#that assume statements exist in a vacuum

[starcurtain]

I don't have time to give this thought the full discussion it deserves, but lord help me, I'm begging people to be able to grasp the concept of context when engaging with takes they find in the wilds of fandom spaces.

Just had to block someone I followed for a long time on twitter because I was forced to see "Yaoi can never be heteronormative because it's always two men" on my timeline, and honestly this is such a perfect encapsulation of fandom spaces' complete inability to handle nuance and keep issues inside their actual contexts that it just triggered my fight or flight response. 😂

"Masculinity [itself nothing more than a social construct] isn't inherently required for queer men or mlm relationships" and "Yaoi developed as a genre catering primarily to heterosexual women's fantasies, thus has a long history of projecting heteronormative expectations onto queer men's relationships" are both statements that can and should coexist, just like statements such as "Dismissing female characters as nothing more than fanservice undermines their narrative contributions" can and should coexist with "The designs of female characters rarely allow women the freedom to exist outside of sexual appeal to men."

If you can't consider an issue from within the full scope of its social context, you're not ready to participate in the discourse!

Please... be quiet...

[trogort]

As I enter my 6th month of unemployment I can't help but come to a conclusion which has begun to greatly trouble me. I only exist as far as I am convenient to others. I don't really think this is a specifically profound observation, obviously you aren't going to spend time with somebody who you actively dislike, but in the past I've always felt like there has been a sort of balance when it comes to making yourself available to others, and others making themselves available to you. I don't know what has changed, recently, I can only assume it's me, but I no longer feel that balance. I feel like I'm a footnote, an asterisk, somebody who, when around, is welcomed, but not important enough outside of that. To capitalism, I'm little more than a means to an end. A cog designed from birth to convert labor into value for people I will never meet in exchange for the privilege of continued existence. To my friends I provide companionship and entertainment, insofar as I make myself readily available, when it is convenient. To lose this convenience, to the workforce, to my friends, feels like a resignation of my existence in itself. Maybe I'm just tired of all the effort. Maybe it's just the natural drift apart of things as I age. And so I put in more effort, and I try harder, and I'm still left with the bitter sting that once that well of exertion dries up, all I'll have done is waste more and more of my limited time.

This is a selfish line of thinking, one that I don't particularly enjoy, but one that I'm stuck in. Why do I get the feeling that, were I to inexplicably disappear, the vacuum left would be quickly cemented over with the next most convenient person to have around. Don't take this as a statement of intent, of course, there are far too many important things in my life to head too far down that train of thought. But it's an exercise I find myself unhealthily returning to lately far too often. Truly there is no intent with these words, other than just getting them out of my head in the hopes that making them real could reveal some sort of truth. The format of which is inherently selfish. A long and storied history of Posting Things Online which are likely better left unsent, such is the rambling nature of this stream-of-consciousness rant.

[pikahlua]

I don't know if this is a right time for this ask or not, but I'm genuinely asking. What other "charitable" conclusion can you get out of Bakugo's death besides Horikoshi jobbing him (as well as all the other heroes who were with Bakugo) to make Deku sound cool or something?

I'm sorry but making Shiggy scared for 2 seconds isn't exactly a flex.

You told us to be "charitable" but I don't see anything else beside Bakugo getting ridiculed for the haters satisfaction and I'm not even trying to be mean to you or go against what you are saying. I don't just really understand where you are coming from. Hero academia is a shounen manga for entertainment so obviously fights and their results are more important than almost anything else.

Look, I just woke up. I'm not happy. I'm gonna try to contain myself, but I'm not happy. Unless you're a particularly young person who isn't used to coming to your own conclusions, I'm just really annoyed. You're putting it on me to assuage your insecurities. You're adding all this unnecessary baggage onto Horikoshi's statement. "I killed Bakugo to show Shigaraki's overwhelming power," is a statement that doesn't have to exist in a vacuum. You and I read the same manga I assume. Please just try to imagine what writing choices led to the final product. Horikoshi obviously made MANY decisions about his story to get that final product, and they all connect to each other. Maybe it's true--though I seriously doubt it is--that Horikoshi sat down one day and was like "Ah yes, I know what will give those Twitter bros specifically what they and no one else want!" and "jobbed" Katsuki to humiliate him. What I would say is far more LIKELY that happened is that Horikoshi considered a lot of unresolved elements in his narrative and came to decisions about them in a haphazard order, and now he's having to use hindsight to try to make sense of them all and come up with trivia to fill this fanbook.

Let's say one of his early decisions was this idea to use Katsuki's death to demonstrate Shigaraki's power. There's no guarantee that this WAS an early decision, but let's just imagine it for argument's sake. Here's how that thought process could have gone:

"Hmm, I need a way to demonstrate Shigaraki's overwhelming power. I suppose the best way to do that would be to kill a character. Who would be the best option? Ooh Katsuki would! Because he's so powerful in the narrative it would shock the audience if he died! But then how can I use his death to solve these other loose threads? Oh, I know! I can use his death to showcase this fundamental and soft truth about his character that would be hard to make a scene involving anyone else about. That would be beautiful. And I can't have him stay dead, he's just too stubborn, obviously. So I can use his death as a symbolic moment, yesssss. It will be glorious! A moment where he can literally defy death and despair and bring HIMSELF back to life! As a new and even more powerful hero! This would be a great opportunity to give him a strength upgrade! Yeah, then he can be the one to defeat AFO and take All Might's mantle, maybe even save All Might too! That would cap off his story perfectly! Yay I'm excited!"

Sound like I'm adding a lot to his innocuous statement in a fanbook? Well it's no more of an assumption than what you're making. You assume Horikoshi wants to ridicule Katsuki, not use this as an opportunity for his character growth. You're unimpressed by the fact that Katsuki spooked Shigaraki when NO ONE ELSE, NO ONE BUT IZUKU accomplished that. The reason it's important Katsuki scared Shigaraki is because it was FORESHADOWING. It showed us Katsuki would come back to life later. His strength upgrade would have to be explored. He would likely be a trump card for the late game. No one else achieved a strength close to that. You claim everyone else was jobbed all the same as Katsuki, but no one else was such a threat that Shigaraki panicked and killed them, no one else threatened him, no one else unhinged AFO's side of his personality. There's a REASON for that, and it was to hype up KATSUKI HIMSELF!

"Hero academia is a shounen manga for entertainment so obviously fights and their results are more important than almost anything else."

Maybe partially so, but I fundamentally disagree with a lot of dudebros on the internet as to why. Sure, the spectacle is part of the fun, but shounen battles are at their core dialogues. One of the reasons shounen anime is so influential in media worldwide is because it provides an easy blueprint for how to make battles compelling, and just a bland fight scene with no context behind it is not what draws people worldwide to watch shounen anime. Good cinematic fight scenes require there to be a story informing them and a progression of that story in the fight. If you really think everything boils down to "two or more people fight and someone wins and shows they're stronger yaaaaay" then I'd say go on a journey of learning about writing and gain a new perspective. Look, a quick search easily pulled up this article:

Fight Scene Tip #4: Show Character Development  Writing great action starts with the core of every good script: character. Action is unspoken dialogue. When words can no longer be used and something must be done, action is taken. Thus, we have a fight scene. The action stems from the development of the characters: their journey up until that point, how they’re feeling in the moment, their relationship with who they’re fighting with, level of fighting skill, and if the character has the desire to actually fight or hurt others. Their intention in the fight drives the action.

Framing fight scenes as "their results are more important than almost anything else" sounds to me like you're emotionally invested in a specific result in just this case, because I doubt you really believe this. If you truly believe this, why would you even read MHA or any manga for that matter? Why wouldn't you just look up the results of all the fights and be satisfied with that? Why would you watch an action movie and not just read a summary to get the fight results? You act as though losing a fight can only possibly serve the purpose of destroying the reputation of the character who lost, but Izuku has lost some fights too you know. His losses were important, and I never thought any less of him when he lost. I recognized those as the growth moments they were, and the story even framed some of those battle losses as narrative wins, like in the sports festival. Speaking of the sports festival, do people deride Shinsou for his loss? Does anyone shit on Shouto for coming in second place? Further, are Yaoyorozu and Tokoyami both jokes for losing in the joint training simulation arc? Is All Might a laughing-stock for putting up his last stand against All For One in the final battle arc?

There will always be bad faith actors who try to make you feel bad about something you love, especially on the internet. Unfortunately, to enjoy your time on the internet, you're going to have to learn to tune them out. Just because they're laughing at Katsuki doesn't mean their opinions hold any value. Jeez, just the other day I had to clarify a statement because some assholes somewhere tried to twist "if you kindly read volume 42 and imagine it" into "use your brain, dumbass." They're wrong. Don't let them rile you up. Don't give their dumbassery any credence in your heart. It's up to you, not anyone else, not even Horikoshi, to determine what MHA means to you.

[pissvortex]

You said you don't agree with Israel existing at all, which I understand given the circumstances it was created under. Would you consider the statement "Jewish people deserve a homeland somewhere, even if it's not where Israel is today" incorrect or offensive? I'm presenting that statement in a relative vacuum; this is assuming another people wouldn't need to be displaced for that homeland to exist.

i am opposed to the idea of an ethnostate period. there is nowhere on earth that you can just "set up" a new nation for a specific kind of person, that's not how populations work. we have seen specifically in the case of israel that they prioritize (people who are considered) white jews specifically. israel was not created to protect jews, it was created to establish a white colony

[cerastes]

Can you explain what you dislike from Pepe's design? I'm fairly neutral on her, and sure there are plenty of more interesting NPCs people have wanted, but I'm honestly shocked at how vehement some people (not you specifically) are about her.

This might sound purist but she does not look or feel like an AK character in the slightest. I don't mean that from a rigid standpoint of purism, I really don't, it's just, when a friend showed me her art months ago (this character has existed in the game since before this banner), I asked him what game was that character from, and he said, no, yeah, Arknights. I thought he was pulling my leg until he showed me exactly where she shows up in the game (not in Global as of the making of this post) and it was really jarring.

Basically, there's two main pillars here:

The first is that I am not the demographic. I don't think Namie is a bad artist but I'm not the demographic for her art, so to speak. It's merely a matter of taste and I don't think her art is bad, it's just not for me, and that's not even an absolutist statement, I like Mizuki a lot! But yeah, in general, I'm not the demographic.

The second is that the design just feels like... Very alien to the setting of Arknights, putting her more in the Conviction category (who is explicitly a joke character) than anything else. Being different is not bad at all, but I think there's got to be at least some cohesion in either the design philosophy, shapes, or elements in a design that grounds it as Someone that I could feasibly meet in this world, even in the case of eccentricity. If you showed me Peppe in a vacuum without me knowing she's an AK character off rip, I would Not At All guess she is an AK character. There's a lot going on with that design, and nothing conveys "Arknights" besides the monitor on her thigh. She's closer in design to a Final Fantasy Tactics Advance character than she is to an Arknights character:

Even the more cutesy designs, such as Suzuran or Eyjafjalla, have surface tacticool design choices included in them to ground them as characters that live in a world like Terra and work with its dangerous, hostile elements, be that merely the wilderness or the deadly cancer rocks, with Suzuran wearing several tactical/survivalist pouches and Eyja having a gasmask as a collar and heavy duty goggles on her arm.

Now, it's absolutely no surprise that Namie was going to design a limited character, in fact, I'd say it was inevitable: Namie is one of the most popular and beloved artists that have worked in Arknights, people have waited in lines for literal hours at events to meet her and buy something from her, and her characters are fan favorites in Arknights. I'm just a bit surprised that this is the design they roll out as the limited one, and I'll assume they were lax or just didn't check up on her design choices at all since She's A Big Name, and reckoned, we let her cook however she wants because she's always cooked success so far, but I think a little bit of a review process would've benefited the design.

I hope this explains my opinion on the character's design clearly. I don't feel negatively towards Namie, I just think this one ain't it, chief.

[leikeliscomet]

Revisiting the term alloace again. I've spoken bout this already but now I think I can put into better words why I don't use it for myself and why discussions by both alloaces and arospecs about alloromantic asexuality is really lacking and underdeveloped (this is gonna be another long one):

First of all, semantics. The term is generally used as nothing more than a dating asexual or 'romantic asexual'. There's a large focus on alloromantic asexuality as the action of dating whilst asexual instead of the experience of romantic attraction with little to no sexual attraction or the experience of having predominantly romantic attraction outside of non-platonic, non-familial relationships. Dating is treated in a vacuum from how romance is represented in society and factors like gender roles, money and desirability. This leads to generalised and frankly incorrect statements like 'alloaces can just date' 'alloaces are seen as pure' 'people see romance without sex are pure' without a single look at how romance is shaped and enforced and the fact it's possible to be 'alloromantic' and still experience romantic based discrimination e.g. interracial couples, the policing of 'homosexual behaviours', the MacKinnon Innis study which showed homophobes admitted to homophobia even if gay people didn't have sex. Basically, it shows the same limitations as 'allosexual' in the sense we've taken the experience of (white) cis straight 'allo allos' and assumed it to be true of all people in the 'allo' category, in this case that the privileges of heteromanticism applies to every alloace regardless of context. It focuses privilege based on how someone is aspec instead of how different factors affect how they're aspec. Gay alloaces won't have privilege over aroaces or aroallos in a homophobic society because gay romance is not the one being enforced and when it's a form of love and romance that's seen as inherently deviant. A Black alloace won't hold privilege over a white aroace or white aroallo and be seen as 'purer' or 'cleaner' because racial sexual purity doesn't apply to Black people and our desires are seen as inherently animalistic. The benefits of alloromanticism are exclusive and instead of unpacking this nuance it's just generalisations about how 'easy' the alloaces get it.

The ace exclusionism movement heavily centred cishet asexuality as all asexuality was or could ever be, that all aces are cishet and so not lgbt and 'invading' the community from 'real' queer people. And whilst there was rightful pushback on it there hasn't really been much done in terms of how cishet asexuality became the face of all alloromantic asexuality. The 'You can't be heterosexual and asexual' rhetoric came from a good place but the repercussion of that was 'You can't be gay and asexual you're a homoromantic asexual actually' and it really isn't non-gay aces place to tell us how to identify and I'll explain later on how this is really backhanded. Whilst there's a large focus on affirming that cishet aces are queer the community hasn't done much for lesbian, gay, bi, pan aces, especially trans alloaces queerness within the community because it's assumed that because ace exclus would parrot 'only LGBT aces are LGBT' that gay and trans alloaces held some form of privilege in the 'ace discourse', even though ace exclus support was conditional and they still targeted LGBT aces anyway. There's loads of 'cishet aces are queer and valid' esque posts but you'll rarely find that for gay, lesbian, bi, pan and/or trans aces even though we're excluded from cishet society x2, from our romantic attraction to the same gender and asexuality. x3 for trans gay aces. Not to say cishet aces don't experience anything but that the rest of us won't ever access straightness or cisness. We'll never be seen as too cishet in any context because transphobic and homophobic society won't let us in in the first place.

Then there's the argument against alloaces 'existing' which came from ace exclus and certain gold-star/black stripe asexuals because asexual originally meant no attraction, so gay, bi and lesbian aces are just spectrums of lesbianism, homosexuality and bisexuality instead of 'true' asexuals but this flattens romantic and sexual attraction as being the same. From certain gold-star/black tripe factions there's the assumption we can just go to lesbian, gay and bi spaces instead of 'stealing' from the ace community with our alleged greediness, despite non-ace queer community helping shape the ace exclusionist movement to begin with. It's a weird and large contradiction in how the ace community is aware the queer allo community helped enable the ace exclsionist movement but then assuming gay alloaces can then go into gay allo spaces without any pushback 'because we're just gay'. It's also another contradiction when ace exclus will claim gay aces are just gays with no sex drive then assert sexless gay people are defanged, repressed and santised and so not 'really' gay anyway. The gap between anti-homoromanticism and anti biromanticism and anti-homosexuality and anti-bisexuality is a footstep. Puritans, queer ace exclusionists and 'anti allo' asexuals' anti-homoromantic stance is rooted in standard homophobia and compulsory sexuality. That attraction to the same gender is inherently sexual. The only difference is *how* this is used to pathologise queer people.

Alloace content almost exclusively focuses on dating but specifically ace-allo relationships and overall centring the needs of non-ace people in romantic pairings are inherently more important than the asexual partner. There's a large focus on how asexuals still have sex in romantic pairings without actually consulting our needs leaving sex-repulsed alloaces with barely anything to work with and sex-indifferent and sex favourable alloaces with the burden of being sexually available to non-ace people regardless of context or individual consent. Whilst the aroallo community seems to center unconventional standards of sex e.g. friends with benefits, non-monogamy, alloace content seems to focus on how asexuals can conform to romantic ones. The conclusion is that either alloaces need to 'compromise' aka participate in sex we don't want to have to be part of conventional romantic society or repress any romantic desires we have because romance 'can't' exist without sex. We're decentred in what was supposed to be for us in the first place.

Lastly, I don't like the idea of my romanticism just being a preference of who I date or an add-on of my asexuality. Speaking as a lesbian there's many parts of lesbianism that don't hinge on dating like how it affects gender. What it means to be butch, femme, stud, stemme etc. whilst asexual, what it means to reclaim masculinity and femininity when they've both been sexualised in specific contexts is a really interesting conversation that 'alloace' doesn't have the range to unpack of this and that's why I find it to be limited. I could also make a similar argument for bear, twink, butch queen, fem queen etc for gay men or bi and pan terms. To repeat the first point, from the stigmatisations of butchfemme, twinks, femboys etc. doesn't magically disappear if you're asexual and the constant giggling about gay love being cringe, amatornormative and essentially wrong from some arospecs in the community isn't gonna help us reach it any sooner.

I'd like to see less focus on dating and better push and support for gay, lesbian, pan and bi aces, especially ones who are trans. I'd like to put the asexual part back into asexual dating and asexual love and focus on what romantic pleasure looks like for alloaces instead of centering non-asexual people, more focus on unconventional romance like ace couples that don't want/have kids, non-monogamous ace couples where all parties are non-monogamous asexuals, aces in QPRs and long-term friendships, aces in platonic marriages, unmarried aces and ace4ace couples, looking at love and romance outside amatonormativity, support systems for alloaces who've experienced DV and SA in ace-allo couples, a strong coalition with the aroallo community on queer attraction and a strong coalition with the aroace community on rejecting conventional romances and love.

TL;DR; I'm alloace in theory but not practice. I'm an asexual lesbian, lesbian asexual, maybe homoromantic asexual but not an alloace, a 'romantic asexual' or 'an asexual that really likes romance and dating'. I am one as in I fit the definition but I have no strong attactment to it and it doesn't fully describe my experiences as a Black lesbian in a society that actively stigmatises and erases lesbian and Black love. There's no universal alloromantic asexual experience because romance just like sex has been/is shaped by various factors. It doesn't hurt to read queer theory on love and romance but also Black feminist and other feminist of colour works of love and romance before making large assumptions about alloaces. Read Michael Paramo!

[runabout-river]

I disagree that a sequel is necessary. While I see the potential for new storylines, the idea of introducing a completely new set of antagonists doesn’t appeal to me. Starting from scratch with villains can feel like a major challenge, and bringing back old ones would only lessen the impact of their original arcs. I don’t want to see previous antagonists resurrected, as it would feel forced and undermine the emotional weight of their defeats.

There's also the power vacuum left by the deaths of major characters, but that doesn’t automatically mean the story needs to continue. Sometimes, the best choice is to let things end naturally rather than create a new threat just to keep the series going.

Jujutsu Kaisen's ending might not be saved by a sequel. If Gege is tired of the universe, it could show in the quality of the continuation. Forcing a sequel when the creator might not be fully invested could result in something lackluster, and I’d hate to see the series lose what made it great in the first place. I also feel strongly about the need for Gege to rest, especially with the health concerns and breaks he had.

I prefer complete, well-rounded stories, and I’m concerned that a sequel would compromise that. In the end, I just don’t want a sequel to happen, as I believe Jujutsu Kaisen could have ended on a stronger note without needing to push the story further.

About the villains: would you say Sukuna's and Kenjaku's arcs are completely finished? Have they been used to their full potential?

Kenjaku eg. has a background connection with Yuji but no actual relationship with him in-story. There is no push and pull between those two and their past hasn't been dealt with either. Kenjaku also has no realtionship with Nobara and Megumi and only a small one with Gojo. As a villain he did much but his interpersonal connections were severly lacking except for Choso which was one-sided.

A potential sequel could present us the relationship and history with Kenjaku and Yuji that hadn't been dugged into until now. Not to forget Heian era history.

For Sukuna its a bit more complex. He had a deep relationship with Yuji and build one with Gojo during their fight. He showed a different side to him through his relationship with Uraume. But what was extremely missing and cut out in the end was a relationship with Megumi. Megumi's end to his own arc was also cut out.

In a potential JJK 2, Megumi dealing with Sukuna (in whatever form he would appear, a curse or trauma) would delve into that missing part of JJK which had existed since the Cursed Womb arc. What would also come from there is Sukuna's past and why he agreed to become cursed objects in the first place.

As a personal opinion, I would like new desaster curses eg a Death Curse. That would bring that curse-centred feeling back to JJK that was missing since Shibuya.

And of course, I wouldn't want a sequel that isn't made with passion either. If Gege has no desire or love for more stories of JJK (outside of maybe small chapters or light novels) than he shouldn't be forced to continue it. If he has health problems that's the same thing.

But just like me who simply assumes that Gege would love to continue the story, you assume that he wouldn't. But in reality we can't tell in any way what Gege thinks about this and if he even has a potentially bad health status. We get small glimpses of him, which is standard for mangaka, and there isn't much to go from there.

He said recently that he's happy the story ends. Yes, JJK will end with chapter 271. That's a statement of fact and can't necessarily be used to say a Part 2 won't come. In the past, sequel anouncements also took months if not years. We can't tell.

What I wanted to say at the end is, I don't think JJK is a well-rounded story. As it stands now, it has superflous plot elements that should've been trimmed down to make it a well-rounded story. Instead we had last chapter were we went through the fat so to speak and cut it off after the meat has already been cooked.

(Please don't roast me for my metaphor, I hate cooking)

There is a reason why "JJK Part 2" is a popular theory/demand and that's because there is room for one that most people have no problem seeing. I don't think that BHA and Demon Slayer had such big Part 2 feelings outside of a niche demand which always exists with all manga and anime that end.

So I don't think JJK would be pushed into more stories. I think it has the groundwork to build those naturally from everything the story has presented us during its run.

[augerer]

@girderednerve replied to your post coming out on tumblr as someone whose taught "AI bootcamp" courses to middle school students AMA:

did they like it? what kinds of durable skills did you want them to walk away with? do you feel bullish on "AI"?

It was an extracurricular thing so the students were quite self-selecting and all were already interested in the topic or in doing well in the class. Probably what most interested me about the demographic of students taking the courses (they were online) was the number who were international students outside of the imperial core probably eventually looking to go abroad for college, like watching/participating in the cogs of brain drain.

I'm sure my perspective is influenced because my background is in statistics and not computer science. But I hope that they walked away with a greater understanding and familiarity with data and basic statistical concepts. Things like sample bias, types of data (categorical/quantitative/qualitative), correlation (and correlation not being causation), ways to plot and examine data. Lots of students weren't familiar before we started the course with like, what a csv file is/tabular data in general. I also tried to really emphasize that data doesn't appear in a vacuum and might not represent an "absolute truth" about the world and there are many many ways that data can become biased especially when its on topics where people's existing demographic biases are already influencing reality.

Maybe a bit tangential but there was a part of the course material that was teaching logistic regression using the example of lead pipes in flint, like, can you believe the water in this town was undrinkable until it got Fixed using the power of AI to Predict Where The Lead Pipes Would Be? it was definitely a trip to ask my students if they'd heard of the flint water crisis and none of them had. also obviously it was a trip for the course material to present the flint water crisis as something that got "fixed by AI". added in extra information for my students like, by the way this is actually still happening and was a major protest event especially due to the socioeconomic and racial demographics of flint.

Aside from that, python is a really useful general programming language so if any of the students go on to do any more CS stuff which is probably a decent chunk of them I'd hope that their coding problemsolving skills and familiarity with it would be improved.

do i feel bullish on "AI"? broad question. . . once again remember my disclaimer bias statement on how i have a stats degree but i definitely came away from after teaching classes on it feeling that a lot of machine learning is like if you repackaged statistics and replaced the theoretical/scientific aspects where you confirm that a certain model is appropriate for the data and test to see if it meets your assumptions with computational power via mass guessing and seeing if your mass guessing was accurate or not lol. as i mentioned in my tags i also really don't think things like linear regression which were getting taught as "AI" should be considered "ML" or "AI" anyways, but the larger issue there is that "AI" is a buzzy catchword that can really mean anything. i definitely think relatedly that there will be a bit of an AI bubble in that people are randomly applying AI to tasks that have no business getting done that way and they will eventually reap the pointlessness of these projects.

besides that though, i'm pretty frustrated with a lot of AI hysteria which assumes that anything that is labeled as "AI" must be evil/useless/bad and also which lacks any actual labor-based understanding of the evils of capitalism. . . like AI (as badly formed as I feel the term is) isn't just people writing chatGPT essays or whatever, it's also used for i.e. lots of cutting edge medical research. if insanely we are going to include "linear regression" as an AI thing that's probably half of social science research too. i occasionally use copilot or an LLM for my work which is in public health data affiliated with a university. last week i got driven batty by a post that was like conspiratorially speculating "spotify must have used AI for wrapped this year and thats why its so bad and also why it took a second longer to load, that was the ai generating everything behind the scenes." im saying this as someone who doesnt use spotify, 1) the ship on spotify using algorithms sailed like a decade ago, how do you think your weekly mixes are made? 2) like truly what is the alternative did you think that previously a guy from minnesota was doing your spotify wrapped for you ahead of time by hand like a fucking christmas elf and loading it personally into your account the night before so it would be ready for you? of course it did turned out that spotify had major layoffs so i think the culprit here is really understaffing.

like not to say that AI like can't have a deleterious effect on workers, like i literally know people who were fired through the logic that AI could be used to obviate their jobs. which usually turned out not to be true, but hasn't the goal of stretching more productivity from a single worker whether its effective or not been a central axiom of the capitalist project this whole time? i just don't think that this is spiritually different from retail ceos discovering that they could chronically understaff all of their stores.

[carmen-berzattos]

I don't understand people's anger with his statement. he's been vocally pro-palestine for years and now I'm seeing people saying he's expressing neutrality?? it wasn't even neutral. it was condemning the actions of western countries feeding the pro-israel stance. it's an extremely nuanced issue and I feel like he was choosing his words very carefully for that reason.

also I hate trying to assume too much but his statement to me felt unfinished. i feel like hes probably being pressured to not be too outspoken right now because, like you pointed out, its dangerous. people have got to stop relying on celebrities to say perfect things and have all the right answers. it's obvious that he's pro-palestine! people are acting like his statement exists in a vacuum when it doesn't.

I know I said I will post these without commentary but I have a couple of things to add here:

I am not sure what people mean when they say he's been vocally pro-Palestine for years because I haven't seen that anywhere and I've been following him for years. If I'm missing something, please let me know. I know people have pointed out the "empire upon Jerusalem" and "occupier upon ancient land" lines in Swan Upon Leda, and those can definitely be interpreted as pro-Palestine, but they're not necessarily overt. There's wiggle room.

I also don't agree that it's a very nuanced issue at heart. At the core of it all it's settler colonialism. It's not a war, it's not a conflict, it's settler colonialism. Politically, that is complex to resolve, but at the heart of it it's very clear what we're dealing with here.

I will kind of agree with the second paragraph, though, about not taking the statement in the vacuum but I think that's a part of the issue.

[utah-criminal-defense-attorney]

What a Drug Distribution Lawyer Utah Can Do to Protect Your Freedom and Future

If you’re facing drug charges, especially for distribution, you need more than just legal help — you need a fighter. That’s where an experienced drug distribution lawyer Utah comes in. Whether you’re being investigated, recently arrested, or already charged, your future is on the line — and the right legal defense could mean the difference between prison and a second chance.

Understanding Drug Distribution Charges in Utah

Utah doesn’t go light on drug crimes. Distributing controlled substances — whether it’s prescription medication, marijuana, or harder narcotics — is treated as a felony. That means serious time, hefty fines, and a permanent stain on your record if convicted.

Unlike simple possession, distribution charges are often based on circumstantial evidence like the quantity of drugs found, scales, baggies, or even text messages. Prosecutors don’t always need to catch you in the act — they just need enough to convince a jury that you intended to distribute. That’s why hiring a drug crime lawyers Utah who knows how to challenge these assumptions is absolutely critical.

What a Drug Distribution Lawyer Utah Will Do for You

1. Investigate the Arrest Thoroughly

A strong defense starts with the facts. A good Utah criminal defense attorney near me will scrutinize every part of your arrest. Was there an illegal search? Did law enforcement have probable cause? Were your rights violated at any point? If the evidence was obtained improperly, your lawyer can fight to get it thrown out.

2. Challenge the Prosecution’s Evidence

In distribution cases, intent is everything. A skilled drug distribution lawyer Utah can argue that what the prosecution sees as “evidence of distribution” was actually for personal use, or even planted. Your attorney will challenge lab reports, witness statements, and police testimony to create doubt — and that doubt can lead to a reduced charge or dismissal.

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Sometimes, a plea deal makes sense — especially if it helps you avoid jail time or a felony record. Your lawyer can work to get charges reduced or recommend drug court or treatment programs instead of incarceration. With experience handling both drug crime lawyers Utah cases and broader Utah criminal defense attorney work, a sharp attorney knows when to push and when to pivot.

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More Than Just Drug Charges: A Holistic Defense Strategy

In my years as a narcotic defense attorney Utah, I’ve seen how drug charges are often just one piece of a person’s legal struggles. Sometimes, a drug arrest comes with an assault charge. Or a client may be facing the aftermath of an accident, looking for help from a personal injury law firm Utah.

That’s why I take a whole-person approach. If you’re also dealing with related issues — maybe you’re under investigation for violence, or you’ve suffered injuries while being arrested — I’ll work closely with colleagues who specialize in assault attorney Utah cases or Utah personal injury law. Your legal defense should never exist in a vacuum.

What You Should Do Right Now

If you’re searching for a Utah drug possession attorney or wondering, “How do I find the best Utah criminal defense attorney near me?”, the time to act is now. Drug distribution charges don’t just “go away.” Prosecutors build their cases fast — and you should, too.

Don’t talk to the police without legal representation. Don’t assume you’ll be fine just because it’s your first offense. And don’t wait until your court date to get help. The sooner you bring in a strong, strategic drug distribution lawyer Utah, the better your chances of protecting your freedom.

A Personal Note from a Defense Attorney Who’s Been There

I’ve worked with clients who felt like their world was falling apart — parents, students, business owners — all facing drug charges that threatened to destroy everything they’ve built. Some of them were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Others made mistakes, yes — but they didn’t deserve to have their lives written off.

Final Thoughts

Facing drug distribution charges in Utah can feel overwhelming — but you don’t have to go through it alone. With the right legal strategy, the support of an experienced drug distribution lawyer Utah, and a team that understands the full landscape of self-defense laws in Utah, Utah personal injury law, and criminal defense, you can take control of your future.

If you’re ready to fight back and protect your freedom, now is the time to act. You deserve a defense that sees the bigger picture — and won’t settle for anything less than the best possible outcome.

[amatorfilozofus]

Why ‘there’s no such thing as society’ is regarded with moral revulsion

I was searching the internet for Margaret Thatcher’s famous (or should I say infamous) quote that ‘there’s no such thing as society’ to find out what exactly did she say. During my search I have found an article by professor Hugh McLachlan entitled ‘Why ‘there’s no such thing as society’ should not be regarded with moral revulsion’. So this post is reply to that article.

The central point of the discussion is a quote from Margaret Thatcher:

“There is no such thing as society. There is a living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.”

Boris Johnson alluded to this quote when he said that the coronavirus crisis had proved there really was such a thing as society. Professor McLachlan claims “There is no apparent rational basis to his assertion.” which Johnson makes. And regarding the Thatcher quote he says we shouldn’t regard it “with moral revulsion, as some sort of expression or defence of individualistic selfishness”.

Firstly I think professor McLachlan misses the whole point of Johnson’s statement. Saying that the coronavirus crisis had proved there really is a society simply means that we are dependent on each other and must work together. It is not a metaphysical claim about there being such an object as ‘society’.

With regards to the Thatcher quote I don’t think people regard it with moral revulsion because she is making some kind of unacceptable metaphysical statement. The problem usually that people have with this quote is that it assumes that individual responsibility is everything. We are responsible for ourselves and we are responsible for our neighbours, but this is quite unfair since not everyone starts from the same place. Some are more fortunate, have wealthier parents, attend better schools and some have poorer parents and attend worse schools, and all Thatcher has to say about this is: “well you have to take responsibility for yourself”. People, who regard this quote with moral revulsion believe that this situation is not acceptable, and we must do something to level the playing field by introducing welfare measures to help those in need. This is just what Thatcher didn’t want to do. She cut welfare spending and weakened labour unions. Unemployment was high during her years in office, and inequality increased. But according to her philosophy this is not a problem since everyone is responsible for him or herself so if they are unemployed it’s their fault and not her policies’ fault which she is implementing since “there is no society”.

Professor McLachlan says at almost the end of the article: “There is no obvious logical connection between the opinion that society does not exist and any particular political or moral stances. In particular, there is no intrinsic association with it and selfishness or with any opposition to altruism, social solidarity and cooperation.” He might be right about this but this is not really the point, we don’t treat Thatcher’s quote in a vacuum; we associate it with her politics, so when someone is against this quote he or she is against a particular neoliberal political stance. “There is no society” doesn’t just mean that society does not exist; it means to many people “you are on your own”.

I think I could even stop here, since it seems to me the quotes are not about the metaphysical question of the existence of society, but I would like to continue because as I see Professor McLachlan has two arguments against the existence of society.

For the first one he start with discussing Emil Durkheim’s views: “He (Durkheim) argued that the objects of study in sociology are ways of acting, thinking and feeling, which he called “social facts”. He argued that because they can have a causal effect upon individuals, social facts are just as real and just as objective as natural physical objects and forces. We can be affected by, say, public opinion or inflation as well as by something like gravity. For Durkheim, society is the ultimate “social fact”.” Then he says: “Many sociologists would say that, on the contrary, what appears to each and all of us as “social reality” is, to a greater or lesser extent, subjective. It is a product of our own social interactions and the meanings we attach to them. On this account, societies are like the sorts of “imagined communities” that nations are sometimes said to be.” I agree that there might be a subjective element to how people see these “social facts” in their life but this doesn’t make them unreal. Durkheim’s examples are public opinion and inflation, but we can go on with the examples: high unemployment rate, high inequality, low social mobility etc. These things do have effects on the lives of individuals and it does not make them merely subjective that individual people have different personal experiences of them.

The other argument is borrowed from Karl Popper: “The celebrated philosopher of science Karl Popper argued that societies do not exist. According to him, such collective terms refer to concepts, to theoretical entities that we construct to try to explain what actually exists and occurs rather than to existing things themselves.” I don’t think we can make a clear demarcation where we have merely theoretical entities and where do we have something “real”. Are numbers real or only theoretical entities? Molecules used to be considered “just” theoretical entities, before with the advance of science they are detectable. But if someone doesn’t like these examples then what about the wave function in quantum mechanics? Is that merely a theoretical entity or is it real? If we have a good explanatory theory which uses the concept of “society” then we should use it, and it makes no sense to claim it’s not really real. This is like having a problem in physics which we can solve by calculation but then taking it all back because numbers are not real.

In summary I don’t want to argue for or against the metaphysical existence of society. I think it is useful to discuss things like inflation, unemployment, social mobility, and when we discuss such things we usually use the word “society”. For me the usefulness of the word is enough to legitimate its use, and I think it is not fruitful to go metaphysical and ask “but does it really exist?”

[bestworstcase]

Both gods created humans together but the god of Darkness is the one who gave them magic.

Even if BOTH brothers made the cat, maybe they don’t know it was two ppl?

The god of Darkness Creating CC after what he says in the lost fable, something about how the god of light might rule over creation but he’s not the only one who CAN create, makes a lot of sense. If he and he only made CC without any of his brothers input to prove he could make something besides the Grimm.

This isn’t disbarring with your earlier posts or about Salem I’m spouting out ideas under the guidelines of the brother gods are involved

see this is the kind of engagement with ‘word of god’ that i appreciate, because it’s thoughtful. i do think it’s a lot more likely that a statement that also included the phrase “humans and stuff” (ghdhsk) is meant to be vague, and i don’t think there’s much narrative punch in an “actually, two!” reveal (like why bother, most everyone is going to assume that anyway), so my inclination right now is to assume that the cat is correct on the number.

i’ve not talked about it as much, but my second-place theory has always been that the god of darkness made the ever after parting ways with his brother post-extinction. i think focusing narrowly on dark’s gift of magic is kind of missing the forest for the trees, because dark’s half of humanity comprised destruction and knowledge. all the way back in V1, the fundamental struggle between grimm and humans is explained as an existential conflict between anonymity and knowledge—which is fascinating because it posits that the god of light really doesn’t have anything to do with it at all, it’s a struggle between the two facets of dark’s nature. there’s also some obvious congruence between the cat’s envy of humanity and the mythical portrayal of grimm; in the two brothers, grimm are said to hate humans in part because the god of darkness favors humans over grimm.

and then like, the cat is the storybook chill—the grimm from ‘the grimm child’—which might tie them to the god of darkness just as easily as it might tie them to salem. the narrative set up generally works just as well if the cat is a creation of the god of darkness, albeit in a somewhat looser way—it doesn’t integrate them into the wider narrative quite as intricately, but that’s fine bc they don’t need to be intricately connected necessarily.

there’s some stuff that has to happen in the next two episodes if one of the brothers did create the ever after or the cat or both, though, and this is the main reason i’ve gotten less convinced of their involvement with every episode. which came first, the ever after or remnant? (humanity was created twice, millions of years apart—which iteration was the cat left behind for?) if it came first, why does it only seem to be a creation of dark’s? if it came after, where is the god of darkness now, and why did he leave? did he leave?? (<- is he dead.) how might the resolution of these questions evolve into the resolution of the looming threat of the brother(s) ultimatum? (if salem made them, it’s much easier to connect the dots between resolving the cat and resolving salem, bc in that case the cat is the key to understanding who salem really is.)

the cat’s origins don’t exist in a narrative vacuum; the conflict with the cat is predicated on their abandonment and resolving that conflict is the climactic arc of the most important volume in the show. we’re on the cusp of the keystone holding the entire narrative together. (and also, just as a matter of practicality, with two episodes left every important thread remaining needs to be tightly woven together or else there won’t be enough time to deal with it all.)

so it matters a lot. i think any theory about the cat or the ever after’s origins at this point is incomplete without a solid sense of how it sets the momentum for the rest of the story and how it completes the key change from the tune of the last eight volumes—the gimme here is that the characters realize the brother gods are awful, but we’ve known that since volume six. it’s not exactly a paradigm shift.

this is why i keep saying—i’ve been saying since the minute i finished v8—they have to realize something about salem in this volume. what that might be is flexible, as long as it’s important enough to change the trajectory of the conflict with salem, but they cannot go back to remnant without changing their perspective of salem. narratively, this is mandatory. that’s the whole point of this volume. so the conflict with the cat and ruby’s experience in the tree both have to facilitate that, ideally in a manner that twines these two threads together.

the biggest unknown rn is what’s going to happen in the tree, i think. we’re probably going to learn about alyx (<-little?) through the process of ruby putting herself back together; we know she’ll meet the blacksmith again, and there’s “you never were the hero” still on the docket. a face-to-face encounter with summer feels like a gimme, with the only question being whether it’ll be the real summer or a figment of ruby’s imagination. loosely all of this fits together in a pretty straightforward way, it’s about ruby finding herself. and of course if summer is 1. alive and 2. with salem, that handles ruby’s side of the salem paradigm shift as a matter of course; if summer is dead (she isn’t) then it’s more of a diffuse rejection of pedestals (which runs into the same problem of the characters merely realizing that the gods are awful).

so how does the cat get involved, exactly? they’re most likely headed for the tree—they believe it’s their way out—which puts them on a collision course with ruby (maybe) and leaves wbyj stranded. with how fucking brutal the last episode was, i dooooon’t think it’s likely that the narrative is going to throw ruby into another violent confrontation, at least not until her ascension is complete (and even then—V9 has made it clear that ruby doesn’t want to be a warrior anymore, and i am… deeply… skeptical of the widespread assumption that of course ruby ascending is about ruby coming back as a more badass warrior than ever before.)

if the cat’s creator is the god of darkness, i would anticipate the resolution hinging upon what the girls know about why the brothers left remnant. the cat needs to know why their maker abandoned them, and if their maker was one of the brothers then team rwby can answer that question. the brothers are cruel and arrogant and see their creations as inferior little playthings to be discarded at whim; if one of them made the cat, they left the cat because they didn’t care. in this scenario i think the resolution is about getting the cat to understand this, and then handling the aftershocks. that facilitates the salem paradigm shift via the symmetry between the cat’s predicament and salem’s, and the kids return to remnant with that model for dealing with salem in mind.

this feels… kind of off to me, though, because the cat already learned this. the cat interviewed them quite thoroughly about the origins of remnant and it allayed their obsession not at all, which makes sense if neither brother is their maker but makes the resolution thornier otherwise—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if the general thrust is that the cat’s true desire is for their maker to come back to them and needing to accept that it’s not going to happen.

bu-ut if that were going to be the case… well. ruby’s mom left for unknown reasons and never came back, and ruby has spent her whole life living in the shadow of an absent mother honored for her presumed heroic sacrifice, always remembering that summer promised to come back. yang’s mom left, too, and yang became obsessed for years with the question of why and spent most of her life actively searching for answers, only to get them and realize that the answers sucked and didn’t make her feel better and she couldn’t just make raven be the mom she wanted.

if the cat’s arc is headed for realization that their maker doesn’t care and isn’t coming back, that the answer they want isn’t the answer they’ll get, the cat really ought to be anchored to YANG, not ruby, because that’s where the narrative symmetry naturally lies. at the very least, i would expect yang’s estrangement from raven to have had more of a presence—any presence at all—in her character arc for this volume. this kind of emotional and thematic set up is something rwby excels at, so the fact that it *isn’t there* says to me that the natural symmetry is between the cat and ruby.

and the thing about summer is, she’s clearly not dead and the story has been rolling out the proverbial red carpet in preparation for her to return. whatever summer’s reason for leaving, and whatever develops with ruby and her mom once summer returns—the cat and their maker are going to mirror that in some way, which doesn’t mean that it will necessarily resolve in exactly the same way, but it’s certainly going to dovetail. summer’s reasons for leaving are likely a lot more complex than anyone who knew her ever guessed, and either she’s going to need saving or (more likely) she’ll turn out to be on “the enemy’s” side and precipitate a lot of rethinking. that is, very loosely, the sort of trajectory the cat is on too.

the cat might, maybe, turn out to be the mediator between humanity and the god of darkness, if the end-game is humans+dark vs light? but there’s a lot of fiddly bits involved in that and obviously the cat can’t reach their maker right now, otherwise they would have already done so, so there’s a decent amount of mechanical work necessary to make this happen—& probably requires bringing the cat back to remnant and incorporating them as a major character for at least the next volume.

dunno. this is where all the brothers-did-it theories tend to unravel for me—carrying that momentum forward out of the ever after in a way that achieves the salem paradigm shift is tricky, and a lot of the obvious ways to do it have been cut off as the arc narrative develops toward the climax. (e.g. the brothers aren’t here, so no confrontation with them is possible; the mains have fretted about the truthfulness of the novel quite a bit, but they haven’t been curious about what the ever after is, the only part of its nature that has been a point of focus is ascension; they’ve not stumbled across any evidence of ozma or salem ever having been here before; there’s no sign of any relics being hidden in the ever after; etc. we’re basically down to “discover a compelling reason to summon the brothers” by now. or “finally realize that the brothers are the Real Problem, transferring the ‘we have no plan!!!’ futility from salem to the brothers,” which seems to be where most brother-origin theories land but is imo hilariously inadequate.)

[dkmbookworm]

Just to add my own two cents on this. I myself also interpret what calypso did as SA. (And to reiterate to anyone who comes across this, the nature of what happened is ambiguous and you are free to have your own readings of it)

I know it’s easy to say “Soon Into bed we’ll climb and spend our time” is just a singular line and shouldn’t be used as the only reasoning of it. But the line doesn’t exist in a vacuum and there’s a lot of her other behaviors within the song that set off red flags.

To start with the line itself, it isn’t calypso asking him in any way or suggesting it. “Soon” is a statement, not a question. It will eventually happen even if it isn’t now

Not only that but it’s all the ways that she is constantly pushing herself on him against his protests. She refuses to ever actually listen to him and insisting that she is “what he wants and needs”.

When Odysseus finally does snap back at her, going as far as to physically threaten this woman. She swings her weight around by revealing herself as a goddess. He can try but he cannot hurt her. He cannot do anything to stop her. Yeah she says “I bring no pain”, but she is not a reliable narrator. She doesn’t want to hurt ody, hurting him brings her no joy or satisfaction. But she does press on the fact that he belongs to her.

“You’re mine, all mine” with the music becoming ominous behind it

So we have established a pattern of her directly ignoring his boundaries, refusing to listen to him, establishing her own authority/superiority over him, that he is her property, and that what she wants to do is not a request but a statement of fact

I think based on all of these, it is fairly reasonable to assume that some kind of sexual abuse took place in this time period. Or at the very least it would fall under attempted coercion with her trapping him there in the hopes he will eventually give into her desires. Which is still pretty bad.

And i think this is actually a good thing because there should be nuanced portrayals of this abuse. Calypso is not an intentionally cruel person. She means well and she probably even sees herself as helping Ody in some capacity. ‘Healing a trauma ridden soldier with her love’; you can see the narrative she’s spinning in her head. She doesn’t understand or contemplate why she cannot have him if she wants him, why he would refuse her when she’s a beautiful immortal goddess.

He just needs time to adjust, he’ll learn to love her. He doesn’t know what’s good for him, so she’ll be there to guide the way.

None of this is motivated by malice. But it is selfish and entitled and ignorant. Things that anyone can fall prey to. It can be easy for someone to just ignore your boundaries, it can be easy to wave away your protests because you “don’t know what you want”. And even just the childish thought of “Why don’t I get to have this if I want it”

And that’s it. Calypso is dangerously childish and ignorant. She is all the impulses of a child that were never tempered and was just given her very first toy to play with.

Edit: I would also like to add the element that Calypso plays within the narrative of the Wisdom saga when her clearest parallel is with Antinous. Both represent Odysseus and Penelope's unwanted romantic interests in the story. Both of them feel a sense of ownership and entitlement to the two of them and both show a clear sexual interest in them. The main difference is that Antinous is outwardly aggressive and cruel in his intentions while Calypso is sickly sweet and has a nicer veneer over it. Another main difference is that Penelope has been able to keep them at bay for now, but Odysseus is completely at his captor's mercy

Don't you think your posts about Calypso SA'ing Odysseus are a reach? You said yourself it's one line. Why is Calypso the only character you have to hold as true to the Odyssey? No one else gets this treatment.

It's not that I am intentionally holding this one specific character directly up to her Odyssey counterpart and saying they have to be the same. I just haven't written or posted any other analyses / critiques of earlier sagas. Eventually I might do that. I assure Calypso is not the only character I look at under a microscope.

Simply put, no, I don't think it's a stretch of any sort or I wouldn't have said it. I did mean it. But I think maybe I didn't make it clear enough why I was saying it.

I'm not using the two lines across the entire musical to insist that she raped Odysseus because I want her to be this irredeemable villain. I can and will concede that, yes, Calypso has no frame of reference for socially acceptable behavior, especially that which pertains to sexual relations. Her songs in Epic really expand on her story in a way that the Odyssey simply does not care to.

I simply think it's important that Odysseus remain representation for men that have been sexually assaulted. He's one of the earliest examples of it, and that is constantly swept under the rug of "he's just a cheating piece of shit" to a lot of people (thank you, Madeline Miller — sorry, that's mean).

That is why I brought it up on my posts. And that's why I think those specific lines were left in the musical.

[firesnap]

Okay, I'm going to add one last thing to this mental health in analysis discussion.

The phrase "c!Wilbur's responsible for his own mental health."

This is going behind a read more because it's incredibly long, rambling, and more of a frustration on comparing the roles fictional characters play to each other versus autonomous living humans.

"c!"Wilbur is responsible for his own mental health" is both true and, potentially, incredibly damaging. Everyone is responsible for their own mental health. You're responsible for going outside to touch grass, for taking mental refreshers, for conducting self-checks and addressing mental needs.

However, mental health does reach a thing called a crisis point. Saying someone is in charge of their mental health, when they're actively suicidal or suffering PTSD, paranoia, delusions, etc.., can be incredibly damaging. At that point, a person is often incapable of knowing they need help, or are shying away from contact or help as a result of their condition.

This statement is, usually, applied to c!Wilbur when it comes to Tommy. Tommy is a child. Saying Tommy wasn't expected or required to help Wilbur because of his age and inexperience shouldn't then be extended to that no one should have been expected to help him and Wilbur was in charge of his own mental health. Because the statement is true, but also, cruel.

Let me try this analogy with some other troublesome talk about social ties and obligations. Sometimes, usually in relation to Bench Trio, I see that whole "As _______'s friend, they are not obligated or required to care about _____. They're just required to be their friend."

And it makes me realize that we've taken analysis too far into one direction. Yeah, as autonomous human beings we absolutely owe nothing to other human beings except the obligations we choose to take on. Friendships and family members are all, despite societal expectations, optional obligations.

But that's also such a bleak outlook. What support systems can we create for ourselves and each other when we have to preface every emergency and every low point with "no one is obligated to be kind." When we create ties to each other, most of us assume those ties are consistent unless something comes to challenge them. This is sort of exaggerated when we're talking about fictional characters.

When we're talking about characters, we have to assume unless the character has said otherwise, that they do feel a sense of obligation to friends and family. This isn't a real person where we can question and discuss their motivations with them. There are no mental health facilities, medications and doctors in this universe. The characters exist in a light fantasy themed universe where the only support systems they have are the ones they give each other.

We also have to assume this because, from a story standpoint, stories are boring when characters exist like they owe each other nothing. If there are no motivations and clear connections to other characters then everyone is existing in a vacuum. (There's also a whole hornets nest of usually this sentiment is expressed to either address a failure of a character as not as a failure or when someone doesn't want to discuss a negative aspect of a dynamic).

With Wilbur, he had friends and adults in his life that could have intervened in a normal situations. Exile to Pogtopia was, unintentionally, the perfectly crafted way of both destroying what support systems Wilbur/the L'Manburgians had built for themselves and to put Wilbur at a crisis point where he could no longer manage his own mental health.

The conversation about Wilbur's health shouldn't be framed as "Wilbur should have been responsible for his mental health." That goes back to this other post I saw about how sometimes we take our own mental illness experience and assume its universal. Because we're expected to take charge of our own mental needs (and we think of the times we sought help for mental struggles), it gets applied to all situations. But, by doing that, when a person legitimately cannot help themselves, we sort of blame them for that.

We don't look at a person with a gunshot wound and say "they really are responsible for their own gunshot health."

As humans, we say "why didn't anyone help them if they could." We also don't look at a child next to the gunshot victim and say "why didn't you stop the bleeding." Usually people understand expectations of help are based on one's capabilities to actually provide it.

So with Wilbur, who was at a crisis point, the tragedy remains that the people who would have helped, who would have felt obligated to help, had no idea anything was happening. It was a failure of their little found family, but not anyone's fault. It's nuanced, because Wilbur should have reached out before Pogtopia, but he didn't. Other characters absolutely held obligations to help him, and to acknowledge that no one helped him isn't a slam on them or erasing Wilbur's own responsibilities.

Honestly, it's more of a comment on how Schaltt won the moment he cut Wilbur and Tommy off from everything and everyone they knew. The characters had created a family with each other and felt obligations and ties to each other. Without that support, they all had to flounder on their own. Some found strength and thrived, and some didn't survive it.

[hanazou]

Do you have any headcanons or thoughts on Oda’s early life?

Obviously someone must have trained him to be an assassin and it must have been when he was very young. When Oda says “There is no forgiveness in this world. There is only retaliation - revenge against those who betray you.” and “Emotions are at the centre of our existence, but they aren’t the centre of the world. There’s nothing at the centre of the world.” I get the sense they’re mantras being parroted from whoever trained him.

Maybe someone killed his mom and his dad went mad with a thirst for revenge and got killed as well? Or kinda Batman style, Oda saw his parents get murdered and then someone took him in and trained him to be able to get revenge and once he was trained they disappeared (or died) and as killing was all he knew what to do at that point?

I mean those guns of his that he doesn’t want but keeps around must have some sort of sentimental value to him. Where did he get them???

frankly his statement about emotions makes me realise two things about this lovely man:

Oda is susceptible to things that hold sentimental value

He sounds to be saying that to himself aka to convince himself that emotions aren't meant to be the gears that operate and command you

From those, I speculate that something occurred that serves as a wake up call for him to abandon emotions because they hold little to no value when faced with the real world. I like your mantra theory of it being passed down and his mentor (let's call it that), but he sounds too invested in it for it to be a hand-me-down. It does sound possible though if we assume his mentor is a professional assassin who copes with their brutal line of work by minimising the importance of emotions.

But since Oda is able to hold on to that quote for so long even after everything that has occurred, it makes me thing there's a dormant/hidden strong feeler inside him. You can't believe in something if you don't think there's truth in it, and for Oda to stamp that quote as the truth, he has to acknowledge that emotions have such strong influence in the decision-making process.

As to what exactly that serves as his wake up call, I'm with you on the orphan theory. Maybe he was an orphan since day 1, maybe something happened to his parents. At the end of the day, he's left all alone has no choice but to take on assassination jobs where his skills can be converted as a way of living/surviving. He could be projecting himself onto the orphans for all we know. Not that it's a bad thing nor that it makes him less of a good man though.

One thing for sure, he has been alone all his life and craves closure and vulnerability with someone that understands his reason to why he has to be a good man (this makes me want to cry). Speculating from the way he speaks and behaves, it seems like he makes the accomplishment of reaching the "Good Man" status as his long term goal. It has manifested itself into his daily philanthropic work. It's not that he's being deceitful, he's just a good man who wants to be a good man while not noticing that he's already one. God I love him

If we go along with the BSD theory of Abilities being an extension of one's innate desire (or trauma), something must have happened to Oda within the timeframe of his younger years that makes him desperate enough to be able to foresee the future. He wants to be prepared for what's coming. This hints that there's a period when he's stuck in a loophole of his trauma constantly replaying that he gets the desire to see the future to prevent similar tragedies from occurring.

As for Oda keeping those "vintage" old style guns, I do agree that they hold sentimental value. Maybe memories, honouring his mentor or his first commission. It does raise questions as to why he holds onto them since they remind him of the murderer he was, not a version of him he's proud of.

TLDR ;; BSD paints Oda as such a Saint like figure that they sort of ditched the importance of his background story. He's the most stable person in the story, he's a good man, but we never know what happened that made him into a good man. We need to know his darkness too (or maybe that's just my nosiness speaking)

(a/n: now I want to vacuum the trauma out of him)

[dwellordream]

“...While it was becoming customary in northern France and in England for lordships to be divided among daughters if no son survived to inherit them as a unit, the duchy of Aquitaine was not to be divided between Eleanor and her sister Aélith. As the elder daughter, Eleanor alone was to become countess of Poitou and duchess of Aquitaine and of Gascony. It would not have been unusual for her to have succeeded to the duchy of Aquitaine and her younger sister to some other component parts of their father’s principality, perhaps Gascony, absorbed into Aquitaine only in the time of their great-grandfather. 

William X was not likely to have regarded his two duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony as indivisible, yet he apparently made no provision for a division of his lands between his two daughters. Whatever the count-duke’s reasoning, he declared on his deathbed his wish that Eleanor should succeed as sole heir to his lands without making any provision for his younger daughter. Nor did Louis VI settle any property on Aélith to make her a more attractive bride. Eleanor’s succession and her marriage to Louis VI’s son and heir would fix firmly the indivisibility of the two territories, Poitou and Gascony; and Louis VII, as if acknowledging their unity, would style himself “duke of Aquitaine,” discarding the titles “count of Poitou” and “duke of Gascony.”

Since no authentic document setting forth William X’s wishes survives, it is not at all certain that in naming Louis VI as Eleanor’s guardian he intended her marriage to the French monarch’s son and heir. Although the duke’s wishes were not set down in writing, Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis wrote in his biography of Louis that the duke “had decided to deliver to the king for the purpose of marriage his daughter . . . and all his land, so that he could hold it for her,” but Suger’s statement relates only to the right to manage young Eleanor’s marriage. Yet other chronicles maintain that the duke had arranged Eleanor’s betrothal to Louis’s heir before his death, placing Aquitaine under the French king’s sway. 

For Eleanor to have been without either fiancé or husband at age thirteen was unusual among aristocratic families, and perhaps it is a sign of her father’s fecklessness that he had never arranged a marriage for her. It is possible, however, that Duke William could find no candidate for Eleanor’s hand whom he considered worthy of her and concluded that the only suitable husband for such a great duchess was the heir to the French Crown. Whether he thought far enough ahead to see that the marriage might mean the duchy’s annexation to the French Crown is problematic. 

Probably playing a key role in the marriage of young Eleanor to the Capetian heir was Archbishop Geoffrey du Loroux, an acquaintance of Suger. It was from the archbishop’s messengers who reached Louis VI in the Île de France near the end of May 1137 that Suger learned of the duke’s death, and possibly they also brought a proposal that Eleanor should marry the Capetian heir. If Geoffrey du Loroux did not suggest the marriage to the French monarch, he at least supported the proposition. Geoffrey and the Bordeaux clergy very much favored the marriage, knowing the Capetian kings’ reputation as advocates for the Church and fearing that rivalries among the magnates of Aquitaine damaging to the Church’s interests could result if the young duchess were married to one of them. 

Apparently the lay magnates of Aquitaine raised no objection to a Capetian spouse for Eleanor, preferring a duke residing far away in Paris to one of their own number. They assumed that a Capetian king-duke would be a largely absentee ruler and that he would appoint some local lesser-ranking noble to act as his agent in his new duchy. They were confident that they could intimidate easily such a royal representative, leaving them unfettered in their cherished freedom. Not all the Aquitanians favored a royal marriage for Eleanor, however. 

In a song by the troubadour Marcabru composed in autumn 1137, his bitter reference to Louis VII’s rule over the Poitevins reveals his sense that the county was being subjected to a “foreign” lord’s dominion. With the French monarch ruling over Aquitaine, Marcabru and another poet, Cercamon, moved on in search of patronage elsewhere. Louis VI, in poor health since 1135, knew that his days were numbered and that he must act quickly to carry out his responsibility of finding a husband for Eleanor. At the same time he saw an opportunity to acquire the duchy of Aquitaine for the French Crown by marrying the girl to Louis the Younger, hoping to see his son secure in his possession of the duchy of Aquitaine before his death. 

Abbot Suger writes in his biography of Louis VI, “Having taken counsel with his close advisors, he happily accepted the offer with his usual greatness of soul and promised [Eleanor] to his dear son Louis.” The king and his counselors were not following established laws of inheritance, for such rules hardly existed, but they were hurrying to settle the succession to Duke William’s lands before uncertainty led to confusion and collapse of authority there. Louis Senior would have understood that marrying his heir to a girl bringing with her as her inheritance Aquitaine, the greatest duchy in the kingdom, was a huge opportunity for advancing the monarch’s position in France. 

The marriage by no means assured Aquitaine’s permanent absorption into the French royal domain, however. The union of the duchy with the French Crown was purely personal, and should Eleanor bear Louis the Younger no sons, the duchy would probably pass out of royal hands. If she should produce several children, a younger son could be designated heir to the ducal title, removing it from direct royal control. Yet Louis VI recognized the Capetians’ strategic advantage in possessing Aquitaine. It would assist his son in corralling the expansionist counts of Anjou, whose Loire valley lands lay between the French royal domain in the Île de France and Eleanor’s heritage; and also it could strengthen his hand against the expansionist dukes of Normandy who were also kings of England. 

To avoid a power vacuum, Louis the Younger headed south from Paris to meet and marry Eleanor at the earliest possible moment. He was accompanied by a very large body of men���500 knights from “the best men in the kingdom and led by powerful nobles.” Such a force, swelled by the nobles’ retainers, was more an army capable of dealing with resistance either along the route or in Eleanor’s patrimony than merely a “stately escort” for the young bridegroom. Heading the royal party were the count of Blois-Champagne, Theobald II, Ralph, count of Vermandois (one of Louis VI’s stalwarts), and Abbot Suger himself.

…Eleanor could not have expected to play any part in choosing her husband, even had her father returned from Spain in 1137. In an age when arranged marriages were the norm among aristocrats, she would have become aware at an early age that marriage was a matter for families, not individuals. All aristocrats viewed the marriages of their children as opportunities for their family’s political or pecuniary advantage, not for the personal happiness of their offspring; and a bride and her future husband had little choice in the matter. 

Eleanor, who had learned in her earliest years of her distinguished ancestry, took pride in her dynasty’s ducal title, and the prospect of marriage to the heir to the French Crown must have flattered her. She is unlikely to have had many illusions about finding romantic love in her marriage to young Louis, a stranger to her, although she may have been led by legend or love lyrics, like some other aristocratic maidens, to unrealistic aspirations for happiness in her arranged marriage, anticipating that she would fall in love with her husband eventually, if not immediately.”

- Ralph V Turner, “Bride to a King, Queen of the French, 1137–1145.” in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France, Queen of England