#complex interpretations

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I feel like some people don’t understand that there’s a whole spectrum between ‘catagorically condemning’ a fictional characters actions and ‘blindly defending’ the same character’s actions. There’s a whole range between the two, covering things like ‘I don’t defend but also don’t condemn to’ ‘I think what so and so did was right to a degree’ to ‘this was wrong and so and so was wrong to do but it’s understandable’ to everything else on that range.

Plus, specific complaints about a character’s specific actions in this incident is not the same as having an issue with a character more broadly. I may get really critical of character X in situations 1, 2, 5, 8 and 13, but given that the character has a whole lot more situations than that, its not unsafe to assume that I don’t actually hate them in every situation.

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In His Mind, Ulfric Had To Attack Whiterun

It always stuck in me a little that Balgruuf ends up joining the Imperials, and there's nothing you can do about it - I'd always expected that basically which side you'd pick would determine his side, rather than him being pre-determined Imperial. It seemed fitting, given that he starts neutral and supports your character so much early on. Ah well. *shrug* Just seemed a missed opportunity. I also kind of expected him to die, and thus the Battle-Borns (if you sided with the Imperials) or the Grey-Manes (If you were a Stormcloak) would take over in Dragonsreach. That's neither here nor there. But its also bothered me why Ulfric decided to force Balgruuf's hand the way he did - giving someone an ultimatum like that is a great way to piss them off. It wasn't until the battle of Fort Neugrad, when I was playing on a Stormcloak playthrough, that it occurred to me. The Empire doesn't just have the resources of its loyal holds to draw on. It has Cyrodiil and High Rock. Pale Pass is closed during the war, but if Ulfric waits too long, will it open again? Will the Empire bring in troops from High Rock, or take them to Solitude by sea? Ulfric might be able to stand to be outnumbered, to a point, but there is a point where someone is going to be too outnumbered. Ulfric cannot wait for that. Plus, he knows as well as Tullius - the longer the war lasts, the weaker Skyrim becomes.  So he feels a need to force Balgruuf's hand, even if it means the man declares for the Empire. He cannot afford to wait, whereas the Empire, which doesn't attack Whiterun, can wait. It would rather not, but it can.  People do things for reasons - you can disagree with their motives or goals, but unless they're wholly given to Sheogorath, From his perspective, Ulfric had a very good reason to force Balgruuf's hand, PR damage or not. He couldn't afford to wait. Condemn him or not, understand his motivations. The great thing about Elder Scrolls is the depth of the world, and the complexity of characters, and Skyrim does that best of them all, I'd argue. Bethesda puts a lot of work into making these characters so multifaceted. It is rewarding, I think, to think from the positions of these characters, and thus develop a deeper appreciation for the world. Skyrim has a lot of gray, and I think the game is made better for it.

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TES: Canon, Fanon and Word of Dante

(For those of you unaware of the concept of 'Word of Dante' when it comes to issues such as fandoms, I direct you to the excellent tvtropes page on the subject: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WordOfDante) I. What is Canon?  The Issue of what is and isn't canon in the Elder Scrolls universe both is and isn't a thorny one, and one that is very simple and very complex. Having muddied right at the start, let's get started. This will be a very meta discussion, and one that not everyone is going to enjoy. And I'm sure my interpretation of the lines between Canon, Fanon and Word of Dante is going to annoy, or possibly anger some fans.

Canon, as defined by wikipedia is: "In fiction, canon is the material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction." 

Knowing what is and isn't canon is an important issue for fanfiction, as fanfiction, by its nature, is based on some previous source of media, be it a movie, book, TV show, game or whatever. It is the common raw material that all fanfiction writers work with, but everyone has their debates about what did and didn't happen, what the inner motivations of characters, how and why things happened, for what purpose, et cetera. That debate and similarly, the dislike some segments of the fan community might have with this or that aspect of canon leads to all manner of fanfiction, as people try to defend or promote their interpretation of canon or their preferred divergence of canon (pairing fics, also known as ships, are probably the most notable aspect of both of these, but not the only ones).  Some things are not canon, but widely accepted in the community as true - and sometimes mistaken for canon by some people. This is Fanon. Back to Wikipedia: "Fan fiction is almost never regarded as canonical. However, certain ideas may become influential or widely accepted within fan communities, who refer to such ideas as "fanon", a portmanteau offan and canon."

The definition of Word of Dante can be seen in the earlier TV Tropes link. 

The first responsibility of any fan that wants to really engage the fandom (such as by writing fanfics) is to decide what qualifies as canon. Sometimes that is simple - in the case of a series of books, what happens in the books. But sometimes its not that simple. The author might say something in an interview about a character or a concept in the books, but that never shows up in the books. Is that canon? Is that Word of Dante?  In some really big fandoms, with years and years and years of build up, most notably Star Trek and Star Wars, there are a lot of things that can't be canon, because they end up conflicting with later material. A rule of thumb that I have discovered in some of these universes that have such expansive canon is a kind hierarchy of canon. Generally speaking the movies in star wars and the movies/TV shows in Star Trek are 100% canon (with the exception of the animated Series) and things in outside books, games and such are canon or can be assumed to be canon - but the owners of the universes reserve some degree of right to contradict that expanded universe material. If I'm screwing up the rules of Star Trek or Star Wars EU canon rules, just bear in mind that I'm trying to talk generally here, and I'm not trying to make definitive statements on either ST or SW.  So to bring this back on topic, there is a very sober, strict interpretation of what is canon - just go by what's in the games. TES is video-game based fandom, and while external stuff, such as books (and potential other things, like graphic novels or movies or whatever) just doesn't count. Some people might extend it to all official material of the owning company (such as the two Elder Scrolls novels by Greg Keyes). Other people extend canon to include what some might call Word of Dante or Fanon.  Then there's Elder Scrolls Online, which has some fans up in arms about Lore conflict and I believe that Bethesda has officially said that TESO will be sort of 'Lore Adjacent' or something like that, where some stuff may end up official lore, but some stuff won't and that Bethesda can conflict with anything that happens in TESO as they desire in the future (a kind of get out of jail free card on that front, much like my interpretation of the so-called 'Middle Dawn', which you can see in the Author's notes at the end of Jarl of Blackreach Chapter 2. (Incidentally, if anyone has information on what Bethesda has actually said on the lore-ness or lackthereof of TESO, I'd appreciate knowing, as this kind of comes second or third hand and I may be misremembering what I heard) With Jarl of Blackreach, I am trying to stick to canon as much as possible, and only use fanon or Word of Dante or just my own interpretation or creations where the canon does not provide information - which is a lot of places, let's be honest. This is not a rule everyone must follow, and I am not touting my approach as superior. It is simply the approach I have chosen to take. So this means, though, that defining and delineating what is and isn't Canon is even more important for me than for some fanfiction writers. Important for me the writer, so I am clear on the limits I have imposed on myself, and for you the reader, so you know the boundaries within which the story you are reading operates within. I feel its important, anyway.  So, finally, we're getting to the Alkeni Definition of Elder Scrolls Canon™. That definition is as follows: Any and All Material Contained within Elder Scrolls I, II, III, IV or V, and other future titles under the same label, such as the no doubt eventual Elder Scrolls VI, et cetera. This does not mean that I may not use material from other sources, such as those books by Greg Keyes or what have you, just that the information I have just defined as canon always takes precedence for me. II. Conflicts Within and Between the Games The savvy fan of the Elder Scrolls, upon reading my definition, is no doubt thinking to themselves, 'but wait, the games often have conflicting canon, and retcons of lore from game to game happen! Which takes priority?" This segment aims to address most, though not all of that problem (since there have been what are unquestionably blatant retcons that cannot be covered with this explanation I'm about to give, such as the moving of Markarth's location). It can be summed up by simple fact: All the Lore In the Games Is In-Universe. What that means is that all the lore from the games is written from the subjective perspective of people that live in Tamriel or is said to the player by those same subjective-perspective people.  To elaborate on my point, let's take a look at real world history, the year 1066 and the Battle of Hastings. For anyone who wants a fairly read on the subject of that year, and more thorough examination of the thumbnail sketch of a thumbnail sketch I am about to summarize here, I suggest David Howarth's quite good work, 1066: The Year of the Conquest. (Howarth is a journalist, not a historian, and he is as much interested in telling a story as he is relaying historical information. His book is very much pop history, so bear that in mind when reading it)

There is a common story with Hastings, and it's basically: Harold Godwinson usurped the throne of England, which was rightly William, Duke of Normandy's and William fought a righteous war and won it and boom, he was King of England after the Battle of Hastings. That is, to say the least, overly simplified, biased towards William/the Normans and not entirely what happened. But the thing is, almost all of our primary and near-Primary sources, such as the Bayeux Tapestry, the Song of the Battle of Hasting, The Life of King Edward, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Lives of the Norman Dukes, et cetera, are all possessed of their own biases and limitations, based on access to information and sources, issues of patronage or reprisal (free speech wasn't exactly a thing then. You couldn't write history that made the King or his ancestors look bad, as a general rule.) There's also the problem that back then, historians had a tendency to invent speeches or conversations that may have happened but that the writer couldn't or doesn't know, and in general, to fill gaps in their knowledge of what happened with 'what makes sense'. And of course, people can just be mistaken. Archeologists and Historians have made mistakes in the past, but as new evidence is found, or old evidence re-examined, they find themselves revising information to try to get closer to that goal of perfect accuracy.

The various sources for the year 1066 and what led up to it often conflict, are obviously biased, and in some cases, such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Life of King Edward show obvious signs of the 'don't piss the King (William of Normandy) off' impulse. All this, coming back around to The Elder Scrolls, means one thing: The historians in the Elder Scrolls universe can be wrong. They can be biased. They can be constrained by political realities. They can lie. They can distort. What is and isn't the case is not always clear or certain because even the people in the universe might not know for sure what is or isn't the case. And there's obviously going to be conflict and confusion among Tamriel's historians, just as there is among the historians here on Earth.

I mean two examples that come mind immediately are the in-universe book “The Dragon Break Re-Examined' which is one scholars attempt to address what at least he feels is a major error in the study of the history of the mid-first era (Again, that 'Middle Dawn') and why he thinks that error occurred. Another one is the publisher's notes at the end of each of Moabar Sul's 'Ancient Tales of the Dwemer' series, and there are other instances of this sort of problem. I won't go into detail about the conflicts in universe regarding gods, myths and theology, largely because they're so obvious, and the fact that in the real world, if you get ten theologians of even the same religion into a room, you're likely to get ten different answers to a great many questions. Just exponentially expand that to cover multiple gods, multiple pantheons, syncretization and multiple races, and you can see obvious how the problem would get worse, and this is post is already almost two thousand words long. What I will say is that almost all conflicts between or within games regarding the Lore can be addressed using this simple fact, this simple understanding. Bethesda has been clever to use this as their primary, if not sole, vehicle for Lore delivery, as it gives them a get out of jail free card (thought it doesn't give them unlimited room to maneuver, as even conflicting histories agree on some things and get some things right). Whether this is cynical of Bethesda or not, or good or a bad thing or not, is a whole different question, but it is one that you always have to keep in mind when discussing what did or did not happen, what is or is not canon. The people of Tamriel can't agree on what's canon. How are we the fan's supposed to? In a future post on this subject, I hope to address the role of Word of Dante/Fanon in TES in general, and in particular a fellow named Micheal Kirkbride, who some of you may know of, and his somewhat unique role in this whole question. However, this post is too long as it is, and I haven't quite done all the research to be able to have that discussion just yet and feel confident in everything I'm saying. Just bear in mind my above definition of what is canon, which does exclude, as strict canon (for me) what Kirkbride has said outside of the games themselves. I'll have more to say on Kirkbride later, eventually.

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Re: Stormcloak/Imperial Divide

I've spent a lot of time recently reading posts on Skyrim Confessions. Probably more than I should, and probably one of the reasons why chapter 3 took so long to write in the first place. That and Dragonborn and Hearthfire.

One of the things I've found there are a lot of posts about the civil war. And a lot of them annoy me. Not because I'm a diehard Imperial, or a dye-in-the-wool Stormcloak, and the other side annoys me. But because both sides often show what I find to be an amazing ignorance of the lore or display an immature, shallow decision making process to take them to their side.

Not everyone does, and at the end of the day, people play Skyrim for whatever reasons they want, and do whatever they want in game for whatever reasons they want, and I don't want to begrudge them that.

But there are some arguments - against both sides and for both sides - that really bother me. Either because they explicitly go against established facts in the lore and the game, or have no grounding in the lore/game or logic. I won't attempt to cover all things about the Stormcloak/Imperial Divide, or come to some grand conclusion. At most, I'm making my contribution to the ongoing to debate by discussing some common arguments I've seen.

I. Stormcloak/Ulfric Racism

I often see people say they support the Empire because the Stormcloaks are so racist, because Ulfric is so racist. This is a negative reason to support the Empire - that is, it isn't supporting the Empire because you support them or their platform or whatever, which would be a positive reason to support the Empire, but this is supporting the Empire because they are the 'lesser evil', as it were, than the Stormcloaks - supporting the Empire because they're not the Stormcloaks.

This is a perfectly valid reason to support the Empire, and one that has real basis in the lore and the game, but the tone I sometimes see in people's condemnation of Stormcloak or Ulfric Racism often bothers me, because it goes too far, or just strikes me as over the top. I mean, I've seen people compare the Stormcloaks to Nazis, and Ulfric to Hitler, proving that Godwin's Law works in Skyrim too. And that, is just...no. You don't throw around words like Nazi and Hitler. Especially not in games that aren't even set on Earth.

For one, I don't think that Ulfric is personally as racist as he's often cast - remember, he'll take your Dragonborn into his army whatever their race, even an Altmer, Dunmer or Argonian. Hitler would not have taken Einstein's help, even if the man had been willing to offer it to him. Right there we see what I feel is the core of Ulfric's approach to the race - pragmatism. He's without a doubt somewhat racist - I'm reminded of the Avenue Q song 'Everyone's a Little Bit Racist Sometimes': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbud8rLejLM 

Now, Ulfric's view would obviously be more 'Skyrimized' and Medieval, rather than fitting to a modern, earth conception of a 'Little Bit Racist' but still. Yes the Argonians and the Dumner have it hard in Windhelm, but they're not beaten by the guards for no offense, there's no one burning wooden Talos Symbols in front of their houses, we don't see lynch mobs. Its complex - but we don't see Ulfric enacting a 'Final Solution' or enslaving them, or even just kicking them out of the city, or Skyrim, even if the war ends in his favor.

 Yes, Ulfric ignores their (the non-Nords) problems, he doesn't go after bandits that don't target Nords very hard (something confirmed in game by the way) and otherwise discriminates against non-Nords and this is bad, but not as bad as it is often made to be.  What Ulfric is doing, essentially, is being a politician. He's not running for office, but he is trying to rally support for a rebellion against the Empire, for his civil war. He's a number of planks to his platform, among them the Talos issue, the weak state of the Empire, and the race issue. That there are racist Nords (and racists of other races, either in Skyrim or at least in other provinces) is indisputable. That there are racists among the Stormcloaks or their supporters is equally indisputable. Ulfric, in need of support for his war, and hardly an egalitarian on the issue of Race, has decided that while he may not be of the KKK (as it were, to use a RL comparison) he's not against trying to use them to advance his goals. This is bad, but its also pragmatic, and that line has to be understood.

II. The Empire Worshipped Talos Too

There's a confession that's stuck in my mind even since I saw it, I can't remember exactly what it said, but it was saying that the Empire was terrible/no good/dirty rotten/whatever for trying to enforce its own beliefs (that Talos is not a god) on Skyrim, as if Talos worship is a unique Skyrim phenomenon. And I've seen similar confessions since, though not quite as vehement in their ignorance of the facts (in so far as there can be facts  And the thing is, you don't even need to look up the Lore, or play earlier TES games to see how demonstrably false this is - you can pay attention to what's in the game, maybe read some of the in-game books. Talos is Tiber Septim. What makes Tiber Septim important? Oh yea, he was the First Emperor of the 3rd Empire. You know, the Empire that's base in Cyrodiil? The Empire that the Nords are rebelling against? The Imperials have a whole lot more reason to be attached to Talos than the Nords when you get right down to it. I don't think they like giving him up any more than the Nords did - and it certainly isn't that they are enforcing their own anti-Talos beliefs on the Nords. They only gave their worship of Talos up to make peace (we can talk about the White-Gold Condordat and if it was spineless, necessary, unwise, or whatever another time.). But its not an Imperial custom that, after more than 500 years is suddenly being enforced on the Nords. III. Final Thoughts/Future Discussion Points I admit, I was planning on more in this post, but its a little long for my tastes already. I do plan on having more to say, but for the time being, this is it. Some things I might touch on in the future on this same subject include two futher common claims I planned to address in this post. -"Ulfric Just wants Power for himself!" -"The Empire is the puppet of the Thalmor!" There are other things I may talk about as well, but that's what I have to say for now.