Discover Top Posts Tagged with #de trant

I am shaking your hand, patting you on the back, handing you a medal - your tags on my Trant Rant absolutely nailed so much of what his character is thematically supposed to represent, and you said it so eloquently. Glorious and magnificent.

thank you so much omg??? your blog is part of what got me so invested in Trant as a character in the first place (seriously, I love how you characterise him in Scars and Probability Scores), and i think you said it all in the Trant Rant, but i'm glad that you enjoyed my little parenthetical ramblings in the tags :)

but yeah. i love Disco to pieces, and i do really appreciate its criticism of Moralism, but i also think that because of its political alignment system only really having 3 extremes and 1 'centrist' option (which is in and of itself similarly extreme), it does struggle with conflating certain political views. in particular, Moralism is such a broad thing in terms of how it includes vague centrism, radical centrism, and 'civil, refined' left-of-centre stuff. in the game (and also some of the dev commentary o twitter/medium/bsky), i think it can be an issue that Trant's seen as some kind of embodiment of Moralism when he is actively critical of how the Moralintern runs society.

since i've got a psychiatry special interest, I'm gonna return to this example of how, when he's speculating about the cause of Harry's amnesia, he suggests that it's a sane reaction to an insane world. that's effectively a psychiatry-critical standpoint that is, if anything, compatible with psych-abolitionist views of mental illnesses as problems of the state, rather than the individual. there's no way to reconcile this perspective with a worldview that's anything less than left-leaning – while there is right-wing criticism of psychiatry, i don't think it's really in conservatism's favour to claim that insanity is a consequence of oppression. so we can posit from this that Trant is much more of a leftist than would be compatible with Moralintern ideologies. after all, the Moralintern would actively benefit from having a working definition of insanity to press onto its constituents, as that would allow for the regulation and restriction of civilian behaviour. in that regard, Trant couldn't be called all that Moralist on a mere ideological level. the issue, though, is that Trant is so privileged that he will always be a Moralist in practice. again, using the psychiatry example: Trant may endorse leftist criticism of a sane/insane dichotomy, but at the end of the day, he can state these criticisms with a level of detachment. he might criticise the system, but he's not going to work to actively pull it down. he might grumble about it, but he's also vanishingly unlikely to do too much more than read and grumble. in theory, he's against the system. but in practice, he allows it to continue.

that's how Trant embodies Moralism – he's got lefty idealism, but he believes there's time to press pause and wait for change. he consults with the RCM – presumably because he does want a better world – but he will never be the one on the field with his finger on the trigger. and that gives him some freedom to criticise the RCM, and may leave him feeling as though he's not actively bringing down the violent arm of the law, but in reality, he's letting it continue.

it's interesting to compare him with the Sunday Friend in terms of how they embody different aspects of Moralism. the Sunday Friend is actively preaching bureaucracy and stagnation - it's all about Ze Price Stabilté, baby! - and basically enacting the cruellest, most neglectful aspects of 'slow progress' on a policy level. but the Sunday Friend is privileged enough that he can then engage in practices his government seems to barely tolerate – not illegal, but scandalous – in terms of sleeping with a much younger homosexual sex worker and lavishing expensive gifts on him. the Sunday Friend truly has no moral centre but whatever allows him to live most easily. he's pleasant, and nothing more.

meanwhile, the loredrop attempts to characterise Trant as a bit like the Sunday Friend in terms of the amoral Moralist motivation. but the thing is, Trant very clearly does believe in change and progress, and he very clearly wants to improve things. but like the Sunday Friend, he has privilege to shield him whenever he behaves in ways that would be unacceptable for the unwealthy. that's to say that addiction is treated as a moral issue until you're rich enough to recover, much as homosexuality is taboo on the clock and acceptable after hours for the Sunday Friend. Trant isn't intentional in this. his embodying Moralism is a matter of his ignorance of the fact that he does, in fact, need to gain the guts to do something other than merely criticise the rampant inequity in Revachol.

Trant's fatal flaw isn't backpedaling – it's his belief that intellectual idealism is enough to enact change. (maybe that's why TrantJean is such an appealing ship – because Trant helps Jean chill the hell out, but Jean's probably the only one who could convince Trant to actually get his hands dirty. they're good for each other, in that Jean probably pretends he isn't a leftist at work, but is ultimately progressive in practice, while Trant is a leftist in theory and a centrist in practice. they bring out the leftism in each other. god. welcome to my political theory shipping game.)

anyway – so yeah, i suspect this is why Pryce left him off the roll call for Le Retour – Pryce probably believes that Trant wouldn't be effective enough in practice for a revolution, even if he's got the theory. but god, I'd love to see Trant step up to the challenge. i guess i'm throwing my hat in the ring for the Class Traitor Trant agenda.

anyway – thank you so much for the ask, and i hope this extra wall of text has had something interesting for you : )