#more like mr moral superiority

[mochirialgworl]

uh huh sure kenny

I'm all for shittin on aubrey's bitch ass, but didn't this fool literally just collab on an album with a fuckin sex offender???

Talkin all this shit about creeps... yet on mr. morale u tryna "uplift" them..... yeah, naw. That's some weird shit. Ick.

still wonderin if we gronna get a surprise pusha t drop to finish this massacre tho

[moderndayamymarch]

imagine your boyfriend gets a job promotion/major inheritance and your whole family tells you that’ll he’ll probably leave you for someone better. because that’s what the crawleys do to edith. when you know they’d never say that to mary.

edith is truly their khloe kardashian.

[transmutationisms]

I would love to hear more of your thoughts on House & its relation to the detective genre ! I think that house (completely accidentally and very badly) stumbles into a good critique of how doctors & medical structures view addicts & disabled people, with house being a horrible hegemonic mr malpractice to his patients frequently yet half is series is unironically just about all the injustice/mistreatment he faces because his doctor colleagues can’t see him as a person but only as a problem to be solved/rehabbed/therapized/institutionalized/treated like a child with stolen candy/treated like a criminal. and then it also randomly takes an incredibly pro MAID stance. which isn’t really part of this but I just remembered how batshit insane that show was. and then chase killed a dictator and I feel like the show was squarely on his side for that one. Anyway. Do you have thoughts? I really like house.

ok here's my house md take. like a lot of medical dramas, the show essentially relies for its dramatic appeal on the construal of patients as gross, weird, and stupid—rubes who are too uneducated and self-serving in their petty lies to solve their own bodies, and thus need the intervention of house to fix them. this is standard for the genre, although slightly meaner on house than on some other examples (cf. grey's or even the older and soapier generation of these shows). i don't even think house committing malpractice is all that new; it's relatively common as a plot point that positions the noble rule-breaking doctor as someone who 'does what needs to be done' and skirts the bureaucratic red tape to follow their own superior judgment. what makes house more interesting is that from the get-go, house himself is both a doctor and an unwilling patient. in itself this isn't a tension that's new to the medical soap (injuring a major character is pretty par for the course) but house's particular interactions with the ruling biomedical epistemology are, as you point out, characterised by hostility and resistance, and the show frequently either sides with house, or at least leaves it somewhat up to the viewer to decide whether house is right to resist the pathologisation that cuddy and wilson try to impose on him.

this is kind of a tricky line to walk for 7 seasons or however long the show is. my recollection is there are episodes, for example, where it's very clear that house's pain is physical, and the writers use this to morally justify his vicodin use. this is obviously not a full-throated defence of opioid users, but it is at least pointing to a position on chronic pain that allows for the possibility that for some people, long-term use of drugs with a high addiction potential and side effects is legitimately the best thing. but, this messaging is also undercut by the fact that it's primetime television, they need to make drama, and there are definitely also episodes where house is framed as potentially lying about his pain, or at least mistaking a somatic problem for a physical one, which the writers often (not always, but often) present as evidence that actually, house shouldn't be trusted to make his own decisions about drug use, and ideally should be 'de-toxed' and probably sent to cbt or whatever. of course all of these considerations are also contextualised by the fact that house is, again, not just a patient but a doctor: his right and ability to make these types of calls for himself is, it's suggested, a result of his having attained medical education and credentials. the patients who come to be treated by him are seldom, if ever, given this same level of consideration or presumed to have sufficient self-awareness to make their own medical decisions. this isn't to say they're portrayed entirely unsympathetically, but ultimately the narrative engine of the show relies on house being the smartest guy in the room (though ofc, sometimes tragically 'held back by his addiction').

so, although there are moments on the show that genuinely transgress some of the norms of the med-drama genre, i have never agreed with people who thought that the show as a whole was presenting any sustained critique of the medical system, the treatment of chronic pain/disability, or the power-imbalanced doctor-patient relationship. ultimately all authority on house md is supposed to emanate from the physician, or the physician's superiors (cuddy as a 'check' on house, though sometimes a failed one! again because of the need to generate drama for like 140 episodes), and at its most radical the show is really only capable of presenting house himself as an out-of-control aberration whose existence strains the existing system rather than being produced by it.

this is where i think the comparison to the cop show genre becomes more clarifying. house md never made a secret of being an interpolation of the detective genre, specifically sherlock holmes. however, i'm not sure i've ever really seen writing on the show that analyses what effect this actually has on house. like police, doctors are tasked with maintaining certain social norms; the dichotomy between policing and medicine isn't even a solid line, as criminality is frequently rhetorically construed as a pathology in itself and medical authorities can and do have recourse to carceral systems in order to discipline and confine recalcitrant patients, the 'criminally insane', addicts, and so forth. (policing has historically also been understood in a more expansive sense than how we use the word today; our understanding of the medical/public health system as separate from police authority is arguably more to do with university credentialling than the actual exercise of social and political power).

so, if we want to be serious about the portrayal of medicine in popular culture (i am always serious about this) then we're necessarily talking about broader systems of power, social control, and discipline, and doubly so on a show like house that is explicitly inspired by detective fiction. this is where house md is most ideologically objectionable to me: as with the trope of the cop who breaks all the rules, house is basically positioned in one of two ways throughout the show. either he's a lone genius who alone is willing to achieve noble ends (cure) through distasteful means (breaking into patients' homes, berating them, performing risky interventions on them, &c), or—and this is rarer on house but does happen—he's portrayed as genuinely crossing an ethical line, in which case he's a kind of monstrous aberration from the normal, ethical functioning of the medical system, often represented metonymously by the objections that cuddy, wilson, or house's underlings raise. in both of these cases, as with copaganda, the function is ultimately to reinforce the idea that doctors, though occasionally capable of human error, are prima facie wiser than their patients, looking out for their patients' best interests, and performing noble social roles as healers. house, ofc, is very rarely willing to admit that he has any underlying ethical motivations, though much of the show is driven by the flashes where he is revealed to 'secretly' care about another person (often wilson) and anyway, the construction of an ethical society in which all individual actors are motivated solely by selfish interests is a very established rhetorical move for those interested in defending liberal capitalist societies (cf. charles darwin, thomas malthus, adam smith, &c).

because of television's need to generate profit via audience engagement, house md always relied on a certain level of shock or at least provocation in order to sustain itself. so, there are certain aberrations from the more overtly doctor-valorising medical dramas, like the suggestion (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) that house was better at his job when he was mildly high on opioids. this was, for the reasons outlined above, never a serious entry into political critique, but it was at least refreshing in a certain way as a departure from, eg, the portrayal of addiction and drug use that we see on grey's, which is completely limited to the medicalised AA narrative of 'recovery' as a battle against the malevolent intervention of an external chemical agent. which is to say that although house md is ultimately reactionary in the way we should expect from an american tv show, it did at least dabble in a certain level of caustic iconoclasm that allowed limited departures from the genre conventions. even with what was ultimately a pretty solid vindication of the anti-opioid narrative, the show does stand out in my mind as one of the few very popular presentations of any kind of alternative stance on chronic drug use. that it's usually put in house's own mouth means it is occasionally legitimated by his epistemological authority as a physician, though ofc ultimately this authority is challenged not through a critique of the medical system, but by presenting house as individually and aberrantly licentious, undisciplined, and insane—and his chronic pain/disability are both a justification for this, and a shorthand for conveying it.

[ravi-is-my-beloved]

No for real, it kinda pisses me off that people saw Eddie, Mr. I Can Help You With My Swedish Side and I Will Punch You Out if You Shit Talk My Son, and were like “oh he’s gonna be Gerard’s crony” and “he’s gonna betray the 118 and side with Gerard” but the moment Buck is shown with Gerard it’s “oh Buck would never do that” and “he must be plotting something to take Gerard down”

Like, 1) Eddie loves the 118 just as much as Buck (( remember this is the family we chose scene )) 2) he’s a Mexican man. Do you think he wouldn’t be a target for Gerard?

I love Buck but the woobfication of him where he can never do wrong drives me fucking insane, especially bc I think a lot of queer white people come from a place of privilege where they don’t acknowledge that racism and misogyny are v much still a huge problem in this world and that homophobia is not the only form of bigotry that impacts people

No matter how much people may try and think Eddie can just hide the fact that he's Mexican, he can't. There's no way Gerrard will be wanting Eddie to be on his side once he hears Eddie's last name. And you can't make me think that Eddie, even with all he's going through right now, would ever want to side with Gerrard.

And before anyone comes at me with "Oh, Ryan said Eddie would keep his head down", there's a difference between keeping your head down and actively participating in bigotry, which is what some fans have speculated Eddie would do. Also, in that same interview, Ryan said Eddie could also punch Gerrard. But somehow, that's not being talked about nearly as enough as the keeping his head down comment.

Also, I'm sorry to say this, but it is more likely that Buck would side with Gerrard than it is that Eddie would.

No, I'm not saying that either of them would side with Gerrard, but that if anyone would, Buck would be more likely to do it. Because unlike the rest of the current 118, he's a cis white man who very few people know is bisexual. There's no true guarantee that Gerrard would target him for his bisexuality because it's something he can hide, which is not the case for anyone else on the team.

When it comes to these fans who say these things, it is their own biases that are saying they can't see Buck siding with Gerrard. Buck is a white man and there's so many years and years of other white people propping themselves up to be morally superior, that they can't do anything wrong. We're seeing these fans essentially spew this same line of thinking when it comes to Buck (and Tommy, let's be real) and it is a real problem in this fandom.

And no, you're not a monster for believing in the racist rhetoric that has been hammered into your brain since you were children. But you first have to acknowledge that it is your biases that make you see what you're seeing before you can go about unlearning those biases.

[rayroseu]

actually all this talk about sebek or silver fighting against malleus makes me sad akdhkhwod because if you think about it its the very thing that lilia was trying to avoid happening... a conflict between faes and human yk 😭

on another thought, i cant entirely blame malleus, the reason for his overblot is an effect of how dark faes are treated by the other species, feared, excluded, and labelled as strange and too powerful to be even considered as equals/be treated normally.

i think its ironic that the person who should've embraced that reputation is their ruler but he's the first one to feel that it isnt right, i think its been implied by now that human morals like shouldn't be applicable to faes as they have vastly different morals but when consider malleus, hes actually alot more humane based on his what he wishes (a friend, to be invited, have fun) but ig thats what sets him and meleanor apart....

sebeks personality says enough about how dark faes naturally think of themselves: because theyre so powerful and superior, its natural for them to be alone, but all that power leads to loneliness... as what was implied in Book 7.1 where Yuu asks Malleus if the Thorn Fairy (or rather Malleus) was lonely after years of exclusion...

also i want book 7 to reveal why levan, an assumedly dark fae, was desperately trying to make peace between humans and faes, even at the cost of (accidentally) endangering briar land--- (i think briar land lost at the human fae war bcs theyve weakened their defenses against silver owls😭)

maybe Levan's mission isnt just a general "faes and humans should get along"--- as we know, faes and humans DO get along but its only the "light faes" that humans accept (i.e knight of dawn and the 3 good fairies), but their treatment and view with the dark faes is that theyre villainous and should be defeated bcs apparently they're terrifying (implied in lilia's dream)

(even though silver owls was the first to offend them kshdkwj i truly think there was a time that silver owls and briar were "at peace," as henry says he first met meleanor and saw princess glow during a visit (?) at meleanor's castle)

so maybe Levan's actual mission isnt "humans and faes should get along" but rather "for dark faes to be accepted and treated kindly",

plus its makes more sense to center his ideals on dark faes- as we know that Meleanor hates humans and he's her wife so---for now, i dont think she'll approve of a plan that "caters to humans" but she could consider a plan that could give "dark faes more acceptance to the world" so they could be safe

idk where this word vomit is going lol this is just a simple interpretation but i think its just saddening that dark faes are making an effort in understanding humans yet the humans barely make effort to understand faes,,,

there are exceptions like silver and yuu, yet whenever they express their thoughts to others that (their) dark faes are "kind", they get shrugged off 💀💀💀

but ig the conflict never ends until one makes amends lol (sobbing about what mrs zigvolt and lilia endured just to believe in their dream that humans and dark faes can love one another djkdj)

(((i was just wishing twst wouldn't go all out in writing malleus as the “evil overblot villain that must eradicated” then boom a little essay about the profound relationship between dark faes vs other species lol (its the malleus apologist in me guys😭😭)))

[silly-salty-utdr-rants]

copy pasting my knight papyrus take from my main

ok so im bored and i know no one will probably read this so im gonna lay out my papyrus knight theory/au timeline

for simplicity ill break it into three segments: what happened before to set up this chain of events, how and why papyrus does it, and bare bones evidence

1 before deltarune

generally this is working off my "gaster is bad at math theory" which, to summarize, basically says gaster started as a scientist in deltarune with 2 kids (sans and paps) accidentily fucks up the math and teleports to undertale, uses deltarunes superior tech to create the core, fucks up the math and falls in, frisk/player pulls up, after a bit sans and paps dip but gaster fucks up the math postmortem and they get stuck in deltarune resulting in papyrus becoming a hermit who accidentally opens a darkworld in his closet and then does the fucking grinch smile and causes a ruckus

2 why tho

how papyrus does it: something something prophecy, destiny, gaster fuckery, what have you. effectively via the same plot convenient saving grace that allows us to close the darkworlds and control kris

why does he do it: same reason he spares frisk in geno. he sees that characters like kris, berdly, susie and noelle and knows that they can do better, they just need to try. and what better reason to try than life threatening adventure? (sidenote: i fucking despise when people make the excuse of "Oh HeS bEiNg ~MaNiPuLaTeD~ bY ______" like no shut up let papyrus be morally ambiguous dammit) he is also likely aware of the titan situation and is just deadass like "NO I CAN TAKE THEM IN A 1V1 I THINK" also it makes sense narratively due to his incomplete character arc

3 DA FAX

the closet the chapter 2 darkworld was likely started from can fit and i quote "a large person" (especially combined with the skeletons in my closet line in undertale), he has been set up by sans to have a late game appearance, no alibis in chapter 1 or 2, in chapter 2 the "trousling bones" mentioned when interacting with the door of sans' house grows distant as another darkworld closes, as mentioned in section 2 his arc is still incomplete and as mentioned in my papyrus backstory post we dont even have a clue as to half the shit he's hiding, as a more meta reason bonetrousle was originally the main theme of deltarune, the "secret name" line from papyrus qna 2, the jevil reference dialogue in papyrus qna 2, and probably the most solid motive out of the candidates. that being the fact he believes so much in that people can do good if they try, to exercise that from a more cynical perspective of these beliefs (i.e people wont try unless they have to) could look like forcing them by way of obscure supernatural prophecy and lifechanging perilous adventure

bonus: why other candidates are dumb

gerson is fucking dead

gaster, while likely behind the secret bosses, seems a bit occupied with fucking with reality and would rather cast someone else (like his son????)

dess is currently entangled in the code and likely cant have much effect on the actual world

mrs. holiday seems like a better candidate for character development by darkworld than creator of darkworld

asriel is at college

kris has been controlled by us for most of the game and i aint see them open a darkworld beyond the one post chapter 2

player, i dont know about you guys, but i have not opened a darkworld

new character sounds REALLY boring tbh

ralsei, rouxls, and any darkner candidate are ruled out due to queens speech

[fanfic-lover-girl]

Why I don't care much about Draco calling Hermione a mudblood

I have stated many times that I don't care much that Draco calls Hermione mudblood across various posts I have written. Now rude Hermione stans will simply say or have simply said I am a misogynist or just a brainless Draco stan and move on feeling morally superior. But I have three very basic reasons why JKR is at fault for me not caring.

Being muggleborne is not a disadvantage

As much as I love Draco, whenever he mocks Ron about his socioeconomic status it bothers me. Partly because I can relate to having a family who financially struggles. But I see how Ron's poverty (the Weasleys should not be poor but that's a different convo) affects him. He gets second-hand clothes. He does not have proper school supplies (eg Charlie's broken wand). He only gets the things he wants when he accomplishes something (getting a broom when he becomes prefect). It has caused him embarrassment. I can probably go on. I feel sorry for Ron.

But how does being muggleborne affect Hermione? Well, there are some cultural concepts she would not know, eg the mudblood slur. However, against all logic, Hermione is the top student even showing up purebloods like Ron who GREW UP in the wizarding world. Besides Draco calling her a mean name, what prejudice does Hermione face?? If anything, she is favoured too much (eg time turners). And then Bella tortures her in book 7...only for Hermione to simply walk it off. After a chandelier fell on her. Wow, I should feel so much sympathy for Hermione! JKR gives me so many feels for Hermione's plight as a muggleborne girl!

I would infer that Hermione's yearning to prove herself with good grades partly stems from being muggleborne but I can't recall if this was an explicit part of her character or something JKR left up to our interpretation. I get the vibe that Hermione was like this even in muggle school.

Muggbleborne discrimination is not the biggest concern

Aside from certain purebloods, the wizarding world treats mugglebornes as regular wizard citizens. There is definitely pureblood favouritism - how the hell is Mr Weasley head of the Muggle Artefacts department over any muggleborne? And JKR is quick to point out muggleborne bigotry. If Lucius or Draco so much as glares at Hermione, we know it.

What's the bigger concern for me is the discrimination that JKR insidiously lets go unchecked. JKR lets her so-called good characters engage in casual bigotry against muggles and magical creatures. She only has one developed muggle family. So any abuse the Dursleys suffer is under the guise of them getting their dues. We see the Order of the Phoenix members have basically no respect for muggles. And it's played as comedy. We see magical creatures have no rights. JKR makes Hermione's elf campaign into a joke. She makes the goblins unpleasant so the readers don't have a bad taste in their mouths when the golden trio betray them.

Hagrid attacks Dudley, a defenceless child, in book 1. Traumatizing this 11-year-old kid for years to come. And the readers are meant to applaud this and/or find this funny.

Compared to the suffering of muggles, Hermione's struggles are nonexistent and hardly worth my time.

It seems to bother Hermione very little

As I mentioned before, Hermione lacked knowledge of certain prejudices. So when Draco called her mudblood, she didn't even know what he meant. And in future interactions, it seems more like an annoyance to Hermione, not something that impacts her self-worth. And that's a good thing! Draco has no power over her! She was never Draco's helpless victim. Good for her! Just because a bully tries to belittle you, it does not mean it has to hurt you.

While that's great for Hermione's mental well-being, it kind of impacts my ability to care too. If Hermione cares little, why should I?

In a nutshell, Draco calling Hermione mudblood means little in the grand scheme of things. It's wrong and Draco should be punished for it (why is Draco not punished for publicly using slurs in a school?). I certainly don't think Draco is in the right for using slurs. But it hardly helps to endear Hermione to me as a reader when it comes to this aspect of Draco's bullying.

[bethanydelleman]

Manners (following from this post) in Jane Austen's novels. Definition:

"external behavior (especially polite behavior) in social intercourse," late 14c., plural of manner in a specific sense of "proper behavior, commendable habits of conduct" (c. 1300)... Earlier it meant "moral character"

Manners, and the lack of them, matter a lot in Jane Austen's low stakes world where a man's biggest flaw can be rudeness. Here are some quotes from Pride & Prejudice, rapid fire:

The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.

“He is just what a young-man ought to be,” said she, “sensible, good-humoured, lively; and I never saw such happy manners! so much ease, with such perfect good breeding!”

"And so, you like this man’s sisters, too, do you? Their manners are not equal to his."

He was at the same time haughty, reserved, and fastidious; and his manners, though well bred, were not inviting. In that respect his friend had greatly the advantage. Bingley was sure of being liked wherever he appeared; Darcy was continually giving offence.

The visit was returned in due form. Miss Bennet’s pleasing manners grew on the good-will of Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; and though the mother was found to be intolerable, and the younger sisters not worth speaking to, a wish of being better acquainted with them was expressed towards the two eldest.

since Jane united with great strength of feeling, a composure of temper and an uniform cheerfulness of manner

and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness

What can we draw from this? Like taste, manners seem to encompass both education and natural inclination/personality. Darcy and Bingley are both educated, but one has "happy" manners while the other's are "not inviting". Elizabeth's manners are not "fashionable", but may still be admired. Manners can be pleasing and draw one in, as we also see in Emma:

Emma was as much pleased with her manners as her person [Harriet], and quite determined to continue the acquaintance.

We also have Emma's very vague description of what makes manners "good":

In one respect, perhaps, Mr. Elton’s manners are superior to Mr. Knightley’s or Mr. Weston’s. They have more gentleness. They might be more safely held up as a pattern. There is an openness, a quickness, almost a bluntness in Mr. Weston, which every body likes in him, because there is so much good-humour with it—but that would not do to be copied. Neither would Mr. Knightley’s downright, decided, commanding sort of manner, though it suits him very well; his figure, and look, and situation in life seem to allow it; but if any young man were to set about copying him, he would not be sufferable. On the contrary, I think a young man might be very safely recommended to take Mr. Elton as a model. Mr. Elton is good-humoured, cheerful, obliging, and gentle. He seems to me to be grown particularly gentle of late.

Honestly, Emma seems to almost be using "manners" to justify who she likes, without any real consistency.

However, there do seem to be associated good qualities that make good manners as well, as we see with Lady Russell in Persuasion:

She was a benevolent, charitable, good woman, and capable of strong attachments, most correct in her conduct, strict in her notions of decorum, and with manners that were held a standard of good-breeding.

Another interesting quote:

Mrs Clay had freckles, and a projecting tooth, and a clumsy wrist, which he was continually making severe remarks upon, in her absence; but she was young, and certainly altogether well-looking, and possessed, in an acute mind and assiduous pleasing manners, infinitely more dangerous attractions than any merely personal might have been.

Anyway, I don't have an answer, but it was very fun to run around Jane Austen's novels looking at her references to both taste and manners. I think it's clear that education played a big part in both, that there are proper and improper manners & tastes. Manner and taste seem to both be influenced by fashion. There is a difference between natural and polished. They can be wrong or offensive.

I feel like someone could write an entire thesis about these two words!

[rose-tea-and-strawberries]

Trey: *Trying to explain Riddle is that way because of his mom*

Me: Give me a minute as I pull up my ‘Trauma Doesn’t Excuse Sh*t Behavior’ PowerPoint.

Say it with me, everyone: an explanation is not an excuse 😊

You know, the other day I was watching one of Ryan George's Pitch Meetings and when Producer Guy asked Writer Guy how the audience would root for the villain of the franchise and the response was "he's handsome" which basically explains most people's reactions to fictional men.

Prepare for incoming rant that has little to do with the ask

This probably might come as a shock because one of the main appeal of twst would be the whole villainous aspect/Disney Villain fanbase but I don't really like villains that much, at least, not romantically. Like don't get me wrong, I think that they're incredible characters and it would be so fun to sit down with one and have a conversation with one. Villain songs are so fun (I was literally singing ‘This Day Aria’ to myself the other day I haven’t heard that song in like a decade) and you can tell that that characters like Scar or Hades or Shere Khan or Jafar or Maleficent are having so much fun being deliciously evil and even the more serious, complex ones like Loki or Frollo are fun to pick apart so yeah I understand the hype. I just always rooted for the heroes and I guess heroic characters have always been more my type.

My mother absolutely loves Erik Destler and is forever salty that Christine chose Raoul (despite my many many attempts at arguing why Raoulstine is the superior couple - smol primary school me could not understand why my mum liked the chandelier dropper and was deeply concerned), my best friend has been in love with Heathcliffe since we were eleven, and my little sister has literally told me that her type of fictional men are the toxic red flags (not exactly word for word but she did explain why she likes bad boys over good boys when I was complaining about how my type (wholesome soft boys) always get sidelined for the arrogant, snarky bad boys - we're also very diametrically opposed on our views of friends to lovers (my s++ tier all time favourite and her loathing) vs enemies to lovers (I can't really stand it - Pride and Prejudice is the only exception - and that's literally all she consumes) so that might also be a reason).

Like, I understand the appeal of a Byronic hero (Mr Darcy has far too much power) - a closed off, broody man that hates everything but you? And will burn down the world to keep you warm? I can respect that there are people who dig that. But their not really for me.

The mild bout of insanity thirteen year old me had where I spent two months attracted to Edward Rochester is an outlier and should not have been counted (though that was during my wattpad phase so...)

But I can admit that I have yet to shake off my feelings for Dr Henry Jekyll, Victor Frankenstein and Dorian Gray (though to be fair, Mr Gabriel John Utterson the lawyer and cinnamon roll artist boy Basil Hallward do own my heart). And yes, Jeremy Jordan did make me question my morality as he did make my feelings for Light Yagami be too positive to be sane for a brief moment (Touta Matsuda is still my man, don't worry). But apart from them, literally all of my faves are what you'd call your traditional, morally upright heroes.

Basically what I'm saying is that my perception might be skewed because I've never had the whole 'villains are cooler' mindset when it came to stories. Yes, I love the villains as characters but I always liked their heroic foils more (goodness is just so attractive to me). You get lots of amazing heroic protagonists that have horribly tragic backstories and they're the ones I always fall for because the idea of being a kind sweetheart despite the world being anything but is just *chef's kiss* that's a kind of strength that's so swoon-worthy.

I guess that's why it's harder for me to look past the characters' actions in twst is because, well, they chose to do everything they did. They made a conscious choice to be terrible, despite understanding the consequences. Riddle may have been brainwashed into becoming a tyrant by his mother but he still admitted that he knew he was being horrible - he understands the concept of morality, of good and bad, and he willingly and deliberately did everything he did.

I suppose this text post I found on Pinterest would explain my point better:

[lawluenvy]

something a lot of people dont understand:

multishipping is just more fun!!!

why the fuck not? don't you love your little buddy? aren't you so in love with x character yourself that you imagine that everyone else must fall/be in love with them too?

like i know that lawlu will never happen but i love it anyways. cuz why the fuck not? why the fuck not imagine that law has fallen head over heels for the monkey boy that barelled into his life and saved it asking for nothing in return and trusting you when all logic says he probably shouldn't? why become invested in your pirate rival's future and wellbeing enough to go to the war you happened to hear he started and save him before he kills himself out of recklessness? you met exactly once before this. why do you care law??? WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!?!

you know what other one piece ship i love that has real concrete basis for? (altho censorship and heteronormativity may still prevent it of course) --- zolu!!!! undying love and devotion and trust in one another??? captain and first mate???? the only man Mr. Greedy Gut Luffy himself would ever/has ever offered to share his food with????? incredible.

multishipping is just fun y'all! shipping isn't/shouldn't be all about what is actually realistic or has basis or is the most "moral" based on real world modern standards

it's just fun to take two or more characters you love and try to imagine "hm how would this happen/work?" cuz WHY NOT?

just because i believe that zolu is legit and beautiful and endgame does not invalidate my wholehearted belief that law is in love with luffy and my desire to imagine "what if luffy liked law back?"

alright?

it's just fun y'all. fandom is supposed to be fun and an escape from the terrible disappointment that is real life - i'm so tired of people trying to bring real life into it. get your ugly ass reality out of here alright!? i'm here for the fantasy!!! i'm here for the "anything is possible!!!"s not the "actually this ship makes 0 sense for x and y reasons so you shouldn't be shipping that- people should be shipping my monoship only cuz it's more valid" like stfu no one cares you sound like a conceited loser

by all means if multishipping isnt for you cuz you just LOVE this ONE SHIP SO MUCH you can't picture anything else (so valid tbh) then alright you may ship what you wish how you like it of course buuuuut:

don't shit on other people's ships like fandom engagement is just some contest of moral superiority??? like??? who the fuck?

get out of here with that. so boring- if we wanted real life post-modern late stage capitalist "everything is a competition" and the heteronormative christian monogamy that simultaneously condemns but endangers individuals to manipulative and toxic relationship dynamics that is embedded within it --- why would we be here in the first place??? if that's what you want then why are YOU here?

i wish i lived in a world where it didnt fucking matter that luffy is only 18 because why should that matter? of course i know why in our reality it would be something to be concerned about but in one piece? on the grand line? where people can be made entirely of rubber or metal blades or goddamn smoke? and where law and luffy are in the same pirate generation and have obvious and clear respect for each other???

why on earth would i ever want to and choose to view lawlu in the problematic light of our fucked up contemporary where by its standards if luffy is only 18 and law is 26 then one would assume law must clearly just be taking advantage of luffy's naïvety cuz that's what people in this reality are most often like --- when the ONE PIECE REALITY is that law views luffy as his equal and is a MUCH BETTER REALITY! like why would you want to bring what sucks about our world into theirs??? it's not like luffy's pubescent like what is your problem??? y'all infantalize him so much when you do this and it's gross. he's a whole ass man with big dreams and a big ship and a big destiny - get outta here with that real life bullshit.

anyways.

i could rant about shipping discourse literally forever cuz its a subject that sadly never ends.

this applies to so many different ships in so many different fandoms but im just using lawlu vs. zolu as an example because the absurdity of one piece is just such an excellent demonstration of why applying our world's standards on fantasy worlds is a stupid waste of time

stopping forcing things into your black and white boxes of good and bad. shit's "grey" and rainbow as fuck. i look outside the window of my office right now and i see a world that is literally not black in white - there is colour everywhere. your rigid standards don't even work here despite the machinations of society demanding it must be so- and they definitely don't work in worlds that dont exist

fuck your real world problems when we're talking about fantasy worlds

i choose to spend my time in fantasy worlds cuz i fucking hate it here on our doomed planet earth

fantasy is so much better than here

let people have their fantasies - it is literally harming no one

[alixtmcknight]

May 2024

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

An absolutely brilliant novel! Possibly one of my favorite novels ever. Unfortunately in good conscience it does get a small demerit for some backward thinking when it comes to race and English superiority. I can’t know what it was like in the authors head, and what sorts of limited experience she had to undo these taught ideas. I know that is part of what we must wrestle over when reading classics, and that is how I framed it in my head. But it doesn’t negate the feeling that came over me when these issues were raised. I despise the idea that some would believe themselves better based on where they are from or the race they happen to be. That is the only reason it doesn’t have 5 stars!

Outside of that this novel has a main character who I relate to more deeply than I have to a character in many years. While relating to characters isn’t necessarily, it does provide some enjoyment on the rare occasions it comes. Her observational skills, wisdom seeking character, independence that keeps her grounded, a tendency to want to please beyond her comfort, along with a strong belief that moral responsibility comes before the wants of the heart find some semblance in my being in one form or another. She wasn’t beautiful like most main characters which was refreshing, and I appreciated her honesty and integrity that I too have always strived to emulate. Mr. Rochester was quite the conundrum for me. I approved few of his actions, but I saw a great spirit beneath his ill decisions. While he is not my type of wanted lover, his terms of endearment must be the greatest I have ever heard. I melt under flowery language, and his exaltation of Jane was enough to have me in a puddle of tears. Despite his issues with his wife, he still found it in his heart to have her in his care (however distant).

I’m in a bit of a daze, as I often am after a great novel, and I want to swim in the waves of reflections this book continues to bring to my mind. But, for now these are my thoughts, until I pick it up again as a future self.

I give this 4 1/2 stars.

[aquietwhyme]

"the drive towards self-preservation is stronger than any so-called moral requirement”. Given “the duty to our blood” which supposedly bound everyone to their own race, universal moral rules, like “always treat others as you would yourself be treated”, were no more than deceptive tools used by weaker people(s) to subdue the superior:

"There can be no possible agreement with systems of thought of an international nature, because at bottom these are not true and not honest, but based on a monstrous lie, namely the lie of the equality of all human beings."

-Adolf Eichmann executed Nazi war criminal and major organizer of the Holocaust

[pulled from this article https://theconversation.com/is-it-time-to-reconsider-the-idea-of-the-banality-of-evil-216737]

Now whose arguments, today, mid-December of 2023, who now is paraphrasing Mr. Eichmann's ideology as they conduct national and military policy? Who now is committing unfathomably cruel atrocities in the name of racial self-preservation? Who is arguing that the people they are slaughtering are subhuman, lesser, not equal or deserving of consideration?

If we approach this question with intellectual honesty, it's shockingly easy to answer.

[shootonsight]

censordoll has hebephrenic schizophrenia (headcanon) with explanation

(apologies for this, not only is psychology my special interest, but i LOVE censordoll… so it all works out)

to start, the hebephrenic category of schizophrenia is characterized by disorganized behavior/speech, shallow or inappropriate emotional responses (could also be called mood incongruence), hallucinations, and delusions.

the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia is to have at least two of these things:

delusions (strong, inexplicable beliefs that are irrational in nature)

hallucinations (when your body or mind perceives something that is not really there)

thought disorders (patterns of thought that cannot be explained with reasoning or senses)

she also has other schizophrenia characteristics, such as:

social avoidance

false belief of superiority

religious delusion

compulsive behavior

irrational/aggressive behavior

depression

being consumed/territorial over interests

now that i have that out of the way, let me explain why she fits into this category.

delusions: believing she is the matriarch, narcissism due to her self-imposed isolation, belief that she is better than others due to her lack of eggs, and being free from original sin. (false belief of superiority) she views herself on the same morality, power level, and deserving of the same respect as the lord, along with believing that she is more qualified to sermonize over moralton than reverend putty. she also displays hyperreligiosity. when she protests, she claims that picketing and protesting is doing “god’s work” (religious delusion) and even if the delusion is right, it becomes a delusion when they use illogical or unethical methods of explaining it.

thought disorders (illogical/irrational thinking): eggs = her removed ovaries. she is obsessed with something that irrationally remind her of something she lost traumatically. eggs are one of her “only pleasures”, but probably couldn’t explain why. this also ties into her delusions, but i decided to separate the bullets anyways.

obsessive, agressive, or territorial over interests: we see this when she slaps mr figurelli over a plate of eggs for no apparent reason. unlike regular autistic hyperfixations, schizophrenia related/induced interests last longer and can lead to someone feeling lost, angry, or depressed when they go away. (we see this in “offensiveness” when there’s a prohibition placed on eggs, she gets really sad because they’re one of the only things that bring her true joy; even though she was given cesarean-born eggs, they aren’t the same as naturally passed eggs in her mind.) her HEAVY obsession with eggs was likely started in childhood and persisted into adulthood.

social avoidance: she isolates herself because she sees herself as better than others. (false belief of superiority is also a schizophrenia characteristic) her lack of eggs caused her to deem herself “immaculate” and free from original sin (as seen in “alone”). she bans and protests things, not only to overcompensate for what she’s lost, but so she doesn’t make real connections with the townsfolk. she secures her place as a sovereign by refusing connection to society and sharing common interests with people. she stays away from commonly enjoyed things (like movies and books) so that she doesn’t fall into line with other people she deems inferior to her, ultimately disrupting her goals (as she believes). she also avoids connections with people who wouldn’t bring her closer to her goal of becoming mayor.

compulsive behavior: she only lets her mom call her at 9pm every night, she will avoid and ignore her persistent calls until the time comes. she will not answer the phone from her mother at ANY other time.

depression: her apartment is MINIMALLY decorated, some of her time is consumed by speaking with someone who ABUSED her (her mother), so that would be a valid factor to her being depressed.

[positivelybeastly]

Assuming nobody in the marvel universe knows the extent of Hank's actions outside x-force and the quiet council, what do you think will happen if word got of what he did?

This is kind of a funny one, really.

So, as things stand, and to clarify your point, the only people who realistically know the extent of X-Force Beast's actions are the Quiet Council (Cypher, Xavier, Magneto, Apocalypse, Sebastian Shaw, Storm, Nightcrawler, Jean Grey, Emma Frost, Mystique, Kate Pryde, Exodus and Mr. Sinister, with later additions being Hope Summers, Colossus, Destiny, and Selene) and those on X-Force (Wolverine, Omega Red, Laura Wolverine, Sage, Domino, Deadpool, Kid Omega).

We also have to imagine that they probably told other people, i.e. Jean probably told Cyclops, but that's basically up to the writers deciding if they want to ever make this whole mess part of a joined up story rather than one long Percyverse tale.

So, what happens if words gets out? Uhh, honestly, it's up to the writer, but logically speaking, not a lot.

Beast can basically just bounce and leave the X-Men behind forever, and no-one's really gonna say anything, mostly because to incriminate him is to incriminate themselves. Rule one of black ops is that you don't leave evidence, so even if they know, they have to either be a witness - and admit that they let it happen - or present evidence which we have no real reason to believe exists. I imagine the space prison probably got vaporised because Krakoa did not want that to ever get out. Terra Verde had nothing linking him to it. I imagine telepathic knowledge isn't admissible in court.

Like, imagine if Jean wants to try and get Hank prosecuted. How does she know? Well, when she found out he'd killed a small country, she held him up in the air and said mean things to him for a bit, then walked away from the situation in a cloud of moral superiority. She later then proceeded to hold civil conversations with him, touch his arm in a quasi-affectionate manner, and plead with him to see good again.

The panel cuts it off, but the art shows her touching Hank's arm.

Fairly certain that man has a kill count in the hundreds of thousands, Jeannie, you sure you want to go with this tack?

Especially in the wake of a shit ton of in-universe Orchis propaganda that's been demonising mutants non-stop, if it were to come out to the public now, people would probably just dismiss it as a complete fabrication, tbh. Hank is one of the few mutants with a legitimately good reputation, so he'd survive it.

He would probably have to deal with some questions from the Avengers, though, especially if he wanted to work with them again or the allegations came from a reputable source, like an X-Man of good name like Storm or Wolverine.

But again. They were both perfectly fine with the Terra Verde genocide. They were both completely fine with the space prison, and a ton of other fucked up shit that Beast did. The point at which it became a problem that needed to be solved is when it affected one of them (the Wolverine mind control saga). That does not reflect well on them, so frankly, I don't think any of them are likely to be selfless enough to point the finger at Hank.

If a writer really wanted to push this to the extreme end of the scale, Hank would probably end up at the Hague International Court of Justice for genocide and a litany of other crimes, and be looking at life imprisonment or the death penalty, depending on what the Marvel universe's version of the Hague doles out. But again, it'd be a shaky court case with a severe lack of witnesses or evidence. It'd basically just be a lot of X-Men pointing at Hank and saying, hey, that guy did fucked up shit that I was fine with him doing until it affected me.

The funny thing is, that X-Force Beast kind of won. Like, I imagine he's going to get gutted by Wolverine at the end of X-Force, that's not really something I doubt, but if the prevailing theory that a younger, more heroic Hank is going to take his place comes true, then he basically just got to do it all with fairly minor repercussions in the grand scheme of things.

Oh no, he's 20 years younger, in the prime of his life, and no longer shackled to the X-Men! Oh no! How awful! How much of a punishment can you logically mete out to a war criminal who doesn't even remember doing what he did, for whom there's no evidence of his actions? You can't really punish young clone Hank for what X-Force Beast did, that's not really justice.

There's been some speculation that X-Force Beast left behind his Avengers era back-up out of romance or love, out of guilt and nostalgia, out of a subtle feeling that he is in the wrong and the only way to fix himself is to go all the way back. And I tend to agree! That's not a bad character beat! It makes sense!

But a part of me is waiting for the reveal that he chose to leave that back-up because there's no way that baby Hank, whose memories end with the Avengers, can be brought to justice for his older self's crimes. We already did this with Cyclops back during the All-New X-Men days. X-Force outplayed them all, and got to do essentially what he wanted.

I don't know if Ben Percy has realised this, because frankly I don't believe he thinks that deeply on what he writes on X-Force, but if things shake out the way his foreshadowing indicates, his villain won.

Maybe that's his final bit of commentary on the CIA? Iunno. I couldn't give less of a fuck about the half-baked crap he's shovelling while he writes a tired Wolverine vs. Sabretooth retread. In-universe, it just means every other writer has a baked in excuse to ignore the bumblefuck bullshit he's been peddling for 5 years.

The only real consequence of all of this is that Beast basically can't interact with the X-Men again unless they retcon that it was all a mind control slug or some bullshit, and . . . like, I like a lot of his relationships with the other X-Men, but they have not been conducting themselves well or been particularly good friends to Hank for close to 20 years now, so I'm fine with that, honestly. Hank's lucky in that he's a versatile character with enough relationships and friendships outside of the X-Men that he could exist for another 60 years, not talk to another X-Man, and still be swimming in stories.

[theculturedmarxist]

[...]

In Ukraine, the West has some intellectual understanding that the war is a war of attrition, but the power of the WSC discourse is such that this is frequently lost sight of. In many ways this isn’t surprising. The WSC—the Liberal mindset at war—looks at conflict as it looks at everything: from a lofty position of complete understanding, based on the universal applicability of a priori normative assumptions. The Liberal mindset as a whole, recall, sees itself as “practical”, and scorns long study and detailed analysis. It sees learning for its own sake as largely pointless, since it knows all the important answers anyway. Universities are only important for acquiring certificates an knowing where to find the detail: technical training is a joke, and for inferior mortals. So Liberal society admires the smart person rather than the intelligent, the quick-witted rather than the expert, the advocate who argues well on the basis of a quick scan, rather than the academic expert with deep knowledge.. It exalts the financier who makes a fortune out of speculating in pharmaceutical stocks above the doctors and researchers who have actually done the work.

The Liberal mindset is thus resistant to learning and the analysis of experience, not least because that might force a modification of some a priori ideas. And these ideas tend to be normative, emotional and moralistic. That’s not surprising: anyone with even a faint acquaintance with psychological research on decision-making knows that our fundamental decisions and opinions are overwhelmingly initially arrived at in the unconscious mind first. The conscious mind seems to function largely as a mechanism for providing an intellectual and rational gloss to opinions already formulated on subjective and emotional grounds. So the Liberal mind, uninterested in detail, unwilling to learn, and working from largely-arbitrary a priori ideas, responds emotionally and often angrily, to ideas and even facts that challenge its gut reactions. Don’t confuse me with facts, I know what I think, as the late Mrs Thatcher said on more than one occasion.

I’ve pointed out a number of times that the Liberal mind, in its many, often conflicting, forms, is inherently normative and moralising. This means that it responds to questions, debate and criticism not by engaging with the issues, but by shrill personal attacks on those who disagree. There’s nothing more satisfying and addictive, after all, than the feeling that you are superior to others by virtue of your normative assumptions, and that you you therefore think and speak on a higher plane than those who would try to confuse you with facts. This seems to be a universal tendency within the factions of the Western Security Complex, for all its internal incoherence : I have, for example, never seen a thoughtful and carefully argued piece of WSC punditry on Ukraine, and I don’t expect to see one on Gaza. A superior attitude of moral and normative judgement does service instead, and relieves you of the need to actually know, and even more learn, things.

So try to explain the tangled history of Ukraine and Russia since 1991, and you are a Putin-loving Russian agent. Try to explain the background to the recent coups in West Africa, and you are an apologist for neoimperialism. Try to explain the probable causes of the Hamas attack, and you are a sympathiser with baby-killers. Some of you may already have had exchanges like the following:

So why do you think this attack took place?

A combination of fifteen years of imprisonment and sanctions, and a sense of betrayal by Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.

But you can’t possibly say that justifies all this killing!

We’re not talking about justifications, but explanations.

So you refuse to condemn Hamas then?

You asked me why I thought the attacks took place.

Ah, you must support Hamas.

The advantage of this kind of ad hominem, normative approach is precisely that you don’t need to know anything: indeed, knowledge itself is suspect because it might eat away at your sense of moral and intellectual superiority. Practitioners of this tactic feel (or seem to feel) the certainty of Knowledge about the world that we associate with revealed truth, or the writings of the Gnostics. It follows that everything contrary that cannot be denied can be, and must be, assimilated to this Knowledge, which is a scheme of thought (?) forcibly imposed onto a complicated world. Those who Know, for example, that Washington is behind everything of importance that happens in the world have already decided that the war in Gaza must have been carefully planned by Biden and Netanyahu to provide an excuse for, well, let’s say attacking Iran. All contrary evidence can simply be dismissed as Iranian/Russian propaganda that the rest of us are stupid enough to accept, or very clever western disinformation. And those who Know that evil must be fought wherever it happens, looked at one video from Gaza, freaked out and demanded that the Palestinians be punished. Don’t confuse me with facts, I know what I think.

The Liberal tendency to impose prefabricated schemes on the world based on selective and often erroneous moralised readings of the past, and a priori assumptions about how the world works, has been fully on display in Ukraine, and I’ll therefore go through that in a bit of detail, with side-glances elsewhere. Let’s look first at the nature of the fighting itself (the theatre), then the wider strategic questions related to Europe and the West, then the strategic questions at the level of the world itself. In each case, it will be clear that the WSC is right out of its depth, and has no real idea what’s going on.

First of all, let’s look at Russian tactics and military objectives. Because the WSC can only conceive of others doing what it already knows about and has practised, it follows that other nations must in fact be doing what the West would do, even if they say they are not, and there’s no evidence that they are. The image the West has of large-scale military operations is pretty much limited to Gulf War 2,0, with its rapid movement of armoured units and capture of territory. For pundits, including military ones, that’s pretty much all they know, so it follows that it must have been what the Russians were planning in 2021. The fact that the Russians did not capture much territory therefore means that they failed. It doesn’t matter how many times the Russians explain that their concept of operations has nothing in it about capturing territory: they must be lying or simply wrong. So the WSC is convinced that the Russians were seeking a reply of Gulf War 2,0 and it failed.

But then there is talk of attrition warfare. We think we know what attrition warfare is: it was the terrible waste of life for no strategic gain that characterised World War 1, or at least 1915-17 on the Western Front. So in this case the Russians are like the Germans of 1914 who attempted to win the war by large-scale manoeuvre operations and failed, and then dug in. At which point the Russians then become the British and French, engaging in pointless attritional attacks, except that they aren’t really the Allies, they are the Germans, because everybody knows that in 2023 they are defending, except how can you engage in attritional warfare if you are defending, so they must in fact be attacking, which means that they must be suffering enormous casualties (60,000 casualties on the first day of the Somme in 1916, remember?) which means Russian Generals must be callous monsters trying to overwhelm the Ukrainians by human wave attacks, even if there’s no evidence of that actually happening. Trying to explain to a WSC pundit how an Army can have a posture of operational offense and tactical defence means that you are a buddy of Putin. Trying to explain what Hamas is up to militarily would cause the WSC’s collective head to explode, although if they had been paying attention they would already have looked at the tactics of ISIS in Iraq. Don’t confuse me with facts, I know what I think.

Because we know a lot about the Russian Army, or we think we do. There were all those popular histories of the eastern front in World War 2, written from interviews with German generals. Oh, and Stalin’s purges and the catastrophes of 1941, and the terror of the Red Army advancing into Germany in 1945, and Afghanistan, and then it all went wrong in the 1990s, and there were the Chechen Wars and nothing much has happened since, and the Russians are undisciplined barbarians who can’t stand up to western-trained forces operating western equipment. So if they haven’t collapsed they soon will. And of course the Ukrainian people will soon rise up against the conquerors and take to the deserts and mountains of Ukraine, forming tribal militias as they did in Afghanistan. Or something. Don’t confuse me with facts, I know what I think.

What’s clear for those with eyes to see is that the War is taking off in ways it has no right to. Drones and precision missiles, to name the most obvious, have changed everything. But the WSC, incapable by definition of learning anything, is simply helpless in front of all this, and so talks about what it knows and understands. A retired Major General from a western Army may perhaps have commanded a battalion on actual operations, and seen platoon-level actions, using small arms and light weapons with air support. Few western nations are actually capable of deploying a functioning Brigade-sized unit on operations, whereas the Russians have been chewing up whole Brigades recently. So people talk about what they know: capturing a village, attacking a bridge, attacking an airfield, daring special forces operations. All these are peripheral to a war of deliberate attrition, where the Russian aim is to grind down the Ukrainian forces and then move forward, as they did against the Germans eighty years ago. It’s impossible for western military experts (OK, that’s controversial, I know) to actually conceive of a war in which Ukraine has lost more men killed than the entire active and reserve strength of any European military. Even on the Russian side, and taking the most-likely figure of 30,000 dead, then with those casualties, as well as the severely wounded, the British Army of today would cease to exist.

The link to the higher levels is clear enough. The WSC certainly has long-term aspirations but it’s incapable of carrying out long-term plans. It’s fixated on the next move, whilst the Russians are busy re-designing the chessboard. The Russian view has been consistent for fifteen years, and has almost certainly hardened substantially over the last year and a half. They want the US out of Europe, Europe itself quiescent and respectful, and a large, disarmed area that they control, between them and the nearest western military power. This is an investment for the next twenty-five years, at least, and if it takes a bit of time, it takes a bit of time. Ukraine in a sense is collateral damage in all of this, since the Russians probably have no very precise idea of what they want there, so long as it is consistent with the overall plan. And rather than trying to understand what that plan might be, the WSC ignores that level entirely, and toasts the capture of a village, the destruction of an aircraft and the despatch of a clapped-out howitzer, as though these things were important. If they think of the higher level at all, it’s in the context of fantasies of the attempted re-creation of the Soviet Union. But don’t confuse me with facts, I know what I think.

And finally, even the new security order in Europe that the Russians are seeking to establish is only part of the ultimate goal: a world where political, military and economic power is more evenly distributed than it is now, and there is no hegemony. Moreover, it is a goal that they broadly share with other nations, with whom they cooperate on certain issues, to the extent that the various nations find it useful: a relatively subtle concept the WSC simply cannot understand. So far as I can tell, this has pretty much passed by the WSC by, for all that they whine and moan about unfair Chinese competition and the Wagner group operating in Africa. At their best, countries with a Liberal pragmatic tradition, like Britain, can actually be highly effective in the short term. But as you would expect, the same countries are terrible at any long-term vision, and find it culturally very difficult to entertain, let alone put into practice. In diplomacy, and often in war, the British tradition is of series of tactical victories crowned by a strategic defeat, because they were never able to produce and stick to a coherent vision. And this is the mentality which has taken over the whole western political class recently, with its obsession with the news cycle and the next tweet. It isn’t even that the Russians are playing seven-dimensional chess, it’s just that, like many other countries, they have some idea where they want to go, and all we know is that we don’t like it, and it’s not fair and we want to stop it. But that’s not a policy.

And now the WSC has pivoted effortlessly from Ukraine (with a brief diversion into francophone Africa) into Gaza. In the course of twenty-four hours, Substacks I receive that talked with utter certainty about what was happening in Ukraine, have begun talking with equal certainty about Hamas and Gaza, and largely echoing each other. Well, I have some experience in the region and have been involved a bit with its problems, but I don’t claim the kind of in-depth knowledge that would allow me to pontificate like that. But in Gaza, as in Ukraine, the WSC is unlimited in its confidence in itself, even as it is limited by what it knows and what it understands, and by its very feeble capacity for learning. If it pontificates endlessly, it is because so many business models depend on it. But they know what they think: please don’t confuse them with facts.

[quordleona03]

Charles Emerson Winchester III

I'd be the first to admit *looks at @topshelf2112-blog * looks at @cuddleswinchester * well okay, no, in this company I would never be the first to admit - that Charles Emerson Winchester has points to admire.

He's brave. I don't mean physically - he quite clearly has a strong reluctance to put his physical safety at risk if anyone else can be got to do it for him. CEW would never have gone out into the compound to disarm and unexploded bomb or offered to climb down a ladder from a chopper to collect a wounded man or run out into the compound under fire to open the gate to save the POWs. But he does have moral courage, in that he won't take undeserved credit when he knows he screwed up: he won't lie for Colonel Baldwin to traduce Margaret: he admits he's hooked on amphetamines when Hawkeye and BJ make him face it (and kicks the addiction).

He's ... generous within his own boundaries. Which include an absolute loathing for being asked for money. But when the gang are trying to figure out how to help Radar pay the taxes due on the O'Reilly family farm, Charles is the first one to suggest a simple solution: they just send him the money.

He loves his sister Honoria and in her honour will blast to the fiery pits of hell anyone he hears mocking a stutterer. (You want to know what Cousin Alfred did? Mocked Honoria's stutter at a family dinner 20 years ago. Charles has neither forgiven nor forgotten.)

That he's a good surgeon who does his best work even when in a M*A*S*H unit where he was transferred in an emergency and kept by the joint vengefulness of Colonel Baldwin and the villainy of Colonel Potter, is not really a count for virtue, but it is why Potter keeps him there and Hawkeye and BJ put up with him.

But.

Charles Emerson Winchester is a stone-cold bigot. He doesn't like anyone who immigrated to the US more recently than his family: specifically Italian immigrants, Irish immigrants, or anyone "swarthy-skinned". The incident where he assists Colonel Potter in trappping a racist would have been absolutely unbelievable except: all Charles was required to do was loan his oak-leaf clusters and the request was made by his commanding officer, not by Hawkeye or BJ. (He may also have actively disliked an officer who got rid of the black soldiers under his command by sending them into danger, however much he sympathised with opposition to integrating the army.)

Winchester never apologises for his bigotry and is never shown actually having a change of heart: the incident where he apologises to Honoria for his angry opposition to her marriage to an Italian, the engagement is safely over anyway and he's comforting her hurt at being jilted.)

Winchester also has an upper-class superiority complex. He is the kind of born-from-wealth/wealthy rich-are-different man: he "works for a living" because he wants to be a surgeon, but his goal is a prestigious position at a prestigious Boston hospital, which he regards as his as of right and the only reason he might be denied it, is he's stuck at an army base in Korea for a year.

He loves Martine LeClerc, but won't pursue the relationship because she's not appropriate kind of people for his family.

He likes Donna just fine, but is screwed up at the thought that he might actually have married her - until it turns out he didn't.

He regards Margaret Houlihan as a friend, but he can absolutely see why Donald Penobscot's mother is reluctant to welcome "a Houlihan" into the family and supports Mrs Penobscot in not recommending Margaret as a memmber to the Daughters of the American Revolution, for reasons which he explains to Margaret, till she threatens to do him personal damage.

While he came to respect the medical staff he worked with, he still thinks he's better than any of them and entitled to things they aren't, purely by reason of his having been born into an upper-upper class family.

Charles is quite capable of being charming when he wants to be. And wealth, as a character in some lesbian detective novel noted to me at some point, wealth is very charming. If Charles wants to be gracious and generous and charming, he can be: he knows how. His upbringing taught him to be chivalric to ladies and his natural inclination is to be nice to pretty girls (I know David Ogden Stiers was gay: but to me CEW comes across as very heterosexual) - but he moves (or he would prefer to) in a world where the lower classes are servants, and the middle classes exist to him as patients if they can afford him.

I would not like Charles Emerson Winchester if I met a man like him in real life (I have met these men in real life, and I know). And a man like CEW would arrange his life so as to meet as few people like us as possible. He's part of the wealthy elite, and he feels he perfectly deserves to be there.

So: why do we like him? Is it possible to write him true to how he is and make him dislikeable? If not, why not? If so, how?