazines, newspapers and journalists who believed that the West should triumph over communism. Much of what you do ought to be covert, and, certainly, if you contract it out, it isn’t.”83

So far we have discussed the distinctive difficulties of the foreign setting. On other dimensions, however, the foreign setting loosens various legal and political constraints, allowing the U.S. government greater freedom in responding to conspiracy theories. In 2004, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, ordered troops to shut down a weekly newspaper in Baghdad that had propounded false conspiracy theories damaging to the U.S., such as a story that “an American missile, not a terrorist car bomb, had caused an explosion that killed more than 50 Iraqi police recruits.”84 Whether this sort of action does more harm than good, in similar environments, is a complicated question, depending on difficult judgments about the etiology of conspiracy theories, the consequences of censorship, and the efficacy of U.S. counterspeech. On the one hand, there are the familiar arguments that censorship attracts attention to the censored speech or publication and fuels further conspiracy theorizing; perhaps, the inference might run, the U.S. is moving against a particular rumor because it is true, or is moving against a particular paper because it is exposing actual U.S. conspiracies. Furthermore, censorship might just drive the conspiracy theories underground, to be spread and mutated by personal rumor-mongering that is less susceptible to focused rebuttal.

On the other hand, the peculiar environment in which Bremer acted may weigh in favor of a policy of censoring publication of conspiracy theories. One editorial argued that “[t]he occupation authorities have plenty of means, including their own television station, to get out a more favorable message.”85 However, this ignores the effect discussed above, that the antecedent skepticism of the Iraqi audience is so strong that any U.S. statements, even if true, credible and important, will be ignored altogether. With an audience already thoroughly in the grip of conspiracy theories, open counterspeech may simply be more grist for the conspiratorial mill. Consider that when Al-Hurra began its operations, a conspiracy theory quickly circulated, claiming that the short-term contracts given to Al-Hurra personnel showed that the station was set up only to bolster George W. Bush’s reelection campaign, and would presumably be shut down after the election.86 Given the extremely low efficacy of U.S. counterspeech in this sort of environment, the realistic options may be limited to censorship and anonymous or quasi-anonymous counterspeech in the style of the Lincoln Group. Whatever the merits of these pragmatic and tactical questions, the availability of censorship gives U.S. officials operating in foreign countries an extra instrument for coping with conspiracy theories, one that is not available in the domestic arena due to both legal and political constraints.

Conclusion

Our goal here has been to understand the sources of conspiracy theories and to examine potential government responses. Most people lack direct or personal information about the explanations for terrible events, and they are often tempted to attribute such events to some nefarious actor. The temptation is least likely to be resisted if others are making the same attributions. Conspiracy cascades arise through the same processes that fuel many kinds of social errors. What makes such cascades most distinctive, and relevantly different from other cascades involving beliefs that are both false and harmful, is their self-insulating quality. The very statements and facts that might dissolve conspiracy cascades can be taken as further evidence on their behalf. These points make it especially difficult for outsiders, including governments, to debunk them.

Some conspiracy theories create serious risks. They do not merely undermine democratic debate; in extreme cases, they create or fuel violence. If government can dispel such theories, it should do so. One problem is that its efforts might be counterproductive, because efforts to rebut conspiracy theories also legitimate them. We have suggested, however, that government can minimize this effect by rebutting more rather than fewer theories, by enlisting independent groups to supply rebuttals, and by cognitive infiltration designed to break up the crippled epistemology of conspiracy-minded groups and informationally isolated social networks.

Footnotes

1 This slogan was popularized by the television show The X-Files, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X- Files. 9/11 conspiracy theorists often call themselves the 9/11 Truth Movement. See The 9/11 Truth Movement, http://www.911truth.org (last visited Nov. 14, 2007).

2 Zogby International, Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9-11 Attacks and “Consciously Failed” To Act, Aug. 30, 2004, http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=855. 3 Thomas Hargrove & Guido H. Stempel III, A Third of U.S. Public Believes 9/11 Conspiracy Theory, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE, Aug. 2, 2006, http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=CONSPIRACY-08-02-06.

4 Id.

5 One in 5 Canadians Sees 9/11 as U.S. Plot – Poll, REUTERS, Sept. 11, 2006.

6 Matthew A. Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, Media, Education and Anti-Americanism in the Muslim World, 18 J. ECON. PERSPECTIVES 117, 117 (2004)

7 Id. at 120.

8 See, e.g., CONSPIRACY THEORIES: THE PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATE (David Coady ed., 2006); CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF CONSPIRACY (Carl F. Graumann & Serge Moscovici eds., 1988).

9 There is also a body of work that collects many interesting examples of conspiracy theories, but without any sustained analytic approach. See, e.g., Michael Barkun, A CULTURE OF CONSPIRACY (2003); Daniel Pipes, CONSPIRACY (1997). For a treatment of conspiracy theories from the standpoint of cultural studies, see Mark Fenster, CONSPIRACY THEORIES (1999).

10 See Alan Krueger, WHAT MAKES A TERRORIST? 75-82 (2007). Krueger believes that low civil liberties cause terrorism, but acknowledges that his data are also consistent with the hypothesis that terrorism causes governments to reduce civil liberties. See id. at 148. Of course, the two effects may both occur, in a mutually reinforcing pattern. Following Krueger, we assume that low civil liberties tend to produce terrorism, a hypothesis that is supported by the mechanisms we adduce.

11 See note 8 supra.

12 See Mark Lane, PLAUSIBLE DENIAL: WAS THE CIA INVOLVED IN THE ASSASSINATION OF JFK? (1991) (arguing that it was); Alan Cantwell, AIDS AND THE DOCTORS OF DEATH: AN INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGINS OF THE AIDS EPIDEMIC (1988) (suggesting AIDS was the product of a biowarfare program targeting gay people); Don Phillips, Missile Theory Haunts TWA Investigation; Despite Lack of Evidence and Officials' Denials, Some Insist Friendly Fire Caused Crash, WASH. POST, Mar. 14, 1997, at A03; 149 CONG. REC. S10022 (daily ed. July 28, 2003) (statement of Sen. Inhofe) (“With all the hysteria, all the fear, all the phony science, could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? I believe it is.”); David Mills, Beware the Trilateral Commission!; The Influential World Panel Conspiracy Theorists Love to Hate, WASH. POST, Apr. 25, 1992, at H1 (describing various conspiracy theories about the Commission); William F. Pepper, AN ACT OF STATE: THE EXECUTION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING (2003) (arguing that the military, the CIA, and others within the government conspired to kill King); Kevin Diaz, Findings Don't Slow Conspiracy Theories on Wellstone Crash; An Official Investigation Has Focused on Pilot Error and Weather. Some Observers Still Have Suggested a Political Plot., STAR TRIBUNE (Minn.), June 3, 2003, at A1; Patty Reinert, Apollo Shrugged: Hoax Theories About Moon Landings Persist, HOUSTON CHRON., Nov. 17, 2002, at A1.

13 See Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1974); George Lardner Jr. & John Jacobs, Lengthy Mind-Control Research by CIA Is Detailed, WASH. POST, Aug. 3, 1977, at A1; Memorandum from L. L. Lemnitzer, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the Secretary of Defense, Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba (Mar. 13, 1962), available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf.

14 See Edward Glaeser, The Political Economy of Hatred, 120 Q. J. ECON. 45 (2005). 5

15 See Karl R. Popper, The Conspiracy Theory of Society, in CONSPIRACY THEORIES, supra note 8; see also KARL R. POPPER, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, VOL. 2 (1966).

16 Id.

17 See NASSIM TALEB, FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS (2001).

18 An illuminating discussion is Edna Ullmann-Margalit, The Invisible Hand and the Cunning of Reason, 64 SOC. RES. 181 (1997).

19 See Taleb, supra note.

20 See, e.g., James Risen & Eric Lichtblau, Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 16, 2005, at A1; Jane Mayer, The Black Sites: A Rare Look Inside the C.I.A.’s Secret Interrogation Program, THE NEW YORKER, Aug. 13, 2007, at 46.

21 Consider here Amartya Sen’s finding that in the history of the world, no famine has occurred in a nation with a free press and democratic elections. See Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines (1983). Of course it would be excessive to infer that in authoritarian nations, famines are a “conspiracy” of the authoritarians.

22 Brian L. Keeley, Of Conspiracy Theories, in CONSPIRACY THEORIES, supra note 8, at 46, 56-57. 23 Quoted in id. at 57.

24 Imre Lakatos, Falsification and Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, in CRITICISM AND THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE 91 (Imre Lakatos & Alan Musgrave eds., 1970); see Steve Clarke, Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Theorizing, in CONSPIRACY THEORIES, supra note 8, at 78.

25 See Diana G. Tumminia, WHEN PROPHECY NEVER FAILS: MYTH AND REALITY IN A FLYING-SAUCER GROUP (2005).

26 Keeley, supra note 22, at 55-56.

27 See Richard Hofstader, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, in THE PARANOID STYLE IN AMERICAN POLITICS AND OTHER ESSAYS (1979); Robert S. Robins & Jerrold M. Post, POLITICAL PARANOIA (1997).

28 See Erich Wulff, Paranoic Conspiratory Delusion, in CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF CONSPIRACY, supra note 8, at 172.

29 There is an immense and growing literature on this question. For examples, with relevant citations, see Glaeser, supra; Sendhil Mullainathan and Andrei Shleifer, The Market for News, 95 AM. ECON. REV. 1031 (2005); Sendhil Mullainathan and Andrei Shleifer, Media Bias (2002), available at http://www.nber.org/papers/w9295.pdf; Edward Glaeser and Cass R. Sunstein, Extremism and Social Learning, J. LEGAL ANALYSIS (forthcoming 2008).

30 Russell Hardin, The Crippled Epistemology of Extremism, in POLITICAL RATIONALITY AND EXTREMISM 3, 16 (Albert Breton et al. eds., 2002).

31 Id. Of course it is also true that many extremists have become extreme, or stayed extreme, after being exposed to a great deal of information on various sides.

32 See KRUEGER, supra note 10, at 75-82. 33 See id. at 89-90.

34 See W.V. Quine & J.S. Ullian, THE WEB OF BELIEF (2d ed. 1978). On the search for reflective equilibrium in general, see John Rawls, A THEORY OF JUSTICE (1971).

35 For a classic case study, see Leon Festinger et al., WHEN PROPHECY FAILS (1956). For a general treatment, see Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, MISTAKES WERE MADE (BUT NOT BY ME) (2007).

36 For general discussion of the importance of thresholds, see Marc Granovetter, Threshold Models of Collective Behavior, 83 AM. J. SOC. 1420 (1978).

37 See Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi & Alain Clémence, Group Processes and the Construction of Social Representations, in GROUP PROCESSES, at 311, 315–17 (Michael A. Hogg & R. Scott Tindale eds., 2001). 38 See Punctuated Equilibrium and the Dynamics of U.S. Environmental Policy (Robert Repetto ed. 2006); Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein, Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation, 51 STAN. L. REV. 683 (1999).

39 See ROGER BROWN, SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: THE SECOND EDITION 202–26 (2003).

40 See id. at 204.

41 Id. at 223–24.

42 See id. at 212–22, 226–45; Robert S. Baron & Norbert L. Kerr, GROUP PROCESS, GROUP DECISION, GROUP ACTION (2d ed. 2001), at 540.

43 See Cass R. Sunstein, WHY SOCIETIES NEED DISSENT (2003). 13

44 Hardin, supra note 30, at 9-12.

45 Id. at 10.

46 Id. at 11; Hofstadter, supra note 27.

47 Roderick M. Kramer, The Sinister Attribution Error: Paranoid Cognition and Collective Distrust in Organizations, 18 MOTIVATION & EMOTION 199, 199-230 (1994).

48 Id.

49 On those benefits in general, see Scott Page, THE DIFFERENCE (2006).

50 See Scott Macleod, Suspicious Minds; In the Arab World, Conspiracy Theories and Rising Anti-Semitism Deflect Attention From Real Problems, TIME, June 17, 2002, at 28.

51 See, e.g., Frank Rich, Editorial, Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 27, 2005, at 11 (“Nonetheless Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney repeatedly pounded in an implicit (and at times specific) link between Saddam and Al Qaeda until Americans even started to believe that the 9/11 attacks had been carried out by Iraqis.”).

52 See Clarke, supra note 24, at 91 (noting that “few [conspiracy theories] are actually harmful”).

53 Jon Elster, EXPLAINING SOCIAL BEHAVIOR (2007); Bryan Caplan, THE MYTH OF THE RATIONAL VOTER (2007).

54 Richard Cohen, Editorial, The Making of a Conspiracy Theory, WASH. POST, Dec. 23, 2003, at A21; see also Andrea Stone, In Poll, Islamic World Says Arabs Not Involved in 9/11, USA TODAY, Feb. 27, 2002, at A1.

55 William Weir, Damage Control; State Department Officer Works To Dispel Lies, Conspiracy Theories and Urban Legends That Harm U.S. Image, HARTFORD COURANT, Oct. 16, 2006, at D1.

56 James D. Fearon, Catastrophic Terrorism and Civil Liberties (unpublished draft), available at http://www.stanford.edu/~jfearon/papers/civlibs.doc.

57 See Cass R. Sunstein, WORST-CASE SCENARIOS (2007). 17

58 For relevant discussion, see Glaeser, The Political Economy of Hatred, supra note.

59 See Timur Kuran, PRIVATE TRUTHS, PUBLIC LIES (1998).

60 See Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, INVESTMENT UNDER UNCERTAINTY (1994).

61 Cf. LEON FESTINGER ET AL., WHEN PROPHECY FAILS, supra note 35.

62 DEBUNKING 9/11 MYTHS: WHY CONSPIRACY THEORIES CAN'T STAND UP TO THE FACTS 60-61 (David Dunbar & Brad Reagan eds., 2006).

63 See, e.g., Jim Hoffman, Video of the Pentagon Attack: What Is the Government Hiding, http://911research.com/essays/pentagon/video.html (last visited Nov. 14, 2006).

64 See Ian Sample, Scientists Offered Cash To Dispute Climate Study, GUARDIAN, Feb. 2, 2007, at 1 (noting that a “thinktank with close links to the Bush administration” had paid scientists to challenge a report on global warming).

65 In fact the two may be distant relatives, but had never met. Will Sullivan, Viewing 9/11 From a Grassy Knoll, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REP., Sept. 11, 2006.

66 Carol Morello, One Man’s Unorthodox Ideas About the 9/11 Attack on the Pentagon Go Global in a Flash. Welcome to the Internet, Where Conspiracy Theories Flourish., WASH. POST, Oct. 7, 2004, at B01. 67 Jim Dwyer, U.S. Counters 9/11 Theories of Conspiracy, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 2, 2006, at B1.

68 Neil MacFarquhar, At State Dept., Blog Team Joins Muslim Debate, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 22, 2007, at A1.

69 See SUNSTEIN, supra note 43.

70 See Federal Election Comm’n v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11 (1998).

71 See Jerry Markon, Pentagon Releases Videos of 9/11 Plane Crash; Group Wanted to Counter 9/11 Conspiracy Theories, WASH. POST, May 17, 2006, at B01.

72 In theory courts might do so by reducing the variance associated with these decisions – fewer big mistakes in either direction – but we will ignore this possibility, which is never adduced to support judicial intervention. Rather, the standard claim is that government errs systematically, in a particular direction – insufficient disclosure.

73 Cf. Kenneth A. Shepsle, Congress is a “They,” Not an “It”: Legislative Intent as Oxymoron, 12 INT’L REV. L. & ECON. 239 (1992).

74 CASS R. SUNSTEIN, ONE CASE AT A TIME (1999).

75 DONALD L. HOROWITZ, THE COURTS AND SOCIAL POLICY (1977); Cf. Frank I. Michelman, Politics and Values or What’s Really Wrong With Rationality Review, 13 Creighton L. Rev. 487 (1979).

76 See, e.g., U.S. Dep’t of Justice v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749, 771-73 (1989).

77 See, e.g., Ctr. for Nat’l Sec. Studies v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 331 F.3d 918, 928-29 (D.C. Cir. 2003).

78 See, e.g., DANIEL PIPES, THE HIDDEN HAND: MIDDLE EAST FEARS OF CONSPIRACY 287- 383 (1996).

79 Marvin Zonis & Craig M. Joseph, Conspiracy Thinking in the Middle East, 15 POL. PSYCHOL. 443, 445 (1994).

80 Cf. Krueger, supra note 10.

81 Justin Rood, U.S. Government Gave Airtime to Terrorists, Official Admits, ABC NEWS, May 22, 2007, http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/05/us_government_g.html.

82 Lynne Duke, The Word at War; Propaganda? Nah, Here’s the Scoop, Say the Guys Who Planted Stories in Iraqi Papers, WASH. POST, Mar. 26, 2006, at D01

83 Id.

84 Editorial, Hearts, Minds and Padlocks, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 30, 2004, at A20.

85 Id.

86 Roula Khalaf, US Takes An Optimistic View in Battle for Hearts and Minds in the Arab World: The New American-sponsored al-Hurra Channel Aims to Reach Young People With Help From Some Good-News Stories, FIN. TIMES, Jan. 15, 2004, at 11.

[angrbrenna]

Cel How does my love life look in the next year? I do not have a preference for deck or spread.

Hi Cel! This is a spread I love using for relationshipreadings at the moment, I call it a “plaited” spread. It begins with you at thebeginning of a journey in your current situation, and ends with you at the endof that journey, and some advice for proceeding. In between, there are threepairs of cards, each representing a certain situation or person. The bottomcard describes the situation or person, and the top card gives you some adviceon how to deal with that. I hope that all makes sense, and if not, I hope it becomesclear in the reading below.

Card 1 (You and YourSituation): Four of Cups

It seems that at the moment, you feel frustrated in yourcurrent situation. Most likely you’re beginning to feel dissatisfied and evenapathetic towards your life, specifically your love life, since this is arelationship reading. Maybe you haven’t been getting the results you want,whether that’s still being single despite being open to a new relationship, orany current relationships have started to lose their appeal. However, the Fourof Cups often suggests that a lot of your problems might stem from yourself.You really need to sit yourself down and consider what it is you actually want,maybe even what you need at this point, and ask yourself if that’s what you’reactively seeking out. Are you looking to connect with people who fit yourcriteria, whatever they may be? Are you really telling the relevant people whatyou want? Setting forth into the next year, I would recommend taking time toreally assess what you want, to and have that clear in your head before goingout and actively seeking anything out.

Card 2(Situation/Person 1): Judgement (Reversed)

This card very much follows on from the first. I think you’recoming up to a situation where change will be forced on you, and you’re goingto need to have your head clear in order to make the right choice. Be awarethat it’s not likely to be an easy choice; you’re going to be forced out ofyour comfort zone and to change the way you’re thinking. Like I said above, you’recaught up in some bad mental loops, and you’re being way too critical of yourself,which is holding you back. This is less dire than it sounds, though. I don’tthink any big disasters are coming your way, I think it’s more likely to be agentle kick in the right direction that you can’t ignore, or maybe you’ll justget frustrated enough that you’ll feel forced to change. Generally, try andstay aware and keep your mind open, and try and be a little kinder on yourself.If you manage to navigate this situation well, really good things are comingyour way – Judgement often signifies spiritual enlightenment, or just reallygood things if that’s not your thing, in which your efforts are paid off andyour anxieties put to rest, and that meaning isn’t lost when the card isreversed. Just make sure you’re ready to make that tough call.

Card 3 (Advice forSituation/Person 1): The Chariot

I almost feel like this isn’t a particularly useful advicecard, because it essentially tells you to be confident, which is easier saidthan done. However it is still relevant, and I think it particularly relates tothe self-doubt element of Judgement reversed. You need to trust in yourself –you have everything you need to get what you want and change your situation.The Chariot is also strongly associated with independence, and it’s interestingthat the first half of this spread has been very inwardly focused. I know it’s cliché,but the cards genuinely seem to be saying that you need to start with yourself,and build from there. Your love life may not have been going the way you wantit to at the moment, but you have everything you need to change that. You justneed to learn to trust yourself a little bit more, and trust your worth, andthat’s going to be something that’s very important going forward.

Card 4(Situation/Person 2): The Son (Knight) of Wands

The Court Cards often signify a person, which fits reallywell into this position! This could be an indication that you’re going to comeinto contact with someone who is driven, energetic, passionate, and above allvery appealing to you. However, they’re likely to be impulsive and evenoverpowering, which will be something to look out for. Even if this isn’treferring to a person, you’re probably going to find yourself in a very intenseromantic or sexual situation with someone, with very little fore-thoughtinvolved. It could be a lot of fun, but also could be painful on the comedown.Maybe this is what you need after a relatively fruitless period, maybe it isn’t.With a little bit of firm guidance and direction, it would be possible to shapethis encounter into something more stable, if that’s what you want. Whateverthe case, be careful to put some thought into your own safety and well-being,and make sure you stand your ground and make your boundaries clear if it comesdown to it. Get too caught up in the passion and intensity of the moment, andit could end badly for you.

Card 5 (Advice forSituation/Person 2): The Father (King) of Pentacles (Reversed)

Interestingly, this card is largely concerned with financialaptitude – essentially, how well you use your earthly possessions. In terms ofadvice, this card is warning you to be careful with how you use your wealth.Card 4 describes a potentially volatile relationship, and so you don’t want tobe sinking too much into it, and if it doesn’t work out, you want to make sureyou can still take care of yourself afterwards. A person represented by theKnight of Wands is usually charming and manipulative, so don’t let them talkyou into spending more money than you should. Again, be clear with yourboundaries, and maybe consider putting off doing anything like moving in withthis person until you’re sure it’s a safe and sensible decision. Essentially,you want a solid base to return to if you need, remain largely independent anddon’t become materially dependant on this person unless you’re very sure it’s agood decision.

Card 6(Situation/Person 3): The Father (King) of Swords

In the King of Swords I see the complete opposite of theKnight of Wands. This is someone who thinks more than they feel. Upright, thiscard represents someone who has their emotions in check, so that they can thinkrationally about the situation. However, reversed, that is taken to the extremeand they have become entirely detached from emotion, which is never good.Again, this could be a person or a situation, but either way, you may findyourself in a position that logically seems more sensible than the one describedin Card 4, but in reality, it’s not much healthier. An excess of passion can bebad, but so can an absence of it. It probably won’t feel right, and can easilyrun into even worse territory, like manipulation and unhealthy dynamics. Thiswill need as much caution as the Knight of Wands, only differently directed. Youmay feel secure, you may even have fun, but this won’t be long-lasting.

Card 7 (Advice forSituation/Person 3): Death

The meaning of this card is clear. It would be best here tolet this relationship die a natural death – don’t fight when it comes to anend, it’s the right thing to do. This card advises you to take time to mourn,but also to reflect. Learn your lessons, this relationship probably hassomething to teach you. Once you move on, you’ll be clear-headed and ready foryour next venture, better than you were before.

Card 8 (Your year,complete): Son of Cups (Reversed)

A big association with this card is the idea of home-coming,and I think it would be advisable to take some time off and rest. However, don’tslip into old patterns – stay mindful and active, even as you give yourselftime to recuperate. This card also links to creativity and imagination, and newprojects. Reversed, this card reminds you to stay vigilant and grounded. Thisis going to be a year of experience, it seems, but don’t forget everything you’velearnt about yourself and the world. You might start having grand ideas,especially as the year comes to a close again, but don’t get so caught up in itthat you forget all the practicalities and the steps you need to reach yourgrand ambitions. Generally, this card reminds you to keep your wits about you,dream big but plan well.

Overall: Thiswhole spread feels very intense, and I think it’s going to be a very busy yearfor you. You’ll meet new people, gain new experience, and I think it’s going tobe a mixed bag of good and bad. The spread starts by reminding you to create asolid basis within yourself to return to when you need to. Love and trustyourself, and that will guide you through the year. The new people you meet andengage with romantically will teach you important things, you’ll have fun withthem, but I don’t think you’ll meet your “endgame” this year, as such. This isa year for learning and exploring, and ironically for a relationship spread,relying on yourself. Through it all, it’s going to be really important to staysmart and aware, and to stick to your intuition. Don’t lose yourself in all thepotential drama, and you’ll be fine. Do try and enjoy the ride, but don’texpect much more.

I know this spread seems pretty dire, and I hate it when thecards are Like This. However, it is my strong belief that this represents thepath you are currently on, which is always something you can change. Even if itis a bit of a bumpy ride, I think a lot of good could come from this year. Itwill be entirely possible to navigate all of this successfully, but it willtake a little bit of effort I think. If you have any more questions, please sendme another ask or message me! I’m happy to clarify and answer a couple offollow-up questions, even draw a few more cards if necessary. I hope you findthis spread useful, and I wish you all the luck xx