Maaruin

Ideosyncratic Christian, 30s, he/him. I occasionally post thoughts about religion, politics, history, and Star Wars (in all possible combinations).

[maaruin]

Heads-up: From now on every Ask I get which asks for money (explicitly or implicitly) gets reported as spam/bot, not just blocked.

[certified-linguistics-moment]

[phantomrose96]

God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers and I'm dodging the draft

[phantomrose96]

hang on I gotta look something up.

[i-suggest-vore]

DW I know that one from heart if you need an explanation

[phantomrose96]

Thanks tumblr user i-suggest-vore. I can always count on you for theological literacy wait is there a different reason you like this story

[maaruin]

[fandom-man]

[thahxa]

ok while we're here. like. it is kinda crazy how fascist frieren is right?

[thahxa]

like the straightforward reading of it IS fascist! "look at me a cutesy little (extremely powerful) pastoralist elf who wants nothing more than to live my happy life when these SUBVERSIVES that the REST OF SOCIETY TOLERATES exist!"

it's not even like. being subtle! it goes from like 3 episodes in of "haha cutesy elfslop" to "ontologically evil p-zombies exist in this world and you have to kill them all. full stop" it's not even drawing parts of it! it's the whole fucking hog all the way in all the time!

[thahxa]

and like. even past that? it's not good! its literally not good.

[morlock-holmes]

That's what I've been saying!

[cultureulterior]

1. It's not fascist, it's set in a universe where what you call fascism (killing ontologically evil entities) is correct and good, as it would be

2. When the demons speak to each other, they are acting

3. It's a good show.

[thahxa]

ok so first of all its not good. but im not even arguing if what the elf does in story is correct or not! all im saying is that if like. dan "ideas" olson made an anime to demonstrate how fascist regimes would make media to embody their ideals he would make frieren and like. somehow this is not the first thing people discuss when they talk about it???

[morlock-holmes]

I know, it's wild, right? And it happens so fucking quickly, like, what, 4 or 5 episodes before it's literally stealing plot elements from Norman Spinrad's Iron Dream and like, *nobody* really even brought it up for a long time.

And sure, it has uncomfortable and direct links to real life fascist thought, but at least it's done in a way that will make most of the conflicts of the show incredibly boring and pointless and that make you think the writers don't pay attention to their own characters.

Like, if people had reacted to it like they react to Goblin Slayer that's one thing, but people acted like it was a good show for so long!

Also genuinely, objectively the first demon Frieren kills uses language to gather information about what's happened since he's been imprisoned. The later demons discuss what tactics they are going to use against the humans and why certain lies work on humans. If they were just parrots that would actually be potentially interesting on some level, but they aren't.

[weiszklee]

Frieren's demons aren't p-zombies. They have internal drives towards survival, domination, and little else as far as we can see. But in this they are not so different from Tolkien's orcs or the vampires in Buffy. This is not fascism, the demons aren't trying to subversively weaken society by promoting a distancing from the natural order or whatever. They are trying to invade and conquer. And the proposed solution is not a strengthening of national character or the establishment of a dictatorship but individual mastery of craft.

As always my opinion is that giving the villains interesting motives is a great way to explore deep themes, but it's not mandatory. You can have one-dimensional villains and still tell an interesting story, you just have to focus more on other things. Which is what Frieren does. The one-dimensional evil-ness of the demons is not a big focus of the show, it's taken as a given for the backdrop of the things the show is actually interested in, which is the personal and interpersonal developments of the main cast and some side characters. The demons are evil because "how does this character react to evil?" is an interesting question. Even the fight scenes are mostly interesting because they tell us more about the inner lives of the people we have gotten to know. For the entire magic academy arc the demons are pretty much absent, because the show is just not about them. If you like politics and want to see shows that focus on complicated conflicts without obvious moral valence then Frieren is probably not the show for you.

[morlock-holmes]

The demons are evil because "how does this character react to evil?" is an interesting question.

Fundamentally, I disagree with the idea that "How do the characters react to the fact that nits really do make lice" is interesting. I think it's actually quite dull.

I do find it a little frustrating to talk about because people keep fitting it into some kind of generic left-wing objection about "evil races" when my actual problem is that this specific instance is bad.

The other thing is that, I had the same experience @thahxa had, which is that after like a decade of super woke people picking apart every TV show imaginable Frieren just straight-up copies plot points from The Iron Dream and people mostly didn't even bring it up!

I found it deeply disorienting when something that was been sold as a pastoral show about contemplation and relationships suddenly turned into Lord of the fucking Swastika.

PS - My immediate response is that Tolkien's Orcs are different because Tolkien is a better writer who actually knows how to use these tropes but I've never finished Lord of The Rings so maybe I just didn't get to the part where Legolas explains that we need to kill all the Orc babies.

[uboat53]

I believe Tolkien's solution was just never to deal with it at all. How orcs reproduce is never explained (Well, I guess actually he came up with multiple explanations that are mutually exclusive and, I believe, none of which involve babies). There are simply no civilian orcs, much less families and children.

[thathopeyetlives]

I believe that's quite untrue. The explanation which seems to have been favored by Tolkien the most often is that the Orcs are what happens when Satan selectively breeds / magically corrupts people for aggression and obedience (and probably fast reproduction) for tens of thousands of years. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say this would indeed produce something like orcs, and also that this would imply a future project of mercy towards the orcs once they no longer pose a direct military threat.

OFC once you strip off the glamour of beauty and invincibility, orcs start to look a lot like the fascist's ideal man.

I haven't watched Frieren yet, but a lot of this Discourse seems to treat "accepting the theoretically possible existence of certain types of evil" as equal to fascism where to me a significantly distinct aspect of fascism as I have seen it is the paranoid/wrong attitude towards *people we know*, and the frantic zero-sum-total-conflict attitude towards outgroup relations as well as the national renewal through violence concept.

[maaruin]

I have watched the early episodes of Frieren and I think your description is facism does fit it pretty well if we interpret "people we know" as "demons as they are shown onscreen". I don't have much of a problem with a fantasy race whose interests are inherently opposed to human interests*, who can feel no compassion, and who will try to trick humans by pretending to be more like them than they are. But the show then goes on to say: "If you attempt any policy other than total extermination towards the demons, you are sooo dumb. Don't you see that showing empathy to people incapable of empathy will get you killed?"

(The shows thesis statement, so to speak, is in Episode 7. This is the best version of the core sequence I could find on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N6QOqt4u7c . As far as I can tell, Frieren's position on this has not been seriously challenged in the show or the manga so far.) In reality, "How do I negotiate with someone who has interests are opposed to mine?" and "How do I deal with the fact that the one I am negotiating with might be lying?" are Diplomacy 101. Deterrance, containment, subjugation and surveillance, even trade and limited cooperation are all possible with someone with opposing goals. It isn't even necessarly a problem that Frieren (the character or the show) thinks extermination is the right approach towards the demons, the problem is that it treats it as the obviously right approach, and that any other approach must be because of an emotional weakness or naivety. "Their interests are fundamentally opposed to ours so coexistence is impossible and they always lie to get an advantage over us so talking with them is useless." is both what the Nazis claimed about Jews, and what more extreme Islamophobes claim about Muslims, and isn't really common with other ideologies. Even Communists who consider the bourgeoisie ultimately hostile to the proletariat think you can negotiate labor conditions with a corporation or deter a capitalist state from attacking you militarily.

And in addition, compassion doesn't contradict caution. People can care for dangerous animals or dangerous people, they just need be careful and take steps to protect themselves and others. And compassion may be morally praiseworthy even if it is shown to someone who doesn't appreciate or return it. Again, I would have no problem if Frieren argued that showing compassions to demons is a mistake. But it conflates compassion with gullibility, and while there are certainly people who are gullibly compassionate and should be criticized for that, considering all compassion towards the outgroup as gullible is a pretty common attitude among fascists especially today.

--------------------------

*It does become a problem when the story then explicitly connects it to real groups, like when Doom Eternal thought it would be funny to have the evil corporation talk about the demons invading Earth like pro-immigration people talk about immigrants.

[maaruin]

I now have an AO3 account. Will I actually write something? I'm really not sure, but it is good to have the option.

Now I can comment and give kudos, or whatever it is called. Maybe I should take the time to go to my favorite stories I read in the past and do that for these as well. Not promises though, might just do it when I happen to reread.

[aviantastic]

Tree Swallows by Linda H. Dulak - Audubon Photography Awards

[fluentisonus]

barn swallows depicted in the “spring fresco”, akrotiri, thera, greece. c. 16th century BC

[cryptidofthecove]

[starlightomatic]

when comments sections are like this

[spin-the-wheel-polls]

Stuck in a historical war

You are stuck as a soldier in this historical war

(this is a magical universe where people who wouldn't usually be able to fight would. so you can all suffer.)

How are you doing?

good somehow

I might survive

OW

dead

results/other

Voting ended onJul 5

[afurioushawk]

[maaruin]

While the DSA is very white, the claim that it isn’t working class is false unless you use a very restrictive definition of working class:

I couldn’t find anything on the median income, but my hunch is that it is mostly people from comfortable backgrounds who do worse than their parents (worse paying jobs with worse job security). They shouldn’t presume to speak for people from intergenerational low income, but they do have legitimate interests in economic justice.

[afurioushawk]

Sib, we literally just had an election where the overwhelming majority of working class voted for the normie Dems and the upper class gentrifiers got DSA candidates elected. The DSA are not working class.

The graphic you posted shows that a very small percentage of DSA is actually working class.

[maaruin]

What’s your definition of Working Class? Even if we only include the groups who predominantly work for for profit companies for a wage (“white color”, “tech worker”, “retail/food/other service sector”, and “blue color”), that’s still 32%. And that would require us excluding nurses and teachers from considering them working class.

[afurioushawk]

[maaruin]

While the DSA is very white, the claim that it isn’t working class is false unless you use a very restrictive definition of working class:

I couldn’t find anything on the median income, but my hunch is that it is mostly people from comfortable backgrounds who do worse than their parents (worse paying jobs with worse job security). They shouldn’t presume to speak for people from intergenerational low income, but they do have legitimate interests in economic justice.

[krakensdottir]

Pretty sure cowardice is a social construct, and we've just kind of willed ourselves into believing bravery and self-sacrifice are the human default.

Like it can be if it's something that matters to you. You might not even give it a thought then. But 9 times out of 10, running away from the bad situation is the smart and normal thing to do.

I hear about a character showing cowardice and I look and they're literally just fleeing a bad situation. 'That chickenshit took off as soon as the bullets started flying' Yeah? Obviously? Why didn't you?

Maybe it's like romance, and it's just one of those things I fundamentally can't grasp even though everyone else seems to know it when they see it. But it honestly feels like something that was invented by military recruiters to convince people that self-preservation is for pussies.

[maaruin]

No, bravery arises from the fact that the actions driven by our fear response are not always in our best interest. “Take a fire extinguisher and turn towards the fire to put it out!” is not something evolution could have prepared as for, and neither is “Yes, the lion is dangerous, but you have a long pointy stick in your hand that can hurt it before it can hurt you.”. And self-sacrifice in most instances is about spreading out the risk. It’s rarely “you will die for certain”, more often it is “some of us will likely die, but if we work together fewer will die/we can achieve our goal and the majority who survives will be better off, so it is worth it for each of us to take the risk because each of us is more likely to be in the surviving majority than one of the dead”. Bravery and self-sacrifice become bad when they become an end in itself and go against the interests of the brave person.

[maaruin]

I do find myself with a certain desire to write fan fiction so that I can project my issues on a character.

[russingon]

the fact that at the council of elrond glorfindel is like “just throw the ring into the ocean” is so funny to me after reading the silmarillion just because it feels like the subtext is him being like “yeah let’s try maglor’s patented and tested method: Just Yeet The Accursed Fucking Thing Into The Water”

#in fairness they do do literally the other fëanorion approved method of magical item disposal #glorfindel: we could do like maglor and throw it in the ocean? #elrond: no we’re doing like maedhros and jumping into a volcano via @lesbianlanval

*at the council of Elrond*

Elrond: Alright, everyone listen up. We elves have 4 methods of dealing with Accursed Fucking Objects™, as demonstrated by my four parents. 

Number 1, the Elwing Method or Mom Method. This is to hide the accursed fucking thing away and keep it safe and close. This is highly not reccommended if the object can take over its user like the ring can, and Sauron will be searching for it, so this method is out of the question. 

Number 2, the Earendil Method or the Dad #1 Method. This is, send the accursed fucking thing across the sea or to some higher power. According to Mithrandir, the Valar will not take it and Tom Bombadil wants nothing to do with it, so this is also out of the question. 

Number 3 is the Maglor Method, or Dad #2 Method. This is to yeet the accursed fucking thing into the ocean. In this case, it is not a good idea as Ulmo will be very upset and we will still have to contend with Sauron. 

The last method is the Maedhros Method or the Dad #3 Method. This method is to yeet yourself into a volcano while holding the accursed fucking thing, and also the method we will be using. You will not have to yeet yourself into the volcano, only the ring, don’t worry, Frodo.

[art-of-a-diffrent-color]

Those…those really are the four methods aren’t they?

[armenelols]

@procrastinationonvacation how dare you hide this in the tags

[duelpersonality]

Listen, Boromir knows 1 (one) ancient elven story and damn it, he’s going to ride that horse until it dies.

[dragongirlsweetie]

it's actually so crazy how much the simpsons would fucking suck if it didn't have any of the simpsons characters. just a bunch of shots of empty houses and streets for half an hour while nothing happens. that would be so badddd lol

[auroroboros1]

yeah that tends to happen when you remove characters from media. without characters its all just background. i guess movies set in scenic locations would still land as kinda nature docs but even then

[dragongirlsweetie]

it only happens with the simpsons

[auroroboros1]

this same criticism could be applied to nearly any media ever.

[dragongirlsweetie]

it's just the simpsons. are you a troll?

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Dragon's right, if you remove all the Simpsons characters from Death Note it hardly changes anything

[thinkinginklingon]

you get a minor drop in quality if you remove the Simpsons characters from Stargate

[maaruin]

I have to admit I think the Project Hail Mary is not good at delivering exposition. And because of that the movie could be classified as soft SciFi, while the book is hard SciFi.