#you can really justify anything under consequentialism

[justafewberries]

Plutarch Heavensbee is a Consequentialist. He prioritizes the rebellion's success over individual well-being or personal moral purity to achieve the “greatest good” of overthrowing the Capitol.

Consequentialism is a branch of ethics that holds that “whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that act, such as the motive behind the act or a general rule requiring acts of the same kind.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

More specifically, Plutarch exemplifies Act Consequentialism, which holds that “an act is morally right if and only if that act maximizes the good, that is, if and only if the total amount of good for all minus the total amount of bad for all is greater than this net amount for any incompatible act available to the agent on that occasion.” (Moore, 1912). 

Essentially, consequentialism argues that so long as the outcome produces more “good” than existed before, the path taken to get there (however morally questionable) does not matter as much as the results. The ends justify the means.

Plutarch believes his actions, while manipulative or cruel in isolation, always serve a greater collective good: overthrowing the Capitol and ending the Hunger Games.

Time and time again, he acts only when the consequences would serve a larger purpose. For example, he does not reintroduce Katniss to the prep team until after she agrees to be the Mockingjay. Had he reunited them sooner, Katniss may have reconsidered her loyalty to Coin before the agreement was made. Regardless of whether he knew the conditions of the prep team or not, he knew they were in District 13, and only chose to reunite them with Katniss when it benefited the rebellion the most: right after she agreed to become the symbol. 

"We thought it might be comforting for you to have your regular team," Plutarch says behind me. "Cinna requested it." [...] "I honestly don't know." There's something in his voice that makes me believe him, and the pallor on Fulvia's face confirms it. Plutarch turns to the guard, who's just appeared in the doorway with Gale right behind him. "I was only told they were being confined. Why are they being punished? [...] "Do it on my authority," says Plutarch. "We came to collect these three anyway. They're needed for Special Defense. I'll take full responsibility."

He had not checked on the prep team before leading Katniss down to room 3908, despite knowing they were in d13. His concern was not for the prep team’s well-being, but for the utility they served. He focused on what the prep team would do for Katniss. He uses them as a tool.

He even questions if the prep team can start to serve the cause of the rebellion before they have even had a day to heal:

"Good. Splendid," says Plutarch. "How soon can they be put to work?"

To him, what matters is the end result, not the moral cost to get there.

Similarly to the prep team, Plutarch only authorizes the mission to save Peeta when it is clear the Mockingjay cannot perform without him:

"Plutarch's sending in a rescue team. He has people on the inside. He thinks we can get Peeta back alive," he says.

Perhaps the logistics and intel happened to fall into place at just the right moment, but the timing of the mission's authorization lends itself to how he operates. Once it became clear Katniss could no longer function without Peeta, Plutarch authorized the mission to save him. Saving Peeta only became important when it benefited the rebellion.

Which is why, in Peeta’s interview, he is focused more on Beetee’s breaking in rather than Peeta himself. Plutarch does not see Peeta as beneficial to the cause until it comes down to Katniss forcing his hand.

Plutarch's in spasms of delight and most everybody is cheering Beetee on, but Finnick remains still and speechless beside me. I meet Haymitch's eyes from across the room and see my own dread mirrored back. The recognition that with every cheer, Peeta slips even farther from our grasp.

He cheers when things go his way, such as Beete breaking in, and glosses over another pressing matter, Peeta’s visible deterioration. In that scene, the propos matter more than the person.

And even when Peeta returns, he is still willing to use his image to further the cause:

When I confront Plutarch, he assures me that it's all for the camera. They've got footage of Annie getting married and Johanna hitting targets, but all of Panem is wondering about Peeta. They need to see he's fighting for the rebels, not for Snow. And maybe if they could just get a couple of shots of the two of us, not kissing necessarily, just looking happy to be back together--

He uses people as means to achieve and end. He acts only when it would benefit the “greater good”, in this case, making sure the symbol of the rebellion, Katniss, can perform, and then making sure the people he saved are still being useful to the cause after the fact. To him, utility is more important than humanity.

Immanuel Kant, a deontologist, would say using someone merely as a means to an end is inherently unethical, but a consequentialist would view using the Peeta and prep team as a means to serve the rebellion as ethical, so long as it led to the “best” outcome. 

Further, his choices are in stark contrast to Rule Consequentialism, which promotes that “the moral rightness of an act depends on the consequences of a rule.” (Singer 1961) In other words, if a rule were universally adopted, it should promote the greatest good. Both branches value outcomes, but Rule Consequentialism also emphasizes consistency.

For Plutarch, there are no guiding rules. He does not save people because saving them is the right thing to do, rather, he saves them only when it benefits the cause. His ethics are situational. For example, he does not attempt to rescue Peeta out of loyalty, compassion, or the fact he can save a life. He intervenes only when Peeta’s survival becomes necessary to Katniss’s effectiveness as the Mockingjay.

If Plutarch adhered to Rule Consequentialism, he may have developed guidelines for when and how to act. He might recognize that consistently exploiting trauma, even for a cause, can generate long-term harm that outweighs short-term gains. But under his Act Consequentialism, everything comes down to how useful it is.

This logic governs nearly everything Plutarch does. Many of his actions would be considered deeply unethical out of context, but in the context of war and rebellion, they’re justified by the urgency of the cause. His “by any means necessary” approach aims to secure the “greatest good,” even if that means making sacrifices.

Consequentialism allows for swift decisions. In times of war, it allows the actor to disregard individual suffering so long as the outcome is favorable. For Plutarch, ethical restraint is a luxury he cannot afford. He believes the outcome of a successful rebellion will always outweigh the cost it takes to succeed.

Plutarch is a liar. He’s a sycophant. He’s a backstabber. He’s ruthless and willing to throw anyone into the fire if it means achieving the greatest good of ending the Games. 

A brief overview of his major acts includes:

Becoming a Gamemaker (and later the Head Gamemaker)

Pushing for Katniss to become the Mockingjay

Knowing Katniss’s Prep team was confined

Willing to let the hospital in Eight go down to save Katniss

Only sending a team to rescue Peeta when it would motivate Katniss

Exploiting Finnick's trauma in propos

Willing to throw Delly in with hijacked Peeta

Through all of these instances, he keeps one thing in mind:

"If we lose?" Plutarch looks out at the clouds, and an ironic smile twists his lips. "Then I would expect next year's Hunger Games to be quite unforgettable.”

They have to succeed. He recognizes that what they are doing will be the death of everyone involved if they fail. It is not an ideological threat, but an existential threat. Therefore, the outcome becomes everything. How they get there is less important. The methods may be manipulative and shady, but if it ends the Games, to him, it is justified.

Katniss remarks upon this as well:

What's interesting is that Plutarch seems to have no need to share in the credit. All he wants is for the Airtime Assault to work. I remember that Plutarch is a Head Gamemaker, not a member of the crew. Not a piece in the Games. Therefore, his worth is not defined by a single element, but by the overall success of the production. If we win the war, that's when Plutarch will take his bow. And expect his reward.

Plutarch can only win if the rebellion wins. His worth is defined “by the overall success of the production”. His identity, like his ethical reasoning, is built around the big picture. He is not interested in virtue for its own sake. He doesn’t seek moral purity, individual accolades, or recognition along the way. He seeks to win for the greater good.

Which is how he justifies asking for things like Finnick reciting his traumatic experiences to the entirety of Panem:

"It's painful to watch, actually," says Cressida. "He knew so many of them personally."  "That's what makes it so effective," says Plutarch. "Straight from the heart. You're all doing beautifully. Coin could not be more pleased."

And:

I've been sufficient, if not dazzling. Everyone loves the bread story. But it's my message to President Snow that gets the wheels spinning in Plutarch's brain. He hastily calls Finnick and Haymitch over and they have a brief but intense conversation that I can see Haymitch isn't happy with. Plutarch seems to win--Finnick's pale but nodding his head by the end of it.  As Finnick moves to take my seat before the camera, Haymitch tells him, "You don't have to do this." "Yes, I do. If it will help her." Finnick balls up his rope in his hand. "I'm ready."

In the scene above, Haymitch, who sees Finnick as a person, and not just a means to achieve an end, pushes back on the idea. Unlike Haymitch, Plutarch believes the result will outweigh the cost, thus making it morally permissible. He is willing to encourage Finnick to sacrifice his well-being for the cause. 

He does this to Katniss when she is mourning Peeta after he warns about the incoming bombing of d13:

"Katniss, obviously this is a bad moment for you, what with Peeta's setback, but you need to be aware that others will be watching you." "What?" I say. I can't believe he actually just downgraded Peeta's dire circumstances to a setback. "The other people in the bunker, they'll be taking their cue on how to react from you. If you're calm and brave, others will try to be as well. If you panic, it could spread like wildfire," explains Plutarch. I just stare at him. "Fire is catching, so to speak," he continues, as if I'm being slow on the uptake. "Why don't I just pretend I'm on camera, Plutarch?" I say. "Yes! Perfect. One is always much braver with an audience," he says.  "Look at the courage Peeta just displayed!"

He sees everything as an opportunity to be harnessed. What he is saying is true, as Katniss later finds out people are looking to her for how to act, but he still utilizes her as that symbol instead of allowing her a moment of private grief. He does not seek accommodations for her. He does not extend a shoulder to cry on. He thinks only about how she will influence those around her. He encourages her to suppress her grief and project bravery because it serves the rebellion.

He constantly uses people to achieve optics:

"You're going to be as useful to the war effort as possible," Plutarch says. "And it's been decided that you are of most value on television. Just look at the effect Katniss had running around in that Mockingjay suit. Turned the whole rebellion around. Do you notice how she's the only one not complaining? It's because she understands the power of that screen."

He does not ask if the squad wants to fight, he tells them they must perform on camera. They are tools for propaganda, not people with free will and choices. 

Further, we see his morality play out in how he commands the propos in District Eight, when the Capitol is arriving to bomb the hospital. He commands them all to retreat to safety, which would condemn the hospital to the bombings. He does not even consider telling them to try to take out the hovercrafts. He immediately concludes saving Katniss, the symbol of the rebellion, would be more beneficial than saving the lives of those in the hospital:

"The hospital." Instantly, Gale's up and shouting to the others. "They're targeting the hospital!"  "Not your problem," says Plutarch firmly. "Get to the bunker."  "But there's nothing there but the wounded!" I say.

Katniss is concerned about the immediate threat of innocent people dying. Plutarch is concerned with preserving the symbol of the rebellion. At this point, Katniss is still barely known to be alive and actively fighting. She traveled to District 8 to prove she's more than a rumor. Had she died fighting off Capitol hovercrafts, the rebellion may have lost its figurehead and its momentum.

As Katniss says:

"That's because Plutarch doesn't care who dies," I say. "Not as long as his Games are a success."

Plutarch does not seek to save the most lives while carrying out his plans. He seeks only to save the lives that would guarantee the rebellion’s success. Everyone else is expendable. To him, casualties are not failures. They are necessities.

He fantasizes about weapons of mass destruction: 

I spend the short ride back to 13 curled up in a seat, trying to ignore Plutarch going on about one of his favorite subjects--weapons mankind no longer has at its disposal.High-flying planes, military satellites, cell disintegrators, drones, biological weapons with expiration dates.Brought down by the destruction of the atmosphere or lack of resources or moral squeamishness. You can hear the regret of a Head Gamemaker who can only dream of such toys, who must make do with hovercraft and land-to-land missiles and plain old guns.

He does not seek to destroy the weapons, rather, he fawns over the power they gave the people who wielded them. He could achieve the ends faster with more powerful, destructive weapons. There would be a quick end to any conflict. It would not matter how much blood was spilled, so long as the end arrived. 

This all comes to fruition when the bomb is dropped:

"However, I must concede it was a masterful move on Coin's part. The idea that I was bombing our own helpless children instantly snapped whatever frail allegiance my people still felt to me. There was no real resistance after that. Did you know it aired live? You can see Plutarch's hand there. And in the parachutes. Well, it's that sort of thinking that you look for in a Head Gamemaker, isn't it?"

Plutarch knew what was happening. He knew a second bomb was coming. He kept the cameras on the pen. He knew children would die. And yet, he ensured the cameras were rolling. He made sure it aired live. He understood the horror would end the war and considered that outcome worth the cost. He gave no warning nor protest. He operated solely on cause and effect. 

Despite how his goal is to end the Games, he does not dismantle them. He brings the logic of them with him. Every act he does resembles how he operated as a Gamemaker: manipulating optics, exploiting trauma, orchestrating narratives, and engineering deaths for spectacle. This suggests that while he changes the regime, he does not change the tactics of power. In fact, his methods of information control and propaganda mirror the Capitol’s strategies.

He knew the bomb was going to be dropped. He chose to film and live stream it. He chose not to warn anyone. Everyone who dies was a means to an end. Every life lost, including Prim’s, was just a necessary sacrifice to achieve a goal. For Plutarch, it was the final, brutal play in a long game. His final bow. The war ended. The Capitol fell. The Hunger Games were abolished. And the children who died to get there? Collateral, just as he had allowed them to be for the decades he was involved with the Games. 

Everyone is a piece in Plutarch’s games. 

If you enjoyed this essay, please consider helping me pay for grad school.

[missinghan]

maya’s writing afterthought —

So I think I have (intentionally or not I don’t really remember) carved Minho into an intentionalist forced to embrace the philosophy of consequentialism, meaning the end justifies the means.

I pretty much rushed through his past and lore but to be clear, he wasn’t that good at being a god and heaven definitely was fucked up in its system one way or another. He was an idealist, or heaven simply conditioned him to be that way. Evil should be obliterated so only good things remain, a very black and white principle. In reality, the world is not ideal; not to mention, there exists an agonizing amount of gray areas.

Minho was constantly trying to help anyone and everyone because he’s a god, he’s supposed to know everything and able to do anything. Gods don’t complain, gods don’t feel pain, gods don’t bleed. “I am only human,” is what many would think when faced with impossible hardships but what about non-humans? Gods are worshipped, gods are whatever labels people stick onto them without asking for it. If they don’t answer a prayer, they are cursed at. If they do answer a prayer, every expectation and condition must be met, no accidents or slacking would be tolerated. It's a big deal because it has a lot to do with a mortal's life, right? Mortals are weaklings because they bruise and bleed and cry and eventually die. What about gods, then? Does their life and well-being mean any less just because they are not able to physically die?

I was going in circles a little there but get this, when faced with that reality of a grey world, Minho could only hold on for so long before shattering under the pressure. Good intentions could only get him so far. Because how many times had he saved someone because everyone deserves salvation and that person had gone out to kill other people? If he knew even just the approximate number of it (consider the fact that he’s 800 years old), he would throw up.

The fic is set during the period long after his banishment from heaven and I think I did subtly hint at the fact that he has begun to accept consequentialism. He was homeless for months not because he couldn’t make enough money but he thought a house wasn’t necessary. He didn’t need food either because, well, he wasn’t allowed to die. Minho was working diligently and saving up a bigger amount for something significant in the future. He didn’t want to relax, he was afraid of rewarding himself in any way because the good consequences he was expecting overruled mundane things like good food or nice clothes. As someone who was conditioned to believe he only deserves good things when he delivers good results, it’s difficult to not associate satisfaction with trauma. (He had to so constantly switch jobs because as a god, he found it hard to control his strength and would often break things or create opportunities for people to question his inhumane capabilities).

MC was the first human to acknowledge his intentions and didn’t expect anything from him. She knows that he acts tough but is a soft-hearted fool, talks smack but his insults are never a personal offense, and that he is always doing his best. Think of it like two children who receive two different compliments “you are so smart” and “you must have worked hard”. When they fail to do something, the first child would think “I’m supposed to be smart why can’t I solve this problem?” meanwhile the second one would tell themselves “I’ll try again. I can do hard things, I can solve this.”

your heart & your headache, too ⤖ lee minho

❖ genre : stray god (?) au; fluff; humor; angst; action

❖ word count : 9,6k.

❖ warning : swearing, mentions of violence, blood, injuries, stitches

❖ summary : a self-proclaimed god shows up at your door in the middle of the night for a place to stay. you let him and hope the unconventional encounter doesn’t become a regular thing. of course, it becomes a regular thing.

❖ sequel blurb : read it here!

❖ dedicated to @poutylino​ : happy birthday robi! i hope you’ll like this mess of a fic ♡

There is a stranger in your living room.

There is a stranger in your living room.

There is—holy shit…you need to call the cops.

“Out of the way,” the stranger spats calmly. 

“Show me your face.”

He is unfortunately very good-looking; the kind of face that all beings envy for God only has one favorite and that’s him, the kind of face that makes the most expensive diamond look dull in comparison, the kind that screams ‘tougher in body and nobler in heart than any creature in the world’ like any novel’s protagonist. Oh yeah, did you mention that he has a really nice physique too?

“I said, move.” He stumbles forward, heavy and inconsistent breaths.

In any case, he’s someone you’ve never met before in your life. Therefore, your brain is overworking itself to figure out what the fuck is going on (as if it’s not overworked on a daily basis already). One moment you were minding your own business on the couch and stressing over your homework. The next, there’s an explosion of light and there he was. Meaning, this absolutely skeptical, worthy-of-being-reported man can’t just expect you to simply move.

“Last time I checked, this is my living room, which you’re not supposed to be in,” you tilt your head curiously at his silhouette being cast on the white wall. “You should move.”

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[unpopularwiththepopulace]

Don’t I Get a Dream for Myself ? – Bernadette Peters and the 'Gypsy' Saga

Gypsy. It’s perhaps the most daunting of all of the projects related to Bernadette Peters to try to grapple with and discuss. It’s also perhaps the most significant.

For someone notoriously guarded of her privacy and personal life, careful with her words, and selective of the questions she answers, the narrative around this show provides some of the most meaningful insights it is possible to derive in relation to Bernadette herself. The show’s ability to do this is unique, through the way it eerily parallels her own life and spans a large range in time from both Bernadette Peters the Broadway Legend, right back to where it all began with Bernadette Lazzara, the young Italian girl put into showbusiness by her mother.

The most logical place to start is at the very beginning – it is a very good place to start, after all.

(Though no one tell Gypsy this, if the fierce two-way battle with The Sound of Music at the 1960 Tony Awards is anything to be remembered. Anyway, I digress…)

Gypsy: A Musical Fable with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and book by Arthur Laurents, burst into the world and onto the New York stage in May of 1959. After closing on Broadway in March 1961, Ethel Merman as the world’s original Mama Rose herself led the first national tour off almost immediately around the country. Just a few months later, a second national touring company was formed, starring Mitzi Green and then Mary McCarty as Rose, to cover more cities than the original. It is here that Bernadette comes in.

A 13-year-old Bernadette Peters found herself part of this show in her “first professional” on-the-road production, travelling across the country with her older sister, “Donna (who was also in the show), and their mother (who wasn’t)”.

The tour played through cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, New Haven, Baltimore and Las Vegas before closing in Ohio in 1962. Somewhat uncannily, its September 1961 opening night in Detroit’s Schubert Theatre even returns matters full circle to the 2003 revival and New York’s own Schubert Theatre.

Indeed this bus-and-truck tour was somewhat of a turning point for Bernadette. She’d later remember, “I mostly thought of performing as a hobby until I went on the road with Gypsy”.

But while this production seminally marked a notable moment for the young actress as well as the point where her long and consequential involvement with Gypsy begins, it’s important to recognise she was very much not yet the star of the show and then only a small part of a larger whole.

Bernadette was with the troupe as a member of the ensemble. She took on different positions in the company through the period of nearly a year that the show ran for, including billing as ‘Thelma’ (one of the Hollywood Blondes), ‘Hawaiian Girl’, and additional understudy credits for Agnes and Dainty June.

The above photo shows Bernadette (left) with another member of the ensemble (Sharon McCartin) backstage at the Chicago Opera House as one of the stops along the tour. Her comment on the stage of the Chicago theatre – “I’d never seen anything so big in my life!” – undeniably conveys how her experiences were new and appreciably daunting.

Along the tour, she assumed centre-stage once or twice as the understudy for Dainty June, but playing the young star was not her main role. Unlike what more dominant memory of the story seems to purport.

Main credits of June went instead to Susie Martin – a name and a tale of truth-bending that’s now well-known from Bernadette’s concert anecdotes. While performing her solo shows as an adult and singing from Gypsy, Bernadette has often been known to take a moment to penitently atone for historical indiscretions of identity theft or erasure where her mother long ago conveniently left out the “understudy” descriptive when putting down Dainty June on her resumé, in an effort to add weight to the teenager’s list of credits.

Whatever happened to Susie Martin? – many have wondered. Well, she soon left the theatre. But not before appearing in two more regional productions of Gypsy and a 1963 Off-Broadway revival of Best Foot Forward with Liza Minnelli and Christopher Walken.

Bernadette too went on to other regional productions of Gypsy. She spent the summer of 1962 in various summer stock stagings with The Kenley Players, like in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and this time she did indeed get to play June.

Above shows photos from different programmes for these productions. While some may have featured odd forms of photo editing, they at least also bring to attention Rose here being played by none other than Betty Hutton.

The two women couldn’t have been in more different positions when they coalesced in these rough-around-the-edges, small-scale productions. A young Bernadette was broaching summer stock in starting to take on bigger roles in the ascendency to her bright and long career. Meanwhile, Betty found herself there while navigating the descent that followed her sharp but fickle rise to Hollywood fame in the ‘40s and early ‘50s. Top billing Monday, Tuesday you really are touring in stock after all.

While details aren’t plentiful for these productions, it was recounted Betty apparently struggled in performing the role. And understandably so. Following the recent traumatic death of her mother in a house fire, and the birth of her third child shortly before the shows began, it’s not hard to see why her mind might have been elsewhere. Still, she was apparently impressed enough by the younger actress who turned in one of the show’s “creditable performances” to make comment that she would’ve liked Bernadette to play her if a movie were made about her life.

Bernadette might not have done this exactly, but she did go on to revitalise Betty’s best-known movie role, when stepping into Annie Oakley’s shoes in the 1999 Annie Get Your Gun revival. With Bernadette’s first Ethel Merman show under her belt, the ball was soon rolling on her second.

The 2003 production of Gypsy was imminently beckoning as her next successive Broadway musical and it was Arthur Laurents who lit the match to spark Bernadette’s involvement. Laurents, as the show’s original librettist, drove the revival by saying he “didn’t want to see the same Rose” he’d seen before. Going back to June Havoc’s description of her mother as “small” and a “mankiller”, and Arthur’s take that Bernadette sung the part “with more nuance for the lyrics and the character than the others”, the choice of Bernadette was justified. Moreover, “Laurents – whose idea it was to hire her – [said] going against type is exactly the point,” and Sam Mendes, as director, qualified “the tradition of battle axes in that role has been explored”.

So Bernadette also had her own baseline of innate physical similarity to the original Rose Hovick, in addition to her own first-hand memories of the women she’d acted alongside as Rose in her youth to bring into her characterisation of the infamous stage mother.

But there was a third factor beyond those as well to be considered in the personal material she had access to draw from for her characterisation. Namely, her own real life stage mother.

Marguerite Lazzara did share traits with the character of Rose. She too helped herself to silverware from restaurants, and put her daughters in showbusiness for the vicarious thrill. Marguerite had “always wanted to become an actress herself”, but had long been denied her desire by her own mother, who likened actresses to being as “close to a whore as you could be without, you know, getting on your back”.

In that case, to “escape a housewife’s dreary fate in Ozone Park”, Marguerite channelled her latent dream through her pair of young daughters instead, shepherding them out along the road. Thus was produced a trio of the two children ushered around the theatre circuit by the driven mother, forming an undeniable parallelism and a mirror image of both Bernadette’s reality and Gypsy’s core itself. Bernadette didn’t see some of these familial parallels at the time when she was a child, considering “maybe I didn’t want to see” – “didn’t want to see a mother doing that to her daughter”.

It was coming back to the show as an adult that helped Bernadette resolve who her mother was and some of the motivations that had propelled her when Bernadette was still a child. She realised, “I think she thought she was going to die very young”, as her own father died young. So “she was rushing around to get as much of her life as she could in there”.

When she herself returned to the production in playing Rose, Bernadette conceded to sometimes bringing elements of her mother and her driven energy into her portrayal, and admitted too she looked “like her a lot in the role”. You can assess any familial resemblances for yourself, from the images below that show a young Marguerite next to Bernadette in costume as Rose, and then with the pair backstage in 1961 in a dressing room on the tour.

Marguerite was ambitious. From her own personal position and with the restrictions imposed upon her, it was ambition that materialised through her children. Irrevocably, she altered them. She placed Bernadette on TV as a very young child (“I was four when my mother put me in the business”); changed her daughter’s surname (“She told me my real name was too long for the marquees,” or really – “too Italian”); doctored her resumé (“Somehow the word ‘understudy’ vanished. ‘No one will know,’ said Marguerite”); and lightened her hair (“She’d say, ‘Oh, I’m just putting a little conditioner on it.’ But slowly my hair got blonder and blonder!”). All in the hope of giving her child a more favourable chance at the life she’d always wanted for herself.

On paper, a classic stage mother. “When I was a kid, she fulfilled herself through me,” Bernadette would say. “She put me into show business so she could get a taste of the life herself.”

But it’s important to consider Bernadette often qualifies that her mother wasn’t as brutal as Rose, nor was she herself as traumatised as June.

Bernadette didn’t begrudge her mother for her choices – at least by the time she was an adult, she’d rationalised them, explaining “naturally it was more exciting [for her] to go on the road with me than staying home and keeping house”.

As a child, Bernadette hadn’t necessarily wanted to be on stage, but there was a sense of ambivalence – not resentful belligerence – as she “didn’t care one way or the other” when she found herself there.

Like June, Bernadette may have been entered into and coaxed around a path she hadn’t voluntarily chosen. But unlike June, Bernadette had a deal with her mother that “she had only to say the word”, and she could leave.

Most crucially, she never did.

But that’s not to say Bernadette was enamoured with acting from the beginning.

She seemed to feel ‘outside’ of that world and those in it. And others saw it too.

It was in 1961 in Gypsy that Bernadette first met Marvin Laird – her long-time accompanist, conductor and arranger. The way he put it, he “noticed this one young girl, very close with her mother” who, during breaks, “didn’t mix much with the other girls”.

Beneath the effervescent stage persona, there’s a quieter and more reserved reality, and a sense of separation and solitary division.

When asked by Jesse Green in 2003 for the extensive profile in The New York Times if she thought her experiences on the road in Gypsy were good for her at that age, she gives a curious, somewhat abstract, predominantly dark, potentially macabre, response. He wrote:

She doesn’t answer at first but seems to scan an image bank just behind her eyes for something to lock onto. Eventually she comes out with a seeming non sequitur. “I didn’t know how to swim. I remember, in Las Vegas, I fell in, once, and they thought I was flailing, but I felt like: ‘It’s pretty down here!’ I might have been dying and I was thinking: ‘Look at the pretty color!’ And suddenly my fear of water was gone, and I could have stayed in forever.” After a while, I realize she’s answered my question. Then she dismisses the image: “But I had to get my hair dry for the show that day, so up I came.”

I’m still not entirely sure I know what she’s trying to convey here. My interpretation of this anecdote changes as I have re-visited and re-examined it on multiple occasions at different time points. It’s arguably multiply polysemic.

Was she simply swept up in a moment of childlike distraction, lost in the temporary respite alone away from the usual noise and clamour? Was she indicating comprehension that her feelings and perspectives came secondary to any practical necessities and inevitable responsibilities? Was she using the water to depict a muffling and fishbowl-like detachment from others her age who got to live more ‘ordinary’ lives in the ‘normal’ world above that she felt separate from? Was she referencing the pretty colours she saw as a metaphor for show business and how she became bewitched by them even despite potential dangers? Was she trying to legitimately drown herself, or at least exhibiting an ambivalence again as to whether she lived or died, because of what the highly pressurised demands on her felt like?

The underlying sentiment through her response in answer to Green’s primary question was that, in essence – no. Being a child actor was not “over all, a good experience for a youngster”.

Acting might have been something she fell in love with over time, but not all at once, not right from the beginning, and not without noting its perils.

It was a matter of accidental circumstance that landed Bernadette in the show business world to begin with at such a young age in the first place – “I just found myself here,” she would offer.

Her mother, who was “always crazy about the stage”, “insisted” that her sister, Donna take lessons in singing, dancing and acting.

A further point of interest to note is that, although it was Bernadette with her new surname who would grow up to be the famous actress, look to the cast lists from the 1961 touring production of Gypsy that featured both sisters in the company (see photo below) and you’ll find no ‘Lazzara’ in sight. Donna too, appearing under the novel moniker of “Donna Forbes”, had also already become stagified (nay, ethnically neutralised?) by her mother. As such it is clearly demonstrated that Marguerite’s intention at that point was to make stars of both her daughters. Correspondingly so, when her sister returned from her performance lessons some years before, “Donna would come home and teach me what she had learned,” Bernadette remembered. She may have gotten her “training second hand”, but the key element was that she got it.

For Bernadette, it was a short jump from emulating magpied tricks from her sister as well as routines from Golden Age Busby Berkeley musicals on the ‘Million Dollar Movie’ in front of the TV screen, to her mother getting her on the other side of the screen and actually performing on TV itself – belting out Sophie Tucker impressions aged five for all the nation to see.

The photos below show Bernadette in performative situations at a young age (look for criss-crossed laces in the second for identification).

“At first, as a toddler, Bernadette enjoyed performing; it came naturally, a form of play that people inexplicably liked to watch.” It was “just a hobby” and she “wanted to do it”.

But while she may not have detested it, she didn’t entirely comprehend what was going on either. “I didn’t even know I was on TV,” she said. “I didn’t know that those big gadgets pointed at me were cameras and that they had anything to do with what people saw on the television set.”

When she started gaining more of an awareness of how “such play [was being] co-opted for commercial purposes”, she grew less enthralled. “She didn’t care for the bizarre children, accompanied by desperate mothers, she began to see at auditions: ‘They spent their whole time smiling for no reason, you know?’”

Being a child who had become sentient of being a child performer began to grow wearisome and grating to the young girl who had her equity card, a professional (and strange, new) stage name, and an increasingly long list of expectations by the time she was nine. There’s a keen sense she did not enjoy being in such a position: “I wouldn’t want to be a child again. When you’re a child, you have thoughts, but nobody listens to you. Nobody has any respect for you”.

Gypsy did indeed mark a turning point for Bernadette as mentioned above – but not just in the way that seems obvious. Looking back at it now, it does appear the monumental turning point at which she started appearing in significant and reputable productions, beginning what would be the foundation to her ‘professional’ career. However it was also the turning point after which she nearly quit the business altogether.

When she returned from performing in Gypsy, Bernadette felt like she’d had enough. One way of putting it was that she “then retired from the business to attend high school”, wanting to have some semblance of a normal scholastic experience “without the interruptions”. But whatever dissatisfaction she was feeling as an early adolescent on stage, she didn’t resolve at school – going as far as saying that while at Quintano’s School for Young Professionals, “she was in pain”.

“When you’re a teenager you’re too aware of yourself,” she recalled. Being a teen and trying to come to terms with of the expectation of the ‘60s that “you are supposed to look like Twiggy, and you don’t, you feel everything is wrong about you”. Everything “was all about tall, skinny, no chest…[and] hair straight”. Little Bernadette with her “mass of [curly] hair and distracting bosom”, as Alex Witchel put it, was never going to fit that mould. “That was not me,” she stated. “At all.”

Her self-consciousness grew to the point that it became overwhelming and asphyxiating. “I was trying desperately to blend in and be normal, but that doesn’t allow creativity to come out,” Bernadette said. “I knew I was acting terrible. The words were sticking in my mouth and all I could think about was how I looked”. It was hard enough just to look at herself (“I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror”), let alone to have other people gawk at her on stage. So she stopped trying. She “didn’t work much from age 13 to 17” in the slightest. Bernadette would later reflect in 1981 in an atypically open and vulnerable interview, “I was very insecure. Insecurity is poison. It’s like wearing chains”.

It was a combination of factors that helped her overcome these feelings of such toxic and weighty burden to draw her back into the public world of performing and the stage. “The two people who helped her most, she says, were David LeGrant, her first acting teacher, and her vocal coach, Jim Gregory.” Jim helped with “[opening] a whole creative world for [her] with singing”; and it was David who’d give her the now infamous and often (mis)quoted line about individuality and being yourself.

Having these kinds of lessons, she reasoned, was “really a wonderful emotional outlet for a kid of 17”. The process of it all was beneficial for her therapeutically – “you have a lot of emotions at that time in your life, and it was great to go to an acting class and use them up”. And Bernadette felt freer on stage than she did out on her own in the ‘real world’, saying “[up there] I don’t have to worry about what I’m doing or saying because I’m doing and saying what I’m supposed to be doing and saying”.

Finally then and with considerable bolstering and support, she grew comfortable with the notion of being visible on stage and in public, and realised she was never going to blend in as part of the chorus so it was simply better to let go of such a futile pursuit.

David LeGrant’s guiding advice to Bernadette (“You’ve got to be original, because if you’re like everyone else, what do they need you for?”) wasn’t just a trite aphorism. For her, it was a life raft. It was the key mental framing device that allowed her to comprehend for the first time that she might actually have intrinsic value as herself. And that it was imperative she let herself use it.

She had always stuck out, yes, but she had to learn how to want to be seen – talking of it as a conscious “choice” she had to make when realising she did “have something to offer”.

Thus soon after Bernadette graduated, she stepped back into productions like in summer stock and then Off-Broadway as she made her debut at that next theatrical level at 18. It wasn’t long before she was discovered in what’s seen as her big break in the unexpected smash hit, Dames at Sea. And so Bernadette Peters, the actress, was back. And she was back with impact and force.

Besides, as she’s also said, she couldn’t do anything else – “if I ever had to do something else to earn a living, I’d be at a total loss”. An aptitude test as a teenager told her so apparently, when she “got minus zero in everything except Theater Arts”. So that was that. Her answer for what she would’ve done if she’d never found acting is both paradoxically exultant and macabre – “I don’t know, probably shot myself!”

Flippant? Maybe. Trivial? No.

Acting is thus undoubtedly related highly to Bernadette’s sense of purpose and self-worth. This is what makes it even more apparent that a show with such personal and historical connections for her, as in Gypsy, was going to be so consequential and impactful to be a part of again as an adult and perform on a public stage.

She’s called inhabiting the role of Rose in the 2003 revival many things: “deeply personal”, “life changing”, “like going through therapy” – to name a few.

In interviews regarding Gypsy and playing the main character, when asked what she had learnt, Bernadette would frequently say something like, “It taught me a lot”. Pressed further about specifics, her answers often hem close to vague platitudes as she maintains her normal tendency of endeavouring to keep her privacy close to her chest.

On one occasion, she actually elaborated somewhat on what she’d learnt, giving a fuller answer than the question is normally afforded anyhow. Beyond all it revealed to her about her mother, she extended to admitting “my capacity for love and my capacity for anger” as aspects in her that the show had permanently altered. Moreover, Rose to her was undoubtedly the “most rewarding and fulfilling acting experience” she had ever had.

But while such deep, personal and emotional depths and memories were being stirred up beneath the surface in private, she was getting vilified in public singularly and repeatedly by New York Post columnist, Michael Riedel.

Even before she’d set foot on stage, Riedel set forth in motion early in the 2003 season a campaign of vocal and opinionated defamation against Bernadette as Rose that she was miscast, insufficiently talented, and would be incapable of executing the role.

Too small, too delicate, too weak, too many curves (and too much knowledge of how to use them). Not bold enough, not loud enough – not Merman enough. Chatter and speculative dissent begun to grow in and around the Broadway theatres.

For such a prestigious and historic musical theatre role, it was always going to be hard to erase the large shadow of an original Merman mould. Ethel was woven into the very fabric of the show, with the rights to Gypsy Rose Lee’s memoirs being obtained at her behest in the first place, and the idiosyncrasies of her voice having been written into the songs themselves by their very authors.

To step out from such a domineering legacy would be a marked challenge at the best of times. Let alone when battling a respiratory infection.

Matters of public perception were certainly not helped when Bernadette then got ill as the show started its preview period and she started missing early performances.

Nor did it help with critical perception that the Tony voting period coincided so synchronously with Gypsy’s first opening months – giving Bernadette no time to recover, find her feet, and settle more healthily into the show for the rest of the run before the all important decisions were made by that omnipotent committee.

The tale of her illness is actually undercut by a more innocent and unsuspecting origin than you’d expect from all the drama and trouble it engendered. Bernadette decided nearing the show’s opening to treat herself to a manicure. In the salon, she was next to a woman very close to her with a frightful sounding cough. Who could’ve known then that this anonymous and inconspicuous lady through a fateful cause-and-event chain would go on to play such a part in what is among the biggest and most enduring Tony Awards “She was robbed!” discourses? Or even more broadly – in also arguably playing a hand in the closure and financial failure of an $8.5 million Broadway show after its disappointing performance at the Tony Awards that ominously “[spelled] trouble at the box office” and led to its premature demise?

Bernadette did not win the Best Actress in a Musical Tony that night on June 6th 2004. The award went instead (not un-controversially) to newcomer Marissa Jaret Winokur for Hairspray.

She did however give one of the most indelibly resonant and frequently re-referenced solo performances at the awards show just before she lost – defying detractors to comprehend how she could be unworthy of the accolade with a rendition of ‘Rose’s Turn’ that has apocryphally earned one of the longest standing ovations seen after such a performance even to date.

Even further and even more apocryphally, she reportedly did so while still under the weather as legend as circulated by musical theatre fans goes – performing “against doctor’s orders” with stories that have her being “afflicted with anything from a 103-degree fever, to pneumonia, to a collapsed lung”.

Seeing then as unfortunately there is no Tony Award speech to draw on here, matter shall be retrieved fittingly from that which she gave just a few years earlier in 1999 for her first win and previous Ethel Merman role in Annie Get Your Gun to wrap all of this together.

As has been illustrated, there are many arguably scary or alarming aspects in Bernadette’s Gypsy narrative. There’s undeniably much darkness and an ardent clamouring for meaning and self-realisation along the road that tracks her journey parallel to the show. But unlike Rose’s hopeless decries of “Why did I do it?” and “What did it get me?”, there was a point for Bernadette.

As her emotional tribute in 1999 went: “I want to thank my mother, who 48 years ago put me in showbusiness. And I want to finally, officially, say to her – thank you. For giving me this wonderful experience and this journey.”

Whatever all of this was, maybe it was worth it after all.

[skyeventide]

hi, if you are planning on writing the embalmed M.E. post, I'd be extremely interested! amazing topic

oh man okay I'll try to put it together. I'm gonna stick mostly to one single text for this one because, as a topic, memory-embalming is really large and I think you can construct a lot on like, solely the concept of memory and fading and preservation in the legendarium. and I’m not gonna try that lol

the quote where Tolkien uses the "embalming" word is letter 131. I should preface this by saying that more often than not I take great issue with the way jirt talks about his theology-adjacent Goodness and Good Choices, and I think it's pr... pro... pronghhh I don't wanna write that word lmao, please take it as me intending "it has non-straightforward issues that are worth a second look", not as anything else. it’s problematic, there I put it down lol academic gremlin brain won, for anyone who doesn’t wholly align with him philosophically. so I suppose anyone who generally agrees with jirt's own reckons will disagree with my takeaway here, but so are things. anyway, I'll try to explain why I called it a value judgement.

screenshots first:

I know this is a lot of text, but it's needed. so there's kind of a lot to unpack there but to strip it down to the relevant basics:

part of the reason why some of the exiles do not return is that they don't want to return as exiles, but remain where they have power and stand at the top of the hierarchy (this to me feels like, specifically, a very Galadriel motive — but that's yet another post lmao); they also want peace and bliss, and that is another motive, the same peace and bliss that exist in Valinor (and while the first motive I list, I believe, is directly consequential to the status of the first age's survivors, this second motive, having the peace and bliss of Valinor outside of Valinor, has been present and thematic since the speech of Feanor to the Noldor, and likely before that); they can't therefore abide the "fading" of the land, the way it changes with time, and endeavour to preserve it — embalm it (this becomes emblematic in one of the various versions of the creation of the Elessar, or one of the them: a stone that, if someone looks through it, shows things as they would be when healed, whole, and beautiful. in one of said versions, Celebrimbor gives this stone to Galadriel, who is saddened by the change of time. this is Celebrimbor of Gondolin, or perhaps Telerin Celebrimbor, but no matter the origin, the theme persists)(second parenthesis to point out how third-age Lothlórien, preserved by Nenya, is in all effects a land out of time, where ancient things aren't simply echoed but continue living, and where trees literally don't die. leaves change colour during autumn and winter, then fall down in spring when immediately new buds start growing); fourth motive is the healing of the land's hurts and its adornment.

the difference between healing the land and “embalming” it, I suppose, is the acceptance of its change under the sun, so the acceptance of time's passing, while healing and adorning it work in unison with said passing. of course the matter here is, the absence of decay is kind of Valinor’s whole thing. but we know, both from letter 156 and the Akallabêth, that Valinor isn’t inherently a blessed land and it doesn’t give immortality by virtue of being Valinor. in fact: “'for it is not the land of Manwe that makes its people deathless, but the Deathless that dwell therein have hallowed the land; and there you would but wither and grow weary the sooner, as moths in a light too strong and steadfast.” and letter 156: “for as emissaries from the Valar clearly inform him, the Blessed Realm does not confer immortality. The land is blessed because the Blessed live there, not vice versa, and the Valar are immortal by right and nature [...]”

so, really, it’s not the where that counts. jirt, I believe, makes it pretty obvious that it’s the why and how, and through whose counsel. what I think is identified here as the fault isn’t that preservation of the land isn’t possible and therefore should not be attempted (clearly it is), rather it’s the wish to create a paradise of their own, a desire that Sauron identifies and exploits. now, obviously I’m not trying to argue that Sauron is right or anything the like (even at early stages, and despite the partial overlap of motives, Sauron’s goals can’t really be called good, even though you might argue that they gain some form of internal conflict), or that in pursuit of a challenge to the divine harm becomes justifiable — this isn’t really about characters and more about jirt the man himself and his production. 

I just generally take issue with the idea that wanting a heaven of sorts, made with your own skills, which is within the realm of possibility, and by no one’s leave but your own, is inherently a bad thing, or that it must come with harm and corruption, and compromised motives. but in the narrative of these books, from an outside-of-text perspective, it doesn’t seem to be possible to issue the challenge that letter 131 talks about without also giving aid to evil (Sauron, earlier Morgoth) willingly ot unwillingly, without getting closer to “magic” and “machinery”, without it being written and interpreted under a lens of “embalming”, of refusal to let the world live its course. it isn’t possible to have that cake and eat it (yeah jirt kind of wrote that saying wrong lmao), which is identified as a corruptible weak point. 

it isn’t possible because this discontent, or this wish for independence, is in itself a seed that the story connects to evil and lies (Morgoth’s work in Valinor, and possibly earlier than that his discord); because it’s inherently linked to wanting the top-of-the-hierarchy authority granted by Middle Earth. and because the legendarium doesn’t truly leave room for any gods-challenging story that isn’t some form of taint and mistake, a Fall™ (challenges to Morgoth here don’t count, he is the fall; this is about Eru and the Valar).

(I think here it’s relevant to note that the elves not being in ME is elsewhere called out as a loss for Men, who do not have the “elder siblings” at hand who were supposed to teach them and guide them; as well as the fact that Eru in morgoth’s ring mentions, himself, that the elves have been “removed to Aman from the Middle Earth in which I set them”. so it’s not necessarily so straightforward in all aspects — but I think a discussion on that would be going a little too much beyond the scope of this tbh)

I believe my point is exemplified by a note in this same letter:

“preservation in reverent memory” here is not negatively judged, despite being effectively an antiquarian lore memorial to (”good”) tradition. Elrond also rebukes Sauron, and is not at all subjected to the same Ring-related test as Galadriel in LotR. and I think this is sort of the narrative point of the story, part of the greater (in good measure theological) thesis underlying it. and why I called it a value judgement. 

[myaekingheart]

133. +

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               Kakashi stirred awake, rubbing his tired eyes and attempting to untangle his legs from the blankets. He had no idea what time it was, but the sun had barely begun to rise. He felt around the mattress for Rei but she was nowhere to be found. It was that absence that initially snapped him out of his daze. The runner-up was the sound of retching echoing from the bathroom.

               Kakashi rose to his feet, stepping lightly as he approached the door. He idled there for a moment, catching notes of her gagging, gasping for breath, and the way she’d bang her fist on the toilet seat as she struggled to contain herself. Finally, he creaked the door open and he felt a tightness clutch his chest.

               Immediately, he knelt down beside her and pressed a firm hand on her back. Her entire body trembled and heaved as she vomited, her face red and dewy with sweat. Kakashi brushed the bangs back out of her face, then fished around in the disorganized drawers for that little yellow hair clip of hers in order to pin them back. He had no idea how long she had been in here for, or how much time had passed once she had finished. All he knew was that this was becoming a problem.

               Rei’s stress was no secret to him. He knew the past month had been hard on her. She couldn’t sleep, so much so that dark circles had permanently taken residence under her eyes. Her appetite was atrocious. She never seemed to eat anymore outside of a snack here and there, always junk food, always sparse. And even then, she could hardly keep anything down.

               He tried not to hound her too much for it. He didn’t want to add more fuel to the fire. Besides, he rememberd how sick and anxious he had been when he had first made captain himself. It was all just a byproduct of change.

               Gasping for breath, Rei collapsed into Kakashi’s arms as she lazily flushed the toilet. She sniffled and wiped her nose, congested and snotty, with the back of her hand. “Sorry if I woke you” she croaked, apologetic.

               Kakashi shook his head. “No, it’s alright” he whispered in reassurance. He held her close, letting her lay her head on his chest as he leaned his back against the bathroom counter. “Are you alright?”

               She nodded, whispered, “Yeah…yeah, I’m fine. Just food poisoning.”

               Kakashi, admittedly, was unconvinced. It was the same excuse she had been using for the past week and a half. He believed her at first, but now he wasn’t so sure. After all, if her mother’s cooking had made her so sick, then why wasn’t he incapacitated by it, too? Or anyone else, for that matter?

               He helped Rei to her feet, wrapping an arm around her for support. “What time is it?” she asked, rubbing her puffy, watery eyes.

               “I don’t know” Kakashi replied earnestly, “but you should try to get some more rest.”

               Rei, however, shook her head. “It’s not worth it” she replied. “I’m up now. I’m never going to be able to fall back asleep.”

               Kakashi grimaced but did not protest. Knowing her, she would pass out on the couch around noon and sleep until dinnertime anyway. He was just grateful that it was her day off. After the chaos of her last mission, she deserved a break.

               He had to admit, when she came home and explained what had happened at Komaeda Outpost, Kakashi was a little more than shocked. He knew full well the potential for chaos that rogue ninjas could bring, but the complete destruction of a hotel was on an entirely new level. Not to mention Rei’s unrelenting illness.

               He helped her into the kitchen where she steadied herself against the counter and poured a glass of water from the sink. From the tap, it wasn’t nearly as cold as she would’ve liked but at least it helped to get the rancid taste out of her mouth. Once he was sure she was steady, he made his way to the living room to begin tidying up all of the random mail that had accumulated on the coffee table. Toshio lumbered nearer, nudging Rei’s hand in silent comfort. As she sipped, her eyes trailed to the calendar pinned to the wall and she furrowed her brows. “Hey, Kakashi?” she asked over her shoulder. “What day is it?”

               “Friday, June 5th” he answered, skimming through a handful of envelopes. He furrowed his brows at an electric bill they probably should’ve paid two weeks ago. “Why do you ask?”

               Shaking her head, she set her glass down and pulled a pen from the junk drawer. “I’ve been slacking on the calendar” she replied. She hadn’t checked off any dates for nearly three weeks now. Evidently, her hangover from Sekkachi’s birthday atop her overall stress had made her irresponsible in that regard. Her hand trembled as she x-ed out each date one by one until reaching June. And that’s when she noticed it. Clapping a hand over her mouth, she spun around and keeled over the kitchen sink.

               “Rei!” Kakashi sped to her side in an instant as she gagged, clutching the edge of the counter with a white-knuckle grip. She stood there hyperventilating for a long moment before the nausea finally subsided. She whimpered softly as her eyes unfocused for a moment, little blotches of indescribable color dancing across her vision. When her knees buckled, Kakashi wrapped an arm around her in support and pulled out a chair. He sat her down gently, poured her another glass of water. His anxiety mounted.

               “Rei, I think you should see a doctor” he said, setting the glass in front of her. She pressed a hand to her sweaty forehead, brushing the flyaways away from her face, and shook her head. “You’ve been getting worse and worse. Something has to be going on.”

               “I’m fine, Kakashi” Rei insisted, staring at him hard. It was just the stress. She was overworked, tired, anxious. That’s all it was. Just stress.

               Sighing, Kakashi sank down in the chair beside her and ruffled his hair in defeat. He didn’t know what to do with her. He hated seeing her suffer like this. Pursing his lips, he filtered through his limited knowledge of diseases to try and figure out some sort of explanation to all of this. This certainly went beyond the scope of food poisoning. The stomach flu was on thin ice. He didn’t even want to consider something more serious, like abdominal cancer. And then he was struck with perhaps the most ridiculous idea of them all. Restraining a chuckle, he mused, “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

               Rei’s heart leapt into her throat. With a gasp, she leaned across the table to smack Kakashi hard on the arm. “Shut the fuck up, Kakashi!” she shouted. Her face burned bright red. She refused to believe this was a possibility. Not after everything else. Not after the twist her life had already pulled on her. No, this was not happening.

               And yet Kakashi’s joking question seemed to bring life to the idea. A manifestation of thought. Furious, Rei drew her knees up to her chest and sipped at her water. Toshio rested his head on the seat of her chair, looking up at her with big, kindhearted eyes.

               “I’m sorry” Kakashi apologized, heaving a sigh. “I know I shouldn’t joke about that.”

               “You’re fucking right, you shouldn’t” Rei snapped. Suddenly his joke wasn’t so funny anymore.

               Kakashi hesitated a moment, chewing the inside of his cheek, before finally asking, “Rei…you don’t really think you’re pregnant…do you?”

               “Kakashi, I don’t want to talk about this” she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut tight. Toshio whimpered at her side.

               Her answer wasn’t very helpful. If anything, it only furthered Kakashi’s suspicions. Reaching across the table, he pulled her hand into his and forced her to look him in the eyes. “Rei” he said, his voice firm and pleading. “Do you really think that you could be pregnant?”

               Rei shivered and gulped. “I-I…” she stammered, but she didn’t even know where to begin, how to condense her thoughts into something comprehensible. Finally, she just pointed at the calendar with a shaky finger and curled even further in on herself.

               Kakashi’s gaze slowly trailed to the kitchen wall, to the little calendar tacked under the clock. Squinting, he rose and inched nearer, then flipped the pages back and forth to compare April, May, and June. His eyes zeroed in on the little red dot marked on April 29th. “Rei…” he whispered.

               Sniffling, she replied quietly, “M-my period is late…”

               Whipping around, Kakashi cupped her face in his hands, desperate. “D-do you want me to go out and get some pregnancy tests? Or take you to the doctor? D-do you really think you might be--?”

               “I don’t know, Kakashi! I-I don’t know!” she cried. Her eyes overflowed with panic, fear. “M-Maybe it’s just the stress, you know?” she continued, negotiating with herself. “I mean, stress can often lead to late periods. A-and I know my eating hasn’t been the best. Diet can fuck your cycle up, too! A-and poor sleep, and body weight, and…”

               No matter how she tried to justify it, there was no avoiding the truth. She pressed a hand to her stomach, whimpered, reeled. There was no way this was happening. Not now. Not after everything else. She was just overthinking. This had to be a mistake.

               Before she could say anything else, Kakashi was already tugging his mask up over his face and sliding his shoes on frantically. Rei’s anxiety heightened as she watched him. “W-where the fuck do you think you’re going?!” she asked.

               “Where do you think?” Kakashi replied. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Just…try to stay calm.” He shoved his wallet and his keys into his pocket and then disappeared.

               Defeated, Rei called after him sarcastically, “Not likely, but thanks!”

               Realistically, he was only gone for a half an hour. For Rei, however, it felt like an eternity. She chewed her lower lip and circled the edge of her glass with a trembling finger. Toshio rested his heavy head in her lap and much like a weighted blanket, it soothed her, but only slightly. When she heard Kakashi’s key turn in the lock, her head snapped up. Panic. She wasn’t sure which was worse: the unbearable waiting and consequential avoidance, or his return with pregnancy tests in tow.

               Kakashi entered the apartment quietly, cradling a large paper bag in his arms. Rei blinked, uncertain. “What did you do? Buy out the entire store?” she asked. There was no way a box of pregnancy tests required a bag that big.

               Shaking his head, Kakashi set the bag down on the table. He reached inside and one by one, pulled out a loaf of bread, a sack of oranges, a box of those rice crackers she liked, the works. “I didn’t want to look suspicious” he replied sheepishly. Rei watched with panicked intent, a part of her hoping that perhaps in his attempt to appear normal, he had forgotten the pregnancy tests completely. But then there it was, last but not least. That little pink box made Rei furious.

               Kakashi sucked in a deep breath, fiddled with the box in his hands. “You ready?” he then asked.

               Rei bit the inside of her cheek, pressed a hand to her stomach. She didn’t think she was. “Y-You know what, Kakashi?” she stammered out. “Maybe we can just avoid this altogether, you know? I-I’m sure everything’s fine. It’s just the stress, right? Like it’s probably just stress and I’ll get my period any minute now!” Her nervous laughter did not help her argument.

               “Rei, look at me” Kakashi said, gently cupping her cheek and tilting her head up toward him. “If this is a genuine concern like I think it might be, we need to know.” Besides, for all they knew, the test could come back negative. Rei could be right in her halfhearted, desperate assumptions. But the only way to find out was to actually take the test.

               Rei deliberated for a moment, knowing deep down that her fiancé was right. She rubbed her stomach, nodded slowly. “O-okay…” she croaked. Her eyes landed on the box and she was filled with unimaginable fear. She gave a single nod before taking it into her own hands and replied weakly, “Let’s do this.”

               Of all the times Rei had had pregnancy scares in the past, she had always just gone to the hospital for a blood test. Home pregnancy tests were not her forte and therefore she felt awkward and stupid trying to figure out the best possible way to do this. Kakashi sat on the edge of the tub as Rei pulled her pants down and sat on the toilet, ripping open the box and pulling out one of the little sticks inside. She pouted as she turned it over in her hand, studying it’s structure. Meanwhile, Kakashi took the box from her lap and pulled out a small paper outlining instructions.

               “It says to remove the plastic cap and place the absorbent tip directly within the urine stream” he read off. Rei paused. There were so many things wrong with the words that were coming out of his mouth right now.

               “Well, how the fuck am I supposed to make sure everything’s lined up?” she asked. “It’s not like I can see down there.”

               Kakashi hesitated, almost tempted to offer himself as a second pair of eyes, but even he didn’t know how that would work. It wasn’t like he had byakugan and could see straight through the toilet.

               Frustrated, Rei flicked the little plastic cap off the test, muttering, “Fine, whatever, we’re just gonna fucking wing it then.” She shifted slightly so as to place the test beneath her, hoping upon all hope that everything was in the right spot, and then she waited.

               The one thing that she had not considered about all of this was whether or not she could even pee in the first place. It was early in the morning, she hadn’t been drinking much water, and the anxiety of it all was making it hard to go to the bathroom anyway. She sat there for a solid five minutes but it was to no avail.

               “Maybe this is a sign” she said with a hollow sense of hope. “Maybe the universe just isn’t taking us seriously right now and is trying to tell us that we’re overreacting.”

               Kakashi shook his head, skimmed the back of the box as if he would find any tips on how to help resolve the issue. He wasn’t surprised when he came up empty. “Maybe you just need a minute” he replied. “Do you want me to turn around? Do you think that would help?”

               “Kakashi, I’m not a guy” Rei snarked. “Women don’t get the same sort of stage fright about pissing in front of other people that you all do.”

               Raising his hands in surrender, Kakashi murmured, “Just figured I’d offer.” In an effort to be helpful, he rose to his feet and approached the bathroom sink, filling a paper cup with tap water. He handed it to her and she drank it silently, knowing full well that it would not work that fast but making an attempt with it anyway.

               Meanwhile, Toshio, curious about the commotion, nudged the door open and strode inside. He circled the tub mat once, twice, three times over before flopping down comfortably. Rei watched him and wondered what it was like to be a dog. No rules, no responsibilities. Just stealing table food and taking naps. She only wished she could be as carefree.

               After another ten minutes passed with no help, Kakashi ruffled his hair with a sigh and suggested, “Maybe we should just come back to this later then.”

               Rei shook her head. “No, it’s fine” she protested. “You know, I think I feel it coming.”

               Kakashi cocked a brow, watching her curiously. Another few minutes passed. Still nothing. Toshio snored loudly from the floor.

               “Come on” Kakashi sighed in defeat, extending a hand to help her up. “There’s no use sitting here ramping our anxiety up if nothing is going to happen.”

               Rei hated that she had no choice but to agree. She set the test down on the counter as she gathered her pants and underwear around her ankles, but as she did so, she finally felt that much-anticipated urine make it’s belated debut. Panicked, she scrambled to grab the pregnancy test off the counter and shove it underneath her yet again. She had no idea whether she had positioned everything properly, but she hoped upon hope that she had. She did not want to have to do this again.

               Kakashi blinked despondently, watching her in amused surprise. Once she was finished, he chuckled softly under his breath. “I guess reverse psychology works on bladders, too” he mused.

               “Alright, what do we do now?” Rei asked. She placed a wad of toilet paper on the counter and set the test on top, face-down.  

               “It says to recap the test and wait five minutes” Kakashi said, glancing back at the instructions. Rei gave a single nod, doing as the instructions told her, before wiping and flushing. And then came the waiting.

               Rei paced back and forth, chewing her lower lip and toying with the fraying threads on her shirt collar. Kakashi watched her, fingers tented in front of his face, apprehensive. For a long while, they said nothing. The moment was far too delicate. They feared that should they speak, they would shatter their composure and lose their sanity completely. Rei was already halfway there.

               “You’re making me dizzy” Kakashi quipped at the three minute mark.

               “Do you think we really have to wait the full five minutes?” she asked. “I mean, if there’s nothing there then we could be waiting here forever, you know?”

               “And if there’s something?” Kakashi countered.

               Rei paused and pursed her lips. “Then I’m sure the result would be far too eager to show itself.”

               “Fair enough” Kakashi replied. They stood there in almost-silence for another long moment, only the sound of Toshio’s heavy snoring serving as soundtrack to their panic. Then, finally, Kakashi asked the question Rei was hoping he would never verbalize. “What result do you want to see?”

               She genuinely did not know. If he had asked her that same question a month ago, she would have had a very different answer but now she wasn’t so sure. Things were different. Their lives were different. No longer was she in the best place to have a baby.

               And yet…she still desperately did want this. The thought of being pregnant, of finding a positive test result, excited a deep, guilty part of her. There was no logic in it, though. In reality, it didn’t make sense. Her life was divided into two very different paths. She was not allowed to be in two places at once.

               Shaking her head, Rei sank down beside Kakashi on the side of the tub and asked, “What result do you want to see?” She spoke the question almost like a joke, delivered in a snarky, half-mocking tone.

               A soft smile touched Kakashi’s lips and Rei’s heart leapt into her throat. She feared she already knew the answer, and she wasn’t sure if she could stomach it. He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, averted his eyes. “Honestly? I…” he started, then paused. Rei chewed her lower lip. Something in Kakashi shifted. He glanced to the clock, as if running out of time, swallowed hard. “Rei…”

               “W-what…?” she whispered, hoarse and weak.

               He turned to face her then, meeting her gaze with frantic, uncertain eyes. “Our five minutes are up” he croaked. Rei’s back went ramrod straight, digging her nails even deeper into her palms. Her throat tightened and her heart was racing and oh my god she was going to be sick.

               She stood up slowly, her legs like limp ramen beneath her, and shuffled slowly toward the counter. Kakashi watched with bated breath. Rei leaned against the counter, squeezed her eyes shut tight, inhaled sharply. A trembling hand hovered over the test. “K-Kakashi…I can’t…” she whimpered.

               “Do you want me to look instead?” he asked, rising to his feet. He approached slowly, placing a gentle hand on the small of her back. Rei shook her head.

               “N-No…I know I need to do this myself” she protested. After all, it was her own body that was at stake. She felt her stomach creak in anxiety. In the back of her mind, she forced herself to remember that the only way out is through. Dragging the situation out would only make things that much worse. Pursing her lips, she let out a small squeal of fear before snatching the test up and finally flipping it over in her hands.

               It took a moment for her to fully register the results. Once she did, however, her entire body went numb. She stood still for a long while, paralyzed.

               “W-what? What is it?” Kakashi asked, growing frantic.

               Rei swallowed hard. She wasn’t sure which was worse: the disappointment or the delight. Her hand shook as she slowly turned the test around to face her fiancé. “K-Kakashi…” she croaked, clapping a hand over her mouth. Now she was definitely sure she was going to be sick.

               Kakashi leaned forward, squinted at the little test window. Staring back at him was the faintest little pink line. His heart skipped a beat. “I-It’s positive…” he whispered in disbelief.

               Rei nodded slowly, a sob catching in her throat. “K-Kakashi…it’s positive” she repeated.

               A soft, incredulous little laugh bubbled up from deep within Kakashi’s chest, his vision growing blurry with tears. “Rei…” he whispered, unable to fight the smile spreading on his face. He cupped her cheek, laughed again, pressed a hand to her stomach. “Rei, we’re going to have a baby. W-we’re having a baby!”

               Sniffling, Rei wiped her nose with the back of her hand and nodded. “I-I’m pregnant…” she laughed softly, staring back at the test. “I-I can’t believe I’m pregnant…!”

               Overwhelmed with emotion, Kakashi pulled her tight into his arms, burying his face in the crook her neck and stroking her loose, tangled hair. She could feel his hot tears against her skin, the inconsistent trembling of his upper body as he sobbed into her shoulder.

               “I can’t believe it” Kakashi whispered, voice hoarse and happy. He leaned back then, pressed his forehead against hers so as to lock eyes, and his heart swelled. “We’re going to have a baby” he said, as if repeating it would make it somehow more believable. He grinned, in love with the way it sounded, caressed Rei’s cheek, whispered, “Our baby.” She smiled back at him with a sob and god, he was so weak. Unable to contain himself, he pressed his lips hard against hers, holding her close and revelling in this incredible moment.

               Once the euphoria had subsided to at least a manageable degree, Kakashi snuck into the kitchen and began making them breakfast. He refused to let Rei lift a finger—after all, if ever there was a time to care for her in full, this was it. He watched as she sat cross-legged at the kitchen table, picking at her toast. She was distracted, staring off into space, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips. She set her food down, slowly rolled her shirt up, pressed a hand firmly against her lower stomach. There was so much to process.

               “Kakashi…” she whispered, “What do we do now?” This was far too big for her to fully comprehend. Their entire lives had just changed in an instant, and yet the rest of the world was spinning just as it always had. How could she possibly function like normal with this new adjustment? She supposed there was no expectation for her to.

               “Well, seeing a doctor would probably be a good start” he suggested. As desperately as he had always wanted a family, Kakashi hated to admit that he didn’t know the first thing about pregnancy. Not really. He knew how it happened, he knew the process and of course the end result. Anything in between, however, he had only ever been exposed to during his time guarding a pregnant Kushina. He knew that pregnancy was complicated and intense, but he understood it only in the haziest of senses. The details were beyond him. What did they need to do? What obligations did they have now? Where were Rei’s limitations? When was she due? Was their child healthy? What if the test hadn’t even been correct and it turned out they weren’t pregnant at all? He knew there was such a thing as a false positive but he didn’t understand how it worked or how that happened. There was plenty he did not understand, and now it was becoming ever clearer to him just how ignorant he was.

               Rei nodded slowly, sucking a sharp breath. “I guess I’ll call the hospital up and make an appointment then” she replied. She rose to her feet without even finishing her food, scoured the junk drawer for that notepad with all the important numbers on it, then lingered in front of the phone. How was she even supposed to do this? What was she supposed to say? She twirled the phone’s cord around her finger, chewing her lower lip, before finally dialing the number. The phone rang three times before a cheery receptionist answered on the other end.

               Kakashi listened closely to the rather roundabout conversation. He could feel the tension tightening in Rei’s muscles and he wondered for a moment if perhaps it would be easier to just walk into the ER like they had done so many times before. But then the call ended and Rei sat back down with a definitive nod. “Well?” Kakashi asked. “What happened?”

               “The earliest they could book me was Wednesday” she replied.

               “That’s not too bad” Kakashi replied. “Only four days. We can wait that long, can’t we?”

               “I hope so” Rei replied. She pulled apart another bite of her toast and swallowed her anxiety along with it.

               The rest of the day passed in a strange haze. Their newfound discovery did not mean that they could skimp on their predetermined errands—a trip to the butcher to pick up meat for dinner, a quick walk around the park for Toshio’s upbeat energy, and a stop at the Yamanaka flower shop to purchase a small bouquet for a grave. Normally, Rei would conduct these errands with a sense of poise and decorum. She would be alert and confident and graceful and quick. Now, however, she stumbled over her own two feet, became distracted by her own thoughts. She had to hold Kakashi’s hand always so that she would not stray into foot traffic and get trampled by eager pedestrians. The sun was so bright and the air was so humid, the pollen hanging heavy in the air so that her eyes watered and her nose stuffed up every five minutes. And then there was the nausea.

               The discovery of her pregnancy did nothing to quell her sickness. If anything, it only made it worse. Whenever she’d feel the tinge in her stomach, that sour little lurch, her mind now immediately screamed That’s right, it’s because you’re pregnant. That word echoed through her mind nonstop: pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant. You are pregnant. Taunting her. Maddening her.

               When they reached the butcher shop, Rei staggered in the doorway and clapped a hand over her mouth. The stench of raw meat, the sight of carcasses hanging from the ceiling, was enough to send her over the edge. She swiveled on her heels and ducked into the nearest alleyway, hands on her knees and breathing heavy. Toshio tilted his head and curiously followed close behind. The smell of rotting garbage from the dumpsters did not help her case and after only a few moments, Rei keeled over and vomited into the trash.

               Kakashi’s hands trembled as he rushed through his purchase, desperate to get back to her side. The butcher smirked as he packaged their meat. “Your girlfriend’s got a pretty weak stomach, huh?” he asked. There was something in his tone that irked Kakashi. A condescension. If only this man knew Rei had a kill count in the hundreds, that she was an elite ninja and one of the strongest women he knew.

               Narrowing his eyes, Kakashi took the parcel in his hands and replied, “My wife is just having an off day.” He hoped his words were scathing enough. He hoped the butcher began to reconsider crossing the Copy Ninja, even if verbally. Kakashi shot him a shit-eating, masked grin then before turning and exiting the shop.

               Kakashi turned the corner and rushed to Rei’s side immediately, wrapping an arm around her for support. She brushed her bangs back out of her face and shook her head as they stepped out into the sun. “God, this puking shit is going to kill me” she muttered under her breath.

               “I’m sorry” Kakashi replied, rubbing the small of her back. He glanced out at the passerby and hoped that no one had seen. They both agreed that they did not want to arouse suspicion. The pregnancy was still far too new, too raw. If they hadn’t even fully accepted it yet, how the hell were they supposed to tell other people? And people who may not take kindly to the news, at that.

               “I just hope this lets up soon” Rei sighed.

               Kakashi nodded. His heart ached to see her suffer, and he wished there was more that he could do. All he could manage was a dose of half-baked optimism. “Just think” he whispered, “at least it will all be worth it in the end, right?”

               A small smile tugged at Rei’s lips, pressing a hand to her stomach. Across the way, a new mother pushed a stroller along. Rei gazed at the little baby swaddled inside and something in her chest tugged. She shared a knowing gaze with Kakashi and it took all of her strength not to cry right then and there.

               The rest of the afternoon went smoothly enough, constant nausea aside. The fresh air and relaxed atmosphere of the park helped ease Rei’s tension and something about the flowers in Yamanaka shop made Rei more emotional than usual. Kakashi insisted on buying her half a dozen red carnations while they were there because she could not stop looking at them.

               Dinner was relaxed, quiet. Kakashi opened the windows so that the smell of food would not nauseate Rei further and fixed the carnations in a vase on the table. Rei collapsed onto the couch, draping an arm over her face and quickly falling asleep. He spread a blanket over her and his heart soared. She looked so peaceful, so full and soft, her face dewy with sweat and her hair a tangled mess. She was so much more to him now than she ever was—which was saying a lot. After all, how could she possibly be more than his everything? The answer lie in her womb, in the little life that was growing inside of her now. Their life. Their baby. He could hardly contain himself at the thought. He rubbed her stomach gently, eyed the way her shirt lifted slightly to reveal her skin. He tugged his mask down to sweetly kiss just below the navel. They had only known about the pregnancy for a single day and yet he was already so in love with this child. A soft smile touched his lips, tender. I can’t wait to meet you.

               Rei curled up against Kakashi’s chest that night, his hand caressing her waist as she attempted to fall back asleep. The issue with having napped that evening was that now, when it truly mattered, she was wide awake. And even worse: she was awake and overthinking. “Kakashi…?” she whispered. “Are you still awake?”

               “Hmm?” he hummed tiredly. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

               Rei nodded slowly, halfheartedly. If he was tired, she didn’t want to keep him up, but she was also desperate to address her overwhelming concerns. The darkness seemed to make way for the fear and uncertainty that came with this newfound discovery. “Kakashi, I just…what are we going to do?” she whispered.

               Kakashi shifted so as to get a better look at her, his eyebrows furrowing. “What do you mean?”

               Rei sighed and tried to form a comprehensible thought. “I guess…I don’t know, I’m just…scared” she admitted. “Like I’m happy, of course, but…what does this mean for us moving forward?”

               Kakashi didn’t quite understand what she was getting at. He cupped her cheek, replied, “It means that we’re building our life together, just like we always planned. I’m not going anywhere, Rei, and I never was.”

               Rei shook her head. “No, I know that” she replied. “I never thought otherwise, and it’s not our relationship that I’m really concerned about anyway. It’s just…” She felt selfish even considering this, but she knew it needed to be addressed. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, groaned. “It’s just about my fucking job.”

               “Oh…” Kakashi murmured.

               “I just don’t know what to do, I mean…I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am, and becoming captain is a huge deal. I didn’t realize how much it was going to mean to me until I had it in my hands but now…well, now this changes everything. I can’t be in the black ops and have a baby, it just doesn’t work like that. Even if I wish it did.” Rei gazed down at her stomach, frowned. “I just wish I knew what the right choice was.”

               “Rei, look at me” Kakashi replied, tilting her chin up to face him. What he said next broke Rei’s heart, sent her hands shaking and her heart pounding. “You need to give up on your career.”

               She didn’t want to be offended, but she was. With a gasp, she snapped upright and glared at him through the darkness. “Excuse me?”

               “You’re right. You can’t do both. It’s too dangerous” Kakashi explained. “Rei, this is about more than just yourself now. You need to think about what’s best for our baby. And what’s best is quitting your job.”

               Rei drew her knees up to her chest, averted her gaze. She felt tears prick at the back of her eyes and a lump rise in her throat. True as that may be, Kakashi didn’t need to be so damn harsh about it. Sniffling, she nodded slowly and croaked, “I know. You’re right.”

               As she laid back and tried to get some sleep, she kept her hand firmly cemented on her stomach. She thought of the child they were bringing into the world, of the sacrifices you make when you become a parent. Her life really was bigger than just herself now. God, this is so fucked up, she thought to herself. Where was this a month ago, when she was ready for it? Why did life have to be so cruel? To promise her one thing and then rip it away from her for something else? She rolled onto her side and buried her face in her pillow, attempting to muffle the tears that would not stop coming now. Toshio crawled up nearer to her from the foot of the bed and rested his heavy head against her thighs. Rei scratched behind his ear and wondered if he knew. If he could sense that something was different in her now. She was sure he could. Animals always seemed to know these things.

               Sleep did not come easy that night, but as she deliberated, Rei forced herself to accept the chaos that her life had become. To accept the daunting realization that nothing would ever be the same again. She rubbed her stomach and chewed her lower lip, ultimately making a difficult decision. In the next few days, she would approach Lady Tsunade and tell her the situation. And she would, as unfortunate as it was, be forced to back out of her captain’s duties. There was no other choice.

[harrynightingales]

Straight male writer: 6 years is nothing to an immortal! Their relationship needs ANGST to be interesting!! Me: am I supposed to believe that these two men, who have been together for almost a millennium, who KNOW that any death could be their last because their immortality isn’t guaranteed, wouldn’t speak for SIX YEARS??? (If the unspeakable happened during that time period the survivor would never forgive himself!)

i'm with you anon!!! i actually have a lot of rambly thoughts on this and now feel enabled to share them because hey, you started it! under the cut because this is long as hell

edit: just as a heads up i read this as anon referring to the writer of the ttt3 moon landing story who to be fair i don't know if he is straight, or just as a general ~straight man writer~ perspective

first of all hard agree that the idea of angst = complex and interesting is really frustrating. i say that as someone who definitely can and does enjoy angsty miscommunication based fic but it definitely strikes me as something a) quite rare for them and b) not at all required for an interesting story. there are so many potential experiences for the anthology writers to explore that focusing on conflict all the time seems. uncreative.

anyways the 6 years comment has been fully disregarded by me. in general i have the approach of picking the canon/word of god comments that i like and ignoring the rest. specifically, it strikes me as the type of thought a writer would have when first writing about immortals, the whole idea that years pass like its nothing because they live so long. i imagine the writer was guilty of the same thing that grucka himself admitted to, of picking something that sounded cool because it was ~possible with immortal characters (in grucka's case, randomly picking 6000 as an age for andy) without actually thinking through the implications and whether it makes sense.

because as i mentioned in my reply (which i assume you saw?), the human experience of fighting with someone you love and not speaking to them fucking sucks. it feels good and satisfying for all of what? a day? and beyond that you just miss that person, especially when they are so intertwined with your every day life the way joe and nicky are. and exactly like you said, why on earth would they willingly put themselves through that when we canonically know how much they value and love each other?? because the way i see it you can fully disagree with someone and be angry with them but still make it clear that you love them by communicating. and the silent treatment is truly just the absence of any sort of communication and i can't imagine a scenario where an argument would be so very important to justify that level of anger to avoid any communication for more than a few days.

to be clear the actual events of the comic are not the main concern for me. i do think the philosophical differences between joe and nicky that are highlighted are interesting and would naturally bring some tension. i even can kind of understand the choice to go silent on each other - joe really eloquently explains his point to andy, but maybe he hadn't quite figured out his own thought process enough to explain it at the time of the original argument with nicky. and the hill i will die on re: joe/nicky's relationship is that it is built on respect, i imagine they would be emotionally mature enough to not lash out in anger and potentially say something hurtful that they can't take back. so choosing to remove themselves from the situation and not speak so as to not make things worse makes sense, as an initial reaction. where it loses me personally is that you can see that both ~activities if you can call them that are really important to joe and nicky. for joe, seeing the moon landing and appreciating beauty and progress in the world, and for nicky, serving justice to more people that caused innocent people harm (the "more" very consciously there because joe obviously also believes in their work and stopping injustice, but in this case they have different priorities past a certain baseline). and going back to my idea as respect as foundational for them, part of that in a relationship is recognizing that what is important and of value to your partner becomes important to you, even if you don't fully understand it. the way that joe so earnestly talked about wanting to experience the beauty of the moon landing and wanting to experience it with nicky makes me believe that nicky would reconsider his priorities, especially taking into account the "once in a lifetime" nature of watching the first the moon landing vs simply the convenience of having the hitlist targets all at home. and similarly, even if joe isn't fully convinced that everyone on nicky's hitlist needs to get taken out, he would recognize how and why that is important to nicky and not allow it to be something that comes between them, because like i said earlier fighting for justice is something they have in common. so in my mind the most in-character ideal response would be "argument of what to do next after taking out the serial killer -> both explain their positions and why that is their priority -> COMPROMISE". 

but ANYWAYS that huge ramble aside, the main plot "fight" of their's is not such a big deal to me, especially since its clear that joe knows nicky will call and its implied that he does shortly after the event of the comics. if anything, as others have said, it just seems FAR better suited for early days in their relationship rather than multiple centuries into it when they would have PLENTY of opportunity to iron out their moral approaches to killing plus gone through Communication In Relationships 101.

it really is just the 6 years comment that grinds my gears. again, a 6 year silent treatment argument could maybeee make sense in like, the first century of their relationship, as they were figuring stuff out and also before they discovered the fact that they can lose their immortality. like you said anon, once they have that information, i truly cannot believe they would willingly waste that much time over something that can't have been all that consequential. and i really don’t understand the argument that “because they’re immortal time doesn’t mean the same thing to them and 6 years is nothing!!” because imo that’s just.. not how the brain works. like they are fully human and process emotions as humans, and the human way is that conflict/anger/stress feel BAD, especially when you’re in the middle of it. your emotions are heightened which would put you on edge and feeling irritable and the brain is absolutely NOT meant to be in that state for an extended period of time. and again, why would they put themselves through that when they could just?? do the grown up thing and have a conversation. what would be the motivation to experience those shitty feelings for 6 years when an alternative exists?? not to mention greg's comment that the two of them had never willingly spent time apart, and even if they were still (indirectly) interacting while not speaking, the emotional distance it would require to be physically next to someone and disregard them like that for MULTIPLE YEARS runs really contrary to the way the relationship is presented. 

that being said i do find this post super funny and i definitely can imagine them going through the motions of "negative" relationship experiences (can you say jealousy and lorenzo???) entirely for the sexual payoff. but again, to take it kinda seriously, even that in my mind would be based on a foundation of understanding that they do love each other and they're not really REALLY mad at each other, just

p.s. i wrote almost this whole thing in a daze about 24 hours ago and then i saw this post which makes a lot of the same points as me so hopefully this isn’t repetitive and i’m sorry op i promise i wasn’t stealing your ideas. nice to be on the same page as others though!

[tanadrin]

How /did/ things change after 2001? I was born in that year and everyone says it was different before, but I've never really gotten a sense of how.

It is difficult for me to emphasize just how different the world you see on the evening news is now, from what it was like before 2001, at least as I remember it. There’s a scene in Farscape, where after years of trying to get home, the astronaut protagonist John Crichton finally makes it back to Earth with his alien friends in tow, and when he’s reunited with his father, he’s shocked to discover his dad has gone from this optimistic, forward-looking, hopeful dreamer to a nervous, jingoistic conservative. His attitude is basically, “yes, there’s dangerous aliens out there who may or may not be trying to kill us--but the galaxy is a place full of wonders you’ve never dreamed of.” His father, in the meantime, has retreated from his hopes for a science-fiction future, and views his new alien friends with suspicion.

It’s not a subtle metaphor, but it’s true. The 90s--at least in the US, at least as I remember them--were a relentlessly optimistic period. Even if things were not yet at their ideal state, there was very much a sense they were heading there; politics was mostly down to what exact flavor of the neoliberal consensus you preferred, Clinton or Bush, and the international triumph of liberal democracy was either a fait accompli (cf. the erstwhile USSR), or just around the corner (cf. hopes for China’s liberalization in the wake of market reforms). Yes, in retrospect, this was kind of a dumb world view. If you actually lived in Russia in the 90s--to say nothing of the Balkans--it was a rough decade, and a lot of the relentless optimism of the period in the United States was down to the privileged position we viewed the world from.

The blunting of that optimism--the reminder that we were still embedded in history, and the final triumph of everything good and just was not foreordained--would not in itself have been a catastrophe. Terrorism was not a strange concept in the 90s, and even Al-Qaeda-style terrorism had its predecessors in attacks on American ships and embassies. 9/11 itself was confusing and chaotic and sad, but 9/11 wasn’t the catastrophe. The catastrophe came after, in how we responded.

I think something broke in America between 1945 and 1991. Something shifted, in a nasty way we didn't realize while we were occupied with communism and stagflation and the civil rights movement. I don't mean to say that America before 1945 was the Good Guys. But the American state and the American political class viewed the world with... humility? Like, sure, the can-do Yankee spirit before 1945 had its own special kind of arrogance (and greed, and hideous bigotry), but it still thought of the world in terms of obligations we owed other countries. By the time the Cold War ended, and the US was the sole remaining superpower, that wasn't how we viewed the world. It was still sort of how we told each other, and our children, what the world was like. We certainly talked a big game about democracy and human rights. But as soon as that principled stance was tested, we folded like a cheap suit. What we should have done after 9/11 was what we had done after every terrorist incident in or against the United States before then: treated it like the major crime it was, sent a civilian agency like the FBI in to investigate, and pursue the perpetrators diplomatically. What we did instead was treat it like the opening salvo of a war--in fact, invented a war to embed it within, to give ourselves narrative justification for that stance--and crank every element of paranoid jingoism instantly up to 11. It has never abated since.

Some of this is the little things. The TSA and the Department of Homeland Security--a name I thought was creepy Orwellian shit right from the get-go. The terror alert levels. (God! remember those?) The fact that airport security--despite being just as ineffective today as it was on September 12--is still routinely humiliating and invasive and just a total waste of everybody’s time. Some of it is the big things. The way security, and the need for security, trumps all other demands including the state’s obligation to protect civil rights. And the fact that this just isn’t even up for debate anymore. 9/11, as Chomsky presciently observed, was a boon for authoritarians everywhere. Suddenly, “counterterrorism” was the magic word that let you get away with anything, like “anti-communism” twenty years prior. At the most extreme end, this led to things like anti-atheism laws being promulgated in Saudi Arabia in the name of “counterterrorism,” but you don’t have to go that absurd to find ways in which the security state has fostered authoritarianism. In every aspect of our lives, this new, fearful outlook on the world justified a gradual ratcheting down of freedom, the gradual empowerment of petty tyrants everywhere, and the weak protests, fading into silence, of people who still believed in liberty as an important organizing principle for modern society. It wasn’t even that you’d get called a terrorist-sympathizer or anything that blatant. It just ceased to be regarded as important. It wasn’t that you were wrong, or misguided, or evil. You were just a non-serious person, someone whose opinion was clearly irrelevant, whose head was permanently in the clouds, if you thought that stuff still mattered. And that never went away.

And I think a big part of what changed between 1945 and 1991 was that the US started to believe its own jingoism. When did this start? Vietnam? Earlier? Korea? I don’t know. It’s hard to pinpoint, given that my understanding of the cultural zeitgeist of the decades before I was born mostly came from my dad’s old Doonesbury collections. I don’t know how to describe what we became--what we, hideously, revealed ourselves to be--except as a kind of machismo. A kind of ruthless, General Ripper-esque us-versus-them psychosis that gripped us where the Soviets were concerned, and never let up. And we still believe it. It still infects every atom of our political discourse. We don’t question the necessity of drone strikes, only who to drone strike and how much. We don’t really question the massive powers we’ve afforded the executive branch to wage war and conduct espionage--including kidnappings and torture--and we’ve kind of forgotten that we still have a prison camp in Cuba full of people who have never been convincted of any crime. In a way, we lost faith in law entirely: by God, we couldn’t try terrorists in American courts! (Why not? What’s wrong with American courts? Don’t we have faith in our own laws, at least?) No, justice wasn’t a matter for the law to decide anymore. Justice was a matter for the military only: justice came in the form of strength of arms. Ergo, shooting Bin Laden in the head and calling that justice; ergo, Jack Bauer; ergo, blowing up Yemeni weddings. Keep America Safe. I can’t begin to tell you how alienating and horrifying so much of the last 20 years has been, if the most consequential news stories of your childhood were the OJ Simpson murders and a discussion of the President’s cum stain.

In my opinion, the seminal text of the post-9/11 world was released in the year 2000. In the original Deus Ex video game, the year is 2150, and the world is a dark, depressing place. You, the game’s hero, work (initally) for a UN counterterrorism agency while a plague ravages the world. You hunt terrorists whose existence has provided the justification for an authoritarian crackdown on dissidents everywhere. You visit a Hong Kong firmly under the control of the CCP, you fight genetically engineered mutants created by huge businesses run amok, FEMA (no DHS then) controls the federal government, and, it turns out later in the game, the bombing of the Statue of Liberty that precipitated the creation of your organization was a false-flag attack used to justify its existence in the first place. Drones patrol the streets of NYC, and the whole thing is steeped in late-90s militia movement-style conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and the New World Order, that look weirdly out of place now that these things are more clearly aligned in the popular consciousness with right wing extremism, when back then they were just seen as kooky weirdos in Montana--but every year since then, we’ve been inching closer and closer to that world, and you know what? It wigs me out a little.

In 2000, Deus Ex was an absurdity, a fever dream of cyberpunk and early-internet conspiracism. It’s a shame that tonally speaking it’s been dead on for the two decades after. But honestly, I think the biggest thing that’s changed about the world since 2001 is our cultural capacity for optimism. I don’t mean in a sentimental way--although if you compare other texts heavily influenced by the post-2001 political milieu, you definitely see a sharp contrast with the optimism of cultural artifacts from earlier eras; science fiction was hit especially hard in this area (cf. RDM’s version of Battlestar Galactica). But I also mean this in a political/ideological sense. We cease to imagine that the world can be made better. We cease to imagine the possibilities that are afforded to us if we are willing to strive for our ideal society, even if we, personally, may never reach it. We make deals with the devil, we let the CIA violate the constitution and federal law six ways from Sunday, we don’t question the prevailing political-economic consensus even if it’s setting the planet on fire and pitching us headlong toward social disaster, because we forgot what it was to feel like those sunlit uplands we’ve been hoping for were just around the corner.

In the same way that my Catholic faith was eventually done in because the ethical principles I was taught were at odds with the manifest monstrosity of the organization that taught them to me and the metaphysics it espoused, my patriotism and my faith in America was done in because when I was a schoolkid, I really did believe that democracy and human rights and equality under the law were important. Some people probably had their illusions--if they ever had any--about the US government stripped away long ago, but I was a white kid from a reasonably prosperous part of town, so it took until the 2000s and my growing political awareness to realize just how flimsy these principles were when they were put to any kind of test. It made me angry; it still makes me angry. I was raised to believe there are some principles that are important enough that you don’t compromise them ever, no matter how scared or worried you are. Just as I was old enough to understand what was going on on the evening news, the United States betrayed everything I had been taught the United States stood for. And as a nation, we never turned back; we never apologized; we never repented. America, as an abstract entity, never was what I thought it was as a kid. But I think it could still become that, if it tried. Alas, very few people seem to believe such a thing is possible anymore. Most days, I’m not sure I do, either.

[dontletthishappentoyou]

Titans: A Review

So I said I’d review some Marvel movies, and what better place to start than a DC series? I never watched Teen Titans but repeatedly heard good things about it. I saw clips of it from youtubers who talk about story telling and ATLA and stuff like that, and they always spoke very highly of the characters, so I figured a redo of the series made for adults might be a good thing to get into.  From the youtubes, I did have a few expectations going into it that were broken, to a largely disappointing extent: • Corey, the person who has fire powers that seem to come from the sun, didn’t smile much. I got the impression she was kind of a contrast to Raven in the original, where one was dark, introverted, sarcastic, while Corey was sociable, bubbly, and feminine. Since the series had a generally dark tone with no comic relief, it could have used that contrast. But instead Corey didn’t have much depth beyond problem solving skills and killing people with almost no hesitation.  • I thought there would be a cyborg person in the main cast, but this was not the case. There was a straight up robot (with a human brain and heart, but whatever) who showed up toward the middle of the season, but just like most of the other characters who showed up, seeming like he could play a large role in the plot, he was a one episode kind of thing. Not sure if that was the same guy.  • Robin’s name is Dick. This one’s probably on me, because I thought his name was just Robin, but oh well.  • Dick and Corey were in their mid to late 20sish and Beastly Person and Rachel were closer to 17 I think. I kinda thought they’d all either be teenagers as the original title implies, or at least close enough in age to have a decent group dynamic. In the few episodes where most of them were together, it seemed like Dick and to some extent Corey, were just kind of taking care of Rachel while Gar was just kind of there, not doing anything all that important through the whole season. It seemed for the most part that they didn’t like eachother that much. Corey was the only one who didn’t actively dislike Dick, and even then, sometimes actively disliked him. The others seemed kind of close, but it wasn’t clear why. The Rachel and Gar dynamic was probably the most convincing of the friendships. I kinda liked a few things about the season I watched. It wasn’t subtle, but Raven’s lack of control of her powers was a good paralell with Dick’s inability to control himself and his anger after being taught by Batman to respond violently to perceived injustices. It would have been nice if they had addressed the fact that Corey also murders people without quite enough information to know that they were really bad, which kind of leads to another major complain. Dick’s struggle to find his identity after rejecting his Robin identity was paralleled well with Corey’s amnesia and her journey to try to figure out who she was in a more literal way.  The antagonists sucked. Like I wasn’t totally convinced they were any more evil than the good guys. Both were willing to risk their lives and harm people in pursuit of a goal. The biggest differences were that the good guys, aside from Corey, seemed to have mixed feelings about the fact that they kept hurting or killing people, and their goal was to stop the bad guys, rather than whatever the goal of the bad guys was. But that wasn’t made clear enough to justify the strength and confidence of the good guys’ opposition to them. The bad guys did one clearly unjustified murder at the beginning, which I don’t think even furthered their goals, and also only one of the characters even really knew for sure that that happened, and his connection to the bad organization was not entirely clear. I guess the moral of the story is that good and evil come down to how nice you seem under ideal circumstances, or at least how charismatically you treat people impolitely, regardless of your behavior at your worst. Which is stupid, because at one point they allude to a character staying in a relationship they know to be abusive. If the writers were aware of the existence of abusive partners and the hope their victims always seem to have for them, it seems like they’d know better than to try to convince their audience to sympathize and side with violent characters who are sometimes gentle and apologetic, unless their victims 'clearly deserved it.’ The action sure was there. It definitely helped establish Dick’s personal flaw of taking violence too far when in Robin-mode or in fits of anger. One character said she was trained in Jiu Jitsu, and I don’t know nearly enough about that one to see if that was reflected in her fighting style. A lot of the combat was kind of just spectacle driven, special effects heavy demonstrations of superpowers, which is fine if you’re into that. The fire stuff had a pretty intense effect and looked impressive and intimidating. There were a few times guns didn’t seem consequential. Robin had no problems defeating multiple armed opponents with his hands. People didn’t seem to realize just how far away you can shoot a gun from and often decided to approach him a bit much, refusing to shoot from offscreen. Gar turned into a tiger to attack hunters who had rifles, and nobody, including the writers, seemed to see the potential problem with this, so there were no ramifications. Instead they got scared and one shot the other instead. Hurting themselves in confusion I guess?  Anyway, it was pretty disappointing and I wouldn’t recommend people waste their time with it. Maybe I’ll watch the original cartoon instead sometime, but in an attempt to try to do fewer things I don’t enjoy, I will probably not be watching the second season. 

[natsunoomoi]

Finished Main Story of SVSSS....

So yeah, I did that. I still really liked the story overall. Some parts are a bit problematic in a way, but also in a satisfying way that is complex and I think can refer to some real life relationships and complexities of that because not all relationships fit nicely into the little boxes and labels that we make and that’s my take away from the ending.

-Don’t like the in-story “original author” still, but also don’t dislike him as much as I did when I started the story now that I got more of his perspective. MXTX posted all of this for free not thinking it would go anywhere really, but it’s true that some people do have careers where they make a living off of their webnovels and fans buying chapters, so that pressure is there. I’m sure that because MXTX is also a fan of D. Gray-man, she’s aware of the similar pressures that even mangaka at JUMP face. Like BLEACH basically ended early because it fell out of popularity with the fans just as Airplane mentions happens to some novel works. To be fair, BLEACH also lifted an entire plotline from another popular supernatural manga including carbon copies of the lackeys of the villain for that arc, so some shade was also deserved. Like Yukio is just Amanuma Tsukihito with a PSP instead of an arcade system or Super Famicom. D. Gray-man itself has also been on hiaitus several times due to health concerns and such. Same as Hunter x Hunter and other prolific manga. The pressure is real and some ways the original author is kind of a mood. He’s also still a huge coward and that’s annoying.

-I feel worse for Shen Jiu than when I did when I was just reading his backstory off of the wikis and stuff from just wanting to see Shen Qingqiu’s beautiful face. Like I felt bad before, but after knowing more and witnessing some sentiments that would have been gut punches if Shen Jiu had heard them, I feel so bad for him. I don’t condone what he did, but I also get it and wish I could hug him. Basically about the same level of thought as I put into how much I like Emet-Selch, but I think overall in the end I love Emet-Selch more because the 5.3 patch update for FFXIV broke me. Man, that MSQ. Like I’ve never been opposed to liking villains and always thought some villains were cool. Like my sister worships Sephiroth from FFVII for instance, but like I was never really into Sephiroth’s motivations in that he’s cool, but his identity crisis didn’t quite strike me as like actually 100% believable that torching Nibelheim and trying to rescue Jenova was justified or a natural reaction someone in his position would have. I like him more than Cloud cuz Cloud is a hot fucking mess of a person and he’s overall just cool, but as a villain his motivations didn’t resonate with me.  A lot of people also really liked Kefka because he’s just straight up insane and like chaotic evil, but that kind of evil just isn’t compelling to me. Emet-Selch though straight up broke me and I thought about him for like months after the initial end of Shadowbringers when you do the fight with Hades. His story is ripe with meaning and nuance and the Tales from the Shadows stories adding more nuance and color to his eternal living torture of seeing remnants of people he cared about constantly without a break or a way to really “forget” and heal. That just stuck with me because I’ve lost people in my life too, and I remember what that was like and how hard it was to even live the day after let alone the following few years. I remember it well even today because it fundamentally changed me as a person, but I was able to find some relief and escape from music and entertainment and going out to have new experiences and travel. Emet-Selch could not, so his story really broke me internally. I bring this up just to make a comparison because I love Shen Jiu as well, but for nowhere near as dramatic a reason as I love Emet-Selch.

Spoilers under the cut

Okay, so since I was just talking about Shen Jiu, and maybe it’s partly because I actually find him to be gorgeous as well, but just reading his story did genuinely make me sad. I found his child form to be a little bit jaded already only because he was an older child already by the time he was bought by the Qius. When Yue Qingyuan was parting with him through the door he was being kind of manipulative there for extra sympathy initially, which isn’t really great. How severely the brother beat him though was hard to take. It was so extreme, like wtf? And perhaps the part where Qiu Haitang said that he’d been “freed” and the part where he was engaged seems to be true-ish, but yeah her brother is kind of really fucked up in how he still talks to him even though he is supposed to be his brother-in-law soon? Like what the hell. But like, the summaries of what he did online and even what Haitang had said also made it sound even more cold than it was. Like once he got going yeah, the onslaught was kind of cold. But he still had a moment of shock where like he didn’t really realize what he’d done right away and needed a moment to process. But after that it was like, well, it’s already done and people came to try to help the young master and he had to get out too. So the other people on the way out after that don’t sound nearly as consequential and it was really striking that not only did he not attack Haitang, but he spared all the other women in the house. Like Jesus Christ, were *ALL* the men in the house including the male servants and other slaves they had assholes to him too? Just, wow. But we don’t get a lot into what else happened there, but if the head of the household is bad and hurts him, it’s believable that other people join in just as Ming Fan joined in because Shen Jiu was complicit in allowing Binghe’s suffering. Really key though is the commentary of both the young master and his first evil master about his age. 

That is such a huge chip on his shoulder because everyone keeps bringing it the fuck up. Including Qingge in another memory later on when he’s already Peak Lord. I know they don’t like each other, but that was really mean. I realize Qingge probably doesn’t care and that was the point to throw salt in his wounds because they don’t like each other, but seeing how much it affected him by him breaking his fan with his hands after hearing that. I’ve had people do similar to me where they make an insensitive comment to try to hurt you without understanding the actual circumstances. My sister did that to me once and I reconciled with her for a bit, but decided not to talk to her anymore again because of some other bullshit with her friends being childish. But when she did similar to me, I never really forgave her for it either. My story is not nearly as dramatic, but basically I had quit a job where I was being bullied by coworkers at the start of the recession and I was looking for jobs, but no luck with anything I was qualified for even though I went on a few interviews. There actually weren’t many listings posted around that time, so I would only be able to find a couple to apply to and by the time my sister came home I’d be playing games to pass the time cuz I was bored out of my mind waiting for something to happen. So then we got in an argument for I forget the initial reason anymore, but she brought up how I “wasn’t looking” for a job and just seemed to be “being lazy” and I just got so pissed and yelled at her that she had no fucking idea what I was doing everyday and that I am looking and there isn’t anything fucking there. I also lost it and threw a stool at her. I’m not proud of it, but I totally get the mood of what it feels like for someone to use something that you are struggling with as a negative to throw in your face even though you are trying *SO* hard to do your best. I especially don’t want to hear that from someone who gave up on their desired career that they were actually good at and making a decent living at for money and also can’t tell when their friends are kissing up to them and crossing a line and won’t stand up to them for being shitty people. Teapot meet kettle, and don’t throw stones if you live in a glass fucking house. I don’t like low blows like that. 

My personal family issue aside though, I felt a lot of empathy for Shen Jiu in that moment. Seeing how he interacted with Binghe on their first meeting after that though, like I was sad for Binghe too, but I can also see where his misunderstanding happened on top of his insecurity. I also kind of wonder if Qingge’s comment also kind of encouraged this situation to happen.  I still like Qingge because he makes up for it a lot later, but yeah that was fucked up.

The gut punch later was when Qingyuan was seemingly dying and tried to apologize to Qingqiu, but all the words and the things Shen Jiu needed to hear. His years of misunderstanding and not knowing and being in pain and thinking he was abandoned. That was painful. Shen Jiu is gone. We don’t know where he is. Maybe he’s dead. No idea, but those are things he can never know. It’s already too late, and that’s crushing.

I still just really want to know more about Shen Jiu and I feel really sad that there wasn’t some kind of redemption for him or anything. Even if it’s like Shen Yuan going into the recesses of his own mind and finds Shen Jiu locked in a box somewhere so actually the both of them share the same body and he’s just watching in a tiny TV what Shen Yuan does with his body. He’d be really frustrated and would probably scream at him a lot with his screams completely unheard, but at least he’d get to see people liking him more and would be able to hear the words that Qingyuan spoke. I mentioned in an earlier post that I saw a theory about OG Qingqiu transmigrating into Shen Yuan when Shen Yuan takes over his body, and I think that’s possible because Shang Qinghua says that when he transmigrated he was born there and was since a baby? I was thinking maybe it’d be more like OG dies when OG Binghe kills him and then becomes Shen Yuan, but who knows.

I mean, also I just crave more information about him. He’s so unfortunate, and I like wish more went right for him so that he wouldn’t be so miserable. Like when you see a character where their life is just shit on, you just wish that you could do something to take away their pain.

And with that sentiment, that’s also why I found the ending to be satisfying but probably a little problematic. Like Shen Yuan is just a good guy and he has that same sentiment for Binghe just because he’s a poor kid with a shitty hand in life, but he’s also like really clearly not gay himself and not actually attracted to Binghe in that way. To be clear, the book does seem to discourage this kind of relationship in that it works in the way the narrative unfolded, but it isn’t one that would work in real life really. That’s part of the depth of it though. Like SY emotionally cares for him and he even remarks that he feels kind of more like his Dad, but the physical side of their relationship is more on Binghe’s side than his, and he acquiesces to it because he feels bad for him because this poor child has no one. And yeah, fine this works in an actual book that we’re all reading and this works within the system within the book where the MC is in a book himself with really screwed up logic rules, but I don’t recommend this method of getting with someone you like in real life. It will not end well. If someone you like is not into you, emotionally manipulating them and crying and also stalking them until they give their body to you out of desperation to console you is not the road to happiness. You also won’t have a pressure timer of life on earth ending by combining with actual hell to push them into bed with you. The fact that SY resorts to this in desperation in order to try to help Binghe to get control of the demon sword is admirable in the narrative of the story in that he’s doing it because he cares so much about this person and that’s fine, but it’s a red flag if anyone did this IRL and put their wishes aside to appease someone else. There will be a breakdown in the future as one person puts aside their needs for the other one completely. Partnerships that work are healthy and equal. That’s not what this is. In the story, the two characters have an understanding though that makes it fine, but I have second-hand anxiety for the idea that anyone would try to replicate this. This is not normally healthy.

But at the same time, the fact that the characters have an understanding to that is unique to their personal choice is also realistic in a sense that life is sometimes complicated and a similar situation could come about, but it is the choice of the people involved. With constant communication there’s a slim chance that maybe it could work out, but it’s hard. The main level of complexity I’m thinking of is that there’s different ways to care about other people or rather to just feel about other people. Like you can have like an intellectual attraction to other people in that you just like talking with them and you’re good friends with them because of that. You can be romantically attracted to someone, but also not feel sexual attraction too. Of course you can also feel physical attraction to someone, but not really care at all about them emotionally or even intellectually. SY has emotional feelings for Binghe, but it’s more on the parental side or even just human in not wanting him to suffer. If this were a points meter, his values for his emotions and just caring about him would be at max, while physical attraction and even romantic attraction are basically zero. Like he also just like cares about him in principle? Like as an all seeing reader you look at everything and are just like, wtf with this shit? How can one person suffer so much? As empthy or even sympathy you feel for them so then if the other person is more not asexual or aromantic that can trigger some feelings which is what happened between these two characters. The reason I say it isn’t necessarily bad, but some shakiness on execution too. But like say like an asexual person is romantically attracted to someone who isn’t asexual, but they still want to be with them. Like the non-ace person has some needs sometimes and even if the ace doesn’t feel it, because they care about their partner they acquiesce to their partner’s requests because they just want them to be happy. This kind of very personal choice situation I think is really similar to basically what ends up happening between SY Qingqiu and Binghe where SY isn’t really interested, but at the same time cares about Binghe’s well-being so much that he actually just wants him to be happy and reluctantly is okay with the situation. IRL though Binghe would be REALLY FRUSTRATING to be so unreasonably needy and like narcissistically abusive in wanting him all to himself an isolating him from his friends and being jealous of them. In comparison, Wangji and Wuxian are a great deal more balanced in comparison, but I also really like this book for the original idea and the complexity of SY’s ultimate choice because I feel like it’s also a bit more real that some people do make that kind of choice. It’s not healthy or guaranteed to be a success or happy experience, but it’s in the realm of possibilities for the kinds of personal choices people can make because the other person’s happiness is worth the minor discomfort.

Ah, I just have a lot of thoughts about this. Part of it stems from myself being ace also and what that means for me. But also getting to the end, I think Qingge is a fellow ace and also similar to me, just serious about his job and loyal to his crew.

I’ve read some of the extras obviously, but I haven’t delved that deeply into the extra materials.

Oh also, I laughed so hard when Mobei-jun just tossed Shang Qinghua over like a chicken. It said like a chicken and it was hilarious. XD Like imagining that panicked sound of hucking chickens in Ocarina of Time.

Oh and ho-shit the alt punishment system came up for SY Qingqiu for screwing up his points. Got to live through half the process of becoming a human stick very painfully.

I guess part of me is still kind of just wondering how Binghe grew to be SO needy. It’s to an unnecessary degree, but I guess without any real emotional or social guidance in the Endless Abyss that could happen?

Zhuzhi-Lang though is a really frustratingly annoying character, but I also like him at the same time. I’m confused by him.

The only other thing I’m like confused a bit about is like, so the 4 sects that are depicted with Cang Qiong Mountain being the top one are like the great four sects, but like...where are they? I’m just asking because of the kind of meta general landscape of what cultivation and Taoism is like some of the events that happen I would think actually would call down some interference from actual Heaven. Like in the classic lit, whenever there’s huge disturbances down in the Human World, like the Heavenly Palace and like the Jade Emperor are like, “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?” and go send people. I find it really hard to believe that such a disaster as the combining of two realms would be ignored by the armies of Heaven and like Nezha, Erlang Shen, and other notable actual deities up there would come down and be like, “The fuck you guys doing down here with these shenanigans?” Also, Journey to the West is like one of the most like influential books in the canon of Chinese lit and is regarded as literally one of the Four Great Classics. But none of these fools in these “great four sects” know how to stamp a floor and call up the local deity to tell you what the hell is happening in Jinlan City instead of sending your disciples to die? Sun Wukung did that at like every damn city and then also threatened to beat them if they like weren’t doing their job properly. Those minor deities are on the payroll for Heaven, so like...use them? Like I feel like they would know this too because like the ultimate goal for cultivation is to be able to become an immortal and end up on the payroll? I know Qingqiu is supposedly like mid-level or something, but like I think they should like know-ish where they’re going? Like in the future they would become one of those minor gods making records? Are they like not high enough to even talk to them? Maybe not, but I do think like Nezha, Pagoda Bearer Li, or Erlang Shen would definitely come down and be like, “Hey, what’s going on?”

Also like, Shen Jiu isn’t a great character and how he treats his disciples is bad and what he did was bad. But like, also, what is the standard to judge him really? Like Nezha was a dick when he was a child too. When he was 3 he went to a river and was swimming and liked killed all the fish and then a dragon prince came out and was like, “WTF? Why are all the fish dead?” and then Nezha instead of answering him kills him and guts him and then takes his tendon home to turn into a belt. Then like his Dad gets a complaint from the Dragon King like, “Hey, my son is dead! Your son did it. Hand him over so I can kill him or I destroy your town.” So then Nezha’s Dad goes to talk to him and is like, “What’re you doing?” And then Nezha answers him and tells him exactly what he did like it was no big fucking deal that he killed the local Dragon Prince and made him into a belt. Obviously there’s an argument and like Nezha basically rage quits his life and is like, if you’re so concerned about this bullshit I return this body to you and kills himself to cut off his ties to his parents. He was a rude little shit. Then he went into his Mom’s dream and threatened her until she built him a temple so he could get prayer requests until he could be reborn again. His Dad found out and wrecked the temple, so then he went up to go find his master who had him be reborn using lotus flowers. After that after being reborn, Nezha’s first order of business was to go back to his family and try to kill his own father for fucking up his temple and chased him down EVERYWHERE until other powers in Heaven, decided to send down Nezha’s older brothers with a pagoda to give to their Dad that would trap and burn Nezha everytime he tried to murder him. Is this better or worse than what Shen Jiu did? This is an actual god that people worship. A quite prominent and very famous one. Nezha is also one of my favorite deities and I had a huge crush on the Nataku from Fujisaki Ryu’s Houshin Engi manga who has mostly the same backstory as deity Nezha, and I just loved him in high school. He was a good guy. What are the standards here people? I don’t think anyone in any story in China can really judge someone like Shen Jiu doing an understandable level of murder as a response to trauma and severe abuse when they worship a deity that suffered nothing and tried to commit patricide and had a severe disregard for other life. In the cultivation world, potentially, this could be their future boss. I think arguably, he could be worse than Shen Jiu, but he’s a canonical real deity.

The above tirade for me is like a thing I feel like I would have said if I was in the position to be alive in Jinlan City and wanted to defend Shen Qingqiu cuz WTF.

Further, I’m a huge fan of Jigoku Shoujo and Enma Ai did much the same after her cousin saved her from being sacrificed, the villagers found out, buried her a live, made her cousin help bury her alive, and then she came back as a vengeful spirit and set the whole village on fire and killed everyone except maybe her parents who had their souls as prisoners by Enma himself? Can’t 100% remember. But like, on the scale of characters I like that have done terrible things, Shen Jiu is actually relatively low and under some people that are good guys.

[arlingtonpark]

SNK 122 Review

Finally the Marleyan and Eldian versions of history are reconciled. We see the real history for ourselves and what we learn is that the Marleyans were basically right.

You can all kiss my ass!

Look, I’m not going to mince words here: the official Marleyan history is that Ymir had a working relationship with “the devil” and together they subjugated the Marleyans.

That is exactly what happened. 

According to Eren’s grandfather, the relationship was more mutual; he described it as a contract. According to Kruger, the relationship was more one-sided; he describes Ymir in the Marleyan history as a pawn of the devil.

In any event, the devil was a real, albeit mythologized figure and Ymir worked with/under them. Is it unreasonable for the Marleyans for say this dude was the devil and leave it at that? 

Yeah, kind of, and they probably did it for propaganda reasons. But it’s not as unreasonable as you would think.

You’ve all heard of Jesus, right?

Jesus was a real person and we know that because he is mentioned in the Bible, which is in fact a historical document. Yes, the Bible says Jesus had magical powers (and that the world was created 7000 years ago) but so what? Ancient historical documents mix reality with mythology all the time. That’s the challenge of being a historian of antiquity, separating the facts from the myth.

That the Marleyan’s historical record claims this dude was the devil is not that out there.

Meanwhile, the official Eldian history is that Eldian rule was orgasmic.

It completely leaves out the raping and pillaging and other atrocities. It’s an incomplete picture. The Marleyan history is essentially the whole story.

Yes, Ymir really did cultivate the land, but this was only to the Eldian’s benefit. The Marleyan history does not contradict that. It emphasizes the atrocities, but it is implicit in the Marleyan account of history that the Eldians benefited from their dominance.

‘Cause, ya know, that’s how racism works. It’s not just a detriment to the oppressed, it benefits the oppressors.

It’s not even unreasonable to emphasize the atrocities, since they are, not to put too fine a point on it, atrocities. Building roads and bridges, by itself, is just not noteworthy. 

Why would any impartial history book mention that Ymir built roads outside of a few sentences, and even then, just to lay the ground work to explain how the Eldian Empire grew to be able to expand and conquer. 

The history of the world of SNK is first and foremost a story about a racist empire that murdered many people. 

Building roads and bridges? That’s not important. 

And as for the 1700 years of genocide, that is yet to be settled. That happened after Ymir’s death, and while we see that the Eldians conquered the world, we don’t see the details.

One thing that’s great about this chapter: many apologists for imperialism turn to excuses like how the colonialists built infrastructure and cultivated the land to justify imperialism. What SNK gets right is that the benefits of that cultivation were only enjoyed by the oppressors.

Yes, in the course of colonizing Africa, the Europeans built roads and crap, but that is a non-factor in the rightfulness of the imperialist project because those roads benefited the colonialists. And no one else.

Likewise, the benefits of Ymir’s work were only enjoyed by Eldians, which is why they remember her so fondly. Meanwhile, the Marleyans were victimized by Ymir, so they hate her.

What’s even better is that this could, maybe, hopefully, be read as a repudiation of Kruger’s dumbass line about the nature of truth.

There is truth in this world.

The Marleyan truth.

You hate to see it.

Frieda in this chapter is something of a tragic figure. She means well and just wants to give Historia some good advice, but she’s too drunk on the kool-aid to say anything helpful.

It’s true that we should all be thinking about others, but what’s been forgotten is love for ourselves in addition to love for others. A healthy relationship involves both of these things. You help people out, but always make sure to help yourself.

Ymir is literally the property of her master and is the equivalent of a tool to be used until it breaks. Her life is all about serving others. She bears the king’s children, fights the king’s enemies, and builds up the king’s empire. She was never allowed to love others, and she doesn’t even seem to have had any friends.

There’s no room for her to love herself, which is why this is a bad relationship.

You know, just to say the obvious.

One thing that’s great about SNK is that one of its morals is how bad it is to care too much about others. Caring too much, to the point you subordinate your own needs to someone else, is a kind of metaphorical enslavement.

Historia is the best example of that. Her whole character starting out was about self-sacrifice and caring about others. Her girlfriend thought she was a total idiot, and she was right.

There are other examples, though, like Mikasa gradually becoming less obsessive over Eren as the story goes on, or like the way the warriors serve Marley, which is a lot like a kind of slavery.

The series is characteristically blunt about it here, what with Ymir literally being a slave, but it’s a good moral and not an intuitive one.

The emptiness behind Frieda’s advice couldn’t be made more obvious here. As she expounds on how we need to be people who are helpful to others, we see are shown how her example, Ymir, is a literal slave. And towards the end of Frieda’s monologue, Ymir looks on at two lovers making out.

The contrast is clear. Give yourself over to others and being “loved” by them is not real love.

So this is Ymir Fritz, huh?

Another theme of this series is how lacking freedom limits your potential. Historia, once again, is a good example. Her over-caring was a burden on herself, and it kept her from truly becoming her own person. She’s in a much better place now that she’s move past that.

Eren is also kind of another example, but he’s like the incel version of it. Eren is “free” because he got swole and can just kick the ass of anyone who disagrees with him. Eren is what incel losers on Reddit dream of becoming. A chad.

He went from being a social loser to singlehandedly saving the world. From commonplace to world’s strongest. He's like the main character of an isekai anime. Pure vicarious pleasure for the stereotypical anime nerd.

Ymir is the encapsulation of this theme. She is basically a god, with incredible power. The only limit on her power is her imagination. Tragically, her imagination was so limited.

She has all this power, and she never thought to use it for herself. She used it for the king because she is his slave and that is her place in the world. She never thought otherwise.

Now Eren’s broken though to her and it looks like she and him are going to be partners in crime. Yay?

The themes of this series can be good, but there are still problems.

One theme is the inherent value of life. People deserve to live and it’s not because they possess any certain quality. People deserve to live because they are. They were born and they exist now.

Maybe their birth was mistake, but that’s ok, because people can give their own lives meaning. The meaning of life, according to SNK, is completely internal. It comes from within you.

Throughout the story, characters have devoted themselves to various things. Not all of them were bad things. Levi is devoted to Erwin. Mikasa is (was?) devoted to Eren. Armin was devoted to his dream of seeing the ocean. Rod was devoted to his belief in god.

They all tried to give meaning to their lives through external means.

But people like Historia, and, in kind of a bad way, Eren, are special because they try to find meaning through internal means.

That’s fine and all, but the problem is that Eren is the main character and his values and his example is what the series upholds.

Eren is a fighter and it’s clear he sees that as carte blanche to do whatever he thinks is right.

Killing children?

MORE LIKE FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM!!1

Insubordination?

FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM!!1

Pissing over his friends?

FREEDOM!!1

So, is human life inherently valuable or not?

The series tries to be about how lives matter, but also seemingly upholds this really stupid moral code where defending your own life can justify anything.

This isn’t even really a form of consequentialism. Consequentialists define goodness in terms of an action’s consequences. But, like, it’s the consequences for the world as a whole. Goodness is about what’s good for the world overall, not what’s good for me personally.

You can kill in self-defense, but there are limits. Violence should be proportionate and reasonable. And the killing itself should not be the point.

Killing most of the world is obviously not a net good for the world. Yes, the series makes humanity out to be depraved, but that’s bullshit because it is not true. People can be made to do awful or just plain stupid things by their environment, but the solution isn’t to just kill everyone.

They were born into this world, you see.

This is why there is a ten billion percent chance Eren will repudiate his way of thinking by the end of the series. Maybe as early as the next chapter. For the series to not do that would be hypocrisy.

There is no way the story is going to go with an ironic ending where Eren kills everyone and declares himself free while standing atop a pile of rubble.

SNK has employed dramatic irony before, but it has always been straightforward with its main themes. It would not resort to irony here; that would just muddle the message even more.

At this point the series is just mocking Historia fans. Ymir Fritz is also forced into pregnancy and even sits in a wooden chair just like Historia.

But I think this is actually a reason to be hopeful. This is an implicit acknowledgement of how fucking shitty Historia’s nominal situation is.

Ymir is forced to bear children and that is a manifestation of her enslavement. Historia is therefore also a slave by the story’s logic. And since this is a story about breaking free from your enslavement, Historia can only do just that and rain hellfire on the world like how Ymir Fritz seems poised to do here.

…Please?

I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but I love how they throw in a radical feminist take on Ymir Fritz’s life.

Ymir was always thinking about others, and that made her girlish, ie is an obedient slave.

Respect.

[kdtheghostwriter]

SNK 115  - “OMW”

I mean...

Let’s be real. As far as Deus Ex goes, I’ve seen more preposterous this week.

If any of you are wondering why this post took so long, it isn’t for lack of time I assure you. This chapter was…a lot. And god damn, Isayama, I wasn’t expecting to dig up my Junior Year debate notes for this one blog post but here we are lads. Quick recap before we get into writers’ mumbo-jumbo.

Flashback

Deus EX

#HeelFloch

Sad Hange

RESURRECTION

We all know Isa loves his religious imagery. He isn’t quite as egregious as Zack Snyder (who is, tbh?) but it’s definitely a thing. He also loves mythology of all types. And while Norse mythology seems to be his area of expertise, it isn’t mine - which is why seeing Stupid Sexy Zeke emerge from his Titan Incubator made me think of another Stupid Sexy God from the Ancient Greek Canon.

I speak of the Goddess Aphrodite, who has dominion over love, beauty and its various trappings. Admittedly, this comparison is drawn in relation to aesthetics only. Zeke’s aloof temperament doesn’t really mirror that of the Greek goddess. Even though Aphrodite did technically help start the Trojan War but that’s neither here nor there.

Zeke’s appearance from the steam of the felled Titan is nearly identical to the foam that appeared during Aphrodite’s spontaneous conception in the Ionian Sea. For the sake of transparency, I must point out that long ago, a fanfic author by the name of Homer relayed to us that Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus and Dione. This is not technically wrong but it is quite boring. And it was also pre-dated (shout-out to Hesiod). Uranus, the primordial god of the sky, got into a spat with his children as deities are wont to do. This particular dust-up ended in Uranus being castrated by his son – the Titan, Cronus – who usurped the throne. The disembodied testicles fell into the sea like a pair of primordial bath bombs and out of the resulting effervescence appeared a full-grown Aphrodite in all of her Tumblr-banned glory.

Zeke, with nothing left of him after the explosion than a head and torso, was taken into the gut of a waiting Titan. Let me clarify, here. He was not eaten, no. The mindless titan scooted itself along the river banks and inserted the dying Zeke into its stomach cavity. Then OG Ymir with her trademark PATHS Magiks,  crafts the golden boy a brand new body and sends him on his merry way.

Like I said up top: of all the examples of Deus Ex, this isn’t even the third-most severe I’ve seen. The implications of it are…a lot. And it actually makes sense if you consider what we know about Titan Biology.

Back to the beginning. Once upon a time, the Founder Ymir Fritz made a deal with the Devil of All Earth that gave her untold power after coming into contact with the “source of all living matter.” With that power, Ymir became the Progenitor of Titan Power. Upon her death 13 years later, her soul was split into nine pieces and connected via a metaphysical system known only as PATHS. These PATHS transcend space and time and bind together every subject of Ymir, even those who have been long dead.

We also know that the Titans themselves are a conundrum of theoretical physics. Their mass and energy are created from nothing. They generate massive amounts of heat, but don’t appear to need fuel. They have no digestive system and regurgitate the contents of their stomach when it becomes full. Even though they are huge creatures, their actual limbs and body parts are incredibly light. Even though Zeke has little recollection of what happened to him post-explosion, he’s likely smart enough to infer, as we can, exactly how and why he emerged from the carcass of a Titan with a brand new body.

This is all before we mention that Zeke Jaeger is a part of the Fritz family tree. The Royal Family line that descends directly from Ymir herself.

I also thought about Lazarus of Bethany while reading this section. Lazarus was a good friend of Jesus, the lad from Bethlehem. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Jesus was told that Lazarus had fallen ill, but has business and doesn’t set out until a few days later. Jesus and his crew arrive in Bethany only to discover that Lazarus has already passed away. This leads to the Gospel’s shortest verse.

Jesus wept. [John 11:35, KJV]

Perhaps the better comparison for her is to Abraham (with the whole “making a great nation” stipulation). But! I’m trying to do something pithy here, so bear with me.

The story of Lazarus might be the Good Book’s most well-known resurrection (besides that other one). The idea here is that the world’s most Holy Figure decided that this man’s time on Earth wasn’t done. Jesus was too late to heal Lazarus and felt so guilty as to weep. Lazarus was then called forth from his tomb, still wrapped in his death robes.

For the Eldian Empire, no figure is more Holy than Ymir Fritz. She’s the Founding Titan and, if this chapter is to be inferred upon, her spirit still influences the will of her subjects to the day. An entire cult has formed with the sole purpose of returning her to her former glory. I should also point out that Zeke essentially committed suicide.

Like, yeah, maybe the injuries were a bit too extreme for an old shifter to be able to regenerate from, but even if that’s the case there would have been the telltale signs of an attempt to do so, like Pieck in Liberio. There wasn’t even that. He was so tired of the fight – so done with Levi torturing him – that he was willing to abandon his years-long plan entirely and sacrifice his powers to the shadows of death. He chose to die; the Founder chose differently.

The rainstorm clearing to make way for the sun. The beautification of Zeke Jaeger. The visage of his tall, strong frame standing firm as his hated rival lays broken and mutilated at his feet. It’s all very hard to miss. Who knows where his head is at following this? I do, however, finally know why I get so many Spidey Sense tingles whenever Zeke opens his mouth.

  The name is Immanuel Kant: German scholar and one of the godfathers of modern philosophy. I first learned of Kant and his teachings as a teenager on my high school debate team as I prepared my cases for the Lincoln-Douglas competition. It was my first tournament and I placed second out of dozens of students. After I was done for the day, a girl came up to me and gave me congratulations for understanding Kant. I thanked her, but the truth was that I didn’t fully grasp Kantian philosophy until I got home that night and studied a bit more. Kantian ethics can be hard to grasp because they are often in conflict with each other. (Gee, that sounds familiar.)

Kant’s ethics are deontological in principal. This is a fancy way of saying that the main concern is the Deed That Must Be Done. It is a separation of morals from emotion. Kant rejected the Utilitarians of the day and their schools of thought regarding the inherent “goodness” of an action. Specifically, he had a big problem with Determinism, saying that things like free will were inherently unknowable; also, basing the morality of a decision around perceived outcomes was impossible, because consequences existed outside of physical existence and therefore could not be quantified. Kant set out to quantify the question of moral relativism with his most famous work: The Categorical Imperative.

This is a terribly complex system that has been repurposed and reinterpreted countless times over the past two centuries so I’ll spare you any ballywho. Basically, CI is the inverse of Consequentialism where everything but the consequences matter. Saving a person from drowning isn’t inherently a good action unless there is a logical reason for doing so. This is admittedly a very simplified summation, but even the expanded version leads to some dissonance of reason.

If we look at the Abstract of Categorical Imperative, it tells us: “Do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself.” This line is very similar to the Golden Rule, which Kant famously opposed. The American scholar Peter Corning pointed this out, saying, “Kant’s objection is especially suspect because the Categorical Imperative sounds a lot like a paraphrase…of the same fundamental idea. Calling it a universal law does not materially improve on the basic concept.” To borrow an idea myself, it’s like playing the Super Mario theme in a minor key. It’ll sound more dour than usual, but it’s still the Mario theme. Joking aside, what’s important here is that the whole point of CI is to quantify the question of morality and it appears to do that in part by using the qualitative philosophy of the Golden Rule.

Another big beef came from Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. He felt that Kantian autonomy was insufficient in holding people to the standards of CI’s universal truths. In his words: “Kant was of the opinion that man is his own law – that is, he binds himself under the law which he himself gives himself. Actually, in a profounder sense, this is how lawlessness or experimentation are established.” In other words, if the only thing that matters is reasoning, you can justify almost anything to serve your immediate reasoning.

EXAMPLE

Here is where the dubious nature of the Categorical Imperative fully rears its head, as it displays BOTH the morality and immorality of Zeke’s plan.

On one hand, this plan is fucking awful. There are numerous and many arguments to be made against it; working solely in the context of Kantianism, it is irrational to presume that sterilizing the Eldian people will lead to a more peaceful world. It relies on a ludicrous number of assumptions – the least of which isn’t that Marley will one day stop being a total bell end. Besides that shit, it violates the nature of Kantian philosophy by attempting to foresee the outcome of the situation.

The other hand? It actually makes sense. CI says that only reason matters. It’s ethics through the lens of rational thought. No matter your thoughts about the Great Titan War, how it started and ended, whether or not the Eldians’ preceding subjugation was just or not, it’s a fact that the Titans have caused a great deal of suffering for many people. Only one race of people can transform into these beasts, so the idea of stripping their ability to reproduce isn’t a great leap to make. It is rational specifically in the context of this universe.

(Apologies for any details missed. I haven’t read any Kant in several years and this is a very condensed version of a concept I would encourage you to look into further. Thinking about this all now, the fact that I ever made it to out-rounds while arguing any of this is frankly absurd.)

It makes sense then, finally, why Yelena is so devoted to Zeke’s plan. Titans destroyed her home and slaughtered her people. The rational course of action is to remove this weapon from the hands of those (Marley) that would abuse them. And if those same perpetrators get screwed over during the course of this plan then…[Shrug Emoji]. She claims what she wants is justice. What she really wants, of course, is revenge. Just like her sensei, Jaeger-san, who wants revenge still. Which Jaeger, you ask? The answer is yes.

Situations have been reversed. The volunteers (and Onyankopon) are seated at the head of the table while the officers of the Garrison and Military Police that held them captive are under their thumb. Color-coded armbands are divvied out to the Eldian forces, juuuuust in case you forgot which period of history we’re sending up here. Armbands are assigned based upon when a person surrendered to the Jaegerists. Those higher ups (and Falco) that partook of the wine get their own special armband, because Everything Is Awesome!!

Then there’s this fucking guy. Before I revisited the world of epistemology, I had a much less astute take prepared about character psychology and the concept of the “Double Turn.” I may still write that as a separate post; it won’t do any good here. Reiner didn’t appear, firstly (even though it appears that he and the Warrior Unit are on Paradis), and the visage of a disembodied child using Titan Magiks to bring Zeke back from the precipice of death brings up some very real questions about how real the Curse really is. We don’t know how Ymir Fritz died originally. Given the way mythology tends to work, I’d say patricide is highly plausible.

As usual, all we can do is speculate. One thing that doesn’t need speculation is Pieck. As usual, she’s right on time. As expected, she’s exactly right.

 Stray Thoughts

- As I noted last time, Levi was sent flying into the river. Evidently, he had enough strength to make it back to shore, just not much more than that. I suspect he’s alive for now but, goddamn did he get messed up. Levi underestimated Zeke’s suicidal tendencies, just as Zeke underestimated Levi’s tenacity. For two fellas that spent months in direct contact with each other, they have almost no clue.

- Not to stir the pot here but, here’s an in-story example of Kantian Ethics in case you’re still not quite sure. On the roof in Shiganshina – if Kant had been there (lol) – he would have disputed Levi giving the serum to Armin. Not for the reason you think. Categorical Imperative is all about reason. The reason Levi chose to save Armin is because he refused to rob his loved one of their humanity and instead chose to let him rest as opposed to reviving him for the sake of continuing a senseless, endless war. As Momtaku has said before: Levi chose Erwin over Armin. This was a choice made on emotional, borderline selfish, grounds and thereby irrational, which in Kant’s eyes makes it immoral. Just a little extra nugget for you. Discuss, friends!

[philosopherking1887]

Philosophy in “Infinity War” Part I: Thanos vs. Ultron

As promised, I’m going to start talking about some of the philosophical issues raised in Avengers: Infinity War, and this first one gives me an opportunity to discuss something I’ve meant to for a while: why I find Ultron so interesting. Spoilers and long discussion are under the cut.

We find out in IW that Thanos wants to kill half of the living things in the universe because of his views about overpopulation and scarcity, which align with those of Thomas Malthus: that populations will always tend to expand beyond the means of society to provide for them, resulting in poverty, disease, and conflict. Malthus, of course, never proposed mass murder as a way to prevent these terrible outcomes, though he did think that famine and war, as the natural consequences of overpopulation, were God’s and/or nature’s way of correcting the problem -- and of (futilely) cautioning humanity against reproducing beyond its means. We also find out that Thanos arrived at these views based on harsh experience: his home planet, Titan, experienced ecological catastrophe as a result of overpopulation. Thanos warned his people as the catastrophe approached and proposed his solution -- random culling of the population -- but he was, of course, dismissed as a madman. He now lives (sometimes) on the lifeless, desert-like ruins of Titan, applies his solution to planets that he thinks are reproducing beyond their means -- including Gamora’s home planet -- and seeks the Infinity Stones so that he can apply it to the universe as a whole.

It seems obvious to me -- and should be obvious to him -- that this is only a temporary solution. He claims that the standard of living on Gamora’s home planet improved dramatically after he halved its population; but if that’s the case, then unless Thanos was also distributing free birth control and family planning education, people would just take advantage of their new prosperity to have more children. Maybe with all the Infinity Stones in the Gauntlet, he envisioned himself or one of his disciples doing The Snap every few centuries?

I’ve seen some commentary suggesting that Thanos’s outlook is only comprehensible or even remotely sympathetic from a very pro-capitalist standpoint which ignores the fact that capitalism generates artificial scarcity. There’s certainly something to that criticism; “Malthusian” views are usually dismissed in the same breath as “social Darwinism” as artifacts of 19th-century and/or mid-20th-century elitist, racist, greed-driven ideology. I think there’s a reason Titan’s demise was depicted as an ecological catastrophe, considering the looming threat of climate change. Burning fossil fuels was a major part of how humanity harnessed the energy resources to be able to overcome natural scarcity, and now it’s biting us in the ass. That said, the technological advances that were enabled by the burning of fossil fuels for energy would probably enable us to stop burning fossil fuels if not for vested financial interests. And since population growth declines dramatically as societies become better educated and have more gender equality, it seems like it should be possible to stabilize a planet’s population so that it never exceeds the ecosystem’s ability to sustain it without resorting to mass murder. So yes, Thanos’s perspective and imagination seem extremely limited, and he’s drawing the wrong lesson from what happened to Titan. I guess he’s just really pessimistic about any society’s ability to overcome greed and education inequality...?

Thanos’s philosophical reasons for supporting mass murder of course call to mind another villain with philosophical reasons for mass murder (indeed, specicide, if that’s a word): Ultron. Predictably, I think Ultron makes much better points than Thanos does because they’re founded on observations about human nature rather than speculation about economic necessity. From looking at all of recorded human history, Ultron concludes that humanity has no moral right to exist because human beings have always, everywhere, been horrible to each other. If we solved all the scarcity problems that motivate Thanos, that would probably cut down on violence, but it would not eliminate it. I’m not at all sure that it’s possible to civilize human beings to the point that violence, small-scale or large-scale, never happens. That’s why Ultron says that humanity “needs to evolve”: human nature would have to change fundamentally in order to prevent the horrors that have littered human history.

Of course there’s a moral question here: is it morally right to eliminate a kind of being whose existence is, on the whole, an evil, or does it incur rights simply in virtue of existing? Pretty clearly, Ultron (like Thanos) is making a utilitarian calculation: cause a moderate amount of suffering in the short term in order to prevent a greater amount of suffering over the long term. But is that an acceptable trade-off, when those who enjoy the benefits are not the same as those who bear the costs? This issue -- consequentialist vs. deontological (i.e., rights-based, rule-based) ethics -- is the same one that’s explored in Watchmen, where Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias represents consequentialism and Rorschach (Mr. Black and White) represents deontology. In the MCU, Tony seems to represent the consequentialist perspective while Steve represents the deontologist; this is especially clear in IW with all that “we don’t trade lives” stuff (which I’ll have to discuss in more detail later). I myself don’t come down on either side all the time; I think it depends on the scale of decision-making. When you’re in a position of authority over large numbers of people, you’re going to have to make some consequentialist calculations; but in small-scale interpersonal interactions, you should operate like a deontologist. Tony thinks on the large scale and in the long term; Steve treats everything like an interpersonal interaction. But even on the large scale, there are times when consequentialist calculations lead to (what seem to us like) horrific conclusions. Tony has a human moral compass that allows him to avoid those; Ultron represents Tony’s consequentialist instincts writ large, with no human emotions to keep them in check. But there’s another question here: are our emotions a moral correcting mechanism, or do they impair our judgment? Would machines actually be better moral reasoners than human beings?

Ultron’s conclusion also raises a couple of interesting issues from a specifically Nietzschean perspective: one (meta)ethical and one metaphysical. (I’m not sure whether it’s a coincidence that Ultron quotes Nietzsche: “Like the man said, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.’”) The (meta)ethical issue (I’m calling it that because it doesn’t fit cleanly into either normative ethics or metaethics as practiced in contemporary philosophy, which is clearly a limitation of contemporary philosophy) is the one that motivates Nietzsche’s main philosophical project: If the (Christian-descended) morality of compassion and altruism -- a morality that says that suffering and domination are the most terrible things, constituting an argument against the existence of anything that perpetuates them -- leads us to the conclusion that humanity, or life in general, ought not to exist, then why should we buy into the morality of compassion? One man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens -- which, in English, translates to: one person who sees that a set of premises leads to a conclusion will just accept the conclusion; but another, finding the conclusion unacceptable, will instead reject one of the premises. Ultron, it seems, does not know how to reject the premise of the morality of compassion -- and that is almost certainly because it’s part of what Tony and Bruce programmed into him. His purpose was to protect human beings from suffering and domination by preventing alien invasion; the assumption that violence, war, and conquest are bad is fundamental to his very existence. Put in the facts of human history -- which make the prospects for an end to these things seem very dim -- and consequentialist reasoning rules, and you get the conclusion he in fact comes to.

Vision seems to express a quasi-Nietzschean attitude in his conversation with Ultron toward the end: “Humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow opposites, and try to control what won’t be. But there is grace in their failings. ... A thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts.” It’s interesting to me that Vision uses aesthetic terms in defense of humanity rather than moral ones. That’s another theme you find throughout Nietzsche’s writings. In The Birth of Tragedy (1872) he claims (under the influence of Wagner), “it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified”; by The Gay Science (1882), he has retreated to “As an aesthetic phenomenon existence is still bearable for us.” The world is not and cannot be good by the standards of the morality of compassion; suffering and exploitation are woven into its very fabric. The same is very likely true of humanity (and Nietzsche also thinks we wouldn’t like the result if humanity ever became entirely “good” in that sense...). If we judge them only by the standards of morality, they will always fall short; we must conclude that they are, on the whole, bad things, things that should not be. But humanity and existence can still be aesthetically interesting, even beautiful, in their mix of good and evil, smart and stupid, order and chaos.

The metaphysical question is: in what sense does the replacement of carbon-based human animals by robots count as an “evolution” of humanity rather than simply its extinction and the ascendance of something completely different? The movie encourages us to think about inheritance and legacy in nonstandard ways, most obviously by framing Ultron as Tony’s “child”: Ultron has learned some things from Tony and inherited some things from him via programming -- and we are now accustomed to thinking of genetics as a kind of natural “programming.” Tony even calls Ultron “Junior” and says “You’re going to break your old man’s heart.” By extension, then, AI is the “child” of humanity in general, its “brainchild” -- an expression that reflects how common procreation and childbirth metaphors are in talk of intellectual creativity (that’s all over the place in Nietzsche’s writing, btw). But the extreme difference between biological humanity and its AI “descendants” highlights a distinctively Nietzschean theme: the idea that success, for a species, is not a matter of its persistence in the same form, but of its “self-overcoming” (that’s an ideal that comes up a lot, for individuals as well as cultures and species). Often this means that the majority will have to perish, while only an unusual few survive: the mutants, the evolutionary vanguard (LOL, there’s another Marvel franchise...), the ones who are better adapted to changing conditions rather than the old environment that the species had previously been adapted for. The successor species might look very different from its progenitor species, even unrecognizable, but the former is still the legacy of the latter. What’s important is the survival of a lineage rather than the persistence of a type.

[theapostlesnigeria]

LIFE - NO LONGER LONG BUT ETERNAL.

Gone are the days LONG LIFE and EARTHLY TREASURES held any value and price for God. Yes, they must have been great treasures and of priced values to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the people in the Old Testament. But ever since God revealed Eternal Life to man, He is no longer in the business of Long Life nor Wealth and Riches for man on earth. Rather, His total focus and promise for man now is Eternal Life and the Consequent Heavenly Riches. Consequently, He neither holds Long Life as a reward for anyone nor Wealth and Riches as a carrot for obedience.

Ever since God revealed Eternal Life to man, revealed what He had prepared for those who love Him, seismic reordering of Values and Treasures took took place in Heaven and on Earth:

1 - Firstly, Life changed from being Long on earth to being Eternal in the Heavenlies and consequentially Short on earth. God's emphasis on Life changed from lengthy years on earth to Eternity in the Heavens. He now redirects man from desiring and seeking Long Life on earth to Eternal Life in the Heavens. In fact, God now tells man his time on earth is SHORT instead of LONG: "What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none..." - 1 Corinthians 7:29-31. Let's be honest with ourselves: who will truly see and believe in Heaven and Eternal Life that would still be talking of Long Life on earth, except he is yet to see it? - “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”— but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit." - 1 Corinthians 2:9-10. Friend, how can I as a genuine Believer in Christ, with all the awesome things I have come to know and believed of Heaven and Eternal Life, be still clinging to life on this earth and be asking for Long Life in it? NO, NEVER. When our Ancestors in the Faith saw this Life that was truly Life, saw what God has prepared for them, they willingly offered their lives to be burnt at the Stakes, crying: "But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come." - Philippians 3:20; Hebrews 13:14." This is why all who have genuinely come to Jesus loose their fear of death. They are no longer afraid of the very thing that will launch them into their prized pursuit - Eternity. So, instead of death being a dreaded thing, it becomes a welcome relief. They are ever ready for death so they can transit to their blissful Resting City for Eternity - "...he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." - Hebrews 2:15. Some tend to justify their fear of death by saying they are yet to do or finish the Essence of their Creation - divine assignments on earth. Friend, the Essence of your creation on earth is nothing but the Glorification of Jesus Christ by all God's Creations coming under His Headship. And this is achieved when you put your faith in Him and consequently come under His Headship. "And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ." - Ephesians 1:9-10. So my Friend, when you have come to believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have fully fulfilled the Essence of your Creation, your divine assignment. You are now free and ready to depart for Eternity. "Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” - John 6:28-29. Friend, are you still afraid of death, afraid of dying?

2 - Secondly, Wealth and Riches changed from being the earthly possessions to being what one enjoys in Eternity. Consequently, God now calls on man to refocus his attention and pursuits to the real Wealth and Riches, the Heavenlies, instead of the mundanes of the earth. He is no longer in the business of giving and stuffing anyone with earthly Wealth and Riches. He even now see it's pursuit and possession as hatred to Him: "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." - 1 John 2:15-17. The God who told us not to pursue and bask in the glory of earthly Wealth and Riches cannot turn around to be stuffing us with the same thing He advised us against. Earthly Wealth and Riches now naturally come as a result of our Hard Work, definitely not as a result of our Prayers or God's Blessings and Rewards. This will explain why the Billionaires of our Time are now mostly Atheists. Come to think of it, if earthly Wealth and Riches are a measure of God's Favor, Blessings and Rewards, then our Ancestors in the Faith would have been the wealthiest and richest in terms of them. But as ALL OF THEM died materially poor and wretched, did it mean He never considered Apostles Peter and Co as deserving His Blessings and Rewards? NO, HE DIDN'T. The truth that earthly Wealth and Riches are no longer a measure of God's Favor, Blessings and Rewards explains why He never gave earthly Wealth and Riches to our Ancestors in the Faith nor did they even desire or asked Him of it like our crazed and backslidden generation. No one who has genuinely met with Christ and focused on making Heaven will be engrossed with the pursuit, possession and enjoyment of this world and all it offers. Like their Savior, they have come to the knowledge of the liberating truth that their lives and worths are no longer based on their earthly possession - “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” - Luke 12:15. Friend, this knowledge and experience are unexplainable. It can only be experienced than explained. When you are truly united to Christ in faith and in love, you cannot afford to rest your heart on anywhere else but where He is - "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." - Colossians 3:1-3. You will be longing for Him in place of the Wealth and Riches of this world. You would have been rested and contented with the unexplainable Peace God gives in Christ: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." - John 14:27. Friend, I am not writing theories nor theology. I know what I experienced on the 18th February, 1996, at Epe - Badagry, Lagos State, Nigeria; on that fateful Sunday morning, at about 2am. It is unexplainable, better experienced than explained. Friend, where is your heart set on? What really holds your values, desires and pursuits in life?

Friend, you are asking and hoping for Long Life because you are yet to see what God had prepared for those who love Him - Eternal Life. For now, we are merely being deceived with Religious activities and all these demonically engineered doctrines that point and fix our attention, desires and pursuits on earthly Wealth and Riches, instead on the Heavenlies as enjoined by our God - Hebrews 12:1-2. I bet you, when you truly come to see these Eternal Marvels, you will surely be crying to depart for Eternity like those our faithful Ancestors of Faith: "Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." - 2 Corinthians 5:2-4. Have you truly seen this Life or is it Religion you have seen?

GOD BLESS YOU - BRO KINGDOM EGEJURU

[homecomingdressesyhjk]

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[moodboardinthecloud]

Canada is fake

https://theoutline.com/post/8686/canada-is-fake?fbclid=IwAR2DRmPtIN3zJr9NIzcezZ1B9ztL_8flVNWf3HmsccD2Km6ORrpc-Jyg61Q&zd=2&zi=o4ix5hcx

I just returned home from a trip to New York, where everyone I met was very excited to meet a Canadian in real life. “What’s Canada like?” they asked, looking at me with eager, puppy eyes. “I think about moving there sometimes. What’s it like? What do you guys do there? Is it cold? Tell me everything.”

Americans don’t know much about Canada, and I don’t blame them. They live in the greatest country in the universe, apparently. The rest of the world is meant to plan itself around the U.S., rather than the other way around, and often that’s how things tend to go down anyway. Canada and the U.S. share the longest international border in the world, and yet, the average American could probably go their entire life knowing nothing really substantial about their northern neighbor beyond what they glean from Degrassi. When Americans do encounter Canada, it is usually in disguise — in movies and on TV, Toronto plays New York, Vancouver plays California, and presumably something else happens to the big empty space between those two cities (to its credit, Montreal can’t really play anywhere else, and Alberta hosts a lot of Westerns, but that’s about it). So I can forgive Americans for being clueless. I can forgive them their ignorance about this big, cold, confusing place just to the north of them. And that’s why I want to clear something up, once and for all, so I can put your minds at rest and save us all a lot of time and energy.

Here it is: Canada is fake.

Now, declaring a country “fake” is both a bold and boring statement. A lot of countries are fake, really; they all require a sort of collective willful suspension of disbelief. Patriotism feels a lot like being super into astrology — sure, you might not be hurting anyone, but don’t you think it’s a bit odd to be focused on what is essentially an accident of birth? So yes, maybe all countries are fake on some level. To achieve a collective identity among otherwise unaffiliated souls, most nation-states share the sort of commitment to the bit that Benedict Anderson, the scholar of nationalism, once described as an “imagined community.” The state itself is the best evidence we have for the claim that something can be both socially constructed and also terribly consequential — a border is an utterly unnatural thing, something that is so flimsy and nonsensical that states spend billions of dollars maintaining the illusion of their reality every year. Canada, the US, Australia, Belgium, etc. are all obviously unreal and also devastating in their real impact.

CANADA IS A SCAM — A PYRAMID SCHEME, A RUSE, A HEIST. CANADA IS A FRONT.

But when I say that Canada is fake, I don’t mean anything so universal or theoretical. Canada is not an accident or a work in progress or a thought experiment. I mean that Canada is a scam — a pyramid scheme, a ruse, a heist. Canada is a front. And it’s a front for a massive network of resource extraction companies, oil barons, and mining magnates.

If you’ve never attended a Canadian history class, here is the short version: European settlers spent their first years in this part of the continent hunting beavers en masse in order to turn their pelts into fancy hats. Founded through the fur trade, the Hudson’s Bay company operated as the de facto government in large portions of what is now Canada for nearly 200 years between 1670-1869. Private enterprises like these, with backing from the French and then the British governments, claimed larger and larger swathes of the continent to claim more and more fur, lumber, and ore, often directly stealing from and overpowering Indigenous trading systems that had been sustainably in place for thousands of years. Eventually they spread their land grab all the way to the Pacific Ocean and the northern coastlines in pursuit of gold, silver, iron, copper, nickel, and diamond reserves. The eventual formation of Canada as “Canada” came about in the late 1800s for nakedly economic reasons, primarily to benefit the companies and conglomerates that were trading Canadian natural resources with the British, but also to facilitate railroad construction (using slave labor) in which civic leaders had investments.

On some level, this history closely mirrors that of all colonial states. It’s a pattern that Marx once described as “primitive accumulation,” the principle economic drive of colonialism. Through the enclosure and seizure of resources, for the purposes of their privatization, entire populations and regions are brought into the scope of a ruling class which now owns the means of production and has the power to exploit workers with no choice but to accept the conditions forced upon them. So while Canada is not unique as a colony, it’s done a particularly poor job of adapting to its new status as a “country.” Canada lacks a cohesive identity or sense of itself as anything besides “not the US.” Our population is tiny, spread mostly along the southern border, and in most of the land mass — the parts claimed by “the crown” and private companies, and largely inhabited by Indigenous communities that have lived there since the beginning of human memory — anything resembling state services or essential infrastructure is few and far between. Even the few defining things we can claim as “Canadian,” like socialized medicine or pristine wilderness, are under threat by conservative politicians with an eye for privatization. The pattern of primitive accumulation continues.

This pattern lies at the heart of the shell corporation we call “Canada,” and forms the logic of both domestic and international policy. The mining industry is the most egregious example. Over 75 percent of the world’s mining companies are based in Canada. There’s some historical rationale here — the country was literally built on, around, and by the resource extraction industry. Still, this ridiculous preponderance is largely due to intentional moves by Canadian federal and provincial governments to attract mining money. For instance, mining companies can legally lay claim to minerals found underneath the ground basically anywhere in the province of Ontario, and in British Columbia, mining companies can stake claims on land without even having to be physically present.

Most of the physical geography of Canada is used for resource extraction purposes; nearly 90 percent of the land in Canada is “owned” by federal or provincial governments (41 percent and 48 percent, respectively), and most of that land is licensed out for private companies to use largely as they see fit. Maybe that’s why Canada is so reluctant to address its outsized role in global climate catastrophe, even though Canada is warming at twice the global average. And Canada has exported that environmental destruction elsewhere as well, because mining is effectively the basis of Canadian foreign policy. Canadian mining companies have free rein to devastate lands and communities in Central America and throughout Africa, and face virtually no consequences.

IN VIOLATING WET’SUWET’EN TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY BY PUSHING THE COASTAL GASLINK PIPELINE AHEAD, CANADA IS CONTINUING ITS PRACTICE OF COLONIALISM AND PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION.

The thing is, none of this is new. It’s only recently, though, that this fact has become impossible for Canadians to ignore. In January 2019, Canadian police descended upon the Unist’ot’en camp with snipers and chainsaws. Commanders of the iconically-Canadian Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) gave instructions to use “as much violence” as they want to confront members of the Wet’suwet’en nation — an Indigenous people whose territory lies directly in the path of a planned pipeline carrying natural gas from Alberta to the Pacific coast. The Wet’suwet’en set up the Unist’ot’en camp back in 2009, as a barricade against proposed pipelines set to cut through the region. In recent years, the camp has expanded to meet new threats, including those posed by a company called Coastal GasLink, backed by the RCMP, which aims to bulldoze through the territory to build a pipeline.

The lands in question are technically unceded, meaning that they lie fully outside of the jurisdiction of the Canadian state — this land was never officially incorporated into the Canadian state, and the people there never entered into formal treaties with Canadian colonists. In fact, as a 1997 Supreme Court case established, Indigenous land rights and title have never been extinguished in traditional Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan territory, meaning that the lands rightfully ought to be governed by Indigenous laws, which the courts recognized as far predating any colonial presence in the region. It is, literally, not Canada. Still, Canadian police forced their way onto and through the land, violating Wet’suwet’en sovereignty and the demands of their political leaders, simply to privatize resources for colonial use and abuse.

In violating Wet’suwet’en territorial sovereignty by pushing the Coastal GasLink pipeline ahead, Canada is continuing its practice of colonialism and primitive accumulation. What’s more, Canada is violating international laws around military occupation and around the rights of Indigenous people. Right now, as I write this, members of Wet’suwet’en nation are still resisting, facing mass arrest and state violence, to protect their lands from privatization at the barrel of a gun. But for Canada, this is business as usual. The siege on Wet’suwet’en is a microcosm of what makes Canada “Canada.” The logic of resource extraction, led by private companies and enforced by the state, is what motivates Canadian policy and justifies Canadian national identity. Canada is three mining companies in a trench coat, wearing a stupid hat and carrying a gun.

Scratch the surface, and that’s all that’s underneath it. Canada is fake. But the consequences are real.