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mercutao

for Ostania

D. Desmond, NUP

D. Desmond, SDP

Remaining time: 6 days 16 hours

@theunbearablelightnessofbeeing can explain the political system bc i can't. starlight parabellum universe

theunbearablelightnessofbeeing

Since I was basing SP on the UK political system, there aren't technically any term limits for PMs or MPs. They can serve an unlimited number of terms provided they can still win elections.

Anyway I voted for Damian despite the whole warmongering thing he has going down, but what I will say is that Donovan is extremely fuckable here.

anyadesmond

Fptp ruined my life. that system's a bitch that swallows votes left and right.

mercutao

begging everyone into sxf to read up on the eastern block history, the situation with just the leaders wives was crazy . sponsored by did first lady exist even as a role? and the answer is: how much time do you have

yugoslavia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jovanka_Broz

romania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Ceau%C8%

albania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexhmije_Hoxha

ussr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raisa_Gorbacheva

german democratic republic (the direct inspiration for ostania) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margot_Honecker

bubbles-burster

I wish Annabeth had been a daughter of Aphrodite instead.

Not only would you avoid having a virgin goddess being utterly disrespected for no good reason, but it would justify way better why people constantly underestimate Annabeth. Because, oh dear, do Aphrodite's sons and daughters get dragged through the mud in these series!

Annabeth being a child of Aphrodite would be a ruthless situation to be in at first; she would more often than not be judged on her looks rather than her wits.

In Rick's very nature-deterministic world where the Dionysus kids will hand you energy juice bottles while all the Ares kids are on the frontline and all the Apollo kids are archers and/or medics, Annabeth Chase would be expected to sit nice and look pretty and break some hearts and maybe fix other campers' armors.

And she'd understandably hate the idea.

Annabeth would attempt to deny and escape her parentage, such as by avoiding her siblings or trying way too hard to make an impression on Athena. She'd despise pink and femininity, just like Uncle Rick did with all of his other main female characters, because there's only one way to be a likeable girl and it's by not wearing any makeup and not trying 'too hard'.

Annabeth's pride, which she would take after Aphrodite's, would have her deliberately avoid learning about the numerous myths relating to her mother, and that could prove dangerous in missions.

Then she would learn to embrace her divine parentage. She'd stop running away from the parts of herself that society had conditioned her to hate, she'd learn about the actual Aphrodite, about her mother's cunning and bravery which has her not think twice before thrusting herself into a decade-long war, about how feared she was even on Olympus.

Annabeth would learn to let her heart lead her on, as she'd realise how remarkably good of a compass it can be when the entire world seems dark and hopeless.

It would also be far more powerful message than what we're currently working with.

Remember two things, kid: pink nails will never, ever, soften a punch, and wisdom is something forged in mistakes, not in the womb.

status-quo-hater

I think one of the funniest abortion stances I've heard was from my parents neighbor. He's a like, hard-core libertarian viking larper guy who is very tall and very fat and very bald.

He believes a fetus is human with a soul, but also its "basically attacking the woman's body" so if she wants to get rid of it, that's "basically self-defense". He compared it to shooting a home invader. So he supports abortion not as healthcare, but as killing a baby in self-defense

status-quo-hater

Y'know I'm so glad someone reminded me of this. Because this was also discussed.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

He brought up people consensually hurting each other, didn't go for one of the obvious answers like boxing or body mods or something, no he went STRAIGHT TO BDSM and he DIDN'T EVEN REMEMBER THE ACRONYM

theunbearablelightnessofbeeing

I do not think Westalis or WISE are ideologically pure as a lot of people seem to believe they are.

I was rewatching S3 today since I got sick, and Spy x Family is my comfort show, and I found it interesting about the anti-Ostanian propaganda and beliefs regarding Ostanians, namely that they are all 'demons who have horns' (paraphrasing, obviously). This is really interesting, because it actively dehumanises their enemy. Literally, they're not humans - they're monsters. This is interesting to me, since this was a tactic used by the Nazis regarding Jews, but I think this is largely coincidental and not intended by Endo. Or, perhaps it was. Either way, it's a point to pick up on.

Conversely, we never hear that sort of sentiment from the Ostanian soldier Franky, who states that the propaganda they were fed were that the West broke the treaty and did a false flag operations. None of these dehumanise Westalians. It's not TRUE, but he's not staying "you guys are cockroaches".

Now, we know that not everyone in the West shares this 'all Ostanians are demons'. Namely, Twlight's dad chastises his son for saying these xenophobic things, so we know Loid didn't hear them at home. So, the belief must be prevalent enough - on the radio, on TV, in society, at school, that baby [redacted] feels comfortable enough regurgitating these talking points without fearing consequences. If anything, it seems he's more rewarded for this behaviour and thinking by his fellow Westalians at large (with the exception of his father and the croquette lady).

This sort of propaganda doesn't just happen and become normalised in a short timeframe. These are incredibly ingrained beliefs in Westalian society; children often reflect the society they grow up in. It is entirely possible WISE - as an intelligence agency - played some part in this, but there's no way to confirm. You know, because that's not how spies work.

However, I noticed a lot in fanworks that WISE and the West is always presented as the good guy and morally superior to Ostania. It makes sense; we follow an employee of WISE as a protagonist, and he's a nice enough man, plus he's attractive, so we obviously support him, since we're invested in his personal struggles. However, we don't actually see too much of WISE (they're a branch of central intelligence services). Either way, lot of people overlook the blatant propaganda I mentioned before.

Everyone who works there seems to be super cool, obviously, but there's a misconception in fanon that because we like Loid and Handler and Nightfall, that WISE is good, and therefore, all their actions are good. However, WISE is a government institution, and seems operationally similar to the NSA/CIA (and uh, yeah, those guys are NOT good). In the Fionky episode (S3E1), some things of note stuck out to me.

They accused - pretty bluntly - an Ostanian politician 'illegally blocking' strawberry exports. How the hell did they arrive at that conclusion? I'm willing to put this down as weak writing, since Endo does not focus on the politics, but that guy has to be beholden to someone. He can't just be like "no strawberries for those guys" without at least 50+ politicians appearing and shouting "you fucking donkey". For the purpose of this, I'll say this was WISE being given an official pretext for the operation to commence. That is not the same as this actually beng the case.

That operation was effectively demanded by a Westalian politician, who it's basically intimated would kick the fuck off for war if he didn't have Ostanian strawberries on his birthday cake in two weeks. What sort of politician has that much sway over an intelligence agency? Who is this guy? Why can WISE just get ordered around by a single person in power? That is NOT how checks and balances work.

From this, I basically concluded that WISE effectively just runs personal favours for their homeland politicians. Sure, they must keep the balance of peace between east and west, but they seem to basically immediately kowtow to any unreasonable demand. It really seems that political corruption runs deep in the West (probably to an equal degree as it occurs in Ostania).

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I'll likely try and write WISE more neutrally, since I don't really buy they're a 'save the world' agency. That's just what Anya thinks about WISE, because she looks up to Loid. Her view is incredibly skewed, and can't be taken as the full truth. Even Handler snaps at the WISE rookie about that sort of thinking (with the understanding he's not four years old, obviously). So, I think going forward, I'll try and write WISE with this nuanced approach more often.

anyadesmond

It's very interesting. Because to me spy x family is just symbolism upon symbolism (ESPECIALLY in the third season opening). I take the strawberries to be so too, along with the obvious purpose of servicing humor. I think it would make more sense if it's thought about how easily people in power, like politicians, sway around institutions no matter how 'good' their country is in terms of democracy and such. About how curroption exists indefinitely as long as their is power. And how this is accepted as a necessary compromise for not turning your country into one ruled by a crone who thinks he has it all. When I first SxF I was like 13, and it was very easy to believe ostania was a dictatorship. The show potrays ostania to be the evil to wise's good. But that's not necessarily it. The narration is very skewed and the audience almost never had the full picture since we follow characters instead of the plot. Twilight dreams of a world where children can be happy, but then rolls it all down on one agency that works for world peace, but is massively influencial. Influence attracts power and people start using it for personal gain. I think Twilight realises this at some level, but has to compromise much of his actions towards those personal gains, because it is 'necessary'. And franky to me seems like the best guy out there. Trusting no agency but building a network of your own to achieve what you want for the world. He seems to be the smartest person to me. The biggest advantage one can have in this game is information, and to have agency over that is another power itself. #ilovewokepeople. Another point I would take note of is that all yuri, yor, and twilight grew up in the countryside of their respective nations. Those areas are more likely to be influenced by propaganda because of their demography and tight know environments. To blame it it on the west/east would be a lot easy than in the urban areas. And then they experienced the war themselves. Berlint and other important cities were not hit as much as the rural areas. In war, people always find somebody to blame. It became very easy for people to do so when they already had a villain in mind. There's somany grander ideas conveyed through silly elements in spy x family which makes it a,azing to watch. (All those mass media essays paid off now I can look at things and know things). Also, how hard would it be to just ship the strawberries on the cake from ostania? Smh you've got like a shitton of agents there.

theunbearablelightnessofbeeing

I loved reading this take. You’re entirely correct regarding narrative skew – the audience is trapped in Twilight’s ideological assumptions and rarely step outside of them. Intentionally, this does a lot in conveying WISE sympathetically. However, I have to pushback on some points (but this is just a friendly, interesting discussion, and I have no intention of beating people into agreeing with me!)

Correct me if I’ve misread, but I think you were framing WISE as the “lesser evil”. I disagree with this framing, because it implicitly accepts WISE’s own self-presentation as a moderate, rational actor working towards peace, which also frames Ostania as this irrational aggressor that needs to be managed by them. However, when we look at what WISE actually does, they’re not working to resolve the ‘cold war’, but the maintenance of equilibrium. Even the goal of Operation Strix isn’t “stop the war”, but “stop this specific man starting a specific war at this specific moment in time”. Sure, the goal is stability, but in this context, that preserves a divided continent within which both blocks remain in perpetual low-grade conflict.

I studied Soviet history in university, so I know a little bit about this than most! My take is that the parallels here are easy. The CIA and KGB were symbiotic; they justified each other’s existence, budget and power. WISE works in this analogy, I think. Twilight’s never given a mission that will fundamentally alter the balance. Obviously, the show’s a comedy, so it never really looks into it, however, once you notice it, the structure becomes VERY obvious. Twilight’s dream of children playing freely is real/sympathetic, but it’s churlish to deny he’s not serving the geopolitical machinery that gave rise to that dream. I think that’s what makes the implications of the show’s politics more interesting than ‘good spies vs. big bad dictatorship’.

You raised an interesting point regarding the countryside, and I broadly agree, rural communities are more likely to be propagandised due to how close-knit they are. However, historical precedent contravenes this. In WW2 (which I’m taking as the basis of SxF’s ‘war’), the primary targets of aerial bombardment/destruction were cities (they had rail hubs, ports, factories, admin centres etc.) The logic is to destroy your enemy’s productive/organisational capacity, which is concentrated in urban centres (you know, the joke of ‘that’s where the jobs are’?) It’s for this reason that the UK’s evacuation programme transported hundreds of thousands of kids OUT of cities INTO the countryside. In fact, the wartime experience of rural communities was one of relative isolation/removal from the direct destruction (obviously, rationing and economic impacts hit everyone).

However, I’d also argue that cities were more exposed to a greater density of information compared to the countryside, which sort of disproves the ‘countryside is more nationalist’ thread. Cities are where state propaganda is more intensively distributed, so I think the picture is more complicated than ‘rural = nationalist’. I will say that urban working-class communities tended to be more politically radicalised/sceptical of the government because their exposure to satire and counterpropaganda, which the countryside didn’t necessarily have.

Regarding Loid being raised in the countryside. My reading of Luwen isn’t countryside. [Redacted] and his friends play in a munitions depot. Sure, it’s disused, but that tells me Luwen has an industrial history. Munitions manufacturing doesn’t just APPEAR, you need infrastructure, labour, transport, proximity to raw materials etc. etc. Therefore, logically, Luwen would have been a legitimate military/economic target, since the workforce would have had experience with manufacturing. My wife also pointed out that it's a border town, and likely not a major targe,but it's close enough to the border and in the rage of artillery to be viable. It’s definitely not a sleepy little village (which I think Loid has nostalgia glasses on for, obviously). Therefore, Twilight’s ‘radicalisation’ (if you can even call it that) stems from witnessing industrial warfare and the consequences close up, since his ideology is formed from trauma. It’s an irony that the character who grew closest to the war machinery is the one who rejected nationalism entirely! (Something, something, proximity to the reality of war cuts through propaganda).

anyadesmond

Thanks for the info on WW2. I really need to study it more; my country's textbooks barely cover the World Wars. Looking back, I think I was projecting some of my own country's historical experiences into the analysis and ignoring the actual historical basis of Westalis and Ostania

I also think I explained myself badly (bad conversationalist tendencies). What I was trying to get at is that WISE functions symbolically. To me, it represents the idea that even institutions which genuinely present themselves as forces for good are still vulnerable to corruption and political compromise. People tolerate that corruption because they see it as the price of maintaining stability or democracy, which is a pretty ironic contradiction. I totally agree with your take on wise, but to me, it also functions to convey this idea about institutions in a political setup. (GOD I NEED TO START RESEARCHING COLD WAR BECAUSE (a) helps with theorizing in SP, even though I never really am right about stuff and (b) my teach is gonna kill me in about a week if I don't start because this is also my board practical)

Everything else I totally agree with you about and thank you for giving me things to think and making me think.

Also, I really like how technical your approach is. I tend to get distracted by symbolism and themes and end up ignoring the obvious structural stuff right in front of me. Also also you've given me a completely different lens to look at SP through now, because yes I'm gonna (try) figure out wtf is happening.