I think one of the worst things a story can be is unproblematic.
Nothing makes a story more unreadable than being able to see the author squirm apologetically for the story they actually want to write—wringing their hands and imploring the reader please, please don’t be mad, I know it’s ideologically questionable but I need you to not be mad at me!
For example: a Good King™️. It’s one thing for a story to present a fictional monarchy and ask me to root for it. It’s another thing for a story to say, hey, I know what you’re thinking—but don’t worry! I can justify this premise! I have introduced a lot of convoluted self-aware political justifications for why my king is good and likable without actually asking any risky ideological questions! These characters aren’t actually problematic! Don’t be mad at me!
Commit to the bit. Apologetic, defensive writing designed to bypass obvious criticisms often winds up offending me far more than stories that are just kind of surface-level problematic. If I’m gonna be a hater you cannot stop me; the more you insist that a character is actually a good oil tycoon because of all these exceptional situations and beyond my reproach, the more I resent you and hate your stupid book.
the sad/funny/fucked up irony is that the more an author seems desperate to create unproblematic worldbuilding and unobjectionable characters who have all the right attitudes, the more likely it is that they’ve inadvertently created some hideous implications far worse than simply writing about characters who aren’t right about everything
like great! now you’ve just reinvented ecofascism or made racism true or made proxy medieval Europe less xenophobic by, uh, removing the Jews
[image description: a photo of tiny tomatillo seedlings pushing up from the soil. Below is a questionnaire marked “Strongly Agree” under “I will protect it,” “I want to see it grow up healthy,” and “I want to tell my friends and neighbors about it.”]
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Next time remind me that tomatillos need like twice the recommended amount of spacing between plants lmfao
Something is eating my ground cherries, and my assumption is it must be raccoons because they are being neatly removed from their lil husks in a way that I assume the culprits need hands for
It’s cool we can share I have plenty of my own, those and the pumpkins are the only things I planted outside the garden fence so I kind of assumed that might happen, I’m just kind of bemused that something is coming along and (1) only eating the ripe ones that fall to the ground and also (2) taking them out of the husks so carefully. Like if anything they’re very polite little thieves.
still trying to decide if luthen had saw make the final decision on kreegyr as a peace offering— a display of trust and willingness to work together— or if he just wanted to divide up the weight of his heavy conscience
@chamerionwrites hey wait come back don’t leave this fucking excellent analysis in the tags
this made me realize that the scene with saw and luthen wasn’t just us as viewers knowing exactly what would happen, luthen obviously knew exactly what saw would choose also
I never noticed the number thing!! I now consider you certified luthen expert and would love to hear why you think he does that
the one thing I’m still questioning about all this is why luthen went to saw then in the first place. because remember, the last time they talked, saw said no to backing up kreegyr— luthen didn’t know until he arrived that saw had changed his mind, forcing luthen to try to stop him. I’m curious what you make of this— do you think luthen had a feeling saw would change his mind and came prepared? do you think he was playing this 5d chess in real time with about 10 seconds to figure it out?
I’d have to go back and watch again to see if there’s a solid canon indication of why Luthen visits Saw at that moment in the story. (Easy speculative answer: Saw’s the one who contacted Luthen so he could act as a go-between with Kreegyr to finalize plans for the raid, but did not tell Luthen until that moment because for security reasons neither of these sensibly-paranoid men wants to talk specific details if they aren’t face to face.) But honestly my read on this scene isn’t so much that Luthen was playing 5d chess, as that he was gaslight-gatekeep-girlbossing his way out of a really potentially sticky situation lol. As you say, the last time they spoke Saw explicitly refused to do the thing that Luthen now needs to talk him out of doing. Luthen’s exasperation about that (“I don’t know WHAT you’ll do”) strikes me as completely sincere. And there’s clearly improvisation happening: Luthen initially tries to avoid telling Saw at all, then tries to talk Saw down when he predictably reacts badly, and only when that fails and he honestly doesn’t have much to lose does Luthen put the decision into Saw’s hands.
The thing is…Saw’s contrary. (I say this affectionately. He is in some sense the rebel’s rebel - Strong Opinions, tendency toward defaulting to Fuck You I Won’t Do What You Tell Me.) Luthen isn’t shy about browbeating people (Vel) or coercing/intimidating/threatening them (Lonni) into falling in line with his chosen plans, but that’s never going to do anything but backfire with Saw and he clearly knows it. Often the best way to get people like that to agree with you is to convince them it’s their idea. In fact the reason they’re in this predicament at all is that (1) Luthen had a plan; (2) Saw shot down his plan; and then (3) Saw had space to come around to the idea on his own terms without feeling pushed or ordered into it and decided, hey, actually this is a great plan.
All Luthen needs to do to work things to his advantage here is make that happen again - albeit on a much shorter timescale and under much more fraught circumstances.
So I don’t think Luthen necessarily knows with certainty how Saw is going to choose, but with his back against the wall I do think he makes a very smart gamble. Because what he does know is that Saw doesn’t like Kreegyr, definitely doesn’t like Separatists, and is motivated by an urgent desire to stop the Empire and a belief in his own willingness - perhaps unique willingness - to do what is necessary (“I am the only one with clarity of purpose”). Luthen knows that Saw is angry (understandably so!) about being left out of the loop, so he positions himself as confiding in Saw. Luthen knows that Saw can’t be threatened or coerced, so he positions himself as deferring to Saw even as he’s literally holding a gun on him. He knows that Saw is afraid Luthen might sacrifice HIM like a chess piece one day, so Luthen says no, of course not, you know too much about me and also we’re equal partners who make tough decisions together. He presses every one of Saw’s buttons one right after the other.
And it works!!! Luthen comes out of a situation that looked pretty bad for him - Saw refusing to cooperate with him in the future was the good outcome, there was at least a slim possibility he concluded Luthen really was ISB and murdered him on the spot - with everything he wants, and maybe even some extra leverage in the bargain. We know this is part of how Luthen operates. He uses the deaths of Kreegyr and his men to lock in Lonni’s commitment - these men are being sacrificed to keep your cover, so now you’re obligated to do something worthwhile with it. Like I said, I doubt he could blackmail Saw that explicitly without Saw digging in his heels out of spite. But he doesn’t need to; Saw’s own commitment and stubbornness, his tendency to charge forward on a path that he’s set his mind to, will do that work for Luthen. In fact arguably the reason this is part of Luthen’s MO is because justification for the sacrifices he’s made is part of what drives him, and he understands that motivation so intimately that it’s very easy for him to project it onto and/or weaponize it against other people (“I know the outside. I imagine the rest.”)
TL;DR it’s a scary-slick bit of manipulation, but I don’t think Luthen needs foreknowledge or meticulous planning to accomplish it. Just quick thinking, chutzpah, and good intuition for people (/practice maneuvering them into doing what he wants, which he clearly does have per the better part of his interactions outside Kleya).
Something is eating my ground cherries, and my assumption is it must be raccoons because they are being neatly removed from their lil husks in a way that I assume the culprits need hands for
It’s cool we can share I have plenty of my own, those and the pumpkins are the only things I planted outside the garden fence so I kind of assumed that might happen, I’m just kind of bemused that something is coming along and (1) only eating the ripe ones that fall to the ground and also (2) taking them out of the husks so carefully. Like if anything they’re very polite little thieves.
“The average US president has been charged with 1.54 felonies” factoid isn’t true. The average US President has been charged with 0 felonies. Donald trump, who has been charged with 71, is a statistical outlier and should not have been counted
Felonies Donld is now up to 79 felonies, for a statistical average of 1.71 felonies per president
Update:
With 91 felonies, felonies Donld has now broken the 2 felonies per president average average (2.02 felonies per president)
people are talking shit in the QRTs but I stand by this one
And there is an explicit “halt activity immediately” thing you can do, and you’re encouraged to do it the instant you aren’t okay with what’s going on!
For lots of people, BDSM is basically adaptive sex.
What I don’t understand is why it stops here. Why is the “explicit communication, vanilla sex” combination off the table. Like, this is actually kind of a problem, why is it this hard to close the conceptual gap.
This is (an adjacent thing to) when I was talking about how “not reciprocating oral sex” as a Stock Badness is harmful, because you’ve still got the thing where there are Default Sex Packages that it’s always reasonable to expect from any partner and you are not in fact striking a blow for consent by using momentary discourse-dominance to change what the default sex packages are.
This low key comes off as like, hostile? “Oh, you want explicit communiaction? I hope you like being hit and controlled then! You’re not into that? Suck it up, it’s a package deal.” Congratulations, you have undermined the purpose of your consent protocols.
Like, I start to wonder why anyone pursues sex at all if it can only ever be mediated through these sorts of all-or-nothing mutually unsatisfying zeitgeist ultimatums, and the ability to talk it out is gated behind having specific kinks, as a part of one such ultimatum, for literally no reason.
I actually agree with this take, though not necessarily the framing of it. Like I think we SHOULD import the standards around explicit communication into vanilla sex, I think that would actually make a lot of people’s lives easier and generally make sex more enjoyable. Like a lot of the notes disagreeing with me basically come down to “why can’t you just have good communication without doing anything kinky?” And it’s like yeah, actually you can do that. the problem isn’t that you can’t the problem is that social norms around sex outside of BDSM spaces romanticize spontaneity and knowing what your partner wants without them having to ask and a lot of people don’t want to have healthy conversations about sex because it conflicts with that so like sorry for landing on the wrong side of the is/ought dichotomy for your tastes but unfortunately good communication being endemic to the people who are into kink is just how shit plays out most of the time
To answer that question - “why is the explicit communication + vanilla sex combo off the table” in good faith, it’s because of what the majority of people who have “vanilla” sex are taught to believe about sex. I don’t understand how doubleca5t’s post comes off as hostile - in my experience as a sex therapist, kinky people are VASTLY more likely to use explicit communication during vanilla sex and to advocate for its use in nonsexual settings.
Most people are inundated with extremely heterosexist beliefs about sex for our entire lives, and a big part of those beliefs are myths that sex is/should be spontaneous, “natural” (meaning you shouldn’t NEED to talk you should just know and want the same things), easy (again - you shouldn’t need to talk it should just happen), that people should know how to arouse their partner effortlessly, and that your body should respond with arousal readily, easily, and on demand. None of these things are true, but they are what we are taught to expect that sex should be like, and consequently many people end up deeply internalizing these beliefs. No one sits us down and says these things outright, but they are hinted at very consistently, and in the absence of anything showing people communicating and exploring sex in a realistic and supportive way, we internalize the former.
Thus, you end up with a norm of people NOT using explicit communication during sex and having all sorts of fucked up expectations of ourselves and each other, and since we’re not supposed to talk about it few people even realize that they hold these beliefs. They are unconscious, but still impact us, and many people end up deeply attached to them. Their sense of sexual identity, of sex as a pleasurable experience and what sex means to them, becomes tied to meeting these unrealistic expectations. If they don’t, they become anxious, disappointed, and frustrated - sex is not happening as it “should”! They “should” not have to put effort in, or communicate! They “should” just be “good” at sex! Their body, and/or their partners’ body “should” just respond in a certain way! They and/or their partner “should” just want sex “normally” (i.e. the same way/frequency/length/etc that they think everyone else does - thus is a moving target and their is no standard.)
Suggesting otherwise, that actually we should dismantle these expectations and use communication and collaboration skills during sex, is very threatening to the internalized fantasy of what sex “should” be, and many people resent the idea of these skills in vanilla sex because you “shouldn’t” have to. It must also be said that for many people, even vanilla sex is still implicitly taboo in their families, if not explicitly - they never talked about it. Parents just never spoke of sex with their kids. They got embarrassed when the topic came up. They turned the TV to a different channel when sex scenes came on. Parents got awkward and uncomfortable if kids asked questions, so they stopped. All of this teaches us - sex is not something to be talked about, but you ARE supposed to do it and enjoy it. It’s awkward and uncomfortable to talk about sex, and it’s NOT okay to feel awkward and uncomfortable about things, better not talk about it at all.
It’s not kinky people not porting those skills to vanilla sex. There is NO kinky person who would say “oh you have to be into hardcore kink if you want to use safewords and collaboratively decide what we want our sexual experience to be like. If you don’t want hardcore kink tough shit you don’t get to talk about sex.” The people who struggle the most with these skills are the people who have deeply internalized very heterosexist beliefs about sex, and honestly those people are most likely to be very “vanilla” in their sexual taste. Kink communities have done SO MUCH to normalize communication and collaboration in vanilla sex, and I frankly find the implication that it’s kinky people saying “NO YOU HAVE TO BE KINKY TO USE THE SKILLS THAT WE DEVELOPED” suspicious, because the question “why are so many people who have ‘vanilla’ taste averse to explicit communication in sex? Could it be that THEY have some problematic beliefs about sex?” is right there
Also idk but I feel it is important, for reasons of genre understanding, to recognize that good old fashioned murder is like the least violent thing anybody ever does in a proper spy story
I don’t wanna be wanky here but am I slightly perhaps just the tiniest bit put out that so many people are all “🤩I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see😍” about Luthen when Cassian Andor’s other tall sandy-haired spymaster came in for so much flack over (checks notes) ordering a hit on the lead engineer for THE DEATH STAR? Maybe so
Maybe if they’d given Alistair Petrie a big dramatic speech like that people would have loved (or even just *got*) Draven a bit more. But Rogue One has a really economical script; so like pretty much everyone else except Jyn, he doesn’t get a set-piece moment.
I mean YMMV, it is of course full of fascinating character insights and that is always narratively compelling, but personally I found the dramatic monologue an unflattering look on Luthen and from what we’ve seen of him as a minor character I sort of think Draven might too
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